THE DISCIPLINING FATHERS

I am a Christian father with two children.  I have a son who is a teenager and a daughter who wants so much to be but is only a pre-teen. So before I get yelled at for not understanding what I am talking about, let me clear up that issue. Let me clear up another issue, my wife and I are not our kids BFFs. We are our children's parents. That is our position in their lives and we take the God given position and  responsibility very seriously. We are not perfect and have learned many things, sometimes by trial and error. But we have learned how to be a father and a mother, and not exactly from other parents but from our heavenly Father.

Paul wrote, "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4). Discipline has to do with boundaries and correction.  I give guidelines to my children and if they go beyond the boundaries that are set, then correction is warranted.  This correction is not done out of a lack of love for my children, but just the opposite.  I love my children and God has given me the responsibility to direct them in the way they should go.  As Father's Day is approaching we must remember that as fathers we are to be engaged in the home.  To be engaged means that we are the ones that administer the discipline.  We are to be the spiritual leaders.  We are to protect and even die for our families.

Far too often fathers have left the home without even moving out of the dwelling place.  What do I mean?  Well, some fathers do not take a stand and guide the family in the right direction.  The direction that leads his family to God.  Remember what the wise king Solomon wrote, "Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him" (Proverbs 13:24 ESV).  The rod of the shepherd in the Old Testament was used for two purposes when it came to his sheep.  First, this rod was used as a guiding tool.  If the sheep would stray from the fold or start to tread into a dangerous place, then the shepherd would give the sheep the needed amount of force with the rod to redirect it.  So, as a Christian father when my children go in the wrong direction or start to tread in dangerous waters, I redirect them with the tools at my disposal.  This does include spanking, grounding, timeouts, etc.  Of course father must never cross the line and physically abuse the child.  The punishment that is used is for guiding them back to a God-lead direction.

Second, the rod used by the shepherd was also a tool to protect.  If a wolf or other dangerous animal wanted to do the sheep harm, then the shepherd could use this rod to strike the intruder with enough force to protect his sheep.  The fathers in the home must also do whatever it takes to protect the spiritual and physical well-being of his children.  Use of the rod in this case can be the teachings of the Bible that give direction to the children.  The rod of protecting them from evil speech, immorality at school (such as the public dances), and the humanistic teachings that continue to be expressed in the public school systems.

Whatever goes on is the world around us fathers, just remember that we have the God given duty to protect our children with the discipline that God ordained.  Continue to minister the message of God...

HYPED-UP WORSHIP?

I have started to hear this term being thrown around a little these days.  But this term is not a new one.  What "hyped-up worship" means simply is that a church must make their worship so exciting that everyone that comes leaves worked up "for Jesus."  This type of worship is not limited to praise bands and the like, but also to what is called a "spirit filled" sermon that "rocks" the crowd.  According to dictionary.com, "hyped-up" means, "intensively or excessively stimulated or exaggerated."  These worship services become a place where the person gets intensively stimulated or overly excited.  What is wrong with that?

The problem with this type of mind set is that they change the focus of worship from all about God, to some about God but mostly about them.  You see the worship is not "good enough" unless I get all worked up about it.  Does this make biblical sense?  Is this what God had planned for us in our worship?  Now don't get me wrong, if I leave the worship service excited about service to God then I am blessed.  But my worship is not about me.  This "hyped-up worship" is a me-centered worship rather than a Christ-centered worship.

If I don't have the best singing in worship, then it was not good enough.  If I didn't have the sermon that made me just jump out of my seat and run out the door screaming about Jesus, then it was not good enough.  Jesus said, "God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth" (emp. jer John 4:24).  Does the modern day "hyped-up worship" fit with this pattern?  Some will try to pull the word "spirit" out of its context and define it as such.  Ok, let's define the word in this passage and see.

 Wayne Jackson writes, "True worship must be in spirit. Genuine worship involves the plunging of one’s spirit into the act (cf. Romans 1:9; 1 Corinthians 14:15) in a humble and sincere way (cf. Joshua 24:14). This disposition eschews the superficial, the ostentatious (cf. Matthew 6:1ff), the self-centered (Luke 18:9ff), and the hypocritical (Matthew 5:23-24; 15:7-9)" (christiancourier.com/articles/282-jesus-and-the-samaritan-woman).  The "hype-up worship" does not fit into the pattern of worshiping God.  This type of worship is all about self.  Even though many claim that they are all about God.

I have studied with people that have said, "I just don't like the way they do worship."  Do you see the pronoun?  They want a worship that pleases themselves rather than God.  It has to be all about God with the removal of self.  Do we really believe the song that is sometimes sung, "None Of Self, And All Of Thee?"  Worship God, not self.  Continue to minister with your message... 

EATING POLLUTION

Editor's note:

The following article is from "Creation Moments." You can find this and other articles at www.creationmoments.com. This is a very good source for young earth, creation of God teachings. I just wanted to share this one with you. Continue to minister your message.

Psalm 119:99

"I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies [are] my meditation."

How would you like to live in a neighborhood where garbage was never collected and taken away? What if there was no provision in the creation for getting rid of waste? By now the Earth would have become a filthy mess!

Our sewage and other waste does not break down all by itself. Without microbes, waste would Eating pollutionsimply continue to pile up. But if you were designing a world in which waste would have to be "taken away," how would you do it? It's hard to imagine a solution to the problem that is better than the solution God provided. The creatures that dispose of our waste are microscopic – an improvement over our big, noisy garbage trucks. But microbes don't simply break down garbage into harmless materials. In His wisdom, God designed them to turn useless garbage into useful substances.

We are now beginning to make more use of what God has designed. A West German corporation now markets a ceramic sponge that is home to countless organisms that not only love highly polluted water, they turn the pollution into useful things like natural gas and alcohol. Scientists say that the bugs eat almost anything, even pollutants that cannot easily be handled by usual sewage treatment.

Whether we recognize it or not, we humans continue to learn at the feet of the Creator who made us – which is, itself, an argument against evolution.