Your Next Steps

A long time a go there was a woman named Hannah.  She worked hard at being a good wife and home builder.  She did her share chores and loved her husband.  But there was a problem.  She couldn’t bear children.  In the Israelite culture ,1100 s BC, it was a travesty if a woman couldn’t have kids especially male children.  The line would die out and so in that culture a family was counted blessed if you had sons.  Almost, as if God favored you more.

She also had to live with the thought that she shared her husband with another wife that, could have children!?  Talk about adding insult to injury.  The fact is, in the scriptures, it said that her hubby loved her more that the other.  Um, maybe he shouldn’t have married the other woman?  Ok I digress but that’s a topic for another day.   Guys don’t get any ideas…

Well she travels with old faithful, ahem, to the temple for one of the Jewish feasts (probably the feasts of Tabernacle) and listen to her prayers while there.

“O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.”                                                                   1 Samuel 1:11 ESV

Would you believe it if I told you she goes home and gets pregnant?  So I imagine that the little promise pops up in her head and now she’s probably thinking, “How am I going to get out of this?”

Well, we couldn’t be more wrong…

After she weens him off of her milk she takes him to the temple.  Back then that was like three years.  No it’s not gross they didn’t have stores with pasteurized milk or formula in cans.  She drops him off at the temple and tells the high priest his name is Samuel which means possibly “offspring of God”  and leaves him.  Whoa!

I wonder how many of us parents are willing to give up a child, even to God himself? Unfortunately, if we say we can’t, then that shows how much we truly hold to the thought of God is sovereign and owns everything anyway.

Really, raising kids to the glory of God has nothing about your desires to love them it has to do with the ability to sacrifice your need for confirmation from them.  Let me put it this way.  Sometimes we need our kids more that they need us.  We use them for emotional stability. I know that I’ve done this.  If you are honest I think you’d say you’ve probably done the same thing.

Would you be willing to give God your child if it was a promise to Him no matter the emotional pain?  The answer will tell you a lot about yourself, your belief in God and your emotional stability.  Try and answer…

I found this add in my wife’s, ‘ahemmm’, magazine Southern Living.  What you can’t see in the small print is that teen age girls that eat at the table with their families 5 nights a week are 33% less likely to develop an eating disorder.  Now I am not sure the source of this statistic but to publish something boldly like that it probably is not far off.  So moms and dads, what type of focus do you put on dinner time?

There are several reasons that come to mind why this might have an affect.

• You are showing your children that dinner is the time to enjoy your food and not worry about how many calories you’re eating.  It is the reward yourself time at the end of the day.
• When combining food with family relationships (when they aren’t strained) they both help build on the other.  That is to say if you are eating when you are feeling content from being around family you will have a better view of your food.  And eating food that taste good helps you stomach your family a little better.                                                                                                                                                                                             
• Evening meal time is traditionally the place where the family shares how their day was.  Dad gets to practice leading his family in conversations that help them cope with the world.  Dads you are the protectors of your family, you need to put them at ease and empower them for the next day.  It’s also a great place to celebrate the accomplishments of everyone.
• As far as practicality you can make good healthy meals which add to good food choices in the future.  This starts with your planning the week’s menu out ahead of time.  Show your kids how to eat right.

All in all, good eating habits take work and so does raising kids in a God fearing home.  I think that statistic is a little scary.  It is well worth our effort to make the evening meal the best it can be for ourselves and our kids.

Anyone have any good dinner ideas?

8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

1 Peter 1:8,9 ESV

Sometimes I get this question from people, “How do you know if you’re saved?”

Well a few years a go I would just run through the checklist.  You know those verses that give you steps.  Say like Romans 10:9, “Confessing and Believing”.  But for a long time I suffered knowing that I had gone through a checklist but I was asking myself the same question all the time.  Here’s the question I was asking and I think it translates the same way as the same one I listed above.

“Why don’t I behave like a Christian?” = “How do you know you’re saved?”

My life was spent feeling guilty about the things I was doing wrong.  There was little joy in my life.  There was a lack of love for a God that supposedly had ‘saved’ me.  I should be acting like an heir to God’s kingdom but I continued to live for myself.  My needs over others.

Then a few years a go, because of this question I started searching for God.  He had awakened my need for Him and I was going after it.  There was this time of trying to have a child like faith while constantly asking Him to change me. Always having that feeling of there is something more to this supposedly Christian life…

On the other side of that journey, and that is a story for another day, reading 1 Peter I get it now.

• you love though you have not seen God
• you believe not just in what He did but in who He is and the principles He gives to live by
• there are times I am filled with this inexpressible joy, not all this guilt

It’s not about the checklist.  The checklist confirms who I am.  I am a Christina because I believe and live in continual confession.  “How do you know if you are saved?” is answered in part by does your life show 1 Peter 8 & 9.

These are all effects of a life transformed by God.  Of a soul that was regenerated.

Where are you at in this journey? Does your life reflect a change or you still asking the question of, “How do you know?”

I recently went home to S. Florida for vacation.  I actually took one day and went down to Miami where I was born and raised.  Hadn’t been down there for 6 years.  Not since I had moved my parents out of there.  Shortly after I had moved them they passed away so there was no sense in going down.

I’ve been a little afraid of going traveling there and what it would mean emotionally to me.  I had lost my parents within the same week those six years a go.  This trip to my child hood home was about as close to seeing them as I can get.  It was the place that held memories.  Memories of holidays, Sunday dinners, tons of hours spent in yard work, and the occasional argument.

Here’s what I found:

This was our little house I grew up in.  It was missing a tree in the front and the backyard was all overgrown.  There was this flag pole still planted in the front yard where my dad proudly displayed a lighted up American flag.  Everyone knew where my parents house was because of it. Finally there was a sticker on the front window.  It said that it was bank owned.

Yep, I cried a little.  This was where I grew up and it had been let go and nobody cared about it.  It was just a beat up empty shell.  A dead husk.

But it meant a very important truth for life lesson.

You are not your possessions and it won’t matter when you are dead and gone about this stuff.

My dad basically worked to retire.  He half killed himself working as a a blue collar/union man.  He retired only shortly after to get lung cancer and spend what few years in retirement visiting dr offices all the time.

What if we he just focused on living, not on the tomorrow?  What if he had lived a life doing God’s purpose instead of worrying about old age?

We get so wrapped up in our earthly lives that we forget what’s important.  You know what all I wanted growing up?  Is for my dad not to be so tired so he could play with me…

“The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down.”  Proverbs 14:1 ESV

Ok when I write this I want you all to know something.  I am old fashioned.  I’m not sure what that means to you but for clarity sake let me explain to you what that means to me.

Men should be men and women should be women.  Now, that’s all cleared up, right?

Seriously, I am kind of a traditionalist.  That does not mean I adhere to some type of male domineering philosophy but that God has called both sexes to some different roles and responsibilities.  We were equipped to do different things.  In saying that, periodically, I will be writing on this blog about some of my traditional, and dare I say biblical, views of the home.

So let me start by uplifting one of the key building blocks for a God fearing home.  The Wise Woman.

The wise woman has been assigned a task from God to build up her house.  Translated for our purposes let’s think of the home, the place where the ‘heart’ of the family resides.  She is to be the one that is to be the, some of you won’t like this, “nest maker”.  She’s the one that is to make sure things are running like a well oiled machine around the household.  Whether she is the cook or not isn’t the question (I do my share of cooking at the house). But rather is there food and what type of foods are you eating?  Is everyone scheduled for their Dr. apts.?  What does the school calendar look like for the upcoming week?  Does everyone have what they need clothes wise?  And as you see the list goes on and on.

As far as the ‘folly’ part of the above Proverbs let us put that into the modern translation of ‘foolish’.  What is it that a woman can do that would tear down the home she is so trying to lovingly build?

Here’s where I need you to chime in ladies.  In what ways do you think you can or have been detrimental to your home?  If you need a little prodding here’s a thought.

If God created us with unique responsibilities and gifts to be used in the management of a home and the rearing of children, then what do you think it does when we try to reverse the roles?  What happens when the man aggressively tries to run the home like a dictator and doesn’t allow you to do what you were called to do?  Or on the other side of that what happens when he’s a chicken and sits passively to the side letting you do everything?  What are the consequences when you try to subvert your will over his all the time instead of being submissive as in Ephesians 5?

I ask in light of this.  If the old ways are so bad why the constant rise in divorce rates and single homes?