Sexy Lady?

So the more I think about marriage and my own marriage and the more I see my own son growing up, I think about what are the things that he is learning now that will influence or shape what his marriage looks like, how he views women, how he will treat women. These beliefs will either help or hinder both his future relationships and marriage and even his walk with God. Obviously my son learns from me but he also is gaining influences from everywhere.

I never want to sound like a bad preacher on some high horse, but it's somewhat disturbing to me to see what's going on in the media realm. I really can't hardly turn the television on in the evening without being shown images of women that portray them as sexual beings only. It makes it look like that is what women are all about. They are beautiful, hot, and sexy and they are there for men's pleasure and that's what women want. Yet, in reality, everyone knows that's not the entire picture or at least that sole mind-set leads down some very dangerous paths in the end. I'm not saying that women aren't beautiful, hot and sexy. I find my wife to be all three! Yet her main existence, her creation by God, is not to exist solely to be sexy and fulfill my sexual desires. I know, I could hardly believe it myself when I learned this one.

Young women, older women, singles, and even married wives think that that is the way they have to be in order to attract and gain love from a man. And perhaps that is where women are at because men have this alter-sense of woman-being. If a woman ever hopes to be loved and find a man to be with her forever, they have to look a certain way and front themselves a certain way.

The bible speaks so directly at how women should adorn themselves and what are some of the things about women that men should be looking for. Perhaps I'll talk about some of those and then talk about some of the ways men should adorn themselves and think about women.

What would you like to learn with me first?

Marriage and the Mission of the Church?

Marriages...to get married or not to get married? to stay married or not to stay married? why and is it possible for it to be? Those are some of the questions I've been thinking about when it comes to this whole family ministries deal. As the Family Ministries Director of our church I spend a lot of time helping create these environments where youth can wonder, discover and grow passion for God. Yet when problems in the family start to show through (meaning there are problems all a long, but we all hide our junk because we don't think anyone else has any but eventually it shows up in different ways), it's often because there may be something going on in the marriage of the man and woman; not necessarily or solely between the child and the parents.

I believe that strong marriages make strong families. And I believe that strong families don't happen apart from a thriving relationship with Jesus Christ. And I believe this relationship with Jesus Christ is the most important everything that is going to matter the most. And I believe Satan believes those same things. So rather than working so hard on teaching parents how to teach their children to have this thriving relationship (basically assuming they know how and just need some pointers or tips) or how to do better parenting skills, we teach marriages how to grow in their own relationship with God personally as well as together as a couple. As we grow closer to God, God changes us and we what we actually learn how to do, we can teach our children. That's why I've said that in order to teach your children it must be first personal, premediated, and permeating in our daily lives.

As a big picture take on all of this: Not dealing with marriages, I believe, is probably one of the number one issues (of course sin is the problem, but what context are those sins lived out?) that lead to destroying the church and the spread of the gospel of Christ. Marriage in the bible reflects this close and loving relationship between God and his church. In the OT, it was God and his people, Israel. When the relationship between his chosen ones and God became disrupted, the whole purpose and mission and future dreams of prosperity were put on hold. If we and believers and unbelievers see how marriages (even our owns) are falling apart, there is a question on whether that relationship with God exists (and more whether there is even a God who cares about _____; fill in your situation).

Getting other people to join this marriage relationship with God is like convincing our younger adults who are moving out on their own to consider marriage to one person for the rest of their lives (if that is the gift that God is giving them). They wonder why, what's the point, "my ways working better for me", "the world tells me that it doesn't work", "I can be happier without it," does it matter, why get married?

Why are you married? and Does it influence the mission of the Church?

Pre-Requisite for Parenting?

So as most of you know, my wife and I do foster care. People often said as we started out that we are doing a good thing and something noble, which I agree. People often told us stories of people they knew who do foster care and their stories of why most of them stopped doing it eventually, which I can see. It's providing daycare or watching friends' kids while they go out 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and if you're in the Massachusetts system, it's for longer than they say it will be...ha ha ha.

I get the importance of the system because these kids are so neglected or abused that if they ever hope to awake from that pattern, something needs to change. These kids come to our house with the usual characteristics. They have problems developmentally (speaking, potty training), socially (withdrawal or being overly friendly to everyone which is scary to see what could happen in the future), emotionally (they cry over everything or have no clue what a hug is), and don't respond well to structure and are more like do what they know to do to survive, which is "do what I want to do or what seemed to work for my advantage before."

The question for me, and others have asked similar questions, is should we work on developing a better and better system to accommodate the need or do we (as a society, government, or who?) create a test that determines whether people are qualified in having children? If so, what are some of the things that would go on such a test? If there should not be a test, why not? and if people fail the test, what are the ways to ensure that these who fail miserably, don't procreate?

Love to hear your thoughts.

Perception, Focus, Purpose

So it's been an amazing long time since I've written anything. I just really haven't been in the mood to share. Sometimes I feel like this whole blog thing gets crazy and trying to read blog after blog after blog only ended up in just trying to keep up with what people are writing without taking the time to contemplate life for myself.

This past Sunday we had our Parent Commitment and Child Dedication with our Sunday Morning Service. There were 7 families participating. This was a holiday weekend. I don't know exactly how many adults we had in service, but there were 34 children with 7 visitors with 12 volunteers, the nursery alone had 14! It was a great day. Yet the interesting thing about church yesterday was the amount of visitors we had in all, including our soon to be adopted child's grandparents, Michael and Diane O'Connell.

As I preached and took part in the PCCD, I couldn't help to notice how few people I actually recognized in the audience. The church was filled with unchurched people who had come to share in a family member's participation in the PCCD. It was awesome to see. In the end, the attitude and comments from most of the people that I could interact with before they left and the comments I still hear from other people who had guests there was that the service was awesome and they haven't seen church like this before, it was refreshing.

I didn't think I did that well in my message and I noticed a few things that should have been better in the flow of the service and I couldn't help but think about how those who know God and call FC their home, chose somewhere else to spend this weekend. (And I'm not here to bad mouth them and there's a whole lot of theological debates that could come into play and that's not my purpose here.)

I don't know whether many will return for a regular visit or whether the message will make them seriously consider their life in relationship to God or not, but all that is in God's hands. One thing it did make me think about is this whole idea of helping people who need God and helping those who desire to want to be a part of something.

See the entire Old Testament is about these people who had it all, yet they wandered away from God and God was constantly working on them. But eventually as Jesus came, the people spent more time debating, not wanting to take seriously what needed to be changed for people to fall in love with God, or chasing what appealed to their senses like healings and getting food without getting His message of a growing relationship with God that Jesus needed to keep on the move to new locations so that his focus could be on His message rather than His works.

This same kind of thing happened as Paul realized his growing mission to reach the Gentiles, those who didn't have this long history of God, and those who were having this great passion to know more about Him. Life is short and there are billions of people who do not know Jesus Christ and yet the majority of our efforts and time can easily get caught up in forgetting about these billions.

Matthew 22:1-14 "1 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2 "The kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his slaves to summon those who had been invited to the banquet, but they would not come. 4 Again he sent other slaves, saying, 'Tell those who have been invited, "Look! The feast I have prepared for you is ready. My oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet."' 5 But they were indifferent and went away, one to his farm, another to his business. 6 The rest seized his slaves, insolently mistreated them, and killed them. 7 The king was furious! He sent his soldiers, and they put those murderers to death and set their city on fire. 8 Then he said to his slaves, 'The wedding is ready, but the ones who had been invited were not worthy. 9 So go into the main streets and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.' 10 And those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all they found, both bad and good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. 11 But when the king came in to see the wedding guests, he saw a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 And he said to him, 'Friend, how did you get in here without wedding clothes?' But he had nothing to say. 13 Then the king said to his attendants, 'Tie him up hand and foot and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth!' 14 For many are called, but few are chosen."