All posts in category Relationships

Top 10 Reasons Our Kids Leave Church

Last week I did a blog titled ‘Resisting Being Cutting Edge‘ and included a link to another blog titled ‘Top 10 Reasons Our Kids Leave Church‘ Today I’m going to interact a little with that article. This article says the 10 reasons are:

10. The Church is “Relevant”

9. They never attended church to begin with

8. They get smart

7. You sent them out unarmed

6. You gave them hand me downs

5. Community

4. They found better feelings

3. They got tired of pretending

2. They know the truth

1. They don’t need it

It’s worth reading the explanations in the article, but the thing I don’t see on here is family upbringing. I think this is the key to all these other issues. We have professionals who take care of every need we have. There are teachers who are professional educators, doctors who are professional health care providers, shouldn’t we have professional Christians too? I hate to break it to you, but there is only one professional Christian who we can read about in the Bible. His name is Jesus. Ultimately we need to trust that God is going to work in the students lives as we do our best to instruct them, but I think it’s almost completely up to the parents. The parents are the ones who have the option of spending the most time with their kids, and the ones who the kids will most often imitate.

Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” This is not a universal truth, but it is a general trend. Ultimately children have their own minds and identities, but in the grace of God those who are raised in Bible believing and God fearing homes will grow to be the same. Parents need to start stepping up and setting an example for their children as they grow to be more Christ like in their lives. If the parents are nominal Christians the students will be that AT BEST, and most often will completely fall out of church.

The other issue I see with these top 10 reasons is that we NEED community in the church. We all have these spiritual blind spots and sin issues in our lives that we aren’t aware of until someone else points them out in our lives. Were it not for the church people would follow their own thinking and reasoning right into sin. Community may be a buzz word in the Christian circle today (just as “Gospel” is), but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t value it. The call to Christianity is a call to community. We need the body around us to support encourage and hold us accountable.

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by mikethestrand on February 20, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Blog, Church, Life, Relationships
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Posted by mikethestrand on February 20, 2013

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/02/20/top-10-reasons-our-kids-leave-church/

Gay Is an Adjective – Review of Washed and Waiting

Gay is an Adjective – My Review of Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality

Adjective: a word or phrase naming an attribute, added to or grammatically related to a noun to modify or describe it.

Noun: a word (other than a pronoun) used to identify any class of people, places or things (common noun).

Many people use nouns to identify themselves, for example, I regularly tell people, “I am Norwegian.” Today, many people define themselves by their sexuality. This leads to many people saying, “I am gay.” I just finished reading Washed and Waiting by Wesley Hill who says Christians need to begin switching the use of that word to an adjective, so he describes himself as a “celibate, gay Christian.” Christian is the noun and the other two words are adjectives. He has, through many trials, learned to place his whole identity in Christ, making Him the head of his life, as he battles his homosexual attraction.

This is a much needed book in our culture today. Is there room in the church for people who struggle with same sex attraction, yet are willing to call it a sin and trust Christ in their struggle against this sin? I hope that churches are able to see this book as a wake up call to reach out to those who are broken by sin, as the church is supposed to do. And if you look at Scripture, that’s all of us.

Wesley does a fantastic job of bringing us along with him in his journey through life and relentless pursuit of Christ. There were a couple occasions that the book brought me to tears as I was able to see this struggle through his perspective. I hope and pray Wes is able to continue to find strength in the only one who can give it, Jesus Christ.

 

“Faithfulness is never a gamble. It will be worth it.”

-Wesley Hill

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by mikethestrand on February 15, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Book Review, Church, Life, Relationships
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Posted by mikethestrand on February 15, 2013

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/02/15/gay-is-an-adjective-review-of-washed-and-waiting/

Putting Your Spouse First

I’m the kind of guy who likes to do research. Whenever I’m about to buy something, I read as many reviews as I can find, painstakingly pick one out, then read the manual from cover to cover before the item even gets to my door. This thinking permeates all areas of my life too so in preparation for marriage, I’ve read When Sinners Say I Do, The Meaning of Marriage, What Did You Expect, and various blogs as well as talking to everyone in the church I’ve seen to have a good marriage. I’ve been doing my research! Yet one thing I’ve already learned in my 24 years of life is that until this intellectual knowledge becomes practical knowledge that I’m living out, I know nothing! One of my best friends from high school got married in May of last year and as we have been talking through the course of his first year of marriage of just how difficult marriage is. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, quite the opposite in fact! The difficulties come from two sinful people coming together in an attempt to mirror the perfect relationship God has with us.

So in my studying and research on this matter I came across this blog today. What an accurate picture of what marriages today need!

My parents were intentional that having kids wasn’t going to stop them from doing the things they did before they had kids. Their object was to bring the kids into their marriage, not allow the kids to drown their marriage in a sea of tasks for the children. For this reason, our kid activities were pretty limited.

Whoa! How many parents actually do that today? And would doing this decrease the incredibly high divorce rate in America today? I think it would! As I’ve been talking to people who have been married for 20-30-40 years they have had this mindset, or else they wake up to it sometime in their marriage. Lewis B. Smeades in an article on Christianity Today way back in 1983 said:

My wife has lived with at least five different men since we were wed—and each of the five has been me. The connecting link with my old self has always been the memory of the name I took on back there: “I am he who will be there with you.” When we slough off that name, lose thatidentity, we can hardly find ourselves again. And the bonds that connect us to others will be frayed to breaking.

As we go through life our main focus should be, in this order: God, our spouse, our children and then anything else. I know it’s one thing for my to write about this on this side of marriage, but it’s a reminder I need to begin telling myself before I get married to carry in to my marriage. Through God’s grace, I will keep Him first, and then make my spouse my priority as we do our best to live out the Gospel in our lives.

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by mikethestrand on February 14, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Blog, Life, Relationships
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Posted by mikethestrand on February 14, 2013

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/02/14/putting-your-spouse-first/

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