Halloween... is it Trick or Treat?

Halloween is less than a week away. As you trust God to show you how to celebrate Halloween, examine the background of this day and use it as an opportunity to explain the reality of spiritual warfare to your loved ones. Always let your discussion of spiritual warfare lead you to the victorious work of Jesus Christ. Look at the following chart that examines some of the schemes of the devil and how they are the opposite of what our all-powerful God wants to do. For more details see Putting God back into the Holidays, pages 245-252.

Thank you to Dr. Bill Thrasher for this chart.

Parenting Panel Unanswered Questions

On March 26th, at the end of the series "Families For Dummies" we held a "Family Panel" with several couples poised to answer questions submitted from our church family. We could not get to all the questions, so here are brief answers to the unanswered questions that were text-ed in for the panel. If you have additional questions please contact me and we can set an appointment for further information.

God bless

Pastor Dave

How do you handle it when you child constantly questions your authority?

When children challenge your authority, they are usually testing you to see how far they can go. Dr. James Dobson says, “Children are constantly trying to determine where the boundaries are.”  You are the one who sets the boundaries; therefore they will continually test the boundaries you set, making you feel that they are challenging your authority. Your job? REMAIN STEADFAST! You are the one God is using to shape their lives. Don’t give up. It may feel like a constant losing battle, but it’s not. It will pay off in the long run… hopefully shorter! J

Please, explain the importance behind eating family meals together.

Short answer: UNITY! It provides a regular opportunity to decompress life events comfortably around the dinner table. Many important subjects crop up in the context of the comfort of a relaxed dinner together. This may be one of the best opportunities to get to know your children, their friends that are invited over, and for them to have your dedicated attention. It also provides unbelievable opportunities for teaching and training.

Why is it better to spank with an object rather than a hand?

You never want your children to shy away from your touch. The problem with spanking with the hand is it’s the best instrument for a loving touch. With it you stroke their face, rib their back, and hold them close to you. It is an instrument of love, not discipline.

How do you keep kids from overtaking your marriage in a negative way?

Remember your children are not the reason you got married. You got married because you love your spouse and you want to share the rest of your life with them. Therefore, you need to develop the discipline to make sure you spend time as a married couple investing in your relationship and into each other. Your job in parenting is to provide for your children, grow them up in the disciplines of the Lord, and equip them for life, so you can send them out adequately equipped to live on their own. Too many couples devote so much time on child rearing that they lose touch with each other and they lose their focus. This is a difficult discipline! Make it a priority, if you don’t, your children will squeeze everything out of you and you will have nothing left for each other. And when the kids leave you will wake up one day and look at each other as strangers. Don’t let that happen!

How do you handle having two different ideas of discipline in between two parents?

It takes unifying compromise. It makes sense; you come from different families, different backgrounds, different styles of family and how you were treated. Your job as adults with children is to sit down and talk about your experiences and willingly work through how the two of you will discipline your children. Sometimes this requires an outside “mediator” to help you think through it unemotionally. So if needed get some help! Where? A respected mature couple whom you both agree on, a Christian Counselor, pastor, and possibly your parents. Whatever you decide on, it must be mutual and unified!

What are some practical ways that a man can keep from resigning all of the parenting responsibility to their wife?

I am assuming that this is the wife asking this question. It takes a dedicated conversation, or many conversations. Determining responsibility in parenting is always a result of communication, compromise, and consideration. Unfortunately many men think of parenting as a woman’s job, Not according to the Bible! IN Ephesians 6:4 Paul instructs “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” That seems pretty clear, God expects Dads to be radically involved in the parenting process. Sometimes, it takes some good counsel from a respected man to help a dad understand this responsibility. Don’t sit at home and try to argue your husband into parenting, find someone who he respects and ask for their input.

Do you make your kids go to church? And if so, When do you stop making your kids go to church?

As long as your children are your responsibility, meaning they live under your roof and you pay the bills, absolutely! Remember it is your job to teach your children about God and to give them every opportunity to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. How is that going to happen if church is an option? If you don’t require them to attend church, it suggests that God is an option as well. Do you want to stand before God some day and say, “God, I’m sorry; my kids didn’t want to get up and go to church. I decided to let them find You on their own, and unfortunately when they didn’t.”

How do you decide how much freedom to give your kids?

It depends on how much freedom they earn. Freedom is earned through responsibility. The parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30 & Luke 19:12-27) is a good example of how to give out freedom. You give them small freedoms and see how they handle it, encourage them on how to use the freedom, and you reward the good use of freedom with additional appropriate freedoms.

How do you handle the adult handoff (when your kids are ready to spread their wings?)

If you have been properly preparing them to leave your home, it will be a natural part of the process. A significant key is: when they leave home, let them experience all the benefits and consequences of their decisions. If you save them every time they fail, you’re probably getting in the way of God’s natural process of growth and maturity. Both Paul and James wrote on how God grow us up. (Romans 5:3-5 & James 1:2-4)

When do you start encouraging them to spread their wings?

As soon as they are capable and ready. The earlier the better!

How do you resign authority without resigning influence?

Authority means you determine what they can and cannot do. Influence is providing suggestions without requirement. Your authority is limited to your responsibility. If you are no longer responsible (they are not living at home anymore) your authority has ended, but your influence should never end!  You prepare your children and yourself for this by teaching them to make good decisions, by offering simple options to your children whenever the opportunity arises. It starts simply: your children need new athletic shoes; so you go to the store and let them try on two different kinds of shoes that you choose. Then you give them a choice between the two. As they get older the choices and options become bigger and more diverse. This teaches them good decision making and it teaches them to allow you to offer opinions on more difficult issues as they grow up.

Totally Accepting and Totally Transforming!

What our world needs more than anything else is grace, not just talk about grace – but real grace, grace that seeks out people who are far from God and loves and accepts them just like God does.

We are working to create a culture at The River that is tolerant, loving, and accepting of people no matter what their background is, who or what they are, what they believe, or how they look or dress.

We strive to be completely loving and accepting…, just as God is, and just like God we will love people enough to help them be transformed into the image of His Son Jesus Christ.

In other words: come as you are; but once you know Jesus, don’t plan on staying that way!

Romans 12:2 (CEV) “Don’t be like the people of this world, but let God change the way you think. Then you will know how to do everything that is good and pleasing to him”
Circle “let God change the way you think”

It’s God’s job to change people through the power of the Holy Spirit, not ours; and when God is ready to change a person, He will! Our job is to love them before, during, and after that happens!

No Perfect People.... Really?

Have you ever noticed how some people treat those who are different than they are?

· Those who have chosen to decorate their bodies with tattoos or piercings?
· How would you react to discover that the person sitting next to you in church was an alcoholic, a drug user, struggled with pornography, had an abortion, struggled with a sexual addiction or homosexuality, was living with someone they are not married to, or they had a prison record?
· How would you treat a Jew, a Mormon, an atheist, a Jehovah Witness, a Buddhist, a Muslim, Christian Scientist, a witch or a warlock?
· How about someone who is African American, Hispanic, Asian, Iraqi, Iranian, or Pakistani?
· What about a street person, a poor person, under privileged?
For years the church has turned away people who desperately need the love and acceptance that God offers. Instead they have condemned, criticized, and ostracized.

Or the church opened its arms to them and once they started attending or indicated that they were spiritually interested they dumped a bunch of rules and expectations on them and turned them off.

Part of the problem is the church has misunderstood part of the Great Commission.
Matthew 28:19-20 “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

Some people think that teaching them to obey means that it’s our job to make people obey, to force obedience; often times forcing them to obey God even before they know God personally.

That’s not our job; that’s the job of the Holy Spirit!

So you have to ask yourself, what would Jesus do with the kind of people I just mentioned?

I know that sounds trite, but think about how Jesus treated the outcasts, the sick, the demon possessed, and the prostitutes. What did He do? HE LOVED THEM UNCONDITIONALLY!

He said in Matthew 11:28-30 (Msg) “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

Jesus said the answer to life’s problems, burdens, and issues is to come to Him, lay them on Him, and learn to live freely and lightly. You can’t do that under rules and regulations!

He said I won’t put anything heavy or ill fitting on you who are already struggling; instead He says I will show you grace, I will give to you freely what you do not deserve! Forgiveness from their past, a purpose for today, and a future home in heaven!

If that’s what Jesus would do, then so should we! The question is how? How do we show grace to others, no matter what their background, problems, or issues are?

We do it just like Jesus. We tell people; just come as you are! There are no perfect people at The River in fact there are no perfect people allowed at The River. So come as you are!

God doesn’t expect us to change anything to come to Him. He just says come as you are, and when He says that He means:
· You don’t have to dress a certain way or look a certain way
· You don’t have to Act a certain way
· You don’t have to Fit a certain lifestyle
· You don’t have to give money
· It doesn’t matter what your religious background is, your class or your socio-economic position.
Jesus says come as you are! Bring your baggage, your issues, and your problems. God loves you just as you are and we should do the same!

In fact…At The River we are working diligently to create a come as you are culture.

So... come to the River Church... and come as you are! Our prayer is that when you come you will experience total acceptance and begin the process of transformation. (Romans 12:1-2)

Come back to God!

God has given us, the church, the responsibility of telling people about His love for them, His acceptance of them and His desire for them to spend eternity with Him in Heaven.

1 Corinthians 5:19 (NLT) “So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!”

That’s our job! But how do we reach people with the good news of God’s love and acceptance when they are struggling with misconceptions of the church and their own personal struggles with acceptance, trust, brokenness, truth, and tolerance?

One word: GRACE!

Theologically grace is God giving us what we don’t deserve. In other words we don’t deserve forgiveness. We don’t deserve a purpose for our lives. We don’t deserve a future home in heaven. But God loves us and He gives it to us anyhow, that’s grace.

The church has always understood receiving the grace of God, what it has struggled with is extending personal grace to an undeserving world. It’s developed rules and regulations, expectations and standards; and it’s been very judgmental of people who don’t measure up.

It’s amazing to me is that those of us who have experienced the total acceptance and forgiveness and grace of God, that we did not deserve, do not offer that same grace to others; just like Jesus did.

Jesus was absolutely non-condemning. In fact the only time Jesus ever condemned anyone was when they were self-righteous and religiously pious! And that’s exactly what many non churched people think about the people in the church! They think the church is nothing but self-righteous and religiously pious people!

So let's change that! Let's give others the grace God has given to us. Let's love the unlovely, the hurting, the outcasts, the imperfect, the "normal" people, the less than cool crowd, the Hipsters, the old folks, the student's.... Let's love everyone just like Jesus loved us! 

When we love others as Jesus loved us, then we can extend our hand and say, Come back to God!

Sex is like a fish in a fish bowl.

Suppose you have a goldfish and he swims around his little fishbowl every day; happy and without a care. Then one day he notices that there is life beyond his fish bowl. He swims to the edge of the bowl and looks out and sees people, dogs, and cats that roam about freely, not restricted to living in the confines of a fish bowl. So he gets it in his little goldfish head that his fish bowl is a prison, it’s keeping him from experiencing everything that life has to offer. And he begins to dream of living free from the confines of his prison of a fish bowl.

One day he comes up with a plan to set himself free. He thinks, “If I can just get out of this crummy fish bowl I will experience a far greater life.” So he makes a plan to get out of the bowl. He begins some new swim lessons designed to help him to jump out of the water. He begins swimming laps to build up his strength so he can jump out of the water. 

He practices and practices until one day he finally thinks he is ready. He swims down to the very bottom of the fishbowl and flaps his little fins as hard as he can and swims with all his might to jump out of the bowl…. And he does it! He clears the water, he clears the edge of the bowl and he thinks to himself "I am free…. No more fish bowl, not more prison…" All the way down to the carpet where he lands with a thud. And as He lays there gasping for breath, slowly drying out, he finally admits to himself, I wish I was still in my fish bowl, and then he dies. 

The moral of the story: As long as the fish lived the way he was created to live, everything was fine. But the moment he went to live outside of that, he died. 

Like the goldfish you can enjoy sex outside of marriage for a moment, but there are significant consequences.  

God created sex. He said it was good. And He said I want you to enjoy it. But there’s a catch. I created it to be enjoyed between a husband and a wife, in marriage. 

I gave up on the church....

When I was a kid, my parents used to go to church all the time and my sisters and I went to church with them. I remember going to Sunday School and vacation bible school. I even joined a special program just for boys that my Sunday school teacher led. I don’t remember much about the program except that we went camping.

On my very first camping trip I was 10 years old. We went to a camp with lots of other boys from other churches. It was rustic camping and the first thing we did was lay out our sleeping bags on the grass in a big meadow. I was the last one done, so as I finished I took off running after the other kids. But I didn’t get very far before my leader called me back.

Apparently when I ran after the other kids I stepped on some sleeping bags leaving my footprint. My leader told me that I had broken one of the rules; I had stepped on someone else’s sleeping bag. He explained to me that no one wanted footprints on their sleeping bag. Then he told me that there was a punishment for breaking the rules and he pulled out the bottom of a tennis shoe and proceeded to swat me with it. I don’t remember anything else about that camp.

When I went home I told my parents, I am never going to go back to church again. They saw how hurt I was, they knew I had had some trouble with some of the boys in my Sunday school class; I was the fat kid and they made fun of me; and the worst kid in my class was the son of my Sunday school teacher. See when someone made fun of me at school I just punched them, but at church, that wasn’t the way to do things… after all God was there! So when I was 10 years old my entire family stopped going to church.

I didn’t have much use for church after that.

When I was in 10th grade a girl invited me to go with her to a high school club called Campus Life. They were having something called a burger bash which was basically a free hamburger dinner! Finally someone was speaking my language; free burgers and I was invited by a girl!

I found out that Campus Life was a Christian club for High school students, but unlike my previous church experience - it was a lot of fun. They played games, there were girls, they always had some kind of food at the end, and there was some kind of talk about God. That was cool; I figured that I had gone to church when he was a kid, so I was cool with God. I mean I assumed that I was a Christian because I used to go to church.

I went to Campus Life all through high school. It was a regular part of my life that I looked forward to every week.

High school was good to me. I may have grown up a fat kid but in high school, things changed and I went from being the fat kid that kids made fun of and basically ignored to a really big guy. I started playing football and I found my niche, I was a jock! I just wanted to fit in someplace really bad and finally as a football player I experienced some kind of acceptance.

That’s all I really wanted was to feel accepted. Unfortunately, as an athlete you’re accepted as long as you play well, make a mistake and everyone turns on you. So my acceptance in High school was partially due to athletics and partly due to fear. I thought that if people feared me they would accept me, so I became a bully; I made the kids pay for making fun of me and I began pushing other people around, getting in fights, and acting as tough as I could.

But that wasn’t really satisfying. That wasn’t real acceptance. People weren’t my friends because they liked me, it was self preservation. It didn’t matter to me, I wanted to be accepted and I was willing to do anything to at least think people liked me.

My senior year of high school my campus life club went on a water ski trip to Lake Havasu for spring break. A whole week camping, hanging out in the sun, water-skiing, BBQ every night and girls in bikinis, what more could a guy want!

But as great as those things were that wasn’t the highlight of my week. For the first time in my life I felt totally accepted. I didn't have to be a bully, or a jock, or funny, or anything. They cared for me just because I was there. There were 150 kids there who were happy, I mattered to them and not just because they didn't want to get beat up.

They had a speaker on this ski trip who was a USC offensive lineman and he had just been drafted by the New England Patriots. He was also the Captain of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at USC.

He spoke about God as a loving, caring God who accepted everybody for who they were. I wanted this relationship with God he was talking about but I had this effeminate view of Christians. None of the really tough guys I knew were Christians, and being tough was a significant part of my life. I was very interested in how this huge All American Linemen could play football, a really tough sport, and be a Christian.

One night after He finished speaking I asked to speak with him alone. We sat on a log and talked. I asked him "How can you be a Christian and be a football player? After all football was a violent sport. And I loved the violence: I played to win at all costs, even if that meant playing dirty." He said, "Football is a game - not a way of life. He said you can’t live your life as if it was a football game, and you can't play football as if it was your life."

And He told me that the most important thing I could ever do with my life was to begin a relationship with God who loved and accepted me so much that He sent His Son to die for me on the cross.

That week I asked Jesus to be my Savior, and for the very first time I experienced complete and total acceptance. For the first time in my life I found peace and fulfillment. For the first time I began to understand the joy and unconditional acceptance the other kids were experiencing and that I had been looking for.

That began a lifetime of changes in my life. But it almost didn’t happen. I almost gave up on God because the church had treated me badly.

Unfortunately, I’m not the only one who has a story of rejection, un-acceptance or hurt by the people in the church.

Over the past several decades huge numbers of people have left the church because of being rejected as not good enough, being hurt, broken trust and irrelevance.

But it shouldn’t be that way! We have the keys to the kingdom of God. God has entrusted us with the responsibility of telling people about Him, His love for us, and how He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross just so we could have a relationship with Him.

Our American culture has shifted away from the church. And now we live in a postmodern society that not only doesn’t understand the church, but they don’t understand God. And many of those who do have some kind of understanding of God have given up on the church.
But again, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be!

There is so much misconception of what the church is supposed to be that it has buried the truth of what God designed the church to be. So when we try to tell people about who God is and how He loves them, they get hung up on the church.
· All they think about is that the church just wants their money,
· Or the church wants to make people be just like them,
· Or the church is full of a bunch of rules and regulations.
They are willing to find out about God, most Americans say they believe in God, but their view of the church stops them cold.

They don’t trust us to tell them that their misconceptions of church are wrong, especially since they can walk into many churches where the very thing that turned them off is still going on.

Maybe you’re one of those people who have been turned off by the church. I will make you a promise; any church that I am a part of will be different! I have experienced the complete forgiving grace of God, and I will always, to the best of my ability, offer that same grace to everyone I meet. That's why at The River Christian Church we boast, "NO PERFECT PEOPLE ALLOWED!"

www.RiverChristianChurch.com