The Real Needs Bullying Reveals

In the grocery store, on the news, almost everywhere you turn you find the topic of, "Bullying" is getting big coverage. It seems to come in waves. Usually the topic comes up when someone is killed or commits suicide because they have been bullied. It is such a big deal the U.S. Government has gotten in on addressing the issue with a web site, http://www.stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov/kids/.

Bullying is really an issue of the heart. None of the web sites I looked at was able to give real answers. Why? Because people can only impose physical restrictions on other people. The issue of bullying can arise from a variety of sources, but at the end of the day someone is becoming more popular or powerful at someone else's expense. In a society that has largely turned its back on God it is no wonder that bullying and other issues like it will be on the rise. Bullying grows when pride grows in our hearts and we think more highly of ourselves than we aught to think.

This happened very early on in the Bible when Joseph was bullied by his brothers for his dreams and his favored status. How did Joseph handle such mistreatment? He recognized that God is sovereign and He must have allowed it for a reason (Genesis 50:20). Without a relationship with a sovereign God there would have been no way for Joseph to see things through the way that he did. He embraced what God placed before Him and in the end He was used mightily by God to save many people's lives. God used His brother's bullying and evil intent to move Joseph to Egypt and put him in a position of power.

The most effective means of dealing with bullying is found in a relationship with Jesus Christ. For the one being bullied they can run to Jesus and find in Him a friend that sticks closer than a brother. Often in the context of a Christian home or Christian community of believers the bullied person can find others who really care about them and will love them.

For the bully the most effective way to overcome the pride that often drives bullying is to repent of their sin and trust in Jesus as their Lord and God. The movie, "To Save a Life" deals with passive bullying. It recognizes that the only way to effectively deal with bullying is to deal with the heart. The most effective way to deal with the heart is to introduce someone to Jesus Christ. He takes out our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). Anything short of this sort of transformation is simply a band-aid on something that’s broken. Become an agent of change. Get your eyes firmly fixed on Jesus and reach out in love to the those who are hurting others and those who are being hurt. Introducing them to Jesus is the best and most effective means of real heart change.

What we don't know might kill us

There is an AP article posted on Yahoo news today that caught my eye. It's titled, "Survey: Americans don't know much about religion." There is a video on CNN covering the some article here. It is interesting to note that overall atheist and agnostics have the greatest general knowledge about religions. In the video the the CNN anchor asked if we are taking faith on faith. It is a good question when Christians score lower than atheist.

The greatest problem that this article implies but does not analyze is that Biblical illiteracy cannot be good for a persons relationship with God. Christianity has been so co-opted by our culture, that church services have become very oriented around the perceived needs of the people in the audience. We cater to addressing "how" questions rather than "why" questions.

• How can I be a better neighbor?
• How can I have a better marriage?
• How can I be a better parent?
• How can I apply God's word to my life?

What is wrong with this is that these questions and others like them may make us feel like we are making headway. In reality they are focusing on us and the world around us. These questions are similar to the questions being addressed by secular psychologist every day (except the God's word question). When I come to meet with other believers my goal should be to worship God, and I am not just talking about singing here. Worship is an outward focus on God with the goal of glorifying Him and knowing Him better. It would be healthier for the church body if we were intent on seeking out answers to the why questions.

• Why has God made me a neighbor and given me neighbors? 
• Why did God create marriage?
• Why did God create children and by extension parents?
• Why did God give us this explicit verbal revelation of Himself that we call the Bible?
• Was it simply to help me live a better life or was there something higher and greater?

In a general sense we could answer most of these questions with a simple phrase, "For the sake of His glory". But the impact of a why question is far reaching because it leads us to more questions. These additional questions have a real Kingdom of God focus.

• If God made me a neighbor and gave me neighbors for the sake of His glory. Then how is He being glorified by me in the neighborhood?
• If God created marriage for the sake of His glory. Then how am I doing at bringing glory to Him in my marriage?
• If children and parenting was God's idea. Then how am I doing at bringing glory to God through my parenting and in the lives of the children that He has given to us?
• If the Bible is God's explicit revelation of Himself for the sake of His glory. Then how am I doing at seeking knowing Him in the midst of reading it?
• Ultimately am I going to a church meeting for me or so that I might know God better and glorify Him more?

Biblical illiteracy has its roots in bankrupt teaching and preaching (Proverbs 29:18). It also exist because we have stopped reading our Bibles and seeking to really know God. You can't come to really know God if you do not know His Word. The Bible is God's self revelation without it we are lost. Without it, relationship with God degenerates into religious ritual that holds less and less meaning for each generation that follows. Without it faith will ultimately die. Just look at Europe as an example. What we don't know will ultimately kill our faith and our relationship with God.

If there is no really good preaching and teaching in your area then open your Bible and begin to seek to know God in it. Perhaps you can be an agent of change in your church by encouraging your pastor to really preach and teach a God centered Jesus focused message. This will change the Biblical illiteracy factor. This is what our souls need more than anything else (Psalm 34:8).

When it comes to the next generation...

We could use a little less talk and a lot more action.

There seems to be a lot of talk about how to reach the next generation. There are a lot of different ideas out there. Many are good steps in the right direction. But in the middle of it all there is one thing that keeps getting tagged on almost as an afterthought. That these kids don't have a real commitment to their faith. Perhaps the faith is more the faith of their parents.

In case you have not noticed a lot of kids are growing up, leaving the church and never returning. We can lay the blame for this result at lots of feet with lots of different reasons. But at the end of the day lets face it, they are mostly lost kids who never really came to know Jesus. What the next generation needs is for this generation to get serious about living out their faith. If our kids never see us approaching our faith like it is a desperate life or death struggle for our very souls then they are never going to see this as something worth living for much less dying for...if it should come to that.

Fundamentally we need to have a passionate pursuit of God as a characteristic of our lives (John 4:23-24). If our kids don't see us living life bent on pursuing God how can we ever expect them to do that? So join me in pursuing living a God focused life for the next generation.

...to become like a child

This last Sunday we celebrated our 3 year old son's 4th birthday a couple of days early. He told us that he wanted lots of presents. Of course to a soon to be 4 year old the number of presents is more important than the type of presents. So balls and cars and bubble's and little planes were all the order of the day. Lots of activity preceded the gift giving part of the day as more and more of his older siblings slipped away to wrap something or slip an item into a gift bag neatly concealing it with tissue paper. Our two year old daughter watched in silent wonder at the energy being expended creating colorful boxes and bags for her closest brother. The excitement mounted until we gathered in the living room to begin the process of discovering what was inside those wonderful boxes and bags. As the gift giving proceeded our two year old slipped away. She soon returned with a bag of her own. We all watched in anticipation and she beamed with excitement as her brother began to take the tissue paper out of her bag. Piece after piece of tissue come billowing out of the container as our son proceeded to liberate one paper after the other from its secret hiding place. Our two year old had managed to stuff an amazing amount of colorful tissue paper into her gift. She pumped her little legs up and down with excitement as one piece after another hit the floor. Finally he got to the bottom of the bag and there was nothing in it but tissue paper. He turned to the next gift to look for something of more value to him. But what he failed to realize is that he had received the best possible gift from his little sister. Our two year old in an amazing moment of selflessness took the time to try and bring joy to her brother. She had nothing to give but her effort at building a better relationship with him. I'm sure she did not think of it this way she just loved her brother and wanted to be a part so she made herself a part. Her Dad saw the best gift in the empty bag. You see what she gave was her. She gave the attempt at bringing joy to him, and it totally came from her. No one helped. She did it all on her own, and it was beautiful. I believe Jesus was thinking of things like this that little children do when He told the disciples that they needed to become like a little child (Matthew 18:3-4). You see God calls us to come to him just as we are. If we bring our good works we are not acceptable. If we bring our intellect and understanding that will not do. We must come empty handed depending entirely on the great work of Jesus on our behalf to make us perfect and acceptable in God's eyes. We must come to Him and rejoice in Him empty handed because that is the thing that will bring us and Him the greatest joy. You see He did not die for the works that we do...He died to take the penalty for our sins and make us righteous. Jesus died to found and perfect our faith (Hebrews 12:2). Jesus died so that we might know Him. So when we embrace Him with all that we are that is the best thing we could possibly do.

Infant dependency

My wife recently gave birth to twins. This has caused me once again to spend some time reflecting on the marvelous grace of God poured out to us through the experiences of life. Infants remind me of how much He is a supplying and sustaining God.
One of the ways that I see this revealed is in how God caused human infants to be so dependent and helpless. In Matthew 11:25-28 Jesus starts out the passage by thanking the Father that He had revealed these things to children. In the context what is revealed is the mighty power of God in Jesus. He has just denounced a list of cities for rejecting Him after seeing the mighty work of God. There is an innocent acceptance in children. In infants there is an absolute assumption of acceptance. They do not try to win our hearts with any showing of specialness. The cry because they are hungry and it lets us know that they are hungry. They cry sometimes just because they want to be held. There is no doing something for us so that we will do something for them. And quite frankly the idea of quid pro quo here is ridiculous. They are helpless and need our care. The reason that I am drawn to this passage where Jesus thanks God that these things (His majesty and power) have been revealed to children is because of the way it ends. Jesus says "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." To understand a little better what Jesus is saying here we can look at His interaction with children recorded in the synoptic gospels (Matthew 19:13-15, Mark 10:13-16, Luke 18:15-17). This story is the one where the disciples are shooing the children away. (As a side note according to Matthew's account this follows the disciples dispute about who was greatest in the kingdom of heaven. In that dispute Jesus said that they needed to become like children to enter the Kingdom (Matthew 18:1-3).) Jesus said to the disciples who were sending the children away that they needed to become like children to enter the kingdom of Heaven. What is a child like? They are dependent. Our idea of children is influenced by our culture. In Jesus' day a boy became a man at his bar-mitzah. A 12 year old would have been an older child. Little children in Jesus day would have been those who were probably six and under. Little children are dependent. They have great needs. They anticipate our love. I think that Jesus' call to come to Him and He would give us rest is in essence a call to become like children. We should remember that we have great needs. We should come with needs depending on Him. We should embrace the unchanging love He's given. Until we become like children we will always be bringing our wood hay and stubble to Jesus. We seem to always be impressed by what we have to offer. None of us has anything to offer. Our best efforts appear as polluted garments (Isaiah 64:6). All we have or ever will have that is of any value comes from Jesus. We truly are like dependent infants producing nothing but poop (Philippians 3:8) and in need of everything. The best we can do in this life is turn our focus to Jesus and bask in the love of our supplying and sustaining God.

Why do we need Dads?

There are a lot of articles on the web in the last couple of weeks about fatherhood and dads. There is one thing that I did not see and really did not expect to see. The most crucial reason that children need dads is spiritual. Spirituality is about warfare. It is warfare for the souls of our fellowman and our children. It requires a man to take on this role because it is men who by and large are the warriors in our society. Unfortunately what has happened over the last one hundred years has been the feminization of our Christianity. Men have gradually taken a back seat to women leading spiritually in the home. Shame on us for allowing this to happen. We have young boys growing up associating spirituality with women but not men. These young men have a hard time seeing this role as something they can effectively take on. We need to awaken the warrior inside of us. We need to realize that the battle we are engaged in is eternal and it is for the very soul of our children. Paul calls the Bible the sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17) for a reason, and the reason is that it cuts to the heart and will ultimately free us from sin (Hebrews 4:12). We need to fortify our souls and overcome the opposition to standing as a spiritual warrior for our children. Men we must immerse ourselves in pursuing God with all that you are. We must cultivate a passionate and vibrant relationship with our Lord Jesus. Extremism in the pursuit of Jesus is no vice and mediocrity in the pursuit of Jesus is no virtue.

Heading off regrets

Raquel Welch who has been in the movie business since 1964 is now talking about morality in an article on CNN called, "It's sex o'clock in America." The article is good because it points out the problems that exist with sexual freedom that has become the norm. She laments the lack of commitment in marriage while lamenting the fact that she has had 4 marriages. I respect the fact that she had the courage to take this stand. But the real question is what expectations can we have for children when the example that they have had is sexual freedom and no commitment? Why are we surprised when they take it one step farther.
This blog is not about social commentary. It is about the reality of how far we have come from living lives that are focused on our Lord Jesus. Raquel is living in the secular community what many believers live in the Christian community. We live before our children a lack of commitment to God. We demonstrate for them an extreme commitment to sports, racing, hunting or any number of other occupations that eclipse our commitment to Jesus Christ. These things are little idols in our lives and our children see it. When our children grow up and leave home is it any wonder that they take the separation from church and God one step farther than we did? Proverbs 22:6 calls on us as parents to train up a child in the way they should go. What is the way that they should go that we are teaching them. Deuteronomy 6:7 gives us some clues. We are to do it diligently. We teach them when we sit down. We teach when we walk and when we lie down and rise up. This sounds like we are teaching all the time. Exactly! I don't know who said it but I think it is true. The most important lessons in life are often caught and not taught. We are teaching our children by what we do. Are they catching God from us? Deuteronomy 6:5-6 clarifies what we are teaching. It tells us in these verses that we are to love the Lord our God. Ultimately the way we want our children to go is to God. Are we training our children to pursue Him by our lives? Or are we going to be like Raquel spiritually looking back and lamenting our actions wanting better things for our kids? We can head off these regrets by living and teaching them to live God focused lives?

Who's the biggest loser?

Jillian Michaels the trainer on the biggest loser is getting some press time. Yahoo published an article titled, Jillian Michaels Criticized for Anti-Pregnancy Comments. Apparently Michaels has taken the position that she will adopt rather than have children of her own because of what that will do to her body. I hope that she does adopt and have the joy of a child in her life. But honestly I will be somewhat surprised if she does. You see Jillian has basically revealed the same self-centered perspective that is everywhere in our culture. It takes sacrifice to raise children. Not just your body, but your time and your energy (physical and emotional). One of the reasons that people in our society are making this kind of decision is that our society holds very little value for God. There are lots of people that want to have children and can't and my heart goes out to them. But the people who do not value the gift of life that God has placed within them are to be most pitied. These folks fail to embrace God's command to Adam and Noah (Genesis 1:28; 9:1) to be fruitful and multiply. These folks see children as an impediment to their career or desires for life. Instead of this those who seek to live a God focused life are going to see children as a blessing and gift from God. While Jillian Michael's might be a star trainer on the, "Biggest Loser" when it comes to children and they gift they are from God she ends up being the biggest loser.

Having family devotions that matter

Over the years I have always been struck by the well meaning people that set out to give us some tips or ideas on having family devotions. They end up talking about how to engage your kids or encourage you to get them involved in acting out the story or whatever it is that they do. There are two things that it seems to me are critically important about family devotions.

1. Have them!
2. Use the time to point your children to God

Often the reason that most people do not have them is because it seems so complicated and takes time to do it right. What happens is the well meaning folks who try to encourage us to engage our kids end up discouraging us from doing it because it seems to take too much time. There also seems to be a great deal of inertia to overcome. This is usually imposed by our favorite TV program. I am not going to sit here and tell you TV is evil. (It is a box with electrical components in it. It can't be good or evil.) The content you choose to watch may be good or bad but that is a different subject. The big issue I see with TV is that it consumes our time. I can promise you when you enter eternity if you never watched TV you will not be standing before the King of kings thinking I wish I wouldn't have missed that episode of (insert show here).  But I can guarantee you that if there are any regrets (I don't know if there will be) they will be about time not spent advancing the kingdom of God in the hearts of others including our children. So turn off the TV and keep it simple.
For our very young children we read them a story out of a Bible story book. Then after putting them in bed we look up the equivalent passage from the Bible story book in our Bibles. We read this together with our older children and teens and then I ask them what they see here about God or what are they reminded of about God. I want my children to know God and so I try to constantly put before them a picture of God in one form or another. We usually follow our scripture reading with a story of a great Christian from the past or a book written by a Christian pointing to the greatness of God in some way. I want to stress that I do NO preparation for this. We sit down together and read and end in prayer. 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.” It seems to me that the way we want our children to go is to God and eternity in heaven. It then follows that I need to train them to orient their lives around God. We simply seek to help them to develop a God focused life.

Happiness: SELF focused vs. God focused - Part 2

This is a continuation of yesterday's post. Yesterday Lucy Danziger published an article called, "4 Simple Secrets to Feeling Happier Every Day." Lucy is the Editor-in-Chief of SELF magazine. I plan on addressing the points of her article over several days. Point two in the article is, "Now is the moment! Enjoy it!" Her main point here is slow down. Once again a point that needs to be considered by all of us. But the reason we slow down as Christians is so important. For most of us I think we slow down, when we slow down for the same reasons that Lucy states. It seems to me that a focus on God at the heart of our slowing down will not only give us good memories but will rejuvenate our souls. 1 Corinthians 10:31 says, "So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." Let's take her example of the playground. There are so many things there that can draw our hearts to God and to thanking Him for His great works. We can thank Him for providing us with health to be there. We can thank Him for transportation to get there. We can thank Him for senses to be aware of where we are. We can thank Him for the resources that were used to create the playground. We can thank Him for the plants, animals and bugs that might capture our attention there. The list could go on and on. This heart of thanksgiving will rejuvenate our spirits. Not only will it rejuvenate us, it provides an opportunity for us to direct our children's attention to God as well. It is in waiting on God in the midst of life that our hearts are filled.  Isaiah 40:31 says, “but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” Our hearts will rejoice in God as we seek to focus on our Lord Jesus in the midst of the day to day activities of life.

Happiness: SELF focused vs. God focused - Part 1

I usually scan the headline on my yahoo front page and see if anything strikes a nerve. Today Lucy Danziger published an article called, "4 Simple Secrets to Feeling Happier Every Day." Lucy is the Editor-in-Chief of SELF magazine. I plan on addressing the points of her article over several days. It is an interesting exercise to think through the man made solutions to happiness in the light of scripture. According to their research 40% of our happiness potential is entirely up to us. Her first key point is, "Too much of a good thing is a bad thing." Basically she is saying that people are too busy and have too many things in their lives. She may indeed be correct in pointing out a problem. But the solution is one that is centered on taking care of the inner self. I do not personally know how I could truly take good care of my own inner self with out Jesus Christ. In Matthew 19:13-14 Jesus rebukes the disciples for hindering children and then goes on to say that to such belong the kingdom of God. What does this have to do with taking care of your inner self? I'll answer that in a minute, but first lets look at Jesus comments in Matthew 11:27-30. In this passage Jesus talks about coming to Him all those who labor and are heavy laden and He will give you rest. This is out of verse 28 and is often taken out of the context of verse 27. The background of verse 27 is instructive here. Jesus says that all things have been given to Him by the Father. Then Jesus talks about knowing the Father and the Son and seems to put a premium on it ending with Him revealing the Father to those whom He chooses to reveal Him. If we look at verse 28 in light of verse 27 it would appear that coming to him is with the idea of knowing Him and the Father. Think about it, children come to their parents for comfort and to get aid or help with what they are trying to do. The younger they are the more dependent and needy they are. When we come to God are we dependent and needy? Do we have a desperate need to know Him? You see a Christian should be ordering their day around seeking God in multiple ways. We should be seeking Him to know Him not just to have Him meet our needs. Martin Luther once said, "I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer." That is the heart cry of a person who needs God. Are you too busy to spend time with God? When it comes to Jesus too much of a good thing is the best thing for us. Ordering your life around God will help to push out some of those extra and unimportant things that weigh us down.