Everyday Talk

“How much time do you spend talking to your children each day?”. That is only one of the questions that provoked me as I read John Younts’ book Everyday Talk. Since I have six children I’ve got to divide my available time six ways! Unless I am talking to all of them at once, I can only rack up so much time with each of them. I have about 1 hour in the morning and two hours including dinner on most nights. Though a part of that time is conversing with my wife let’s just say I have one half hour per child to work with. That is not a lot of time to lead and influence them for the kingdom of God. Throw in a few meetings and long days, and it can be hard staying connected with my children This is a great question to keep me from drifting away from the daily reality of shepherding my children’s hearts.

Here is another question from the book. “What do your children hear from you about God in the few minutes that you have each day to speak to them?” Now I’m really convicted, and with a title like Everyday Talk, you might think that if you miss a day you blew it. But that is not the way the book is written. For instance, I think I have spent more time talking about the Eagles losing, my latest EBay purchase, and the weather, than I have talked about God with my children outside of our family devotions. If I could only redeem some of the time I already spend in conversation, I actually have a lot of time to lead my children spiritually day to day. John Younts puts it this way, “Your interaction with God in everyday, ordinary, non-church life is the most powerful tool of influence that you have with your children.” That is good reminder for all of us.

The balance of his book is a chapter by chapter encouragement on how to talk to your children about God in everyday life. John helps parents talk about the Lord and the gospel and gives practical tips to help us talk to our children about everything from relationships to music to sex. He also reminds us as parents that our conversations with each other, in the presence of our children, shape their view of marriage. So, to start to put it into practice, have a conversation with one of your children when you get home. Then, call your wife into the room, give her a big hug and a kiss and let your whole family know just how much you love her. Not a bad alternative to recapping the Eagles last game for the third time in the week.

If you’d like to inject a little more fresh vision into your conversations with your kids, pick up a copy of Everyday Talk at the Book Shoppe.

Surviving Christmas With Your Budget and Sanity Intact (Version 1.0)

We’re all heading into the Christmas shopping season. There are two types of people with whom I can’t really relate. One is the type who has already done all their shopping before the holidays and can still resist the temptation to buy more. The other is the type of person who has the skill and industry to make their own Christmas gifts and can still resist the temptation to buy more. Obviously I’m neither. I love to give gifts but I hate to bargain-hunt. I’ll pay for convenience and one stop shopping. The closer I get to Christmas, the more loose I get with my money. I am the guy retailers drool over during Christmas.

Over the years I’ve needed to build some disciplines into my gullible tendencies. Here are seven things I’ve learned to do to keep a reign on holiday spending.

1. Set limits for total Christmas spending, not just on gifts.

At times I’ve done well on spending for gifts, but during the break we’ve gone out and done a lot of family stuff. My bills in January tell me that Christmas spending is not just gifts, but on all the stuff we do that costs extra money during the holidays.

2. Idea shop before you really shop

I’m in trouble if I go shopping without a plan. Well before I go to spend, I go to look (the internet really helps as well in this). My goal is to know what is a good price for something, so that when I see it I can get it. I’d love the best deal, but I’m after a good deal.

3. When thinking about a gift for someone, ask: Is this something they would appreciate any time of year?

A good gift is something somebody would want for themselves enough to buy it, not something I just think they should have because its Christmas and I’m running out of time.

4. Don’t panic over sales you missed.

See #2. There are always sales. Pride makes me want to say I got something at the best deal possible. Pride will also make me drive $50 of gas out of my car trying to save $20.

5. Give experiences for the family, not just stuff for people.

I want my gifts to generally benefit the whole family, not send them into their own little worlds for the next three months. The last couple of years my big gift for the family was tickets to a show – something we did later in the year that we anticipated for months ahead of time. The gift that keeps on giving.

6. Don’t buy what’s hot this Christmas till after Christmas

This is where the pressure to overspend is really strong. Deny it.

7. Pray before you shop – ask God to direct your steps, guard your heart, and protect your wallet.

If you’ve got any ideas for wise Christmas shopping, let us know. We’ll pick from the best and put them out there for folks.

The Romance Exchange

One of the ways we want to use this blog is to allow great thoughts or ideas from our folks to get around so we can all benefit. For example, how many couples have said something like, “I wish we could come up with some creative ideas for our date nights.”?

Well, let’s make it happen here. If you send us a date idea, or creative romantic idea that we post, and if someone else actually uses that idea and responds to the post with a recommendation, we’ll give a gift certificate for a local restaurant to both the couple with the original idea, and the first couple to respond to the post AFTER they have tried the idea.

For example. Suppose John and Julie Jones find a great getaway (or a clever way to celebrate an anniversary) and they send their idea to us. And we post it on a Wedded Wednesday. Then suppose Steve and Sally Smith say, “Wow, what a great idea! Let’s try it”. And they do, and it actually works for them as well. Then they can reply to the Smith idea post at Family Life Blog. Once somebody tries the idea and replies to us about it, the Jones will receive a gift certificate for their idea. And if Steve and Sally were the first to get back to us with their experience – they will also receive a gift certificate.

So how do you send an idea? Here are some important questions to answer in your submission.

· Your names

· A description of what you did (as much detail as will be helpful to give another couple not only directions about what you did, but vision for why it might work for them)

· The amount of time it took and what day(s) and times might be best for it

· The total cost (can be ‘under $25’, under $75, etc. we don’t need an exact cost)

· A link or address or phone number for somebody to check it out on their own.

To send an idea, simply hit comment on any Wedded Wednesday post and we’ll get it. So get out there and make some romance happen! Good things await us all.

Small things

I happen to be sitting in front of a crackling fire as I write this—it is a rare but wonderful occurrence that is helping me forget the four loads of unfolded laundry behind me. I’ll just be veeeery careful not to turn my head.

The boys, and Jim, are playing with a stomp rocket INSIDE (this is serious submission for me) so every couple of seconds, a Styrofoam rocket whizzes by my head and bangs into an unsuspecting target in the kitchen. I’m kind of hoping it breaks another one of my ugly blue Eighties vintage dinner plates. I’m trying to knock them off one by one.

Life in my home is probably a lot like yours. There are wonderful parts, crazy parts, difficult parts, and most of all a lot of noise.

After a challenging day yesterday, Jim asked me as he was heading to Alpha whether I was planning on doing worship with the kids, which is what I usually shoot for on Wednesday nights. I looked at him with the best non-committal face I could manage and kissed him good-bye.

But as 7:30 rolled around, I figured I might as well do it—it was a small thing and it would be a nice way to end the day. So all five of us flopped on my bed, and I grabbed my guitar and a pick that Adam had extracted from the pirate’s den (his room).

As we sang a couple of worship songs, I looked around--one of my kids had dragged three of her blankets onto the bed and one of the boys was playing air guitar violently – but quietly - to the slow-paced song we were singing. But it was going well.

I opened the Bible and read a Psalm about God’s steadfast love, and as I listened to my own voice I felt the familiar lump in my throat as the truth of God’s faithfulness hit my tired soul. I started playing, “Oh no, you never let go”, and everyone was singing—even the air guitarist. And I felt the presence of God. God was with us in my messy bedroom, and in our messy hearts.

It wasn’t a revival. No one ended up face down on their pillows crying out for mercy. But we were all reminded of God’s amazing love for us. And one of my children came to me later and whispered with excited eyes, “Mom, I really felt like I was… like I really was meaning those songs this time!”

What could be better? I was reminded that our lives, especially as moms, are composed of little things. Little decisions. Little acts of faith. And they’re done in imperfect environments with imperfect people. But one of God’s specialties is turning our little things into his big things. I wonder what tiny little acts of love and faith I can do tomorrow that God is already planning on blessing and multiplying? How 'bout you?

Why In the World Should I Pray?

To be faithful in prayer has been a lifelong challenge for me. Take a large quantity of self-sufficiency, sweeten with a generally good life, add in a few drops of doubt and distraction, and cook continually in my ‘busy-bake’ oven, and you’ve got a great recipe for prayer-deficient Christianity.

One of the things I have done over the past couple of years to battle prayerlessness is to read regularly on prayer. Reading on prayer not only reminds me to pray, but it builds faith when I pray. And it also makes me wrestle with the BIG questions about prayer that can so easily keep my praying stuck somewhere just above wishful thinking.

I’m reading a book by C.S. Lewis right now called Letters to Malcom – Chiefly on Prayer (A word of caution: While he was a Christian, Lewis never claimed to be a theologian, and much about this book I would not recommend – it is simply his personal reflections, not carefully thought out theology. If you’re looking for a great book to stir you with sound doctrine on prayer, consider Charles Spurgeon, collection of sermons, Prayer.)

But Lewis does say something that really hit me the other day:

“The world was made partly that there might be prayer” (p. 56)

As we see in Genesis 1 and 2, God created the world – and us in it – for his glory. But God created man to glorify him in unique ways, none more significant than that we were created to have fellowship with him and be an integral part of his purposes on this earth. In one sense, prayer is a way we carry out that mandate – we relate to God as he has revealed himself in his word, and we ask him to extend his rule and power through us and around us – for his glory.

Do you wrestle with questions about how God can be completely sovereign and yet answer prayer? Do you wonder at times if prayer is just talking to the air? Lewis reminds us that prayer isn’t a ‘peripheral add-on’ to God’s plan for all things, it is hardwired into the way he made things to be.

So as you pray this week, whether that is in your prayer closet on your knees, or in your car offering ‘quick-reference’ petitions to God, look around you at the world. It was made partly that there might be prayer.

What Do You Know?

Last Saturday at our monthly Cross Culture meeting for Teens, Jamie Leach did an outstanding job preaching the second part of a two part series for teens on Nehemiah. In that message he talked about some of the situations in life that taught us to believe wrongly about God. He shared about his own family’s current experience walking through a taunting trial. His daughter who has been suffering unpredictable, and as yet, untamable seizures which have landed her in the hospital several times over the past few months. For a girl with a busy senior year in high school and lots of plans this has been a real test of faith – to which she is responding with an amazing display of grace. For a dad who has to wrestle with his own questions while leading his family, it has been a real trial of faith.

Jamie shared how God met him at a key point in a way that has continued to keep his eyes on the Savior.

As I walked out of the hospital after several unexpected hours in the emergency room, I felt questions rise up in my heart. They were directed toward God. “Lord, why are you allowing this? What’s happening? What are You doing? What is going to happen next?” I didn’t know the answer to those questions. As I brought the car around to the front of the hospital and began to follow the ambulance that was transferring my daughter to Children’s Hospital, my brain was filling with anxious thoughts. “We don’t know what is causing these seizures, we don’t know what going to happen, what if she doesn’t come out of one of the seizures? What if they don’t stop?”. There were so many things I couldn’t know. But before I fear and doubt took hold of my thoughts, a gracious question came into my mind:

“What DO I know?”.

I do know that God is sovereign and that He is good. Nothing will happen to us that He hasn’t planned through His omnipotent hand. And that plan will be for our good - He will cause all things to work together for good. God is greater than my fears – our fears, than our sin, than our limited knowledge, and He cares for us – in this I trust. Further I know that I am not alone, that He is with me and will not leave me, ever. In the face of the unknown, my immediate (and seemingly urgent) response is to search for answers, to find the cause so that I can project or anticipate the future and then control it. But what I find I really need to do first is to trust God. I must first trust in His character, His goodness, His plan. This requires grace beyond me, but as I surrender to His will, I can sense the pouring out of His grace. Truly the best first thing to do is to turn to God. To ask for His guidance and direction, to seek Him for faith and strength, and to remember what I know about Him.

In those moments God’s grace came to me, I sensed His presence, and His reassuring love and care. The unknown may cry out to me: “Fear! Fear what you do not know!” but by God’s grace my response is: “No! I will not fear. Let me tell you what I DO know!”.

What do YOU know?

Whatever Happened to the Mayflower?

Happy Thanksgiving!

“I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.

I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name O Most High

~ Psalm 9:1-2 ~

If you’re sitting around the dinner table today, or sitting in front of a typical Thanksgiving football blowout you may want to get some conversation started. Nothing like a good mystery get everybody engaged. Why don’t you ask the question,

‘Who knows the mystery of the Mayflower?’

Be prepared first to make some connections. The Mayflower is not the latest M. Night Shyamalan mystery. And while it is a moving company, that’s not the reason it is famous. The Mayflower is the ship in which the Pilgrims (Get the Thanksgiving connection?) sailed to America.

Anyway, chances are that most folks in your group won’t know that it is believed that the Mayflower was dismantled and moved to the Buckinghamshire area of England, where it was rebuilt as a barn. And the barn is still there today! The Mayflower Barn is a very popular tourist destination in England – especially for Americans.

Is it the real deal? Or just a tourist trap? Pass the cranberry sauce and let the debate begin!

And let us at the Family Life Blog know if you solve the mystery.

Speaking of socks...

The Sock Wars are raging. Here’s a great report from the Family Front by Deb Demi… Demi Family: Just for the Record

And Now, the Weekly Sock Report…

Cyndi Smith sent me this story following a community group meeting where we were sharing on the ‘little things’ that tie us up in marriage. I thought it was both funny and applicable to many of us so I asked the Smiths if I could blog it. Here it is in Cyndi’s words.

Over the years there has been an ongoing tension in our marriage relating to Tom's ‘amazing disappearing socks’. It really seems to bother him when socks come back from the laundry unmatched and he regularly comments on how many socks he is missing. I am not fond of these conversations as I (ungraciously) see them as a criticism of the way I care for him. One evening as he was getting ready for bed, he began another inquiry into his missing socks. I felt myself getting annoyed and wanted to head him off before I provoked an argument, so I said, "you know, I'm getting really tired of the weekly sock report and wish you would stop doing it." I realized the moment the words came out. “This is going to be a conflict”’. But the tension was quickly cut by Tom's laughter. "The weekly sock report...that's really good!" We both had a good laugh together and no conflict ensued. I believe it was because Tom was merciful toward me, and this allowed grace in the form of humor to rule the moment. Since then we have had no more weekly sock reports, and no more arguments about socks.

This reminds me of an old Jerry Seinfeld routine where he talks about how socks have one purpose in life, and that is to escape. That’s why they always hide in the edges of the dryer, or cling to other clothes as they’re coming out – it’s a prison break. Sadly, its also the reason you see abandoned socks on the street and in the gutter. They’re the ones who didn’t quite make it.

Anyway, what I loved about the Smith Sock Report is how mercy can come in the form of a gracious response. Proverbs 15:1 reminds us that A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. Tom’s ‘soft answer’ was not a mumble, or an unmanly ‘whatever you say dear’. It was wise – it saw the danger in a situation and drove around it on the road of humor. Note that Tom’s humor wasn’t sarcasm, or an attempt to correct through a joke. Laughter isn’t always the best medicine, but harsh words never cure anything.

Tom’s response is a great lesson in gracious speech. Rather than he and Cyndi being on opposite sides of a debate, they found themselves on the same side of a humorous memory. Not a bad trade-off.

God’s Graces and Wedding Dresses

Welcome back to Tuesday’s at Fivebucks. Happy Thanksgiving – and don’t forget to get that turkey out to defrost!

Mark and I just married off our second daughter in 9 months. WHEW!! Even though we are still trying to catch our breath, it has been a real joy to see our girls marry godly men and begin their own families. We have found that the wedding day has been a unique context where biblical convictions really come into play, and where the Gospel makes those convictions a joy to apply.

We’ve learned that weddings are about details and choices. There are SO many of them that it can seem overwhelming: the guest list, the bridesmaids' dresses, the flowers, the stamps that go on the envelopes, its mind-boggling. Each detail requires discussion, agreement and a decision, and our (mine, Mark, the girls and the husbands-to-be's) desire was to honor God in every opportunity.

For example, the process of choosing a wedding dress is not only a “fashion” decision, but one that needs to be shaped by biblical convictions regarding dress. If you’ve looked at any wedding magazines, or have been in a bridal shop, recently you know that finding an elegant, yet modest, wedding dress isn’t an easy task. Before the “great shopping expedition” began, Mark and I took time to ask our girls about the kind of wedding dress they would want and why. Questions like: “what kind of a dress are you hoping for?” “what dresses have you seen that you like?” “are there any changes you would make to a favorite dress? What are they, and why would you make those changes?” Like all girls who dream about their wedding day, they desired a dress that would be beautiful. But each of our girls desired a dress that would honor God by displaying not just the beauty of the bride, but biblical modesty as well. I remember saying to them regularly, "Dad and I desire for you to be the most beautiful bride for your husband ... and you will be!"

When you are thinking in terms of beauty and modesty, its not like there is a list at the end of Habakkuk or somewhere that lays it out for you. There are important passages in God’s word that guide us (Proverbs 31, 1 Peter 3:1-6 for example). But our views of beauty and modesty are shaped by our hearts, which should be shaped by the whole counsel of God’s word. As we prepared for our dress-buying expedition, we found that talking through these questions in light of God’s word became great fellowship. Even though we didn’t always agree, these conversations revealed that my daughters and I were on the same page in terms of looking for a dress that would be elegant, fashionable and modest. We also wanted Mark to give the final approval before buying a dress. So, with our convictions and process in tow we found that it is possible, through some creativity and hard work, to find a dress that honored God and that the girls loved. Some of my daughters' favorite dresses simply required some extra fabric and tailoring (and by the way, we have some wonderful women in this church who can really sew!). What we thought was going to be a painful process turned out by God’s grace to be an adventure in finding the dress God himself had picked out for each daughter before we even started the process.

So whether you’re a Mom, or bride to be, the Gospel gives you rock solid reason to anticipate the goodness of God in the details and decisions of wedding planning. Yes it’s a process of praying, planning, working hard, crying, laughing, laughing and crying at the same time, and desperately praying some more. But as Mark, our daughters (and sons!), and I have reflected on the last 9 months, we’ve realized that God had wonderful plans of his own for us in our wedding planning process. And they go far beyond what kind of stamps go on the invitations.

Some other great thoughts on wedding dresses can be found on Girl Talk.

Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation

The idea of setting aside times for National Thanksgiving is part of our heritage since the founding of our Republic. But in October 1863 President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for a National Day of Thanksgiving to be Celebrated every November. After three years of agonizing national civil war, hope had shown over the horizon with crucial military victories on July 4 at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. In little over a month the president would be traveling to the battlefield at Gettysburg to consecrate the nation’s first national military cemetery – where his 2 minute address to the crowd would echo into history as perhaps the defining expression of what it cost to build this country.

But in his Thanksgiving Proclamation, Lincoln simply wanted to lift his people’s eyes from the travail around them to see the sustaining hand of God. His opening words could easily be spoken to us today:

"The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God."

In this proclamation Lincoln goes on to implore all people to conscious and vocal thanksgiving for both the blessings they enjoy, but also for the mercy that does not treat them as their sins deserve. And he ends by calling then to prayer for the great moral struggle in the land – foreshadowing the words he would speak on November 19, 144 years ago today in his Gettysburg Address:

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Let us remember the cost of freedom still being paid. And let us thank Almighty God for our freedom in Christ, purchased for us by the shed blood of the Savior.

Here is the full text of Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, Delivered October 3, 1863.

Here is the full text of the Gettysburg Address, delivered November 19, 1863.

Thanksgiving is a Holiday Too

Thanksgiving is a holiday that seems to be more and more like a little speed bump in the decorating rush between Halloween and Christmas. Or maybe its becoming more like ‘Black Friday Eve’ – the time to rest and fuel up before we slam into the Christmas shopping season. One year we got so pre-occupied with the impending Christmas holidays that we actually forgot to pull our turkey from the freezer with enough time to defrost it. Initially I felt embarrassed that we forgot Thanksgiving, that is until I saw a dozen other people at the Acme scrambling to find a fresh turkey for the same reason.

Thanksgiving is a holiday that deserves more attention. So, to help you and your family prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving in a meaningful way, here are a few thanksgiving ideas you can consider this year.

1. Place a basket in the center of your table now and every day from now until Thanksgiving have each person in your family write something they are thankful for, from this past year, on a slip of paper and place it in the basket. Then, on Thanksgiving just after the meal, before dessert, pass the basket around and have everyone read a slip of paper. End the time of thanksgiving with a prayer. If you really want to get creative, cut construction paper into leaf shapes and use those to write on.

2. Decorate early. Decorate your dining room for Thanksgiving with traditional fall colors. Pick up a small leftover pumpkin and some gourds from your local supermarket and farm store to use for the table centerpiece. You can write things God did in your family that you are thankful for right on the pumpkin so that all the meal long everyone can see just how the Lord blessed you this past year.

3. Take time between your main meal and dessert on Thanksgiving to sing a few worship choruses, giving thanks to the Lord.

4. Invite a single to join your family who might not be able to travel home for the holiday.

5. Make Thanksgiving cookies (ginger snaps, oatmeal, and snickerdoodles are good choices) and give them out to your neighbors. Don’t drop the basket and run, stop to talk. You might find the gesture provokes some great evangelistic conversation. After all, God, is the unnamed subject of this holiday.

6. Start a Thanksgiving tradition that you only do on this holiday. Here are a few ideas: bob for apples (sounds corny but kids love it), make caramel apples, home made ice cream or hot cider, light a fire in a fire ring outside and enjoy a campfire.

7. Memorize a different “Give thanks” passage each year as a family. (Pick one from these Psalms 7:17,28:7, 75:1, 100:4, 105:1, 106:1, 107:1)

8. Help your children write meaningful thank you notes or cards to people who have been a blessing them over the past year. Mail them early enough to arrive just before Thanksgiving.

Oh, and by the way, we already purchased our Thanksgiving turkey but if you see me on church this Sunday, remind me to take it out of the freezer for Lois. I’d love to avoid last minute turkey scrounging this year.

Winterizing My Stuff (part 2)

Last week we offered some tips to help you avoid unexpected disasters that can come from the unpredictable onset of Winter in our area. Today, Brian “MacGyver” Vander Weide and I have some tips for you on things you can do to make things easier as we move from warm to cold weather.

Winterizing to make things easier:

1. Run your lawnmower dry (let it run out of gas) on the last cut of the year and store it without fuel over the winter. This will help prevent the carburetor from getting gummed up and ensure an easier start with fresh gas in the Spring. If you have extra gas but you don’t need to mow your grass you can push your lawn mower around to help blow your leaves into piles to make raking easier to it runs out of fuel.

2. Get your snow blower and mower serviced. November is the best time to get these things done. A good repair shop can replace the plugs, sharpen the mower blade, grease your snow blower and replace the oil in both. That way you will be ready for that big winter storm and your mower will cut grass like a carpet in the spring.

3. If you have window AC units, turn off and cover your air conditioner. You don’t need an expensive cover. A small 3x5 tarp will do the trick. Use a length of rope with two loops tied on the ends and a bungee cord to secure the tarp over your air conditioner. Make sure your air conditioning vents, if they are different from those your heater uses, are closed for the winter.

4. If you have central heat and want to conserve a little, shut off some of your vents on your second floor. Warm air from the first floor should rise and help keep things warm. Also, if you don’t have a programmable thermostat – its worth getting one just to tailor your heat use to your lifestyle.

5. Replace the screen in your screen door with the window. On a windy day, walk around the house and see if there is air coming in anywhere. If there is you can be sure that cold air coming in means warm air is going out. Weather stripping, calk, shrink plastic are all inexpensive and helpful solutions to draftiness.

6. If you burn wood – look at the location and condition of your wood pile and ask yourself, ‘what kind of hassle would it be to get wood if it were raining or snowing?.’ Consider a ‘staging area’ for wood where you could keep a stock of dry, easily accessible wood. You can fill it on good weather days throughout the winter.

7. As soon as we get the first sub-freezing night, look to do a quickie garage reorganization (less buggy after a freeze). Just move the warm weather stuff (lawn chairs, bikes, boogie boards, etc.) to the back of the garage, and make snow cleaning stuff, sleds, etc. easily accessible. If you have a full garage, make paths to stuff you might need for the winter.

Winter – bring it on!

Occasional Enemies

This past Saturday night in our Family Life Married Couples Meeting we had the privilege of having our own Dave Harvey speak to our married and engaged couples from his book When Sinners Say, “I Do”.

Dave was drawing on some thoughts in our meeting from Chapter 5, “Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment”. He was working out of Luke 6, where Jesus calls his disciples to, among other things, ‘love your enemies’. In his book Dave points out something that I find both challenging and helpful. Jesus takes the holy call to love and applies it to the most difficult people to love – our enemies – those who ‘hate, curse and abuse you’ (Luke 6:27-28). What does this have to do with marriage? Dave writes, “Everything. Because Christ is showing the comprehensive reach of mercy.” (p. 83)

We think of mercy and loving our enemies as something for those who are set to do us harm. But did you ever think of your conflicts making you and your spouse (as Dave says on p. 83) ‘occasional enemies’? Occasional enemies are usually friends. Occasional enemies say things in anger that they regret saying after the fact. Occasional enemies can pull each other’s past failures out of the memory trunk and ignore change that has taken place in more recent times. Occasional enemies sometimes argue for the sake of arguing, even common sense tells them it’s not going to resolve anything. But occasional enemies have the opportunity to break through conflict with mercy. Mercy is essential to turn occasional enemies back into usual friends. As Tim Lane writes in his excellent book, Relationships – A Mess Worth Making, “Mercy is my commitment to live along side you in this broken world even though I will suffer with you, for you, and because of you.”

Do you want to grow in mercy in your marriage? Ask the following questions:

· Of yourself: Is there anything that my spouse does that tempts me to think they are against me? What inordinate desire might this reveal in me?

· To your spouse: Is there anything I do regularly in our conflicts that makes it seem that we are more enemies at war, than friends working toward peace?

· Before the Lord: How can I understand better the mercy that has come to me through the cross, so that I can better offer mercy to my occasional enemies?

Let’s look for ways we can apply the ‘comprehensive reach of mercy’ this week in our marriages.

Solo Femininity

Thanks for stopping in at the Fivebucks. One of the things we want to do for our ladies from time to time is introduce you to some of our friends and what they have to say in blogworld. Today I’d like to introduce you to Carolyn McCulley. Carolyn is a gifted writer, author of Did I Kiss Marriage Goodbye? and numerous articles on being a Christian woman in today’s world. She also happens to be a godly single sister. Carolyn has been an inspiration to many of our single ladies at CFC on how to embrace the call of singleness while actively preparing for marriage. Many of you in Family Life world may not know her, so I wanted to make the introduction today. Wives and moms of CFC, meet Carolyn McCulley through this blog post from her excellent web site, Solo Femininity.

The post from Carolyn is a great encouragement for a biblical view of femininity and an appreciation of our complementary relationship with men through the eyes of a woman from another culture and religious background. Its also a reminder that we need our single sisters – they have tons to offer us – insights on life, encouragement and observations for our families. And they would love to learn from us as well. Do you know a single sister in our church? Mom’s and wives, let’s all look for ways we can benefit from solo femininity.

Enjoy!

Now for the REST of the story…

I loved Jared Mellinger’s sermon from our series on Genesis yesterday. Preaching from Genesis 2:1-3, Jared walked us through a perspective-altering look at the Biblical idea of rest.

In the message he referenced a quote from Augustine that should be taking up space somewhere in our brain mass. It makes a great kick-off to our Wisdom for the Week:

“You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” (Confessions, Book 1, p. 1)

I’m coming off a busy week, in the midst of a busy month, and looking forward to a busy next few months with the holidays and a wedding coming up (no pity please – its all good stuff!). I found myself yesterday longing for 4:00 p.m. Sunday afternoon. That’s the time that I could be reasonably sure that I’d be at home in a state of undisturbed torpor (definition: Torpor – “inactive, inattentive indifference”’ – yep, that’s the goal). As I went through my busy day I increasingly got more and more energy, because 4:00 Sunday was growing ever closer, and I wanted to finish strong. As I write this it is just a couple of hours away, and I’m working hard to get there.

Jared’s message reminds me that my rest is not found in 4:00 Sundays, or in the completion of projects, or in vacations, or leisure, or in naps, or in comfort food. My heart doesn’t rest when I’m vegging out with TV, zoning out with iTunes, or chilling out with friends. Those can all provide relaxation, but they can’t give me rest. My heart is restless until it rests in God. As Jared said so well, Rest is not worklessness. Rest is life as God intended it to be.

As you look at your undoubtedly packed week coming up, remember that God is at work stirring you to take pleasure in him, because in Jesus Christ we find ‘rest for our souls’ (Matt. 11:29). And that’s life as God intended it to be.

The Flix Are Coming!

The Golden Compass, a children’s fantasy film starring Nicole Kidman is opening December 7^th. The film is based on Philip Pullman’s trilogy of books promoting atheism and the death of God. Do a Google on the movie title and you get a host of opinions, but they all seem to agree that the movie is bound to have anti-Christian theme.

Trailers for another holiday feature, Beowulf are peppering the commercial breaks these days in advance of this movies’ November 16 release. The special effects are spectacular, but some of the images I saw left me wondering if the movie would be appropriate for adults let alone children. These and other movies coming out will stir familiar questions for parents about which movies they should allow their children to watch.

Here are a few helpful tips for guiding the movie choices of your children this holiday season:

• Don’t make blind decisions, do some research. Look up the movie for a review on screenit.com or pluggedinonline.com. Both of these sites will give you detailed descriptions of the movie so you won’t get surprised. Screen it offers a subscription price (which makes finding their reviews easier but they also allow you to wade your way through their website for free by clicking on the “No Thanks” button at the bottom of their home page.

• Keep your standards high. Wayne Wilson in his book Worldly Amusements recommends “Christians should hold the arts to a clear standard of morality in order to justify Christian patronage.” Too often we ask the question “Is it permissible?”, instead of the more mature question, “Is it beneficial?” Let’s not settle for movies which might squeak by our conscience but slowly desensitize us toward an ungodly culture.

• Don’t get caught up with the holiday movie frenzy. Avoid the “gotta see the movie on opening night” syndrome. I find that children can be tempted to find their identity in the latest movie they see. And the movie industry clumps a lot of product into the time when kids are out of school. Even if you let a week go by for a new release you’ll be amazed at how ‘must see’ movies become ‘has been’ movies in just a few days. You might find your teenage son or daughter is not as interested in paying $25 for a movie and popcorn once some of the hype has faded.

• Don’t just show up at a theater and pick the “best movie.” Review before you go view.

The benefit of all this advertising is that you can do all your review well in advance of an opening date. Movie experiences are much richer if we plan what we’ll see, not just see what comes out.

Winterizing My Stuff – Avoiding Disaster!

Nobody likes the work required at the change of seasons. Whether it is Mom taking down the winter clothes and putting the summer wardrobe away or Dad winterizing of the family home, we all like to put off the transition. The clothing switch for Mom takes care of itself after the first hard frost when you realize your children don’t have any long sleeve shirts. Dads are usually reminded by subtle things like bursting pipes. So we’re offering a two part series on things you can do to get your home act in order for winter. This week we’ll cover things to do to avoid disaster. Next week we’ll offer some tips on how to make things easier.

1. Check the antifreeze in your car. You can check the levels by removing the radiator cap. The radiator should be full of antifreeze. You can check the quality of the antifreeze with a simple bulb tester available at your local auto center. While the hood is up, check your battery terminals for corrosion. If corroded mix a little baking soda and water and scrub them with a toothbrush, (an old one). .Check the air pressure in your tires. Put an ice scraper and jumper cables in every car you own. The colder weather causes the air to contract, so you may be a few pounds low. (Don't you wish it was the same for our bodies?)

2. Go to the local home center and purchase a bag of ice melt or salt. Also check your shovel – is it in shape for a big winter? You might also consider buying a pair of lined work gloves – A pair that you’ll use just for clearing snow.

3. If you have been holding out on turning your heat on, give it a test run to see if it works now. Don’t wait till the first really cold day only to find out your family has no heat and it’s freezing out.

4. Turn off your outside water, drain and put away your garden hose. If you have a water shut off valve inside your basement, turn off the water there, then drain the water from the outside spigot. If you don’t have a shut off inside your home, purchase an inexpensive foam insulating cover for over your outside spigot.

5. Clean out your gutters once the leaves are down in the fall. You don’t want the gutters to clog with a frozen ice jam and have a winter storms worth of water come in your basement. Even if you have no such catastrophe, the leaves are always less pleasant to remove once they have begun to rot in the spring. The fall, while the leaves are fresh is the best time to do the gutter job.

Why “When Sinners Say, I do”?

Please remember to join us for our Family Life Meeting this Saturday night, Nov. 10, beginning at 6:30 pm. Our special guest will be our own Dave Harvey, who’ll be talking about his new book, When Sinners Say, ‘I Do’. At our recent ‘Hot Topics’ Family Life Meeting I thought Andy Farmer did a great job clarifying why this book is so helpful, and is being read in so many different areas of the Christian community. Here are Andy’s thoughts that he shared at “Hot Topics”:

We’re studying Dave’s book (and he’s not here tonight so I can do this) “When Sinners Say I Do” and I want to make sure that those who are reading that book get the point. The title of the book is “When Sinners Say I Do”, but the heart of the book is not sin, but what it is like to be married under the watchful gaze and helpful grace of a loving God. And if we study this book and read it and discuss it, not so much looking for “where am I sinning?” but learning to see marriage in a God-referenced way, we’ll discover how grace abounds in both the successes and failures of marriage. Christian marriage books typically start with the importance of God, but by the time you get to the end of the book God is kind of a coach, encouraging you from the sidelines in the work you’re doing in your marriage. But practical things like submission, resolving conflict, dealing with disappointments, all those kinds of things are understood first and best when they’re understood as we live, and breathe and act before a God who is holy but who has our interest at heart. If you just see that, study that, focus on that, it comes alive in the book, and it will help you understand that even the toughest trials of marriage are filled with God-breathed purpose. And that will be so helpful to every married couple.

Come Saturday night and experience ‘God breathed purpose” for your marriage.

What’s Your Order?

Welcome to “Tuesday’s at the Fivebucks.” By the way, “Fivebucks” is an affectionate name we use around the Prater house for every time we stop at Starbucks we spend at least Five Bucks!! Can you relate?

As Andy mentioned last week, every Tuesday will be devoted to addressing women’s issues. Living with 4 women most of my life, I know this will be a challenging task because women are mature, intelligent and resourceful. So after getting this assignment the first thing I did was call home and yell “HELP!” You ladies face issues daily that are hard for me to completely relate to. I can’t effectively tell you how to change a diaper, answer the phone, help your 8 year old with his math problem, dislodge the gum that your 3 year old just fed the cat, read your Community Group assignment and make a “wonderful” dinner all at the same time with “the joy of the Lord” oozing from your pores!! But I bet I know some women who can help.

So the best way for me to serve you is to connect you with the resourceful women of Covenant Fellowship Church and beyond. On Tuesdays you will hear from ladies who are wrestling with the same issues you are as a woman, wife and mother and yet have found great hope in their God, His Word and His amazing, transforming grace. In other words, Tuesday at the Fivebucks won’t primarily be pastors writing to women, (although we may drop in time to time), but an opportunity for you to you hear from and interact with other women.

And this is where I really need your help. What are the issues and challenges that you face in the day to day as a wife, mother, and disciple of Christ that you would like to see addressed? Take a few minutes and respond to this blog post and send me your thoughts, ideas, and the issues you would like to see addressed on Tuesday’s at the Fivebucks.

I can’t wait for you to hear from some of the ladies in our church, because the women of Covenant Fellowship are some of the most amazing, impressive and resourceful people I have ever met. And to give you an idea of how resourceful you ladies are, please take a look at this below.

Oh, and today the Fivebucks is on me.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear…

Welcome to the Family Life Blog. We’re calling our Monday post “Wisdom for the Week” because we want to offer you some thoughts at the beginning of the week that just might help you in the days ahead.

I’d like to kick this off by offering some thoughts from the CCEF “Living Faith” Conference that took place this past week in Valley Forge. The theme of the conference was “Running Scared: Fear and Worry and the God of Rest”. What a great job by our friends at CCEF to address with biblical truth an arena of life we all experience – fear. Sessions dealt with everything from common worry to fears following victimization, OCD tendencies, fear of death, panic attacks – fears all along the scale. Check out the CCEF web site for more info about the conference.

One consistent theme from the seminars I attended that is our Wisdom for the Week is that ‘fear is a relational matter’. Did you ever think of how much of your fear presumes you’re alone – either through isolation, rejection, or lostness. For example, I find that I’m a lot more susceptible to fears when I’m home by myself than when my wife and kids are there – even though if anything really fearful happened I’d rather they not be there to face it with me. Most fear is reasonable – we live in a world we can’t control. But fears can dominate our lives is many ways. Here’s some wisdom: The thing that overcomes fear is not power, but relationship. Fear is vulnerability seeking isolation. David Powlison said, ‘we can’t reason ourselves out of fear, but we can relate ourselves out of fear…. Relating gets us out of our own heads’.

Do you fear anything this week – are you trapped inside your head by fear? The ultimate remover of fear is God himself, who says, “do not fear, for I am with you.” Ed Welch encouraged us that “God has a deep joy in being trusted”. Do you see God as demanding your trust, or enjoying it. Faith in the face of fear is expressed in talking – calling on God for protection and peace, and calling on others for prayer and encouragement.

Fear: Talk it out.

Let the Games Begin

We’ve survived Halloween – at least for this year. Hope the guys were helpful. Normal life awaits us – school and work, home and church, moms and dads, husbands and wives. It’s the day to day stuff of family life that matters most. And that’s what the Family Life Blog is being created for. To help you with the daily stuff – making good decisions, focusing on good priorities, enjoying family to the fullest - living out the Gospel at home.

Each week we want to help your marriage and parenting be all it can be – little bits at the time. We’ll have helpful articles, practical tips, pastoral advice, in what we hope will be an engaging and informative site. We’ll look for the best of what’s out there for families and bring it to you here. And we’ll take what God is teaching us as a local church and work it into daily application.

Our goal is five posts a week – each targeted to a relevant area of family life:

On Mondays you’ll get Wisdom for the Week, a rich quote and thoughts about it to help you start your week off with substance and truth.

On Tuesdays, its Tuesday’s at the Fivebucks, a virtual café chat especially for women. We’ll have women blogging for women on things that matter to you. (Ok, sometimes a pastor will sneak in as well, but we won’t hang around too long).

Wednesdays are Wedded Wednesdays, where we’ll focus on marriage stuff – with both biblical perspective and ‘how to’ advice.

Thursdays are for Practical Matters. This is where we’ll deal with things like managing a home, finances, planning, calendar craziness, and other skills for living.

Fridays are Family Fridays, where we’ll focus on parenting and kid issues – just in time for the weekend!

We’ll also give you an opportunity to interact with us on things that matter to you. Your feedback and comments will help us make this site a great tool for parents, marriages, and families.

So welcome to the Family Life Blog. See you Monday

Andy Farmer
Minister of Blogging – Family Life

Halloween – The Aftermath

The timing couldn’t have been better!

This year, I finally had a reason to avoid Halloween that even my neighbors – the ones with the orange pumpkin lights in the trees and giant fuzzy spiders in the flower beds – could understand. Halloween is hazardous! I came across this frightening warning from the Consumer Product Safety Commission: Halloween Skull Pails Recalled Due to Violation of Lead Paint Standard. Dog food, Mattel toys, and now Halloween is laced with lead! Surely I could count on their support to skip Halloween this year!

But Noooo! Not even environmental hazards can kill Halloween. So here we are once again, the oddballs of the neighborhood – but at least we’re lead free. But now that the festivities are over, how can we make the day after Halloween special. I’ve done some research and have come up with some things to help you avoid those Halloween day after blues.

• Did you know that Starbucks officially kicks off the holiday season on the day after Halloween by bringing out their annual gingerbread latte. Did you also know that Halloween is the best shopping day of the year – for clowns. Why not make the day after Halloween “treat a clown to a latte’ day.

• Don’t know what to do with that Jack-o-lantern? One web site suggests “starting a new family tradition” of burying your carved up pumpkin. Consider this cheerful thought: “It is especially fun for family gatherings and keeps the children interested for one more day as they dig a grave for burying the pumpkins”.

• Pack up the family for a surprise vacation to the “Baltic Sea Day-After-Halloween Cycling Race”. I think its in Sweden. Don’t know if it is regular cycles or sea cycles that they’re racing. But it would be fun to find out – I think.

So there you have it. The best ideas for the day after Halloween from the internet. But as I think about it, maybe its best just to have devotions, toss out the leftover candy and go about the Lord’s business. Just remember – don’t keep those lead-covered skull pails where the kids can get them.