discipleship

E-220 entrusted TO BE invested- Week One: Sound Doctrine Leads to Sound Living

entrusted TO BE invested is a six-week Bible [...]

E-220 entrusted TO BE invested- Week One: Sound Doctrine Leads to Sound LivingKaren Hodge2023-07-27T20:49:57+00:00

Summertime Discipleship with Your Family

LISA UPDIKE|GUEST “Summertime and the livin’ is easy…” Well, that’s how the song goes anyway. Although I’m not quite sure that summer is all that easy for a mom with kids wanting to go to the pool, have a friend over, visit the park, and build forts in the woods, I do realize that summer is a more flexible time of the year. The long, unscheduled days present opportunities to engage in fun activities, making special memories as a family. That’s what we love about summer, isn’t it? Although my kids are grown, I know that I treasure our picture albums full of smiling, sun kissed faces squinting into the sun next to carefully constructed sand castles. Summertime “easy livin’” also presents us with numerous opportunities to engage our children with the gospel, and that is even more precious than a well-crafted memory album! Memorize Scripture Together Because summer offers a reprieve from the rigors of schoolwork, it is an excellent season to start a Bible verse memory program for your whole family! Choose a verse or passage to learn. Introduce it to the family during dinner, discussing what it means and how it applies to life. As a family, choose an award. Perhaps this could be a trip to the ice-cream parlor, an outing to the lake, or a night by the fire-pit toasting marshmallows for s’mores. Anything can work as long as everyone agrees. Then start memorizing, just a few words at a time, adding to them daily. Have the kids make posters with your family verse, and tape them up on the fridge, in the bathroom, and on your doors. Say it together in the car, in the morning, before bed, or at random times during the day. Once you’ve all learned it, enjoy your reward! You could even make a goal to memorize several passages and have a great big end of summer celebration!...

Summertime Discipleship with Your FamilyChristina Fox2023-08-15T13:24:03+00:00

The Sacred Work of Intergenerational Discipleship

KAREN HODGE|CONTRIBUTOR “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). Last words are precious and shape us. Moses has some final words for the children of Israel at the end of the exodus. He will not go with them into the promised land but only see it from a distance. He encourages these forgetful people like us to hear and listen up! They have seen sand and sad circumstances, but he invites them to start their new life on solid ground. The Shema above is the centerpiece of daily morning and evening prayer for Jewish families. It bookends each day with holy realignment, which begins by looking upward. We are to hear, listen, heed, and remember that Yahweh, our covenantal and relational LORD is our God, and He is One. In a polytheistic world of gods who compete for our allegiances, He is singular, other, and holy. No one else is His equal. He is our King and should rule and reign in every area of life. Moses notes the natural overflow of worshiping our LORD is the integration of faith and life. Intergenerational discipleship begins with the relentless dethroning of competing loyalties. God wants all of us—nothing held back—our heart, soul, and might. Our obedience is an overflow of our love for Him, not the Law. It is easy to get this upside down. Jesus quotes this greatest commandment to a young striving lawyer in Matthew 22:36-37...

The Sacred Work of Intergenerational DiscipleshipChristina Fox2023-08-15T13:26:40+00:00

Wisdom of the World vs. Wisdom of the Word

LISA UPDIKE|GUEST Everything is beautiful in its own way!... Never say I can’t; always say I’ll try…..If the sun doesn’t shine, create your own rainbows…..Throw kindness around like confetti….Be true to yourself….Follow your dreams….Dream big!....You can be anything you want to be… Inspirational quotes. They’re everywhere! On little kids’ t-shirts, bumper stickers, water bottles, journal covers, and classroom walls. They sound so witty. Clever. Like little pearls of wisdom. Good slogans by which to live your life. “Yes! I WILL follow my heart, try harder, and shoot for the stars! I can be whoever I dream I can be, and love IS LOVE!” Written in rainbow colors, with butterflies adorning the borders, this “wisdom of the world” beckons to our children. It can be quite confusing. Sometimes these slogans can be true; other times they can be outright lies. Often they are lies hiding right next to truth, subtle in their deceit. That is what makes them so dangerous for our children. Lies parading as wisdom. Teach the Truth There is only one true source for wisdom, and that source is God as revealed to us in His Word. However, ever since the events of Genesis 3, we are prone to seek wisdom from other places. How can we guard our children, teaching them to discern the truth from the lie? Simply put, we must teach our children the truth. How do I know that 2+2 does not equal five? Because I was taught how to count. If you counted out two things and had two more, you kept counting. That is adding. I learned this by grouping beads. I learned by counting on my fingers. It never varies. Two things plus two more always makes a total of four. You can’t convince me that 2+2=5 just by putting it on a pretty poster. Even if all my classmates say 2+2=5, I still won’t believe it, because I KNOW the truth! We do the same with God’s Word. We teach it to our children by rote (like we learn to count). We tell them what the Bible says. We share with them the wonderful stories. We memorize Scripture. Just like I held and manipulated those counting beads, we let our children experience and interact with what God says in His Word. This gives them a foundation of truth. They learn what kindness is, and respect, honor, and obedience. They learn about repentance and sin. They know God’s Word because we are living it with them...

Wisdom of the World vs. Wisdom of the WordChristina Fox2023-08-15T13:37:13+00:00