Why You Need to be Sure That Your Children Know the God That You Serve

Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it. Proverbs 22:6 (NIV) This is a scripture that most Christians know and yet very few really get to the extent that they implement it actively or rather proactively within their own lives concerning their own children. No matter how you became a parent, God blessed you with that child or children for a reason. I know that people in Western society are accustomed to having children for their own selfish reasons and they have no sincere concept as to the important role that they play in the life of that child. Hence fathers who leave marriages because it is no longer the convenient thing for them to be married and not only do they abandon the marriage but they make the horrible mistake of abandoning their role as a father. Mothers decide that rather than raise their children they would rather go out and party and become the "play thing" of some man who could basically care less about them meanwhile Grandma, who is older, tired and stressed is left with the monumental task of raising another generation. Or women who behave in error like, yours truly, who decide to have children without the love and support of a husband for themselves and father for their children. That's right! I love my babies but had I not been so selfish I would've continued to abstain from sex and I would've waited to have my children within a marriage ordained by God but enough about that!

I find it to be quite a curious thing that Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and Roman Catholics take the time to indoctrinate their children from birth as to what the principles of that family's respective faith is and the important role that it will play in the life of that child. Jewish people and even devout Scientologists take the time to indoctrinate their children as to what they are to believe about God as the foundation for the rest of their lives. Now the fact that Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roman Catholics and Scientologists believe in religious principles that are not congruent to biblically sound principles is something else but the fact is, they get something that the average so-called charismatic, pentecostal, believer doesn't get and that's the importance of teaching your children about the God that you serve!

I remember when my daughter was two, the Lord revealed to me the importance of reading the Bible to her and praying with her and I wanted to but something in me wanted to justify not doing it because she was "too young" to understand. I tried to reason with the Lord by saying, "But God she's just a baby. She's not going to understand what I am reading to her." I admit that I did it for a while and then I fell off because I reasoned within myself that she was a small child and I couldn't understand the purpose of reading the actual Bible to her instead of Dr. Seuss or bible stories. But when I got pregnant with my son, I realized that because I was single and a mother that I could not by any means be successful as a parent unless I got close to God and obeyed Him to the letter regarding the upbringing of my children. We took small steps. Psalm 91 was read over my daughter at her Baby Blessing (like a christening but Pentecostals don't believe in baptizing children so the elders and prophets prayed and prophesied over her and assigned a scripture to her.) Well, when I was pregnant with my son, she was three going on four and I felt that it was time for her to know this God who had been so gracious and merciful as to allow me to be her mother. I taught her Psalm 91 and we would pray and she would have to recite Psalm 91 every night before bed. By the time my son was born, I had a blessing said for him and because he was a boy (not to be sexist) but I knew that he would not be a baby always and one day he would be a man and I wanted him to grow up to be a great man of God. Don't get me wrong, I wanted my daughter to grow up to become a great woman of God but because there was no direct positive male influence in his life, I felt that it was imperative that he know God and that is what actually compelled me to get my act together and get right with God. Pentecostals and most Charismatics want to depend on Sunday School and Children's Church to teach their children everything that they need to know about the Lord but the Sunday School teacher and the Children's Church minister doesn't go home with you and what's worse is that they see you go home and live something other than what they were taught at church and that only leads to disillusionment and confusion so that by the time they are teens, unless they are blessed to have an encounter with God on their own that compels them to seek God, they end up using you as a barometer to gauge how they should behave and they'll either become lukewarm, mediocre Christians or they'll reject Christianity altogether because you weren't the example of holiness that they needed and deserved to witness.

My constant prayer is that God will bless me to be the kind of mother that my children need and deserve because they didn't ask to be here and I also understand that it is not about me or what makes me feel good but about the spiritual and psychological health and well-being of my children. It's enough that they don't have a father in the natural right now, I'm all they have and if I don't live an example of holiness before them, then what will they have? I am accountable to God for how I raise them and even more so for the life that I live before them. I'm such a nerd and a square that partying and carousing were never my thing anyway but I love men! But because I love God and I love my children and have come to love myself, men are not even in the equation until God sees fit to bless me with my husband. I miss the companionship of a man but I can't risk the emotional and psychological risk of having serial monogamous relationships in my life and therefore apart of my children's lives. I have to give myself over completely to the Holy Spirit so that even when I'm tempted to jump ahead of God into a relationship, I'll consider what it would do to my children and myself if the man involved is not who God would have me raise my children with as a direct influence and father figure in their lives. Not any old piece of man or breath and breaches (as my grandfather called them) deserves to have any contact or access to my kids and if he's not good enough to meet my kids, then I don't need to be with him! It's that simple!

Over the past year, as a family we have evolved in closeness to each other and to the Only True and Living God! My son turned three this year and I prayed prior to his birthday for the Lord to give me a scripture regarding him and the Lord directed me to Psalm 121. So now he almost knows Psalm 121 and my daughter well, she turned seven and the Lord let me know that it was time for her to learn a new scripture since she'd been reciting Psalm 91 for 3 years and now she is learning Psalm 24 as of her 7th birthday. We have prayer and meditation time together and I read the Word of God to them nightly and in addition to their individual scriptures that they recite nightly prior to going to bed, I also assign a weekly family scripture that we recite every night for a week. I could pop my collar if I wanted to, but I have enough sense to know that all glory and honor belongs to God for revealing to me the importance of living holy before my children and truly training them up in the way that they should go so that when they are older they will not depart from it! I want to see my children grow up to become great people of God and to know that no matter what they go through it's not enough to know God through me or even our pastor or the youth pastor at church but they have to know and have a relationship with God for themselves and everything that I'm doing right now, is not easy and yes, it takes some patience and effort but I know that it is the foundation of my children knowing and being secure in their Christian identity. A lot of parents don't understand and some really don't want to understand just how important it is for them to be an example of holiness or how important it is for them to share their faith with their children on a daily basis because it calls them to a higher level of accountability and responsibility than what they are willing to involve themselves.

I'm not perfect and neither do I portray myself as perfect to my children. I have had to abandon pride and self and become transparent so that my children can see that even in my humanness, God is still merciful, loving and faithful and if He'll be those things for me, He'll be the same for them. Nothing worth having comes easy and raising happy, stable, fulfilled children who love God is well worth it! I'd rather take the time out now than to leave their knowledge of God to chance and simply hope and pray that they will know Him. In these formative years they must know who God, El Shaddai, Elohim, Jehovah Jireh, Jehovah Rohe, and the Great I Am is through me! It's a huge responsibility but it also helps me to keep in the proper perspective just how important it is for me to know God so that they may know Him, truly know Him and in the name of Jesus not have to suffer needlessly from ignorance because I did not effectively teach and train them up in the way that should go.

Be abundantly blessed!

Mediocrity hates greatness...Be great and let the haters hate!

2 Corinthians 10:3-5

Back In Effect

Wow...it's been practically more than a month. I have missed posting to The World of a Christian Single Mother. Get ready because we're about to go live! That's right Mocha Brown is taking this movement to the airwaves of internet radio. I'll post more details once all of the kinks have been worked out!

Anyway, Abba has had me reading, meditating and praying through the book of Isaiah and the books of Acts, Romans and Hebrews. I read two chapters of Isaiah in the morning and two chapters of Acts (done), Romans (just finished)and two chapters of Hebrews (starting tonight). I have learned over the past year just how important it is to pray scripture instead of just praying off the top of my head and out of whatever my flesh may feel at the time. Isaiah 55:11 says essentially that (paraphrasing), "the word of God will not return to Him void but will accomplish the very thing that He sent it out to accomplish." You can't go wrong when you pray the word of God! It's consistent, and the Father is bound by the honor of His name and has promised to fulfill His word time and time again. What more do you need? Sometimes when we pray we get too caught up in emotion and a lot of times because of how we "feel" we end up praying outside of God's will for our lives. Then we get frustrated with praying and then we stop praying altogether because we feel that our prayers aren't being answered. Isaiah 45:23 says, "I have sworn by Myself, The word has gone forth from My mouth in righteousness And will not turn back, That to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance." (NASB) We must first desire the Father's will for our lives realizing that He will not withhold ANY good thing from us and His plans for us, that they are for good and not evil. They are to bless us and give us hope and a future! (paraphrasing Jeremiah 23:11)

Why not get take the time to get to know God for yourself through His word? It's not enough to "know" the Word through someone else be it a pastor, evangelist, television ministry or even your mama, daddy, grandmama, or granddaddy. In fact it is downright dangerous and a threat to your relationship with God to entrust something so precious to someone else without knowing it yourself. It's like trying to know your child through a nanny or babysitter. It's all secondhand knowledge and the problem with secondhand knowledge is that it is always compromised and filtered through someone else's experience. A prime example is the church that I grew up in which was very legalistic and taught that women shouldn't wear make-up, pants, braid their hair or preach or teach in the pulpit. It wasn't until I read and studied the word of God for myself that I discovered that there were modern-day Pharisees lurking in the church who distorted the word of God in order to subjugate and impose a legalistic form of "works" salvation that was based on what you wore rather than the love of God. Unfortunately a lot of these churches still exist but thank God that my hunger and thirst for the word of God saved me from a stagnant life of legalistic "works" salvation, based on denomination and not on the love of God. Many people will be deceived in the last days because they do not know the word of God for themselves. David Koresh is said to have known the Bible from Genesis to Revelation verbatim. However if his followers had known the word for themselves and had been seeking God and not a man, they probably wouldn't have been deceived to the point of death. My grandfather used to tell the story of a little bird that used to sit in a tree and sing "laziness will kill ya'! Kill ya!" Apathy and willful illiteracy will cause many to be deceived by false prophets and teachers. The word of God empowers us and blesses us to have wisdom and authority and power through The Spirit of The Only True and Living God. We get an awesome insight into the greatness of God when we read the word of God and read it not with the intent to manipulate and cause others to fall but rather to gain access to an intimacy with God that we would not otherwise be able to attain through other means.

I will continue this topic in another post but my prayer for you is that you will realize just how precious and awesome having the word of God is in terms of your relationship with Him. We'll also get into how to arouse a love for the the Bible in your children and it's not by reading Disney-type, watered down bible stories that are meant to be palatable for them but some of them take the Word out of context and treat these awesome life-changing stories as if they were nothing more than mere fairy tales or fables. You need to KNOW the Word of God and your children need to KNOW the Word of God!

Be abundantly blessed!

Mediocrity hates greatness...so be great and let the haters hate!

The Church As A Social Club

By now you probably realize that I was raised in the church. That's right, my grandfather had at one time been a COGIC pastor and lived the rest of his days as an elder (more on him at another time) but I grew up in the church. I was saved at the age of 6 and filled with the Holy Spirit at the tender age of 9. I loved and still love the Lord with all of my heart. But I've been to a few too many churches that are starving and lacking in the power of love and the power of the Holy Spirit because they have reduced church to that of a glorified social club where people no longer come to be delivered, praise/worship and exalt Jesus as Savior and Lord...oh no! They come to see and be seen; to know, be known and be in the know! They get together with their cliques and some feign holiness where others are so bold that they don't even bother to put up too big of a front. They come to hook up with the opposite sex and sometimes the same sex. They come to catch up on the latest gossip among the circle of cliques in the church. They come so that they can have the appearance of holiness but it's really kind of funny because they have no power! More than just a social club they have become elitist social clubs where the motive is to gain notoriety and position. These are they that when the pastor calls a fast they are found mumbling and grumbling or if service goes off program or lasts a little longer than usual, they can be heard murmuring and complaining. These are they who are jockeying for positions in the church so that they can be in close contact with the pastor and be seen for the purpose of bragging rights and to seem important to others. These are they who pick and choose what is sin and what is not sin and unfortunately, these are they that the new age pastors and preachers have chosen to cater to by preaching to soothe their itching ears (II Timothy 4:3)instead of calling them to accountability because it has now become unpopular to talk about sin; it is unpopular to hold people accountable for their actions. So there we have the 21st century church, which I believe to be the modern day Laodicean church (Revelation 3:14-22). This is the lukewarm church that Christ declared He would spew (spit) out of His mouth because He would prefer that they would be either hot or cold. The church as a social club is a collection of lukewarm individuals who persistently resist the love, unity and holiness of the true church and body of Christ. They often possess a pharisee spirit in that most of them believe that they are already holy enough, in fact they are so holy in their own eyes that they can stand in open and obvious judgment of others and have no fear of the judgment that they will reap as a result of their self-righteousness. Most of them are blessed with material things so because they equate material success or the appearance of material success as being blessed they feel that this somehow qualifies them to look disdainfully upon others. If they are involved in ministry of any kind, it is simply to gain position and notoriety for themselves and you can tell by the way that they handle the people that they are "ministering" to because they often times have this very phony, apprehensive, stand-offish demeanor (much like handling a filthy rag, I call it nice-nasty) or they are mean, rude and inconsiderate of even the faintest form of Christian love and civility let alone basic customer service. They handle those that they are "ministering" to as if they were filthy and unworthy of their time. These are truly they who will look Jesus in the face on the day of judgment and proclaim, "Lord, I visited the sick, the imprisoned, fed the hungry and clothed the needy." But the Lord will have no knowledge of them because whatever they did, they did it to bring glory to themselves and not to God. They do these things for love and preoccupation with self and not a devotion and love for God. I Corinthians 13 is highly detailed in that it even goes so far as to say that (paraphrasing) even if I give my body to be burned but do not have love. It profits me nothing."

It is my personal opinion that these modern day pharisees don't even believe in God. Their actions and their motives are indicative of people who can't possibly truly believe God. If they believe that there is a God, He is not real to them so they handle the church and their erroneous representation of Christianity very lightly. They are in essence their own God! It's all about them and what they can get and you better believe if they are giving it's only because they believe that they are getting something out of it. They don't care about souls being saved, lives being changed and each time a new person who comes into the church, they act as if they are offended at the very thought of new people attending "their church". They shout and speak in tongues in the pews and out in the lobby and out in the parking lot their feet run swiftly to mischief. They speak in rebellion of the pastor while they gossip over the phone but they are quick to grin in his face as if he were the God who has a heaven or hell created for them.

I have purposed it in my heart and mind that I am going to "rattle the cages" of every modern day pharisee whose path I cross in the church. I am determined to praise and worship God as if I've lost my ever-loving mind. I am going to go all out for the cause of Christ and I am going to love them and pray for them even if they despise and speak evil against me. Yeah, they think that it's all about them well I'm glad that it's not all about me and I am not on any kind of campaign to be seen of men for only what I do for Christ will last. Keep in mind as you go about your way that the absence of love is the absence of God and if what you do is without love then you might as well not do it all. YOU are the temple of the Holy Ghost! These modern day pharisees go to church but I AM THE CHURCH!!! When the church is in you, it is impossible to disrespect the body of Christ by treating and relegating the church to a mere social club experience because the Holy Spirit in you provokes you to love and teaches you wisdom. Galatians 6:7 tells us not to be deceived because God is not mocked, whatever a man sows that's what he will also reap.

Be abundantly blessed!

Mediocrity hates greatness...so be great let the hater hate!