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Tag: witness

  • Godly christian teens?

    Godly christian teens?

    (Almost) Everyone’s Doing It

    A SURPRISING NEW STUDY SHOWS CHRISTIANS ARE HAVING PREMARITAL SEX AND ABORTIONS
    AS MUCH (OR MORE) THAN NON-CHRISTIANS.
    Eighty percent of young, unmarried Christians have had sex.
    Two-thirds have been sexually active in the last year. Even though, according to a recent Gallup poll, 76 percent of evangelicals believe sex outside of marriage is morally wrong. source
    .

    “What used to be happening in high school is now happening in eighth grade,” DiMarco said.

    Even Christian teens are not immune to the rampant sexual temptations bombarding their generation.

    “I found no difference between Christian girls and non-Christian girls,” DiMarco said. “No difference, except that they talked a good show and acted really nice in front of me.”

    When she probed deeper she found that Christian teens were engaging in the same sexual behaviors as their non-Christian friends. source

    The problem that she has found with abstinence pledges is that teens have misconceptions about what it means to be a virgin. “Teen girls don’t understand what virginity is,” DiMarco says, “so everything except intercourse is considered okay even by Christian girls.”

    “…parents do not fully understand how commonplace these sexual behaviors have become in their children’s generation.

    The teens have been desensitized by the sexual messages on television, in movies, in magazines, and from their friends. But parents would never imagine that these things are taking place.

    Quick facts regarding STDs and adolescent pregnancy

    • Approximately 18.9 million new cases of STDs occur each year.
    • Forty-eight percent of new STD cases in 2000 were among 15- to 24-year-olds.
    • There are currently more than 25 types of STDs; some are curable, others are not.
    • In 2000, approximately 822,000 pregnancies occurred among 15- to 19-year-olds.
    • Seven out of ten adolescent mothers drop out of high school.

    Quick ideas about setting boundaries

    Children and teens need boundaries for their safety. Children should understand the consequences of breaking family rules and boundaries. Consequences should fit the severity of the rule. The following are a few boundaries to discuss with your teen:

    • Curfew
    • Transporting other teens: who or how many people ride in one car together
    • Drinking alcohol or using drugs
    • Drinking alcohol or using drugs and driving
    • Lying to parents or adults in authority
    • Allowing opposite-sex company in bedrooms
    • Having friends over while parents are absent
    • Age at which dating can begin
    • Dating vs. courting: discuss family values and guidelines

    source

    CHRISTIAN PARENTS:
    Do you need HELP!?
    –
    Many fine organizations provide help, books, materials, counseling, prayer and the love of Christ in getting parents through TRYING to raise godly Christian children. It is NOT an easy job, but the Lord calls on Christian parents to take responsibility for the children we raise – that INCLUDES our teens.
    .
    Start early. As you can see by the startling statistics, you had better think about SEX in your children’s lives BEFORE they do.
    • IF you didn’t start early, it’s still NOT too late.
    Don’t give up.
    Your son (yes, don’t forget them, even though they don’t get pregnant) or your daughter will bless you for your Biblical guidance in later life when they discover how much damage the sex life of theirs or their friends has caused.
    –
    One of the fine organizations I can recommend for marriage or various family challenges is Family Life Today.
    Here is just one article on this topic:

    Establishing Dating Guidelines for Your Teen

    Full Article

    In light of our reformatted definition of dating, we have the following very general age guidelines for spending time with a friend of the opposite sex (these are for our children still living at home).

    • Doing things together with an approved mixed group of teens away from our home: We have allowed this to begin sometime after age 15.
    • Double dates or group dates: Usually at age 17, maybe earlier.
    • Single dates: These are generally discouraged but allowed in certain circumstances.

    More Beautiful You – Jonny Diaz

    [Song with lyrics]

    What is YOUR witness for Jesus Christ, beloved Christian young woman?
    +
    What is YOUR witness for Jesus Christ, beloved young man of the Lord’s witness?
    +
    What is YOUR witness for Jesus Christ as a PARENT of a TEEN in your ‘christian’ household?
    +

    Proverbs 30

    English Standard Version (ESV)

    11 There are those [There is a generation] who curse their fathers
    and do not bless their mothers.
    12 There are those who are clean in their own eyes
    but are not washed of their filth.

     

  • The Commitment of Christian Marriage

    The Commitment of Christian Marriage

    This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

    Did we miss this? I love a good mystery. Don’t you? Especially at the moment you finally get it – the moment you figure out where the story has been headed all along.

    Paul writes a letter to the church (at Ephesus). It is a letter to you and a letter to me, IF we claim Christ as our Lord… IF we are consumed with the promised return of our Lord. But there’s a mystery here you might overlook if you see Ephesians only as a letter with rules and regulations. It is the mystery of relationship.

    Ephesians 5

    English Standard Version (ESV)

    Walk in Love

    Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.  2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

    Walk in love. We get that, right?

    Walk. Make progress in our faith. Don’t just stay as we were, but become as Christ would want us.

    We are beloved children of the Living God. WOW! We love that. But now, as children we are expected to grow up as a member of the family of God our father. Yet as the rebellious child will often do, we get hung-up on Dad’s rules. (See vs. 5-21)

    Then, it seems (like in all good mysteries) that the author is headed down a different road with just the obvious connection to that ‘sexual immorality’ thing: porneia. We know that marriage should solve all of that. But why is Paul giving marriage so much ink?

    Wives and Husbands

    22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

    25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,

    27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

    28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

    29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body.

    Lets pause for a moment and look at this from a different perspective. Many a sermon has been preached using Ephesians 5:22 as a reason for husbands to have their wives “submit” to their will. I will point out here that MANY a husband is NOT submitted to Jesus Christ as his Lord. For the text says, “as to the Lord.” Therefore, BOTH the husband and the wife who claim Jesus Christ as their Lord MUST be submitted to Christ as Lord.

    Is your Christian marriage submitted to Christ as your Lord?

    Husbands, love your wives. (Don’t get mixed up on this now.) Love here is not sexual love. (That’s OK and expected, but Paul refers to something bigger here.)

    Love, that is: agapaō, is inclusive of the same love expected from all Christians for each other on a most intimate basis.

    Paul adds: as Christ loved the church. (Same word for loved: agapaō). This means that in a sense if you think of Jesus as the Husband and you as the Bride, it’s the love that Jesus has for you IF He were your Husband. It’s the same love that God has for all of us in the sense that ‘adam’ means not only man, but mankind.

    But Paul does not stop there with his example for husbands. He adds: and gave himself up for her.

    What does he mean by, gave himself up?

    Husbands, he means a sacrificial love for your wife. Do you do that? (For you were glad enough to have your wife sacrifice her humility to serve you. Do you sacrifice your being for her?)

    Paul emphasized the sacrifice of the husband even more (in a way that we cannot get around), for he adds to that a purpose: that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.

    Sanctify her: a husbands duty. A religious term meaning to to separate her from profane things and dedicate a wife to God. My responsibility as her husband. (And I pray in the Lord that she will submit to it.)

    The prodigal wife has returned from the pig sty. She is filthy. She has had an unloving master who has not cared that she has wasted all of her blessing and inheritance from her father on foolish things. She begs to return home, even as a servant with not even the rights of one of the family of the father.

    How will you welcome this filthy prodigal wife?

    (Need direction in this? Read Luke 15.)

    Sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. 

    Picture the purification of the Bible, a waterfall showering the one sanctified to God until all the filth of the pig sty of the worldly places is gone.

    The water of purification is the word of the Lord.

    Will your wife listen? That is what the Lord wants to know. Will you and she both become sanctified in the Word?

    John 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

    It all goes back to the beginning, to Eden, to God’s intention of the intimacy of the relationships involved of adam.

    31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 

    Paul now refers to the mystery of marriage. The climax, however, is more than you ever expected. (Paul adds that the mystery is profound.) 

    32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

    JESUS + HIS CHURCH = a Marriage made in Heaven.

    As a member of Christ’s body, the church; Christians are Jesus’ Bride.

    Every prepared and purified soul of the church awaits the coming again of our Bridegroom: Christ Jesus, our Lord and Husband betrothed to each of us.

    It is a very great mystery, Jesus Christ + the Church; Husband + wife. We are by His sacrifice one with Him and will be with Him in His heavenly home for all time.

    Paul adds, as our example of that marriage:

    33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

     Why is the witness of Christian marriage so important?

    We are the respect of Christ in this world, until He returns for His faithful Bride.

    Christians must live as Christ and be witness to His love and righteousness.

    Would you (IF you were Jesus) want an unfaithful wife?

    The hypocrisy of failed christian marriages is no mystery to the world.

    WE, by the witness of our divorces are prodigal wives gone off to the pig sty on our own.

    It is because of the hardness of our hearts and not love for Christ Jesus, our Betrothed Bridegroom.

    Will we return to the vows of our faithfulness?

    OR will the Lord return before we purify our church once more?

    They are no longer two, but one.

    Is your marriage one with Christ Jesus our returning Bridegroom?

    For He poured out His sacrifice of love for His Bride on the Cross.

    May we in our Christian marriages once more take up our cross and follow the Bridegroom.

     

     

     

  • Covenant and Truth – 4

    Covenant and Truth – 4

    And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. – 2 Peter 2:2

    1 John 1:6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 

    8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 

    [Links open separate windows to different Hebrew & Greek roots or scripture.]

    Amos 5:8  They hate him who reproves in the gate,
    and they abhor him who speaks the truth.

    Malachi 2:6 True instruction was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity.

    The Prophets speak of truth, the Apostles speak of truth, God speaks of truth time and time again. Truth must be important.

    No Gospel mentions truth more than the Gospel of John. (You would do well to consider the Truth of every verse of this Good News.)

    John 1:14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”)

    The Gospel is a testimony of Truth in the Court of God with witness before all mankind.

    17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

    John 4:24 “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

    John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

    God values Truth so much that He sent His only Son to the Cross as witness of His love for us.

    Ephesians 4:25 Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.

    Let those of us with ears to hear, hear the words of Jesus about our spoken words and our promises (not even addressing the more serious violations of breaking the covenants of our written words).

    Matthew 5

    English Standard Version (ESV)

    Oaths

    33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’

    34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.

    36 And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.

    37 Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.

     Do we realize the context of this teaching from Jesus?

    It is from the Sermon on the Mount: after the Beatitudes (or blessings), after His call to us to become salt and light to the world, after His warning that He has not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, after His warning against anger and call to reconciliation, after his warning again lust; and after His prohibition of divorce.

    bride signs certificate

    Christians and Christian marriages are being watched. We are witness to Christ Jesus and the permanence of His relationship with His faithful Bride the church – a topic which we will pursue after our next focus on hypocrisy.

    To be continued…