3-25-22 This Week in Faith
/The Grove in March
In Sunday school, we’re talking about God rescuing the Israelites from Egypt and providing for them as they leave [Exodus].
Scripture Memory John 3:16
Student Ministry in March
High School THIS Week: This Sunday we have a JOBS Speaker- Chris Irwin
Middle School THIS Week: This Wednesday our small groups will be hanging out together
Parents in March
Check out the Easter resources on the Welcome Desk outside The Grove. There are recommendations for books to read to and with your kids, family devotionals, and books for your older kids to read on their own.
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Ten Ways to Bless an Enemy
Anger can do so much damage to others- and to ourselves. I was talking to someone the other day about the way God lets us recognize more and more of who we used to be so we can be humbled and grateful by how much he has changed us. Anger is one of the places in my life where I have seen God change my heart. My almost daily prayer comes from the book of James- “God help me to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry”. I can think of many things that I have said or done in anger the have hurt those around me and I know there are many more. But for as far as God has brought me in this area, it still rears its ugly head in my life on a regular basis.
We live in such an angry culture that it takes purposeful work, and God’s grace, to calm our angry and love our enemies. As parents, we get the chance to model this for our kids and teach them a different way. The way of Jesus’s kingdom. That instead of hating our enemies and destroying them with our words, the Spirit gives us the ability to love those enemies and speak peace to them [or not speak at all to merely listen and learn]. This is a helpful and practical article for how we can work on this in our own lives and point our kids to the way forward.
Click here to read the article by Ed Welch.
Let’s Go to the Movies
I love watching movies. I go to the movie theater often and watch even more movies at home. The Oscars- the biggest night for the movies- are this weekend and I typically try to watch all of the movies nominated for best picture [I have seen 8 of the 10 this year]. But with so much out there to watch, it can be overwhelming. Not only to know what’s beautiful to watch, but whether something would be good to watch. It reminds me of the classic line from Jurassic Park, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.” For us and our kids, we can get so lost in the amount of content we can watch that we forget to evaluate wether or not we should watch it. There are practical things we can do to help our kids with this like setting parental controls- and these are important! Disney Plus just added a number of new shows that have graphic or explicit content so they have updated the parental controls so setting those for our kids is a way to love and protect them. But we also need to teach them how to think and discern these things for themselves. We cannot, and will not, always be with them in those decision making moments. So what are we doing now to teach them how to make decisions for themselves that are good for them and honoring to Jesus? The answer may be different for each kid but we can equip them to think about these issues in light of their faith, not in spite of it. Below are 3 articles from Brett McCracken. Two are on helping our kids think through the way they consume media. The last is his list of best movies and documentaries for 2021 [which include a number of them up for Best Picture] with reviews on a number of them. They will not all be for your kids but it may help you decide if there are some worth watching, enjoying, and talking about with your kids.
Should I Watch this? 5 Questions for the Discerning Viewer.
5 Questions for Young Christians about their Media Choices
PODCAST: Dr. Jim Coffield on God’s Beautiful Design for Gender
There is so much talk about gender and sexuality in our culture that it can be hard to know where to start in talking about these issues with our kids. More and more, our kids will encounter ideologies about gender that different from the Bible, but also people who are living lifestyles different than the Bible. In some ways, this is nothing new and shouldn’t surprise us. In other ways, we can feel ill-equipped to engage with our kids on these issues in an understandable and compelling way. This talk from Dr. Coffield gives a Biblical foundation for understanding the beauty of God’s design for gender, as well as some practical things we can use to talk to our kids about these issues and interact with kids who are struggling with these issues.
