LCMS

Family Devotions…My biggest failure as man!

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So my family has never been really good at spending time in Gods word each night. Heck I haven’t ever been very good at doing personal devotions but I know it is my responsibility to be the leader of my household and passing on faith to my children.  We as a family are not super consistent and fail to do it every day but try to be faithful. So why is advent any different…Well it isn’t but it is a great time for get you family involved in prayer and devotion.

During Advent you have some very real opportunities to get you family involved in family devotions.  It can be a time for everyone to spend time together. We have used this time because their are so many opportunities to share your faith with your family. It is a time you can get gather together to share the good news of Jesus and his coming.

So why is advent such a good time…well first you have a plethora of different devotionals put out by a number of great organizations and groups. Pick one and go for it.  It should be short and should be pointing you to Jesus and his coming.  You have advent calendars with ….chocolate! This can help  you think about the anticipation of Advent.  You also have children who after thanksgiving your children are looking forward to the eager anticipation of Christmas presents… well that is not really helpful.  Lastly and my personal favorite is the advent wreath.  It is a time to remind us of the light and anticipation for the Coming of Jesus again.  You can talk about the hope we have in Jesus.  It is just a great way for families to involve children in the devotional moment.  My children are now asking about how they can be involved in the devotions. They light and blow out the candles, say the prayers, read the devotions and preform the blessings.

This leads me to my last and final point. Get your children involved.  A few weeks ago I lead a advent devotional program at Church for school families and shared with them ways to get the kids involved.  I even gave them an outline I would like to share here. (I actually think this a variation on faith inkubators family five)

  • Invocation in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit, (My 5 year old daughters favorite part is doing the sign of the cross over the whole family and then herself.)
  • Highs and Lows for the day
  • Bible reading (Kids take turns reading the short devotion or Bible verse)
  • Prayers (sometime items from Highs and Lows, sometimes Lord’s prayer, apostles creed of 10 commandments)
  • Blessing Anything would work but we use (The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all) Again the sign of the cross to remind us of the blessing of our baptism.
So with all that being said don’t think of this as a law moment. This isn’t about guilt or look at how well we do it.  This is about spending time in the Word of God to help your family grow in faith.  May Christ bless you this year as you eagerly await the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you feel God?

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Do you feel God is a question many students have asked this question in their lives. Students, adults, and everyone in between struggle with this issue of feeling God. It is a tough question because often is reveals how people are doing in their faith life. When we forget about who works faith in us we start to ask the question do we feel God.

Your emotions are what make us human. We cannot follow Jesus without at least thinking about our emotions. I get very frustraited with Lutherans who say emotion has no part in the life of a Christian. Chrsitians will always have emotional responses to the world around us. We will respond in worship with some emotion. Think about the last service you went to and tell me you didn’t have some response to the music, liturgy, readings or sermon. You can’t avoid emotion but you can put it in the proper context. Emotion is a gift of God but it isn’t what saves us.

So how do I feel God. I think it is the wrong question. What people are really saying is I don’t feel God do I have faith? So here is my answer. Remember your baptism. Remember in your baptism God declared you his child. In my life I have had moments of ups and downs. I have had moments of time when I struggled in my faith and wondered if it is really there. I remember a professor I had in college who reminded us all one day that when we have those moments we should remember our baptism because it is the one thing we couldn’t mess up, it was done to us. You see in baptism we don’t have to trust in our works or how much we feel Gods presence. We receive the gifts of forgiveness of sins purely by the Grace of God connected to the word. We are saved not because we feel God’s presence but because of what Christ has done for us in that moment. Remember your baptism it will help when you are going through those moments of doubt.

Why Youth Ministry isn’t destroying the Church!

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Recently I have been seeing more and more articles on Facebook from Christians bashing youth ministry because we are segregating teens and destroying their faith. I do understand that in blog posts we can all use a title that is a little over the top in order to get a point across. My problem with these articles is they seem to throw the baby out with the bath water and attack us in ministry who are dedicating our time to try and reach youth with the gospel.

These articles seem to come to the concussion that any segregation will lead to youth having shallow faith focused solely on themselves. Having a youth ministry that focuses only on teen’s leads to problem in the Church as a whole. I totally agree but this is not the goal of most youth ministries. The problem with this view of youth ministry is twofold. First almost every youth ministry I know has seen this problem and been addressing it for years. Most of us in youth ministry have for a long time now been working to get more adults involved in our ministries. We have been focusing on bringing adults and students together in meaningful ways. Not just manual labor but real ministry. We in youth ministry take very seriously the faith of the young people God, parents and the congregations have entrusted to our care. To say we haven’t been doing this misses out of the goal of every good youth ministry to bring kids to a greater faith in Christ.

So here is my problem with the no segregation crowd. It just doesn’t work in real life. My experience of trying to do family based bible study and everything else together has problems all the way around. First we struggle to make something that is meaningful for all the age groups. Whatever group we gear our bible study or other activity for we miss another group of people. The second issue I have is that most parents are very ill equipped to share and answer questions of faith they have not grappled with themselves.

We currently live in a very de-churched culture with little biblical knowledge to pass on to our children. Youth ministries are there to help parents share the faith. When we don’t segregate we can’t always speak to that group. I have found that in our confirmation ministry is has been most helpful making parents attend class as well. It allows them to grow in faith and have chances to share faith with their kids. But it isn’t the whole answer because many of our families don’t have two parents or even one parent that this is where having other adults, and teens to speak to each other can be very helpful. Also many students are not willing to ask us questions when their parents are in the room. They need to deal with these issues with adults and teens together. You just can’t expect teens in a group of adults talk about issues in a group where they aren’t the majority and feel safe to talk. Youth ministry needs to have adults who can share faith with them but saying we have to do everything in a large group setting misses this dynamic.

Lastly the biggest problem I have with no segregation is it seems to assume all kids and student have two parent homes. My experience is that many of the youth in our youth ministries do not have two parents at home. Many times in my experience they may not even have one parent who is Christian. This youth ministry you are so quick to attack for many kids is the only adult and teen in their life who can speak Jesus into their lives. Youth ministry can be a safe place they can attend in order to hear the gospel when they don’t hear it at home.

So I guess what I am saying is stop trouncing youth ministries. Stop attacking those who are dedicating their lives to share the gospel with students in a way that speaks to them. Don’t pretend like sitting us all in a room when we will teach like all adults will work. When having events geared to youth is some kind of bad thing. Sometimes it is the only way we can reach them. To my youth ministry friends. Let’s make sure our youth ministry programs don’t get in the way of our youth participating and experiencing the greater Christian Church. We have a lot to learn from each other but it is ok to have things geared toward our students to help them grow in faith.

Life will not be better with Christ.

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I like shocking statements.  I enjoy throwing things out there to students to get them to think.  Sometime I think we need to be shocked in order to hear the message.  So here goes.  Life is not better with Jesus in fact it ruins your life.

I know most of you who are reading this are screaming at the screen… By the way you shouldn’t ever scream at your screen it is weird… But I said it being a Christian and follower of Christ mean your life will be different.  When you know Jesus your will be scorned by the world around you.  When you stand up for what is right in the world you will be mocked.  When you speak with family and friends you will be ignored and people will walk away from you.  You will look with empathy on those around you who do not know Jesus and his work for you.  The way you lived your life and it being all about you will change to a life of looking out for others…Well maybe all of this will happen.  You will still have days when you will be about you.  Your sinful nature will make sure of that.  However Jesus will continue to work on you.  And that work will be hard.

So I guess what I would like to share with you today is that God is faithful.  God in his work reminds us that when we are experiencing this persecution that Christ is faithful.  He will continue to come after you.  He will continue to chase after your soul through His Word and sacraments.  He is coming after you.  Just remember this doesn’t mean your life will be better but it will be one with Christ.

Do you hear me?

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Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.  And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Colossians 3:12-17

It happens all the time… I am sitting in the room with a bunch of teenagers and everyone of them is on their phone, iPod, or other device.  One of them might be talking to the group but in general students today are constantly on a device either with twitter, txt messaging, snap chat or some other electronic from of communication.

The problem isn’t just teenagers. We younger adults and increasingly older adults are getting into the habit.  In fact if I am honest, I am just as bad if not worse than most of the teenagers I work with.  My kids have looked at me with those oh so beautiful eyes and said “Dad will you stop playing on your phone and play with me.” My heart breaks a little every time they say it.

Maybe you can relate, maybe you aren’t there yet, but we all need to struggle with the damage we are doing to our relationships when we don’t communicate in person.  We are so busy trying to communicate with every person on the planet instead of the person sitting across the room.

For all of us in youth ministry but more importantly for all of use as fellow Christians.  We need to be better at this communication thing.  The problem with electronic communication is it is so easy to miss read people and or not hear and see the pain and struggle they may be going through.  It is so much easier to speak ill of people when it is in electronic form instead of speaking to them in person.  These forms of communication are causing many of us to be very mean and hurtful. It is damaging our Christian community and everyday lives.

So what can we do…

We could take our computers, smart phones, iPods, etc. and chuck them out the window into the snow.  I know your heart just skipped a beat. It really isn’t very realistic anyway.  These forms of communication do have a great benefit.  The problem is that if we only use this form we never really know people. When we miss that face to face talking with someone we cannot possibly know them or understand them.  (ask the kid from Notre Dame.)

So who is it in your life you are ignoring or hurting?  Who are you only speaking to on twitter, facebook or txt? How can you show them love and compassion by actually being with them. How can you bring reconciliation to a situation by being in the situation.  I know it is a challenge for all of us myself included but it is a challenge we must all take seriously if we are to forgive and bear each other burdens. To help bring hope to our relationships and lives together.

Still trying to figure out this Christian life, while living in Christ’s grace.

Steve Wilson