Topic: GROW: Families And Relationships

Sometimes, it just takes a father. See the character traits of God (Psalm 103) as they relate to the father in the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15). The last in our “Jesus at home” series.

Forget the power games. What if we all surrender to Christ?

It’s possible to raise our kids with Christian-ish stuff, but not raise them up with Christ. It’s possible to raise them dependent, but not raise them up. It’s possible not to raise them at all. But to raise them…up…with Christ…involves complete self-surrender and authentic sacrificial love. There is no substitute. There can’t be. If there was, Jesus would have chose it.

God loves every person and every home. But there are good reasons to uphold the ideal of life-long marriages, two-parent households, and church-going families as the norm. In this sermon, I’ll show you why.

Smartphones. Social media. Online living. It’s ubiquitous. It’s the new norm. And, at an alarming rate, it’s harming us. We need to examine the power of presence, shaping our space and managing our time for real encounters over unhealthy habits.

Let’s hear it for the moms! In a culture that increasingly devalues children, mothers are actively involved in a counter – cultural revolution. And in the kingdom of God, says the Apostle Paul in Romans 16, there are communities of faithful people to nurture and provide for our children alongside ourselves. Hear a full-throated defense of motherhood, with a special word in praise of the mothering community we call the church.

Parenting is hard but rewarding. It’s easy for a parent to feel inadequate; to wonder where to look for help and guidance. Praise God that we have some guidance, as we look to God as our parent. Both fathers and mothers can find what it means to be a parent from the face of God, and we will find traits that we usually see in our fathers and traits that we usually see in our mothers when we look at God. That is because mothers and fathers, working together, image God on the earth.