Family Business
May 20, 2007 AM
Make it/Take it
Pastor Brad Dyrness
Sparks Nazarene Church
If you miss a shot then the other team or person gets the ball and they get to shoot until they miss.
If you give influence to someone on the other team you may never get it back.
What is seeking to distract you from your number one assignment as a parent?
1. Our Occupation
2. Our Entertainment
3. Their entertainment
4. Our desire to live our missed Opportunities through our kids.
5. Our Laziness or Selfishness
6. Even Church stuff
For our struggle is
not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the
authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual
forces of evil in the heavenly realms. --
We must understand the calling for families!
I pray that your love for each other will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in your knowledge and understanding. For I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until Christ returns. May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation—those good things that are produced in your life by Jesus Christ—for this will bring much glory and praise to God.
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This is a three-fold prayer Paul prays for families and for all believers.
1. A Prayer for love that overflows.
The kind of love that would send a shepherd out to look for a lost lamb; the love that would cause a father to receive his wayward son; the love that says ~ not my will, but thine.
When we love like that we are making it and taking our influence to the next level.
2. A Prayer for light! ~ Growing in Knowledge and Understanding
We want to teach our kids:
a. What and the why! Having either one alone is dangerous.
b. Either we do the right things and don’t understand why and have no ownership – that leads to rebellion.
c. Or understand the why but don’t know how. That leads to guilt.
3. A Prayer for life… Understand what really matters…
To be able to know the difference between good and evil for sure – but more than that to know the difference between good and best.
As a family we must choose the best over good for our:
Spiritual development
Family bonding time
Ministry: to selves and to others
That, coupled with the power of the Spirit, will help us live pure and blameless.
Our faith must work outside the doors of the church right into the halls of your home.
The Word teaches us that if we will influence our kids with love, light and help them live it out in all of life ~ the world will be hard pressed to take our influence away!
This is Make it/Take it ~ SO . . .
choose to Love, work in the Light and to equip for Life and…
Point your kids in the right direction—
when they’re old they won’t be lost.. --Proverbs 22:6 The Message