Ministry

Raising Godly Kids – What About Homeschooling?

Raising Godly Kids – What About Homeschooling?

Before I start, I want to point out that I don’t feel that homeschooling is the only option for raising godly kids. I have seen many parents and children thrive in a public school environment and for some families this is the best option. I have also known many public school teachers who are truly doing their best to teach and help children in positive ways that those children wouldn’t otherwise encounter. So, I want to state that I feel parents need to make the best decision for themselves and their children.

I’m sitting here with my sisters and I was talking to someone, a young lady around thirteen years old. This young lady has been in church her entire life, but she’s really unclear about a lot of things. We were talking, how do you produce that? How is that being produced in the churches nowadays?

I see so many adults that grow up and they’re just “religious-minded”. They can go to church and the church is a permanent fixture in their life that they do “religiously”, but outside of church they have very little direction and they have very little understanding on what the Word of God says, very little understanding of everything.

One of the things that came up is the fact of school and both of my sisters homeschool. It has become a lifestyle practice to intermingle our faith with our schoolwork, and with everyday things. I’m sure you can hear the kids in the background now because they’re a part of this and so they’re hearing this as well.

But, this has become a lifestyle — more than just a ritual or something to do on a Sunday, or a Tuesday, or a Saturday, or whatever day that anyone worships on.

I think that a lot of things that cause unsureness in a lot of kids that attend school, is that if you had to measure time on weights, they’re in school 5 days a week, 8 hours a day — where as, you’re going to church, maybe, 2-3 times a week for a couple hours. And the church time that they have on a weekly basis wouldn’t even equal up to one day at school.

So, the school influence is going to weigh heavier in their life and in their lifestyles than the church message if they’re only getting it those couple of days a week.

The big thing is, what they’re getting at school is lifestyle differences about different religions, different moral things, so they’re getting that more than their getting the true faith and the true Word. I think that’s where the discourse comes in, I think that’s where the confusion comes in for kids. It’s just outweighed in their household, outweighed in their lifestyles.

I’ve found that very true. And one of the things, it’s not that we’re trying to say “hey, increase the church hours,” because that’s not what the whole thing here is. But the main focus is to make Christ a permanent fixture in their lives.

Oftentimes, what you see is that if you get into that routine of going on a certain day that that day becomes the day, that your kids even, program to perform on. We weren’t called to be performers, that’s what we call in the hood or in the world as being fake or fronting.

What we see today is we see a lot of fronting, we see a lot of “Sunday-believers”, or “Saturday-believers”, or just “religious” people and that’s not what this is calling for. So, when I look at them and doing this from a homeschool standpoint, I see that the children are learning to connect with God on every aspect.

And so school is void from that because you can’t even mention God at school, you can’t pray at school. As a children’s book writer, every time you go to publish a book they’re always going to say that you can’t even mention God in it. That’s what the children are being programmed to and that would explain a lot of it.

We find this all across the board. When you go to college, that’s when the “anti” God comes, you’re teaching about evolution, and you’re looked at as being crazy for thinking like this. Because the young lady was talking about agnostic vs atheist because she has a friend that is and she doesn’t know how to deal with that as a young Christian girl.

Pretty much, the church has failed getting in front of these kinds of issues and I think that ties back into that she doesn’t even know if it’s right or wrong. The question was “was it even right or wrong to be agnostic or atheist” and there’s a clear idea that there was a breakdown of communication and a breakdown of faith in her life somewhere for her not to be able to stand strong and stand up for what she believes because she doesn’t even know what she believes.

That’s why my thought was “where’s she getting the unbelief from?” and I had to think, if she isn’t raised like that and her home isn’t like that, then she’s getting the unbelief from some outside sources.

And then the question is also, how do you, even when you send your kids to school, because a lot of people don’t have the opportunity to homeschool, how do you still implement that faith? And I believe it’s by you being a living example.

You have to be a living example, you can’t just go to church on those three days a week. You have to be a living example. “Bible Study” has to be a lifestyle in your lives, the Word has to come alive in your life because the children will follow you no matter how old they are they’re going to follow their parents, even if they have outside influences of school.

Because a lot of people say, “I can’t homeschool, what can I do?”, and it’s that you have to live that Word that you want your kids to know, to have that faith, you have to live it yourself.

You have to be the light, you have to be the example and the minute you start deviating from those things your kids notice.

My mom use to say “Do as I say, not as I do!” and I grew up doing everything she did, so I think that’s important.

And when it comes to “religious people” and when you see that breakdown in their kids, being hellions out in the world, it’s a lot of times, because the parents are living double-standards.

I don’t think that’s in every case, but double-standards will kill us. And one thing that I feel, if you’re a young mother or a young father, and you’re wondering “where are these things coming from?”, you have to understand that everything around you, and everything around your children are suggesting “anti” Christ — the music, the TV shows.

If you let your kids watch Nickelodeon and Disney, they’re talking about boyfriends and wanting to kiss and all those different things — those things are teaching your kids the opposite of what you’re trying to instill in them.

All of the music that the kids are listening to, with me working at school, these kids are singing songs from people who are 30-40 years old! Beyonce and J-Z are in their 40’s and they know “So Crazy in Love” and all these different songs. And they’re doing Chris Brown moves — Chris Brown is an adult that can make his own decisions about what he wants and with women, and these young boys are singing that.

You have to look at the track record. You also gotta look, conversations can be so simple. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to open up a conversation with the little girl. But, how often do people genuinely ask kids questions? They tell the kid to stay in the kid’s place.

“If you’re not asking my opinion, how can I be open to asking questions, even about my faith? Is it really my faith or is it my parents faith?”

So, if you don’t ask them certain questions or you don’t allow time to talk with them then they won’t ever really have their own faith, they’ll have examples of what their mom did or their grandma did. God can be very powerful in their life, they can stay up all night and pray and you’ll never know why they could be sleeping for school.

These are subtle attacks that you won’t know unless your parents explain it to you.

And that’s one of the things we had to tell her was that there’s no right or wrong answer here, don’t just try to give me the answer that I want to hear. I want to know how you feel, I want to know what your feelings are on these subjects.

This is not just performance, I want to know what’s your take on this. And when she told me the take, I didn’t scold her for it. I just explained to her, if you believe this way, then this is what you believe. This is what the scriptures say about that. If you believe this way, this is what the scriptures say about that.

This is coming from a healthy understanding of “yes, we’ve gotta start talking to them,” and getting the idea of how they believe and not just assuming.

To go back to the music and the things that we put in front of our kids, I feel we also have to take a look at, yes, a lot has changed as far as the music industry, but a lot has really stayed the same. And if you think about when we were teenagers, there was a lot of music that was around back then we probably shouldn’t have listened to — and where did it get us?

It got us to be doing things contrary to what we should have been doing.

I remember SWV had that song “Weak”, “I get so weak in the knees,” — all the kids were singing that.

All of the kids were singing that and shouldn’t have been singing that, we were in junior high!

And now as I’m older and I really break down that song in the way it was really talking about, there were so many sexual innuendoes.

We were bringing on all of that over us, singing it over and over.

So, the music has not really changed too much, but it has gotten worse. You have to understand, the same thing that is coming over your kids is the same thing that was trying to come over you.

And quit trying to be like, “Aw, just let them do it,” because where did that get you?

When you do have things like that, you gotta realized that certain things that we say out of our mouth are either blessings or curses. You’re either going to bless them by what you say and what you do, or your going to curse them.

I don’t know why people don’t believe that it’s the same thing for themselves. If I sing this music over me, I’m inviting the same problems. That’s why we associate so well with music, we can find one about any way that we’re feeling. So, if I’m sad — I’m going to turn on some sad music, if I’m happy — I’m going to turn on some happy music.

That’s why God said that songs come out of the spirit, because the spirit that’s behind these songs you won’t find out until it’s overtaken you, and you’ll be like, “man, this music is crazy, why am I feeling like this?”.

It shouldn’t be like gospel music with a hip-hop rap beat. There has to be a separation, if you’re going to be holy for Christ. You can’t be double-minded, you can’t be having double-standards, for you or your kids.

We’ve always had this conversation because music has always been such a huge part of all of our lives. That’s the universal language, music is, so that’s one of the biggest things that’s going on as far as influence in our children today. And the music has gotten so much worse and so much more explicit, and we’ve gotta do our part.

But, I wanted to talk about this because there’s definitely a breakdown in today’s “Christian” or today’s “believer” compared to what we see that the scriptures say that it should be.

In talking with one of the kids, who’s 4 years old and he picked up from the talk “Nickelodeon”, so you see just in conversation you have to be very careful about what you say around your kids!

TW Bright

 

 

 

Christ of this Age

Christ of this Age – This Will Change Your Life

One of the main scriptures I’m coming from is Hebrews 1:1-2. We’ve been speaking about the ministry of reconciliation. We found that this is the ministry that Christ operated in and this is the ministry that he left us.

We found that each and every believer has the responsibility to reconcile men and women back to the Father. Hence our roles as ambassadors of Christ.

It is my belief that many believers don’t see themselves as such. Many people leave this great responsibility to those who they see as the leaders.

I believe this way of thinking comes in a few different ways.

One being the lack of understanding of who you are in Christ. Typically I advise against self-centeredness, or thinking high of yourself, but I believe that it’s imperative for you to know just how great you are in Christ.

It’s not you that’s actually great, but the Christ that is in you. Normally we talk about taking away from self-centeredness, but it’s imperative to know how great you are because you have Christ in you.

Here we go back to the “us” — every believer, when you become converted you have His presence inside of you.

Hebrews 1:1-2

Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets and now in these final days He has spoken to us through His Son. God promised everything to His Son as an inheritance and through the Son He created the universe.

Now understand, in the Old Testament, the connection to God had been cut off due to the Fall when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, that communication line was seared. So, in the Old Testament, what we would see is God speaking to people in many different ways.

He would do what He had to do to get His message across. A message could come from a prophet, a burning bush, a donkey, or even an angel, but it was always an outside source. It’s important to understand this.

In the second verse they’re trying to give Christ the credibility that He deserves, they’re walking you through and showing what God said about His Son. The scriptures are telling us, now after Christ died, and the veil was torn, He speaks to us through Christ.

It is no longer an outside source but He lives inside us. He’s in every person, each and every person who put their trust in Him. It is important that you understand that God has placed that same Spirit, His Spirit, in us all.

If you don’t understand this you’ll always be relying on someone else, you’ll rely on pastors, deacons, ministers — you’ll hold them to a high standard, but you neglect to hold yourself to that same standard.

In the Old Testament they would always rely on someone else — they would ask Moses, ‘Go talk to God for us’, or ask one of the prophets.

The people, when Moses went up there, they were waiting on him and Moses wasn’t coming back, so what did they start doing? They started sacrificing, putting all their gold in and making the golden calf — they wanted somebody or something to worship.

They always wanted to rely on something else. They didn’t have God living inside of them at the time.

So, Moses would come back and he would give them a message and the people would change for awhile, but they would always rebel. They would go right back to being hellions.

We see this time and time again because most people hold leadership to a higher standard than themselves.

They see the leadership as being great, but can’t see the greatness in themselves.

Men of God, men of valor, woman of virtue — those are some of the things that people see when they see leadership.

When you look at somebody and you admire them — “Man, he’s such a man of God,” or “She’s a woman of virtue,” — these are the things that you think.

But sometimes the lines get twisted and they fail to realize that the only thing that makes them great is the Christ that is living inside of them. And the Christ living inside of them is the same Christ that will be living inside of you.

We have to shift our understanding and our knowledge of ourselves because if we keep on looking at everybody else being something and us being nothing, you never walk in that greatness — you never walk into what it is that Christ has called you to walk into.

If he is inside of you, you are too — you are a “man of valor”, “a woman of virtue”, but you have to see that for yourself.

You end up walking in that, you have to see that for yourself, you can’t always just see that for other people. It’s easy for me to see the greatness in other people.

One of the things that I used to struggle with most is seeing into myself because I felt like I was a wretch. Now, wretched man as I am, we all know that this flesh is vile. And we know that we have all seen and fallen short to the glory of God, but when Christ comes in, now you have been renewed.

You have to understand that you can walk in that newness — it says renew your mind, walk, and crucify yourself daily. Step away from all selfishness and all of those things, but you have to know that about yourself.

You don’t want to boast in those things that you used to do, but you have to leave those things where they are. When He said you are forgiven, He actually forgave you.

There’s no doubt in my mind, as a minister, that there is some woman or some man that has probably never spoken in the front of the room, that is not even very good at speaking, but still has a more deeper, intimate relationship with God than I do.

And my point is, God has no respect of person, God shows no favoritism. When I came into the body of Christ and Pastor told me that I was saved and I had my own connection with God, I took her at her word because I didn’t know where the scriptures were at.

But when I started getting deeper in the scriptures I was like, “Hey, He has made me new!”, and the more confident I got in that, the more I was willing to give up different things because I saw myself different. You have to see yourself different.

You can’t always look at other people as being different. I always looked at certain people like, “man, I wish I had what they had,“ and that’s ok to do that. It’s ok to say “man, I love his zeal,” “I love this, I love that,” but you have to know that God has done the same thing for you.

On the cross He took all that, for you, not just for the leadership. What do you think being a disciple is all about? Once someone disciples you, you become the leader, you go and make another disciple.

Christianity, this world would never have spread it if people were stagnant, just looking at the leadership. All of the people had that, that’s why some people prophesy, that’s why some people had visions, had dreams, that’s why all these different people had different things that were going on because the Spirit of God flows through all of us.

It never would have been, we probably would never be here with the Word. If it weren’t for Peter, and Paul, and all of them — they were actually there with Him and they took what they saw and they gave it to somebody else. That person took from them, because they became the Christ of their age, and went to somebody else, and that person took and went to somebody else, going over and over from one person to the next, all making disciples.

Because the Spirit of God has no respect of ‘person’. He will flow through you if you align yourself with His Word, He will flow through you just like anybody else. But it all starts with how you see yourself.

God used many approaches to send His message to people in the Old Testament time. He spoke to Isaiah in visions, He spoke to Jacob in dreams, Abraham and Moses personally.

Jewish people familiar with these stories would not have found it hard to believe that God was still revealing His will. But it was astonishing to them to think God had revealed Himself by speaking through His Son, Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s revelation through the centuries. When we know Him, we have all we need to be saved from our sins to have a perfect relationship with God.

Going back to the fact that He started using Christ, this is the new way. The old way was where He would come to the people from different areas.

Hebrews: The Son so radiates God’s own glory and expresses the clear character of God. And He sustains everything by the mighty power of His command. When He had cleansed us from our sins He sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven. This shows that the Son is far greater than the angels, just as the name God gave Him is greater than their name.

Again, they’re establishing who He is, the Son is far greater than the angels.

The Son is greater than the angels, for God never said to an angel what He said to Jesus.

Hebrews 1-2

You are my Son, today I have become your Father. God also said I will be His Father and He will be my Son. And when He brought His supreme Son into the world, God said let all of God’s angels worship Him. Regarding the angels He said He sends His angels like the wind, His servants like flames of fire, but to the Son He says your throne, Oh, God, endures forever and ever, you rule with the scepter of justice. You love justice and you hate evil, therefore Oh, God, your God has anointed you, poured out the oil of joy on you more than anyone else. He also says to the Son, in the beginning, Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth and made the heavens with your hands. They will perish, but you will remain forever, they will wear out like old clothes, you will fold them up like a cloak and discard them like old clothing, but you are always the same. You will live forever and God never said to an angel sit at the place of honor at my right hand until I humble your enemies, making them a footstool under your feet. Therefore angels are only servants, spirit sent to care for people who will inherit salvation.

Who inherits salvation? Us.

You, us.

What I need you to understand is that you are the Christ of this age.

Understand what I’m saying, because Christ lives in you. You are to fulfill the same mission that Christ was fulfilling. Reconciling, He reconciled us, and we take that and we go and reconcile men and women back to the Father. It’s the same thing.

If you understand that your responsibility is the same as Christ then you probably would act different. If you saw yourself as having the same responsibility that Christ did, you probably would operate different.

When you raise kids and you set a high standard for them, they usually rise to that standard.

It’s just like in sports with the record breaking. The 4-minute mile, they felt like somebody would die if they ever did the 4-minute mile. When the first person did the 4-minute mile, the standard was raised and everybody started doing it.

So, it’s the same thing, you have to look at Christ as the standard, and you have to know that this is the same mission, you are the Christ of this age. The only way people will see Christ is when they see it through you.

That’s why in Philippians it says that you will be found blameless and shine like bright lights, because you are the light. You are the light of Christ. We are that radiance that they were talking about. The other scripture says that you are the righteousness.

Hebrews 2: 5-9

And furthermore it is not angels who will control the future world we are talking about. For, in one place the scripture says What are mere mortals that you should think about them.

Who’s a mere mortal? You, us.

Or a Son of man that you should care for Him. Yet for a little while you made them a little lower than angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You gave them authority over all things. Now when I say all things it means that nothing is left out, but we have not yet seen all things yet put under their authority. What we do see is Jesus, who for a little while was given a position a little lower than angels. And because He suffered death for us, He is now crowned with glory and honor.

And yes, by God’s glory, Jesus tested death for everyone. Look at that, because right now we are a little lower than the angels, why? Because we’re in this flesh body. We have this sinful nature attached.

But, what about when Jesus comes back with that new glorified body?

I Corinthians 6:2-3

And it says: Do you realize that someday we believers will judge the world? And since you are going to judge the world, can’t you decide even these little things among yourselves? Do you realize that we will judge angels? So, you should surely be able resolve ordinary disputes in this life.

So, here it’s telling us that one day we will be judging even the angels. And so, what he’s talking about here is about avoiding the Christian lawsuits, and we should be able to operate in a higher manner. Because we know who we are.

What he’s testifying here is “Don’t you know who you are in Christ?” We shouldn’t be bickering about everything, we shouldn’t have to fight about everything, we should be able to resolve our situations. Because why? Because you know who you are.

Who? Us. You have to know who you are.

You have to know that greatness lives inside of you.

So, like Christ was made lower than the angels for a little while, and Christ will return with a glorified body, and we will judge even the angels.

This to me, is a testament of who we are through God’s eyes. He loves us, He actually loves us. He loves us enough that He sent His Son to die and to reconcile us. And now that we have been reconciled, we are in His right standing. He loves that.

You are the Christ of this age and it is important that you see yourself as such.

I Corinthians 5:20-21

So, we are Christ’s ambassadors, God is making His appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plea Come back to God. For God made Christ who never sinned to be an offering for our sins so that we could be made right with God through Christ.

In another translation, the second one says: God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

So, you have become the righteousness of God. What does it look like when you are out and you are not acting righteous? It’s a big contradiction. How we look to the world is so important.

Because oftentimes, when we operate we’re often out here operating just like the world, they see something totally different than they should be seeing and when I say you are witnessing something no matter what.

If you’re not bringing them close to Christ, what are you doing? You’re pushing them away.

The way you function on a daily basis you’re either pushing them away or you’re bringing them towards Him.

And I’m not just talking about when you’re quoting scriptures or when you’re talking to people about the Word of God. I’m talking about our lifestyles.

Our lifestyles are either encouraging them to live for the Lord, or encouraging them to live for the other guy.

Acts 2:17

And in the last days I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy, young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.

There it is again, “all people”, you have to see yourself as a part of this. You have to see yourself included in these scriptures.

Every time it’s talking about Paul or Peter, or John, or anybody, you have to see yourself in that also, because you represent that place in this age. They’re gone, who’s here? We’re here.

Oftentimes I’ll look and I’ll say, man, things have changed so much, and I used to be unsure if I could be the person that all the older people would want me to be. Because somebody’s gotta pick it up and somebody’s gotta carry the torch.

But, oftentimes I’ll look and be like, man, it doesn’t seem like anybody’s carrying the torch.

And the older I get, I feel like, man, I gotta have some responsibility in there. But, that is how we are all supposed to feel when it comes to this world, because you do carry the torch.

Pastor’s not going to be here forever, ministers aren’t going to be here forever, somebody’s gotta take it and keep it on.

That’s why I say the Christ of this age, I’m not being like you “are” Christ, I’m saying that Christ lives in you, His Spirit lives in you, and you testify to who He is, to who He was, in bringing men and women back to God.

We have to carry the torch.

There’s no in-between, we’re either reconciling, or no we aren’t.

You have to see this for yourself, you have to recognize that we are the ones that this Bible is talking about. As long as you always see yourself as separate, you will never rise to the occasion.

You will never be fulfilling what it is that God has called you to fulfill. We just won’t.

Sometimes we’re so focused on man, that we can’t hear what God is saying. We can’t see any of the warning signs that God is saying, because we don’t know who we are, we’re always too busy looking at somebody else.

So, my message today is really just trying to get us to start looking at what God has put in you.

What’s the level that God wants you to operate at?

So, you can’t point and say “if your son did something like that, now that would be a problem because he’s a minister,” — that’s garbage, that is absolute nonsense!

So you mean to tell me that you doing it is ok, but him it’s something different? That’s not scriptural.

We are all to stand as Christ stood on this earth and the minute that we can start realizing, the minute we can start seeing ourselves as being the light of this world, as the scripture constantly tells us — You are the light of this world, so you don’t hide your light under a bushel — when we embrace that, when we understand that God has put this marvelous light inside of us, and we shine, we shine bright, when He’s telling us to be found blameless, to walk away from our sins, we can operate on this higher level because we are assured through Him on who we are. That’s a beautiful thing.

Over this whole thing I kept bringing up reconciliation because I want people to understand that is your duty, that is your obligation, it’s not an option. That’s just who we all are, you don’t really have to look for your calling, that is your calling.

We all function in separate arenas, we all have different places that we serve and we carry that out in, but we all are doing the same thing.

Who is the Christ of this age? We are.

We gotta embrace that. I have to embrace that, I’m not just talking to you all, because I have to hold myself to a higher standard.

TW Bright

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