Let's Be Thankful for Everything (and Teach our Children to be also)!

I was shocked recently at church. I had complimented a teenage girl on her mother's hard work for the church and she said, "Yes that's my mom, I'm so thankful for her" and then she began to list all the things she was thankful for in her mother, father and sister!

Our 17-year-old grandson is with us for a week (after working six weeks) before returning to his home and missionary parents and last year of high school in the Philippines. Even though our apartment is very small and he needs to sleep on the floor, he not only keeps things tidy and clean, clears the table after meals, runs errands for us, is polite and kind to all (actually talks as a teenager), but he says "thank you" for everything! Wow! Everything! Yes, wow!

If the Word of God says to be thankful in everything (1 Thessalonians 5:18, “In everything give thanks, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”), then why, especially as Christians, are we not thankful in everything?

So many never say thanks, especially children and many adults! Even if you hint, they do not seem to know what being grateful is.

Parents, teach your little ones to look you in the eye and say, "Thank you!" Yes, teach them to say "thank you" for everything!

Why? Because the Bible says so, and as a result, they will grow into teenagers and adults who are kind, grateful, happy, and obedient!

If you do not teach thankfulness to your children, they will be considered by others as selfish, rude, discourteous and, therefore, a future embarrassment to you as parents, grandparents, their few friends, and in the end themselves.

Saying "thank you" for everything will help them, especially if they are extremely shy, not to have a privileged attitude (thinking themselves rich and well-to-do).

Teach your children to write thank you notes for gifts and things done for them by others such as teachers, relatives, church pastors/staff, and many others.

The Word of God says to train a child in the way they should go (Proverbs 22: 6). Let's have faith to practice this ourselves to be thankful. And if we are parents, to teach our children and young people to "be thankful!" to all including Sunday School teachers, pastors, youth leaders, etc.).

75 Astonishing Things that Happen at Conversion

by Paul Tautges

What words could we use to describe God’s grace toward sinners like us? Amazing? Yes. Extravagant? For sure. Astonishing? Absolutely!

The apostle Paul was a man who never got over the grace of God…and neither should we. As the Holy Spirit guided him along, he edified the believers at Ephesus by expounding on “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:7). I want to do the same in today’s post.

Recently, I spent some time thinking about all that God accomplishes in an instant, at the moment of conversion, and what He continues to work to its ultimate completion in the day we see Him in glory (Phil 1:6). The result was a list of 75 amazing works of God. With a list that long, and interconnected, categorizing them into smaller chunks was quite a challenge. But I finally had to decide on a manner of grouping, inadequate as it may be. 

Take time to meditate on these astonishing realities, personally, or in your small group. I hope this meditation on the riches of God’s grace and kindness in Christ will stir our hearts toward worship and will encourage our spiritual growth. Read more ...

Sent ≠ Forgotten: A Practical Way to Care for Missionaries

by Zach Bradley

When I was six years old my parents accidentally forgot me at church. Both of them had driven that day, and they simply pulled away thinking I was in the other vehicle. Meanwhile, I sat happily on the front steps, waving goodbye to friends. At first the autonomy of it all was pretty cool. But when the last car left the parking lot, I began to feel six years old. We lived only two miles away, but less than five minutes alone was enough to convince me—it stinks to be forgotten.

Now multiply that by thousands of miles and several years. Perhaps you start to get a feel for what missionaries experience when their sending churches lose touch. Read more ...

Why WOULD Anyone Sing in Church These Days?

by Jonathan Aigner

Why don’t people sing in church anymore? 

A quick trip down Google’s memory lane reveals that the internet has been talking about this regularly since at least 2012. And everyone seems to know why.

Nobody knows the songs.

Singing makes men uncomfortable.

It’s just a performance.

We don’t love Jesus enough.

There is truth to some of these points, but the longer I think about this problem, the more I’m convinced we’re asking the wrong question. Instead of figuring out why people aren’t singing, we need to turn around, look at ourselves, and ask, “Why would they sing?”

See, when it comes to our sacred discipline of congregational singing, a lot has changed in our recent history. Read more ...

Reaching the World with the Gospel – Let’s Get On with It!

If missions are not careful, they may become like the old empty cathedrals in Europe. Sidetracked, our main activities could become: building retirement homes, increasing allotments, upgrading insurance, and obtaining nicer offices instead of taking the Gospel to the masses.

 If we get sidetracked with the baby buster, seeker or warfare seminar mentality instead of taking the message of the Gospel to the lost, missions in the future may be nothing more than a shell, possibly with lots of activity but with no spiritual life.

 As we approach 2017, our purpose should be to “Proclaim Him [Christ], admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, that we may present every man complete in Christ” (Colossians 1:28).

All evangelical missions and churches need to plan to evangelize and disciple the millions in India, in lost Europe, Muslim Africa, and the Middle East, as well as the world’s 150 million street children, the 100 thousand children and 400 thousand estimated to be in the sex trade in the Philippines, as well as the major unreached cities of the world. There are over 400 unchurched slum areas of Manila and the over nine million poor of Calcutta. This will take more than “supporting a national worker or needy child” (each of us should do both!).

Churches and missions need to recapture the word “sacrifice” for the sake of the lost. Let’s not wait for the future. Let’s reach our generation now with the Gospel.

Charles Spurgeon said from his bed of sickness, “If you do not wish to be full of regrets when you are obliged to lie still, work while you can. If you desire to make a sickbed as soft as it can be, do not stuff it with mournful reflections that you wasted time when you were in health and strength!”

Why don’t some of us older pastors and missionaries forget about retirement, break out of the “we deserve a break” mold, and give all we have before death for the Gospel’s sake and God’s glory?

We shouldn’t just talk about our heroes such as Paul, C.T. Studd, Hudson Taylor, George Whitefield, David Livingstone, L.E. Maxwell, William Booth, and Amy Carmichael; let’s emulate them!

Missionaries, pastors, and Christian workers today can recommit ourselves to die in the battle if need be with our backs bent under the Gospel plow and our bodies worn out in ministry for the masses who need the Gospel of salvation in Christ. “And for this purpose [we] labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within [us]” (Colossians 1:29).

Why They Don’t Sing on Sunday Anymore

by Thom Schultz

Looking around the church 

last Sunday I noticed that the majority weren’t singing. And most of those who were singing barely moved their lips. The only voices I actually heard were those on stage with microphones.

That’s been the case for years now–in churches large and small. What used to be congregational singing has become congregational staring.

Even when the chipper “worship leader” in contemporary churches bounds on stage and predictably beckons everyone to “stand and worship,” the people compliantly obey the stand command, but then they turn into mute mannequins.

What’s behind this phenomenon?  Read more ...

Can a Non-Christian Play in a Worship Band?

Churches want the best players to play the drums, guitars, keyboard in the worship band. Is it therefore okay to enlist a tattooed, longhaired, rough new believer, shallow Christian or a non- Christian to the band because they are the better musicians?

So often in churches I speak, the members of the band stand apart from the hungry listeners to the Word. They lounge around, take smoke breaks, seeming to disregard the things of God and His Word.

But they are enlisted and hired because they are the best; but are they?

Can you really play to the glory and praise and worship of God if you do not know Him through the Gospel?

Read more in an article, The Tone Deaf Singer… What do you think?