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REGRESSION EXAMPLE
Several years ago, there was an article in the Virginia Medical Monthly about a lady who regressed in her life development. This lady had three children. When her husband died, she started regressing in her development. Initially she started dressing like a twenty-year-old. She regressed backward at the rate of one year for every three or four months of time that went forward. At 61, she acted and talked like a six-year-old. She was sent to a sanitarium, where she insisted on wearing short dresses, playing with toys, and babbling like a child. Then she became like a three-year-old; she spilled her food, crawled on the floor, and cried "mama." She later regressed to the age of a one-year-old. She drank milk and curled up like a baby. Finally, she went back over the line and died.
(Illustration 381 in Encyclopedia of 7700 illustrations. Paul Lee Tan)
To say the least, I was at first shocked to read the headline, Baby Ate Cocaine Dad Left Nearby. According to the Associated Press a father from Ravenna, Ohio was sentenced to one year in prison for endangering his daughter, who was six-months-old at the time of the incident. He evidently stashed his illegal drug in her baby swing and she ate some of it. The mother noticed the white powder around the daughter’s mouth and took her to the hospital for treatment.
I take this as a wake-up call to fathers from God. He is calling us to protect our children. Obviously, this man carelessly endangered his child, but what about us father’s possibly putting our children at risk in very subtle ways. I believe it is not enough for us dads to house, feed, cloth, and educate our children. We dads need to empower our kids to turn from evil and do what is good and right, and to have the best possible harmonious relationship with them as we can.
National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University reported recently in a survey which suggests “....most teenagers find it easier to talk about drugs with their mothers than with their fathers, and those who don’t get along with their fathers are at far greater risk of smoking, drinking and using drugs....” The survey reported that “teens in two-parent families who have fair or poor relationships with their fathers are 68 percent more likely to use drugs than those in average families.”
Dads, we can to have a relationship with our children that fosters openness and care. We can be responsibile to do what is in their best interest, safety and welfare.
We dads can be emotionally and spiritually connected with our children. “ ’Too many fathers are just AWOL in their kids lives,’ said Joseph Califano, the research center’s chairman. ‘They’re not there to help with homework, and kids don’t go to them with important problems.’ " We can best share with them helpful lessons from life and God’s Word by maintaining a positive relationship.
Jesus Christ said, “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:11-12).
Fathers, even though none of us always hit the mark, we can still give our children good things. Let us search our hearts and ask God to reveal the attitudes and habits that can hurt or hinder our children. Then let us jettison them for the sake of our kids, ourselves, our community and our Creator. For “....children are a reward from [the Lord]” (Psalm 127:3).
Published Wednesday September 01, 02:25PM CDT
Baby Ate Cocaine Dad Left Nearby
RAVENNA, Ohio (AP) - A man whose infant daughter ate some of his cocaine after he stashed the drug in her baby swing was sentenced to a year in prison for child endangering.
The 6-month-old girl was treated in time.
Christopher Stockman, 21, was sentenced Monday. He pleaded guilty in March. The baby was hospitalized Sept. 29 after her mother noticed a white powder around the child’s mouth.
Source: http://Omaha.com/Omaha/OWH/APStoryViewer/1,3293,89112,00.html
CHRISTIAN MATURITY: IT'S IN THE DETAILS
Ted Williams, who died in 2002 was arguably the best hitter baseball has ever known. He was the last baseball player to hit better than .400 in a season. Upon his death, George Will said in his column "There is no joy in Red Sox Nation, a.k.a. New England, or in any heart where baseball matters."
One of reasons Williams was unique in his ability to hit a baseball was because of how fastidious he was with the bats he used. For instance he used a postal scale to check that humidity had not added an ounce to the weight of his bats. He was once challenged to find from among six bats the one that was half an ounce heavier than the others without the scale...he quickly did. He once returned to the maker a batch of his Louisville Sluggers because he sensed that the handles were not quite right. The handles were off by five-thousandths of an inch.
Some would call him obsessive, but it was hard to argue with the results. Ted Williams knew bats and could detect the smallest discrepancy.
(From a sermon by Kevin Short, Marks of Maturity (part 3), 10/13/2009)
The philosophy for dog obedience training has changed quite a bit in the last few decades. It used to be that many dog obedience schools operated by teaching the dog, “you better obey me, because I’m your master. And if you don’t obey me, bad things will happen.” And plenty of dogs were trained this way, and trained well. They obeyed, but they obeyed out of fear. But now there has been a shift in the thinking of many trainers, though some still do it the old way. If the old way was punishing disobedience, the new way could be characterized as rewarding obedience. In this new way of training, you don’t strike the dog, you don’t yell at him any more than a firm “no!” But whenever you catch him doing something good, he gets praise and rewards. The thinking here is that the dog is going to want to do the things that make you happy, because positive things happen to him when you are happy.
Both obedience philosophies get results, but they produce very different dogs. The old way produces a dog that is terrified to do the wrong thing. The new way produces a dog that is eager to do the right thing. And these two schools of thought work not just for dogs, but maybe you’ve seen children raised by these two ways. And this should be nothing new for us, since basically we are talking about the difference between Law motivation and Gospel motivation. In our lives, sometimes we do things, like hitting the brakes when you see a cop car, that would be obeying out of Law motivation. It is the fear of punishment that motivates you to slow down. But now let’s say that you are driving your children in the car with you. You are so happy for the gift of a family that God has given you, that you want to drive as carefully as poss...
Getting the Fruit for Yourself
A family was driving to Tampa, Florida. As far as the eye could see, orange trees were loaded with fruit. When we stopped for breakfast, I ordered orange juice with my eggs. "I’m sorry," the waitress said. "I can’t bring you orange juice. Our machine is broken." We were surrounded by millions of oranges, and I knew they had oranges in the kitchen -- orange slices garnished our plates. What was the problem? No juice? Hardly. We were surrounded by thousands of gallons of juice. The problem was they had become dependent on a machine to get it.
Christians are sometimes like that. They may be surrounded by Bibles in their homes, but if something should happen to the Sunday morning preaching service, they would have no nourishment for their souls. The problem is not a lack of spiritual food -- but that many Christians haven’t grown enough to know how to get it for themselves.
As a human being, one of the marks of maturity is you learn how to feed yourself. This is true in spiritual growth too.
(From a sermon by Stephen Sheane, Growing Through God’s Word, 1/26/2010)
“Step Into The Image of Christ!” Hebrews 5:1-9 Key verse(s): 8-9:“Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him . . .”
Why do we love the Constitution so! A document that is nearly 220 years old and written in the flowery English of our forefathers, a musty old thing that some say has little relevance to the way we live our lives today; why is it that it occupies a central display in our national archives and governs yet after all these years? As a charter, some say, it is certainly without equal. Many have compared it to the Magna Carta presented by the English barons to King John in 1215. Others have held it up as the hallmark of all governing charters. Certainly we can all be proud of our Constitution. In reality, nearly every other democratic nation in the world has made it their epitome as they craft their own charters of state. But, what is it about this charter that holds us so tightly after all these years? It must be more than the “bigger-than-life” characters that wrote it and signed it. Ultimately, it must be the relevance of what it grants not what it so eloquently states that so binds us since the lives we lead today bear little resemblance to those led by its authors.
A charter is something that engraves for all time. It is meant to be held in high esteem and altered only with utmost diligence. For a charter grants privileges and reserves rights which are endemic to life itself not just living. In a sense, it reflects the character of those who wrote it on-in-perpetuity. Though gone for hundreds of years, when we open the pages of our Constitution, we see reflected not just words but images; character images of those who bore this document. When I read our Constitution I can see and feel Jefferson, Franklin, Madison and the all the others who shaped it word by word and then embraced it for all ages. As you cannot look at Michelangelo’s Pieta and not see the sculptor or Rembrandt’s The Black Watch and not see the artist, it is impossible to divorce the Sons of Liberty from pages of our Constitution.
A charter is a likeness of those who drew it up; a reflection of their thought. When we read a charter and live under it as we do the Constitution, we are not simply edified. Rather, we enter into it and become like Jefferson and Madison. Their words become our words because once a charter is so drawn up, ownership of it belongs to those to whom it is granted. It is not Jefferson’s Constitution. It is Mark Brunner’s Constitution and so on. Since it is my charter and your charter, and we receive from it rights and privileges reserved only for those who live under it, we in turn strive to protect it, defend it, and cherish it. To love it become natural. In that love we follow naturally into obedience. For it is natural to obey something which provides us with essential security and well-being. The more and more we crave that security and well-being, the more and more we strive to conform to the image of the charter that provides it. In a sense we are holding the document up to the light of understanding and trying to step into it and sound its depths. In our love of freedom and liberty we long to make the Constitution, the charter of our freedom-loving forefathers, the portal by which we enter into and conform to their understanding of what freedom is.
Jesus Christ came down from heaven over two thousands years ago and presented us with the greatest charter of all time, the charter of freedom from sin and death through His sacrifice once for all on the cross of Calvary. His Word is our charter to freedom that is irresistible to a sinner. It draws us into Christ Jesus himself and because of what it promises, remains r...
The circles of life
I remember when I was a kid, seeing my mom hand feed my sister. I realize that she did the same with me as well. After a while I began to take the spoon and feed myself. At first it was a little messy (missed my mouth most of the time). As time and experience went on, I became more proficient and landed the spoonfuls more often than I missed. As a kid, my mom cooked for me, but I truly did feed myself clear through high school and on. Then I grew up and moved out and learned to cook for myself and feed myself. Then came marriage and children and Lori and I went through the same process with our kids. We hand fed them, they learned to use the spoon and soon began to feed themselves and even eventually moved out and learned to cook and feed themselves. Now with a grand daughter, my daughter is repeating the same circle of life again. It’s kind of amazing to see it happen.
I become alarmed when I hear Christian people use the phrase, “I’m not getting fed” or, “I left that church because they weren’t feeding me.” I think to myself, did you ever take up a spoon on your own?
God expects you and me to grow up to a place where we are feeding ourselves, taking in our own nourishment. Maybe at first we miss our mouth, but we will become more proficient as we exercise it. Yes, for a time someone else will cook for us and present before us the meal. But, in time, He expects us to cook for ourselves and even to come to the place where we are cooking and feeding others, babies.
Hebrews 5:12-14 (BBE) - And though by this time it would be right for you to be teachers, you still have need of someone to give you teaching about the first simple rules of God’s revelation; you have become like babies who have need of milk, and not of solid food. For everyone who takes milk is without experience of the word of righteousness: he is a child. But solid ...
