Ye Have Wearied the Lord

Have you ever done something that just brings you frustration and anger, yet you find yourself doing it every couple of days anyway? I do. In fact, I did it again this morning. I read the newspaper.
On the front page of the Midlands section of the Omaha World Herald there was an article titled "Bill would require comprehensive sex ed". Believe it or not, though the title piqued my interest, I regret reading it. I feel sick...
"Nebraska public schools would have to offer comprehensive sex education, which some districts already teach, under a bill introduced by an Omaha lawmaker.
Schools would have to include instruction in the proper use of all contraceptive methods approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The FDA has OK'd a variety of devices and medications, among them the 'morning after' pill that prevents pregnancy after intercourse."

Does it prevent pregnancy or end pregnancy?
That aside, what are we doing? The article states that the purpose of this sex education is to reduce the rate of STD's in the state. The article also says that the bill "would require schools to teach the benefits of abstinence." So, we teach them how to use contraceptives, then we tell them it is also beneficial to be abstinent? Is there a contradiction here? A mixed message?

By the way, how is the morning after pill going to prevent STD's?

The article goes on to say...
"The Omaha Public Schools has provided students with comprehensive sex education, including contraceptive education, since the mid-1980's.
Even so, Council, a former Omaha school board member, said she doesn't believe the message is reaching kids."

I guess that if we legislate it, it will be more effective? There is a reason that Council doesn't believe the message is reaching kids, it's because the STD rates are climbing...

http://www.ketv.com/health/18780006/detail.html

http://www.wowt.com/news/headlines/1370126.html

The article gets worse...
"The [current] OPS curriculum does not discuss abortion, she [Karen Spencer-May, the districts supervisor for family and consumer sciences and human growth and development] said. When the curriculum was written, she said, 'there were certain things that our community didn't want us to talk about, and that was one of the things'.
The curriculum also does not discuss issues surrounding sexual orientation, she said.
OPS teachers are trained not to deviate from the curriculum. When students raise questions beyond the scope, teachers are to refer them to counselors."

Now we are getting to some of the real reasons behind the new bill. Obviously this is not about reducing STD rates...

"Council's bill, however, would authorize sex-education instructors to 'answer in good faith any questions initiated by a student that is germane to the material of the course.'"
Listen to this...
"The bill would require that instruction materials not 'promote bias' against sexually active students or students of any sexual orientation or gender identity."

We are going to teach our kids that evil is good and good is evil. Not only are we going to teach it to them, we are going to make it a law that we must teach it to them!

Malachi 2:17 "Ye have wearied the LORD with your words. Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied him? When ye say, Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and he delighteth in them; or, Where is the God of judgment?"

Just so you know, "Officials with Planned Parenthood of the Heartland support the effort."

Folks, don't be confused. Satan wants to destroy the family!
Remember, whoever is teaching your children is discipling your children. Who do you want your children to be a disciple of?

Sneak Peak

As a special gift to the readers of this blog, I am going to share a sneak peak of our new church website. I can't resist because I am so excited about the changes!

It is so nice to have such talented people in our church. Janna Selander has been working on the graphics and the layout while Karl Hake has taken on the ministry of web administrator. What Janna has put together is beautifully contemporary and up to date, even to the point of designing a new logo!

Karl is working on transferring our church calendar, adding the new emails, and finding a way to upload sermons every week. What a neat feature it will be to have a sermon archive with our weekly messages available online.

So, without further ado, and with unending gratefulness...

www.Vvbc.net

Comment

The following comment was intended to be left on the previous post, however, possibly due to it's length, it never uploaded, though it was sent to my email. I have pasted it in its entirety...

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "WHAT I DONT kNOw!":

Some thoughts from my studies today in regards to church ministries (sunday school,youth group etc.) And the failure of these programs according to National Center for family integrated churches confession


The following are some articles from their Articles of Confession
*see complete confession at website www.ncfic.org


Article I — Scripture is Sufficient
We affirm that our all-wise God has revealed Himself and His will in a completed revelation—the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments—which is fully adequate in both content and clarity for “everything pertaining to life (salvation) and godliness (sanctification)” including the ordering of the church and the family (2 Pet. 1:3-4; 1 Tim 3:15; 2 Tim. 3:16-17).
We deny that God’s people should treat His Word as inadequate for church and family life by supplementing His completed revelation with principles from humanistic psychology, corporate business models, and modern marketing techniques.


Article VI — The Church is a Family of Believers that Includes Families


Article XI — The Biblical Pattern of the Church Reflects Age and Family Integration
We affirm that there is no scriptural pattern for comprehensive age segregated discipleship, and that age segregated practices are based on unbiblical, evolutionary and secular thinking which have invaded the church (Deut. 16:9-14; Josh. 8:34-35; Ezra 10:1; 2 Chr.20:13; Nehemiah 12:43; Joel 2:15-16; Luke 12:42-47; Col 4:14; Acts 20:7; Eph. 6:1-4).
We deny/reject that corporate worship, discipleship and evangelism should be systematically segregated by age, and that it has been an effective method for making disciples.


So, in referring to Sufficency of Sripture (Sola Scriptura) The following is from: www.GotQuestions.org


Question: "What is sola scriptura?" * not a full text quote, see website
Answer: The phrase sola scriptura is from the Latin: sola having the idea of “alone,” “ground,” “base,” and the word scriptura meaning “writings”—referring to the Scriptures. Sola scriptura means that Scripture alone is authoritative for the faith and practice of the Christian. The Bible is complete, authoritative, and true. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:1


The Word of God is the only authority for the Christian faith. Traditions are valid only when they are based on Scripture and are in full agreement with Scripture. Traditions that contradict the Bible are not of God and are not a valid aspect of the Christian faith. Sola scriptura is the only way to avoid subjectivity and keep personal opinion from taking priority over the teachings of the Bible. The essence of sola scriptura is basing your spiritual life on the Bible alone and rejecting any tradition or teaching that is not in full agreement with the Bible. Second Timothy 2:15 declares, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.”


Sola scriptura does not nullify the concept of church traditions. Rather, sola scriptura gives us a solid foundation on which to base church traditions.
Again, traditions are not the problem. Unbiblical traditions are the problem.© Copyright 2002-2011 Got Questions Ministries.
________________________________
In closing, do we blame our church programs for the failures?, toss them aside. Or, do we take personal responsibilty , confess our failures to God, seek forgiveness and ask for His help to teach our families according to his standards ?

Remember, we all must appear before the judgement seat of Christ ? (2 Corinthians 5:10)
God Bless,
Daniel Moore dd_Moore60@yahoo.com
member VVBC

WHAT I DONT kNOw!

This has been a great week for reading! I just finished a book this afternoon that challenged many of my assumptions regarding church ministries.
Before today, I didn't know...

Plato (428-347 BC)
"All those in the city who happen to be older than ten they will send out to the country; and taking over their children, they will rear them - far away from those dispositions they now have from their parents - in their own manners and laws that are such as we described before. And, with the city and the regime of which we were speaking thus established most quickly and easily, it will itself be happy and most profit the nation in which it comes to be."
Allan Bloom, The Republic of Plato, Translated, with notes and an interpretive essay. 2nd ed, (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 220*

Plato actually asserted that for best results, the city or state should own or rear the children away from the influence of the parents.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1788)
"If there are laws for adult life, there should be laws for childhood, which teach obedience to the others; and just as the reason of each man is not left to be the sole judge of his duties, so too the education of children should not be left to their fathers' capacities and prejudices, especially since it is even more important to the state than to their fathers; for in the natural course of things the father's death often deprives him o f the ultimate benefits of having educated his child, but his country will sooner of later feel the effects of what he has done: the state remains while the family is dissolved."
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "Discourse on Political Economy," in Discourse on Political Economy and the Social Contract, trans/ with Introduction and Notes by Christopher Betts (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1994), 23*

In 1848 the Quincy Grammar School in Boston, Massachusetts was formed. Prior to this time there was no such thing as "grade levels" but students all learned at their own pace even though common schools (which later became government schools) had formed. However, at the Quincy Grammar School, they had twelve classrooms of equal size.

Charles Silberman quotes Frederick Burk, the first president of what would become California State University at San Francisco...
"It [graded schools] is constructed upon the assumption that a group of minds can be marshalled and controlled in growth in exactly the same manner that a military officer marshalls and directs the bodily movements of a company of soldiers. In solid, unbreakable phalanx the class is supposed to move through all the grades, keeping in locked step. This locked step is set by the 'average' pupil - an algebraic myth born of inanimate figures and an addled pedagogy. The class system does injury to the rapid and quick-thinking pupils, because these must shackle their stride to keep pace with the mythical average. [But] the class system does a greater injury to the large number who make slower progress than the rate of the mythical average pupil...They are foredoomed to failure before they begin...Could any system be more stupid in its assumptions, more impossible in its conditions, and more juggernautic in its operation?"
Crisis in the Classroom: The Remaking of American Education (New York, Random House, 1970), 166.*

Then there is this quote from Charles F. Potter...
"Education is thus a most powerful ally of Humanism, and every American school is a school of Humanism. What can the theistic Sunday-schools, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?"
Charles Francis Potter, Humanism: A New Religion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930), 128.*

Then, 53 years later, John J. Dunphy writes...
"The battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level --preschool day care or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new--the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism, resplendent in its promise of a world in which the never-realized Christian ideal of "love they neighbor"will finally be achieved. Then perhaps, we will be able to say with Tom Paine that "the world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion" It will undoubtedly be a long, arduous, painful struggle replete with much sorrow and many tears, but humanism will emerge triumphant. It must if the family of humankind is to survive."
John J. Dunphy, The Humanist, Vol. 43, Issue 1 (Jan/Feb 1983), 23-26*

Scott Brown, referring to the aforementioned paragraph, says...

"And it worked! Christian parents uncritically trusted this system, placed their confidence in it, and sent their children into these pagan indoctrination centers. Their children came out walking, talking and thinking like pagans."
Scott T. Brown, A Weed in the Church ( The National Center for Family Integrated Churches, October 2010), 105*

These quotes were brought up in order to ask this simple question, "If man's wisdom invented age-segregated learning away  from the instruction of the fathers, why are we doing the same thing at church?"

Is the Bible silent of this issue? (Hint-kNOw!)

*Disclaimer- I am not giving a blanket endorsement of Plato, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles Silberman, Charles Potter, John Dunphy, or Scott Brown. However, the words of each of these men have challenged many of my assumptions regarding church ministries.

Already?

Well we're into a new year! I don't know that I am ready for it yet. I still have plans for the summer of 2010.

Huh. Now that I think about it, I am still working on things that were planned before that. In fact, I am so far behind I wouldn't be able to know which year I originally planned to do things if it wasn't for the receipts! Do you know what I am talking about? Let me illustrate...

Last Thursday, December 30th, I finally got around to putting new brake shoes on Karen's Honda (I noticed we were at 97,000 miles and it still had the original brakes). I knew that I had purchased them so that I could change them at my convenience. I looked around the shop for less than 30 seconds when I spotted them sitting right at the edge of the workbench waiting to be installed.
I pulled her car in, jacked up the front end and pulled the front tires. It didn't take long to remove the old shoes. However, when I went to install the new ones, I noticed that they were a different size. Huh, I'd bought brakes for a V6 but we owned a 4 cylinder. I guess that makes a difference in the brakes.

Fortunately, thinking ahead, I had left the receipt in the box! As I was thinking about making a quick trip in to town in order to make an exchange, a check of the receipt told me where I had made the purchase.

That check of the receipt also let me know where I was on my "to do" list. In other words, it had a date of purchase on it.

Since our car had no tires or brakes, I decided to take the motorcycle to town. It does better on fuel anyway. Besides, it was the last opportunity I would have to drive it in 2010. With such great weather Emily decided to come along...


Oh, did I mention the date on the receipt?

3-12-2009

I told you I wasn't ready for 2011!