News from The Kingdom

1. Parents, Understand yourself. Get some feedback about your ability to affirm and love your children. Find out if you tend to be overprotective or permissive, and also determine your spouse’s tendencies. Knowing yourself provides a benchmark for making changes in how you treat your kids. It’s never too late to change.

2. Engage them intentionally. Learn all you can about their culture, and make time to talk. Great conversations sometimes can be planned, but often the unguarded moments yield the deepest level of heart-to-heart talks. Look for those moments. Pray that God will open your eyes to see them. I’m convinced they are there, but sometimes we miss the cues. On the way home from a ball game, on the way to pick up a movie, in the kitchen preparing dinner, and in the other mundane moments in life, God can give us windows to each other’s soul if we look for them. (more…)

The biblical laws of sanitation were clearly ahead of their time! There was really no way to fully understand the reasons for these laws until the invention of the microscope, the discovery of bacteria and the pioneering work of pathologists in recent centuries, yet these ancient biblical laws have proven scientifically valid today! (more…)

I thought for years that the “Lord’s work,” that is, ministerial endeavours, must have top priority in a any church leader’s life. So,  we complied and gave the children to nannies’ care when the youngest was only two, as my husband and I were supposed to work from dawn to dusk in church. But things didn’t work out very well and I finally found myself alone to take care of my children. I began to have second thoughts about certain Bible verses related to the ministry and the family. I belatedly realized from Scripture that my first priority is to bring up my own family in the fear and admonition of the Lord. If I put my family before my call, then and only then will I know how to do the Lord’s work rightly. (more…)

koinonia, according to the  New Testament, assumes and requires face-to-face communication. Three things marked New Testament Christian community: It was centered in Jesus Christ (believers met together as Jesus’ followers, constituting his body); this fellowship was a gift of the Holy Spirit; and the community was missional. That is, the New Testament community was directed toward a purpose outside itself—actually being a living witness to Christ and the gospel’s power in the world. (more…)