I received a You Tube video of my granddaughter Ashlee being thrown into the air, twisting around, turning flips and so forth. She is known as a “flyer” on her cheerleading team. They just won the Oregon state championships.
Wow!
I know my oldest son is bursting with pride and is overjoyed at her accomplishment as am I.
Later in the day I received an e-mail with a photo from my youngest son’s wife of one of my grandsons, Owen, (nickname Obo), and he was at the dentist for the first time. I assumed he would be screaming bloody murder, but instead he was nonchalantly perched in the dental chair with one foot flat with leg crossed over his knee with a “Dennis the Menace” smirk on his face. It appeared as though he was sitting in an easy chair getting ready to have a cup of coffee.
Then I received a photo entitled “snaggle tooth” from my middle son of my granddaughter Hailey who was widely smiling exposing a missing tooth. It was very loose last week when she visited me and she told me she was hoping it would come out soon so the tooth fairy could provide her some “hard cash” for it.
Hmmm… My oldest son told me he just returned from Chile where he directed the installation of a complex Oracle/Sap system for an acquisition of the company he works for. This coming after a similar installation in Australia. He received a big promotion and raise for his efforts.
Last week I accompanied my middle son to demonstrate the innovative new software system that he has developed to the Commissioner of Education of Florida and the National Chamber of Commerce. They were very impressed and in fact told us they wanted our current Governor Rick Scott, Jeb Bush, and the likes of Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Bobby Jindal of LA, and Chris Christie of NJ to take a look at it for possible implementation in their states as a joint venture and enterprise solution to help improve our public schools in nine states.
My youngest son worked on our upcoming Fellowship of Christian Athletes banquet at Honey Lake and secured an autographed bat from Atlanta Braves star catcher Brian McCann, autographed football from Coach Mike Smith with the Atlanta Falcons and other memorabilia from Atlanta based athletes for the FCA auction tomorrow night. And then met with me and our team to go over final details and preparations for this huge event.
Not to be outdone my wife volunteered to spend today making her special recipe for key lime pie for the event, (she learned this recipe while living in the Florida keys for six years) – She will prepare 70 of them today! Yum…
Yes I’m proud of my wife, sons, daughters in law, and grandchildren and next to accepting Christ as my Savior I feel that they are my most cherished blessing. We have a family filled with love and respect for one another. All three sons and their wives love the Lord as do all of the grandchildren that are old enough to understand. They are all prospering and doing well.
Contrast that peaceful, joyful and loving scene with the news yesterday where we learned about the many children in the United States that are being raised by single parents.
According to the CDC: births to unmarried mothers is rising sharply; 40 Percent of U.S. births are to unwed Mothers, and a staggering 72 per cent of Black children are raised in a single parent household.
This is not good! Research shows that these kids are twice as likely to be poor and have psychological and behavioral problems; they are also twice as likely to have children out of wedlock themselves, and these children are at a far greater risk of such things as accidents, injuries, and poisoning.
Many of the problems are caused by a significantly lower income of the single income families. 69% of never married mother’s children are raised below poverty and 45% for children brought up by divorced single moms. These families are filled with financial stress related turmoil and the kids spend little time with their single parent and in many cases are left to raise themselves. Kids don’t do a good job of raising themselves.
One thing former NFL star football player Bill Glass taught me about prison ministry is that 80% of children whose fathers are in prison go to prison themselves. Fathers are instrumental in raising healthy well adjusted kids.
The Bible is clear that marriage should be between a man and a woman and kids should come after marriage and not before. That is God’s plan. Statistics bear out that His plan is the best for raising well adjusted loving kids who are happy and who will excel later in life. This is not to say that no kids raised out of wedlock will succeed, (no letters please); that would be a ridiculous notion, but it is to say that the odds of them not succeeding and instead ending up in poverty and having problems go up dramatically.
The stigma of unwed mothers has largely been undone in this country and indeed in the world. It is no longer considered immoral to have sex out of wedlock and society views those who cling to biblical standards as Neanderthals and religious zealots.
Count me among them. The Bible is entirely relevant whether our society has abandoned it or twisted it to suit their immoral lifestyle or not. I have been on both sides of this street and can attest that the Bible way is not only the best way, it is the only way to success.
The Bible is not a list of out of date crazy religious rules that are meaningless in today’s society. God states that His laws will last forever. According to God they were valid in ancient times; they are valid today, and they will be valid 1000 years or 10,000 years from now.
After reviewing the statistics above it is no great mystery to me why 1/3 of our children dropout of school and don’t graduate.
How will they find a job? Who will take care of them if they cannot pay their own way? Where will they live? What will they eat?
Our President likes to blame all of these problems on the people who have excelled in life and for political gain he likes to divide the country into the “haves” and “the have nots”. He thinks the government needs to solve this problem by redistributing income.
No thinking people believe that is the problem or the solution. Maybe he could at least take a stab at counseling our country on refraining from having kids out of wedlock beginning with the 72% of black families who are raising another generation into poverty. It isn’t a racial problem; it isn’t a Wall Street greed problem; it is a morality problem. Our great country is turning its back on God and slowly but surely God is turning His back on us. Just read what happened to Israel when they turned their backs on God; it was not a pretty sight.
We are losing our great country in my generation and that grieves me to no end.
We need to turn to God, not to our government. Sadly I don’t see that happening in this country and I worry about my children and grandchildren. What will their future be? I don’t even like to think about it…
My prayer is for a great revival in this country. Revival starts with those of us who love our God, our families and this great country. Please join me today in praying for this country and its leaders that they will turn to our Creator who is the only salvation and hope for mankind that is obsessed with sin and the lust of this age. We also need to vote and we need to support those leaders who value God’s role in our lives as opposed to those who are a part of our corrupt government.
2 Chron. 7:14
If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.