Prepare Well, Aim Well
“Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.” Psalm 127:4
When one of my sons was in junior high, his creative gifts met with his love for all things Lord of the Rings. He was captivated by the elves’ skill in archery in Tolkien’s trilogy. Soon reading the books and watching the movies led to studying the tools and the techniques of the archer. Purchasing arrows for his new bow soon turned to learn how to craft his own. He gave hours to developing his skill and to understand how a well-made arrow could improve an archer’s accuracy in hitting the target. His dedication to learning and practicing has resulted in years of enjoyment.
Ironically, years later I had the opportunity, after a brief moment’s instruction, to pick up a bow and arrow, and give it my best shot. It was no surprise that I wasn’t very good at hitting the target. Somehow my son had made it look so much easier than it actually was. And while it would have been nice for me to hit the bullseye, he had been very intentional in his preparation, while I had just hoped for the best.
As parents, we can easily slip into the same mindset that I had in picking up the bow that day. We just hope for the best. And while the historical context in verses 4 and 5 may be a reference to the safety that our children bring in protecting us from harm as we grow old, it is also true that God desires for our parenting to be far more like my son’s approach to archery than mine. The time we have to intentionally invest in preparing our kids for their launch into adulthood is far shorter than we realize.
Does your heart resonate with the Apostle John who said, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”? (3 John 4) What are some of the ways that you are making the most of the season you are in with your kids and grandkids? How are you making it a priority to encourage their next steps of faith?
Here’s an idea for an intentional next step. Open up a conversation about the gifts and strengths that you have observed in them, and commit to helping them find a place to serve in our faith community. Consider the possibility of serving together. After all, seeing your faith lived out authentically and practically is the most powerful influence you can have. My favorite place to suggest? Children’s ministry, of course! It is a wonderful opportunity to learn to be a disciple-maker.
Nicole Jiles
Director of FaithKids
Deeply Cherish
Tears blurred my vision as I watched the already fuzzy home video. A tiny little bundle with tubes coming out of its mouth and IVs attached to its body was cradled gently in my dad’s arms.
That pitiful, stringy little form was me, at negative two months old on Christmas Day, 1992. I had been born three days before, and my dad had come to the NICU to spend Christmas with my mom, my twin, and myself.
In the video, he and my mom were singing a Christmas song, and afterward, they fussed, cooed, and smiled while speaking all kinds of sappy sweetness to that little, pathetic-looking bundle. After a few minutes of making much over me, they repeated the routine with my sister.
Even the poor quality of the video couldn’t fail to capture what was being so blatantly conveyed in it. No one could watch that video without seeing that, to my parents, my sister, and I was infinitely precious. The love they felt for us, and their relief that we were alive and growing healthy after being born prematurely was unmistakable.
This video was filmed after my mom had been so sick due to her pregnancy that she had to spend six months in the hospital, and after my dad had been told that all three of us were probably going to die.
I think this video so beautifully demonstrates what it looks like when parents discover that their children are gifts: when they realize they are simply to be deeply cherished and treasured, not controlled or grasped.
In Psalm 127, the psalmist begins his psalm by metaphorically illustrating the ways a parent might anxiously seek to watch over, protect and maybe even control their child. His response to such parental disquiet (in addition to reminding the reader that God is truly the one who holds their child) is merely to remind the reader of how wonderfully precious it is to have children. In verse 5, he declares: “Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them [children]” and in verses 3-4 he also asserts confidently that to have children is a “heritage” and “a reward.”
For those of you with children, I would simply like to encourage you to remember how precious your children are: that they are gifts from God to be cherished.
Have you told them you loved them today? Have you hugged them close even if they shrug you off and seem too cool for it? Have you praised them and told them that you will root for them and believe in them to flourish even if they repeatedly fail to do so? That you will love them no matter what they do?
Ashley Carr
Invest Deeply
Psalm 127 describes children as a heritage and a reward from the Lord. They are a powerful benefit to their parents ‘just as arrows are in the hands of warriors.’ Our three sons have been the greatest blessings in my life and our grandkids as well. What did Jesus say about children? They are valued greatly. Matthew 18:10 tells us, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven continually see the face of My Father who is in heaven.” Heaven belongs to children.
We should all come to Jesus as children with the same innocence, humility, and yearning to know Him. (Luke 18: 15-17) Yes, we entrust our children and grandchildren to our sovereign heavenly Father, but he has entrusted them to us, so we have the responsibility to treasure them, train them, discipline them, teach them and enjoy them just as God our Father does for all of us. And most importantly we pray for them, while they are in the womb and until we draw our last breath. And if we don’t have children of our own, there are countless ways to be involved with children and influence them for the Lord, if just by setting a good example. Coaches, teachers, Sunday School teachers, camp counselors, babysitters, foster parents, neighbors, etc. all have the opportunity to be a godly influence. There is value in investing deeply into the spiritual and emotional lives of children. Yes, we are responsible for their physical needs, but not at the expense of these other most important needs.
Our time freely given to our children is the most important investment of all. Teaching them to be caring, compassionate human beings will be more valuable to them than wearing the most popular brands of clothing. Teaching and showing by example the value of the things they do have and how to take care of them while being grateful for them is more important than giving them everything they want. There are no perfect parents, and sometimes we are just in survival mode with work, activities, and other time eaters. Again, the Lord wants to help us prioritize Him in our lives, and prioritize how we spend our time, including with our children... With that in place, the rest becomes easier. We can be examples of His love to children and others whether they are part of our own family or part of God’s family.
Deb Hill
Executive Assistant
Unless the Lord
At 1 am I was awakened by a loud thud. I ran into my boy's bedroom to find my son on the ground, ten feet from his bunk bed. The next few minutes were terrifying as I tried to figure out the extent of his injuries while his brother called 911. After arriving at the hospital, we discovered that he had experienced multiple forms of head trauma. The doctors determined that he needed to be admitted to the ICU at Children’s Hospital. The next 48 hours were crucial. At 5 am, as I was following the ambulance to Rady’s, I had my first opportunity to call my husband who was in the middle of the ocean on an Aircraft Carrier. Reality set in. Neither of us had one bit of control.
Thankfully, forty-eight hours later my son was discharged and allowed to return to the normal life of a JH student. I learned that for a child, head trauma heals quickly and rarely causes permanent damage if they survive the first two days. My head wanted to believe this but my mother’s heart was in agony and desperately wanted to control everything he did. In processing this event, I had multiple conversations with God about the issue of control. I had worked hard to let go of control in so many areas but recognized that I still somehow thought I could maintain control of my kids. I developed a version of “nighttime PTSD”; always being on the alert for the worst-case scenario. This made for sleepless nights and exhausting days! A few years later, Deja Vu! While not as traumatic, another child ended up in the ER after diving off his bunk bed. Fortunately, the results were not as severe. Needless to say, we will never own bunk beds again! With this second accident, I revisited the idea that I could somehow control my kid’s lives. Both times I had been asleep less than 20 feet away and both times my kids were in a safe environment. God graciously allowed us to go through these trials yet protected our children from permanent harm. I soon saw this as an opportunity to develop my trust and expand my devotion to prayer.
This week we are studying Psalm 127 which opens with, “Unless the Lord…” Verse 2 says, “In vain you rise early and stay up late,” Oh, how many times I have laid awake in worry! While I wouldn’t want to go through these experiences again, I am grateful that they brought me to a point of recognizing, “unless the Lord”. As parents, we are to obey God’s directives to raise our children in his ways, but if we believe that God is sovereign then we have to let go of control and trust his provision.
Physical safety is at the forefront of every parent's mind, but so is their children’s emotional and spiritual welfare. We can guide and pray, but we can’t control their decisions. EFCC has a ministry called God’s Waiting Room. This is a group of moms who come together to study God’s Word and pray for their children who have decided, for the time, to not follow Jesus. If you are hurting and longing to give control of your kids over to the Lord, please contact the Care & Counseling Department for more information about God’s Waiting Room.
If you are a parent, or anyone struggling with control, ask God to show you Scripture that talks about his sovereignty. If we genuinely believe God is good, we can honestly say, “unless the Lord.”
Lynette Fuson
Director of Care & Counseling
The Purpose of Living the Dream
We were like those who dreamed…. Then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” - Psalm 126:1-2
Everybody wants to live the dream! Are you living the dream? Do you have hope? Are you filled with joy? I think God wants that for you. But I’d like to suggest that he wants that for you for a very particular reason, and this Psalm tells us exactly what that is.
The first half of Psalm 126 is a psalm about people who were living the dream! It tells us that the LORD had restored their fortunes. This is most likely a reference to the exiled people returning to the promised land. However, the English word “fortunes” implies that their future was given back to them. It signifies that they had hope again. The psalmist tells us that their mouths were filled with laughter. That is one of the best images there is. There is nothing better than being around a group of people whose mouths are filled with laughter. That only happens when people have the freedom and the time to sit around and tell stories. Exiles and slaves don’t have that kind of luxury, but freed people back home, do. The same thing is true of people whose tongues are filled with songs of joy. They just have so much joy that they can’t help but sing about it. This is a picture of living the dream!
Now, I don’t know many people who just break out into song like in the musicals, but I do have a feeling that from time to time, you have had a sense that you are living the dream. Maybe it was because of a new job or a new relationship. Maybe you got married and you just felt like singing… maybe you did? Whatever the case may be, I believe that this sort of joy, laughter, and hope are clearly blessings that God wants us to enjoy. God isn’t a slave driver who only wants you to work for him… he wants you to enjoy life also. God wants you to live the dream! However, I just want to suggest that he doesn’t just want you to live the dream because he wants you to be happy. Your happiness is not God’s primary focus. Instead, I strongly believe that God wants you to live the dream and find happiness, joy, and hope as a means to an end. This psalm tells us exactly what that end is: other people. God wants you to live the dream for the sake of others. As the text says, “Then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’” God wants you to live the dream so that others recognize Who it is that blessed you.
So my question for you today is: Does your joy, laughter, and hope point back to the author of all good gifts? As your pastor, I really hope that you find all of those things in this life, but I also hope that you don’t just think that it is for your sake. I pray that you see those blessings as opportunities to be a blessing to those around you… even “among the nations.”
Josh Rose
Teaching Pastor
Remember and Hope
As a child, I often prayed for my grandma to come and rescue me from a messy home life with parents who loved us but had so many issues of their own, they had little time or capability to care for me and my two sisters. When I cried and prayed to the Lord, He seemed to always hear me and my godly Grandma would come, and often take us to stay with her for a while. I knew from past experiences that life would be more peaceful and happier when that happened, and it was.
The pilgrim in this psalm seems to be walking through a sad or tough season but remembers joyful times of restoration that seemed like a dream and longs for the Lord to do it again. Read Psalm 126 verses 4-6 from The Message:
And now, GOD, do it again— bring rains to our drought-stricken lives. So those who planted their crops in despair will shout hurrahs at the harvest, So those who went off with heavy hearts will come home laughing, with armloads of blessing.
Remembering the good things God has done strengthens our faith and our resolve in hard times. It gives us hope that He will do for us what He has done before just as it did this psalmist. We all go through hard seasons in life, times when we are holding on by a thread. But even in times of despair, if we can hold onto a tiny seed of hope, our joy will be restored. Psalm 30 tells us that weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning. And when He doesn’t do it exactly the same way as in the past we can hold onto the truth from Psalm 56:8 that says He keeps track of all my sorrows and He has collected all my tears in His bottle. He has recorded each in His book. Our tears are important to Him.
Sometimes in the moment, we don’t see God working, but later we can see He was working everything out according to His good and perfect purpose. So we can pray in those moments, ‘Thank you Lord for how you are going to work this all out, though I can’t see how right now, I know you are in control and have a plan.’ Read with me Isaiah 55:8-9, think of times when God has protected or rescued you, and thank HIm.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Deb Hill
Executive Assistant
It’s Risky to Dream!
Emily Dickinson once wrote, “The heart wants what the heart wants.” No duh! Could anything be more obvious? Whether reasonable or unreasonable, the heart will emotionally invest in ideas or dreams that have no grounding in reality!
Perhaps you’ve experienced this in your own life.
Maybe you’ve dreamt of a job that you’ve always been unqualified for.
Or perhaps you’ve had dreams of a relationship that has never come around.
It could be that you’ve desired to be used by God for a ministry or a cause that seems impossible.
But no matter how unrealistic all of these dreams or desires may be, our hearts yearn for them.
It’s tempting to try to kill these unmet expectations and dreams. As bad as our mundane lives maybe, they’re better than the constant heartache that we have when we yearn for more.
We may be quick to discount these dreams and desires, but the fact that we have them is very significant. At the very least it shows us that our current lives are dissatisfying to us. We may be discontent in our present circumstances or season, or perhaps we’ve been disappointed by what life has handed us so far.
Dreams force us to admit that we are discontent. Like the exiles of Babylon, “we sit and weep when we remember Zion,” (Psalm 137:1).
But the minute that we admit we’re discontent, we find ourselves in a bind between what we want and what we have. We enter the tension that the prophet Habakkuk felt when he wrote: “the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food,” (Habakkuk 3:17). We’re tempted to believe, as the people in Isaiah’s day: “My way is hidden from the LORD; my cause is disregarded by my God,” (Isaiah 40:27).
But these dreams also speak to a deep desire that we are meant to prayerfully present before God.
Faithlessly, we think that something is wrong with us when we feel the angst, the tension, the anguish. “Why, my soul, are you downcast?” (Psalm 47:5) we cry out. But the unsatisfied tension of unrealized dreams and desires is the very thing that allows us to experience the God who immerses us in his presence, his promises, and his power.
“Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me,” (Psalm 47:7). How do you know that God is not doing something in you through the midst of the unsatisfied desires that plague you? It might not be the thing you want, but it will certainly be something that God will use to direct your steps and to shape you into what He wants.
Ryan Lunde
Young Adults Pastor
Dare to Dream
Have you ever had one of those sleepless nights where relaxing slumber is replaced with stress, anxiety, and fear? Hopefully not, but sometimes our current life situations (work, relationships, community, etc…) are not as expected or planned and our soul suffers. This has happened a few times in my life so I am getting pretty good at finally talking with God and learning what is causing me to only focus on my current situation.
One time it was because I had just returned home from being overseas and nothing felt quite right, I couldn’t rest, I couldn’t sleep. I was just trying to figure out how the next day would go and what the right things to do might even be. My current reality was just overwhelming. Another time it was during the recession and I was not sure how I was going to support my wife and two kids and all their needs. The doom scenarios just kept spinning in my head over and over again. In these examples I couldn’t(or didn’t) even take time to dream about how God was going to change things. I could not even dream about our future hope in Jesus because my current situation was so stressful.
In Psalm 126 I love how the NLT describes what the Lord did in verse 1, “...it was like a dream.” Verses 2 and 3 describe the people with laughter, joy and praise. That all came because their dream was in the Lord and his future promises being fulfilled. Their current situation was not there yet, but they looked to him so they could have enough hope to dream about how bright things could get. They remembered what God had done so they could dream about what he would do. They dared to dream so they could find the hope they needed each day. That would have been good for me to do as well.
Jesus has defeated the grave, he defeated sin so we could dream about what is in store for us. He did all that so no matter what we face today we can dream about what Jesus has for us tomorrow. If you are facing a current situation that seems bleak, would you pray and call us. We will listen and talk, and hopefully find enough hope in the Lord so we can dream about what he will do.
Jeremy Johnson
Family Pastor
Restoration
"When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.” The LORD has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy." - Psalms 126:1-3
These verses speak to me about being exuberantly happy. The kind of happiness that comes from realizing that your life of lacking is thoroughly gone, replaced with a new life of abundance. Our daily lives have their ups and downs, but the phrases “our mouths were full of laughter” and “we are filled with joy.” don’t seem realistic. We resonate too much with the second part of this psalm, “Restore our fortunes, Lord” or being in the position of want.
It seems to me that we received the fortune of heaven itself when we accepted the gift of salvation. Our inheritance is endlessly huge, having been named as co-heirs with Christ. We are heirs of Heaven and Earth! Imagine what that looks like … we’ve been given a gorgeous tapestry of promises for this life, which will meet every need we could ever have many times over. Recall with me how faithfully God keeps every promise he’s made. Most wonderfully, we get to do this life hand in hand with the author of reality, himself. I think we have been given a better fortune, one that literally cannot be taken from us.
Maybe instead of restoring our fortunes, the cry of our hearts should be, “restore the joy of our salvation.” Let’s get back to our first love and the fervor of untainted hope. So that we can’t help but dream of our awesome future just like the Israelites in this psalm. Unlike them, we never pray for the restoration of our fortunes.
Jonathan Duncan
When I am Weak
As a Jr. High student, I remember singing a worship song titled, “O Lord, Take my Life”. The song was meaningful to me, yet the last line was confusing: “Father please use my frail life now, for when I am weak, I am strong.” I thought that it should say, “for when I am weak, YOU are strong.” I knew that God could cover my weakness, but the idea of my weakness being a strength just didn’t make sense; until the day that I came across 2 Corinthians 12:9-10. “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Crist may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Was God somehow saying that my weakness, my failures, my insufficiencies could not only be covered by his grace but could also be a strength as his power is magnified in me? This was a significant formational moment for me!
This week we have been discussing Psalm 124; the cages which snare, the chains that hold us captive, the sin that entangles, the weaknesses that prevent us from being free to live as God has designed. It’s easy to think that if we just try hard enough then we can work our way out of any situation and therefore prove our own worthiness. Yet Psalm 124 opens with, “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side,” and concludes in verse 8 with, “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” Our freedom comes from the Lord.
Tim Keller says, “Those who enter a relationship with God inevitably look back and recognize that God’s grace had sought them out, breaking them open to new realities.” Simply put, it just doesn’t depend on our own human strength. The reality is that in our weakness, God is strong, but it is our weakness itself that makes us strong so that we may be open to the freedom that God offers; the vast array of opportunities that he has in store. When we offer ourselves as an offering, surrender to God’s ability to go exceedingly, abundantly beyond what we could ask or imagine, we will find freedom and God will be glorified.
Lynette Fuson
Director of Care & Counseling