Why Are Evangelical Young Adults Engaging in Premarital Sex?

 Here is an article from The Christian Pundit.  How do we raise our children?  Do we indulge their every whim and wish?  What kind of examples are we, do we indulge ourselves or do we ever deny ourselves?  Read this wonderful, thought provoking article by RVD.

On the weekend I was talking with a mother of teenaged girls about the statistic that 80% of evangelical, college age kids have premarital sex. Obviously, there’s a problem, and this mother was concerned for the future of the church.

People have pointed out the theological and ecclesiastical reasons for this stat: evangelical kids often come from churches that do not clearly teach biblical patterns of marriage and sexuality, and many teens leave church when they move out of their parents’ home for university or work. Those are problems, certainly. But there may be an even more fundamental issue here: a lack of self denial for Christ’s sake. Many sons and daughters have been indulged for a long time, by family and church. They’re entertained in worship, coached and aided into academic success, sent on fully funded “mission trips” sweetened by theme parks or resorts, allowed to wear what they want, watch what they want, eat what they want, and do what they want, hovered over by helicopter moms who are waiting to come to their aid, day or night. Should we wonder why they can’t deny themselves the strong urge to sleep with a boyfriend or girlfriend when the opportunity arises?

 While every child is certainly responsible for their own sins of impurity, at times parents may bear a share of guilt as well. Are we practiced in denying ourselves, taking up our crosses (i.e., crucifying the old man), and following Christ (Luke 9:23)? We may truly love Jesus and we don’t want our neighbors to go to hell, but are we hungering and thirsting after righteousness? We go out for dinner when we don’t feel like cooking; we love posh vacations; we have more clothing than we can regularly wear; we go golfing instead of serving at home; we expect help with normal child care; we skip evening worship because we want family time. While there is nothing wrong with restaurants, holidays, clothing, golf, etc., are we living routine patterns of self-indulgence to which evangelical Americans have become accustomed?

Not every child who sleeps around has a self-indulgent parent. Some of the most godly parents I know who have been exemplary in living and teaching the gospel to their children still have a son or daughter who end up in the sin and guilt of fornication. Some children heartbreakingly pursue sexual sin without repentance, turning their back on their faith. It is not what we do that saves our children; it is God. But Scripture also tells us that God often uses a pattern of holy living in parents to produce holy offspring. And unbiblical patterns of parenting always throw up obstacles for our children’s obedience.

Why would our kids listen to us telling them to pursue purity and godly restraint when we are giving in to shopping addictions, gluttony, love of money, love of pleasure, and other self-indulgent behaviors? We live with an entitlement attitude, bending Scripture’s commands to holiness when they are too uncomfortable or costly. Why are we surprised when our kids sleep around?

 In a sermon on Luke 9:23, John Wesley wrote that “if the will of God be our one rule of action in every thing, great and small, it follows, by undeniable consequence, that we are not to do our own will in anything. Here, therefore, we see at once the nature, with the ground and reason, of self-denial. We see the nature of self-denial: It is the denying or refusing to follow our own will, from a conviction that the will of God is the only rule of action to us. And we see the reason thereof, because we are creatures; because ‘it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves’.”

Jeremiah Burroughs wrote in The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment that we “must learn the lesson of self-denial or you can never become a scholar in Christ’s school, and be learned in this mystery of contentment. That is the first lesson that Christ teaches any soul, self-denial, which brings contentment, which brings down and softens a man’s heart.”

The mother I was speaking to on the weekend is doing a good job of living this. But a generation of her daughters’ peers has been left open to great temptation and sin by their own hearts and by parents who refuse to teach their children self denial by precept and example. Have we learned “the first lesson that Christ teaches any soul”? Are we helping our children to learn it so they can be holy even as God is holy (Lev. 20:26, I Peter 1:16)? Perhaps a generation of parents who are disciplined in prayer and Scripture reading, in fasting and tithing, in putting the old man to death and walking in newness of life (Rom. 6:4) will by grace be able to raise a generation of children who exceed their parents in holiness and living in the world, but not of it (Rom. 12:2).

 

How the American Church Paved the Way for ObamaCare

 Posted by Scott T. Brown of NCFIC on June 29, 2012

 The United States Government has done it again! With the recent Supreme Court validation of ObamaCare, it has usurped the role of individual citizens to care for themselves and will punish them through taxation if they try. The “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave” has taken another giant leap towards the “land of the oppressed and home of the coward.” However, hope for America does not depend on Republican control of the White House and Congress, but instead in the rising awakening of churches and families who desire to be governed by scripture. I am connected with many of these and have much hope, regardless of the big government threat.

First, let’s examine what just happened. The Supreme Court’s validation of the Affordable Care Act can seem confusing, but it boils down to a simple fact. Under the Constitution, Congress cannot compel you to buy something, but it can tax you for not complying. Passing this law means that the Court creatively justified something that is wrong in principle. They used the Constitution to abuse the Constitution. It was legislative licentiousness.

But all of this is nothing new!


The government has always used taxes to control behavior and now it wants to control your healthcare. Government healthcare is logically consistent with our headlong sprint toward socialism in America. We are systematically surrendering every personal responsibility we have been given by God to be pampered and coddled by a doting Government. We have surrendered the role of parents to educate their children to the public school system. We have surrendered the role of families and churches to care for orphans and widows to Government assistance programs and welfare. The menagerie of further Government control and oversight being proposed should not surprise us. From the bizarre suggested ban on buying a 44 oz coke in New York, to the outright attack on biblical family life with the Delaware legislative attempt to penalize disciplining children – all of these moves are consistent.

 Is this what the founders of America envisioned? Doesn’t the Constitution of the United States forbid giant government from taking over every area of life in America? Yes, it does! Then how did we get here? We got here by increasingly considering the Constitution as outdated, by abandoning the Word of God as a standard, and by “reimagining” government with enlightened, postmodern minds freed from the shackles of the old and dusty “rules.”

But before we simply point fingers at the Government we need to stop and take a hard look in the mirror. The church is supposed to “hold to the pattern” (2 Tim 1:13) and be a “beacon on a hill” (Matt 5:14) setting an example of obedience to God’s word and faithfulness to “His ways.” But in my own lifetime, I have seen the church “re-imagine” itself every few years and furiously work to leave behind the old dusty “rules” in favor of enlightened, approaches that appeal to the impulses of our modern self exalting affections.

The Government is simply doing what pastors and churches do all the time. The church in America has come to do what it wants based on pragmatism by saying, “Anything goes, I am under grace not law.” Churches often grow themeslves by ignoring the clear teaching of Scripture in order to achieve pragmatic objectives and then justifying the “advances.” The church has freely set aside the biblical language of church government, church offices, and church practices. It has disregarded simple and clear statements about sexuality, manhood, and womanhood and rejected the clear teaching of Scripture on the matter of educating children. Like the Government, the church has become comfortable throwing off all restraint if it can find an excuse. We do not want to be restrained, but the truth is that Scripture restrains. The truth is, the Constitution restrains. They were designed to restrain evil, abuses of power, and inappropriate creativity.

What does a lawless church have to do with a lawless court? Everything! As the family goes, so goes the church. As the church goes, so goes the nation. In this case, home life and church life gave birth to Supreme Court life. Church leaders and their people don’t want the Bible to constrain them any more than they want the Constitution to constrain them. This is how the church paved the way for ObamaCare.

Revelation 1:5 says that Jesus Christ is “ruler over the kings of the earth.” But we are in no position to demand that our Government honors Christ as King or that it constrain its actions to honor the Constitution, until first we honor Christ as the ruler of our families, churches, and personal lives by constraining our actions according to His revealed Word!

So in the wake of this devastating Supreme Court decision, my heart is actually full of hope. Contrary to the antinomian culture at large and unlike lawless churches and homes that have thrown off “the old paths” (Jer 6:16) and paved the way for today’s ObamaCare, I see a rising remnant of families and churches returning to God and His Word. They are raising up a new generation of sons and daughters who desire to be governed by the Word of God alone and as a result, honor the Constitution of the United States. And in time, I believe this will produce a new generation of leaders, even Supreme Court justices and congressmen, who have grown up in families and churches that have loved submission to God’s Word, and who have seen their fathers and mothers constrain their lives by the “Law of liberty”! This gives me great hope for the future of America.

Do you think the church paved the way for ObamaCare?

Do you think that a reformation of church and family life and the true conversion of its members is the answer for America?

 

Body Piercing and Tattooing

 "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ Himself? … Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, Who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. Therefore honour God with your body." 1 Corinthians 6:15, 19 – 20

"As Christians, we are called to be holy, set apart and different from the world, consecrated to God. "Everybody’s doing it" is hardly an argument to justify Christian involvement. They very fact that pagans practice body piercing should be a compelling enough argument against Christians being conformed to the world." "If something is prevalent and accepted in the world, that alone should be a compelling argument against Christians adopting their fashions and fads. We are called to be different. We are to honour God with our bodies."

 "A pagan view on the subject (of tattooing): "A tattoo is a complex signifier: it signals class; it signals sexuality; and it has specific content as a signifier: a depiction of an animal, a person, an abstract tribal design. The most usual motifs are signifiers of power and masculinity... But what the tattoo signals above all is the power one seizes over one's own body… To be branded or tattooed shows also that you have the requisite guts to join the group. It is not the most extreme or painful form of initiation, but it serves as a sign of pain and hence of resolution." (Crispen Sartwell)"

"It is very clear who are the Christians and who are the pagans in these mission fields. The pagans wear little or no clothing and they engage in a variety of body scarification, body piercing and/or tattoos. On the other hand, the Christians are easily identifiable – they wear clothes and they don’t engage in any body modification."

(I have seen MANY Christians with body piercings in various places on their bodies and tattoos. What should be the churches stance on this?  This is a very well written article, full of Scripture.  To read this entire article go to Frontline Fellowship.)