Saturday, April 4, 2020, 9:10 am | Randy Thomasson
Do you realize how, right now, you can powerfully influence your children’s or grandchildren’s minds and lives? You can give them what the government schools refuse to teach — the truth about life!
With today’s schools and media bombarding kids with lies about their origins, their bodies, and their purpose, you can equip kids with the “what” and “why” of our very existence.
Just imagine the benefits of young people learning how to spot the lies in our culture.
Imagine the conversations they could have, once bolstered with rock-solid facts.
And imagine how children’s eventual questions can be answered now. Questions like, “Who am I?” “Where did I come from?” “Why am I here?” and “Where am I going?”
To equip you for greatness, SaveCalifornia.com has found powerful, free videos for you to watch with your children or grandchildren. Watch and talk about them!
The Privileged Planet (by Illustra Media, based on the book with the same title by Jay Richards and Guillermo Gonzalez)
Intelligent Design 3.0 (Stephen Meyer and Doug Axe discuss the advances of Intelligent Design Theory and the faltering Neo-Darwinian mechanisms behind creative change.
Stephen Meyer’s presentation on God and the Origin of the Universe “What if the discoveries of science actually lend support to belief in God?”
The Case for Christ for Kids by Lee Strobel “Equip your 8- to 12-year-olds to defend their faith in an unbelieving world”
“The controversy between Darwinism and intelligent design has the characteristics of major scientific revolutions in the past. Darwinists are losing power because they treat with contempt the very people on whom they depend the most: American taxpayers. The outcome of this scientific revolution will be decided by young people who have the courage to question dogmatism and follow the evidence wherever it leads.” Jonathan Wells, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design
Wednesday, April 1, 2020, 3:24 pm | Randy Thomasson
When schools closed and sent children home for months, most parents’ expectations were shattered and their daily lives turned upside down.
Yet if you’ve also been sent home from your job, you have a tremendous opportunity to make homeschooling wonderful for your children and your entire family. The keys are love and faith and adjusting your expectations. When you grasp the awesome virtues of homeschooling, you’ll appreciate how it can empower your kids’ minds, souls, and lives.
SaveCalifornia.com has found 3 excellent messages to encourage you and your friends. These wise teachers can help you to actually enjoy homeschooling!
1. We really like The Home School Mom, who recommends, in light of the virus scare closing schools and sending children home,“Have grace with yourself and your kids—this is unprecedented in modern history, and it’s hard on everyone. Keeping expectations realistic will help you to prevent feelings of frustration and failure. We are seeing lots of parents asking about how to homeschool or help their children learn at home. These resources can help with scheduling, keeping kids engaged, and staying sane during social distancing. Be sure to check out our complete household planner and unit study downloads!”
2. And don’t miss Love & Logic, which has such practical wisdom for parents with children at home right now:“…the more routines the class has, the fewer discipline problems they will have to deal with. Kids feel safer, calmer and are more focused, and as a result there is more time spent on learning and less time spent dealing with problems.Do yourself a favor during these trying times. Establish and maintain routines for the home.” Read the full article of master teacher Jim Fay of Love & Logic
3. Most importantly, this is your big opportunity to touch your children’s hearts. Here’s profound insight from parenting expert and pediatrician Meg Meeker:
Consider this: the time you are spending at home with your child is an opportunity to positively influence their development. Research has proven spending consistent time with parents is crucial to a child’s developing identity. Here’s why. When a child is young, she scours her mother and father’s faces for clues about life and herself. She reads their body language, their mannerisms, their inflections, and she listens to their tone of voice in order to find out some very important things. She needs to know what they believe about her. Even as young as a year old, your child watches you to see if you are in a good mood or a bad mood. If you are in a good mood, he can go play because life is good. If you are angry or upset, he is rattled and can’t settle easily. As he grows older, he watches you more fervently. He wonders, Do you like being with him? Do you think that he is stupid or smart? Is he good? Does he matter? Do you like to hug and kiss him?
When he receives answers, then he begins to form a mental image of himself: he is a good, smart boy who is huggable, or he is a nuisance and is never worth being seen because no one pays attention.
Children shape an image of themselves by the messages we send them and then they internalize those messages. They become part of who they are.
Over time, if they repeatedly learn that we are happy to see them, they feel higher value. If we ignore them and talk on our phones whenever they are in the room, they wonder whether or not they are worth being with. In addition, children mimic our behaviors to see if they like them. If snarling makes people pay attention, they will try it. If saying “I’m sorry” makes Mom feel better, then the kids, too, will try it.
My challenge for all of you is to make your children feel seen and loved during this tough time.
“These words I am commanding you today must be kept in mind, and you must teach them to your children and speak of them as you sit in your house, as you walk along the road, as you lie down, and as you get up.” Deuteronomy 6:6-7 and other Bible verses about raising children
Monday, January 20, 2020, 12:41 pm | Randy Thomasson
Do you see people’s souls?
As a want-to-be disciple of Jesus Christ, I want to see people’s souls, to motivate me to love them more deeply.
But I also want to see people’s souls because I don’t want to be distracted by false identities.
Because ultimately, we’re all souls with skin on. And on Judgment Day, every human being will be in one of two groups — saved or lost, forgiven or condemned.
This is why I’m attracted to the 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech of Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, in part, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” How Christian this practical, moral perspective is!
Yet in my generation, I’ve heard even more profound wisdom from biblical Christian pastor E.V. Hill of Los Angeles, who, during the 1992 L.A. riots, was a guest on the Christian-format radio show I was producing at the time. (Back in 1957, Hill and MLK were two of seven pastors who formed the anti-segregation Southern Christian Leadership Conference.)
While portions of Los Angeles and Long Beach were burning — a criminal response to white police officers being acquitted of using excessive force against Rodney King, who was resisting arrest — Hill uttered these wise words on the air:
“I don’t understand the verdict, but this I know — I know who I am: First, I’m a Christian. Second, I’m an American. Third, I’m a man. Fourth, I’m a black man.”
E.V. Hill got it right.He knew his main identity must be in Christ, and he moved race to the back of the line, where it belongs. For in the New Testament, true Christians have a spiritual identity that’s literally out of this world:
For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3:26-29)
This is why true Christians should think of themselves as “in Christ” and avoid competing identities. Likewise, when asking the introspective question, “Who am I?”, the correct Christian answer is “I’m a saint,” or “I’m a child of the King,” or “I’m a sinner saved by grace,” or “I’m a happy slave of Jesus Christ.”
This means my primary identity is:
not in my race, ethnicity, or nationality not in my sex not in my age not in my performance not in my looks not in my possessions not in my status and not dependent on people liking me
I can tell you, I’m not totally there yet. Because developing my identity in Christ requires me to daily “die to myself” and to replace the lies I’ve believed with the truth of the Bible, which tells me the truth about God, the truth about myself, and the truth about the devil. The pursuit of a Christian identity is the quest for true mental health. Real peace, real security, real significance, real knowledge, real love, and real life are its satisfying fruits.
As for a non-Christian in the United States of America, his or her main identity should be as an American. For if citizens of a particular nation do not identify with their own country first, it’s all to easy for them to become unreliable in matters of faith, duty, and love.
“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all … The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic … There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.” Theodore Roosevelt, 26th U.S. President (1901-1909), in 1915
“I want to say — I cannot say too often — any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready. If I can catch any man with a hyphen in this great contest I will know that I have got an enemy of the Republic.” Woodrow Wilson, 28th U.S. President (1913-1921), in 1919
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