Messages From Heaven: Stop Overindulging Your Children!!

Messages From Heaven: Stop Overindulging Your Children!!: What do your children really need from you? Love, guidance, shelter, food, clothing, medical care, and an education. That’s it. Every...

Stop Overindulging Your Children!!

What do your children really need from you? Love, guidance, shelter, food, clothing, medical care, and an education.
That’s it.
Everything else is a want, a luxury: video games, iPods, cell phones, the latest fashion — whatever new item their friends have.
Today, far too many parents fall for the “nag factor.” They know their kids are bombarded by ads telling them to buy certain products and that many parents are buying those products for their children. They know the pressure that comes from their children’s peers, and so they buy their kids far more “stuff” than they can even use, all in the hope that their children will fit in and be accepted by their peers.
According to a recent survey of youth commissioned by the Center for a New American Dream, the average 12- to 17-year-old who asks a parent for products will ask nine times until the parents finally give in. For parents of tweens, the problem is particularly severe — more than 10 percent of 12- to 13-year-olds admit to asking their parents more than 50 times for products they’ve seen advertised. Kids have learned if they nag enough for long enough, parents will give in.
Parents, stop falling for the nag factor.

Refuse to Overindulge Your Kids.
Sadly, our self-absorbed society has told parents to help their kids feel good about themselves, that it’s the parents’ duty to make their children happy. But underneath it all, kids don’t need parents who make them happy. They need parents who will make them capable.
Dr. Connie Dawson, co-author of How Much Is Enough, writes:
“When parents give children too much stuff that costs money, do things for children that they can do for themselves, do not expect children to do chores, do not have good rules and let children run the family, parents are overindulging.”
Here are some other signs of overindulgence. As you read them, watch for your weak spot:
1. Giving them things or experiences that are not appropriate for their age or their interests:
- Allowing a five-year-old to dress like a pop star.
- Allowing a twelve-year-old to watch an R-rated movie.
- Removing curfew from a sixteen-year-old with a new driver’s license.
2. Giving things to meet the adult’s needs, not the child’s:
- A mom buying her daughter the trendiest clothes, because Mom believes it’s a reflection on her own style.
- A dad giving his son the “stand out” wheels at sixteen, so Dad’s friends — as well as his son’s friends — will think he’s “the man.
- A parent giving his or her children the best of the best in order to make the parent look successful.
3. Neglecting to teach children the life skills they need to survive in the “real” world beyond their home:
- Tying shoes and dressing four-year-olds who are perfectly capable of dressing themselves.
- Doing the laundry for teenagers who are more than capable and need to learn to do it for themselves.
I admit that I slipped into overindulgence in raising my sons in more than one area. It’s important to realize the harm this can do to our children. According to one study conducted in 2001, children who are overindulged are more likely to grow up to believe the following:
- It is difficult to be happy unless one looks good, is intelligent, rich, and creative.
- My happiness depends on most people I know liking me.
- If I fail partly, it is as bad as being a total failure.
- I can’t be happy if I miss out on many of the good things in life.
- Being alone leads to unhappiness.
- If someone disagrees with me, it probably indicates that the person doesn’t like me.
- My happiness depends more on other people than it depends on me.
- If I fail at my work, I consider myself a failure as a person.
So, for the sake of your children, stop overindulging them.
Instead, teach them the difference between a need and a want, and then make them work for their wants. For instance, rather than buying that new video game for your children, give them two options: Tell them they can place it on a wish list for a birthday or Christmas present, or they can do extra duties to earn the money to buy it themselves. If your children are willing to work for their “heart’s desire,” they’ll take better care of it, be more grateful for it, and think long and hard before turning a “want” into a “need” in the future.

Repairing the Damage of Overindulgence
Parents, you can begin to remedy the damage done by overindulgence by doing two things:
1. Help your kids cultivate patience.  The truth is parents often prevent their children from learning patience. We’ve gotten just as caught up in our fast-food society as anyone else. We’ve forgotten that real life problems aren’t solved in fifteen minutes, that it takes time to find solutions to everyday struggles. We’re the ones who try to speed things up for our kids.
So don’t be so quick to solve your children’s problems for them. A bit of a struggle is good for them.
2. Give children opportunities to develop responsibility and to feel valuable. Your children need your help if they are going to learn necessary life skills. They need you to give them regular chores or duties and to hold them accountable for taking care of those duties. In so doing, you will help your children become adults, not just grown-ups.
All children will at times engage in a power struggle when it comes to carrying out chores or duties. But if parents give in and don’t assign age-appropriate duties for their children, their kids will grow up to be irresponsible, which is heartbreaking for the parent and tragic for the children. No matter the age of the child, any duties you assign them should encompass these purposes:
- Helping your child learn life skills.
- Helping your child become a valuable member of the family.
- Helping your child become a valuable member of society.
By giving your children opportunities to help and serve each other within the family, you’re preparing them to take care of themselves and go out and serve society.
Now that I’ve asked you not to overindulge your kids with their wants, I want to encourage you to overindulge them with love, real love. Love that molds and shapes them into the young men and women they are meant to become. Patiently help them develop patience, and with persistence and persuasion give them age-appropriate responsibilities. As you do these things, you’ll be preparing their hearts and minds to accept the responsibilities God has planned for them.

Messages From Heaven: It's All About Him!!

Messages From Heaven: It's All About Him!!: A little girl noticed that her mom was getting really stressed out around Christmas. Everything was bothering her mom, and she was very ...

It's All About Him!!

A little girl noticed that her mom was getting really stressed out around Christmas. Everything was bothering her mom, and she was very irritable.
Evening came and the mom bathed the little girl, got her ready for bed, put her under the covers, and had her say her prayers. She would usually pray the Lord's Prayer, but on this particular evening, she amended it a little bit.
Her petition went something like this, "Father, forgive us our Christmases, as we forgive those who Christmas against us."
That is what happens when we lose focus of the real meaning of Christmas, isn't it? We get so caught up in the busyness of the season that sometimes we forget the wonder of it all: that deity took on humanity, that God became a man.
Scripture sums it up well in 2 Corinthians 8:9, which says, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich" (NKJV). Jesus literally went from the throne of heaven to a simple little cave or stable.
Can you imagine what must have gone through Mary's mind that day when the angel Gabriel appeared to her and told her she would be the mother of the Messiah? Her head must have been swimming. "What about Joseph? What are people going to say?"
But God had it all put together, because the time was just right in every way.
There was one small detail: the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, as Scripture prophesied (see Micah 5:2). But Mary and her husband-to-be Joseph lived in Nazareth. So the Lord touched a little man who was big in his own mind.
His name was Caesar, and at this particular time in history, he was the most powerful man on Earth. One day, Caesar gave a decree that all of the world should be taxed.
In reality, he was nothing more than a pawn in the hand of God. The Lord needed Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, so He moved events.
Mary and Joseph made the difficult journey to Bethlehem, which was especially perilous for a woman who was as far along in her pregnancy as Mary was. But they did make it, and there, the miraculous birth of Christ took place, just as Scripture said it would.
This little baby grew up quickly, and although we would love to know more about his boyhood, the Bible offers only a few details.
But we do read of one day in the synagogue in Nazareth when, as the custom was, the time had come for Jesus to read. He walked to the front of the synagogue, opened up the scroll, and began to read from Isaiah: "'The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord' " (Luke 4:18-19 NLT).
When He had finished, He sat down and said, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing" (verse 21). He had declared himself the Messiah. His public ministry had begun.
This One who was sent from God was always in perfect sync with the Father. While He spoke with the learned spiritual leaders, He always had time for the outcasts of society — people like the woman at the well and the tax collector, Zacchaeus. People like you. People like me.
His ministry on Earth was only a few years, and then He was crucified. You can be sure that as He hung there on the cross, where all of the sin of humanity was placed upon Him, that this was God's most painful moment.
But then it was finished. He rose again from the dead, and after a time, ascended back into heaven, promising to come back to this earth. And we eagerly await that day.
This Jesus who was born in a manger, who walked this earth, who was crucified, and who rose again, is not some mere historical figure, although He was that. He is alive, and He is still in the business of changing lives.
That is the reason He came: to put us in touch with God, to forgive us of all of our sins, and to give our lives purpose and meaning.

Messages From Heaven: The Danger of an Exaggerated End-Time Mentality!

Messages From Heaven: The Danger of an Exaggerated End-Time Mentality!: On a regular basis, whenever there are reports of moral collapse in our country or of wars and crises worldwide, someone will say to me, ...

The Danger of an Exaggerated End-Time Mentality!

On a regular basis, whenever there are reports of moral collapse in our country or of wars and crises worldwide, someone will say to me, "This is it! Jesus is about to return! Everything is coming down!"
Of course, according to one system of interpretation, that could be true and the Lord could return within the next few moments or years.
The problem I have is that I've heard Jesus is coming back any moment for more than 40 years.
Could it be that we have a wrong mentality about the end of the age? Could it be that we're missing something very important?
To be clear, I am not a preterist (meaning, that I don't believe most of the prophetic promises and events have already been fulfilled and that "the coming of Jesus" took place in the year 70 A.D. when the temple was destroyed), and I do look forward to the return of the Lord and our eternal union with Him (see 1 Cor. 15:50-55; 1 Thess. 4:13-18; 1 John 2:28-3:3).
And I am a classic premillennialist as opposed to a postmillennialist or amillennialist, although I am not a dispensational premillennialist—meaning I do not believe in a pre-trib rapture.
But the last thing I want to do is argue over these points, and I have worked with leaders around the world for decades without dividing over these issues. If you want to agree with me passionately or disagree with me passionately over eschatological details, have at it.
What I want to address here is a potentially dangerous mentality that breeds despair and hopelessness, that leads to capitulation and escapism, and that almost encourages believers to throw in the towel.
For example, in response to one of my articles about sex-change regret, someone commented, "More proof that the end is near. Right is wrong and wrong is right."
Someone else responded to my YouTube video on the apostasy of the PCUSA by saying, "The end is over the horizon...so near brother...more and more churches committing apostasy, it's ridiculous," while someone else wrote on Facebook, "We are witnessing the great falling away."
My problem, to repeat, is that I've heard this since I came to faith in late 1971, a time when the most influential, best-selling Christian book was Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth.
And while I have not held to a pre-trib rapture theology for more than 35 years, I appreciate the fact that my dispensationalist, pre-trib friends take the Bible seriously, that many of them have been great evangelists, that they recognize the importance of Israel today and that they really are looking forward to the return of Jesus (whereas lots of other believers hardly give it any thought).
But to say it again, I've heard that Jesus was coming back any second for more than 40 years, and every time something bad happens people are saying, "Armageddon is next!" or, "This is the final deception!"
What we do know is that so far, the end has not yet come, the harvest is still very ripe (and vast), there have been far worse times in human history than today (in recent memory, just think of World War II and the massive losses of life), and around the world the Spirit is being poured out mightily.
It is true that America today is in great moral and spiritual decline, but revival historians will tell you that we have had some very dark times before, and it was divine visitation that turned things around.
Where is it written that there will not be another, even greater awakening? Can you demonstrate to me conclusively from the Scriptures that God is finished with our nation and that no hope for revival remains?
It's interesting to note that over the centuries, even as early as the second century, Christian leaders were proclaiming that they were living in the last generation (or close to it), and so it's understandable that believers through the ages would have this perspective.
After all, we see the great suffering and sin of the human race, and if we love the Lord, we will live with at least some sense of urgency: there are so many lost, hurting people to reach and we have only one lifetime to touch them with the good news.
And all of us should long for the Lord's appearing (see 2 Tim. 4:8). In fact, if we're so at home in this world that we don't long for His coming, we need to examine our hearts.
But to repeat once more, the problem is with our mentality, with the idea that, every time there's an example of apostasy we say, "This is the great falling away!", or every time we see further moral collapse in our society, we say, "We're out of here any minute!"
Many believers had that attitude in the '60s and '70s, and rather than recognize that a great potential harvest was here, they thought, "The whole world is going mad!" And rather than stand against the flood tide of immorality that swept through our culture, all too many believers were waiting to be taken out, leaving it to the ungodly to write their revolution into law. We have been paying the price ever since.
As I understand it, the Scriptures indicate that the last days began with the death and resurrection of Jesus and will continue until the end of this age (see, for example, Acts 2:17-20; 2 Tim. 3:1-6; 1 John 2:18).
This means that we have been living in a transition age for almost 2,000 years, a time of already but not yet, a time when the kingdom of God has broken in and is expanding but will not reach its complete manifestation until Jesus returns, a time of great outpouring and a time of great falling away, in short, a time of parallel extremes.
And I expect those extremes to get more and more extreme the closer we get to the end. (Again, I'm quite aware of the different interpretations that can be put on these passages, so I'll say it again: I'm not here to divide over theology or to debate interpretations. I'm here to make a practical point.)
So I encourage you to remember that we are in the age of the Spirit's outpouring, the age of the harvest, that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to the Lord Jesus, that we are overcomers and more than conquerors in Him, that He who lives within us is greater than he who lives in the world, that our God sits enthroned in the heavens, and that, in the end, His ways will triumph over the entire earth.
That's why, no matter how bleak things look, my eyes are fixed on the Lord, and in Him, I am full of hope, confidence and vision. And should the day come when our strategy needs to change, I trust that our heavenly Commander in Chief will make that plain.
So, forward until He comes!