Episode Summary: Is our mission today, as Christians living in America, to recover America as a Christian nation? As we process what happened last weekend and go back to the last election and the storming of the Capitol, Christians are divided. Eschewing passivity, many believers feel impelled to speak up on the social media to fight a movement rooted in ungodliness, which they see shaping our culture. They are appalled that younger Christian leaders either don’t seem to see this happening or seem to lack the courage to speak up about it. Other believers are horrified at the views they hear expressed by Christians on social media, which exhibit a kind of “Christian Nationalism” and exhibit Christians to be combative towards those with whom they disagree, violating Christ’s clear command, love your neighbor, not to mention, love your enemy. This episode continues our series Winning Spiritual Battles Because We Use Our Spiritual Weapons by examining how to encircle ourselves with the belt of God’s truth, which must be the starting point for sharing that truth in the culture. Then we consider how to be persuasive as salt and light in the culture, and in particular the dangers of being right, but sharing truth in a HARMFUL, rather than a COMPELLING way.  

For Further Prayerful Thought: 

1. Which aspect of fastening the belt of truth around ourselves stood out to you?
2. Why is it important in today’s word to surround our loved ones with truth?
3. How does Jesus’ teaching not to give holy things to dogs or throw our pearls before swine resonate with your experience? Are there times when you have thought that a person is not spiritually in a place to hear this truth?
4. How do Paul and Barnabas follow this teaching from Jesus in Acts 13:44-49. What Thoughts do you have about trying to determine is a potential hearer of biblical truth is in a place to value it or not?

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Summary: This episode continues the series, Winning Spiritual Battles Because We Use Our Spiritual Weapons. Every guy who reads this blog would stand at the door of his house with a shotgun to protect his family physically. But most Christian men feel inept and inadequate at fighting to protect them, spiritually. As we saw last week, Jesus told his disciples the ultimate weapon for defeating Satan is prayer. But if we are going to use this weapon effectively in spiritual battle, we need to understand it. This episode continues our study of what Jesus taught are the six basic parts of effective prayer, in Matt 6:9-13.

For Further Prayerful Thought: 

1. What would you say to a believer who said he thought that reciting the Lord’s prayer at the end of his daily bible reading is what Jesus taught?
2. What struck you about Jesus teaching us to tell our heavenly father what our practical needs are? Have you ever thought about keeping a prayer journal?
3. Why does it make sense that one of the six prayer concerns we should have is looking at past events to see if there is unconfessed guilt or resentment towards another?
4. How can you be more watchful of temptation coming into your life? 

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Summary: This episode begins the series, Winning Spiritual Battles Because We Use Our Spiritual Weapons. As we seek to run well the race marked out for us in 2021, i.e. advance the righteous reign of King Jesus in our own lives, God has ordained one, primary offensive weapon that overthrows the kingdom of darkness:  PRAYER. Jesus said to Peter, “Satan has demanded to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you “(Luke 22:31-32). One veteran missionary writes, There is nothing on earth that Satan so fears as prayer. He cannot triumph over prevailing prayer. 

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Episode Summary. One of the words used to describe the worldview of the culture in which we all swim is secularism, which describes a lifestyle of preoccupation with the visible, material world to the neglect of the world of the spiritual. The result of swimming in this polluted water has been, in my view, a largescale disregard of the fourth commandment by Christians and consequent loss of its benefits. The lost benefits are understanding the eternal value of work and understanding the need to regularly shut out the secular world to be renewed and reconnected to the Spiritual Being who created us. This episode seeks to recover what is often lost by the neglect pf the fourth commandment.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. What most stood out to you in this episode about the fourth commandment?
2. How would you respond to someone who said, “Keeping the Sabbath is being legalistic, and the church is not Israel?”
3. What components of a biblical view of work seem most important to you.
4. It’s been said that the more important your work is, the more important it is to regularly step away from it and renew. How might this principle apply to serving Christ?

Link to Master Plan Objectives for Instilling Biblical Moral Values

Link to New City Catechism Curriculum.

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Episode Summary. Fatherhood champion Anthony Bradley’s research proves what Scripture teaches us about the role God has assigned to fathers in creation: fathers are the most important men in any community, anywhere, everywhere, ever. Their presence, involvement, and guidance are pivotal for the emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being of their children. This is the fourth episode in our June series, Fathers Giving the Moral Foundation to Their Children That the Culture Won’t.  It recognizes that the third commandment, You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain involves much more than a prohibition against cussing. It goes to the very heart of our love for Christ and how God says that love should be shown in the way we treat his name. 

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. It seems like having a plan for building a strong moral foundation into our children with the help of the Holy Spirit is OBVIOUS. Why do you think so many Christian fathers don’t have one? How can you help that change?
2. What thoughts stood out to you about teaching children to not misuse God’s name?
3. What thoughts stood out to you about beginning our prayer by asking that God’s name would be hallowed? Why might Jesus say to start this way?
4. How can the thought that Christ has given us his name, fire a hotter passion to please him? 

Link to Master Plan Objectives for Instilling Biblical Moral Values

Link to New City Catechism Curriculum.

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On October 7, 2023, more than 3000 members of the radical Muslin extremist group Hamas surged across the Israeli border crying “Allahu Akbar” “God is good” raping women, beheading children, torturing, mutilating and murdering more than a thousand people, most of them civilians conducting the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. How would you respond to the trembling words of a seven-year-old who said, “Daddy, these bad men said God told them to do those awful things. How can this be?” This episode seeks to answer this question by understanding what the second commandment teaches.

For Further Prayerful Thought

1. How would you answer a new believer who said to you, “I believe Jesus is the Son of God, the risen Lamb slain to take away my sin, but why are there so many other religions in the world?”
2. Why can’t a chewing gum replica of the Alps convey their glory? Do you agree that a chewing gum replica of the Alps might be worse than no physical image? Why?
3. Although man was created in God’s image, our fall into sin means that we suppress the truth of who God is, especially our accountability to him, and remake God as OUR IMAGE—the way we want him to be, because we are created to worship. (Atheists usually build their life around a false ideology, which functions like a God.) How do you see this biblical truth making sense in what you observe about the world?

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Episode Summary. Unlike adherents to multi-culturalism, Christians realize that God chose to reveal his moral law to one nation, Israel, in a rather spectacular manner. God himself wrote his summary of his moral law on two stone tablets using his own finger (Dt 5:22) telling his people how they can most please him. There is no other text of the Bible written directly by the finger of God. The two tablets were called the Ten Words, the decalogue, and kept in the Ark of the Covenant. Foty years later, In Deuteronomy 5, Moses repeated The Ten Commandments for the next generation. This episode examines how to apply the first commandment as the leaders of our homes and provides some thoughts about teaching it to our kids, using the New City Catechism.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. In the opening overview observations, which one stood out most to you?
2. Why do spiritual leaders have to fight a lifelong battle to keep reminding those under their care that God’s word is the path of life? Why is that so hard for us to remember, in moments of temptation?
3. What do you find most helpful in Tim Keller’s definition of an idol as: “anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.” Which potential idols do you need to be wary of? 

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Episode Summary. With the average teen spending over 50 hours a week on his or her phone, it is undeniable that social media is catechizing our children, not the church. This episode seeks to recapture the urgency of the fathers role to raise up his children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. It supplies a master plan that every guy can adapt for his own and begins to show how the New City Catechism can be used and be an effective plan for countering many of the cultural falsehoods impacting our kids.

Master Plan: Instilling Biblical/Moral Values:  For some reason the link may not work, so here is the Website Page address:

https://www.forgingbonds.org/assets/images/general/Master_Plan_Instilling_Biblical_Moral_Values_June_2_2024_1.pdf 

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. Why do you think most Christian fathers are not intentional about formulating a plan to teach their children and grandchildren the ways of the Lord and Abraham was to do? 
2. How would you persuade a Christian friend that he needs to have a master pan for what he is going to teach his sons and daughters?
3. So far, what have you most liked about the New City Catechism and the curriculum’ helps?

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Episode Summary. This episode shows how the biblical worldview of authority laid out for us in I Timothy chapters 2 and 3 is on a collision course with the worldviews of critical theory, egalitarianism, and multiculturalism at almost every point.

 For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. What do you think are the most important elements of a 30,000-foot overview of the Bible’s view of authority?
2. Paul encouraged Timothy to pray that civil government leaders accomplish four things. Which ones stood out most to you?
3. How would you contrast the Bible’s high view of authority with the view of critical theory and egalitarianism’s views of authority?

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Episode Summary. There is strong evidence that Christians today are oblivious to much of the spiritual battle that Scripture repeatedly urges us to fight. In fact, in Paul spiritual leadership charge to Timothy, he commands, “fight the good fight.” It is impossible to understand why Paul urges spiritual leaders to do this or understand what the battlefield even is without understanding that we live in an age in which Christ is taking back Adam’s lost kingdom, earth, from Satan, sin, and death to reestablish righteousness and health over Adam's kingdom. This episode seeks to give a clear look at this battle, so we know how to fight it.

 For Further Prayerful Thought: 

1. When seeking to understand what fighting the good fight means, why might it be valuable to recognize that we are engaged in a war between two kingdoms?
2. How does understanding the extent of the damage done to Adam’s posterity and kingdom by sin and its consequences help us better understand how to implement our orders to FIGHT?
3. In the fight against wrong desires, thinking, attitudes, behaviors, the fight to implement Christ’s agenda in every sphere of our lives, and the fight to be salt and light, influencing culture towards righteousness and truth—which do you feel you are most alert to? Which do you need to consider more carefully? 

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