Today's sermon = ICKY ICKY ICKY

[ilovewest]

The entire thing was about how to discipline your child, just like God disciplines us.....punitively, of course! If we truly love our children we will use words to warn them first, but then if they don't listen, we need to break out the big guns... He told the story of David to illustrate this: He wanted Bathsheba, God let him know that wasn't right in a gentle way. But then he had Uriah essentially murdered and then took her as his wife, so then God was all, 'BOOM! now your baby has to die! Too bad so sad!' because His love for David was so great and God could not bear to let David be so unholy. And then after this, David became the man God wanted Him to be and had 'a heart like His'. And don't we all want children who have hearts like God's? Don't we all want them to be holy? Then we need to remember that God parents us with a 'holy whip' when we fail to hear his plainly spoken instruction to us. If we aren't acting in the same manner with our children, then we are remiss as parents and our children will suffer.

Then the old 'the parent who doesn't (physically) discipline their child hates him/her', 'backed up' by two or three verses which I was too upset to read up on the screen. And then the whole 'Now I'm not going to tell you to spank your child or not spank your child.... but I *do* spank mine .....You do as you see fit' thing. So, in other words, ' GODLY PARENTS HIT THEIR CHILDREN.'

He did encourage the use of 'words' to move our children towards right behavior in the beginning stages, but to not be afraid to administer discipline when our words aren't heeded. And several times he pleaded with us to go look at focusonthefamily.com because they have 'amazing resources!' on spanking and parenting in a Godly way.

It was the laziest, most shallow, inaccurate, and angering sermon I've ever heard. I am so upset.... we just started attending there about a month ago and DS1 is absolutely loving it, and really learning so much in Children's Church there; really good stuff. We are really seeing God work in his little heart and the church has been such a blessing thus far. This was the first time we had heard the Associate Pastor preach this morning; the two other men we've heard preach there a few times have been great. They definitely have NOT pointed to a theology the likes of what we heard this morning. And really, I understand that there are people who think like this in almost every church, and that we're not likely to find a place where everyone parents like we strive to. But to declare this kind of parenting from the pulpit, essentially declaring this as this church's official position on parenting? This just makes me incredibly upset. DH is so disappointed too....we really thought we'd landed at the right place finally.

Is it even worth it to write a letter? To go talk to them? It's a larger church, and we've been there about a month.Thoughts, ladies?