Frank Gil

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5 Ways to Make Your Kids Hate Church

From The Resurgence

1. Make sure your faith is only something you live out in public

 Go to church… at least most of the time. Make sure you agree with what you hear the preacher say, and affirm on the way home what was said especially when it has to do with your kids obeying, but let it stop there. Don’t read your bible at home. The pastor will say everything you need to hear on Sundays. Don’t engage your children in questions they have concerning Jesus and God. Live like you want to live during the week so that your kids can see that duplicity is ok.

2. Pray only in front of people

The only times you need to pray are when your family is over, Holiday meals, when someone is sick, and when you want something. Besides that, don’t bother. Your kids will see you pray when other people are watching, no need to do it with them in private.

3. Focus on your morals

Make sure you insist your kids be honest with you. Let them know it is the right thing for them to do, but then feel free to lie in your own life and disregard the need to tell them and others the truth. Get very angry with your children when they say words that are “naughty” and “bad”, but post, read, watch, and say whatever you want on TV, Facebook, and Twitter. Make sure you focus on being a good person. Be ambiguous about what this means.

4. Give financially as long as it doesn’t impede your needs

Make a big deal out of giving at church. Stress the need to your children the value of tithing, while not giving sacrificially yourself. Allow them to see you spend a ton of money on what you want, while negating your command from scripture to give sacrificially.

5. Make church community a priority. As long as there is nothing else you want to do

Hey, you are a church going family, right? I mean, that’s what you tell your friends and family anyways. Make sure you attend on Sundays. As long as you didn’t stay up too late Saturday night. Or your family isn’t having a big bar-b-que. Or the big game isn’t on. Or this week you just don’t feel like it. Or… I mean, you are church going family so what’s the big deal?

Read through the Bible

My pastor on Sunday gave a sermon encouraging the congregation to read their Bibles. He explained that a true sign of spiritual maturity are those who do not just read the Bible to get through it, but mediate on it and see what the Lord is trying to say to them. I want to share with you all a tool I have used to read through the entire Bible in a nice, simple, and structured way. This past Sunday I began to use this tool over again as my daily devotional in reading and meditating on his word everyday.

When I first got my ESV Study Bible I freaked out by how useful it was. I literally used it for every class in Bible College and it became my first reference to understanding difficult passages. In the back of the Study Bible is a reading plan that I thought was really well laid out and easy to follow. There are four readings for each day. These readings are divided into four main sections: Psalms and Wisdom Literature; Pentateuch and the History of Israel; Chronicles and Prophets; and Gospels and Epistles.

The ESV folks have created a pdf version that you can print off and use with your own personal Bible.

If you are like me and love technology, you may use your iPhone, iTouch, iPad, Blackberry, or Droid to read your Bible. Well I have found the perfect app for you!

YouVersion has created a Bible app that is probably the most successful and used Bible app out there! With the ability to have any number of translations all in a free app is really wonderful! They have a tab in their app that looks like a little calendar that lets you choose from all kinds of different reading plans. From topical plans to reading the whole Bible in one-year plans. The thing that got me hooked was that they had the ESV Reading Plan among their various reading plans! To use this you need to create an account with YouVersion. Trust me! If you have the app, you know it will be worth it.

Disclaimer: You have to do what you can for your own walk with the Lord. For some, reading the whole Bible in a year might be too fast! I know it was for me the first time I did it. I barely retained any of it. So my suggestion to you is, check out all the different reading plans that are out their. Do some research! See what works for you. Ask your pastor and see what he thinks. Send me an email and I can even suggest a few others. The point is, get in the Word. You wont grow if you are not in it daily!