Your Family Series

Video Clip after worship: The Croods

How many have had similar road trips with your families. You have to love our families!

T.S- Today is Mother’s Day – Happy Mother’s Day to all of you moms – we want to honor both the natural and the spiritual moms that are here today! You both are essential to Kingdom of God and to the family unit.

Series: Beyond the Benjamin’s

Hold $100.00 Bill up again and then the Hershey Bar from last week to remind them of what we talked about last week.

Scripture Texts – 2 of Jesus’ Parables:

Luke 12:13-21: The parable of the rich fool

Matthew 25:14-30: The parable of the talents

Summary of the message

 Are you using the Benjamin’s God has given you for the Kingdom of Heaven or just for yourself?

 God will give you more if you give it away for Him and His Kingdom. If you hoard it you will lose it all!

 We also learned the story of Milton’s Hershey’s eternal legacy from Hershey Pa.

Sermon 2: Your Family!

Thesis: Life is not about the money you accumulate or even make but it’s about your investment in your family and your willingness to sacrifice for them. Success as God see’s it is all related in how you help your family members grow mentally, physically and spiritually.

Introduction:

Everything that God does is modeled on family. It is in this structure that spiritual and natural growth and spiritual health flourish. We all need mothers and fathers as well as spiritual mothers and fathers to speak into our lives. We need brothers and sister to run beside us and interact with us. We need brothers and sisters to learn how to socialize, how to share, how to play fair and even fight fair. We all need children growing up around us to show us the value of investing in other people’s lives and to see what children see and value. We need children running around us so we can see their playful attitudes, their humor and also their potential.

Illustration of Kids – you have to love them: From Paul Harvey

We should be like the 3-year-old boy (that Paul Harvey told about) who went to the grocery store with his mother. Before they entered the grocery store she said to him, "Now you’re not going to get any chocolate chip cookies, so don’t even ask."She put him up in the cart & he sat in the little child’s seat while she wheeled down the aisles. He was doing just fine until they came to the cookie section. He saw the chocolate chip cookies & he stood up in the seat & said, “Mom, can I have some chocolate chip cookies?” She said, “I told you not even to ask. You’re not going to get any at all.” So he sat back down. They continued down the aisles, but in their search for certain items they ended up back in the cookie aisle. “Mom, can I please have some chocolate chip cookies?” She said, “I told you that you can’t have any. Now sit down & be quiet.” Finally, they were approaching the checkout lane. The little boy sensed that this may be his last chance. So just before they got to the line, he stood up on the seat of the cart & shouted in his loudest voice, “In the name of Jesus, may I have some chocolate chip cookies?” And everybody round about just laughed. Some even applauded. And, due to the generosity of the other shoppers, the little boy & his mother left with 23 boxes of chocolate chip cookies. We ought always to pray and not give up…SOURCE: Jeff Strite in "The Power Of Persistent Prayer" on www.sermoncentral.com.

We need to help our natural and spiritual kids to mature in God as well as in their natural gifts and talents. All parents want their children to do more than they did and they want them to achieve their God given dreams and goals. It’s our job to help them do that!

But sadly many families in America are experiencing “Family Shock” today due to the changing of moral values which are spiraling downwards - technological changes which are impacting the family and there is also a rapid climate of cultural change which is leading us as a nation down the path of depravity and it is swelling up all around us. It is beating at our doors, ravishing the public schools and entering our homes through things like media sources. It’s chipping away at Biblical family values, challenging them, trying to break them off of the families of America.

All families today have been shocked, taken back with the explosion of shifting values, and the relentless media attack on Biblical values, the attempt by society to redefine the nuclear family, we have information overload, waves of novelty trends that come and go, and also for some their rises a fear of the future.