Bonus: Your Home is an Embassy (Part 2) - World Avoiders or World Changers?

Barbara Rainey's Top 10 Interviews

Click Here to Listen to the other parts in the series
Your Home is an Embassy (Part 1) - On Mission, Your Assignment as a Couple
Your Home is an Embassy (Part 2) - World Avoiders or World Changers?
Your Home is an Embassy (Part 3) - My Home, God's Embassy
Your Home is an Embassy (Part 4) - A Christian's Mission
Your Home is an Embassy (Part 5) - A Home For Hospitality

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete.

World Avoiders or World Changers?

Guest: Dennis Rainey

From the series: Your Home Is an Embassy (Day 2 of 5)

Air date: August 23, 2016

______________________________________________________________________________

Bob: As a parent, should you be teaching your children to be world avoiders or world changers? Here’s Dennis Rainey.

Dennis: What if you could give them the concept of being on the offensive as they go to school / as they go to college? Instead of losing their faith—as they graduate from high school and never darkening the doors of a church—instead they’re on the offensive, not even thinking of losing their faith because they have a reason for why they believe. They’ve been trained by you helping open the Book and address some of the issues that we’re facing today that are thorny—thorny—issues.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, August 23rd. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. Are you winsomely engaging the culture around you, being salt and light in this world, and are you training your kids to do the same? We’ll explore that today. Stay with us.

1:00

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us on the Tuesday edition. You’re aware of the fact that some people / some married couples aren’t fully engaged around God’s assignment for them because they’re not sure what God’s agenda is or what their part to play in it is.

Dennis: I think a lot of couples, Bob, never get around to asking the question: “Why are we here? What’s our mission as a couple?” They may say, “You know, I’ve never been to seminary / I’ve not been trained by some of the great Bible teachers / Bible schools in America—so what do I have to say?” The answer is: “If you are a follower of Jesus Christ and you’re in the process of being discipled, you have stuff you can share with others at some level and impact them.” It may be a youth group.

You may start kind of like I did—

2:00

—I picked a group that I was well ahead of. I taught a sixth-grade Sunday school class. [Laughter] I taught it for 11 years, not realizing that they were educating me and preparing me, as a parent, to know how to direct our children as they moved into adolescence. You have no way of knowing how God wants to use you, long-haul, with the gifts and abilities He’s given to you.

Bob: You recently spoke to a whole group of couples. We had spent time with them, over the course of a week, encouraging them to strengthen their own marriage relationship / to forgive one another where there’d been offenses—really trying to build into what their marriage can and ought to be. You decided, after all of that pouring into them, it was time to light a fuse and let them loose; right?

3:00

Dennis: Jesus Christ did not go to the cross to turn families into holy huddles / into little Christian groups that sing Kumbaya around a fire. He put us here to build some fires, and to make a difference, and to do good in the culture. I don’t know what that is for you, but you need to be grappling with it—both as a man or a woman—but certainly as a couple as well.

I just want to say one thing, Bob, to a group of people that make this broadcast possible every day, here on FamilyLife Today—Legacy Partners who give / donors who give—thank you for standing with us. We’re short in terms of the number of donors we need to keep FamilyLife Today coming on strong on this station and hundreds of other stations, here in America, and hundreds of others around the world.

If you believe in marriage and family—and I suppose you do because you’re listening to this broadcast—and you believe that FamilyLife Today is providing help / biblical help and hope / biblical hope to people, then would you consider joining us?

4:00

Just pray, “Lord, would You want us, as a couple—or me, as a single person—to help this ministry stand strong in a culture of confusion?” I need your help right now. The last seven months have been slower than we anticipated, and we need to pick up some steam here as we finish the month of August and head into the new school year.

Bob: You can make a donation online at FamilyLifeToday.com, or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to make a donation over the phone. Again, we appreciate those of you who have been standing with us this year. If you’ve never made a donation to FamilyLife Today, we’d love to hear from you. FamilyLifeToday.com is the website where you can make an online donation, or call 1-800-FL-TODAY.

Alright; here’s Part Two of Dennis Rainey’s challenge to married couples to be a part of God’s agenda for planet earth.

[Recorded Message]

Dennis: So, what if you’re a little unclear about your mission?

5:00

Well, I have some tips for you. Just really quick, kind of in Gatling gun fashion, let me just give you some thoughts—that if you don’t know what your mission is—perhaps this might be of help.

First of all, really capturing your mission begins with surrender. You’ve heard every one of us, as speakers, speak about surrendering to Jesus Christ. It’s coming before the King and going: “You know what? I’m Yours. Tell me what You want me to do. Tell me where you want me to go. I will obey.”

Second thing, read what’s on the King’s heart—read the Book [the Bible]! This is God’s heart between two covers. This tells us what’s important here—this tells us what is valuable / what’s eternal.

Then Ephesians 2:10—know this—that He created you for good works: Ephesians 2 says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

6:0...