#4 - He is the Stability of Our Times (Part 2) - Teaching Your Kids to Handle Loss
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He is the Stability of Our Times (Part 1) - Keeping Your Focus
He is the Stability of Our Times (Part 2) - Teaching Your Kids to Handle Loss
He is the Stability of Our Times (Part 3) - The Unchanging Christ
FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript
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Teaching Your Kids to Handle Loss
Guests: Dennis and Barbara Rainey
From the series: Unshaken: He Is the Stability of Our Times (Day 2 of 3)
Air date: October 18, 2016
Bob: As a parent, do you want your children to grow up full of faith and courage? Then, your children need to see a mom and a dad who are full of faith and are courageous. Here’s Barbara Rainey.
Barbara: I think that that’s our call as parents—is to model a relationship with Jesus Christ that’s authentic, and strong, and rooted in the Rock. That’s what our kids will notice, and they will follow that. That’s what we want—we want our children to grow a faith too, but we have to remember that we are modeling that in what we say and in what we do because our kids are paying attention.
Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, October 18th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I’m Bob Lepine. In times of instability, are you modeling for your children what it looks like to walk by faith and be full of courage? We’ll talk more about that today. Stay with us.
1:00
And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us on the Tuesday edition. I have some counsel for those who might be trying to decide on a church home. If you should show up at a local church and the worship pastor says, “Let’s sing the great hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, and let’s sing verses one, two, and four,” you should leave that church immediately; and you should never consider joining that church.
Now, there are some hymns—first of all, I just—
Dennis: The one, two, and four—counsel of Bob Lepine. [Laughter] You heard it first here on FamilyLife Today.
Bob: There are some hymns where it’s fine to skip a verse if you want to; okay? I don’t prefer it—I like to sing all of the verses of all of the hymns—
Barbara: I do too. I agree
Bob: —but I’m also aware that Charles Wesley did write some hymns that had 20 verses to them. So, I get narrowing it down to the best ones. But when it comes to Martin Luther’s A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, this is based on Psalm 46.
2:00
You can’t go from verse two to verse four without skipping a big, important part in the middle.
Barbara: A big chunk of Psalm 46.
Bob: Exactly right. And Psalm 46 is that Psalm that says, “God is our Rock, our fortress, our ever present help in time of need.” I was thinking about the hymn and thinking about that Psalm—with what we’ve been talking about this week—because a fortress is a place that you go into to feel safe from an enemy that might be attacking you. And there are times in our culture today, where we look around and go, “It feels like I need a fortress just to rest for a little bit.”
Dennis: And fortunately, I’m married to a great woman who recognizes that, not only do we need a fortress—and reminds me of that in our marriage / in our family—
3:00
—but also pinned both Bob and me underneath her foot and said, “I’ve got to go into the studio and share with our listeners the need for stability today.” [Laughter]
Bob: Let me just say—it was not a hostile takeover.
Dennis: It wasn’t.
Barbara: Thank you.
Bob: We were very happy.
Barbara: Thank you.
Dennis: Semi—semi-hostile. [Laughter] But she is all about a new plaque that she has developed. Interestingly, when she created it, she said, “You know, we haven’t even talked about it on FamilyLife Today, and these things are flying out of the warehouse,” —it is Isaiah 33:6: “And He shall be the stability of your times.” Share why you have created this, Sweetheart.
Barbara: Well, I think everyone is aware that we live in a very uncertain world, and it’s not just in America; but it’s all around the world. People are feeling the sand underneath their feet shifting, and people don’t know quite what to do with economic changes. They don’t know what to do with political changes. They don’t know how to respond to changes in their family.
4:00
Life is an uncertain adventure. And when uncertainty comes or when instability is felt, we need to know what to do—we need to know how to respond and what to do next.
The idea of putting this verse on a plaque—in a really pretty frame too—is so that we can be reminded every day in our homes that Jesus is our stability: He is the One who never changes; He is the One who is the Rock; He is the One who is our fortress. So, no matter what’s happening personally or no matter what’s happening in our world around us, He will never change; and that’s what gives me my security.
Dennis: Uncertain adventures demand leadership. What Barbara’s talking about demands leadership of men and women in all walks of life—whether you live in an apartment, inner city, suburban America, smaller towns across the country. These are days when individual followers of Christ need to know who they are and why they are here.
5:00
Barbara and I were talking about just the whole need for leadership in the family in the midst of uncertain times. I was reminded of a story that I told in my book, Stepping Up. It’s a story about Sir Ernest Shackleton who, at the age of 40, recruited men to go with him to the South Pole, the Antarctic. He took 27 men on December 5, 1914. After 45 days at sea, ran into what was called heavy pack ice that trapped his ship in the pack ice and they couldn’t get loose. They tried for three weeks—couldn’t get out of the pack ice. I want to read you what leadership sounds like in uncertain times.
This was written by the ship surgeon, Alexander Macklin, in h...
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