Kid's TV

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.Proverbs 4:23

“Imagine inviting a stranger into your home for two or three hours every day to tell your children all about a perverse world where violence solves problems and all anyone needs to be happy is the right beer, a fast car, good looks, and lots of sex.” According to Dr. Victor Strasburger, chief of the division of adolescent medicine at the University of New Mexico’s School of Medicine, that is exactly what happens when parents use television as the baby-sitter and do not monitor what their children watch.

Recently, Dr. Strasburger addressed the American Academy of Pediatrics in Chicago. His visit was reported by Charles M. Madigan in the Chicago Tribune.

Dr. Strasburger said: “Ninety percent of the programming is detrimental to your child’s health, and it is a scary business. . . . America has the worst television for children and adolescents in the world . . . We have to instruct parents better about what the effects of television are and how they can mediate against those harmful effects.”

In addition to the poor content of most television shows, the amount of time that children spend in front of TV is also a great problem—23 to 27 hours a week by the average child. That is 23 to 27 hours that they are not outside playing, not reading books, not riding bicycles, not exercising, and so forth..

According to Strasburger, for many years the television networks and parents have been blaming each other. But both are at fault, and both can make changes. Obviously, the television networks can produce better shows (the pediatricians have recommended that every network provide at least one hour of quality children’s educational programming a day).

But parents should also get involved. Instead of using the television as a convenient baby-sitter, they should get involved with their kids, playing with them and directing them into creative uses of their free time. Parents should monitor the shows their kids watch. And they should have the courage to change channels or turn the TV off when something inappropriate, offensive, or wrong comes on. They could even put the entire family on a TV diet, limiting viewing to a few hours a week.

I know parents who do not own a television, and their children seem to be getting along fine. I know others who have refused to subscribe to cable because they don’t want MTV in their house and they figure they already have enough viewing options. I know a family who agreed to watch no television for a week. At first they suffered “withdrawal,” but soon they didn’t miss the tube at all.

Don’t invite that insidious stranger into your house. Consider pulling the plug.

The Secret of Peace

Don’t love money; be satisfied with what you have. For God has said, “I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.”Hebrews 13:5

Contentment lies not in what is mine but in whose I am. When I come into a relationship with God through his Son, Jesus Christ, I understand whose I am and what I have. Envy causes one to look horizontally—at what others have—so we are never satisfied. We pursue the god of money, thinking of what it can buy us. Contentment invites us to look vertically—at God. When we look in his direction, we know that he is enough.

Contentment is the secret of inward peace. It recalls the bare truth that we brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out of it, including our money. Life, in fact, is a journey from one moment of vulnerability to another. So we should travel light and live simply. The reality for most people is that we have enough—whatever enough is. We would be well advised to be content with what we have.

Being content with less stuff and not envying those with a lot is a process that will take more than a quick prayer or reading a book or hearing a sermon. It will require a dependence and satisfaction in God. He knows what is best and what is needed in our lives. We must trust him and not money.

Too often we take our eyes off God and put them on earthly pursuits, with money most often at the top of our lists. Money has an incredible power, much like a magnet and more like a god than most of us are willing to admit, to draw us away from those things that are eternal and life-filling.

Always be on your guard with money. As the writer of Hebrews stated, “Don’t love money.” The heart can only love one thing at a time. When we choose to love God, we will discover the marvelous benefit of contentment. And, more importantly, we will learn that money can never satisfy the heart. Keep your focus, therefore, on God. He is enough.

The Secret of Peace

Don’t love money; be satisfied with what you have. For God has said, “I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.”Hebrews 13:5

Contentment lies not in what is mine but in whose I am. When I come into a relationship with God through his Son, Jesus Christ, I understand whose I am and what I have. Envy causes one to look horizontally—at what others have—so we are never satisfied. We pursue the god of money, thinking of what it can buy us. Contentment invites us to look vertically—at God. When we look in his direction, we know that he is enough.
Contentment is the secret of inward peace. It recalls the bare truth that we brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out of it, including our money. Life, in fact, is a journey from one moment of vulnerability to another. So we should travel light and live simply. The reality for most people is that we have enough—whatever enough is. We would be well advised to be content with what we have.
Being content with less stuff and not envying those with a lot is a process that will take more than a quick prayer or reading a book or hearing a sermon. It will require a dependence and satisfaction in God. He knows what is best and what is needed in our lives. We must trust him and not money.
Too often we take our eyes off God and put them on earthly pursuits, with money most often at the top of our lists. Money has an incredible power, much like a magnet and more like a god than most of us are willing to admit, to draw us away from those things that are eternal and life-filling.
Always be on your guard with money. As the writer of Hebrews stated, “Don’t love money.” The heart can only love one thing at a time. When we choose to love God, we will discover the marvelous benefit of contentment. And, more importantly, we will learn that money can never satisfy the heart. Keep your focus, therefore, on God. He is enough.

Overrated and Undervalued

Love wisdom like a sister; make insight a beloved member of your family. Let them protect you from an affair with an immoral woman, from listening to the flattery of a promiscuous woman.
Proverbs 7:4-5



Recently, Time magazine discussed the ongoing problem of teenage pregnancy. It has, they concluded, reached epidemic proportions. The basic cause for this tremendous problem is the unusual combination of sexual pressure and sexual ignorance.

Children are influenced toward sexual activity as early as grade school. Of course, much of the blame for early sexual involvement can be attributed to the media, which feed us a continual stream of sexual escapades and perversion, implying that adultery and similar affairs are “normal.” Reports Time, “Social workers are almost unanimous in citing the influence of the popular media—television, rock music, videos, movies—in propelling the trend toward precocious sexuality. One survey shows that in the course of a year, the average viewer sees more than 9,000 scenes of suggested sexual intercourse or innuendo on prime-time.” But Time continues to say, “For all their early experimentation with sex, their immersion in heavy breathing rock music and the erotic fantasies on MTV, one thing about American teenagers has not changed: they are in many ways just as ignorant about the scientific facts of reproduction as they were in the days when Doris Day, not Madonna, was their idol.”

Through its obsession with sex, our culture has cheapened sex. Because it is the all-consuming passion of our society, freely available and encouraged, sex is lowered to the level of just another appetite that must be satisfied. In the meantime, teenage girls by the thousands are pregnant, and they’re having babies or killing them through abortion. Sex is not just good feeling; it is God’s way of renewing the species . . . of producing more human beings. Sex should be understood, cared for, and valued.

In America, however, sex is overrated and undervalued. Of course, the usual secular answer to this dilemma is to “protect” ourselves from impregnating or to kill the unwanted fetus when pregnancy occurs. “Let’s teach them about birth control and abortion,” the loud voices in society say. But this is a “Band-Aid” approach at best and a heinous sin at worst.

The only real answer lies in raising high the value of human life and of human beings. Women are not “play things” to be used and cast aside, and babies are not toy dolls to discard when we tire of them. When a teenage girl has a baby, at least two precious lives are at stake.

As Christians, let us become vocal in our stand in society . . . through letters to the editor, to our congressmen, and to the networks. Let us become active with our money, boycotting products and businesses that profit from pornography (including video stores). And let us take the lead in sex education, teaching our children about the God-given sex drive, its purposes, and its responsible use under his control and guidelines.

I look forward to worshipping with you as we join together to go before our God, who has already won the victory.

Coram Deo, Trev

We Are Being Watched

People with integrity walk safely, but those who follow crooked paths will slip and fall.Proverbs 10:9

Integrity is a high standard of living based on a personal code of morality that doesn’t succumb to the whim of the moment or the dictates of the majority. Integrity is to personal character what health is to the body or 20/20 vision is to the eyes. People of integrity are whole; their lives are put together. People with integrity have nothing to hide and nothing to fear. Their lives are open books. They say to a watching world, “Go ahead and look. My behavior will match my beliefs. My walk will match my talk. My character will match my confession.”

Integrity is not reputation—what others think of us. It is not success—what we have accomplished. Integrity embodies the sum total of our being and our actions. It originates in who we are as believers in Jesus Christ—accepted, valued, capable, and forgiven—but it expresses itself in the way we live and behave, no matter whether we are in church on Sunday or at work on Monday or in a lonely hotel room on Tuesday or suffering in a hospital bed on Thursday.

Unfortunately, integrity is in short supply and seems to be diminishing everyday. All too frequently our integrity is discarded upon the altar of fame or fortune. Sadly, what we want to achieve is more important than what we are to be. Integrity is lost when we focus on expedience more than excellence, on progress more than purity, on riches more than righteousness.

People are watching. They watch to see if our behavior matches our belief, if our walk matches our talk, and if our character matches our confession. In a word, they watch to see if we have integrity.

How secure is your walk? Others are watching.

The Way of Cain

But these speak evil of whatever they do not know; and whatever they know naturally, like brute beasts, in these things they corrupt themselves. Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain. . . .

— Jude 1:10–11

A fisherman who filled a bucket with crabs to take to the market every day was asked why he never put a lid on his catch. Wouldn't the crabs climb out? The fisherman replied, "I don't need to put a lid on the bucket. As soon as one starts to climb out, the others reach up and pull him down."

People can be the same way. As long as we are all equal and on the same level, we can live with that. But as soon as someone starts doing a little better than the rest of us, we want to pull that person down.

The Bible warns of going "in the way of Cain." The way of Cain, simplified, is the way of hatred. And so often, hatred is rooted in envy.

Cain was the first son of Adam and Eve. But instead of growing up to be a godly man, he became a wicked man. He even turned out to be a murderer. When God accepted his brother Abel's sacrifice but rejected his, Cain was angry. His heart was filled with envy, which turned into hatred. And when Cain gave in to hatred, he ended up murdering his brother.

The way of Cain is to have a heart and life that is filled with jealousy, envy, and hatred. It is to reject all responsibility for your actions. It is also to lie to God about what you have done. The way of Cain leads to the curse that came upon Cain. That is why we want to make sure we don't harbor anger or bitterness.

If you are experiencing envy or hatred today, nip it in the bud. Don't allow it to continue.