{"id":584,"date":"2015-05-26T21:42:51","date_gmt":"2015-05-26T21:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theprodigalpig.com\/?p=584"},"modified":"2015-05-08T17:53:33","modified_gmt":"2015-05-08T17:53:33","slug":"grandchildren","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.theprodigalpig.com\/?p=584","title":{"rendered":"Grandchildren"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"01-01-15<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Me:\u00a0 Prodigal, who are you with?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Prodigal:\u00a0 This is Wayne and Shelby’s first grandchild and he is a boy!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Me:\u00a0 Grandchildren are precious and this one is very cute, I must say.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Prodigal:\u00a0 He is getting ready for bed, and we both could use a story to relax us.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Catherine Marshall discusses grandchildren I her book Beyond Our Selves.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When Christ’s apostles first started preaching, they insisted that every individual had to have a personal encounter with Christ and make the decision to accept His way-for himself.\u00a0 Judging from history, there must have\u00a0 been plenty of vitality in the first-century church-enough to shake the sophisticated Roman world to its depths.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, the years passed.\u00a0 After a while those first followers of Christ began to reason, These children of ours were born into a Christian family.\u00a0 They have grown up in the church and have been instructed in the faith.\u00a0 They were born Christians.\u00a0 Surely they don’t need any special experience of repentance as we did.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The church pews were soon filled with the sons and daughters of those first followers.\u00a0 But since the children had inherited their belief in Christ, they knew Him only secondhand.\u00a0 Perhaps it was not surprising that by the second century the vitality of the church had begun to decline.\u00a0 Proofs of God’s power became the exception rather than the rule.\u00a0 The pews were then filled with largely secondhand believers-grandsons and granddaughters.\u00a0 God has no grandchildren.\u00a0 God only has children.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wonder how many others there are who have thought of formal church membership as a substitute for that direct Father-child relationship that God really wants of us?\u00a0 No wonder much of our religious life today is plagued by vagueness.\u00a0 Let us not mistake it:\u00a0 Entering in does take childlikeness.\u00a0 The door through which we enter into Life is a low door.\u00a0 And sometimes it is the humble and the needy who can show the rest of us the way.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Are you a grandchild or a child of God?\u00a0 Does your church activity substitute for a relationship?\u00a0 Why not have church activities that are based on your relationship with God instead of others?\u00a0 Sometimes God has to bring us low so that we can see just how big God is.\u00a0 It is then that we can start viewing our relationship with God as that child.\u00a0 Then he can become that Father and love us and care for us.<\/p>\n

Psalm 116:6<\/p>\n

The Lord preserve, the simple:\u00a0 I was brought low, and he helped me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jennifer Van Allen,<\/p>\n

www.theprodigalpig.com<\/p>\n

www.faithincounseling.org<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Me:\u00a0 Prodigal, who are you with?   Prodigal:\u00a0 This is Wayne and Shelby’s first grandchild and he is a boy!   Me:\u00a0 Grandchildren are precious and this one is very cute, I must say.   Prodigal:\u00a0 He is getting ready for bed, and we both could use a story to relax us.   Catherine … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nGrandchildren - The Prodigal Pig<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theprodigalpig.com\/?p=584\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Grandchildren - 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