Nineteen years ago I (Jerry) held my two-hour-old grand- daughter, Kendall, in the palm of my hand and silently offered a prayer of thanksgiving to God. I have never forgotten that day; its importance rivals that of my wedding day and the day my firstborn child came into the world. Arthur Kornhaber, researcher and writer, reminds us that there are three natural, life-transforming events in our lives over which we have no control: our birth, our death, and becoming grandparents. Even now, nineteen years later and with Kendall on her way to college, my heart skips a beat thinking about that moment when I held her in my hand.

I never dreamed, even then, that grandparenting would define my life quite like it has. Not a day goes by that I do not think about my five grandchildren, now ranging in age from nineteen to twenty-seven. Seldom does a week pass without me talking to or spending time with each one of them, even though they are scattered across the country, working and studying. Judy and I find—and make—time to be with them every chance we get. We are disappointed if we miss their calls; we cancel dinner plans with friends when our grand- children come into town; we delay planning vacations until we know if we will be missing out on a chance to spend time with them. Vacations can be rescheduled and friends can wait, but being with our grandchildren cannot. There is simply no such thing as being with them enough. We are creative, involved grandparents. You can be too—there is no greater privilege.

Creative Grandparents Described
Creative grandparents find new ways to love and enjoy their grandchildren at every age and stage of their lives. They know them intimately, what they are thinking and dreaming, their fears and struggles. They know when to talk and when to listen. They have the awesome privilege of watching their grandchildren become all they will be. This kind of close relationship imparts profound joy but also carries a weight and confers responsibility. In return for getting to be part of their lives, grandparents have a responsibility to be available, to be accepting, and to love unconditionally.

Being available is taking time out of your busy schedule to be with them. It means making them a priority, choosing to be with them instead of doing other things and being other places. It is fitting into their schedules, not demanding they fit into yours, or trying to squeeze them into your limited time. It is fulfilling your promises to them, being there when they count on you. Most importantly, it is letting them know how important they are to you and to God.

Loving and accepting your grandchildren unconditionally is seeing their uniqueness and the uniqueness of their individual journeys, not expecting them to be like you, their parents, or anyone else. It is looking for and encouraging their good qualities and positive traits, not focusing on negative traits. It is listening to their ideas and suggestions and doing what makes them happy when possible and practical. It is enjoying each one of them and letting them know how grateful you are for them and for the privilege of being a part of their lives.

Creative grandparents actively look for ways to be involved in the lives of their grandchildren, and enter their world, wherever and whenever allowed or invited. Creative grandparents know the interests and passions of their grand- children and share their own with them. They are open to learning from their grandchildren and trying new things together. Creative grandparents are grateful for each opportunity to include them in their plans, but also allow them to say no to their invitations, without feeling personally rejected.

Creative grandparents enjoy their grandchildren, not merely endure them. Creative grandparents look into the eyes of their grandchildren, connect with them, see the love in their eyes, and respond to that love with a greater love. Creative grandparents walk with them, hand in hand through life, in good times and in tough times. Creative grandparents experience the great joy of having their grandchildren look up at them and say, “I just love to be with you, Grandpa.” Creative grandparents thank God for their grandchildren and for their relationship with them each and every day, leading grandparents to wonder what they could possibly have done to be so privileged. Kornhaber and Woodward in Grandparents/ Grandchildren call this relationship “the vital connection . . . second only in emotional power to the parent-child bond.”

Grandparenting is a unique and special joy. We can delight in the love and affection of our grandchildren without having to parent them. We can watch them grow into young men and women without having to keep track of curfew or worry about their school work. Grandparenting offers all the best things about parenting without the accompanying weight of responsibility. We can be free to enjoy our grand- children in a way that we may not have been able to enjoy our children. We are older, seasoned, perhaps less rigid with the passing of years. We’re more ready to laugh and cry, better prepared to love without reservation.

There are biological grandparents and there are creative grandparents. Biological grandparents carry pictures in their wallets and hang photos on the wall. They have sporadic con- tact with their grandchildren and limited input in their lives; they are gift-givers and perfunctory hug-receivers. Creative grandparents carry memories in their hearts and love in their souls. Creative grandparents go beyond showing off their grandchildren as trophies. They want to impart to them their values. Christian grandparents serve God and their grand- children by teaching them about Jesus. They seek to live in a way that makes them heroes of faith to their grandchildren. They shower their grandchildren with love and acceptance. They build deep, meaningful relationships that will last a lifetime. Creative grandparents make a difference in the lives of their grandchildren.

This book is about creative grandparenting. Creative grand- parenting goes beyond the occasional phone call and birthday present. It challenges to you to take grandparenting seriously. Judy and I want to help you realize that, as grandparents, we can have a profound influence on our grandchildren, and they on us. We want to inspire you to be the best creative grandparents you can be.

The Benefits of Creative Grandparenting
The creative grandparenting challenge isn’t something we take lightly or take on without reason. We believe that grandchildren benefit greatly from a strong relationship with their grandparents, and research has indicated this time and time again. Studies show heightened self-esteem, greater chance of success in later life, and a stronger sense of family values in adults who have had good relationships with their grandparents. The facts are in. They tell us that, now more than ever, children need love and acceptance. Now more than ever, children need trusted adults to tell them that they are okay. Now more than ever, children need role models, adults living out their faith and values with honesty and integrity.

As much as our grandchildren need us, we need our grandchildren. The benefits of being a creative, involved grandparent are many. When interviewing grandparents we constantly heard the phrase, “My grandchildren keep me young.” They do. They show our tired bodies what it is like to run barefoot through the summer grass. They inspire us by scaling the trees we climbed in our youth. Their youthful enthusiasm reminds us of days long past. Grandchildren give us a renewed sense of what is possible. They give birth to new hope in us, reminding us of things we have forgotten about ourselves and teaching us things we’ve never known.

They also let us into the world of young people today. One grandmother we know listens to the music of her teen- age grandson. She says, “I just want to know what’s going on in the world, and John helps me stay in touch. He never treats me like an ‘old fogey’ but thinks it’s kind of neat to lend me his CDs and create playlists for my iPod. He even brags to his friends that his grandma likes hip-hop.” As we get older, we may begin to feel isolated from our families and from the mainstream of society. Our grandchildren bring us back. They provide us with an entrance into the world again, a ticket to American culture.

Taken from Creative Grandparenting: How to Love and Nurture a New Generation, © 1992, 2011 by Jerry Schreur and Judy Schreur. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids MI 49501. All rights reserved.

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I DIDN’T SIGN UP  FOR THIS, GOD!

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you can’t move? The car is racing toward the edge of a cliff and you can’t lift your foot to press the brake pedal. An attacker is breaking down the door to your house and you can’t raise your arm to dial 911. Your child is about to run in front of a truck and you can’t open your mouth to scream.

My bad dream became a reality in 1982. My husband and I stood beside our son’s isolette in the neonatal intensive care unit. An IV needle pierced Allen’s tiny arm, and angry red scars crisscrossed his chest. One end of his feeding tube hung on a pole beside his IV bag. The other end rose from the soft skin of his tummy. Pain etched his wide forehead and tugged at the corners of his perfect rosebud mouth.

More than anything, I wanted to reach out and take his hurt away. But I was trapped in a bad dream. Immobilized. Inadequate. Helpless. Though God had assigned me to love and care for this beautiful child, I could do nothing to minimize his pain. My thoughts were an inward scream. This isn’t what I signed up to do, God! I don’t want to be a helpless onlooker. I want to parent my child. How can I care for him? What can I do?

As the parent of a child with special needs, you’ve probably experienced the same sense of helplessness. Whether your child is critically or chronically ill, mentally or physically impaired, developmentally or behaviorally challenged, you want to do something. You want to ease your child’s pain, but you don’t know how. You want to help your child realize his or her full potential, but you don’t know where to begin. You want to ask God about your child’s suffering, but you don’t want to be condemned for questioning His wisdom. You want to believe God is with you, but you don’t know how to find Him.

You’re stuck in a bad dream. You can’t move. You can’t speak. You want someone to shake you awake and tell you everything will be okay. Instead, you wake up and must become the parent you never expected to be. You doubt that you’re up to the task. You’re worried about your child’s future. And you’re wondering, Does anyone understand what I’m experiencing?

The answer is yes, many parents understand your situation. In the United States,

• 10–15 percent of newborns, or 431,000 annually, spend time in neonatal intensive care according to the March of Dimes.
• 12 percent of children between ages 1 and 17 had medical conditions serious enough to require hospitalization between 2004 and 2006, the most recent years for which statistics are available at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• 13.6 percent of students between ages 6 and 21 were enrolled in some kind of special needs program according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. That’s 706,000 of our country’s school-aged children.

Lots of kids mean lots of parents, dads and moms who are valuable sources of information and advice. In this book, dozens of them share with you the wisdom they gained while parenting kids with special needs.

Support can also come from the surprising number of professionals who work with families of kids with special needs. These professionals—and the resources they’ve created—are available at hospitals, medical facilities, government agencies, private organizations, businesses, schools, churches, and more.

This book brings you advice from professionals around the country and provides information about national organizations and resources. It also gives tips about where to start searching for state and local resources. More often than not, your problem won’t be a lack of resources, but a lack of awareness of them or inability to access them.

Different Dream Parenting contains six sections: Diagnosis, Hospital Life, Juggling Two Worlds, Long-Term Care Conditions, Losing a Child, and Raising a Survivor. Each section is divided into four chapters. Three chapters address practical issues. The last chapter in each section addresses spiritual concerns.

Parents of kids with special needs often wrestle with prickly spiritual questions. I sure did. Sometimes I still do. So do all the parents interviewed in this book, and most of the professionals, too. Every day, we continue to ask questions about our kids’ lives and futures. Gradually, we learn more about how to trust God’s timing and wait for His answers.

As you read this book, please ask your faith questions. Read about how parents and professionals learned to ask questions, wait, and listen. Consider the answers they have discerned and their suggestions about how to find comfort and courage in God’s Word. When you are ready, try out their ideas about how to pray and use Scripture to hear God’s answers to your hard questions. The thirty-day prayer guides in appendix A are designed to help you engage in conversation with Him.

But even with prayer guides and Scripture to guide you, I know how hard it can be to trust the God who is allowing your child to suffer. So I won’t condemn you for asking prickly questions. Instead, I’ll encourage you, cry with you, and support you when your faith grows weak. When you can’t hang on a minute longer, I’ll hold you close until your strength and your faith return.

I hope this book helps you break out of your bad dream, wake up, and move forward with joy and confidence. I pray that the stories of parents and professionals in this book will give you hope and strength.

Most of all, I hope you discover the truth God has revealed to me and many other parents. Raising a child with special needs isn’t a bad dream. It’s just a different dream. And surprisingly, a different dream can be the best dream of all.

Taken from Different Dream Parenting, © 2011 by Jolene Philo. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids  MI 4950l.  All rights reserved

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Take a trip with me back to the summer of 1985. “We Are the World” was heard about sixty times a day on the radio. New Coke, after a dismal three-month debut, was about to be shelved for good to make room for Coca-Cola Classic. And Marty McFly desperately needed 1.21 gigawatts to power his DeLorean’s flux capacitor to get “back to the future.” It was also the year that I started wondering about Satan.

That summer my parents got cable television, and my brother and I began sneaking downstairs every night to experience the ado- lescent thrill of being scared to death. Every night a deranged serial killer, an evil spirit with a creepy name like “incubus” or “poltergeist,” or an eerily humanlike robot from some other time or dimension was rampaging through modern suburbia. Andy and I would mock the movies as they unfolded their gory narratives on our living room Zenith. We were cool—just watching this stuff for fun. Well, maybe my brother was; I was transfixed by the terror. The Freddies and Jasons were tolerable; the robots and aliens were laughable; but the spirits and supernatural villains made me . . . uncomfortable.

During that same season, my good friend Matt was sharing the radical news of the gospel with me, and in the summer of 1985 I was still resisting the message. The thought that a good kid who usually listened to his parents (except for sneaking downstairs to watch horror flicks) could die and go to hell for not believing in Jesus seemed ridiculous to me. But God was working on my heart.

It would be over a year from that summer before I surrendered my life in faith to Christ, but God was preparing me. And my infatuation with evil spirits, demons, and incubuses (or was it incubi?) was to become one more link in the chain leading to my conversion. Late at night, after I checked under the bed and deep in the closet, I would lay in bed asking a lot of questions. Is there a devil? If he’s a spirit, how can anyone be safe from him? What if he targeted me? What could he do? Could I stop him? How could I stop him? What if I can’t stop him?

A lot has changed in my life since that summer. I have now been captivated with Jesus Christ as my first love, my heart’s great- est treasure, for twenty-five years. And I have been a pastor for four- teen years—not quite a veteran, but seasoned enough to know a thing or two about the “spirit realm.” Yet I want to start this book wearing a different hat (eventually, I’ll put my pastor’s cap on, I’m sure): a father’s hat.

My wonderful wife, Lisa, and I have four great kids: two girls and two boys. Our second child, Benjamin, is a sensitive soul. He cares about animals, friends, even his siblings! He feels things deeply, and sometimes that comes out in his dreams. One of the greatest privileges I have is to be his snuggler when he climbs in between his mother and me after a bad dream. Some of his dreams are typical—hungry sharks, roaring lions, even being lost in a busy crowd. But a few of them are . . . well, strange.

Occasionally Ben tells me about a shadow, a voice, or a dark figure. In no way am I suggesting that all of these dreams are manifestations of satanic power; but I’m not prepared to say the opposite either. The realm of angels and demons is a mysterious territory for us humans (even though many televangelists seem to disagree). So rather than recalling each one of my son’s nightmares, seeking to analyze whether there was actually a demon lurking in the shadows, I’d rather ask a more important question: What do I tell my son when he’s clinging to me under the blankets in the wee hours of the morning?

Should I pull him close to my chest and say, “Benjamin—yes—Satan may be hiding under your bed, but just make sure to say your prayers”?

Or how about, “Now listen, Ben. Satan is a monster who wants to hurt you, but be a good soldier, go back to bed, and remember the verse I talked about”?

And if he’s still scared, maybe I should suggest that we go into his room and together we will cast out the demons as a father and son activity, sort of like a three-legged race, but this time it is our determination to wipe out the guy in the red satin jumpsuit that ties us together.

The Haze of Hollywood

All of these responses assume something—that Satan is a monster, not much different than the Freddies and Jasons that my brother and I grew up watching on our living room television.

One of the reasons I am writing this book is my concern that pop culture has shaped our view of Satan more than the Bible has. Hollywood has won the PR war in representing Satan. They’ve made him the ultimate horror movie villain, an amalgamation of every mad scientist, serial killer, and monster we’ve ever seen on the big screen. Sadly, sometimes a “Christian” song or book struts on the scene with a very similar-looking Satan. And many Christians assume they are getting the Bible’s straight talk on Satan (after all, it was purchased at a Christian bookstore!), when they are really just getting a Hollywood devil with a little “Christian” flavor drizzled on top.

As with any caricature, there is a strand of truth in this portrait, but a thin strand indeed. There are some frightening portrayals of Satan in Scripture, as we will consider in chapter 2. But even these differ radically from the “when is the killer going to jump out from behind the door” scenes so common in

Hollywood’s portrayal of Satan. Movies like Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and Paranormal Activity have given us a Satan whose deep voice and red eyes make us cower in our seats or hide under the covers, but they bear no resemblance to the Bible’s description of our ancient enemy. Perhaps this is why some find it so difficult to say that they believe in Satan when incredulous people ask about his existence. The folks asking have seen the same movies, and they just can’t believe that we cannot discern the difference between Hol- lywood and real life.

But forget Hollywood. What does Jesus say about the Devil?

Jesus Doesn’t Blush When He Talks About Satan

Consider the following statements Jesus makes about the Devil:

“When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart.” (Matthew 13:19)

“And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?” (Matthew 12:26)

And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” (Luke 10:18)

The Savior speaks of Satan’s reality in the same matter-of-fact way that He talks about faith, repentance, love, marriage, adultery, divorce, money, prayer, and fasting. Apparently Jesus did not think that acknowledging the very real presence of Satan would ruin His credibility. The Son of God knew who the Devil truly is, and He was not shy about calling him out. Perhaps the most striking example of this is found in John 10:10!

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

This is a remarkable passage. Not only does Jesus leave no doubt concerning the Devil’s existence, but He actually uses Satan’s character as a contrast to His own!1 Just as a jeweler lays a precious diamond on a piece of black velvet, so Jesus draws our attention to His glorious character by setting it against the dark backdrop of Satan’s despicable nature.

So if the Lord himself wants us to contemplate just who He is in contrast with Satan,2 then I say, “Let’s do it!”

Living Free In Enemy Territory—Not Just A Title

And so back to my original question: What do I tell my son about Satan? When my son snuggles with me under our comforter in the wee hours of the morning, I don’t want to reinforce some silly picture that a Hollywood filmmaker has concocted to entice a thrill-seeking teenager. Nor do I want my son to be more preoccupied with Satan’s glitz than with the Savior’s grace. What I want is for my son to under- stand who Satan is in relation to Jesus so that he can drift back to sleep in peace, knowing that the Devil is a defeated foe.

And make no mistake—the Bible makes it crystal clear that Jesus has defeated our ancient enemy. Consider the following passages:

And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.” (Mark 1:23–24)

“Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out.” (John 12:31)

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:8)

But we will never appreciate the Satan-crushing work of Jesus if we do not understand who Satan really is. If he is some gruesome serial killer or special-effects monster, then Jesus’ victory will look less glorious than it truly is. If Satan’s chief role in the world is to make us scared of things that go bump in the night, then the trans- forming realities of the cross and the empty tomb will seem little better than a child’s night-light that keeps the bogeyman away.

Do you want to understand the fullness of Jesus’ victory over Satan? Do you want to experience the truth of the power that “he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4)? If you do, and I pray that you do, the only way forward is to properly understand who Satan is and what Satan does.

__________________

1. Not all commentators agree that Jesus is referring to Satan in this passage. Some see merely a contrast between the idea of a thief and the idea of a shepherd. I subscribe to A. W. Pink’s argument that “it will be observed that Christ here uses the singular number. In verse 8 He had spoken of ‘thieves and robbers’ when referring to all who had come before Him; but here in verse 10 He has some particular individual in view.” But even those who don’t think Jesus is necessarily describing Satan in this passage should be able to see this passage as applicable to the Devil’s nature, since earlier in John’s gospel Jesus describes him as “‘a mur- derer from the beginning, and [who] has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies’” (John 8:44).

2. In chapter 11 we will revel in this kind of contemplation. By contrasting the King of Glory with the Father of Lies, my hope is that you will experience a renewed love and allegiance for Jesus as your greatest treasure.

____________________

As I am writing at the desk in front of my apartment window, the sun’s rays are warming the room. It’s cold outside. The snow has lingered for several days. As I sit here, I notice my neighbor’s yard. The side of the yard directly in the sun is a beautiful green. The side of the yard sitting in the shadow of the house is snow-covered.

Schools are closed today, so I am in my “empty nest”—trying to multi-task. A few moments ago, I put banana bread in the oven to take to my neighbors. I shouldn’t do anything else when I’m baking, though; I’ve taken enough black-crusted bread out of the oven over the years to know that by now.

But here I sit writing lesson plans and thinking about people I love who live a long way away—in America.

Every day, I walk down the streets of Mitrovica, Kosovo. Ten years ago, when I came here, this was the flashpoint city between two cultures that were separated by a river, a bridge, and broken hearts. Today, a young, vital population is moving on. Walking among them are future leaders. “Someday,” I have said, thinking about my students here in Kosovo, “someday one of them could be the prime minister . . . or the mayor . . . or the administrator of a new school.”

“Teacher,” many of the kids who run up and down the streets call me. Some because they’ve been my students and others just because that’s how I’m known. I do have a name, but it doesn’t really matter. I’m the American teacher who lives here, organizes crazy game nights, takes kids on skiing trips, makes them study really hard, and asks them to leave the room cleaner than they found it. You could be known for worse things. And some call me their second mom. You could hardly do better than that.

I didn’t come here because it was a country where I always wanted to live. I started out on a journey of faith. The steps were by grace, as God gave me one good gift after another . . . although I didn’t always see it at the time. But I love being part of life here. Most of all, I love the people. I’m home now.

I look out the window at my neighbor’s yard—half green from the sun and half shadowed and covered with snow. And I think that it’s easy to live in the shadow of our problems—the hard days, the misunderstandings, the tragedies. This country has been scarred. Devastation is still a matter of short-term memory; civil war a decade ago killed 10,000 people. But it’s a new country. It needs leaders—leaders who have a vision for more than revenge, more than survival.

They need to know how to live in the light. We all do. —Nadine Hennesey

Taken from When You Don’t See His Plan, © 2011 by Nadine Hennesey and Rebecca Baker. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids  MI 4950l.  All rights reserved

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Grand Rapids, Michigan—Christy Bower, author of Best Friends with God (2010) and Devotion Explosion (2007), has been honored with the “Writer of the Year” award from the American Christian Writers Association (ACWA) at their Spokane, WA, annual conference.

The award is given for overall accomplishment and is the third award that Bower has earned through the ACWA. She won the “Persistence” award in 2006, followed by her first “Writer of the Year” award in 2007 for the successful publication of her first book.

This year’s award recognizes all of Bower’s accomplishments but specifically acknowledges her successful transition into a full-time writing ministry. Because so few find success as a full-time writer, she has become an inspiration to others.

The ACWA’s stated purpose is “locating, educating, and motivating writers and speakers.” They host annual conferences in twenty-four cities. At each location, they present one attendee with the “Persistence” award and another with the “Writer of the Year” award.

***

Goodness & Faithfulness CD is a collection of 10 instrumental songs includes “Surely Goodness and Mercy,” “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” and other timeless hymns. It offers a powerful expression of God’s steadfast loving kindness and His tender mercy, which is the basis for these fruits to grow in our lives through His Spirit.

Song List:

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
Great Is Thy Faithfulness
I Have Decided to Follow Jesus
Day by Day
His Eye Is on the Sparrow
The Steadfast Love of the Lord
He Leadeth Me
Surely Goodness and Mercy
Blessed Assurance

The CD Love & Joy is a collection of 10 instrumental hymns includes “Love Lifted Me,” “Joy Unspeakable,” and other songs of the faith. It focuses also on God’s love and the joy He supplies through His Spirit to inspire us to live lives of love and good deeds.

Song List:

The Wonder of It All
Love Lifted Me
Joy Unspeakable
Medley: My Jesus, I Love Thee / I Love You, Lord
‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus
Sweet Sweet Spirit
The Love of God
Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring
Victory in Jesus
We’re Marching to Zion

Both albums are arranged by J. Daniel Smith with selections by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.

To order a copy of Fruit of the Spirit: Goodness & Faithfulness, please click here. 

To order a copy of Fruit of the Spirit: Love & Joy, please click here.

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A Garland of Grace

Attend, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not reject the teaching of your mother; for they are a garland of grace on your head and a chain of honour round your neck.

Proverbs 1:8–9 NEB

Julie tells me that her mom is her best friend, the one person she shares everything with in her life . Her mom is the first person Julie calls when she is having a bad day or wants to share good news. They talk often by phone and also enjoy weekly lunch or movie dates. Matt asked his father to be the best man at his wedding, because he considers his dad to be his closest friend. These relationships sound rare but occur more often than we imagine.

What parent would not want to be considered one of their children’s closest friends? Yet many adult children dislike or hate their parents. I have several friends who grew up in abusive or negligent homes who would not verbalize that they hate their parents, but they have no contact with them. These friends do not want their children to associate with their grandparents, because they do not respect or trust their parents. No parent sets out to be hated by their children yet it occurs too often.

Friendship between parents and children is not guaranteed. We may not be surprised when adults raised in abusive homes harbor hatred and resentment toward their parents. What puzzles us is when young adults who grew up in loving, healthy, Christian homes have no desire to nurture friendships with their parents. We are equally baffled when we observe wonderful teachers, coaches, pastors, and mentors struggle to get along with their own children.

What foundation did Julie’s and Matt’s parents build that made their solid friendships possible? When mulling over the topic for this book, I had to ask the most important question . Being close friends with our children sounds ideal, but is it a biblical goal? Does God intend for us to become friends with our adult children? I found the answer to be yes . It is the only way that our children will spiritually mature, placing their trust in God instead of in us.

This is not a book about parenting. If you have adult children, that job is completed. Continuing to micromanage and parent our adult children, communicating the message, “I’m not finished with you yet,” has derailed many parent-child relationships. This approach also cripples adult children . The challenges of raising Generation X and Millennials are well-known today, as baby boomer helicopter parents wonder why their adult children often become stalled and enter a period of limbo. The “leave and cleave” Old Testament model—“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife” (Genesis 2:24 KJV)—seems antiquated.

This book is about shifting from your parental training role to a new, expanded relationship, based on friendship, influence, and mutual respect. You will always enjoy the unique parent-child relationship but the role changes. No one takes care of us or cooks for us when we are sick like our moms do, while our dads can fix any problem, no matter how big or small. That irreplaceable relationship remains intact. Yet the role shift is critical to our children’s personal and spiritual maturity, as they understand as adults that their heavenly Father is their unchanging, perfect parent. We human parents only pointed the way to Him.

Debbie and Steve tell their children, “We will always be your safety net.” This is the reassuring gift they received from their parents, and now they pass it on to their children. My mom says it a different way, “No matter what happens or what crises come, I will always invite you for dinner.” Being a safety net is different from rescuing our children from poor choices or letting them take advantage of us, which only cripples them. That does not nurture adult friendship. They must learn firsthand that God’s arms are the ultimate safety net.

Taken from Parent or Friend?, © 2011 by Mary Ann Froehlich. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids  MI 4950l.  All rights reserved

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Email publicity@dhpinreview.com, if you work in print or broadcast media or have a professional blog/website and would like a review copy.

The Golden Scroll Awards were presented in Atlanta July 10th at a banquet during the International Christian Retail Show. The publisher finalists were Beacon Hill, Discovery House, and Tyndale House Publishers.

“Publishers can only do what we do,” said DHP Publisher Carol Holquist, who accepted the award, “because you, the writers, do your work so well. We’re just the megaphones that amplify your message.”

Discovery House is the book, music, and curriculum publishing arm of RBC Ministries, creators of the popular devotional Our Daily Bread. Discovery House’s mission is to produce materials that “feed the soul with the Word of God” and to encourage writers and editors around the world by giving a portion of the proceeds from sales to publishers in developing countries.

AWSA, an outreach of Right to the Heart Ministries, is comprised of over 300 top Christian women communicators who both publish and speak nationally. See www.AWSA.com for more information.

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It makes me uncomfortable that you’re presenting a whole new way of understanding what the Bible says about money and possessions — and you’re only a computer programmer.  What credentials do you have to give your book any authority?

To tell you the truth, I’ve struggled a lot with the very question you’ve brought up:  What authority do I have for writing a book about Christian stewardship — especially a book that has such a unique viewpoint?  But three events have convinced me that I’m not just another crackpot with a homespun theory about the Bible.

First of all, for more than twenty years, I’ve been writing and teaching in churches about the paradoxes in what the Bible says about money, and over and over again, people have come up to me to say, “Everything you said rings true with the Bible, but I’ve never heard it before; you ought to write a book.”

Secondly, when I finally put a manuscript together, before I showed it to anybody else, I sent it to four of the most educated, spiritually mature, biblically literate people I’ve ever met, and I asked them to give me their brutally honest opinions of what I’d written.  Honestly, I was prepared to throw away ten years of work if they told me to, but all four of those people were embarrassingly adulatory about the book.

And thirdly, I registered a sample chapter of my manuscript with the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, and a few weeks later, Discovery House Publishers lived out their name and “discovered” it.  In one of the first conversations I had with Discovery House, I happened to mention another book that I knew had sold seven million copies after it was rejected by every Christian publisher in the country, and the editor from Discovery House told me, “Jonathan, even if we had known that that book was going to sell seven million copies, we still wouldn’t have published it because we don’t think it’s completely faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”  Now that’s integrity!  And that’s the third basis for my book’s credibility.

Unlikely as it seems, a computer programmer in Cincinnati has somehow ended up as the author of a stewardship book that brings up eight or nine pages of references when you Google its title.  As Andrae Crouch would sing, “I didn’t think it could be until it happened to me.”

I believe that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God, and I believe that God never contradicts himself.  You must not believe these things if you think the Bible is “riddled with paradoxes,” as you’ve said in the very first sentence of your book.

I agree with you 100% that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God, and God never contradicts himself.  At the same time, I don’t think it honors God to brush aside the statements in the Bible that seem to contradict each other.  To cite a trivial example, when one gospel writer says there was an angel at Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning, and another gospel writer says there were two angels, I’m certainly not going to conclude that the Holy Spirit made a mistake when He inspired one or the other.  But at the same time, I can’t help but notice that there’s a difference between the two stories, and I think it actually honors God when we want to see what we can learn by studying differences like this one more closely.

One of the problems I’ve had to deal with, though, is that we don’t have any familiar word that describes the idea of eternal truths couched in seemly contradictory statements.  I’ve had to use the word “paradox” which can mean “a self-contradictory proposition.”  But in my dictionary, that’s the second definition. The first definition says that a paradox is “a proposition that seems self-contradictory but in reality expresses a truth.”  And it appears to me that from our stunted, mortal point of view, the Bible is riddled with such seemingly contradictory truths.  It makes me uneasy to confront them head-on, but frankly, I think it would be juvenile to ignore them.

Don’t you think your writing style is awfully “flip” for somebody who’s trying to explicate the Holy Word of Almighty God?

Believe me, I spent years trying to make this book sound scholarly.  I even came up with some great words like “hermeneutical” and “pecuniary.”  And every time I stopped to read back what I’d written, I sounded like a complete phony.  I didn’t even like the person who was trying to preach at me from the page.

Finally, somebody asked me to teach about stewardship in our Adult Discovery Hour, down in the basement of little North Church in the inner city.  I can’t be a phony there; my church family at North would see right through me.  So it occurred to me that if I could just write down what I said to my friends, and write it the way I said it to them, that manner of speaking would come across as a lot more genuine.

Now you have to understand that when I’m teaching in our Discovery Hour, if I read something like the story of Goliath yelling “Give me a man, that we may fight together,” I’ll hear all kinds of tramping under the tables like the armies of Israel running for their lives, and I’ll hear soldiers yelling, “I want my mommy.”  At old North Church, we take the Bible very seriously, but we’re just not all that serious about ourselves.  So I’ve ended up with a book that sounds a bit “flip”  — about as flip as it would sound if somebody said that a judgmental person should pull a plank out of his own eye, or that a wealthy person is going to get stuck like a camel in the eye of a needle.

There’s no “how to” information in your book.  You haven’t given us any detailed instructions for how to put all of these lofty ideals into practice.

I didn’t intend for God’s Thrifty Extravagance to be a “How To” book; it’s more of a “How Come?” book.  There are loads of other financial “How To” books that are better than anything I could write, but most people who try to study those books lose their motivation before long because they don’t appreciate the “How Come?”  In other words, they don’t understand the cosmic significance and the eternal consequences of managing our finances under the lordship of Christ.  That understanding is what we need to motivate us, that’s what interests me, and that’s what I’ve written about.  And if you want to know the whole truth, in my household, it’s my wife who does the budgeting.  She’s just better at that kind of thing than I am.

Find out more about Jonathan Kopke and read an excerpt from his book here.

Day of Discovery

The program “Marian Anderson: A Song of Dignity and Grace” won a 2011 Award of Distinction in the 17^th Annual Communicator Awards. This award is presented for projects that exceed industry standards in quality and achievement.

In this award-winning video, Day of Discovery examines the life of singer Marian Anderson, who overcame adversity and racism to become one of history’s greatest vocalists. Through the gift of her voice, she opposed discrimination and spread hope across the world. From the stage of the Metropolitan Opera to the banks of the Jordan River, this inspiring DVD takes you on an incredible journey spanning the Great Depression to the Civil Rights Movement.

“I always bear in mind that my mission is to leave behind me the kind of impression that will make it easier for those who follow.” —Marian Anderson

The Communicator Awards is the leading international creative awards program honoring excellence for communication professionals. The awards are judged and overseen by the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA). Entries are judged by evaluating distinction in creative work.

Day of Discovery has also been honored with a 2011 Videographer Clapboard Award of Excellence in the Religious/Documentary category, this one for “The Dawning: Christianity in the Roman Empire.”

In “The Dawning,” Day of Discovery takes a close look at the struggles faced by early Christians. Dr. Joseph Stowell, president of Cornerstone University, takes viewers on an amazing journey to modern-day Rome to share the story of the early believers’ community, compassion, and endurance.

The Videographer Clapboard Award is an international competition and one of the most coveted awards in the video industry, attracting thousands of submissions from production and communication professionals. The Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP) judges the competition. The purpose is to recognize hardworking, creative companies, individuals, and their clients.

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Day of Discovery’s four decades of programming makes it one of the oldest continually running Christian broadcasts in US television history, first airing on May 5, 1968, as a television ministry of Radio Bible Class (now known as RBC Ministries). Day of Discovery DVDs are distributed by Discovery House Publishers, part of the RBC Ministries family.

RBC Ministries offers and distributes teaching resources to millions worldwide and has offices in 37 countries including the US. Their signature publication, the daily devotional Our Daily Bread, is translated into over 40 languages.