Monica McKeen

This is a great time of year to teach your children about serving. Serve together at a local food bank or head out to a nursing home and sing Christmas Carols and give a message of hope through God’s word. Pray as a family and God will share with you what to do. Many places are looking for volunteers. So get out their and teach your children to be God’s hands and feet.

When you’re a FT missionary supported by an awesome team you make financial decisions a little differently. My friends are YWAMER’s and there daughter came to them asking about the possibility of taking ballet in Berlin, Germany they sat down with her and prayed. That’s what you do. You ask God. As they prayed together as a family it went something to the effect of, “God, you know our hearts & you certainly love dance. What would you say to us about Katie taking ballet lessons in Berlin?” God loves to talk to us ALL! He really likes it when His kids talk to Him and ask Him things. Yes He might say no. But He knows best. So when Katie asked she received an impression and felt like God said that when she danced, He smiled. A lot. And that it made Him happy to watch her dance for Him. 💝 Gulp, yup, kiddo. That sounds about right. So, my friends prayed with others to receive confirmation and believing God is in this. When all of a sudden one of the families stepped up to the place and wanted to help cover the costs of her lessons this year. Wow, Thank you Lord. I know it doesn’t always happen this way, but more than once I have seen things like this unfold since we started trusting God in the area of our provisions on a deeper level. And the coolest part? Katie get to experience a tangible level that God sees & loves HER. 👑 I believe God to be extravagant in His generosity to us. We don’t have to look further than Jesus to know this is truth.
Bless you, friends. However we live this out in having an attitude of generosity & sharing from our abundance with those in need. May our eyes be more open to see the extravagance of the love of God on our lives!

In the beginning, I faced many problems regarding my kids’ ministry, but I had a strong faith in God, that He will help me to do something different, and he did. I remember the first day I got saved reading Lauren Cunninham’s book in a Discipleship class “is that really you God” My heart wanted to quit my job and pull my daughter out of school and go on the Mission Field with Youth with A Mission. But I also learned in that same disipleship class to pray about everything because God has a plan. When I asked the Lord about it he said “No” 19 years later he says it is time to go. I have learned a lot at YWAM and God taught me so much more about how to teach families and to hear the voice of God. I have been able to make God known through Missions. I am so excited about this journey God has me on and looking forward to partnering with YWAM again in Foundations School.

I find the Bible stories about the childhoods of both Moses and Samuel quite fascinating. In both cases, the mothers only had them until they were weaned. Common opinion of the times was that it was between 4 and 5 years of age. At that point, both were sent into either pagan or dysfunctional families. Moses went to Pharaoh and was taught all his life about Egyptian gods. Samuel went to live in a home where the father had raised embarrassing reprobate sons whom God eventually killed for their sinful ways. Yet both boys grew up to be devoted, passionate servants of the Most High God.

The take away is that whatever faith those mothers deposited in the hearts of those two preschoolers lasted them a lifetime.

Never leave to chance nor take for granted the spiritual mentoring you do with your children. But be deliberate about their training. Start very young. Assume nothing. Bathe them with prayer, worship, and the Word. The fruit of your labor will be everlasting.

Baptism tells a story of being rescued from sin by Jesus through faith in His death and resurrection. Being baptized does not save you. Placing your faith in Jesus alone saves you. Baptism is a picture of what God has already done in the heart of a believer. A outward sign of a inward cleansing. When someone is baptized, that person shares a brief testimony so that other believers might hear of God’s grace, rejoice in His saving work and worship Him together. I had had a wonderful opportunity to get to know many families and children here at my DTS at Youth With a Mission in Kona, Hawaii. Children and adults who love Jesus. Sunday one young boy named Louie made a decision for life. He gave his heart to Jesus here in Hawaii and wanted to be baptized. We celebrated this special moment on Sunday and what a joy it is to celebrate water baptism with believers, who have decided to follow Jesus for the rest of their life and publicly declare it to the world.

We all want our kids to emotionally healthy. What about spiritual health? Is that an automatic by-product of eating supper with your family? Well….depends on a number of factors. First of all, if you are a splintered family at supper time, maybe you should seriously reconsider your schedule and do something drastic—like drop out of half of your activities! But secondly have you ever considered that this might be the perfect time to impact your children deliberately and purposefully with spiritual issues–when everyone is together even for a short time?

Scary Truth!

The scary truth is the average parent spends 38.5 minutes per week in meaningful conversation with their children. (A.C. Nielsen Co.) So when, Christian parent, are you passing your faith values and beliefs on to your children?
Tonight the supper table, at family time when you discuss the things of God, talk about this Scripture tonight. James 1:27 “27 Keep yourself unspotted from the world” Ask your children if they know how important the Bible is. When a Muslim child picks up the Quran, he kisses it. When you go to a Jewish synagogue, people dance around the auditorium holding a copy of the Torah in their arms, and as they walk by it, they will kiss it. We don’t kiss our Bibles, but this shows how valuable and special they believe their holy books are. How can we show that we believe the Bible is valuable? Here’s something to talk about at supper tonight with the kids—how do we live in the world but not be of it? And how do we pass this concept on to our children and teens? A lot of it just boils down to understanding who we really are—we’re children of light living in world of spiritual darkness. I like to tell kids that when we are truly walking in the light of Jesus it’s like we’ve swallowed a Holy Ghost light bulb and people can actually see us glow.

But when we compromise and begin to let the world get into our hearts, even in small ways, our light gets dimmer. We can become “spotted” and if we are not careful we get so many spots our light gets dim, and people can’t see our light any more. The Bible tells us to keep ourselves “unspotted” from the world.

Church leaders and Christian parents are beginning to put more emphasis on the role of the family in the spiritual development of children. In Matthew 22, Jesus pointed to the most important commandment in the Bible: “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise’ ” (Deuteronomy 6:5–7, (ESV2). Some of the best times of family worship in the home is when invite the Holy Spirit to come just like you do at church during worship. Teach them to close there eyes and invite the Holy Spirit. This is particularly helpful for younger children. I used to love to have a bucket with a scrub brush and would tell my daughter let’s begin with cleaning our hearts. What Is God saying he wants clean? Always start with repentance than watch what God will do. Family worship will become a lifestyle!

If we want our children to know God and not just know about Him, we need to teach them to pray and listen. God speaks today and prayer is very important. Start them young just like you train them to brush their teeth and make their beds. Pray with them. Children can hear all the bible stories about God. But they too can have a relationship with God just like the people in the bible.

I had one of my youngest children from PowerClub today share with me that he disobeyed God. He went to his cousins house and he heard the Holy Spirit say “Do not watch that TV show” But he did anyway. He came home and went to sleep and got scared because monsters were in his room. He ran into his mothers room and told her to please read the book Monsters in my closet. She said “Why” He said because I need it. She said to her son “what is going on” He told her what happened and told him he didn’t need the book.” She said ” You know what to do” He prayed out to God crying and saying I am so sorry and then stood up and told those monsters to go away in Jesus name. His Mother told me he went into his own room and fell fast asleep. We need to listen to the Holy Spirit. He knows what is best. When we hear his voice we need to obey.

Friday’s Passion is a event we do in our community. A reenactment of Christ Death and resserection. It is a parade down our Main St. and the gospel shared after his resserection. Along with Worship and children sharing the gospel along with the adults. Thank you Lord for Salvations!