Surviving As a Single Parent

The American Family Unit has changed drastically over the years. Where the typical family unit used to be a mother, father and children the majority of families today are single parent with the majority of single parents being mothers.

Surviving as a parent is difficult enough but making it as a single parent can be brutal. Here are a few things that all parents can do to survive parenthood and raise Godly children.


Be Fed
In I Kings 17:9-12 Elijah had fled from the wrath of King Ahab to Zarephath under the Lord’s direction. There he meets a woman who recognizes him as the prophet of God.

He asks her for a drink of water and a cake of bread. Her reply was interesting to say the least.

"As surely as the LORD your God lives," she replied, "I don't have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die."

Her intent was for her and her son to eat to die. Even though she recognized that she was in the presence of a man of God she didn’t recognize what God could do in the life of her and her son.

She made the same mistake that many parents are making today. She tried to rely on her own means for the survival of her son.

There are so many resources and helps for parents out there. The church is leading the way in this by providing ministries for children and their parents that are targeted at enhancing spiritual as well as physical growth.

It is the parent’s responsibility to equip themselves in a way that allows both themselves and their children to succeed in life.

Follow Godly leadership
In verses 13-16 the prophet Elijah instructs this single mother to go ahead and fix the bread for her and her son but to make him a small portion first. By doing that the jar of flour and bowl of oil would never be empty.

This was a simple test of faith. Did she really trust in the guidance and leadership of this man of God? Verse 15 says that there was enough food every day to feed her, her son and Elijah.

There is a reason why the divorce rate among couples that attend church is less than half of that of couples that do not. There is a reason that the graduation rate is higher and pregnancy rate is lower among teenagers who have grown up in church.

There is a right and wrong way to do everything including raising your children. Everyone follows a certain type of leadership but not all of it is Godly. Whose leadership are you following?

Place your children in God’s hands
17 Some time later the son of the woman who owned the house became ill. He grew worse and worse, and finally stopped breathing. 18 She said to Elijah, "What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?"
Why did this happen? After all this widow had done for Elijah why would her son die?
It’s amazing how many things we fail to give over to God. We give our lives to Him and call Him Lord but we never let Him in our marriages or in our homes. We don’t trust him with our children or anything else important to us. Those things we want to manage ourselves so we can always keep a firm hold onto them. What we are really doing is not trusting God enough to place those things in His hands.

19 "Give me your son," Elijah replied. He took him from her arms, carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. 20 Then he cried out to the LORD, "O LORD my God, have you brought tragedy also upon this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die?" 21 Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried to the LORD, "O LORD my God, let this boy's life return to him!" 22 The LORD heard Elijah's cry, and the boy's life returned to him, and he lived. 23 Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, "Look, your son is alive!"

This mother had to experience total loss before she placed her child in the arms of God. What are you waiting for?

On February 19, 1979, a small plane crashed into Ontario Peak in the San Gabriel Mountains, and a ten-hour story of death, courage, and survival began. The passengers of that Cessna 172 included the pilot, a young woman, an attorney, and his eleven-year-old son. The pilot and the attorney were killed in the crash. The boy said he knew his father was dead when he tried to rouse him and “he wouldn’t wake up.” The boy and the young woman huddled in the snow near the plane for seven hours, hoping to be rescued. Finally they decided they must attempt the treacherous descent of the mountain or freeze to death. Shortly after they began, the woman fell 350 feet to her death. The boy, all 75 pounds of him, was lost and all alone on a mountain in the freezing cold. Bloody and bruised, broken bones in both hands, his father lying dead a few feet away—what was he to do? He never gave up. He slid most of the way down the mountain on the seat of his pants, clutching a stick in his fractured hands. Whenever he began to slide too fast, he wedged the stick in the snow as a brake. About 5 p.m. he was found near a village at the foot of the mountain and rushed to a hospital. Wet, bloody, and exhausted, he was still very much alive.

Before his release from the hospital there was a news conference. The boy encountered a barrage of questions about his ordeal. How did he find the courage to go on? Didn’t he feel like quitting? He answered simply, “I’m alive today because my dad taught me never to give up.”

Your children are learning from you. They are learning to be people. They are learning to be husbands and wives and they are learning to be mothers and fathers. How are you teaching them?

Three Things Every Husband Wants to Hear His Wife Say

I’ve started a series on the family that will cover all the family unit
relationships. The purpose is to encourage families and marriages to be even better than what they currently are. Not saying that they are bad but understanding that every successful marriage takes work and for every “happy ever after” there was a husband and wife who were willing to continue to make their marriage better.

There are three things that every husband wants to hear his say. It’s not an issue of respect, or lack there of, nor is it an issue of one gender being better than another. It’s simply an issue of loving your husband enough to say one of these three things to improve your marriage. I promise it will change your marriage for the better. So, here we go…

1 "You’re the man."

Genesis 3:16 To the woman he said,"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

This is your curse ladies! You may not like it but you can’t leave it. Adam and Eve messed up and it changed the world. It was Eve who took the fruit and passed it on to her husband and it was Adam, who was equally at fault, who did not protect his family.

Both were at fault and both had to suffer the consequences of their actions. For the man it would be working to earn and provide for his family. That is his charge. That is his responsibility. The worst thing a father can be to his family his lazy. Not only is he not fulfilling his obligations to his family but he is also modeling to his children what not to be as a husband and father.

A husband should be hard working and dedicated to the support of his family. I’m not saying that women shouldn’t and couldn’t work. I believe if a woman wants to work outside the home then they should be commended for their additional support to the family but it should also be their choice.

If it’s the man’s responsibility to be the family workforce then it’s the women’s responsibility to be the encouraging and supporting force. If your husband is working to support your family then I promise he wants your encouragement. He wants to know that you support him and are proud of him for what he does.

When the bible says to wives that their husbands will rule over them it is a challenge to the husbands rather a knock against the wives. It’s interpreted as highly disrespectful to women and women often look at a husband trying to be the family leader as the man withholding his love and not appreciating her advice.

God created men and women as equal partners but he also created your family with the man as the intended leader of the home. We believe in and trust the promises found in John 3:16, Eph. 2:8,9, Romans 10: 9-10, John 10:10....why do bug out when we read Eph. 5:22-23?

Ephesians 5:22
Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. [23] For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. [24] Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

We read the word "Submission" and we go "Ugh!" We don’t like to hear it, especially when a man says it to a woman. Husbands and wives are equals and they are partners but the man is intended to be a leader among equals.

I can see why women who don’t believe in God, Jesus, resurrection and forgiveness of sin would have trouble with Eph. 5.

But for the woman who believes....Ephesians 5:22 is simply God’s instruction to the woman just like Eph. 5:25 is God’s instruction to the man.

Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

I’ve always said that a wife who is loved and cherished by her husband will have no problem submitting to his leadership as the leader of the home. It’s alright ladies. Tell your husband he’s the man.

2 "Yes we can."

Here’s a surprise. Men and women are different. A woman’s need is to be appreciated and listened to. Experts say that a woman needs 8-10 nonsexual touches a day. Things like having her hand help, a hug or just simply having her husband’s arm around her.

Men on the other hand need sexual touch. Ladies, it’s not just your husband. All men were created that way.

It takes two to tango but only one not to tango. According to the bible husbands and wives have the duty to fulfill each other.

I Corinthians 7:3-4
[3] The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. [4] The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.

Wives if you withhold your body because of revenge, punishment or manipulations you’re messing up biblically. The same thing goes for husbands.

3 Honey, I was wrong, will you forgive me?

Proverbs 27:15 A quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping on a rainy day; 16 restraining her is like restraining the wind or grasping oil with the hand.

Proverbs 21:9 Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.

This post is not meant as a knock against wives but rather as an encouragement. Trust me a post for husbands is coming soon. Ladies, it’s important that you don’t criticize your husband to other people and when you do point out his faults, do it privately and out of love.

Be willing to acknowledge when you have done wrong yourself and don’t be afraid to say you are sorry. Apologizing puts the ball in his court so to speak and puts the responsibility of resolution on his shoulders.

"Let the wife make her husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave." - Martin Luther

The Big Easy

I had the opportunity to go to New Orleans last week as a part of a damage assessment team. My job was to lay the ground work for a team from our church that will be going in August to help with rebuilding.

I was amazed at how much devastation was still there. I was able to tour through some of the most devastated areas and was shocked at what I saw. There is no doubt in my mind that it will be years before the city is restored to a pre-Katrina state. Right now the city is still missing half of its population.

I encourage you to look at the photos below and find a way to get involved in the rebuilding of the city. Volunteer to go on a work trip or find a good reputable charity or ministry to make a donation to. After being there first hand I can honestly say that every little bit helps.

The bible speaks, in Ezekiel, of looking for someone to stand in the gap to rebuild the wall but no one was found. My fear is that many will have the attitude that New Orleans got what they deserved for building a coastal city under sea level. I pray that many will step up into the gap on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of people who are still displaced and have lost everything.

Photos from New Orleans

Here are some of the photos I took of the flood area in New Orleans. These were taken in the Lower 9th Ward and in Saint Bernard Perish. Photos don't do it justice but it allows you to see how devastating this storm really was.



Sights like this are still very common. This is a church in Algiers. This area sustained mostly wind damage.













This pile of rubble is what is left of the home that were at "Ground Zero" when the levee broke in the Lower 9th. Every home within about six blocks of the levee was totally washed away.













This is the foundation slab that is left from a home washed away when the levee broke. This actually was a neighborhood in the Lower 9th this time a year ago. There were some homes where not even the foundation was left.













Smashed vehicles like this one, along with boats, are found littered throughout the Lower 9th Ward.













This is a home in the St. Bernard Perish. The water entered one side of the house and then blew out the wall on the other side. There are several homes just like this one.













All of the homes in the flood zone are marked like this. The upper numbers (9-30) are the date the home was searched. The letters and numbers to the left (SA-2) is the unit that searched the home and the number on the bottom (0) is the number of bodies recovered in the home. Unfortunately there were several homes where this bottom number was not 0.













These next two photos are what the inside of the flooded homes look like. Imagine a 30 foot wave of water hitting and flooding your home floating everything around for three weeks and then setting everything as it drains. This is what it looks like.













When our team goes in August our job will be to totally clean out homes like this. Everything has to come out to get rid of the black mold.













This was the way of escape for many people in St. Bernard. The water rose so quickly that people were forced to their attic and had to escape my making a hole in the roof before the attic flooded.















This shrimp boat was located in the middle of a neighborhood in St. Bernard. It gives you an idea of how deep and how much force the water had. This boat was 3/4 to one full mile away from any body of water.

Is the Old Testament Credible?

All people, believers and non-believers alike, need to know whether or not the Old Testament is what it claims to be. Where the books in the Old Testament really written by Moses and the prophets whose names are attached to the works are is it all just a hoax?


There are two types of evidence that can be used to establish the credibility of the Old Testament. Internal evidence is looking within the text itself and external evidence looks at things outside of the text.

Internal Evidence of Authorship
The Old Testament book of Numbers (33:2) tells us that Moses recorded the journeys of the Israelites and he did so by the commandment of God. We read in the book of Exodus, after the battle against Amalek (17:14) that God told Moses to write for a memorial in a book.

In one of his last acts Moses finished writing the book of the law and then commanded the people to put it inside the ark of the covenant so that it would be a continued reminder to the people (Deuteronomy 31:24-26).

The Law is referred to throughout the remainder of the Old Testament. Judges 3:4, II Kings 21:8 and Malachi 4:4 are just a few places in the Old Testament that mention Moses’ writings.

In addition several New Testament writers and Jesus himself support the authorship of Moses on the first five books of the bible – known as the Pentateuch. Matthew 19:7-8, Mark 12:19, Luke 20:28, Acts 3:22 and Romans 10:5 all support the authorship of Moses.

There is also internal evidence for the authenticity of the remainder of the Old Testament. In Matthew 24:15 Jesus validates the authorship of Daniel. He also gives validity of Jonah (Matthew 12:39-40) and Isaiah (Matthew 12:17-21).

External Evidence of Accuracy
Once the Old Testament had been complied it was translated into several various languages. As the years passed the original manuscripts of Moses, the various historians and prophets were used and copied so many times that they eventually disappeared.

Scribes would use ingenious means to guarantee the accuracy of the scroll they were copying. Each scroll contained a count of the number of letters, the number of words, the number of lines, even such significant facts as the middle word or letter. When a copy was made the letters, words, and lines would be counted and double checked against the original. If a difference existed, the entire copy would be checked until the error was located and immediately corrected. If a scroll contained more than the allowed minimum errors it would be destroyed.

In 1947, a revolutionary discovery was made. The Dead Sea scrolls, in the caves at Qumran, were discovered by a shepherd boy. This discovery would yield over 40,000 fragments representing hundreds of scrolls and included every book of the Old Testament except Esther. Some of the fragments represented scrolls that had been written 150 years before Christ, more than a thousand years older than any previously known manuscripts.

Careful examination and comparison of the Qumran scrolls with existing medieval manuscripts revealed a consistency in textual integrity which was unbelievable. There was little noticeable difference between the texts written in 150 B.C. and those written in A.D. 800-900. This evidence supports the accurate preservation of the text.

Amazing Grace

It could be the most popular song in all of Christianity. It has been sung by artist world wide, been in movies and recorded over and over. But do you know the story of the man who wrote the song?

In a corner of the churchyard of Olney Parish Church there is a large tombstone on which the inscription reads: “John Newton, clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ preserved, restored and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy.”

John Newton was the son of a sea captain engaged in Mediterranean trade. His mother died when he was 6, and after several years at school, he joined his father’s ship at the age of 11. Immorality, debauchery and failure followed. Rejected by his father and finally jailed and degraded, he later served on slave ships where he incurred the hatred of his employer’s black wife.

He was eventually brought to his senses by reading “The Imitation of Christ” by Thomas a Kempis, the great German preacher of the 13 and 1400’s. He gave is life to Christ and at the age of 39 he became a minister of the Gospel and was the pastor of the Olney Church for 15 years. He wrote many hymns but the most familiar is:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.

What we need more than anything in life is the grace of God. There are three aspects of God’s grace – saving grace, sustaining grace and sanctifying grace.

God’s greatest demonstration of grace is seen in Jesus Christ! Without Jesus there is no grace. He is the very personification of grace.

It is only through a personal relationship with Jesus that a person can find forgiveness and healing. That is saving grace!

God’s grace sustains us as well. Do you realize that people outside of Christ have no assurance of Salvation? People as searching for security, peace and some sort of assurance of eternity but are not finding it.

I am amazed that God sustains my salvation despite my faults and short comings. Even through my failures He sustains me.

“Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.” Romans 4:4-7

That is sustaining grace!

The grace of God should sanctify us. Sanctification is the act of becoming holy and godly. This process should start when we come in contact with God’s grace and surrender our lives to Jesus Christ. That’s sanctifying grace!

God Has a Plan

I couldn’t believe the words I was hearing. I was asked to come to the pastor’s office for a “brief” conversation and upon arriving I was told that I was no longer needed at the church and my job had been terminated. I was being fired!

Twelve months earlier I had moved my family from the south side of Oklahoma City to the northwest side to take a position as student pastor at a local church there. It had been an amazing year of student ministry full of trials and triumphs. We had seen the ministry grow to over 100 students and were making preparations for a great summer.

Then I was called to the pastor’s office. Thoughts raced through my mind trying to rationalize the situation, trying to discover what I could have done to deserve this and I was drawing an absolute blank. I even asked what I had done to cost me my job. The pastor’s reply was that I had done nothing wrong. He said that they were proud of me and my ministry but it was time to move in a different direction.

I stumbled out of the office trying to search for the words I would use to explain to my wife and children that I had lost my job. I was in a complete daze when I remembered the words that God had spoken to the prophet Jeremiah, “For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” – Jeremiah 29:11

What could possibly be God’s plan in all this? Fast forward five years from this “event” and I am now pastoring a church on the northwest side of Oklahoma City and God is blessing and growing it at an amazing pace. I became the pastor here in July of 2005 and since that time we have had 65 new members join the fellowship of our church.

Over the past five years God has shown me that not only did He have a plan for my life that it is perfect. After leaving the church in Northwest OKC I realized quickly how much I need God to be involved in my ministry. We like to put matters in our own hands because we can’t stand the feeling of not being in control.

The key to successful Christian living is not us being in control but God being in control and the same is true with ministry. After coming to that conclusion I was called to join the staff at a great church in Miami, OK located in the far northeastern corner of the state. I’m a city guy! I grew up in OKC and had always lived around the OKC metro area. Had I not been in the situation that I was in I never would have been open to moving that far (3 hours) away from “home”.

We lived in Miami for three years and it was there that I felt God calling me away from student ministry to become a pastor. I was fortunate enough to be working with a pastor who understood what I was going through and was willing to mentor me.

Now that I have been back in Oklahoma City for nine months I can look back on that time and see where God did have a plan for that day in June of 2001 and He continues to have a plan for my life now.

Jesus never promised us an easy life. He never said that there wouldn’t be hard times and difficulties in life. In fact, in Matthew 10:16 Jesus says that Christians in the world are like sheep among wolves. All of us will face trouble in life but the difference is whether you have embraced God’s plan for your life and have the faith to live it.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28