Podcasts about one sunday

ALBERTA - A two-part series. One Sunday in Medicine Hat, AB, a little boy peered through the window of a neighbour's home and discovered a scene so horrific it would shock even seasoned police officers. As a frantic search began for a missing 12-year-old girl, the case took an even darker turn.* Additional content warning: this episode includes the death of a child. Please take care when listening.The intention of this series is to take a look back at a shocking crime sensationalized through headlines and explore how it impacted the community. Some names have been changed to respect the privacy of those involved.Part 2 of this series will be released to everyone in a week.Look out for early, ad-free release on CTC premium feeds: available on Amazon Music (included with Prime), Apple Podcasts, Patreon and Supercast.Canadian True Crime donates monthly to help those facing injustice.This month we have donated to the Calgary Homicide Support Society.Full list of resources, information sources, credits and music credits:See the page for this episode at www.canadiantruecrime.ca/episodes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Pastor Matters, Dr. Alistair Begg shares insights from his 42 years of pastoral ministry at Parkside Church in Cleveland, Ohio. He discusses the importance of endurance in ministry, balancing family life with church responsibilities, and the lessons learned over a lifetime of ministry. Dr. Begg also offers practical advice for young pastors on sermon preparation. His reflections provide valuable guidance for both seasoned and aspiring leaders in the church. We hope this episode is encouraging to you today! Let us know how this episode encouraged you or share any feedback you have by emailing us at pastorscenter@sebts.edu. Pastor Matters is produced by Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Find out how Southeastern can equip you to GO by visiting sebts.edu.

One Sunday morning, Pastor Bill decided the church needed a fresh, attention-grabbing sign to draw in new visitors. He came up with a bold one: "Try Jesus. If you don't like Him, the devil will always take you back." He proudly put it up Monday morning. Later that week, an elderly lady walked in and…

Mark Hart is the chief innovation officer at Life Teen International. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Hart is a blogger, podcaster, and international speaker. He is a research fellow at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology.He is an award-winning producer of Bible study DVDs and the author of more than twenty books, including the topic of our conversation today One Sunday at a Time: Preparing Your Heart for Weekly Mass for cycles A, B, and C published with Ave Maria Press.

Psalm 100 Introduction: Scottish minister Alexander Whyte was known for his uplifting prayers in the pulpit. He always found something for which to be grateful. One Sunday morning the weather was so gloomy that one church member thought to himself, "Certainly the preacher won't think of anything for…

One Sunday morning in Georgia, a family walks into their Pentecostal church ready for worship. They're unaware that outside something life changing is about to unfold. During the service, ICE arrests a man just outside the church doors while his family sits inside. A moment of worship and community suddenly turns into a moment of fear and uncertainty. This is the reality for many facing immigration enforcement in unexpected places today.  This week on Spirit and Power: Apocalypse Now - how Pentecostal and charismatic Christians are making sense of the Trump administration's long promised mass deportations. For some families torn asunder, it feels like the end of the world. For others, it's just the beginning. Dr. Leah Payne does a deep dive into stories of immigration and deportation with Dr. Jonathan Calvillo and Dr. Lois Olena. This episode features contrasting interpretations of the Pentecostal faith, and who is on the side of good and evil when it comes to deportations, family, and public policy.  Resources & Links: “Fear grips immigrant communities as ICE ramps up arrests; community journalist responds,” 11 Alive News “Tenía un proceso de asilo: detienen a inmigrante hondureño al salir de una iglesia en Georgia,” Univision “When ICE Comes to Church,” Christianity Today, by Andy Olsen Migrating Faith: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth Century, by Daniel Ramírez When the Spirit is Your Inheritance: Reflections on Borderlands Pentecostalism, by Jonathan E. Calvillo The Saints of Santa Ana: Faith and Ethnicity in a Mexican Majority City, by Jonathan E. Calvillo“Fear grips immigrant communities as ICE ramps up arrests; community journalist responds,” 11 Alive News Join Leah & many other scholars, activists, and artists considering music the rise of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity at the 2025 Summer Institute for Global Charismatic & Pentecostal Studies at Candler School of Theology at Emory University, May 21-23 in Decatur, GA. Registration is free! Spirit and Power is produced by the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement. Created by Dr. Leah Payne Producer: Andrew Gill Executive Producer: Dr. Bradley Onishi Audio Engineer and Music: R. Scott Okamoto Production Assistance: Kari Onishi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gemilut Chasadim is one of the mitzvot for which Hashem rewards us in both this world and the next. It is so precious to Hashem when we go out of our way to help others. The Chafetz Chaim writes in his sefer Ahavat Chesed that after 120 years, when a person stands in judgment before Hashem, he will see that most of the mitzvot he performed were not done with all the required halachic details. However, if he was a ba'al chesed in this world, Hashem will judge him with chesed as well. Even if he doesn't fully deserve it, his mitzvot will be accepted, and he will receive their full reward. Gemilut Chasadim is not only about giving money—it is about giving time and energy. Whenever we go out of our way to help someone, we should be mindful that we are fulfilling the mitzva of Gemilut Chasadim . And no matter what, we always gain from it. A man, whom we'll call Reuven, shared the following story: In 2013, Reuven was living in an apartment with about $7,000 in his bank account. One Sunday morning, he received a call from someone asking if he could help make a minyan for a person who needed to say Kaddish . At first, his yetzer hara tried to convince him otherwise. "It's raining outside, it's cold, I'm sure they'll find someone else." But he overcame the struggle and went to join the minyan . After tefillah , the man who had asked him to come thanked him and mentioned that he was getting involved in something called Bitcoin. Reuven had never heard of it before. The man encouraged him to buy one coin. At the time, the price was $50 per coin. Reuven listened to his advice and bought one. Very quickly, the price doubled to $100. Excited, Reuven called the man to thank him. The man told him, "Buy more. I'm certain it will keep going up." Following his advice, Reuven bought more coins—and as the price rose, he kept buying. Today, his Bitcoin holdings are worth millions, with each coin valued at around $100,000. Of course, in the Next World , his act of helping someone make a minyan will be worth infinitely more than millions of Bitcoins. But he is also happy to have seen a side benefit from the good deed he did. Sometimes we are asked to help others, and we don't think we can. But Hashem is interested in the effort , not just the results. If He wants the person to be helped, He will bless the efforts. A real estate developer, whom we'll call Shimon, shared his own experience: One day, he received a request from someone who needed an urgent appointment at the Cleveland Clinic. The waiting list for this particular appointment was extremely long. Shimon was very involved in helping people, but this time he felt he had no connections at the Cleveland Clinic. He initially told the person that he didn't think he could help. But after hanging up the phone, he told himself, "I have to at least try." He searched for a list of hospital contacts and decided to call the vice president. The secretary answered, and Shimon introduced himself. Thirty seconds later, the vice president was on the line. "Are you Shimon Cohen, the real estate developer?" the man asked. Shimon replied, "Yes." The vice president continued, "I've been on a waiting list to get a condo in one of your buildings in Florida. I heard there are only a couple of units left, and multiple people are trying to get the last one." Shimon told him, "Let me see what I can do for you." The vice president then asked why Shimon had called him. Shimon explained that he had a friend who urgently needed an appointment at the hospital. The vice president immediately replied, "Consider it done. You help me, and I'll help you." Afterward, Shimon reflected, "What were the odds that the one person I called would be someone who needed my help at that exact moment?" Because Shimon had a sincere desire to help, Hashem orchestrated the zechut for him to do so. Every effort we make to help others is precious to Hashem. And the more chesed we do, the more chesed Hashem grants us in return.

Hour 1: The Tara Show - “Canadians Booing the US National Anthem” “Marco Rubio Gives One Sunday Show An Education On WW2 Germany!” “Ryan Wrecker Talks With Sally Pipes About Pharma Costs” “How Do We Lower Housing Prices?”

Laurence Torr Leaders Meeting -  Sharing One Sunday 15th December 2024   Visit Our Website http://www.graceloveandtruth.com/ Visit Our YouTube Channel Here http://www.youtube.com/laurencetorr

Ken talks with Mark Hart “One Sunday at a Time: Preparing Your Heart for Weekly Mass – Cycle C” (Ave Maria Press) and Father Nathen Cromly “Coached by Paul the Apostle: Lesson in Transformation” (Scepter Publishers). Mark's book available at: https://www.avemariapress.com/products/one-sunday-at-a-time-cycle-c and Father Cromly's book at: https://scepterpublishers.org/products/coached-by-paul-the-apostle-lessions-in-transformation?_pos=2&_sid=ab810584e&_ss=r&variant=44218634764465  Follow Mark at: www.biblegeek.com and https://www.facebook.com/MarkHart99/ Follow Father Cromly at: https://www.saintjohninstitute.org/ L'articolo Meet the Author with Ken Huck – January 16, 2025 – Mark Hart “One Sunday at a Time: Preparing Your Heart for Weekly Mass – Cycle C” and Father Nathen Cromly “Coached by Paul the Apostle: Lesson in Transformation” proviene da Radio Maria.

This week, Pastor Marty Tackett continues the powerful “Come Alive in 25” series with a message that will inspire you to break free from the ruts in life. It's easy to get comfortable in routines, but true hope and transformation require stepping out of your comfort zone. Pastor Marty challenges us to embrace change, take action, and trust God's plan to bring new blessings into our lives. If you're ready to experience something different and live with renewed purpose, this is a message you won't want to miss!

January 9, 2025Today's Reading: Catechism: The Third CommandmentDaily Lectionary: Ezekiel 3:12-27; Ezekiel 4:1-11:25; Romans 2:1-16The Third Commandment: Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.“What makes you so special?” That question could be taken as Law or Gospel, depending on the context. Both are helpful to us as we reflect on the Law of God laid down in the Third Commandment and the Gospel promise He offers apart from it.“What makes you so special?” an honest friend asked a young church worker. After years of schooling and moving and sacrificing for others, the young church worker was convinced that a getaway weekend was deserved. So it was planned, miles away from any church. “After all,” they explained to their friend, “the Sabbath is not a literal ‘day' for the Christian who finds his Sabbath in Jesus.” While true, this attitude betrayed a dangerous misunderstanding of Christian freedom. One Sunday away from church may not break a believer's faith, but intentionally spurning the Word of God will lead to rejection of the faith received at Baptism; this is most certainly true. There are no exceptions; no one is so special as to be immune from the Law. There is no vacation from God nor rest apart from Him. There is no portion of one's life that can be kept for oneself. All things belong to the Lord, who commands us to worship Him. The words of Ezekiel are a warning to us: “Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God?” So the honest friend asked: “What makes you so special?” The words were like a shot through the heart, as the Law so often is. The young church worker knew they had despised God's Word. They repented and found a place to worship, even on vacation.Brothers and sisters in Christ: gladly hear and learn the Word of God. Come to worship as regularly as you can. This is in keeping with God's good Law; it is His good and gracious desire for you to hear His Word, that it may convict you of your sin and bring you to repentance. As the Holy Spirit works within your heart, you will hear the same Word of God, but it will take on a new and glorious meaning– for the Law has been fulfilled in Jesus!True Sabbath rest is His free Gift to you! “What makes you so special?” now has an answer: Jesus! In His Word, He declares you so special that He forgives your sin!In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.O Lord, we are men of half faith, of cloven faith, half given to You, half saved up for ourselves. Forgive us, Lord. Teach us, O Lord. Teach us to walk as Your Son walked on earth through ministry to death, through death to life and glory at Your right hand. Through Him we pray. Amen. (adapted from a prayer “To Live by the Word of God” by Martin Franzmann, in “Pray for Joy,” CPH: St. Louis, MO, 1970)-Rev. Donald Stein, pastor of Saint Andrew Lutheran Church in Rockton, IL.Audio Reflections Speaker: Pastor Jonathan Lackey is the pastor at Grace Lutheran Church, Vine Grove, KY.What makes a church "good?" Come join the fictional family as they test out eight different churches in their brand-new town and answer this question along the way. Will the Real Church Please Stand Up? by Matthew Richard, now available from Concordia Publishing House.

One Sunday a year, we stay home with our families and enjoy service from the comfort of our living rooms! This past Sunday we joined the Manna Fayetteville/Ft. Liberty family and folks along the Military Highway for the “Service in Your PJ's”! Watch now and be inspired to start the New Year knowing you have nothing to fear with God's everlasting love!  Join us this Sunday for the first service of 2025 and the beginning of a new series! To learn more about our church, visit the Manna Church Stafford/Quantico website at mannastafford.church.Looking for a church in Stafford, Virginia? We would love for you to visit us onsite. Get directions to our church at mannastafford.church/visit-manna-church-stafford-quantico/Connect with Manna Church Stafford on Facebook at facebook.com/MannaStafford and on Instagram at instagram.com/manna.stafford.

Talk 46 Mark 15:16-39 The Crucifixion Welcome to Talk 46 in our series on Mark's Gospel. Before we begin, I want to apologise to those of you who have been trying to visit my website. We've been facing some technical difficulties which have yet to be resolved and this has resulted in some delay in the production of these podcasts. However, as you must have discovered if you are now listening to this podcast, all my podcasts are accessible from the usual podcast providers. If in doubt, please google Great Bible Truths with Dr David Petts. But sincere apologies for any inconvenience you may have experienced so far. But now, for today's talk.   Last time we considered Mark 15:1-15 where Jesus is tried before Pontius Pilate. We noted: 1.     The continued determination of the Jewish leaders to have Jesus crucified 2.     The total commitment of Jesus to the way of the cross 3.     The complete moral failure of Pilate to do what was right. And we saw that at the end of that passage Pilate has Jesus flogged and hands him over to be crucified. Today we pick up, the story in verses 16-20:   16 The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace (that is, the Praetorium) and called together the whole company of soldiers. 17 They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. 18 And they began to call out to him, "Hail, king of the Jews!" 19 Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spat on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. 20 And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.   Jesus had said yes when Pilate asked him, Are you the king of the Jews? (v2). Of course, the soldiers would have thought that this was an absurd claim, and so they decided that, before they led him away to be crucified, they'd have some fun at his expense. So they put a purple robe on him. They put a crown of thorns on his head and called out, Hail, king of the Jews!" They fell on their knees and paid mock homage to him. Then, when their fun was over, they led him away to be crucified. But, as we shall see later, the soldiers weren't the only ones to mock him. But first, verses 21-26:   21 A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross. 22 They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means The Place of the Skull). 23 Then they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. 24 And they crucified him. Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what each would get. 25 It was the third hour when they crucified him. 26 The written notice of the charge against him read: THE KING OF THE JEWS.   Simon, the man who was forced to carry Jesus' cross, was from Cyrene in Libya, north Africa. It's possible he had come on pilgrimage for the Passover festival and was staying in the countryside just outside Jerusalem. It's equally likely that, although he had originally come from Cyrene, he was now permanently living near Jerusalem, as Acts 6:9 seems to indicate that there was in Jerusalem a so-called Synagogue of Freedmen some of whom were men from Cyrene. The fact is, we simply do not know. Neither do we know who his sons, Alexander and Rufus were, although it's possible that Rufus is referred to in Romans 16. The fact that Mark refers to them both by name does seem to suggest that they were known to the early Christian community for whom Mark was writing. We can't help wondering whether they had become Christians as a result of their father's unexpected encounter with Jesus.   What we do know is that Simon was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross. It was one of those occasions when something totally unexpected occurs in our lives. At first sight it might seem like sheer coincidence. He just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or was it the right place at the right time? The Saviour of the world is on his way to be crucified. It's the most important event in history. Is God in Heaven going to allow anything to happen by accident? Surely not. And if not, there was a divine purpose in Simon's encounter with Jesus. He follows Jesus, carrying his cross all the way to Calvary. It's hard to imagine that he did not remain to witness the events of the crucifixion and, having done so, to continue to follow him for the rest of his life. We're reminded that we're all called to take up our cross and follow Jesus.   But let's pause for a moment and think about unexpected things that may happen in our lives or the lives of people we know who are not yet Christians. Of course, we all love to see miracles of healing that come unexpectedly and are positively life transforming. But what about events that seem negative, rather than positive, like being forced to carry someone else's cross? Has it ever occurred to you that God might have a purpose in allowing these things to happen?   One Sunday morning in June 2016 I was preaching in Ireland on that passage in Matthew 8 where Jesus calms the storm. I remember saying that storms may arise in our lives, even during the coming week, but that Jesus would bring us safely through them. Little did I know that two days later my wife would suffer a massive stroke that was to leave her confined to a wheelchair for the next eight years.   And little did I know on 28th February this year that within less than 24 hours she would be in Heaven. Both were totally unexpected and life-changing events for both of us, but God brought us through, and Eileen has now safely arrived on the other side. Even when unexpected events seem totally negative, God can bring a positive outcome, even if we can't see it at the time. And he can bring about unexpected events in the lives of those who don't yet know him that will draw them to himself.   But back to our passage. They bring Jesus to the place of execution, and they offer him wine mixed with myrrh. This was an act of mercy to condemned criminals usually provided by the women of Jerusalem, but here passed on to Jesus by the soldiers. But Jesus does not accept it. He wants to remain in full possession of his faculties. No anaesthetic can ease the pain of the suffering he is about to endure. He is to bear the full agony of crucifixion, the full penalty for all our sins.   And so they crucify him. The Gospel writers spare us the physical details, perhaps because they were all too familiar to their readers, but also because Jesus' suffering was far more than physical, and far more than the psychological torture he endured at the hands of those who humiliated him. His greatest agony was separation from his Father as the spotless Lamb of God bore the sins of the whole world. Most of the accusations brought against him were false, but he was finally condemned to death for telling the truth, for admitting who he really was, the Christ, the Son of God, the king of the Jews. But it mattered little to the Roman soldiers. They were too busy gambling for his clothes.   But now verses 27-32. 27 They crucified two robbers with him, one on his right and one on his left. 29 Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, "So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30 come down from the cross and save yourself!" 31 In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. "He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself! 32 Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe." Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him.   Mark doesn't say much about the two robbers crucified each side of Jesus. It's Luke who tells us how one of them joined in with the mocking of the crowd and the soldiers, but is rebuked by the other one who says, Don't you fear God, since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong. And then says, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.   This man could certainly not have understood the fully developed doctrine of salvation initiated by Jesus and later taught by the first apostles, but somehow he grasped enough to acknowledge that he was guilty, that he deserved his punishment, that Jesus was innocent and was indeed a king for whom death would not be the end but would lead to a kingdom in which somehow he, a robber, hoped to be remembered. He could hardly ask for more, but Jesus grants him far more than he asks for: I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43).   That was what Jesus was dying for – the salvation of sinners, sinners like this robber, even sinners like Barabbas whose place on that cross Jesus had taken, and sinners like you and me.   But back to our passage in Mark. We saw in verses 16-20 how the soldiers humiliated, mocked and abused Jesus. Now in verses 29-32 we see the mockery continuing, this time not just by those who passed by but by the chief priests and teachers of the law as well. Looking at the passage as a whole, we see that Jesus was mocked by the soldiers who crucified him, the unrepentant thief on the cross beside him, those who were passing by without even stopping to think, the chief priests and teachers of the law, and, as we see in the next section, the man who offered Jesus wine vinegar to drink.   Verses 33-34. 33 At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. This darkness lasted from 12 noon until 3 o'clock in the afternoon. It can't have been a normal eclipse of the sun, as Passover was celebrated at the time of the full moon when the moon would have been in the wrong part of the sky. This darkness was a supernatural event initiated by God himself. All attempts at astronomical explanation of such events, including incidentally the star followed by the Magi in Matthew 2, are totally futile. When God works a miracle there is no natural explanation. If there were, it would not be a miracle!   But what was the purpose of this darkness? It's mentioned in Matthew and Luke as well as Mark, but none of them tell us its purpose, so we need to tread carefully here. We're on holy ground. But perhaps we can find an answer in the events that are closely connected with it in the Gospel records – Jesus' cry, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?, the tearing of the temple curtain from the top to the bottom, the earthquake that accompanied it, the constant demands of the Jews for a sign from Heaven, the final cry of Jesus, It is finished, and the cry of the centurion, Surely this man was the Son of God.   Combined with these events we can surely interpret the darkness as a sign of God's anger at human sin, and at the rejection of his Son by the Jewish leaders. It was a sign that this crucifixion was no ordinary crucifixion. It was a sign that temple worship was now terminated. It was the sign that the Jewish leaders had constantly demanded but still would not accept.  It was a sign of God's vindication of all that Jesus had claimed to be. It was a sign, for all who, like the centurion, would receive it, that Jesus was indeed the Son of God.   34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" – which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" From before time began, back in eternity, Jesus, the Son of God, had enjoyed intimate fellowship with his Father. But now, as Jesus carries our sin, God who is holy and cannot look on sin (Habakkuk 1:13), turns his face away. This for Jesus was the greatest agony of the cross. But his cry must not be seen as a cry of despair. Jesus was well aware that he was quoting Psalm 22 which in so many ways was prophetic of the crucifixion, but which concludes in glorious triumph, for all the ends of the earth will turn to the Lord and all the families of the nations will bow down before him. It was for the joy that was set before him that he endured the cross (Hebrews 12:2).   Verses 35-39 complete the story. 35 When some of those standing near heard this, they said, "Listen, he's calling Elijah." 36 One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. "Now leave him alone. Let's see if Elijah comes to take him down," he said. 37 With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. 38 The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. 39 And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said, "Surely this man was the Son of God!"   Jesus' cry had been in Aramaic, but some mistakenly thought he was calling for Elijah. The mocking continues right to the end - Let's see if Elijah comes to take him down.   John 19:28-30 supplies some information not given in the Synoptic Gospels. Jesus says, I am thirsty and in response he is offered wine vinegar to drink, which he accepts and then cries, It is finished. This is undoubtedly the loud cry referred to in Mark 15:37. Jesus had refused the wine offered to him earlier, but now the work of atonement was complete. He accepts the drink to clear his voice for one last final cry. It is finished.   There was so much that was finished at that moment, not just his earthly life and suffering, but the reason for that suffering was now accomplished, the work of atonement, the bearing of our sin, the means of entry into the presence of a holy God as the veil of the temple is split in two from the top to the bottom. No longer the need for the animal sacrifices demanded by the Law, no longer a temple made with human hands… Jesus has done it all – and he did it for me!   The Roman centurion could not possibly have understood all that, but he understood enough to know that Jesus really was the Son of God. Perhaps he came to understand later, not only that Jesus was the Soon of God, but that he was, in the words of Paul, The Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Charles Wesley certainly understood it when he wrote:   It's finished, the Messiah dies, cut off for sins, but not his own. Accomplished is the sacrifice, the great redeeming work is done. It's finished, all the debt is paid, justice divine is satisfied, The grand and full atonement made; God for guilty world has died. The veil is rent in Christ alone, the living way to heaven is seen, The middle wall is broken down and all mankind my enter in. The types and figures are fulfilled; exacted is the legal pain. The precious promises are sealed, the spotless Lamb of God is slain. The reign of sin and death is o'er, and all may live from since set free. Satan has lost his mortal power. It's swallowed up in victory! Saved from the legal curse I am. My saviour hangs on yonder tree. See there the meek expiring Lamb. It's finished, he expires for me. Accepted in the well beloved and clothed in righteousness divine I see the bar to heaven removed, and all thy merits, Lord, are mine. Death, hell, and sin are now subdued. All grace is now to sinners given. And lo, I plead the atoning blood, and in thy right I claim thy heaven.   God bless you.

One Sunday a year, we pause and reflect on all that the Lord has done, and look forward to what is to come. We are excited to share all that is to come with our Kids, Students, Young Adults, and the launch of Valley College.  Speaker: Brad Bell

One Sunday a year, we pause and reflect on all that the Lord has done, and look forward to what is to come. We are excited to share all that is to come with our Kids, Students, Young Adults, and the launch of Valley College.  Speaker: Brad Bell

1 Sunday afternoon

Recap....No Politics....Terry....

“My Vocation [duty] to Serve God and Family”   In the summer (Mid-June-August), Cross-Way runs a sermon series on Christian Family Life related topics. Generally, keeping in mind the Family Life Conference in the first week of August. This year also we are running a series called“My Vocation [duty] to Serve God and Family”  We have been studying the Vocation of the Church (that Resurrection & Pentecost has given to us). The key themes have been we've been called to God's specific work in this world. One Sunday we studied from 1 Corinthians 12 about the Spiritual Gifts. Our spiritual gifts are our particular ways each of us have been called to serve in the church. It is important for each one to understand (discover) what is their spiritual gifts, as a person, as a family, as a community and even a nation. And then to employ them (as gifts received) to “build the church” (see 1 Cor. 12:4,7, Romans 12:3-6 for the definition). In knowing my spiritual gifts, I must also know what God has called me/us to do in this world.   Spiritual Gifts (1 Cor 12): Me and my family have been especially gifted with certain (skills, money, relationships, benefits) for this we feel responsible to contribute. There are weaker members in the body of Christ, for whom we are responsible to look after. This is a responsibility God has entrusted to us in His Body. Keeping in mind, some of the needs within our congregation, such as families being separated by life's circumstances, having to go away to the cities or abroad to work and send money back home. Many have grown up without parents in their homes, thus struggling with loneliness and/or other issues of the mind and the hearts. Your special gifts, talents, privileges (you've been born in a certain place, you have certain network of relationships- family, friends, neighbors, people we know in higher places, or gov't offices). Let us leverage everything to serve God, his church and bring glory to God.  The goal of this series is  a)  Discover the gifts and resources each person has, b)  Understand the church as the body of Christ, c)  Live healthy life for own self, in family and in the community around d)  Learn how can one serve in the church more effectively, and   I am wonderfully equipped to serve the Body of Christ Topic: “My Vocation [duty] to Serve God and Family”

One Sunday morning during service, Rick died at the back of the church. The power and unity of the congregation's prayers brought him back to life.

One Sunday morning during service, Rick died at the back of the church. The power and unity of the congregation's prayers brought him back to life.

One Sunday morning during service, Rick died at the back of the church. The power and unity of the congregation's prayers brought him back to life.

One Sunday morning during service, Rick died at the back of the church. The power and unity of the congregation's prayers brought him back to life.

One Sunday morning during service, Rick died at the back of the church. The power and unity of the congregation's prayers brought him back to life.

One Sunday morning during service, Rick died at the back of the church. The power and unity of the congregation's prayers brought him back to life.

One Sunday morning during service, Rick died at the back of the church. The power and unity of the congregation's prayers brought him back to life.

“My Vocation [duty] to Serve God and Family”   In the summer (Mid-June-August), Cross-Way runs a sermon series on Christian Family Life related topics. Generally, keeping in mind the Family Life Conference in the first week of August. This year also we are running a series called“My Vocation [duty] to Serve God and Family”  We have been studying the Vocation of the Church (that Resurrection & Pentecost has given to us). The key themes have been we've been called to God's specific work in this world. One Sunday we studied from 1 Corinthians 12 about the Spiritual Gifts. Our spiritual gifts are our particular ways each of us have been called to serve in the church. It is important for each one to understand (discover) what is their spiritual gifts, as a person, as a family, as a community and even a nation. And then to employ them (as gifts received) to “build the church” (see 1 Cor. 12:4,7, Romans 12:3-6 for the definition). In knowing my spiritual gifts, I must also know what God has called me/us to do in this world.   Spiritual Gifts (1 Cor 12): Me and my family have been especially gifted with certain (skills, money, relationships, benefits) for this we feel responsible to contribute. There are weaker members in the body of Christ, for whom we are responsible to look after. This is a responsibility God has entrusted to us in His Body. Keeping in mind, some of the needs within our congregation, such as families being separated by life's circumstances, having to go away to the cities or abroad to work and send money back home. Many have grown up without parents in their homes, thus struggling with loneliness and/or other issues of the mind and the hearts. Your special gifts, talents, privileges (you've been born in a certain place, you have certain network of relationships- family, friends, neighbors, people we know in higher places, or gov't offices). Let us leverage everything to serve God, his church and bring glory to God.  The goal of this series is  a)  Discover the gifts and resources each person has, b)  Understand the church as the body of Christ, c)  Live healthy life for own self, in family and in the community around d)  Learn how can one serve in the church more effectively, and   I am wonderfully equipped to serve the Body of Christ Topic: “My Vocation [duty] to Serve God and Family”

I greet you in Jesus' precious name! It is Monday morning, the 15th of July, 2024, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today. We start in the Book of 1 Corinthians 3:10: "…as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it."" There is no quick fix drop, there is no building on the sand. Matthew 7:26 tells us: "But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.We cannot wing it, we cannot just quickly make a plan. Everything done today seems to be done instantly but it doesn't last. You see, when the storms of life come the building won't stand. We must build on the rock. Who is The Rock? His name is Jesus Christ. Especially for those who are coming after us. You see, when a building collapses it doesn't just destroy the builder but it destroys many other lives as well. As Christians, we have an obligation to others. I can hear somebody saying, "Well, it is my life, I can do as I please." No, you can't. When you gave your life to Christ, you surrendered all your personal privileges. We are now living for the Lord and we are living for each other. I remember a story of a young missionary that went to the Congo. This young man worked night and day. He was so passionate for the Lord, but you see, he wasn't spending time with God. He was building a hospital, he was building a school, he built a beautiful church. He never rested, he never spent time putting down foundations in the Lord. He was literally working himself to a standstill and the villagers were coming to church and they were serving the Lord and were so excited about what was happening. One Sunday morning they arrived at church. The young missionary lived in a little hut but the door was closed, and they thought, "What is wrong, he is normally up early, he is normally the first there?" Then they knocked on the door. There was no answer. They broke the door down and they found that the young man had taken his life. He had committed suicide. They were devastated, that whole congregation went out, they closed the door and they nailed a sign on the door, "There is no god," and they went back to their former lifestyle.Be careful that we don't upset and chase other people from God because we are not building on The Rock. Jesus is The Rock, first the Lord and then the ministry, first the Lord and then your family and your future.Jesus bless you and goodbye.

"I was drawn into the recording by the complexity of the sound - the different layers: close and far / long and short / bass and treble / soft and loud. It was almost like a type of jungle. "I was also drawn in by the story of the park - a residential area in the centre of the city where migrants pitch their tents - an arena where the potential for both clash and collaboration is so clearly played out in the common ground of the football game.  "I used the recording as a springboard for vocal improvisation. I messaged a group that I meet with irregularly and invited them to join me to record a response to the audio file.  "One Sunday evening at Music Tree music school in central London, I set up a few microphones, told the story, played the file to the assembled and off we went. The very immediate response and the tone of human voices was exactly the sound I was looking for to compliment, exaggerate, resonate with and deeply humanise all the so very complicated aspects of a migration story, much of which is out of my reach and beyond my comprehension.  "I am indebted to Jeremy, Henrietta, Dan, Evie, Kay, Sai and Tamara for their openness to and enthusiasm for the project and to Tiziana for letting us use her beautiful school space."  Maximilian Park, Brussels reimagined by Patrick Carpenter. IMAGE: Tram Bruxelles, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Part of the Migration Sounds project, the world's first collection of the sounds of human migration.  For more information and to explore the project, see https://www.citiesandmemory.com/migration

“My Vocation [duty] to Serve God and Family”   In the summer (Mid-June-August), Cross-Way runs a sermon series on Christian Family Life related topics. Generally, keeping in mind the Family Life Conference in the first week of August. This year also we are running a series called“My Vocation [duty] to Serve God and Family”  We have been studying the Vocation of the Church (that Resurrection & Pentecost has given to us). The key themes have been we've been called to God's specific work in this world. One Sunday we studied from 1 Corinthians 12 about the Spiritual Gifts. Our spiritual gifts are our particular ways each of us have been called to serve in the church. It is important for each one to understand (discover) what is their spiritual gifts, as a person, as a family, as a community and even a nation. And then to employ them (as gifts received) to “build the church” (see 1 Cor. 12:4,7, Romans 12:3-6 for the definition). In knowing my spiritual gifts, I must also know what God has called me/us to do in this world.   Spiritual Gifts (1 Cor 12): Me and my family have been especially gifted with certain (skills, money, relationships, benefits) for this we feel responsible to contribute. There are weaker members in the body of Christ, for whom we are responsible to look after. This is a responsibility God has entrusted to us in His Body. Keeping in mind, some of the needs within our congregation, such as families being separated by life's circumstances, having to go away to the cities or abroad to work and send money back home. Many have grown up without parents in their homes, thus struggling with loneliness and/or other issues of the mind and the hearts. Your special gifts, talents, privileges (you've been born in a certain place, you have certain network of relationships- family, friends, neighbors, people we know in higher places, or gov't offices). Let us leverage everything to serve God, his church and bring glory to God.  The goal of this series is  a)  Discover the gifts and resources each person has, b)  Understand the church as the body of Christ, c)  Live healthy life for own self, in family and in the community around d)  Learn how can one serve in the church more effectively, and   I am wonderfully equipped to serve the Body of Christ Topic: “My Vocation [duty] to Serve God and Family”

Whooping. Spanking. Beating. Whatever you want to call it, corporal punishment was a central part of Lee's upbringing. Growing up, he was made to believe that it was a Black custom but as an adult he began wondering if it ended up doing more harm than good. In this episode, Lee speaks with Dr. Andrew Garner, a pediatrician who has studied the effects of corporal punishment on children, and how the nervous system is altered by it. Later, Lee speaks with Geoff Ward, a Professor of African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, to discuss how corporal punishment has extended beyond the home, and into schools.TranscriptWe wanted to give a heads up that this episode includes talk of abuse, and acts of violence. You can find resources on our website, WhatHappenedInAlabama.org - listener discretion is advised.Hi - this is Lee Hawkins and we're about to dive into episode seven of What Happened in Alabama. This conversation is about corporal punishment in homes and schools. Beating, spanking, whooping, whatever you call it, that's what we'll be talking about. This is very personal to me because it's how I and so many of my peers were raised. We were taught that it was not only normal, but necessary. Today we're going to get into the short and long-term effects of corporal punishment on the physical, mental, and emotional development and well-being of children, often following them into adulthood. It's a heavy and important topic But you'll get a lot more out of it if you go back and listen to the prologue - that'll give you some context for the series and this episode. Do that, and then join us back here. Thank you so much. In February 2019, I had my final interview with my dad for this project. We talked for over 3 hrs. I had a deadline to hit, and because I had so many interviews already recorded I did one final interview with him, just to get specific questions answered without having to go back through all that tape. He did the final interview – and he answered some extremely difficult questions, with compassion, regret, and especially grace.Lee: And so how did you get into the whooping thing? Like you beating us with your belt? What made.. Like, where did you get that from?Lee Sr: That I can't say. I don't know, man. It was just a, some kind of a stress that I had, evidently. Lee Sr: it's hard to say how this shit went man.Asking my dad directly about this I realized that families often repeat certain patterns and cycles from generation to generation, without understanding why or where they come from. That four year process of interviewing my father about his upbringing in 1950-era Jim Crow Alabama shined a powerful light on why I was raised the way I was. But while I had gained a better understanding of some of the historical factors that shaped my upbringing, I still needed to understand the forces that prevented my father from breaking the cycle of belt whipping when we were kids. Lee: But what were the stresses that you were going through? Lee Sr: Things that I had seen my mom had to go through with people and shit and that was hard to push it. And so when I thought you guys did something, that was when I would, you know, get out of control like I did man, because that is out of control. I don't give a fuck how you put it. It was validating to hear Dad declare that hitting children with belts was wrong, and something that he profoundly regretted, and was genuinely sorry for, because I struggled for my whole life to understand the sentiment that Black children – especially – need to be beaten, even as I accepted it. I didn't need much more than to hear my dad acknowledge that no, we didn't deserve it – Black kids or not. Lee Sr: If it was up to me and the way I feel about things, I would've never done nothing like that. But I don't know how I got out of control like that. Something was back there in my life that did that and I know it.My mom told me that there were nights that my dad came to bed and cried after those interviews. Though I never saw those tears, it doesn't surprise me. Revisiting painful memories that led my father to try to whip us into perfection out of deep love and concern was obviously excruciating for him. Despite my belief in “honor thy mother and father” and occasionally unnecessary guilt, I didn't feel obligated to shield him from the pain he caused my sister Tiffany and me at times. I accepted that the burden of his actions was not mine to carry. Expecting a victim to accept the blame for a perpetrator's actions, fearing that a grown man might cry, just isn't fair.I was determined to lead my dad down the path to finally put these generational demons to rest, for both of us and for future generations of our family. If he cried, he cried. When I heard that dad cried, I saw it as a sign of empathy but not a reason to quit researching. As children, I wept, and Tiffany wept, through the hundreds of belt whippings we received. In fact, our mother would tell us: “Stop crying or I'll give you something to really cry about.” I now realize that perpetrators rarely recognize the extent of a victim's pain because they aren't the ones being beaten.My father's tears didn't change the reality of what they had done to us. His crying may have meant he finally grasped that his childhood impacted mine more profoundly than my parents had ever acknowledged. Our pain stung so much more than the feeling of a belt to the behind.Social justice activists talk so often about how violence impacts Black bodies, but my research, and my memories of my own childhood, have shown me that violence–including within the Black family and community– can also have potentially devastating effects on Black minds—especially the minds of children.With my mental health journalism training, I now understand why I was always on edge, like my parents. They feared the world, and I feared them. Sometimes I'd go to bed fully clothed, with three layers of clothing on for extra padding, preparing for the possibility of being pulled out of bed for a forgotten chore. This made me high-strung and hard to stay calm. Around age eight, I started blinking excessively when nervous. One Sunday in the choir stand, I couldn't stop blinking. After church, one of my Dad's friends mentioned it, "I think Lee Lee's got some kind of nervous tic." Dad dismissed it as teasing, ranting to my mom about it the whole ride home.But his friend was right. My nervous system was firing like crazy. Though I excelled in spelling and reading, I struggled in math that year. My parents thought I was clowning in class and believed more beatings would improve my scores. They'd yell, "You're being the class clown for all those white friends of yours." They didn't realize I needed extra help from a teacher or tutor. Instead of focusing on math, I'd sit at my desk and worry about the belt whipping I could get for writing down a wrong answer, which made me blink even more.Neither my father nor I connected my nervousness to the beatings. We saw the belt as temporary pain. But it hijacked my entire system. As an adult, I've dealt with stress, but nothing compares to the constant stress I carried as a child. I don't know how I never developed an ulcer. Imagine an adult experiencing the unpredictability of being overpowered and whipped several times a month, then having to perform at their best the next day. That's what I went through… as an eight-year-old.What broke my heart as a child was that my mother told me that she gave my teacher permission to hit me if she wanted to. My teacher never did, but she clearly knew I was getting the belt at home. That trend of many schools failing to protect students from violence, or even exacting violence themselves, impacted me in so many ways. One clear way was the reality that my Dad rarely if ever got hit by his parents, but he did get hit plenty of times at school, which, I believed normalized the idea of child beating in his mind at a young age.And today, Alabama is one of seventeen states that still allow corporal punishment in K-12 public schools, with the schools mostly striking Black children and those with disabilities. In 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the UCLA Center for Civil Rights Remedies reported that Black boys are nearly twice as likely to be hit compared to white boys, and Black girls are struck at over three times the rate of white girls. This, all despite the fact that Black students behave similarly to white ones. Today, hitting school children is legal and most prevalent in states where enslavement was legal. Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas represent over 70% of all corporal punishment in U.S. public schools, according to the SPLC. Children at some schools are hit nearly twice a month. Notably, during the 2015–16 school year, one Mississippi school reported 871 instances affecting 57 students, averaging 15 times per student. Another school in the same state noted 60 instances for just four students, also averaging 15 times per student. A few years back, before my dad died, my Dad and his sister, Aunt Toopie, talked about the beatings they received at school while growing up in Jim Crow AlabamaLee: Did they whoop the kids in school, was it a strict thing?Lee Sr: Yeah, we got our ass kicked every time we were late, I know that. Aunt Toopie: And stand in the corner.Lee Sr: And when you did something in class you got your ass kicked.Aunt Toopie: They had belts in school in them days.Lee Sr: They had that board of education. If I was late for school, you'd go right to the principal's office, and he'd tell your ass up about three times with that paddle, with holes in it. That paddle was a piece of oak wood, and it had varnish on it and it had holes. They had drills holes in it. It was custom made. It said board of education and he'd have you bend over and man, that thing, them holes in that thing, would leave little dots on your ass.” Being hit at school burned a permanent memory in my dad's brain - he normalized it when he became a father, handing down the Alabama-born anxiety to another generation, to me. After the conversation with my dad where he apologized for whipping my sisters and me, I tried to have a similar one with my mom. But it went very differently. "We didn't beat you,” she said. “We spanked you."I was disappointed to hear her deny how severely she and my dad beat my sister Tiffany and me. But I also understood why she would say what she did. There's almost a collective agreement in society that so-called spanking is supposedly lighter than a beating…kinder and gentler and never abusive or harmful. It's much easier to stomach the narrative that there are acceptable forms of violence to use against children; even though that same violence would never be acceptable to use against an adult. Which is why I give my dad so much credit for being honest and not trying to minimize what they did.My dad finally understood the full spectrum of damage the American whip had caused generations of our family. We often think the worst of corporal punishment are the welts and physical pain. But through my own experience and my research, I know the real pain is from the belt's access to the victim's mind. My parents didn't know these beatings and the mental stress of having to constantly look out for danger all around me, made it harder for me to focus, triggering my nervous system into fight or flight, causing bouts of anxiety that followed me into adulthood. This led me to find experts on the effects of corporal punishment on the body and mind.Dr. Garner: The thing that separates kids from adults is they're still under construction. Their brain, their physiology is still under development. And so what happens in childhood doesn't stay in childhood. That's Doctor Andrew Garner. He's a primary care pediatrician in Ohio who has studied the effect of corporal punishment on children. I wanted to talk to Dr. Garner to understand the physiological changes that occur in children when they are hit. Whether you hit them with your hand, a belt, a paddle, regardless of how hard or how often you hit them, it's all corporal punishment. I'm someone who refuses to get nostalgic about the beatings of my childhood. I would never high-five my friends and say I needed it, I loved it, or credit it as the reason I stayed out of trouble or became a productive citizen. It's not funny to me, mainly because it took me years to rewire my system. But I don't want to unfairly judge people either, especially those who don't have the information. Once I delved into history, I gained a deeper and clearer understanding of why so many people I've known—especially Black and white people from the South—have often celebrated and even laughed fondly about the use of corporal punishment. Many have no idea that, when we really look closely at America's historical foundation, hitting children is akin to setting up a system of white supremacy or a mini plantation in their living room. Later in this episode, I speak with Professor Geoff Ward, a Professor of African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, to discuss how corporal punishment has extended beyond the home into schools across the South, mainly the states and counties where slavery was legal and lynching was most prevalent. We talk about the institutionalized use of corporal punishment and how deeply ingrained it is in our history. But for now, let's get back to Dr. Garner.The conversation mentions violence and abuse against children, sensitive listeners please take care. [break]Lee: I think there are many people who believe, well, if I just hit the kid a few times on the butt with my hand, that's a spanking. If I hit a kid with a belt that's a beating, or if I don't if I hit a kid with a belt, but I don't hit them hard..as hard as the guy up the street who's hitting his kid with the extension cord, then that's not a beating. Dr. Garner: That's all violence. Right. So, you know, corporal punishment is a negative consequence, for unwanted behavior. But that negative consequence is the use of force and is intended to cause pain or discomfort. So that's violence. So, you know, whether or not you're trying to split hairs between, a spanking or a beating, it's still the use of violence to coerce, and control and modify another person's behavior. And we know that in order to continue changing that behavior, the violence needs to escalate over time. So it's a slippery slope. I can recognize this slippery slope in my own life. My parents started out with a few hits when I was little and over the years it escalated to something much more serious, to the point where getting hit with a leather belt for five minutes was normalized. In fact, their punishment increased to slaps across the face and attacks that were even more severe. And this was from two parents, who, like most of the parents we knew, felt like, if they truly loved their children, they needed to kick it into high gear and show us that life wasn't going to be fair and that nobody was coming to save us, especially because we were Black. I can see how this happens. Dr. Garner: You may think that in the short term, you're doing a good service to your child because you're trying to teach them something. But in the long run, we know the outcomes are worse. There's clear data, you know, increased risk of child abuse, because you have to eventually increase the negative stimuli to try and change the behavior. Part of the problem with corporal punishment, it's a double whammy. In addition to the anticipation, like you're saying what bad thing is going to happen to me? There's also the loss of safety, because one of the things that the the one of the ways that we buffer adversity is through relationships. And now there's, there can be a loss of trust, in the, in the relationship. And that to me is really interesting that, it's not just the, the, the fear of the pain as you were talking about. It's also the loss of trust that when is this going to happen. Where when am I safe? When am I safe? Lee: Well, never. I was never really 100% safe in my home or outside in the world. Never. There was never a time that I felt safe. And I also feel like my parents did that by design. I don't think they wanted me to ever feel safe, because I don't think they believed that a Black person in America is ever safe. So I believe that they wanted me to feel the hyper vigilance and the hyper cautiousness that they, in the generations before them, felt because they didn't believe enough in the system of America. Another thing is that when you said you have to increase the punishment if you're going to use this system, that's exactly what happened to me. And I know my dad. I know that he…lost control and did not know what he was doing. And I think at that time he got to a point where he realized, what have I done? What have I become? Dr. Garner: I think where we break down sometimes is trying to decide what's more important, you know, is it the connection or is it the structure? Well, they're both important. You need to have connection. So kids trust the instruction you're giving them. But the way I think about it is it's a lot easier to teach a kid what they should do than to keep from doing something you don't want them to do. Lee: But it's also forcing us to understand that children are multiple times smaller than adults. And so we if we apply some empathy here, we have to understand that even if you're hitting a child once or twice, you're still multiple times larger than the child, and the child may not have a bruise. Or the bruise may go away. But it's really this person who's supposed to be taking care of me, who is the only thing in this world I love, and this person who is providing meals and food and shelter for me is hitting me. Oh, he's going to hit me again. But for some reason, children have a different standing in society. They're the most vulnerable in the society, but they have the least protection. Dr. Garner: Yeah. It's crazy. The thing that separates kids from adults is they're still under construction. We know if there is significant adversity, and there aren't opportunities to turn off the body's stress response that can result in a thing called toxic stress. Right. So toxic stress is this inability to turn off the stress response. And it can literally change who we are at the behavioral, at the cellular, even at the molecular levels. We know that adversity can sort of become biologically embedded and and changing the way our genomes work. Lee: And this is just even with just hitting a child once or twice occasionally. Right? Dr. Garner: Absolutely. I mean, that's the point, is that we have to understand the way brains develop. Brain development is an experience driven event. It's the experiences that happen that drive brain development. And so the question is, what are those experiences in childhood, are they adverse in the sense that they're leading to expectancies of bad things and always being on edge, or are they nurturing to the extent that people get me? I have agency and things are going to be positive in the future. So those early experiences are truly foundational and they can influence the way we see ourselves and the way we see other people and the way we see our future.For me, belt whipping taught me not to ever trust anyone, including and especially my parents. I loved them, but I never fully trusted them and rarely confided in them. And that turned me into an adult who simply refused to trust another human being. Despite the active social life I've always had, my childhood groomed me to be a rugged individualist, putting all my trust in God and myself. I never put even an ounce of faith in the idea that another person would not be capable of betraying or letting me down. And in relationships with girlfriends -– especially if they wronged me in any way – I developed the very unfortunate ability to be able to walk away from them and never look back and never miss them. And I often wanted to be able to be vulnerable and feel some level of paralysis or regret, but I always could just keep going.The beatings also made me perfectionistic. My mantra became, “if you want something done right, do as much as you can by yourself, because most people will almost always fall short and disappoint.”At a very young age, I just adopted the posture that I was on my own, and that I should not count on anyone or expect anyone to come up with a net and try to catch me if I fell. And also I also believed that you should always keep people out of your personal business, because in most cases, they'll take your plans, your confiding in them about your most vulnerable feelings or moments, or the smallest mistakes and weaponize them to try and hurt you. And that's how my father was. And yes, he came from a family of Jim Crow survivors and had family members murdered, but I believe a lot of this view of the world I've seen in my family, especially in my case, came from being beaten as children. These beatings – and yes, I have finally given myself permission to call them abuse – just wreaked havoc on my capacity to receive love without skepticism. Even now, I mean, speaking this, I'm wondering if this revelation will somehow be used against me by somebody down the line. But at least I can recognize it now. My new mantra is, “I'm free and I'm safe.” And to be fair, I'm a lot better than I used to be, and I can't say that the skepticism hasn't helped me a great deal – especially in the media business – but I wouldn't wish that level of steel-heartedness on anyone. I asked Dr. Garner to break down what happens to a child's nervous system when they get hit or know there's a possibility they're about to get hit. He said there are three biological pathways. Dr. Garner: The most simplest and the most evolutionarily, primitive is freeze, right? So you may see that the deer in the headlights type thing. Right. And so the first temptation is to freeze, if I be small and don't move, maybe the threat will go away.The second, which you might recognize, is fight or flight. Dr. Garner: And that's where you have a release of all kinds of biological mediators. Cortisol and epinephrine, that basically make your blood pressure high, make you ready to fight or run away. Those hormones are very useful in the short term. So if you see a bear, you can run away fast. But if that if that stress response isn't turned off through the presence of safe, stable, nurturing relationships and that constant bathing in those physiologic mediators of stress is there that results in changes. Changes at the molecular level, changes at the cellular level changes the behavior that really can change who we are. And we call that toxic stress. The third response is to affiliate, that means our ability to collaborate with others, to seek help when there's a threat. It's part of the reason humans have existed so long as a species. But Tiffany and I didn't have that support. There was no escaping the belt. Dr. Garner: Where are my friends? Who's going to help me through this? The problem is, for a young child, the friend is the person who's beating you. So you've really sort of lost that that ability to turn off the stress response from an affiliate response. You're really stuck in flight or flight, and if you're constantly bed with those hormones, again, that's going to lead to a child who's going to be more defiant, more aggressive. Not be able to think things through, not be able to think about the broad perspective because you're. Constantly in fight or flight mode. You're constantly in survival mode instead of relational mode. Lee: Right? Yeah. And if you can think about this to bring some empathy in here for people to understand, if you were hitting a dog and a dog who depends on you for everything, is experiencing this toxicity in this toxic environment, you can actually see a lot of times when dogs are abused because you'll go to pet them and they kind of squirm. Sometimes they might bark, sometimes they might even try to bite you. And that's because they've been abused. Children are the same, right? I mean, children can have some of the same effects that we see, in dogs, that we empathize with. Children who are treated the same way in their home. Can have that same impact. Dr. Garner: But here's the good news. And this is the really fascinates me, is that the more we learn about the biology of adversity, the more we learn about toxic stress and how adverse experiences become biologically embedded and really affect life course trajectories. That same biology underlies how positive experiences get embedded. Right? And that that is the good news, right? So adversity is not destiny in any way, shape or form. In the last few years, there's been a really interesting thing called biobehavioral synchrony, which is a big phrase, but what it means is in those moments of magical connection that you have with another being in particularly between parent and child, there's literally an alignment of the brain waves of the autonomic functions of hormone levels and behavior. Right. And so we sort of know this intuitively that emotions can be contagious. Right? So, if a child's crying, the sibling mates are crying and specters may join an angry mob so it can go in the negative way, but can also go in a positive way, in a sense that engaged and trusted caregivers, they literally have the ability to hack in remotely and turn off the child stress response. Dr. Garner explained that you can see this in action if you look up the still face experiment on Youtube. It's a famous psychological study that was first conducted in 1975 by the psychologist Edward Tronick. Dr. Garner: Basically they take a young child about a year old, and usually it's a mother, and they bring him into the laboratory and they have three two minute blocks. The first two minute block is engaging, so they're just playing back and forth. It literally they call it serve and return - the baby coos the mom responds. And it's really this biobehavioral synchrony. You can literally see it happening for you. And then they tell the mom to turn away and then turn back and to not engage for two minutes. And if you watch the video it is viscerally painful because the child noticed there's a rupture in the synchrony and does everything they can to try and get back engaged, everything they can to get back engaged. And then they tell their mom to turn back again, and now to start to repair. And it's palpable. The children's relief immediately. Oh, we're back again. You're back again? I'm safe. You got me. The important thing is, is there repair, right? And the most recent evidence suggests that it's the latency to repair that's associated with secure attachments and distress tolerance, that ability to say the goodness is coming. We're going to get back together again. It's really, really important. And so, again, that's great news for parents. We're not going to be perfect. We're all going to make mistakes as parents. We can't always be perfectly engaged. The important thing is it's all about repair. It's the ability to come back and become back engaged and basically be saying that, child, your perspective is important to me. The relationship's important to me. And it's way more important for me to be kind than right. Lee: Yeah. And I think that that's one of the challenges for me as part of people from the African-American community who had my experience. For me, knowing that my parents loved me and knowing that that love could be shown, but then the next minute I could be being beaten with the belt. And then they're loving me again. And then I'm beaten with the bel,t going back and forth. I do wonder…I do believe that there were there were some kind of protection outcomes that came from the love that was shown, but the unpredictability of it was, was very difficult because the relationship to violence was weird. Like it because violence was almost framed as love. Dr. Garner: Yeah. That's one of the one of the big paradoxes, I think, of corporal punishment is that having been a victim of corporal punishment, that increases your risk of being a victim of other physical violence down the line, which is sort of counterintuitive. But I think it gets at what you were saying there is that leads to what those expectations of what love are.And throughout my research, I found disturbing instances where enslavers used Bible verses to justify corporal punishment and enslavement. This deeply troubled me as both a Christian and a Black man. I've often heard the phrase "Spare the rod, spoil the child," which, contrary to widespread belief, isn't even in the Bible. And even still, this metaphorical use emphasizes guidance and care rather than punishment. Dr Garner's wife is a Methodist pastor, and I talked to him about how people have often manipulated and weaponized scriptures and proverbs to justify and advance slavery, whipping, and their own agendas. As a result, generations of people have come to believe that it is moral, righteous, and holy to beat children. Dr. Garner: I think it's very upsetting when, these scriptures are being used in a way to propagate violence, when clearly that is not what Christ's intention was. He said, bring the children to me. Bring the children to me. Right. He didn't say, bring them to me so I can whip them. Right. Said, be like a child. Be be like a child. Be empathic. Be full of wonder. Right. And somehow we sort of lost that. So, discipline, you know, comes from the Latin word to teach. Right? So it doesn't mean to punish. Right. And of course there are multiple types of punishment, which actually runs the spectrum right from, a loss of privileges, right. So, you know, if you, you lose your driver's license, if you speed too much, right, to possible incarceration and then all the way to physical harm and even even death. Right? So punishment is the, are those negative consequences. They're imposed for undesired behavior. But punishment is only one form of discipline. And the more we know about it, the more we know it's actually not as effective in the long term and actually can cause potential harm. Lee: And what I love about this research that you've done in everything that you're sharing with us today, is that you're showing that a child's brain is being wired as we go, right, that we're creating the future adult every day when we're working with that child. What do stress toxins do to the body in terms of health? Dr. Garner: Toxic stress, which can be precipitated by any number of different forms of adversity, is associated with basically all of the leading causes of death. Right? So if you want to look at, asthma, you want to look at cancer, do you want to look at suicide and mental health issues. You want to look at obesity. You want to look at substance abuse. Right. So I mean, there's no doubt that, when we are programmed to expect adversity, that we're going to find ways to try and cope. And so if you think about it, you know, people overeat and abuse substances and, are promiscuous for a reason. In the short term, they turn off the stress response. But in the long term, the worse health outcomes down the line. Right. And so, yeah, I mean, I think your point, though, that the brain is, is being made over time is really important, and so are the relationships. And so one way I think to try and frame all of this is affect regulation, how we handle our emotions. Because if you have an angry parent who's spanking a child, the message to the child is when you get angry, it's okay to hit right. And so, that's not what we really want for our kids in the long run. We actually want them, to learn that it's okay to have strong emotions. It's okay to be angry. It's okay to be frustrated. But when you have those emotions, what can we do with them? How can we channel them? Dr. Garner has worked with parents and treated children as a Primary Care Pediatrician for more than two decades. He co-authored the book "Thinking Developmentally: Nurturing Wellness in Childhood to Promote Lifelong Health" and the American Academy of Pediatrics' Policy Statement on Preventing Childhood Toxic Stress and Promoting Relational Health. As a speaker, he focuses on early brain and child development, preventing childhood toxic stress, and promoting early relational health, and he considers himself to be an advocate for all children and their families. Lee: And what do you tell parents when they bring their children in to be treated about corporal punishment? Dr. Garner: One, to heal any wounds that they've had as a parent? Because we've talked before, parents tend to parent the way they were parented. So, I'm going to want to know, what the stressors are in their life with, what the stressors were when they were kids. What a good question often is, what, did your parents do that you want to make sure you do for your kids? But then also, what are the things your parents did that you want to make sure you never do for your kids? As kids get older, I'm going to help them understand, that it's really not the behavior you want to focus on. That a child's behavior is always telling us there's something they need or something they want. And what we need to do is trying to interpret it and help them figure out a better way to have that behavior met. And so this starts really early, you know, with temper tantrums in 3 or 4 year olds. It's really not about the behavior. It's the emotion that's driving the behavior. And if we can help parents understand that, then we can help parents help their child say, look, you're allowed to be angry. You're allowed to be frustrated, allowed to be disappointed. But when that happens, we're not going to yell and scream. We're going to do the things that bring us joy. We're going to try and, spend some time doing some Legos or some coloring, teach them how to cope instead of just saying stop. The problem with, with corporal punishment and all punishments is it's basically saying, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. And then the child, then in, in sort of in their own mind, thinks there's something wrong with me. Because I feel this way and the message needs to be, you're allowed to feel that way, but when you feel that way, do this instead. If the parent is able to say, I'm so sorry I lost it, I'm so sorry I used those harsh words. I'm so sorry I was demeaning. I'm going to try better and we're going to work together to build this relationship. Then that's what those kids are going to do someday, right? I mean, I tell kids that empathy is a superpower. It is an absolute superpower. Not everyone has it, but we can teach it. And when you have it that allows you to repair, that allows you to have relationships. After speaking with Dr. Garner I want to believe that if more well-meaning parents knew hitting their children can also harm their brains and emotional health as opposed to just being temporarily painful, fewer would do it. However, in a country where hitting children is part of a centuries-long pattern of violence, and amid a system that offers the smallest people the least protection, I understand why many believe hitting children is beneficial, especially for Black children.But now that I'm out of that situation, I do view it as abuse and a legacy of my country's legal system and culture, and the enslavement and torture of my people. And it's not just in the home - in 17 states across the U.S. corporal punishment is legal in public schools. Most of these states allow educators to hit students three times in the rear with a long wooden board. And in all states except for just a few, corporal punishment is allowed in private schools.To help me understand it more I reached out to Professor Geoff Ward at Washington University in St Louis. He's a historical sociologist and the director of the Washington Slavery Project. Some of his work connects the dots between the history of lynching in southern states with the modern usage of corporal punishment in schools today. I've had a couple conversations with Professor Ward, the first time was about 2020. I spoke to him again more recently to learn more about the logic of racial violence, how it intersects with our judicial system and how we can break the cycles of racial violence. Lee: You know, before when we talked, we talked a lot about racialized social control. Can you give us a definition, to hold on to here? Prof. Ward: I think a good place to start would be is to recognize that we live in a racialized social system, a society where rewards are allocated along racial lines, where meaning is constructed along racial lines, things like, you know, reliability or, beauty, or intelligence, morality, are riddled with racial logic because we live in a society where race has sort of been infused in the way we relate to and understand each other, the way the society has been organized. And in that context, social control becomes racialized. And social control generally describes the definition and enforcement of norms. And social control can be informal, you know, a sideways glance or a disapproving look. But we also have systems of formal control. And that brings in the State. And our regulatory systems, our courts, our criminal legal system and so forth that are part of the system of social control. And, you know, all of that complex is racialized.I remember reading Professor Ward's work and being shocked by his citation of a 1901 Alabama constitutional debate over the legality of whipping prisoners, in which a county official remarked that “everybody knows the character of a Negro and knows that there is no punishment in the world that can take the place of the lash with him.” And he noted, that juvenile court records from 1930s-era North Carolina reveal that court-ordered whippings were reserved almost exclusively for Black boys and girls, given “widespread feelings among white county juvenile court judges that whipping is the most effective way of handling delinquent Negros."Another court official noted a common diversionary practice of “sendingdelinquent Black boys downstairs with a big police officer to have themflogged” prior to release.Prof. Ward: So this was a an example we, we used from the historical record in the article I mentioned where we examined how histories of racist violence, particularly lynching, relate to patterns of corporal punishment in contemporary public schools. Where we found that, that net of other factors, every additional lynching in the history of a county increased significantly the odds that a child would be corporally punished in a school in that county. This was after accounting for things like how, the funding of the school, the racial makeup of the school, whether it's urban or rural, how experienced the teachers are, how religiously conservative the residents of the county are, and so forth. And in that article, we used the story you're referring to to provide some context for how this relationship could come to exist. How is it that contemporary schools, likelihood of using violent strategies of school discipline has anything to do with the history of slavery or lynching in in that county? What is the story there? What are the mechanisms that connect the past to the present? And we cited that example because it speaks to the racial logic of corporal punishment, the idea that African-Americans are not fully human, are not sentient beings, can cannot be, influenced through, you know, appeals to things like morality or decency or logic, you know, white supremacism historically asserted that that Black people could not think deeply about anything. And so you and so this what this judge is saying in this case and we found numerous examples of this, judges, legislators, you know, rationalizing corporal punishment. And was saying that, you have to appeal, you have to reach, you have to address African-Americans through pain. Lee: Yeah. Prof. Ward: Because, because the you can't reach them through the brain. Lee: Yes. And and what I love about your research is that you've really just blown the doors off of this and shown that the public record is full of governmental rationalizations of violence against Blacks, even after emancipation. you show that African-Americans have always been framed as warranting more violent control strategies. And this is deeply rooted in the idea that we are not fully human. Is that something that you just have seen all through your research? Prof. Ward: Well, yeah, it is, I know it has to also be said that that, you know, racialized social systems are contested. You know, this this idea, this attempt to dehumanize African Americans, never actually fully succeeded. It resulted in a tremendous amount of oppression and pain and violence and death and so forth. But, simultaneously, you know, my research is also showing that Black communities and their allies are countering these measures. But even with respect to the juvenile justice system in my book, ‘The Black Child-Savers' is mostly about how generations of Black women organized, beginning in the 1890s, to dismantle this Jim Crow juvenile justice system. And, they were fundamentally motivated by their own recognition that Black children and people were, in fact, fully human and fully capable of realizing the benefits of a more enlightened approach to social control. One that focused on, on child welfare and development. You know, the system that was being developed for white kids, who were not being subject as much to this, yeah, this brutality. And so they did create, you know, other kinds of institutions and practices that also have to be kept in mind as we think about the sort of how this history unfolded. Lee: You talk about the connection between corporal punishment and the history of lynching, which is really an incredible contribution to this body of work. Lee: Are you still seeing the trend in which, historical areas where lynching was the most prevalent tend to correspond to the amount of corporal punishment that's being done in a particular school district? Prof. Ward: There certainly have been study after study showing that that that histories, area histories of lynching and other racialized violence, predict contemporary patterns of of conflict and violence and inequality. Things like, Black victim homicide rates today and, patterns of vote suppression and white supremacist mobilization, you know, and, white political conservativism, things like Black infant mortality or racially disparate infant mortality, differences in heart disease. I mean, all kinds of contemporary outcomes have been shown by social scientists to be associated with histories of racial violence in, in specific areas. So I would I would imagine that, you know, that that the relationships we saw with respect to corporal punishment in schools, have not suddenly gone away. Understanding how governmental institutions have historically ensured that Black children are subjected to corporal punishment, including in schools, helps me see why my parents feared they had to use violence to protect me. They were conditioned by a system of legal white supremacy to equate violence with love. Like agents of the state, they and generations of Black parents saw violence as a necessity, convinced that nonviolent reasoning wouldn't work with a Black boy.As a result, while my parents were opposed to police violence, they turned our living room into a whipping station, becoming indirect agents of the very police brutality our people protested. Each generation in my family had a hypervisible white police officer who symbolized the need to beat Black children. For my father's generation, it was Birmingham's white supremacist "Commissioner of Public Safety" Bull Connor. In my generation, it was the officers who brutalized Rodney King, and epithet using Officer Mark Fuhrman from the O.J. Simpson trial. For Millennials and Gen Z, it's Derek Chauvin, who murdered George Floyd. It felt as if my parents unconsciously partnered with America's most racist police elements to enforce violence and keep their Black son in line.As I delved deeper, I saw similar patterns among some Black educators and religious leaders. Despite the disproportionate use of corporal punishment against Black children, many administrators and school board members advocated for its use. Legendary psychiatry professor Alvin Pouissaint once told me he once traveled to the South to lobby for the repeal of corporal punishment, only to find that Black educators and leaders were some of its most vocal proponents. One of the school board members who once adamantly advocated for corporal punishment in Mississippi was also a prominent pastor in the Black church. He was one of the many people I'd studied who used the Bible to justify their pro corporal punishment stance Prof. Ward: I think one of the issues here, which relates to what we're talking about in terms of Black religious leaders, is there's an issue here of a kind of sovereignty where local community figures in a context of generally diminished power, economic power, political power, are holding on to a form of power that they do have, which is in the home, through the church, and saying, look, don't, let this, you know, social research fool you. And don't listen to these people who aren't from here and don't know our ways and aren't part of our church. We know what works, we've been whipped and we're fine, and listen to me, and I think there is a fair amount of, you know, manipulation on this issue that is about really about power. About holding on to power, holding onto power in community context, but also asserting power, as you mentioned, in the context of the home. In a society where, you know, there is so much humiliation and alienation, and and refusal of influence on things like, policy and practice and so forth. We commemorated Doctor Martin Luther King Junior, and I was part of an event at my university where we specifically focused on his theme - beloved community. And, our conversation is making me think about, you know, some of the basic, you know, fundamental, tenets of this concept of beloved community, which include that we are stuck in a society marked by, you know, a chain of violence, you know, where we're just in this situation where violence is seemingly a constant. It's almost how we communicate. He talked about how our society is organized by fear and resentment and that fear, you know, the politics of fear and resentment... We for good reason often in that in that context, think about, you know, white reactionary politics. But but our conversation today is also about how fear and resentment contribute to other communities and, and their politics and that are, that are part of this larger chain of violence. If we're ever going to realize this idea of a beloved community, you know, that is a community organized by mutual understanding and universal goodwill. And King, King stressed that to get there, we'd have to reckon with these realities of how our politics of difference breed violence, breed fear and resentment. We'd have to get to a place of mutual understanding and goodwill and, and, you know, for example, to see our to see how, we have common interests in an issue like corporal punishment, whether it affects us directly or not, we have interest in creating a society where we aren't, reifying a culture of violence starting in the high chair, or assuming that there is also going to be an electric chair. How do we get to that place where we collectively disavow, violence as a means of social organization? Lee: Geoff Ward, thank you so much. This has been powerful. And we'll keep the dialog going. But thank you for the wonderful work that you're doing. Fabulous. Keep up the good work. Prof. Ward: Thank you. Lee, it's great to talk to you again. Lee: All right, brother.For years, I had an inner voice that told me, "My parents hate me." So much around us in America, from Black comedians who entertain and electrify crowds with their jokes about beating Black kids, tells us that there is often great contempt for Black children – that they hold the lowest standing in society and therefore should be violently punished with impunity. It takes a countercultural, conscious Black parent to see that every Black child deserves life, liberty, happiness, and positive reinforcement every day.These interviews helped me understand that the first step towards breaking this toxic belief—that violence with Black children is a necessity—is recognizing that they possess bodily integrity and innate intelligence and are neither superhuman nor subhuman, even if the broader society doesn't always see them in that light. We must be careful about internalizing the historical belief that Black children are built differently than white children and can endure more pain. The reams of science proving that corporal punishment has harmful long-term effects apply to them too. I believe that my parents and others unconsciously internalized these classically American beliefs about Black children. We have experienced every facet of America, from its deepest injustices to its greatest achievements. Because of that, it is easy to embrace the prevailing philosophies of this country that we played a heavy hand in building—we are deeply interwoven with its history and its belief system. But those who continue to advocate violence against Black children in homes and schools must reject those racist beliefs and instead embrace a new paradigm that sees and nurtures the full potential and worth of our children.There's a gospel song that says, “He saw the best in me when everyone else around could only see the worst in me.” We need more Black parents and communities to take the lead in seeing the best in our children. I hope that, armed with information about the generational and ongoing cycle of governmentally codified violence against our children, combined with the ever-evolving neuroscience showing that even the anticipation of being beaten can trigger the brain in ways that lead to anxiety in adulthood, more parents—Black and of all races—and school administrators will make a conscious decision to retire the hand, tree branch, belt, and wooden boards of the slavery and Jim Crow eras. We need to breathe life and affirmation into all children, ensuring they grow up with the support and validation they need to thrive, both at home and in society.If corporal punishment was designed to protect Black children, did it really help when it came to growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood? Black kids and the American Dream - that's the next episode of What Happened In Alabama…CREDITSWhat Happened In Alabama is a production of American Public Media. It's written, produced and hosted by me, Lee Hawkins.Our executive producer is Erica Kraus. Our senior producer is Kyana Moghadam.Our story editor is Martina Abrahams Ilunga. Our lead writer is Jessica Kariisa.Our producers are Marcel Malekebu and Jessica Kariisa. This episode was sound designed and mixed by Marcel Malekebu. Our technical director is Derek Ramirez. Our soundtrack was composed by Ronen Lando. Our fact checker is Erika Janik.And Nick Ryan is our director of operations.Special thanks to the O'Brien Fellowship for Public Service Journalism at Marquette University; Dave Umhoefer, John Leuzzi, Andrew Amouzou and Ziyang Fu. And also thanks to our producer in Alabama, Cody Short. The executives in charge at APM are Joanne Griffith and Chandra Kavati.You can follow us on our website, whathappenedinalabama.org or on Instagram at APM Studios.Thank you for listening.

“My Vocation [duty] to Serve God and Family”  In the summer (Mid-June-August), Cross-Way runs a sermon series on Christian Family Life related topics. Generally, keeping in mind the Family Life Conference in the first week of August. This year also we are running a series called “My Vocation [duty] to Serve God and Family”  We have been studying the Vocation of the Church (that Resurrection & Pentecost has given to us). The key themes have been we've been called to God's specific work in this world. One Sunday we studied from 1 Corinthians 12 about the Spiritual Gifts. Our spiritual gifts are our particular ways each of us have been called to serve in the church. It is important for each one to understand (discover) what is their spiritual gifts, as a person, as a family, as a community and even a nation. And then to employ them (as gifts received) to “build the church” (see 1 Cor. 12:4,7, Romans 12:3-6 for the definition). In knowing my spiritual gifts, I must also know what God has called me/us to do in this world.  Spiritual Gifts (1 Cor 12): Me and my family have been especially gifted with certain (skills, money, relationships, benefits) for this we feel responsible to contribute. There are weaker members in the body of Christ, for whom we are responsible to look after. This is a responsibility God has entrusted to us in His Body.Keeping in mind, some of the needs within our congregation, such as families being separated by life's circumstances, having to go away to the cities or abroad to work and send money back home. Many have grown up without parents in their homes, thus struggling with loneliness and/or other issues of the mind and the hearts. Your special gifts, talents, privileges (you've been born in a certain place, you have certain network of relationships- family, friends, neighbors, people we know in higher places, or gov't offices). Let us leverage everything to serve God, his church and bring glory to God.  The goal of this series is  a)  Discover the gifts and resources each person has, b)  Understand the church as the body of Christ, c)  Live healthy life for own self, in family and in the community around d)  Learn how can one serve in the church more effectively, and   I am wonderfully equipped to serve the Body of Christ Topic: “My Vocation [duty] to Serve God and Family”

It's First Responders Sunday! One Sunday a year we recognize and honor all First Responders who serve as firefighters, EMTs, law enforcement officers, active military and National Guard members, and others who respond to emergencies for their courage, commitment, and extraordinary service to our community!

It's First Responders Sunday! One Sunday a year we recognize and honor all First Responders who serve as firefighters, EMTs, law enforcement officers, active military and National Guard members, and others who respond to emergencies for their courage, commitment, and extraordinary service to our community!

A deep dive into an iconic song by Kris Kristofferson... --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mark-owens2/support

You're sitting across from your teenager at the kitchen table. Now that you finally have their undivided attention, you want to talk about an important issue they are facing. Unfortunately, things get tense quickly. Their eyes roll, you get frustrated, and soon they are looking for an escape from this conversation. You sit dumbfounded thinking, "How do I raise my teen to love Christ in a world that is doing everything possible to pull them away?"In this episode of Candid Conversations, host Jonathan welcomes back Melissa Kruger, Vice President of Discipleship Programming at the Gospel Coalition. Melissa is also an accomplished author, having written multiple books, including “Growing Together,” “Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood,” and the popular children's book “Wherever You Go, I Want You to Know.”During this conversation, Jonathan and Melissa discuss her latest book, “Parenting with Hope: Raising Teens for Christ in the Secular Age.” The book provides practical guidance and biblical insights for parents navigating the challenges of raising teenagers in today's culture. Melissa shares her personal journey and the inspiration behind writing this important resource.Listen to this Candid Conversation as Melissa Kruger sheds light on parenting teens with hope, faith, and wisdom. Whether you're a parent, grandparent, or youth leader, this episode offers valuable insights for nurturing the next generation.To ask Jonathan a question or connect with the Candid community, visit https://LTW.org/CandidFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/candidpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/candidpodTwitter: https://twitter.com/thecandidpodTRANSCRIPT:This transcript recounts Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef Episode 248: Parenting with Hope:  Raising Teens for Christ in the Secular Age: Melissa Kruger.[00:06] Jonathan: Well, today I have a repeat guest. It is Melissa Kruger. She is the vice president of discipleship programming at the Gospel Coalition. She is the author of multiple books, including Growing Together; Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood; and the popular children's book, Wherever You Go, I Want You to Know, which we have gotten for our son, and then we've had his teachers write inscriptions each year, whoever his teacher is. And I think you have a special book that allows for that.Her husband Mike, who has also been on the podcast, is the president of Reformed Theological Seminary. And they and their three children are in Charlotte, North Carolina. Melissa, thank you so much for coming back onto Candid Conversations.[00:52] Melissa: Great! Thanks for having me back.[00:54] Jonathan: Okay, you've got a new book out called Parenting with Hope: Raising Teens for Christ in the Secular Age. Now, I imagine this book is flying off the shelves, and you've probably shattered sales records.[01:12] Melissa: I don't think so, right?[01:14] Jonathan: It should. I think this is something the church hears a lot about and it's always so helpful to have books that are written from a helpful, biblical perspective and giving people the foundations and the equipping and the reminders that we can often forget.So tell us a little bit about the journey on Parenting With Hope. What got the start of the book?[01:48] Melissa: I was approached by a publisher who had read my book, Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood, and they said, “We'd really like you to take some of these principles and apply it to parenting teens. And we want it trade book form, Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood, is a Bible study for women, I wrote that one for a friend, for her baby shower. It wasn't intended for publishing; I was writing it for her. So this one really they came with the question and I was very unsure of myself. I've raised three teenagers, and so it was kind of that, ooh, and I was just out of the season. But what I realized when I did Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood, I couldn't write that book now, I think, because I'm not in that moment. The teen years are very fresh to me. I saw tons. I still have one teenager, she's 17. I have a 17-year-old, a 20-year-old, and a 23-year-old and so still it's fresh to me. But I also realized no one's sixty who can write about what they did about cell phones because they didn't exist. They can't talk about what did they do with social media. They can't talk about some of these sports and activities because it was totally different twenty years ago. And so I realized, okay, it's probably a good thing to have someone fresh on the season. And I also realized, the second thing, I was a high school math teacher in I always say my other life, and so I had taken a lot of teen development classes. And I realized this really did help me in the parenting of teens, like there's a lot of common grace insights by people who have studied just what works and what doesn't, and I've realized I had those things in my back pocket. And we do that a lot with young children, we read all the developmental milestones, we know what your 2-year-old should be doing, what your 3-year-old should be doing. When's the last time you read a developmental milestone about your 9-year-old or your 10-year-old? And we stop being learners of what kids are able to do and what they should be doing and so I wanted to put some of that in the book as well.[04:15] Jonathan: Okay, so I love how you break down the book. So it's broken down into three parts. You give the basics, which you call “The Foundations of a Christian Home”; The Battle: Fighting for the Better Portion”; which we'll get into that. And then “The Blessing: Cultivating a Home Where Teens Thrive.” Talks us through a little bit of the Part 1.[04:44] Melissa: I might come off as, well, we all know this, right? [04:48] Jonathan: Right. If you're in the church, you should know and understand that. But—[04:51] Melissa: Exactly. Exactly. And in a lot of ways this is being a Christian 101. But I remind parents of it because I think sometimes we get so bogged down with all the things we're not doing as parents that I want to remind them the most important thing you do as a human is be in God's Word, be in prayer, and be in the church. Doing that is going to already set you ahead of parents all around the world. I mean, that is such a gift to your child to be a parent who is regularly in-taking from the Bible. Why? Because the Bible is not just another book on the shelf; it's actually divine wisdom. We have the ability to tap into divine wisdom. And then secondly we have not just divine wisdom, we have divine help because we can call on God to do what we cannot do, we cannot save our child, we cannot change our child. We cannot make them do really much of anything, but God can work in ways that we can't understand.And then the community of the church is just something that, I mean, I think we're seeing with the epidemic of teen loneliness and anxiety and isolation, all these things. The church is this institution that, guess what, it answers that. It's this welcoming place where you have 80-year-olds and you have 8-year-olds. And so I don't think we can talk about parenting without talking about what's the foundation of our hope. It's actually that God's Word is true, and living in light of God's Word is hopeful, and we're not left alone on the journey. So that's the Battle. The battle really talks about our battles. And again, this is a book about being the parent of a teen. It's not a book about how to make your teen perfect. If that book exists, that's the—[06:54] Jonathan: If it does, you should burn it.[06:56] Melissa: Yeah, that's the Holy Spirit's job is to change us and make us different. And so the second part is the battle, I think we often think is sex, drugs, rock and roll or some other things we're trying to prevent our teen from. I would say it's actually good things robbing us of the best things. The battle is with our own idolatry. As parents, we are all coming into this game with hopes and dreams for our kids, and sometimes those dreams turn idolatrous. I focus on scholarship and achievement, on sports and activities, and then on social acceptance. I think those are the cultural idols we have in the West that are pressing upon us as parents, and we have to battle about all of those.[07:38] Jonathan: And that's what I love about the book is that it's not prescriptions, right? When people are struggling with their kids, what do they want? Just tell me what to do so that this will stop or so I can take this away, right? And I think the way that your book is written is that it's not about if you do A, B will happen. Now, there's a little bit of element of that because you just mentioned the foundations earlier, which is, well, you really need to be doing these practices, but you don't necessarily think, oh, being in church and being in the Word and being in prayer, you don't necessarily feel the direct correlation to your parenting, but it is there.I have friends who have raised their kids the exact same way and one rebels and the other one is a blessing to their family. And then it's like, what did we do wrong? Your husband was speaking yesterday about the paradox of God is sovereign over all things, and yet we're still called to be good parents. And so there's that. We don't fully understand the mystery of that, but we know what we're called to, and so we have to walk it out.[09:14] Melissa: That's right. As a parent, I am called to fight my idolatry. I'm actually not called to control my child. And so often what you see if we go into control mode when we're fearful, and the Bible says trust and obey. And I would say obey and trust. And so you follow God's call and then you trust. You trust that you're doing everything you can to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel in front of the Lord and in front of your kids, and then you have to trust. And you will only have the ability to trust if you're building on the foundation. So this is where it always goes back to that foundation. And I'm talking about how to be a human, honestly. I mean, if you want to know how to succeed in your place of work, oh, you need the Word, you need prayer, you need the church. If you want to know how to be single in the life of the church, you need the Word, you need prayer, you need the church. But I think I say it again and again because it's Psalm 1. Yeah, I mean, “Blessed is the man who doesn't like in … who doesn't sit …” all that stuff. Oh, what does he do? “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on it he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by a stream. Whatever he does prospers.” This is wisdom for life. And so I definitely think we have to start there, and then we have to be battling our own idols.And then the last section on the blessing is how do we create homes of acceptance, availability, and affection? Those words have to be in our world today. Acceptance does not mean an acceptance of sin, but it means an acceptance of who they are. And what I mean by that is we see a lot of curated children. And what I mean by that is parents trying to make the perfect child who plays the sport, who plays the instrument, who has an amazing GPA, who gets into the Ivy Leagues and all this stuff because that's a representation of me is what we're really trying to do.[11:12] Jonathan: Right. It's a reflection, yeah.[11:13] Melissa: So rather than saying, you know, my kid's not that great at school, but I can teach hard work. Even if they're not going to be a lawyer or a doctor, that's okay. And so that's what I mean by acceptance, accepting who the Lord is creating them to be and letting that glorify Him, whatever it might be. [11:33] Jonathan: Yeah, there's a lot of this element of caught versus taught, right? So especially as you think about the idolatry and what you prioritize in your life, your kids are by default looking at you, watching you. You're one of the greatest sources of influence on them, and so they are going to model themselves after what mom and dad prioritize. And the funny thing is that when parents look down the track they say, “Why are they like this?” And it's like, sometimes it's a little bit of look in the mirror. You know, what were they catching, even if you were teaching in a different trajectory and direction. Okay, so acceptance. What about availability?[12:17] Melissa: Yeah. I talk about this. I say you want to be available but you want to understand your limitations. Look, I mean, parents cannot be at everything. And I actually believe it's helpful for our kids to know that they are not the center of our universe. They do not have the gravitational weight to bear us, I like to say. Like the Earth cannot support the Sun revolving around it, it was never intended to, we are not created to revolve around our children. We are created to revolve around God, and we are helping them do the same. And kids who grow up in a home where the parent is rooted and grounded in the Lord, that takes an amazing burden off of them. You've heard the phrase “You're only as happy as your least happy child.” I think that is like poor least-happy child. No. My contentment and joy, where are they supposed to come from? They're supposed to be rooted in the Lord. Why are we supposed to be content with what we have? Because He has said, “Never will I leave or forsake you.” That's where our contentment rests. And we have to be people fighting for that as parents, to free our kids up from our own maybe tendency to put our hopes and dreams in them.[13:36] Jonathan: And then affection. A home of warmth.[13:39] Melissa: I read an article somewhere recently. I can't remember where it was; it was in the secular paper, and they said, really what you do as a parent doesn't matter, but if you love them, that makes a difference. And I was kind of like, huh. That's really interesting because I do think there's a lot to that. I think, you know, it's a little bit empty because I think love—[14:03] Jonathan: Well, one's usually reflected in the other, right?[14:05] Melissa: Yeah. Exactly. And you need truth to guide what love is, so there's that. But I did once hear—this was on the Oprah Winfrey Show a million years ago when that show was still on—she was interviewing I believe it was Toni Morrisson. And Toni Morrisson said one thing she had learned when a child walks into the room, she said, light up when that child walks in the room. And she said what kids tend to get when you walk into the room is your critical gaze. They tend to get, huh, your shirt's not tucked in. Hey, make sure you're getting ready for this. And this gets even worse in the teen years, because look, they're cute when they're walking in at two, so you might light up just because they're so cute.[14:50] Jonathan: It's worn off, yeah.[14:52] Melissa: Yeah, when they're walking in pimply and smelly and dirty, and they haven't showered in a week, you still need to light up when they walk. And I think there's something about that that will translate for the rest of their lives. That they know “I am deeply loved.” Light up even when they've done something wrong. Our correction should not be coldness. Our correction can still be full of warmth. And so we want to light up when these people walk in the room because they're made in the image of God. They have been given to us for this time to raise, and so we want to shower them with affection. And there can be wrong views of affection like trying to buy them. There are wrong ways. But I'm just talking about genuine love and interest in a person; that's always going to be a great basis for a child to go into the world with.[15:42] Jonathan: Okay, let's talk a little bit about how the gospel shapes our approach in parenting. What are the biblical principles that should guide us as we're raising children?[15:58] Melissa: The first is that I'm the oldest sinner in the room usually, so I'm expecting my 12-year-old to have their whole act together at twelve. Wow, that's pretty ungracious of me, right, because here I am at fifty and I don't have my act together. And so I think that one of the ways that parents can lead is to be the first to apologize. I always say my response is my responsibility. And so if I—let's say a kid's done something wrong, but I manage their wrongness by yelling and losing my temper and being impatient and unkind, I've got to own that. That's on me. I can still hold them to a standard while holding myself to a standard, and so we have to do that.And so I say one way grace-based homes begin is by being the chief apologizer in your home. Own it. And you know what? The kids will learn. They will learn from that and they will be able to give good apologies in their life. And you will benefit from it. I've had all of my kids come to me and be like, “Hey, I'm sorry I acted that way about that.” They did it on their own accord. I think it just became the conversation of the household that was safe to do. It was going to be met with love; it wasn't going to be met with the silent treatment, all of those things.And so I think a home with grace is going to be a home with apologies. It's going to be a home that accepts that failure is going to happen. I mean, the Lord's Prayer presupposes, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” so there's going to be sin. We're living flesh on flesh in these homes. And so it presupposes that we're going to need grace, but it also presupposes that there is a standard. So we do not lower standards. We keep the standards, but we offer correction when the standards has not been kept, and we offer love and grace in those moments as well.[17:57] Jonathan: Well, and it's a requirement of being a disciple of Jesus is being a forgiver. And yeah, why not start at home—not just forgiving, but asking for forgiveness. And I think you're right, it sets the tone for the family. But I think we can get caught up in, well, I'm the parent and I've got to be the one in control and in charge and I'm just giving directives to the little ones. It's hard, right? I mean, it's hard to admit to a little child that you've wronged them. Because you just want to say, who are you? Who are you to hold me accountable? But it's the Lord's holding us accountable.Let's elaborate a little bit on principles of prescriptions. We've talked a little bit about that, but as that relates to parenting.[18:52] Melissa: Yeah. I definitely think your principles in parenting can stay very much the same as kids go from two to twenty, meaning certain principles like, oh, my child is a sinner in need of grace. That's a principle. My child's a sinner and needs correction. That's a principle. Now, how I go about the practice of that correction is going to change greatly when they're two from when they're twelve, and if we don't make those changes, we're going to find ourselves with very frustrated teenagers.And so one example I like to say is when your 2-year-old makes a mistake, normally you need to offer correction right away, so if they do something wrong, they need it immediately because they're not going to remember tomorrow what you're talking about.[19:36] Jonathan: That's right exactly.[19:37] Melissa: They're in a different little universe where every moment is a new moment. Whereas with your 12-year-old, when they come in hot, and you know we all see 12-year-olds come in hot, they're slamming doors, they're in a mood, their hormones are going whatever. Right then is probably actually not the best time to offer correction or even confront them with, hey, you were really rude to me.I like to say if my friend came in and slammed the door my first question would not be like, “Hey, that's disrespectful to me.” My first question would be, “Hey, how are you doing? Is everything okay?” Or if my husband came in. Like I'd ask a question. And I think our teens need that from us. They need us to live with them in an understanding way, and often we're real caught up in our pride and how we deserve to be talked to. And that's just very us-centered versus, “Hey, is everything okay?” And maybe even to just say, later in the day, like 6:00 PM, 7:00 PM, when they've had some time to cool off, to go in and say, ‘Hey, you came in, you seemed upset today. Do you want to talk about it?” They may say yes, they may say no. And then later on, things will soften. They will soften to be able to say, “What would have been a good way to come in today?” That's a better time to have that conversation. And it may even be the next week. That's a better way to have that conversation than right away. So I think we had immediate kind of discipline when they were young, and it's really about applying wisdom to how and what we're going to correct. Thankfully, we do not have someone following us around all day correcting every little thing we do. I think sometimes parents of teens think, I've got four years left. I've got to get this kid all sorted.[21:20] Jonathan: To be ready for the world.[21:21] Melissa: You don't. If you saw my teen's bedroom, you'd be like, “Wow, she's a terrible parent. They are a complete and utter wreck.” And I just chose that was a battle I wasn't going to fight. But certain things, I wanted them to be truthful with me, I wanted them to have character, I wanted us to be able to have conversations. And if that meant I had to deal with messy floors, I was going to deal with messy floors on there. And they are. They lived up to that low expectation.[21:48] Jonathan: I'm sure they love hearing that. So you've introduced a topic that I wanted us to discuss, which is those stages of development and how do we parent differently when they're children versus teens. At what age is there a transformation? So when your child is little, you're really in kind of a protection mode in terms of what they consume media-wise or literature, whatever it is, right? We have a responsibility for protecting them and not just exposing them to all the horrible things out there.But as they get older, you and I talked about this in the beginning, but parents can tend to lean into one or the other camp, which is keeping the hyper bubble wrap around their child and never letting them be exposed to anything, or essentially letting them go out to the wolves at twelve, thirteen, whatever, and they are kind of almost drowning in “I need help. I wish someone would have kind of held my hand a little bit here.” That's a nuanced question, I know, but if we could talk about it in some generalities—and you can even use your own children as an example. Help parents who are at the tween period in their kids' lives. How do they navigate that helpfully?[23:21] Melissa: Yeah, I think that transition is tough and it's full of bumps and bruises. I called it in the book, I likened it to driving a stick-shift car. You have to be letting off the clutch the same time you're pressing the gas, but as you're learning, we're all going to stall and that's pretty normal. But I would just say as they're heading into these years, teens still need our involvement, but they do not need our over-involvement. And so as a parent, I think we really have to step back and say, “Okay, I'm going to be involved. I'm going to make sure they're not out drinking; they're not out doing illegal activities that could actually harm them. But I am not going to check their homework online.” Okay, see this was not even an option when I was a teacher—I don't know why parents are doing this. So I always think back to when I was teaching the parents never saw the grades until the grades came out. We had a midterm grade thing. I have people in my life who are checking their kids' grades constantly, and I'm like—[24:36] Jonathan: I didn't even know you could do that, actually. I've got little kids, so I'm, yeah, we're not in that camp yet.[24:41] Melissa: Well, come the teen years, they're finding out their kid missed one homework assignment and then they're all over them about it. I'm like, just let them bear that consequence. Let them bear the consequence of a zero. [24:52] Jonathan: That's a little bit of the helicopter/lawnmower parent mentality, right?[24:57] Melissa: That's right. And what happens is then that child never knows what it's like to deal with failure, and they actually need what I call safe failure. Because guess what? We all fail at things. Like we all make mistakes, we all do dumb things along the way. You want to protect them from huge failure, like you're going to go to jail for this.  But even things that we know are particularly damaging for their souls. So we want to protect them as best we can and have good rules in our home; we don't want rule-less homes; but the over-correction of being so over-involved.If you have teenagers, they should be packing their own lunch. They should be getting themselves—I don't wake any of my teens up, never have. They get themselves up, they knew to be at the family table for devotions at the time we always met. They could be responsible for them. And I never regret letting them be responsible for them. And so some of that is letting go of control and letting them, like again, like their room. Their rooms. Sometimes they did have to clean them.[26:09] Jonathan: You've got to live in it. They're the ones who have to live in it, right?[26:11] Melissa: And they have to … And they really will own it if we let them. Another big thing was we started early with our kids having them do chores and clean up the kitchen every night. But what Mike and I had to do, we had to leave the room, because yes, they would argue. Yes, they would get mad at one another. Yes, they would say, “I don't want to do it this way. Yes, it was excruciatingly slow and not well done. And I'd come in and I'd look at the counter and I thought, yeah, you'd feel the grit still on the counter, kids, and then do it again. Y'all get it right. And then we'd walk out because I couldn't handle the slowness at which they did it, but if I had not given them the space to do it and fail and not do it perfectly, they'd never learn. Where now they come home and they all know how to clean the kitchen. They know how to—and that's a gift when they go to college because they [overlapping voices] because my kids are like, “My roommates”—[27:04] Jonathan: And their future spouses.[27:06] Melissa: Yeah. “My roommates don't know how to clean the kitchen.” [27:09] Jonathan: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, let's steer into some of the battle things that are taking place. We, without having to explain, we live in a secular culture. How can parents maintain hope and raise their teens to follow Christ in just the age and day in which we live where there's the social pressures on sexuality and defining truth and those sorts of things. How do you kind of help navigate that water?[27:53] Melissa: Yeah, I think the earlier you can begin, the better. And some of this starts by having conversations about faith with your kids as young as you can. Mike and I were big believers in the catechism. There are different versions. We use the children's catechism. And every night at the family table we did it. What I love about a catechism is the kids talk; it's not just the parents talking. So it's about who made you? God. What else did God make? All things. Why did God make you and all things? For His glory. Okay, you've already set their framework in such a better place than most kids walking into elementary school just because they know they're made in the image of God and that they're made to glorify Him. So these things can start early. I think having those conversations along the way, and just, again, this is what we valued in our homes. We have to start valuing them young because if you start coming to your kid with, “Hey, God's Word is important” at age fifteen by you haven't modeled that by the way you live your life or by how you've been in it yourself, it's going to be hard to convince them that they should follow this ancient book. So I would say the best way to combat culture is to have the culture that Scripture encourages us to in the home. And to really know that what's happening in your home is actually what has the greatest impact on your kids, not the world, not their teachers, not their friends. Actually the studies show over and over again parental—what we do, which is kind of terrifying, we all should own it—what we do in the home is the biggest impact on how they are going to view certain things. It does not mean they will all come to faith. You can do everything right. We know it's the Spirit only that awakens people's hearts. But that—[29:48] Jonathan: Which takes a little bit of the pressure off in that category.[29:52] Melissa: Yes, exactly. But there are things we're teaching them like hard work and doing a job, knowing how to do a chore. Those are things that even non-Christians know how to work hard, and even non-Christians can live in certain outwardly moral ways that we can be trying to shape and mold our kids into, in prayer that the Spirit would make their hearts alive in a lot of ways.So I think we can be really fearful of culture. I think there's a lot to be concerned about. But what I will say is that when the Spirit opens our eyes, they can see, wow, culture is really empty. So my kids, I think they grew up in Christian school, but they've both been at large secular colleges and they just haven't been attracted to some of the worldly things because I think they know that, hey, the fellowship, the friendship of true believers is way better than this false, oh, I have to be drunk and do all these things for you to be my friend. Yeah, I don't think it's been as enticing because they've actually experienced good fellowship with believers throughout their lives and they've seen the benefit of that. So I always try to say fight the bad by giving them the better.[31:09] Jonathan: Yeah, I love that. Okay, two more areas I want us to just quickly dive into. One is navigating technology and social media, which again is one of the battles. And the other one is dealing with doubts. And so let's talk about, I mean, technology is everywhere. Social media abounds. How do we navigate this? Maybe some practical tips, setting boundaries, that sort of thing. How did you and Mike do it?[31:41] Melissa: Yeah. I mean, the first boundary is yourself. If you're glued to your phone, okay, your kid's going to be glued to their phone. So that's the first one. Let's just go ahead and say it. And I will say this: I think it's a lot harder for you raising kids now. When I had young kids, I didn't have a smartphone. I mean, can you imagine the difference? I could not, at a restaurant, just take my little cell phone and say, “Here, watch whatever show's popular.”[32:07] Jonathan: Yeah, keep ‘em busy.[32:08] Melissa: Yeah. And so I'm so thankful. We had to deal with those awful restaurant moments when they're losing their minds and having a fit.[32:20] Jonathan: That's why we don't go to restaurants.[32:22] Melissa: Or just not go. Sometimes it's like fast food because that's where you can easily…[32:28] Jonathan: In and out.[32:29] Melissa: And so I think to be aware that what you're doing with your phone and devices in the young years is greatly going to impact the older years. And then the other thing I would just say, as the statistics have come in—And the hopeful thing I have for your age, I think by the time your age, those kids get to high school, I think there will be new rules in high schools. It's hard right now. I view the cell phone and social media like smoking. The high school that I went to had inner courtyards, and you were allowed to go out and smoke during the middle of the day. Not when I was there. By the time I was there, inner courtyard, there as no smoking. I mean, think about it you know, airplanes, you used to be able to smoke on them, right?[33:11] Jonathan: I've been on one of those planes, actually, when I was a kid.[33:13] Melissa: Exactly. And now they've realized, oh, these aren't innocent—[33:19] Jonathan: It affects everyone in the plane, whether you want it or not, and the curtain's not going to keep it back.[33:24] Melissa: Exactly. And they would no more let a bunch of kids be sitting in the inner courtyard of a high school smoking now. Well, I believe, I really do believe what the studies are showing us, how bad it is for kids and their mental health. I believe one day cell phones are not going to be allowed in school—hopefully by the time your kids get there. I think they will not be allowed in middle and high school, so it might help parents.But today, parents have to navigate those waters without help from culture, and it's really hard. And so what I would say for every hour your kids spend on their cell phone or device, they will be less happy, and you have to reckon with that. The studies are in. Every further hour they spend on a device, they will be that much less happy. They will be more lonely, they will be more depressed, they will be more anxious. And so we've got to deal with that reality as we parent, and the most loving thing we can do is to help our kids not be glued to their phones all the time.[34:21] Jonathan: Yeah, I would imagine it fosters more of that comparative, yeah, right. My friend's picture's on whatever social media platform and I'm comparing myself at a constant rate, versus when I was a kid or teenager, it was like just what you could see in front of you.[34:40] Melissa: Right. You didn't know that you were actually left out of the party until a week or two later. Now instantly you're sitting home on a Friday night and you see the party that you weren't invited to.[34:54] Jonathan: I can only imagine navigating that. Okay, doubt. That's … This is a period in kids' life where doubt is more prevalent, more frequent. How should parents be dealing with questions—and I heard Mike give a great answer to some of this yesterday. But how do we address the question without dismission it, but also not wanting to just give the answer straightaway is kind of what Mike was saying yesterday.[35:37] Melissa: That's right. I think so often we hear a question and we jump to fear. Fear leads to control. So rather, the kid says something like, “Yeah, I'm not sure I believe that.” And then we hyper jump on that and give them a three-point outline of why they should believe what we believe. That is not a conversation and that is not what your teen needs. What I would say when they say, “Yeah, I'm not sure. It's seems really … That view of whatever seems really mean,” “Okay, tell me why you think that. Tell me where you hear that. What do your friends think about it?” Be curious about them. You already know actually what you think about whatever the thing is, but what they need to hear from you is that you actually are willing to listen as they're trying to sort it out. And it's going to make sense. Kids have really small perspectives on things. I did. When I was that age, I had all sorts of bad ideas about things. They're working through it, so work through it with them but don't … I just don't think it's very helpful to lecture them at that point. I think it's good … We want to have a conversation is what I keep saying. A conversation will allow more availability to give your opinion when you are curious about what they are thinking rather than just jumping in. And the reality is, again, me lecturing them is probably not going to prove my point. But as we have conversations, I'm going to start to understand where they're struggling, what they're struggling with, and we can keep having that conversation and it makes them a lot more receptive.[37:26] Jonathan: Yeah. I found that helpful. Mike was saying yesterday his tendency was to just give the answer straightaway. He's got the PhD and all of the qualifications and credentials, but kids don't really care. It's like, “All right, Dad, just chill.” And I get your point. And I think he said this yesterday, which is about let them kind of sit in the doubt for a little bit. Rather than just giving the quick, immediate response, let them wrestle with it, because this is probably the early formations of them moving out of the family faith and into a personal faith. And I think you've hit it on the head there with opening the dialog so it can be an ongoing conversation so that when they do go off to university or whatever it is and they are presented with ideas and philosophies, they can say, “I've already talked about that.” And I realize here all the fallacies or issues that come up with that, I think that's really helpful. But you're right, I think we do, we tend to go to fear and we start thinking down the track what could happen if I don't resolve this immediately. [38:43] Melissa: And to realize that conversation continues. It doesn't—[38:45] Jonathan: Yeah, right.[38:46] Melissa: All of our kids have called us. They normally call Mike, and they'll Facetime. I mean, Emma has been on the Facetime with like ten of her friends, and they're like, “We have a Bible question for you, Dad.” And I think because it felt like a conversation they actually continued the conversation.And I'll also say this. It's okay to not know. Because I get it. Like, look, it's really convenient when you have a husband who is a New Testament scholar and can answer some of these questions.[39:14] Jonathan: We all  just need Mike's phone number.[39:15] Melissa: Exactly. But I will say this. There are plenty of times he's like, “Yeah, that's a really confusing passage. I'm not sure what that means.” I mean, they are wildly unimpressed with his knowledge base sometimes, and so it's always nicely humbling.But he's very comfortable saying, “I don't know.” And I think we all should be comfortable saying, “I don't know,” and saying, “Hey, let's find out together.” Look, there are pastors out there who are waiting for calls like this. They have to deal with really hard issues sometimes, but they went to school to answer your biblical questions, and so a lot of times pastors are really eager to say, “Oh, I can help you with that.”[39:52] Jonathan: I get those from time to time, and sometimes there are the ones where, especially from little ones, and I think, how do I take what I know and put it in a way that you'll understand it. That takes some work.[40:07] Melissa: That's the best theological classroom you can ever be in right there.[40:10] Jonathan: Exactly. So we've asked some parents of teens to submit some questions that they're wrestling with, so we'll do a little lightning round of questions here. [41:06] Jonathan: This ties us back to what we mentioned earlier. This is kind of a newer thing. I mean, it's always been around, but it's more prevalent probably post-COVID, post-invention of the iPhone where kids are isolated. They are less relational than you and I would have been because that was all we had was relational collateral, personal interaction. Now kids can interact digitally and immediately and so there's probably a heightened level of self-consciousness, and that includes just appearance through social media and that sort of thing.So now going into a new setting with real people and real interactions must be a challenge. So what is some advice for the parent who's struggling with a teenager who's going through that?[42:08] Melissa: The first thing I always say is it's good to offer sympathy to them, “Hey, this is hard. I can remember what it was like to go into the lunch room and it be super awkward. Like who am I going to sit with?” We all have that. I still have that feeling sometimes. I'm in situations many times where I'm the only woman in a scenario, and I'm like, hmm, which table of all men … am I going to sit at? And it feels awkward.And so sometimes just them knowing that you feel it too is helpful. But I think it's also helpful to equip them and to say, hey, when you're in a situation like that, other people are probably feeling nervous too, and so it's good to go in with three questions so that you have them on your mind when you're walking into an awkward situation. It can be a question like, hey—let's picture the school lunchtime—what's your next class after this? That anybody can answer. It's pretty easily, yeah, whatever.Second one, you know, hey, where do you live? Or something like that, maybe something I'm thinking as I'm thinking in a business context, where are you from? But just some easily accessible questions that kids can answer. It could be, Are you going to the game this weekend? Whatever it might be so they feel equipped to actually reach out to someone else with a question and that can help conversation start.[43:27] Jonathan: This one's sort of on a similar vein but on a different level. “How do our teens manage the social rejection when you are following Christ?”[43:44] Melissa: Yeah. I think it is really helpful to put before our kids that we are stranger and aliens in this world. And you know my kids go to a … they were blessed to go to a Christian school, so they did not have to feel it at the level certain kids are going to have. But they did still get teased. All, especially, for being, oh, you're the professor's daughter. When she's in Bible class, even the teacher looks to her. “Well, would your dad agree with this?”[44:14] Jonathan: Oh dear. I had a little bit of that, too, with my father being a pastor. What would your dad say?[44:18] Melissa: It's the awkward … you have to be the super-spiritual one in every instance. And we just talk some about feeling a little bit like you don't belong is actually a good sign. And that means we're not home yet.[44:36] Jonathan: Great reminder.[44:37] Melissa: Yeah. When we talk about home is heaven, it makes sense.[44:43] Jonathan: Oof. “How do you parent a child that doesn't realize their friends are unhealthy for them?” These might all have a little bit of a sigh.[44:54] Melissa: It's tough. I'm a big believer in question-asking rather than telling. So hey, it seems like John did this and this and this. Do you think a good friend would be like in this scenario? What would you want him to do in that scenario? And then sometimes they can start to uncover, hey, this isn't the best type of person. But it always good to  maybe pause and ask why are they turning to this kind of friendship? And I mean, yeah, again, praying that the Spirit would waken their hearts to see the destructiveness. Always be praying. In every one of these scenarios, let me just say—[45:37] Jonathan: It starts with prayer.[45:38] Melissa: It starts with prayer. [45:39] Jonathan: I'm with you. This is good, and this question actually comes into one of your chapters in your book. “How do you prevent sports from becoming an idol, especially in regards to travel?” [45:58] MELISSA: Yeah, it's tough. I would manage it very carefully and just remember as good as your kid is, they probably will not play in college, and even more likely are they to create a career out of this. But you do want them to create a career and a life out of being a church member. So guard your church time. It doesn't mean you never miss. We've all missed church for various reasons, whether it's travel or just vacation. You couldn't get to church for some reason. You could say if you're traveling it's a great opportunity to take your kid to other churches. My kids really benefited from seeing other church traditions when we traveled. So it was great for them. One Sunday we went to a Baptist church, and they had grown up Presbyterian, so they only saw babies get baptized. It was Easter. It was spring break, so we were traveling, and they had this full-immersion baptism. Well, my kids were on the edge of their seats, and they were like, “what is happening here?” So for them it was great. It was a great conversation to say, “Oh, this is how they do it.” Those are great conversations to have. [47:05] Jonathan: “Courtship dance. How to handle it now.” There's not a lot of Scripture on dating. How do you all navigate that with your kids?[47:59] Melissa: We have had very little experience in this, not because we have had rules, not because of any other reason than our kids have just not dated. I think the benefit of maybe going to a small school is they're like, we've known these people since we were five. I'm not going to date them. My daughter is getting ready to get married, and she is marrying a guy she knew all through college. They met at Chapel Hill and were friends for three years and their senior year starting dating. I will fully admit, it was as easy as it could have been, and he is delightful and we're so glad they're getting married.So what I would say with my lack of experience is I do believe that rather than have rules it's better to have conversations in this area. And so when your kid comes home to you at fifteen and says, “I really like this kid,” one, be glad they're willing to talk to you about it. Secondly, say, “What do you like about them? Tell me what's great about them.” Be curious rather than controlling. If I could impress anything, be curious about your kid rather than control them. And so I would just say it's good to have standards. When you're talking about sexuality standards, you need to have those conversations whether they're dating or not. So that should be happening well before they're dating. way before the teen years. So I'm just assuming that in these conversations those have happened beforehand.But then I think modeling good friendships. If your kids are developing good friendships, it's a big precursor to developing a good and strong marriage and good and strong dating. But I think the main thing you want to do is keep the conversation open. Hold your tongue and listen.[49:45] Jonathan: Keeping a distraction-free family. Sort of like no cell phones at the table kind of thing?[49:57] Melissa: Yeah. You know it's just funny. We didn't have some of those rules, I guess. It was just understood that that's what we were doing. And I would say a big thing I would probably highlight is if you're going to watch a movie, all watch the same movie. And so, yeah, that means you're going to watch a lot of movies you don't really want to watch as a parent, but I'd rather have all five of us in the den together watching a movie that maybe everyone had to compromise on, than all of us in separate rooms, watching what we want to watch.[50:32] Jonathan: And I know Mike's favorite movies are horror films, right?[50:35] Melissa: No, he has to watch those alone. He's not allowed to watch those with us.[50:39] Jonathan: I was going to say. Here's a good one. “How do you balance contentment and complacency and still encourage hard work?”[50:50] Melissa: I think contentment goes right alongside with hard work. But complacency is a little different. So I think you know your child. Some children are going to need to be told, hey, you need to slow down. Some kids are going to need to be told, you need to speed up. And that's okay. But you're going to have to know your individual child to know if they're not living up to who God has made them to be or if they're trying to prove something to the world. You're going to have to know that better as a parent, so it's probably going to be different for every kid.[51:27] Jonathan: This is similar to different types of child, but “How do you parent the high-achieving, focused child, how to best support their talents?” And then we'll do the other side of that.[51:37] MELISSA: Yeah. I think with the high-achieving, focused child, it's really good to make sure they're not putting their worth and value in their performance. And so you're going to have to just work with them on that and walk through that with them and encourage them that they are beloved not because of what they do but because of who they are in that. Because they're going to fail one day, and then how you deal with their failure and mistakes is really important because those kids aren't going to be used to it, and they really need it. They need to feel what it feels like to fail sometimes. And they're going to be really uncomfortable in that moment. And so walking through that with them graciously is really important.[52:20] Jonathan: Flip side, I suppose, is “How do you parent the low-achieving, unfocused child?”[52:27] Melissa: Yeah, I mean, that's a really hard one, I have to admit.[52:30] Jonathan: Yeah, because it's different.[52:31] Melissa: It's totally different, especially if it's a child like “I know this child can do things.” One, if it is a boy, let me just say they really will get it together eventually. A lot of boys, their frontal lobe—great book called The Teenage Brain. You should read it. It's written by a neuroscientist who had two boys. It's great. I mean, their brains really are taking long to develop. I taught high school, and let me tell you, the boys were not winning in high school. They forgot their stuff, the reason they had B's rather than A's was not because they were not smart enough, it's because they did not turn in their homework.They really will, by their junior and senior year, developmentally get it together. It's the girls are just developing earlier. Some of the front-lobe stuff is connecting earlier. It's biological. So yes, have expectations, but just know that with your son you might have to remind him five times, “Hey, did you pack your lunch today? Did you pack your lunch?” Don't pack it for him, but you might have to remind him more on those things.[53:35] Jonathan: “When they experience rejection or seek acceptance from the wrong sources, how do we navigate that?” And I think that's one of your … that's one of your chapters.[53:47] Melissa: Yeah, I think that different again this one is just going to have to be prayer. Because it shares a little bit about where their heart is leaning. I mean, you can see this in some kids. Some kids just always want to be on the edge, and you can see it. I think this is where you pray and you do trust that the Lord will somehow use this season in their life.But also I think to ask questions like, “Hey, why do you want to do that? What's going on? Why is that attractive?” And it's difficult if you're not that type of personality to even understand. Like I don't want to get burned, so I stay way, far away from a fire, right? But some people are just drawn to the fire and they want to get close up to it. So sometimes it's good to just ask, “Hey, why do you want this? What's going on?” Again, I think with each kid it's going to be a little bit different, so it's important to ask what's going on with their hearts and to keep probing and keep praying.[54:50] Jonathan: Yeah. All right, I'll make this the last one. “What is the Kruger's' take on how much we are requiring church attendance, devotions, spiritual practices versus giving teens the freedom of choice?”[55:03] Melissa: That's interesting. So you're saying how much we require it versus how much we just let them make that choice.[55:12] Jonathan: In terms of family devotion. Churchgoing I guess is part of the question. [55:22] Melissa: That's a good question. That makes sense. So I'm totally fine with “you're going to go to church on Sunday” just because I don't make school a choice. If you can go to school all day, you can go to church, so that's just fine with me. If they don't believe, I'm like, “That's fine, you don't have to believe, but you're going to go to church because we go to church, just like you're going to go to school,” and I'm okay with that.When I comes to family devotions, that was again just something we had always done, so it was never a new thing. It would be like my kids saying, “Oh, all of a sudden I don't want to brush my teeth.” “Huh, really? You've brushed your teeth since you were two. You want to stop now.” Some of these habits, when you can start them young, they just don't know any different. My big hint to young parents is they only know the home you make normal for them. And so they don't know that no other family's having family devotions. When it comes to personal Bible reading, that was something I did not force at all. We gave our kids Bibles, they saw our habits and our practice, and I watched as each of my kids became interested in the Bible on their own.We did not say, “Hey, you need to read it every day.” When you're putting them in church and you're having devotions, you're showing them what you value and at some value they've got to start picking up on those personal habits. That felt much more like the very relational, intimate walking with the Lord, and I wasn't going to try and force that on them. So there are spaces, I think, where you say, “Hey, this is what we do as a family,” like go to church or have prayer time before breakfast. That's just our family rhythm, and yes, you need to participate. But when it came to their own faith and their own growth, by the teen years I think that's starting to be put in their hands.[57:04] Jonathan: All right, before we go, encouragement for parents who are feeling overwhelmed, discouraged—which is probably every parent.[57:13] Melissa: Yeah. Exactly. If you're feeling overwhelmed, this is where I'm always like go back to the basics. Read the Bible. Be encouraged. God is with you and He is parenting you while you're parenting your teen. Be in prayer, ask for His help, and be around the people in the church. And so again, that makes life a lot more simple, right? Read your Bible, it will change you, it will change how you parent. Prayer will give you hope that God can change your child. And the church will give you the community you need. And then say no to a lot of other things, but simplify your life so that those things can be a priority. [57:56] Jonathan: Well, the book is Parenting with Hope: Raising Teens for Christ in the Secular Age. Melissa Kruger, it's always so fun, and you've knocked out the lightning-round questions and I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to be on Candid Conversations.[58:14] Melissa: Thanks for having me. It was fun.[58:16] Jonathan: Absolutely. Pleasure.   

Episode 168: UTI in MalesFuture Dr. Tran gives a summary of UTIs in Males, including epididymitis, orchitis, urethritis, prostatitis, and pyelonephritis. Diagnosis and treatment were briefly described and some differences with female patients were mentioned by Dr. Arreaza.  Written by Di Tran, MS-3, Ross University School of Medicine. Editing and comments by Hector Arreaza, MD.You are listening to Rio Bravo qWeek Podcast, your weekly dose of knowledge brought to you by the Rio Bravo Family Medicine Residency Program from Bakersfield, California, a UCLA-affiliated program sponsored by Clinica Sierra Vista, Let Us Be Your Healthcare Home. This podcast was created for educational purposes only. Visit your primary care provider for additional medical advice.WHAT ARE URINARY TRACT INFECTIONS?Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) is an infection of any part of the urinary tract system. It may involve any part of the renal system, the kidneys, the ureters, the bladder, the prostate, and the urethra.  Different from men, a woman may get a UTI more easily due to their anatomical difference. A woman's urethra is shorter and lies close in proximity to both the vagina and the anus, which allows easy access for bacteria to travel up to the bladder.UTI is further subdivided into two different categories, depending on where the infection takes place within the urinary tract:Lower Tract Infection – cystitis and urethritis when the infection occurs on the bladder and the urethra, respectively.  Common infections are a result of bacteria migrating from the skin (and also from sexual organs) to the urethra and ending up in the bladder.In males, other forms of lower tract infection can result in prostatitis, epididymitis, and orchitis.Upper Tract Infection - aka pyelonephritis, is a more concerning infection that involves the upper parts of the urinary system, in other words, the ureters, and kidneys.AGE DIFFERENCES IN UTI FOR MEN:For men, the incidence of UTI increases with age. Dr. John Brusch reports UTI rarely develops in young males and the prevalence of bacteriuria is 0.1% or less.  Men who are 15-50 years of age often have urethritis due to sexually transmitted infection (STI), mainly by Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Chlamydia trachomatis.  Symptoms include frequency, urgency, and dysuria (most common).Men who are 50 years or older, especially those with prostatic hyperplasia, will have signs and symptoms of incomplete bladder emptying, hesitancy, slow stream, difficulty initiating urination, and dribbling after urinating. Due to the enlargement of the prostate gland, there will be partial blockage of urine flow from the bladder, which in turn, creates a reservoir where bacteria can grow and cause an infection. The most common offending microorganism for this age group is Escherichia coli.Interestingly, while UTIs are rare among men under 60, by the age of 80, both women and men have similar incidence rates. The bladder tends to have a higher residual volume in older males because the prostate grows no matter what, it´s just a part of aging for males. Some may end up with more or less lower urinary tract symptoms, but the prostate is enlarged in general.Other risk factors for UTI in males are men who are not circumcised, urethral strictures, fistulas, hydronephrosis (or dilated ureters overfilled with urine due to failure of drainage to the bladder), and the use of urinary catheters. DIFFERENT TYPES OF UTIs IN MALES:EPIDIDYMITIS:The infection starts from the retrograde ascending route from the prostatic urethra, backing up to the vas deferens, and eventually ending in the epididymis.In men who are younger than 35 years of age, the usual pathogens are C. trachomatis and N. gonorrhoeae (sexually transmitted).In men who are older than 35 years of age, the usual offending agents are Enterobacteriaceae and gram-positive cocci (E. coli as mentioned previously).ORCHITIS:This unique UTI is caused by viral pathogens, such as mumps, coxsackie B, Epstein-Barr (EBV), and varicella (VZV) viruses.  Several studies have shown that patients having orchitis have a history of epididymitis. Fortunately, this infection is uncommon, and it was the main reason to develop the MMR vaccine. It is caused by viruses other than mumps, so you can still have orchitis even if you are vaccinated. Antibiotics are not prescribed for viral orchitis.BACTERIAL CYSTITIS:Having a similar pathophysiology of ascending infection mechanism, male patients in this category often present frequency, urgency, dysuria, nocturia, and suprapubic pain. On a side note, having hematuria is concerning, especially without symptoms, because it's automatically a red flag that should prompt an immediate evaluation in search of other causes besides infection, such as underlying malignancy. Possible etiologies are calculi, glomerulonephritis, and even schistosomiasis infection that can ultimately result in squamous cell carcinoma of the bladder. Arreaza: Let me share a little anecdote about hematuria. One Sunday when I was a resident I woke up with hematuria. Of course, I immediately went to urgent care, knowing hematuria means trouble in men. I had a urine dipstick test, which was normal. The first thing the nurse practitioner asked me was, “Did you eat any beets?”, and I never eat beets, but that day I had a full bag of beet chips. So, yes, that was the cause of my pseudo-hematuria. Lesson learned: Always ask about beets when you have a patient with painless hematuria with a normal dipstick. PROSTATITIS:This is an infection of the prostate gland. The most common offending agent is E. coli. Acute prostatitis will present with signs of “acute” infection, such as fever, chills, and suprapubic pain. On rectal exam, we will find a prostate that is warm, swollen, boggy, and very tender. Make sure you perform a gentle prostate exam as you may spread bacteria to the blood and cause bacteremia and potentially sepsis. Patients are normally very sick and it is not your typical cystitis, but it is more severe. Chronic Prostatitis can arise from different causes, ranging from retrograde ascending infection, “chronic” exposure to urinary pathogens, and even autoimmune etiologies. The majority of patients often are asymptomatic.   URETHRITIS:This infection is further classified into two groups, gonococcal and non-gonococcal. For gonococcal urethritis, N. gonorrhoeae is the most common pathogen. Agents of non-gonococcal urethritis include C. trachomatis, Ureaplasma, trichomonas, and Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV).  Patients often present symptoms of dysuria, pruritus, and purulent penile discharge.PYELONEPHRITIS:Following a retrograde ascending mechanism, an infection may travel from the bladder and make its way to the kidney, causing damage and inflammation to the renal parenchyma. According to Dr. John Brusch, E. coli is responsible for approximately 25% of cases in males. Pyelonephritis presents with chills, fever, nausea/vomiting, flank pain/costovertebral angle tenderness, and dysuria.  Other findings include pyuria and bacteriuria.  Pyelonephritis is a common cause of sepsis. Diagnosis of UTIs.URINE STUDIES: Urine culture remains the gold standard for diagnosis of UTI. Other studies include suprapubic aspiration, catheterization, midstream clean catch, and Gram stain. Imaging studies are not always needed, but you may order plain films, ultrasonography, CT scans, and MRIs.  It will depend on the severity of your case and your clinical judgment.UTIs in women: In males, we should perform urine culture and susceptibility studies. However, in women, urine studies are not needed all the time, they should be reserved for women with recurrent infection, treatment failure, history of resistant isolates, or atypical presentation. This is done to confirm the diagnosis and guide antibiotic selection.Interestingly, in a recent evidence review, published in the American Family Physician journal, women can self-diagnose their uncomplicated cystitis. All that is needed is having typical symptoms (frequency, urgency, dysuria/burning sensation, nocturia, suprapubic pain), without vaginal discharge. If you have those elements, you have enough information to diagnose, or even the patient can self-diagnose, an uncomplicated UTI without further testing, but in males, you should ALWAYS perform urine studies.TREATMENTS:Men with UTI should ALWAYS receive antibiotics, with urine culture and susceptibility results guiding the antibiotic choice. Laboratory results will help us determine the best treatment plan. UTIs are often treated with a variety of antibiotics.  Dr. Robert Shmerling, of Harvard Medical School, states that most uncomplicated lower tract infections can be eradicated with a week of treatment with antibiotics. Common antibiotics for UTI are fluoroquinolones, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMZ), minocycline, or nitrofurantoin.On another hand, if it's an upper tract infection or prostatitis, the course of treatment can be extended for longer periods. For those patients who are hemodynamically unstable or have severe upper UTI, hospital admission is required to monitor for complications and IV antibiotics.UTIs in males are less frequent than UTIs in females, except when patients are 80 years and older when the incidence is similar in both sexes. UTIs in males must prompt further evaluation because if left untreated, they can have detrimental effects on your patients' health. As a take-home point, UTI in males is less common than in females, and it requires urine studies or other studies to identify the etiology and guide treatment. Antibiotics are always used, and you may guide your treatment depending on the results. Imaging is not always needed, but use your clinical judgment to make a more specific diagnosis and detect complications promptly. __________Conclusion: Now we conclude episode number 168, “UTI is Males.” Future Dr. Tran described the different anatomical areas that can be infected in males with UTI. She reminded us that UTIs in males always need to be treated with antibiotics and urine cultures are done to guide treatment. Dr. Arreaza mentioned a few differences in the diagnosis and treatment of UTIs in females. For example, women can self-diagnose an uncomplicated cystitis, and urine studies or antibiotics are not always needed in women. This week we thank Hector Arreaza and Di Tran. Audio editing by Adrianne Silva.Even without trying, every night you go to bed a little wiser. Thanks for listening to Rio Bravo qWeek Podcast. We want to hear from you, send us an email at RioBravoqWeek@clinicasierravista.org, or visit our website riobravofmrp.org/qweek. See you next week! _____________________References:Shmerling, R. H. (2022, December 5). Urinary tract infection in men. Harvard Health Publishing. https://www.health.harvard.edu/a_to_z/urinary-tract-infection-in-men-a-to-z.Brusch, J. L. (2023a, March 27). Urinary tract infection (UTI) in males. emedicine.medscpae.com. https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/231574-overview.Kurotschka PK, Gágyor I, Ebell MH. Acute Uncomplicated UTIs in Adults: Rapid Evidence Review. Am Fam Physician. 2024;109(2):167-174. https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2024/0200/acute-uncomplicated-utis-adults.htmlRoyalty-free music used for this episode: Tropicality by Gushito, downloaded on July 20, 2023, from https://www.videvo.net/royalty-free-music/

Whitney and I go to the same church. One Sunday in particular, witnessing her with her kids moved me and I had to tell her so. We've been friends ever since! Whitney is a mom who keeps her wheels moving forward, who loves to learn, and who now has devoted her life and career to helping others find their path and flourish in it.Find Whitney's contact info here:Email Whitney: whitneynordvold@gmail.comHer Counseling PageLooking to save money on quality, bulk foods? Shop Azure StandardWatch on YouTubeVisit The Motherhood Experience WebsiteFollow us on InstagramFind us on Facebook

The message of God's grace can sound radically different from anything Christians have heard in popular religion.God's grace challenges what many believers have been taught regarding forgiveness. One Sunday, you hear that God remembers your sins no more. The next week, you're told to confess your sins to receive forgiveness from God. So, which is it? Has God taken away your sins forever, or do you need to ask Him to do it daily?Or maybe you're taught that grace and forgiveness are merely topics to be balanced with others like prayer, Bible reading, and spiritual disciplines. This relegates the core of the Gospel to a bin of “basics we've already covered.”In this episode, I tackle these mixed messages and explain how we can showcase God's grace as the only doorway to true spiritual growth!We hope you enjoyed this episode. Since we're a nonprofit organization, episodes like these are only made possible by friends like you.You can help us continue sharing God's message of grace with the world here: https://andrewfarley.org/donate/Connect with Dr. Andrew Farley here:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrAndrewFarleyInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/drandrewfarleyTwitter: https://twitter.com/DrAndrewFarleyTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drandrewfarleyWebsite: https://www.andrewfarley.org/

One of the more popular topics from past episodes has been the story of Gail Rohde who was adopted as an infant, and her search as an adult for her birth mother. Then several years after finding her, she searched for her birth father - and found him, too. I'll have links to those episodes at the bottom of the show notes.  It can be a relational minefield in dealing with the dynamics of adoptees wanting to know where they've come from, especially when it's been hidden from them. I have a similar story about searching for my birth father that I wrote about in my book, THEM.  Today's episode is about that search.  Welcome to You Were Made for This If you find yourself wanting more from your relationships, you've come to the right place. Here you'll discover practical principles you can use to experience the life-giving relationships you were made for. I'm your host, John Certalic, award-winning author and relationship coach. I'm here to help you find more joy in the relationships God designed for you. To access all past and future episodes, go to the bottom of this page to the yellow "Subscribe" button, then enter your name and email address in the fields above it. The episodes are organized chronologically and are also searchable by topics, categories, and keywords. An invitation from a friend One day my retired friend Bill told me he was starting to get interested in his family history. He wanted to learn more about where he came from and then pass this information down to his children and grandchildren. To help with this, Bill decided to attend a meeting of the Milwaukee Genealogical Society at the main library downtown. And he wanted to know if I would like to come with him.  I wanted to know where I came from, too, particularly as it related to my birth father, the man who brought me into this world in a one-night stand with my mother. The man who abandoned us and who made life very difficult for my farm-girl mother from Staples, Minnesota. The man who was having a greater and greater unwelcome influence in my life, though we had never met. Discovering who he was might help me discover who I was. So with all this in mind, I decided to go with Bill. We went to the first meeting and both of us became hooked on discovering our roots. This was in the early 1990s, before the Internet was widely available. So playing family detective and historian was a bit more challenging than it is today.  Wondering about my birth father From the time my mother first told me I was born out of wedlock and later adopted by my father, I wondered a lot about who my biological father was. And a lot about who I was. I always felt different as a kid. I was taller than my siblings, and as a teenager, was much taller than my parents. Maybe the circumstances surrounding my birth explained why I was depressed much of the time growing up.  “How you came into the world is not how it's done. You never should have been born” was a feeling that kept repeating itself over and over again in my soul, like a song on a damaged CD that skips because of a scratched track. Maybe if I knew more about my birth father and where I came from, I would be less depressed. Long before attending the Milwaukee Genealogical Society meetings with Bill, I began the search for the mystery man from my past. One morning, when I was twenty years old and home from college, I sat at the kitchen table of our small house, just with my mother and father, as my brother and sisters were in school. Fighting back my fear of not knowing what would happen next, I summoned all the courage I could muster to continue the conversation my mother started with me ten years earlier. Picking up a conversation from ten years ago “Mom, do you remember when I was about ten and you told me Dad was not my natural father? I was wondering whatever happened to my…” With that, my father quickly jumped up from the table, forcefully cutting me off and pounding his fist on the kitchen table next to his coffee cup, blurting out, “He was a truck driver and was killed in an accident. That's all we're ever going to talk about this!” Something inside told me he was not telling the truth as he stormed out of the room. For the next twenty years, I wondered about that conversation. Especially around the time of my birthday. I could never enjoy my birthday, for it would once again bring up the “how you came into the world is not how it's done; you never should have been born” theme from the basement of my heart. It would start a cycle of depression that would last for several days. I felt like crawling in a hole and just sleeping until the depression lifted, as it always did with time. Wanting to be like everyone else I felt so different from the rest of the world. Why can't I be just like everyone else? Yet part of me was glad I was not like everyone else. But that part, the missing legitimacy to my birth part, was where I wanted to be like everyone else. The mystery about my origins troubled me deeply.  I read with rapt attention newspaper articles about people reuniting with their birth parents. I intently watched TV shows and movies about children discovering as adults siblings they never knew they had. There'd be scenes in the airport with middle-aged people hugging their newly found brothers and sisters as they got off the plane. Maybe there's someone out there like that for me. Maybe my biological father had always wondered about me and was trying to track me down.  In the genealogy classes Bill and I attended, we learned how to find valuable information from public records, like birth certificates filed in courthouses. The copy of my birth certificate shows my last name is Certalic and my father is Harry Certalic. Nothing unusual about this, except if I had been adopted by Harry Certalic, why did his name appear on my birth certificate? My mother told me they married a year and a half after I was born and that he didn't adopt me until I was five. Were my parents lying to me? It made me angry to think about it. What are they not telling me? Why can't people tell me the truth? A courthouse cover-up Things became a bit clearer when I went to our local courthouse to see what they had on me. There I found a large ledger book where births in Milwaukee County were recorded in chronological order. I went to the day I was born and looked for my name with the other births recorded for the day. There was my name, and everything appeared in order, except for one entry—my last name. It clearly showed my last name, “Certalic,” but under the ink appeared some form of White-Out, covering over what had originally been entered. It was obvious someone had erased what was recorded as my surname, and then wrote “Certalic” over the erasure. What is this cover-up all about?  I learned through the genealogy class that in Wisconsin, as in many states, when a child is adopted, its original birth certificate is impounded and a new one issued with the name of the adopted parent(s) shown. So that explains why my official birth certificate looks normal, but the ledger book at the courthouse has the erasure. All this to protect the confidentiality of the birth parent(s). While I'm all for confidentiality in most areas of life, what about the right of children to know who brought them into the world? Who really, then, was my birth father? What name was covered over on the court ledger? What did my original birth certificate look like? As I neared my 40th birthday, I became more and more agitated and depressed about the whole thing. Janet kept encouraging me to talk to my mother to get more information. The last conversation I had on the topic hadn't gone very well, so I was not anxious to open a can of worms with her again. Finishing a conversation from twenty years ago One Sunday afternoon while visiting my parents, I summoned the courage to try finishing the conversation of twenty years ago about my origins. It was an attempt to finish the conversation begun ten years before.  I had been dealing with this whole thing for thirty years, and not dealing with it well. The voices whispering in my heart, “How you came into the world is not how it's done; you never should have been born,” grew louder and more frequent. By now, my father had suffered a paralyzing stroke several years after retiring from his factory job. Because of his stroke, he spent most of his time in a wheelchair watching TV. So with him in the living room, and my mother in the kitchen out of earshot, I continued my conversation with my mom from twenty years ago. In the same room, the same conversation. My mother finally answered my question “Mom, do you remember when I was ten and you told me Dad was not my real father? Who was my natural father?” She told me some of what she had said before at that time, that he was a truck driver living in Indiana who would deliver empty beer cans to the breweries in town. “Did he support us?” “No, when I asked for money to help us, he said he couldn't because he had a family of his own in Indiana he had to support.”  With a tight grimace in her face and shoulders hunched up, she continued, “And that's the last I ever talked to him, that [expletive].” “What's his name?” “Jack Byrd. “Where in Indiana did he live? “Fort Wayne.” “I want to try and track him down, Mom. Do you want to know what I find out?” “No.” ____________________ You're probably done walking your dog or washing dishes by now, so we'll need to stop. But in our next episode I'll share how I finally tracked down my birth father and what happened the day I met him. Most importantly I'll explain what I learned from this process. Closing As we close for today, I'd love to hear any thoughts you have about today's episode. I hope your thinking was stimulated by today's show, to think about your origins. To ask your parents questions, if they are still around. For when you do, it will help you experience the joy of relationships God desires for you. Because after all, You Were Made for This. Well, that's it for today. If there's someone in your life you think might like to hear what you just heard, please forward this episode on to them. Scroll down to the bottom of the show notes and click on one of the options in the yellow “Share This” bar. And don't forget to spread a little relational sunshine around the people you meet this week. Spark some joy for them.  And I'll see you again next time. Goodbye for now. Other episodes or resources related to today's shows 029: An Adoption Relationship Story- Part 1 030: An Adoption Relationship Story - Part 2 124:  Resting In Our Identity Frees Us to Love Well Prior recent episode 214: People Are Like Houses All past and future episodes    JohnCertalic.com Our Sponsor You Were Made for This is sponsored by Caring for Others, a missionary care ministry.  Donate Please consider donating to help cover the costs associated with this podcast and the other services we provide missionaries around the world. You can make a tax-deductible contribution to Caring for Others when you click here.  You can also contribute by clicking on the yellow "Donate" box in the upper right corner at the top of the first page.

ONE Sunday at Victory Family Church with Pastor Adam Starling

ONE Sunday at Victory Family Church with Pastor Adam Starling

This week, we are distracting ourselves from the freezing cold weather with a game of Burden or Delight. Our panelists are Adora Namigadde, WBEZ metro reporter and host of the morning episodes of the WBEZ podcast The Rundown, and Erin Allen, host of The Rundown in the afternoons. We discuss the end of certain comedic road signs and the ethics of a husband's hidden trust fund. Then, we head to a basement bar in Chicago for a Silent Book Club! One Sunday a month, the lesbian bar Dorothy fills up with book lovers reading alone together. We hear from attendees about what makes Silent Book Club nights so special.]]>

In 1971, Sundays in Savannah, Tennessee were for two things: church and family. That was especially true for the Stricklin family. One Sunday, 66-year-old Mollie and her husband, 81-year-old William, invited their son and his wife to their new home for a midday meal. Mollie made the food. Her daughter-in-law served the tea. Afterward, they all went for a nice drive in the city. The get-together seemed fun and innocent—until Mollie and William became terribly ill. Days later, William died. Mollie barely recovered. When evidence revealed that the Savannah couple had been poisoned with arsenic, questions started to arise. Little did they know that William's death was only the beginning of a case that would change the Stricklin family's lives forever. Hosted and produced by Erica KelleyResearched and written by Andrea Marshbank Additional Writing by Erica Kelley Original Graphic Art by Coley HornerOriginal Music by Rob Harrison of Gamma RadioEdited & Mixed by Brandon Schexnayder of Southern Gothic & Erica KelleyCase recommended by Cathy and othersSources: Today's Sponsors: Customize the US's best home security system for your home by going to SimpliSafe.com/southernfried. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.Cancel your unwanted subscriptions with RocketMoney.com/southernfriedTake a break and lose yourself solving a mystery set in the roaring 20's with June's Journey. Download today on iOS or Android.Access some of your hard-earned paycheck early. Download the EarnIn app and type in Southern Fried under podcast.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/2975465/advertisement

It's very likely all have felt this to varying degrees in varying seasons of our lives. One Sunday can feel fine, and the next we feel like everything might catch on fire. So here's what I'd like to offer. I want to give you a helpful plan for neutralizing the Sunday Scaries. We'll start with a three-step calming practice then I'll give you seven things you could do to make Sundays less scary.Helpful Companion LinksA helpful guide to making a brain dump on Instagram circa 2021Episode #177: The Lazy Genius Plans a DayEpisode #238: How to Get Stuff Done When You Don't Feel Like ItSign up for the Latest Lazy Listens email.Grab a copy of my book The Lazy Genius Kitchen or The Lazy Genius Way! (Affiliate links)Download a transcript of this episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One Sunday in February, in a northern Italian town called Ivrea, the facades of historic buildings were covered with plastic sheeting and nets. And in several different piazzas, hundreds of wooden crates had appeared. Inside them were oranges. Oranges, the fruit.Over the next three days, 8,000 people in Ivrea would throw 900 tons of oranges at one another, one orange at a time, while tens of thousands of other people watched. They would throw the oranges very hard, very viciously, often while screaming profanities at their targets or yowling like Braveheart. But they would also keep smiling as they threw the oranges, embracing and joking and cheering one another on, exhibiting with their total beings a deranged-seeming but euphoric sense of abandon and belonging — a freedom that was easy to envy but difficult to understand.The Battle of the Oranges is an annual tradition in Ivrea and part of a larger celebration described by its organizers as “the most ancient historical Carnival in Italy.” Several people in Ivrea told the writer Jon Mooallem that as three pandemic years had passed in which no oranges were thrown, they grew concerned that something bad would happen in the community — that without this catharsis, a certain pent-up, sinister energy would explode. And on that day in February, three years of constrained energy was due to explode all at once.This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.