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A childs view of the marriage vows
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Eight-year-old Tad (not his real name) watched with wide-eyed amazement as his parents renewed their marriage vows.


Tad’s mom and dad were not alone. I had been preaching a series of sermons on marriage, so I concluded the last sermon on commitment to a lifelong covenant by inviting husbands and wives to stand up, join hands, and renew their marriage vows en masse. Men and women all over the building stood and faced one another, as their children and others looked on, some with tears in their eyes. But Tad had no tears. The grin across his face could not have been wider if somebody had taken their fingers and tried to stretch the corners of his mouth.


When his parents finished renewing their vows and sat down, Tad spoke up. “You didn’t say your marriage vows,” he claimed. “Yes we did,” his mom and dad answered. “No you didn’t,” he shot back. “You didn’t say A-E-I-O-U.”


Just because Tad confused “vows” with “vowels” doesn’t mean that he didn’t understand what his parents were doing. The next day he plopped down between his parents, sniffed the air, and said, “Smells like safety.”


When husbands and wives are committed to marriage, their children feel safe and secure. That’s why Malachi 2:15 (NCV) says, “God made husbands and wives to become one body and one spirit for his purpose — so they would have children who are true to God.”


Little Tad is blessed to be one of the children Malachi was talking about. Does your home smell safe to your kids?


(Copyright 2013 by Bob Rogers. Email: brogers@fbcrincon.com. Read this column each Friday in the Herald. Visit my blog at www.bobrogers.me.)

Is there a church for a big woman with an itch?
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A pastor was called to be guest preacher at a church. He knew this church was different when the congregation ended every line of the hymn with the shout of “yeehah!”


As he stood to preach, he noticed that people were spread out on the pews. He would see a person, then a space, then another person, and another space. He wondered why nobody sat next to another person, when he noticed on the pew beside each person was a cowboy hat.


Another time this same preacher was invited to a new church in the city. He was surprised to see that everybody there looked like they had fallen face first into a tackle box, because they had piercings and earrings on every part of the body imaginable. A rock band was playing alternative music on the stage.


As different as these two churches were, they were both growing and reaching people for Christ.


Years ago I was pastor of a small country church in the backwoods of Mississippi. There was another Baptist church just five miles away in the town (population 600). The pastor’s wife at the town church asked me, “Why don’t our two churches merge?” I said, “There are people in my church who would not feel comfortable or fit in at your town church.” She said, “Oh, come on. We’re a small town church. What could be so different?”


I said, “Well, I got one really big woman in my church who, when she gets to feeling an itch, she pulls her dress halfway up and she scratches herself.”


The eyes of this pastor’s wife got really big and she said, “I see what you mean.”


I forgot to tell her about another woman in my church who saw a roach running across the wood floor, so she stomped on it with her bare foot, laughed and shouted, “Aha! I got him!”


Yep, the culture was definitely different where I was pastor.


Jesus upset the religious establishment because He crossed cultural barriers. He loved to eat with tax collectors and Gentiles and other strange people. Jesus walked into the land of Samaria, full of half-breed Jews who worshiped in weird ways and talked different and smelled different.


Jesus walked right up to a Samaritan woman at a well and started talking her language. He accepted her culture, but he let her know her sinful lifestyle had to change. Soon she had the whole town following Jesus (see John 4).


So what cultural barrier is keeping somebody in your community from hearing the gospel? If you tear down the cultural barriers to share Christ in your neighborhood, you may hear the angels shouting, “Yeehah!”


Copyright 2014 by Bob Rogers. Email: brogers@fbcrincon.com. Read this column each Friday in the Herald. Visit my blog at www.bobrogers.me.