Raising Healthy Children in Difficult Times

I want to invite you to turn to the Word of the Lord in 1 Samuel chapter 1, verses 20 through 28. A few days ago, I shared a brief illustration, as I sometimes do—an inspirational thought during the time of offerings and tithes—and I spoke about Hannah, who is one of those exemplary women born with a mother’s heart, and to whom God literally gave a son after an intense struggle in prayer because she was unable to have children. But after having that son for whom she had waited so long, like Abraham, she decided to give that son back to the Lord and dedicate him to Him, and He blessed her.

When we dedicate the gifts we have received from the Lord, when we acknowledge that they come from Him and belong to Him, something special happens; and God blessed Hannah, and God opened her womb abundantly, and Hannah conceived more children after that.

And this morning I want to focus on Hannah’s example in a slightly different way from how I may have done so in previous years, when I have spoken about her once or twice in the context of Mother’s Day.

But there in 1 Samuel chapter 1, verses 20 through 28, it says: “And it came to pass, when the time had come, after Hannah had conceived, that she gave birth to a son and named him Samuel, saying, ‘Because I asked the Lord for him.’ Then the man Elkanah went up”—that is, he was Hannah’s husband—“with his whole family to offer the customary sacrifice and his vow. But Hannah did not go up, but said to her husband, ‘I will not go up until the child is weaned, so that I may take him and he may be presented before the Lord and remain there forever.’ And Elkanah, her husband, answered her, ‘Do what seems best to you. Stay until you have weaned him. Only may the Lord fulfill His Word.’ So the woman stayed and nursed her son until she had weaned him.”

“After she had weaned him, she took him with her, along with three calves, an ephah of flour, and a vessel of wine, and brought him to the House of the Lord in Shiloh; and the child was young. And after slaughtering the calf, they brought the child to Eli, and she said, ‘Oh, my lord, as your soul lives, my lord, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the Lord. I prayed for this child, and the Lord gave me what I asked of Him. Therefore, I also dedicate him to the Lord; all the days that he lives, he shall belong to the Lord.’ And she worshiped the Lord there.”

Let me emphasize verse 27: “I prayed for this child, and the Lord gave me what I asked of Him. Therefore, I also dedicate him to the Lord. All the days that he lives, he shall belong to the Lord.”

What I want to point out for our consideration this morning is that posture, that attitude of acknowledgment and surrender on Hannah’s part regarding the most precious thing she had, which was that son for whom she had prayed for so long and whom she had longed for so deeply, and finally God gave her the desire of her heart.

Hannah now fulfills a promise she had made to the Lord: that if God gave her a son, she would dedicate him to the Lord all the days of his life. And so now Hannah fulfills that purpose: she has her son; her son has now reached the age of fruition, of being a viable child; in a sense he is now ready to separate from her. And so Hannah, with complete integrity, brings him to the very temple where she had cried out with bitter tears for a son and gives him to the Lord. She dedicates the most precious thing of all to Him, and she knows that she is separating from that son and releasing him to the Lord as His possession; from that point forward, that son would live as a Nazirite.

The Nazirites were like super-priests dedicated solely to the Lord: they did not cut their hair, they did not drink wine, they owned no property, and they did not live like any other ordinary human being because they were like living sacrifices, wholly consecrated to the service of the Lord—and Hannah is doing this.

As I say, what is interesting is that God recognized this woman’s integrity and her love for Him, and so He rewarded her and blessed her with five more children after that. The truth is that God is not stingy: when He blesses and answers, He does so abundantly. And you also see, don’t you, that when a person is generous with God—I believe that is the key to success in the Christian life and in life in general—when a person seeks first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, all these other things are added to him.

Hannah dedicated her son to the Lord. She did not think of herself but thought of adding something to the Kingdom of God, and so God gave her three more sons and two more daughters to compensate her for her surrender.

The same thing happened with Abraham, by the way, when God told him, “Give Me your only son; sacrifice him to Me.” And Abraham, with the pain you can imagine, took Isaac to the place of sacrifice, and he himself was going to sacrifice him, was going to kill him. The Lord told him, “Stop your hand. Because you did not withhold your son from Me, I am going to give you descendants so numerous that if the stars of the heavens can be counted, your descendants could be counted; and you are going to prosper, be blessed, and be multiplied.” And I believe that therein lies the key to success in every sense: in our families, in our homes, in everything.

When we dedicate our home to Him as a stronghold of the Kingdom of God and say, “Father, everything we are as a family—my marriage, my property, my possessions, my profession, my work, my talents—we are going to dedicate it all to You,” when we live with that white-hot passion for the Lord, God then blesses every dimension of our being.

How can we have blessed families, prosperous families? Well, by forgetting our own convenience a little and dedicating ourselves to blessing the Kingdom of God, to being a resource, to making our home an outpost of the Kingdom of God. Then the Lord opens the windows of heaven and pours out blessing until it overflows in our lives, doesn’t He? I believe that is the key to having prosperous and blessed families in our time.

Sometimes it saddens me because when couples marry—sometimes they are single members of the Church, they meet in the congregation, and they marry—then very often, not always but sometimes, the natural outcome is that life becomes more complex. Married life gives energy, but it also drains energy; the commitments of life as a couple come, the burdens of the home come, children come, and while they are young, they demand a great deal; and very often the Church loses resources.

I believe the ideal would be that when a couple comes together and they are now more economical, in the sense that they are more united, the Church should gain a resource, not lose one. Now, that requires the couple to make a firm resolution that “we are going to be a blessing to the Kingdom of God.” So one has to make a proactive decision, because if one simply waits for opportunities to arise, life will never naturally give us opportunities like that to serve the Kingdom of God. It is something about which we must make a deliberate, planned decision. That couple should come before God at the beginning of their marriage and say, “Father, we want to serve You with the same passion with which we served You before, and we want to be a blessing to You and to Your Kingdom. Here we are with everything we have, including our future. Use our home, and may this space be a place where Your Kingdom is advanced.” And then they should serve the Lord sacrificially in that way. It is incredible how God blesses such a couple, because a couple that serves together stays together.

You have heard the phrase, “A family that prays together stays together.” Well, I believe that a family that prays together but also serves together is blessed and prospers. I believe that on this day we should all make a commitment to God that we will not serve God simply because it is natural, convenient, or spontaneous—no. We are going to serve Him on principle. Our home is going to be a resource for the Kingdom of God. Then you see how wonderfully and mysteriously the other things are literally added: the job comes, the money comes, harmony comes, intimacy in marriage comes, communication comes, the blessing of God comes, and the children prosper and are blessed because Dad and Mom are serving the Lord sacrificially and deliberately. Hannah is an example of that: she served the Lord, dedicated her first son, her firstborn, to the Lord, and God opened her womb in a way she had never imagined.

One of the interesting things about Hannah is that she lived during one of the most barren and spiritually difficult times in the entire history of Israel. Chapter 2, verse 17, tells us about the sons of Eli.

Eli was the high priest in Israel, but sadly he was deficient as a father; he did not discipline his sons or raise them in the fear of the Lord. As the saying goes, the blacksmith’s house has wooden knives. Well, unfortunately, Eli was a terrible example of this, because although he was the lamp of Israel, the high priest, and the spiritual guide of the nation, he did not raise his sons in the fear of the Lord; he neglected them, and unfortunately his sons tarnished the image of God in the community.

It says, then: “The sin of the young men, the sons of Eli, was very great before the Lord, because men despised the offerings of the Lord.” These men abused their family position as part of the priesthood and lived immoral lives. They also used Israel’s offerings for their own benefit in an ugly, very, very irreverent way, and the people had already lost respect for the sacrifices and offerings. They had turned them into nothing more than a way to eat whatever they wanted and to trade in the animal offerings that the Hebrews brought to the House of the Lord, and they had completely discredited the Kingdom of God.

God severely punished Eli for this and rebuked him on several occasions, including through young Samuel, when he was still a boy, to give a terrible warning to this man who, though he should have been an example, neglected his responsibility and did the exact opposite: he discredited the Kingdom of God, and the Spirit of the Lord was grieved throughout Israel.

If those at the head do not exemplify the Name of the Kingdom, what will happen to everyone else? If the Church—if we, the spiritual leaders, the pastors, and the leaders of a congregation—are not the first to safeguard the values of the Kingdom of God, what will become of the people? If the Church of Jesus Christ is not an example in the world, then how can we expect to bless the community? It is a call God makes to all of us as well, and I gently extend it to each person.

Brothers and sisters, let us feel the tremendous responsibility we have as priests before this community, and let us ask the Lord to help us live lives that reflect the values of the Kingdom of God. Let us commit ourselves; let us take seriously the call of the Kingdom of God to the Church to reflect that love for the Lord—a life of commitment, holiness, and obedience to the principles of the Kingdom of God. And let us strive with all the strength of our hearts and ask the Holy Spirit to help us be an example.

Because the truth is that part of the chaos society displays today in the family, in sexuality, and in all these things can be laid at the feet of the Church. People in the Church often want to live as people out there live; we want to live “normal” lives, in quotation marks, and that is not possible. We have to exemplify something different.

Our calling is a much higher calling than that of the average person, and we have to make the effort; every day we have to feel that call of the Holy Spirit: “Hey, renew your vows before the Lord today. Commit yourself to being a Christian family with very powerful values—different values, values of obedience to the Word of God. Learn what those values of the Word are, and ask the Holy Spirit to give you the strength to live by them.”

The fact is that Eli had not raised his sons; he himself had lost his spiritual discernment. By the end of his life, it says that he had become a grotesquely obese man. He did not practice the spiritual disciplines. When he saw Hannah weeping bitterly and praying for her son, he thought she was drunk; he criticized and rebuked her, not knowing that she was a woman completely devoted to the Lord and that this was why she was there crying out to the Lord. He had lost his spiritual bearings, and all of this had grieved the Spirit of the Lord.

In chapter 3, verse 1, it says: “The Word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.” In other words, the Holy Spirit who was upon Israel had been grieved, and the gifts of the Spirit were not being manifested. There was no vision; there was no direct instruction from the Holy Spirit for the nation. Does that remind you at all of our times?

Sometimes we complain that the Spirit of God is not manifesting Himself with greater power. We say, “Where is the God of Elijah? Where are those miracles of which the Word speaks, those we have heard about in the past?” We have to begin by examining what is happening. Might we perhaps be contributing a little to that barrenness?

The fact is that there was tremendous barrenness in the land, and Hannah moves within that context; and in that context Samuel is born, in a context of great barrenness and great spiritual scarcity, just as we must raise our children in this time.

I know young people who say, ‘I don’t want to have children; we’re not going to have children, or we’re going to have one just to fulfill Scripture, but no more, because these are very difficult times in which to have children, and I don’t want to.’ And the truth is that you become distressed when you look at education, when you see the values toward which the culture is moving at this time; you say, ‘Wow, do I really want a child to grow up?’

Sometimes parents are not allowed to educate their children as they should, and the state often wants to snatch children away and prevent parents from teaching them certain things. The state arrogates to itself and claims the right, under a civil conception of fatherhood, motherhood, and the family, using arguments that seem very legitimate, don’t they? Because a child is a citizen, and therefore that citizen supposedly has to be taught how to live in society. But that also has moral and spiritual implications; nothing is neutral. So the state tries to turn it into something merely civil, political, and legal, but nothing is that simple. The world is a web of relationships, and so they are also affecting our children’s education, contradicting and undermining the spiritual education that we are supposed to give our children.

So it is within that negative context, hostile to the values of the Kingdom of God, that we educate our children, just as Hannah also had to educate her children and had to educate Samuel.

Now, I believe that, once again, there are other things in Hannah’s example that help us, and one of the things I want to emphasize is that Hannah knew her son was a direct gift from God. She was very conscious of this because her journey had been very painful; she had already had to fight for that son, and she had the privilege of having no doubt that this son had come actively and directly from the Lord for her.

We often have our children naturally; we have them because we are healthy, everything is in order, and so our children are born. But there is no difference between Hannah’s situation and ours. Children are a gift from God; children are an active blessing from the Lord; children come from God.

When we receive our children, we must always consecrate them to the Lord first. That is why we do it this way: we present our children to the Lord. In other words, it is a public acknowledgment: ‘This child belongs to Jehovah, and I present this child to the Lord, and I thank Him.’ And you say, ‘Father, I know that this child belongs to You.’ That is how we must understand that our children are not our property, but that we are—what?—merely stewards.

Whenever you look at that very special child whom you love so much, say to yourself, ‘Ultimately, you are not mine; you belong to God. I am merely a caretaker, a steward of your life. God has placed you in my hands so that I may care for you on His behalf.’ That child is not my child; that child is God’s child, and I am the nursemaid, the person who takes care of that child. And I believe that repeating this to ourselves will help us maintain the right perspective. Continually give your son or your daughter to the Lord as a reminder to yourself.

I believe that this is very different from the modern perspective. What is the modern, secular perspective? It is that while the child is in the woman’s womb, that real estate where the child is living belongs to the woman; that womb belongs to her. Brothers and sisters, that is the legal and sociocultural understanding of our time, and much doctrine concerning abortion and everything else is based on that.

I have read statements by very progressive thinkers who say that, up until the last day of gestation, until that child emerges from the mother’s womb at nine months, that child belongs to the woman and that she should have the right to abort the child up to the ninth month if necessary, because the child is inside her womb, and her womb is her property, and therefore whatever is inside her womb belongs to her.

Look: that is not true even in the world outside. I have a house; you have a house or an apartment, and ultimately you cannot do whatever you want with that apartment. You cannot just go and burn down the house simply because you felt like it, or paint it colors that are out of place in the neighborhood. There are neighborhoods where you cannot use certain kinds of wood or build right up to the last inch of your property because you have to take into account the surrounding property and appearance laws, and everything else. And yet we want to do that with our children, as though a child were our absolute property.

The child belongs to God. We believers understand that it is not that way, but rather that our children are the Lord’s property. We have to educate them for Him, raise them in the fear of the Lord and according to the values of the Kingdom of God, and understand that what we must raise up is a resource for the Kingdom of God. That son, that daughter, belongs to the Lord, and we must educate them for the Lord so that this child will grow up to be a man or woman whom God can use greatly for His Work and for its advancement on Earth.

And Hannah wanted to prepare a resource for the Kingdom of God, and that is why she gave Samuel over to be educated within the temple, so that he would be a servant, a prophet of God, so that he would bring the Word of God and bring revival to Israel in that time of such great need.

And I encourage you to see your children—our children—as future resources for the Kingdom of God and to educate them with that purpose in mind. Before wanting to train successful and prosperous professionals, our first desire should be that they love the Lord and guide their lives by the values of the Word of God, amen? Before my son becomes a great engineer, a doctor, or a teacher, I want him to be a God-fearing man; I want her to be a servant of the Lord. And within that context, amen, let that child become a professional if God wills, make money, and live a successful life—but let all of that take place within the context of a special love and loyalty toward the Kingdom of God.

We have to educate our children with that same intentionality and consistency in everything we do to educate them. Our children’s education must be purposeful, not random or left to the school, the culture, or even the Church. I am responsible for presenting the Lord with a resource for His Kingdom; we can never abdicate our commitment.

The Church is not responsible for our children—did you know that? You and I are responsible: you, your spouse, your household. We bring them to Church so that they may be educated to a certain extent—that is true—but ultimately, it is at home that those important values begin. So this is very important, isn’t it? Our children are not ours; we must raise our children as a resource for the Kingdom of God.

Another important value that I believe we must keep in mind in these difficult times is that both parents—both parents, whenever possible—must participate equally in the child’s formation. I know that it is often not possible because there are homes where the father or the mother is not present, but whenever possible both parents must participate equally, because both masculine and feminine sensitivity are essential components of a balanced personality.

Fathers, let us not abdicate the responsibility of educating our children; let us do everything possible. Men always tend to be a little more detached, don’t they? Let us make a proactive decision to be a very present influence in our children’s lives.

Children need both their dad and their mom; they need the scent of their father. Daughters need the warmth of a dad; they need his presence, they need to hear his voice, they need to learn what a merciful man is, what a well-functioning man is, a man who acts as Christ acted—a balanced, loving, tender personality—and they need that influence. So, father, no matter how old your daughter or your son is, participate. Mother, let us be a team and work together to educate our children. Both parents are important, especially in this time.

Third, we are supposed to educate our children by modeling for them; we are to be a model of what we are teaching our children, modeling total surrender, ourselves becoming an embodiment of love for God and consecration to the interests of His Kingdom. Brothers and sisters, first we need to be filled with the warmth of the Holy Spirit, surrender our lives to the Lord, and live passionately for the Kingdom of God. Our children should see us coming to Church early, reading the Word, loving intimacy with God, being proactive worshipers, serving the Lord in every way possible, giving our tithes and offerings to the Lord, and being loyal and fervent in everything that has to do with the Kingdom of God.

When your child grows up continually seeing that example, that child will absorb that energy. Children receive much more through impartation than through verbal teaching. What they see every day is what they will take in, deep within their inner sensibilities. So be aware that you have two or four or six or eight little eyes around there watching you twenty-four hours a day, and that you are always teaching something, always demonstrating something, always displaying something, always imparting something. Never lose sight of the fact that your children are little sponges, and they are going to absorb the love of God; they are going to absorb your loyalty to the Church and to the Kingdom of the Lord, the words that come out of your mouth, the television programs you watch, and how many books there are in the house. Sometimes we want our children to be avid readers, but when do they ever see us reading a book? So we have to.

I believe that one of the things lost with iPads and computers is that it is difficult to tell when someone is reading a book or something, isn’t it? Because they may be watching a video program or whatever. How wonderful it is when a child sees Dad or Mom reading a book and knows, ‘Ah, they are specifically reading.’ I believe there is something beautiful about books, and whenever possible we should buy books for our children and also be readers ourselves, so that they see us sitting there. Buy yourself something, and even if you are not reading, pretend that you are reading for half an hour so that at least they see you.

If you tell your child, ‘Kid, read, read, read,’ but you never read—(laughter). We have to model, to model love for God and steadfastness with the Lord. I want to invite my brother Omar to come up here, and these are values; in difficult times like Hannah’s, these are things that are crucial in our children’s lives.

And the last thing I want to point out, which has already been foreshadowed by everything I have said, is that in difficult times, more energy, more intentionality, more clarity, and more emphasis on the values we instill in our children are required.

My brothers and sisters, if twenty years ago it was difficult to educate our children in God’s values and it required great effort and intentionality on our part, it is more important now than ever. What might previously have been excusable—certain oversights, a certain casualness in how we educated our children—it is now almost a sin to practice that level of negligence in educating children. Now we practically have to shout to be heard amid all the noise and discordant sounds of the culture in which we live.

I believe that this is, incidentally, one of the Church’s errors in these times. I believe that in many congregations, out of fear of offending visitors and scandalizing those who think differently from what the Word of the Lord says, many congregations and many pastors feel tempted to omit from the pulpit certain teachings that are offensive to visitors and to people who have not been educated in the values of the Kingdom of God.

So, in this desire to be attractive and not to sound hateful and confrontational, what we churches and pastors are doing is dimming and silencing every voice that the culture finds scandalous, because supposedly, in this way, we will not alienate the people who come to our services. But if you think about it, that is the most terrible mistake a Church or a pastor could make. In fact, I would say it is a sin and an act of cowardice, because in these times of confusion, when the world feels completely entitled to shout its values and spread them through every possible means, including legal and unjust means, how can the Church then lower its standard and diminish its insistence on proclaiming the values of the Kingdom of God? It is madness.

Quite the opposite. We should be more insistent than ever on educating our people so that they may have the tools they need to stand firm in the Word of the Lord. Yes or no? This seems logical to me, doesn’t it? And our young ones, our young people, also need the counsel of the Word of the Lord. And where will that counsel come from if not from the Church, when they come here to receive teaching and instruction, where the teaching authority of the Church is supposed to be exercised most clearly through Sunday school instruction?

If the Church abdicates its responsibility to teach the people in times of confusion and barrenness, there is no hope for this world, brothers and sisters. And I am committed—we must be committed as a Church—to being a prophetic voice in this world and at this time, and to declaring the Word of the Lord with humility and gentleness, but without apologizing for it either.

We must do that very same thing in our homes because when they go to school, their sexuality will be called into question. The commandment concerning human sexuality that the Word of the Lord has proclaimed, and that the great religions of history have proclaimed throughout the ages, is being called into question by an elite group of people in this day and age who represent a very recent and very fleeting emergence in human sensibility throughout the ages.

Their sexuality will be called into question, and we have to tell them: no, God created mankind; male and female He created them, man | woman, to reflect a unity, to reflect the richness of His personality. God is genderless and is both genders; He is male and female; rather, He is something else, and man and woman reflect God through their different energies. The masculine and the feminine are reflections of energies that are in God, and God wanted to create and reflect Himself in a man and a woman in their complementary relationship. The Church has to proclaim that without ambiguity and without asking permission or apologizing for it (applause).

And, um, in our home—let me tell you, brothers and sisters—if we want masculine boys, I am going to talk for a moment about boys, but also about girls, because nowadays lesbianism is growing by leaps and bounds. If you want to raise a masculine little boy, you have to work at it, you know? Do not rely on hormones now to help you and take care of that. Nowadays there is social engineering; biological endowment is no longer respected, it no longer carries as much weight as it used to, and today confusion is everywhere; our children can become confused even while still in the womb.

That is why it is so important for men to be involved in the education of their sons and for you to teach your son to be a man. There is an aspect of being manly that has to be learned, brothers and sisters. Devote time to that. I believe it is important to educate our sons about what it means to be a man. And I also mean a healthy man, not a man who is as stiff as a dry stick that breaks easily because of how masculine he is—no. We must also teach him to be gentle, helpful, loving, and tender. I believe that a man can and should cry, can and should show affection, can and should ask forgiveness, can and should show fear and express fear, and confusion, and weakness, and deficiency; but there is also something in a man that is aggressive, hard, angular, and we have to teach that to our sons as well. We have to be very proactive about raising masculine boys in our time.

And the same goes for young ladies: may our daughters be feminine, brothers and sisters. There is nothing wrong with our daughters also learning to be feminine. Let them play with their dolls, develop their maternal instincts, dress in pretty, delicate little dresses, speak in a certain way, and conduct themselves accordingly; there is nothing wrong with that. I make no apologies. I do not know about you, but I think that is beautiful, and that we also have to educate our girls to be feminine (applause). Devote time to it.

Above all, you young people. Many of you young couples have drunk the water and milk of this culture, and this whole idea has gotten into you that all these things are purely cultural matters, but look: femininity is inscribed in a woman’s body, and every month she has to remember that she is a woman and not a man, and the same is true of a man. There are things that will not change, no matter how sophisticated we become. That is inscribed in humanity’s genetic code, and fighting against it is kicking against the goads; it is trying to rebel against what you are. It is inescapable; it is inevitable.

So we have to be very intentional, brothers and sisters. We could spend a great deal of time on that point alone because it is a very important point, but let us be intentional about educating our children in the Word of God, educating our children in their sense of sexuality, in what they are in terms of gender. Let us also educate them about their complementarity: man, woman—what a beautiful thing that unity is, that union unequaled in all creation. Man without woman is absurd; woman without man is no good either. A man and a woman are needed, whether in friendship, in marriage, or as a working unit. God made us (applause).

At every level—at the level of society, at the level of a corporation, at the level of a Church, at the level of a community, at the level of a school, at the level of anything whatsoever—man and woman are needed, united and working together, each one contributing their gifts and virtues in a loving struggle between two essences that complement each other in what each one lacks; and we have to educate our children in that as well. The little boy should appreciate the little girl, and the little girl the boy; let them begin to develop that mutual appreciation for the beauty that each one is within creation.

Let us devote time to all these things, brothers and sisters. These are difficult times, but we can raise blessed children, children who adorn the Kingdom of God and are a benefit to it. I leave you with the words of Deuteronomy 6:4–9, Deuteronomy 6:4–9. Stand for a moment; receive the Word of the Lord this morning. Healthy Children in Difficult Times.

“Hear, O Israel”—hear, Lion of Judah Congregation—“Jehovah our God, Jehovah is one; and you shall love Jehovah your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. And these words that I command you today shall be in your heart, and you shall repeat them to your children”—you shall repeat them to your children—“and you shall speak of them while you are in your house”—you shall speak of them while you are in your house—“and as you walk along the way with them, you shall repeat the same words to them; and when you lie down and when you rise.” That is our part: in our own lives we then exemplify them before our children. “And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes, and you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” Amen. May the Lord help us to live with that level of commitment to the Word of God.

Let us make a commitment there as a family. If you wish, take the hand of your wife or husband, your children, your grandchildren, a friend there beside you, someone beside you; and in difficult and barren times, in times when the Word of the Lord is scarce and the Spirit of Jehovah seems to have withdrawn from society, let us as the Church invite the Spirit of the Lord to come among us, and let us commit ourselves to living by that Word of God and making it a source of instruction for our children and our neighbors, embodying and modeling that love of ours first.

Let us commit ourselves to loving our partner, our husband, our wife, and to being a united and blessed married couple. And if you are a single mother, do not worry; the Lord will provide all the nutrients you lack in terms of a husband, physically speaking. God will be your husband; God will be Dad. Your children will not lack those nutrients, because the Lord specializes in covering deficiencies.

As far as possible, however, if you have the blessing of having your partner with you, let us do this. I do it with my wife, who is in Puerto Rico today with her family, and we unite in faith to be homes where the Word of the Lord abounds, where the words of God are inscribed on the thresholds of our doors and on the very foreheads of our heads, where we carry the Word of the Lord inscribed on our hearts, and where we read those words and share them with our children right and left, and are a resource for society.

Father, we give You our children; we give You our fatherhood, our motherhood; we give You the children of this Congregation, and we ask You to help us be a blessed Church, prosperous first and foremost in the Word of God and in fierce loyalty to the values of the Kingdom of God.

I bless our descendants, beloved Lord, the descendants of this Congregation. May Your favor follow Lion of Judah Congregation, Father. May Your favor bless right now the children growing up in this very city without the benefit of a father, who are being distorted by the presence of too many men who come and go from the apartments where they live, Lord. Perhaps they are suffering sexual abuse; perhaps they are watching their mothers being physically abused, Lord; perhaps their mothers are not being the example they ought to be for them; certainly, their fathers may be in prison right now. We bless them wherever they may be, Father.

We declare Your Mercy over apartments and housing projects throughout this city, Lord, where there are Hispanics, where there are African Americans, where there are white people in South Boston and even in other places, Lord, here in the South End with incomes of hundreds of thousands of dollars, yet lacking examples of good fatherhood, motherhood, and family.

We ask for mercy, Lord, for this society around us. Make us a refuge here, Father, and humbly teach us to embody the values of Your Kingdom. Help us to be better every day, Father, and to do everything within this Congregation’s power to produce healthy families that reflect the values of the Kingdom of God. Begin with the senior leadership of this Church, Father, and let it flow from there down to the most inconspicuous person in this Congregation. We bless Your people on this day.

Thank You for our mothers; may they leave here strengthened and affirmed in their exemplary work. Thank You, Lord. In the Name of Jesus, the people of God say: amen. I bless you, my brothers and sisters. May the Grace of the Lord be with all of you, amen.