YOUR HEALTH AS A WONDERFUL CHILD

Your child's health includes physical, mental and social well-being. Most parents know the basics of keeping children healthy, like offering them healthy foods , making sure they get enough sleep and exercise and insuring their safety.

  "Time to get ready for bed!" someone calls from the other room. Oh, no! You're really into the great book you're reading or that computer game that you're winning.
"Why do I have to go to bed?" you ask.
 "Sleep is boring, and I'm not even tired!"

But sleep is more important than you may think. Maybe you can think of a time when you didn't get enough sleep. That heavy, groggy feeling is awful and, when you feel that way, you're not at your best. So if you're not too tired, let's talk about sleep.

Why You Need Sleep

The average kid has a busy day. There's school, taking care of your pets, running around with friends, going to sports practice or other activities, and doing your homework. Phew! It's tiring just writing it all down. By the end of the day, your body needs a break. Sleep allows your body to rest for the next day.
Everything that's alive needs sleep to survive. Even your dog or cat curls up for naps. Animals sleep for the same reason you do — to give your body a tiny vacation.

Your Brain Needs Zzzzzs

Not only is sleep necessary for your body, it's important for your brain, too. Though no one is exactly sure what work the brain does when you're asleep, some scientists think that the brain sorts through and stores information, replaces chemicals, and solves problems while you snooze.
Most kids between 5 and 12 get about 9.5 hours a night, but experts agree that most need 10 or 11 hours each night. Sleep is an individual thing and some kids need more than others.
When your body doesn't have enough hours to rest, you may feel tired or cranky, or you may be unable to think clearly. You might have a hard time following directions, or you might have an argument with a friend over something really stupid. A school assignment that's normally easy may feel impossible, or you may feel clumsy playing your favorite sport or instrument.

One more reason to get enough sleep: If you don't, you may not grow as well. That's right, researchers believe too little sleep can affect growth and your immune system — which keeps you from getting sick.

So dear parents, it is also important for children to get regular checkups with their health care provider. These visits are a chance to check your child's development. They are also a good time to catch or prevent problems.

Other than checkups, school-age children should be seen for the following:

• Significant weight gain or loss
• Sleep problems or change in behavior
• Fever higher than 102
• Rashes or skin infections
• Frequent sore throats
• Breathing problems                                                                              
  
                                       

GOING THROUGH THE STORMS OF LIFE

Life has storms, life has ups and downs. There are breaking points in life, there are also break through points. There are times when you feel like giving up but at other times you feel like going on.

Even Jesus Christ the author and the finisher of our faith said that in this world we will have tribulations but encouraged us to be of good cheer because He has overcome the world. John 16:33.

Jesus was not threatening us when He talked about the tribulations, because He gave us a solution which many of us have failed to continually apply. He said we should be of good cheer, that is we should be joyful.
 Many of us carry about a squeezed face in worry; thinking may be God will pity us. If God was to pity us then a large percentage of people would have gotten their miracles by worrying. God expects us to be joyful even in the storms of life because Joy brings the presence of God. Joy will bring God into every storm. And when God is in the fire with you, you will not feel the heat and you will come out better and brighter. Is God in that storm with you? Don’t just hurry up to say yes. The true test of God being in the storm with you is to be joyful and rejoice. Remember in Daniel 3; when the three Hebrew boys were thrown into the fire they were singing and a fourth man appeared. They didn’t cry or complain. Joy is a display of confidence in God; joy is also what brings God’s presence into every storm, Psalms 16:11.

 When trials come, don’t forget there is someone who can bring you peace. After a long day of teaching, Jesus Christ boarded a ship with His Apostles. They were going across the Sea of Galilee to teach the people on the other side. Christ was asleep when a storm came upon them. The Apostles began to fear the storm as they were tossed by the winds and water filled their boat. They awoke Jesus, crying, “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” (Mark 4:38).

Christ arose and calmed the winds and waves with His power, saying“Peace, be still” (Mark 4:39). He turned to His Apostles and asked, “Where is your faith?” (Luke 8:25). Christ gently chastised them for being fearful and not remembering that He can calm the tossing seas during a storm.
I recently heard a friend say that “life is a storm sometimes.” How true that is! Life can be tempestuous, tossing us with winds of misfortune, grief, shame, or stress.

Christ not only calms the physical seas, but He can also calm the seas within our minds and souls.

Christ not only calms the physical seas, but He can also calm the seas within our minds and souls. Do we call on Heavenly Father and His Son when the waters of anguish begin to fill our ship? Do we have the faith to trust in Christ?
It’s hard to remember there is someone who can bring peace when we are being tossed so hard that we feel like we can barely hang on. Sometimes in life we just try to outlast the storm, forgetting to call on the One who can calm it.
Peace may not always come as it did that long-ago day on Galilee—the storms and winds may not be replaced by perfect calm. Instead, when we hasten to call on the Master and allow Him to bear our burdens, our peace may come in small reminders of His love and care, giving us strength to get through the storm.

That is what happened to me one April. The end of another school year was fast approaching—and with it came the cares, worries, and work I had experienced during the past nine months. I was exhausted, emotional, and lonely. I felt like I was being tossed by the storms of life. Church service was coming up one weekend in April and it was to be a special anointing service, and I earnestly looked forward to hearing the prophet of God speak to me, hoping to feel a calmness enter my “sinking soul.”

A closing hymn brought great peace. As the choir sang the third verse, I felt the Spirit calm the seas inside me:
Fear not, I am with thee; oh, be not dismayed,
For I am thy God and will still give thee aid.
I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand, …
Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.

It is our faith in Christ’s calming power and our hastening to call for His help that allows Him to calm our hearts during life’s storms.

My storm may not have been as tempestuous as the storms others face, but it is not the velocity of the storm that makes our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ willing to help us. It is our faith in Christ’s calming power and our hastening to call for His help that allows Him to calm our hearts during life’s storms.

Joy Can Be Ours

“My brothers and sisters, however dark conditions may seem in this world today, whatever the storms we are facing personally, in our homes and our families, this joy can be ours now. …

“… Our faith in Him and obedience to His commandments will bring ‘a perfect brightness of hope’ [2 Nephi 31:20] and dispel the darkness and gloom of despair in these troubled times. The One who had power to calm the elements of earth has power to calm our souls, to give us refuge from the storm” (Robert D. Hales, “Faith through Tribulation Brings Peace and Joy,” Ensign or Liahona, May 2003, 18).


Finally joy is a weapon you war with when things begin to go bad. God will deliver you from every storm and you will come out better and brighter in JESUS PRECIOUS NAME.

RPF: RPF Youth Wing

RPF: RPF Youth Wing:  Showing True Genuine Love as a Youth I don't know much about Stacey, but I know that she'd never met or cared about anyone like B...

THE POWER OF AGREEMENT

I welcome everyone to the month of Grace. May the Grace of God never leave us.  Being in unity is powerful.

Definition of agreement
It means to come into or be in harmony regarding a matter of opinion.

There is war over what you agree with because there is power in agreement. there are five important areas in a mans life that you need to be solid in. these areas are:
1. God
2. Your identity
3. Your future
4. Your relationships
5. Your Council

 I would focus on our need to be in agreement in two areas, agreement with God and with each other. Remember, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish when we come into agreement with each other.

 Matthew 18:19-20
"Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”

The power of unity is a universal principle, not just a church-principle. People working together toward an agreed upon goal are all but unstoppable. Early in the history of humankind, God stated this truth:

“Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men move eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, ‘Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They used brick instead of stone, and tar  for  mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’ But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The Lord said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.’” (Gen. 11:1- 6).

God had to disrupt unity and divide the human race in order to stop them from bringing destruction. The power of their unity was so great that God Himself declared that “nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” Humankind was unified for a purpose of their own—a purpose that would bring disaster on the earth. God had to scatter the human race until the day when He could reverse the division and restore unity—until the day when He, by His indwelling Spirit, could bring humans into agreement with Him and, finally, with each other. The unity described in Genesis was dangerous because humans were in agreement with each other, but not in agreement with God.


Spiritual Agreement in Prayer

Spiritual agreement is something different from having the same opinion. It goes much deeper. Agreement among believers begins in the heart of each individual believer before God. It’s a simple matter to find someone who “agrees” with you—someone who has the same opinion of what God should do in any given matter. This kind of agreement, in fact, weakens prayer. Why? Because two people who are drawn together because they have the same opinion will strengthen that opinion in each other. These two people will feed each other’s “arguments and pretensions” and will actually keep each other from hearing from God. Opinions about how God should handle a certain matter are ALWAYS dangerous. A pray-er who is listening to God can know what God wants to do but not how He is going to do it. He wants to “fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding “( Col. 1:9), but “his paths are past tracing out” (Rom. 11:33).
As believers, we have strongholds. Strongholds, as referred to in 2 Corinthians 10:4, are fortresses. Fortresses are erected to defend or protect something within their walls. These fortresses, Scripture says, are built out of arguments and pretensions. Arguments and pretensions serve to protect lies and stubborn opinions.
           ”For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons
             we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power
             to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up
             against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to
             Christ” (2 Cor.10:3-5).

“The weapons we fight with” are prayers—words initiated by God and voiced  believers. We don’t tear down strongholds with brute force or our bare hands. We don’t tear down strongholds with arguments and reasoning. We tear them down with prayer.When we allow strongholds to exist and protect our favorite opinions, we cannot hear God’s Voice. How can you know if you have a stronghold protecting an opinion or an attitude? By how many arguments you need to support and justify it! So you can see that if two people who have erected strongholds to protect the same opinion come together, the result will not be the tearing down of strongholds, but the strengthening of strongholds.
            ”Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be
             done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name,
             there am I with them” (Matt. 18:19-20).
What does it mean, then, to agree in prayer? The word translated “agree” is a word from which we get the English word, “symphony.” It means to harmonize, to blend several voices into one. The word “agree”means to be in harmony, but not necessarily in unison.With whom must a pray-er agree? He must agree with God. A pray-er must be in agreement with the intercession of Jesus, who is always in agreement with the will of
God. When more than one intercessor, each of whom is in agreement with God, come together to pray God’s will, then anything they ask Him to do, He will do.
                   “Where two or three come together in [His] name...,”
 concerted intercession produces effects on the earth. The word translated “come together” is a the Greek word sunago, which means “to join together; to make one.” It is the composite of two words: sun, which means to bring into complete union, and ago, which means to lead, guide or induce. The verb is in the passive tense, which means that the subject (two or three intercessors) is acted upon. They do not come together
 we must make the decision to stop        fighting against God and turn over every aspect of  our lives to Him. When we can accomplish this, we will begin to walk in full agreement with Him. In order for us to come into agreement with God we must believe. There can be no agreement if there is no belief. If we believe then we can agree. If we do not believe then we cannot agree. What is it that we must believe? That Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Once we believe this, we come into agreement with God and enter His family.

Have you ever been in a situation where you were asked to agree to something that in your heart you did not believe in? When this happened, was there not a conflict in what your beliefs were versus what you were being asked to do? If we do not fundamentally believe in what we are being asked to do, it is nearly impossible for us to do it with a clear conscience. If you cannot agree with something it is impossible to believe in it. Therefore if you can agree with something it becomes possible to believe in it.Now once we believe, something else starts to happen. When we come into God’s family the bible says that the love that we have for God will be extended to others because we are keeping God’s commandments. When we keep God’s commandments we are in agreement with Him. However,  it is impossible to love God and not love His other children. Our love for each other becomes the evidence that we are in agreement with God and are keeping His commandments. But notice the benefit, the bible says that everyone who is born of God “overcomes the world.” 

The Power of Agreement in Marriage

The power of agreement is one of the most important themes we find in the bible.  This is particularly true when it comes to marriage.  Words like “agreement”, “unity”,  “oneness”, “being one” and “covenant”, are meant to convey powerful word pictures to encourage us to choose this blessed way of alignment for ourselves.  Jesus himself through the entirety of John 17 fervently prays that oneness would be a reality in the lives of all that would follow after him.

 Marriage, the union of two persons blending their two lives into one. Marriage, the climatical expression of love telling the whole world that this is the person that I want to spend the rest of my life with...at least until the honeymoon is over. The honeymoon stage is such a blissful time and then...reality sets in. After the honeymoon stage is over many may ask, "Do I really know this person?" One may come to the realization that the blending of two lives, ideas, thought patterns, family and friend selection is harder than first imagined.

As married couples in covenant with one another, we have an anointing and calling to be in agreement with both each other and also with God. Why is the blending of two lives so difficult? Consider this: We want everyone to agree with how we do things. As a single person, it's not necessary to get anyone to agree with you. You do things your way. However in a marriage, we are becoming one with a person who may or may not do things the way we think they should be done. And guess what? That's okay.   It is the picture of that threefold cord given to us in scripture that is not easily broken.  Just as the cord is tightly wrapped together so we are as couples to be wrapped around Christ and his word. When, as a couple, we make decisions to go our own way and build our own towers of what we will call a marriage, we can expect the following:

1. We immediately place ourselves in opposition to God and his will.
2. We immediately place ourselves in agreement with the Evil One.
3. We can expect to become temporarily invigorated with our new “mission”.
4. We will eventually fall into disillusionment.
5. We will then progressively fall into disappointment and despair.
6.  If we do not repent and align with the Lord, we will go through the same process all over again.
7. If we never come to the place of repentance, failed attempts will continue to promote ever changing aberrant marital constructs that can, over time, become hopeless, unbiblical, societal norms.

On the other hand, when we realize that we can walk in the power of grace the Lord has given us to align with one another and His word, we can expect the following:

1. We will immediately step into God’s grace and place ourselves under the full, unadulterated unifying power of the Holy Spirit.
2. We will immediately put God himself between us and the enemy of our blessed covenant of marriage.
3. We will immediately be infused with encouragement and favor to be everything God has meant for us to be.
4. We will continue to become encouraged as we experience God’s transforming power in our marital relationship.
5. We will become stronger, more confident and more determined to follow God’s will for our marriage.
6. We will become excellent examples of a godly marriage that will become an encouragement to others.

When we adopt this principle of agreement with God and one another as a foundation for our marriage, it serves to direct everything we both do and do not do.    It becomes a restrictive track on which we run that will take us to a place of promise, blessing and favor.  Who wouldn’t want that? I have purposely used the word “restrictive” because that is exactly what God’s track is.  Just like a railroad track defines where the train starts and finishes so does every other track. We’ve all heard of the common expression, “being off track or getting off track”.  Things start looking unfamiliar.  My level of confidence in where I’m going begins to weaken.  We can be the most beautiful people, physically attractive, great personalities, financially successful, well educated, well loved by others and either go nowhere because we have become distracted by some other goal and jumped the track or end up in the wrong place because we have chosen to define what a marriage will be for ourselves and gone our own way. Potential and good intentions never guarantee progress towards any goal.  Potential, when it is properly directed and developed in the right way, produces progress to attain that goal.

In conclusion, the beauty of the human race is that each of us have our own fingerprint and no one else's fingerprint is exactly like the other. No one else's fingerprint is exactly like yours and because of that we can make a concious decision to just get along and live with our differences. Our differences is what makes each of us unique. I can love you for you and you can love me for me even with our disagreements. That's the beauty of our differences. God made us that way. He created each of us different. Embrace the differences. Learn from the differences.

When we approach the subject of marriage from the standpoint of agreeing with what God has already set in order, we will reap the successful, fulfilling relationship He has planned for us.

CHEERS!!!!