Category Archives: Losing Faith in College

Equip Kids with Answers to Faith Challenges

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“Oh, well, that is what you believe.” Have you heard that with a patronizing dismissal? Do you understand that suggestion that your Biblical commitments are marginalized? That you should be ashamed? That they can be explained by….your socialization, lack of education or whatever? If you can’t answer this challenge, how will your child?

Have you ever worried if your child could stand up to an atheist professor? To a supposed role model? To a really bright, but challenging friend?

Have you ever wondered what was taught in and around the school? What values might be creeping in via media of all kinds?

Did you know that those under 18 are the least likely to say they are Christians? Did you know that pastors are often baffled why young people today sit in a stupified way, untouched by the gospel, until they realize the amount of porn sewage coming across the young person’s phone.

It doesn’t take porn. It doesn’t take active choices. Just the value system taught in public schools and colleges often challenge faith.

If your faith is farther from the Bible than your parents, think how much farther from the Bible is your kids.

What to do? I have the answers! Nine, in fact. Listen to my series of Nine + Answers to the most common challenges to the Christian faith in today’s world. I give you a short synopsis of the value set and an answer to it. All in short audio segments.

Be sure and purchase the entire set. For nine CDs, mailed to you, so you can keep and share, it is only $30.00. However, if you send my a check to Sharon Sarles / The Great Shalom P.O. Boc 971 Cedar Park Texas 79630 before October the 1st, I will slash the price in half. Only $15.00. And I will pay the shipping and handling. That is how vital I think it is to get this information out.

In some Christian schools, they do teach a class called Apologetics. I am sure some of these are really great. Personally, I feel that most apologetics classes in college are more academic and dealing more with questions asked over time, rather than the questions most posed today. Worse, most of the courses that I have actually seen have been limited to high school and are so watered down as to be useless. First, we have serious challenges in today’s culture, unlike any other. Second, children need these answers long before they are juniors in high school. Thirdly, they need to be couched in modern, personal terms rather than made to sound silly, boring, or course-like. So this 9+ part series is vital for any Christian home.

Even the adults, faced with the same challenges will want to hear this series. This month, half price.

But that is not all. There are bonuses.
First, a CD discussing the importance of Sunday School/Children’s Church and how to evaluate program in which to place your child.
Then, there is a prayer CD, where I lead mothers, grandmothers, whoever, in prayer for their children and the children of this nation.
And THRID, is a tenth CD discussing yet another answer.

It is a deal. Send $15.00 today to P.O. Box 971 Cedar Park, Texas 78630, being sure to let me know your address!

Imagine how good you will feel when that slick, smart sounding bully doesn’t close down your kid. With these 19, no 10, answers, you and your children will have an answer for the hope that is within you.

Be sure to share this offer with others. Let them know. This is vital information for right now. Have an answer for the hope that is within you.

Recommended book:

    How to Not Lose Your Faith in College

by Sharon Sarles, available about on www.lulu.com

Are We Living in a Sexualy Repressed Society?

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Are we STILL being taught that today’s problems exist because we lived in a sexually repressed society? WHAT? Time to rethink.

Repressed Sex?

Apparently, this is still taught and still given as an explanation. However, we surely know that our society is HIGHLY sexualized. Indeed, it has become stock-in-trade to point to the 1960s ubiquitous practice of selling cars by draping pretty young women across the hoods. While that is not done any longer because of the outcry of the feminist movement — and the number of female car buyers — today we are even more highly sexualized. Just go out in public and watch people. See how they dress. How they interact. Sexual purity has become a relic of the past. Indeed, suggesting that sex should be between one man and one woman in marriage only itself has become controversial, even despised. So the argument fails.

So why is it still trotted out? Does some one have an agenda to push? Who benefits from pushing this oversexualization? Who benefits from condemning wholesomeness and sexual purity? And why?

If it is NOT TRUE that sexual problems in society stem primarily from sexual repression (and given that we have more sexual problems than ever, more rape, more violence, more children molested, and much much more sex trafficing, then why isn’t some constraint being considered? Why not a move FOR “sexual repression”?

Is it because of this old saw? Where did it come from? Why is it still repeated? How could we change the situation?

Speak the truth.

Apologetics and Hot Revival

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Ravi Zacharias is one of the ministries that most inspires me. Let me relate, very briefly, his report for this month:

As I travel…the downward slide is huge and sensitivities are at their peak…Yet, as we arrive to venues to speak the auditorium are full, often without not enough space for the occasion.

For instance, in Romania, a country that has had its fill of communism and autocracy, ten thousand people gathered to heat a reasoned explanation of the gospel. Same in Islamic countries.

Here there is media and academic hostility, even cultural hostility.

Please recognize both sides of this. We are closing our culture, our learning, our future down. Yet, it is opening up elsewhere. Perhaps your children. One what to do that is to study Apologetics, or how to have an answer for the faith in you. Ravi Zacharias runs a great college level program for that: The Institute for Apologetics and Contemporary Thought. You can start, however, with an easy book from your local Christian book store.

Celebrating Educational Acheivements

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On The Great Shalom I have always proclaimed that God wants total well-being for all children. Especially I have encouraged academic achievement, something which, for all the hype and words, is less and less valued in American education. I daily see the ravages of evil in this regard. It is most serious when news of a correctable evil is blotted out with charges of “negativism.” What is really negative is to refuse to address a problem, and to lie that evil is good. I see this so much, so pervasively that even I am tempted to get down.

Last night, however, I went to Commencement. Aside from the top administrator saying a few things that could seldom ever be true, given current policies, it was a great event all ’round. We cheered and celebrated so many student. Many of these students, where I have been teaching, work to complete their program of study under great hardship: poverty, under-0preparedness, lack of resources, lack of community and moral support and faculty who themselves must struggle with these things. Yet these few students made it. They were every size and shape. Some walked timidly and others with “excessive celebration” as they say in the sports world.

I could not help ginning ear to ear the entire time. I have seen standards so obliterated that bright students no longer try and learning disabled students not get identified. I have seen so many negative, hurtful things. But last night, I saw some achievement. I wish that I could help more students across such a finish line — whichever is their particular line.

Being a gracious and helpful teacher will not in today’s world be sufficient. Being a broadcaster encouraging the parents of children, probably all of whom have special needs, has even proven insufficient. I would like to train teachers, even to build a teachers’ college. Everywhere we train pastors, we should train teachers. The State of Texas certainly disallows this here, but it is not impossible. Please help me, help more students, over their goal time — with or without excessive celebration!

Happy Graduation! Blessings on all graduates.