The Sackrider Family Blog

Ok, Zander is growing up everyday but I haven’t put anything up here in a while. Here are a couple of the latest cute Zander stories:

The Drive Through

After church recently, Stephanie and I stopped at a drive through to pick up a quick dinner. Usually when we are going out to eat, we order Zander something too, but since we were headed back to the house, we figured we would save the money and just feed him from what he had at home – he gets more groceries than Stephanie and I combined.

Anyway, as I was ordering, Zander started to tell me he wanted a milk but I quickly hushed him up so that I could finish my order and we pulled around to the window. As the girl handed out our drinks, saying “This is the diet … and here is the regular”, Zander rolled down his window and very clearly and politely says, “And I’ll take a milk, please”.

The girl must have thought this was cute, because she promptly brought him a milk.

Bedtime

We have a bedtime routine with Zander where we let him know he only has so many minutes left before bedtime, then we take him ‘potty’, then to bed where I read him a story, sometimes two before lights out. On days where we relax his bedtime a little and he is up much later than he should be, we sometimes skip the bed time stories.This particular night, we were watching TV and let it get later than we should have. Stephanie and I paused whatever show we were watching and took Zander to bed. It was so late, that I almost forgot to take him ‘potty’, which you just cannot do unless you want to wake up at 3am with a screaming kid that doesn’t understand why his belly hurts until you tell him to get up and go to the bathroom (at least he doesn’t wet the bed).

So, he was already in his bed, when Stephanie reminded me to send him ‘potty’. On the way to the restroom, he asks, “Can you read me two stories?” and I wasn’t paying attention and said, “yes”. Stephanie knowing that I wasn’t paying attention and that it was late enough that Zander would go to sleep without a story (and perhaps motivated by the fact that we would not be able to finish watching whatever the show we were watching was until I finished) looked at me and said, “you just agreed to S – T – O – R – Y!”

My son stopped walking toward the bathroom, turns and says, “S – T – O – R – Y is in my room!” While my first thought was, “I have the smartest three year old in the world!” – my wife wisely asks Zander, “what is S – T – O – R – Y?” to which he replied, “my doggie!”

Ok – many of you may not have a clue as to what the AG or the Foursquare are. I grew up in a Foursquare church (it’s a denomination) but I spent many years in the Assemblies of God (The AG) – another denomination. The core beliefs of both denominations are very close.

As the name implies, the Foursquare denomination (http://www.foursquare.org) is based on the four fold ministry of Jesus – The Savior, The Baptizer with the Holy Spirit, The Healer, and The Soon-Coming King.

The Assemblies of God has 16 “Statements of Fundamental Truth” (found here). Now they may have always valued a subset of those fundamental truths over the others as ‘core beliefs’, but I have only recently noticed a prominence given on the AG website to four of those 16 statements. What four you might ask? Salvation Through Jesus Christ, Divine Healing, Baptism in the Holy Spirit, and The Second Coming of Christ. Hmmm… I’m noticing a similarity to the Foursquare.

The Foursquare has a long standing logo to represent the four fold ministry. The AG recently added a new logo to there site. What do you think of the two?

I’m sure it’s only coincidence…

Many of you know that I have been a Bible Reading advocate for many year.  I believe if we would spend more time reading the Bible and less time reading Harry Potter (or worse, watching TV and not reading at all), our lives would be better.  Many of you share my belief that the Bible is the great collection of writings available today, but like me you have found times in your life where you just don’t read the Bible.  I joined an online reading group hosted at http://godfidence.org that read through the Bible twice a year for a couple of years.  I found it difficult to get others to read through at that seven chapters a day pace.

Anyway, Jason Fisher and I have started a new Bible reading initiative that we hope will bring more people on board with their own devotional plans – whether that is one chapter a day, or one book a day.  We hope to connect people with the resources they need to be successful in Bible reading with Advice Articles, Study Notes, Links to online Bibles, and the like.  You will notice a new tab on my site that links to http://WeReadTheBible.com.  I hope you take a moment to check it out, send your feedback, and start reading!

Here is the site:

http://WeReadTheBible.com