This past June, Shannon gave birth to our second boy…Mason Lee David Qualls.  While Mars Hill Church doesn’t believe in Infant Baptism, we do have baby dedications.  This Sunday (Christmas), our church will be having baby dedications.  If you aren’t familiar with baby dedications, this is where the parents present the child to the church, the church and the parents promise to raise the child to know about Jesus, and they pray for the child and family.

There isn’t anything magical about a baby dedication. It doesn’t make the child a Christian (only Jesus can do that).  It’s actually more for the parents and the church.  This isn’t to try to secure the child a place in heaven, but it’s to set in the heart of the parents and church how the child should be raised. If it doesn’t save the child, why should you do a  baby dedication?

Well here are the three reasons, Shannon and I are doing it.

1. It’s Biblical

You see in the Old Testament that God gave Abraham a sign to show that he and his family were dedicated to the Lord (circumcision).  As we entered the new covenant, we see that this particular symbol was done away with as the sign. Baptism replaced it as the sign of someone that has believed in Jesus for their salvation.  While some would now say that we should now baptize infants because of this, I don’t see enough in scripture to support baptizing children (another topic for another time).  I see baptism consistently happening when someone comes to a personal faith in Jesus.

What I do see constantly in scripture though is parents being dedicated to raising their children to know Jesus.

• Deuteronomy 6
• Proverbs 22:6
• Luke 2:22-24

2. It’s Counter-Cultural

Where I live in Albuquerque, NM, it seems like you generally have three options when it comes to the subject of dedicating your child –   Abandonment, Religion, or Spirituality.  The majority of kids in Albuquerque will grow up without a dad in their house.  They will never know what it means to have the daily influence of a man in their lives.  They will grow up having daddy issues that only Jesus can save them from.  By the grace of God, my boys will not have to experience that.

To say that Albuquerque is steeped in Catholic tradition would be an understatement.  While I believe there are a lot of Catholics that love Jesus and I’ll be hanging out in heaven with, there are a lot of Catholics in this area that feel they have get in to heaven free ticket.  They will site that they were baptized as an infant and took their first holy communion at such and such an age.  There faith is based in a ceremony and not in Jesus.

If you’re not abandoned or religious in ABQ, then you’re left to be raised in some vague spiritual system.  Children are raised with a mix of various religious, spiritual, and demonic rituals.  This leaves the child finding their righteousness in anything and everything…other than Jesus.

I want Mason’s dedication to be a counter-cultural witness to the saving grace of Jesus alone.  We are dedicated to Jesus alone, and we dedicate Mason to Jesus alone.  By the grace of God, we are raising him to trust in Jesus and not religion or spirituality.

3. It’s Familial

Shannon and I want to build a legacy.  We want the name Qualls to decrease and the name of Jesus to always increase. When I hear the name Graham, Wesley, Spurgeon, and Edwards, I think of Jesus.  I want the name of Qualls to be synonymous with Jesus.  The sad thing is that it only takes one generation for this to stop.  Therefore, it is my hope that some day I will get to be at the baby dedications of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  But it must start with me.  So this Sunday I am pumped that we get to dedicate Mason Lee David Qualls to Jesus. Come join us if you are in town.

I’ve only been a dad for about a year-and-a-half, but I must say one of my favorite things to do is to pray for Asa before he goes to bed every night.  If you don’t pray for/with your kids every, I would highly recommend it. I thought I would take a moment and share with you what I pray for Asa every night before we put him in his crib.

Father,

I thank you so much for Asa and the blessing that he is in our lives.
I pray the you help him to fall asleep quickly and to sleep the whole night through so he can get the rest that he needs.
I pray that you keep him safe through the night and send your angels to protect him and keep him safe.
I pray against Satan, his demons, their works and effects, and in the name of Jesus I demand that any demons that are in the house or in this room leave immediately and go to  pit for which they destined for all eternity.  I pray this by power and authority of Jesus Christ.
I ask Father that you would send your Holy Spirit to enforce this.  I pray that you would fill our house and hearts with your Holy Spirit.  I ask that your Holy Spirit would work in Asa’s heart; regenerating it and drawing him to You.  Make him a child of yours.
I pray the same thing for his future wife, and that the two of them would stay pure til the day they are married.  I pray that they would become parents and grandparents and great-grandparents who raise their children to be lovers of Jesus.
I pray the same thing for me and Shannon.  Fill us with your Holy Spirit and give us wisdom and strength to raise Asa to be a lover of Jesus.
We pray this all in the name of Your Son Jesus.
Amen

Shannon and I have developed this prayer over the past year-and-a-half.  The words aren’t always the same, but the general concepts are.  We’re constantly adding and changing it.

Do you pray for your kids every night?  Do you have a regular prayer, or do you play it by ear?

We went out and saw my grandparents on my dad’s side for their 61st wedding aniversary a few weeks ago.  I got this pic of my dad with Asa on his bike.  From the looks of things, motercycles run in our blood.  Asa was having a great time on my dad’s bike.

If you’ve been keeping track, Shannon only has 10 more days until Asa is due to enter this world (June 1st…make sure to put your guess in for the pool). With this on my mind I’ve been noticing a lot of fathers-to-be on twitter. These are guys that have either just had a kid or are in the pregnancy stage. It’s like there is baby boom in the twitterverse.

So on this Tech Wednesday, I thought I would compile a quick list of all the twitter dads that I know of to date. These are either links to their dedicated blogs or their twitter accounts…whichever one they have.

Erik Anderson – Any man that has more grills than children is ok in my books. Erik has a 2-year-old and another kid due in September.

Joe Day – Joe is a pastor at Mars Hill in Seattle and is about to have twin girls. I’m freaking out about having one…may God give you the strength Joe.

Dustin DeKoekkoek – Dustin’s kid isn’t due until August, but he already has his own twitter account.

Jack Moffitt – Jack’s son was born in January and has already started blogging.

CJ Mills – CJ’s wife just had their son Asher on the 16th….oh yeah…Asher was two month early and they were on vacation. You need to go to his site and read the story. Also pray for Asher and his parents as you can imagine all the things that go along with having a kid that premature.

That’s all the fathers-to-be and recent-fathers in the tech world that I know of right now. If I missed you on the list, make sure to let me know in the comments below. It’s cool to know that I’m not in this crazy process alone.

My dad sent me a link to this. I think I’m going to have one installed on my 1992 Ford Taurus (198,000 miles and counting).

So I’ve been trying to get be a little more healthy with my lifestyle. So, I got a bicycle on birthday and have been riding it as much as possible. The one time that this has come in handy is for Sunday morning. I generally have to be at the theater for church before Shannon on Sundays (to run lights, sound, do announcements or to just hang out). So I’ve been riding my bike.

This way I’m being healthy and plus we aren’t paying gas for two cars to go to the same location. So this last Sunday, I decided to ride my bike again…but I didn’t feel like riding all the way to the theater (it’s about 4 miles and pretty much all up hill). So I decided to ride my bike to the bus stop and take the bus to the theater.

I tell you all this to tell you this story. As I was waiting at the bus stop for the bus to show up (and trying to catch my breath), I started to evesdrop on these two guys conversation. They were talking about the usual things that you talk about while waiting for the bus: weather, women, and the sort. In there conversation, on guy begins to tell the other one how his father had passed away two months ago.

He stated it in the same way that you would say the sky is blue or the grass is green. I don’t know if he was just numb from the situation or what. But what caught my attention was where the conversation went from there. He started to talk about how his dad is in a better place now. Now I’m not one to place judgment on whether or not his dad is in a better place. So I won’t. What got me to thinking was the statement “a better place.”

We hear people say it all the time when someone passes away. This made me realize that there is a common thread among people. We understand two things. The overall state of being here on earth is pretty crappy, and there is a better place.

By this time I was sitting on the bus listening to the homeless guy in the seat across from me talk about his Louis Lamor book to a friend (my parents use to listen to Louis Lamor books on tape when we took long trips…wow that brought back memories). I started to think to myself, “If people already know there is a better place and that it’s crappy hear on earth, then I don’t need to point that out. In fact, to do so is kinda rude. My place is to point to the One who gets you to the better place. Better yet He can turn your crappy earth into a better place now.

“It was something I had thought of before…but it took God using a random man at a bus stop to remind me.