Youth

This service falls during the church's weeks of prayer and fasting, and the message, preached by brother Oleg, turns to the family and the raising of children. He insists that good parenting begins with the parents themselves: we must keep learning, because every child is different and each one is, in a sense, raised for the first time. Parenting cannot be left to chance. He points to how little time we actually spend with our children compared with school, screens, and the surrounding culture, warning that if we do not enter their world, someone else will shape it. Drawing on Titus 2 and Romans 8, he urges parents to lean on God's grace and to keep their children rooted in the Word, in prayer, and in the church. The goal is children who can one day live without us, yet live rightly and godly. Sharing how time spent fixing dirt bikes and an old car turned his son into a friend, he calls parents to put down the phone, find time, and reach the heart of each child, bringing them up in the instruction of the Lord rather than provoking them.

The preacher opens by remembering his grandfather, who spent six years in prison for the Gospel under Soviet rule, when the lines were black and white: to believe meant to be persecuted. Today, in the freedom of the West, the danger is subtler. Freedom brings endless options, and options open the door to compromise, which always means gaining one thing while quietly surrendering another, often conscience, purity, family, or Scripture. Turning to Daniel chapter 1, he describes four Jewish teenagers carried off to Babylon around 605 BC, roughly a thousand kilometers from home. Babylon tries to reshape them in three ways: by filling their minds with new information (what they believe), by changing how they live through the king's rich food and wine, and by erasing their identity with new pagan names. Babylon pictures the whole system of the world, which still dazzles us with its splendor while demanding we give up what matters most. Daniel resolves in his heart not to defile himself. He openly states his convictions, sets a standard even higher than the law requires, and proposes a ten-day test, trusting God with the outcome. God grants him favor, protection, and finally wisdom ten times greater than Babylon's experts, a reward for faithfulness that later saves many lives. Greatness, the preacher concludes, comes not through grand feats but through quiet faithfulness to God's word in the smallest things, wherever you are.

This Sunday service marked a special day for the church - the Sunday school graduation of its teenagers. It opened with worship and a prayer over the children, rooted in 1 Peter 1:22 and the call to set a young person on the right path early, with a reminder that faith and obedience pass to the next generation chiefly through the example of parents. The main message explored the difference between simply having money and being truly prosperous in God's eyes. Drawing on the rich ruler in Luke 18, the warning of Deuteronomy 8, and Paul's counsel in 1 Timothy 6, the preacher cautioned that the love of money quietly pulls people away from faith, while everything we own - our home, our work, our income - comes from God's hand. By the measure of Scripture, anyone with food, clothing, and shelter is already rich. He shared a childhood story of being tested with a few coins to learn generosity, then closed with a striking thought: money can buy a house but not a home, a bed but not rest, medicine but not health. Real security and lasting joy come from trusting God as the true Provider and giving freely to others.