Emphasis Preaching Journal

Emma, by all standards, was a good mother. She raised her children with love, provided the basics plus some extras, and she raised her children, she thought, to be God-fearing. That was pretty good for a single mother in the 1970s. But she cried when she talked to her pastor, "Why have my children all gone astray?"

Emma was a devout Christian woman, a tireless worker in the church, a teacher of Sunday school, the director of the children's choir, and active in the woman's group. When she broke down before her pastor, she confessed that none of her three children