There is a vision which, to the extent that this vision is thoroughly Biblical, we men must learn to see and then learn to embrace. Read on and see what you think.
We are trustees, put on this earth to look after and be stewards of everything God has created, and more specifically, those things which He has Providentially placed into our hands and under our roofs. Being a trustee is different from being a creator or an owner or an employee or a slave. Ultimate owners and all creators have total control over those things they totally own or totally created. All decisions they make, even when consulting only themselves, in regard to how these things they own or created are allowed to exist, utilised or destroyed - including human life - are perfectly valid and proper. Employees and slaves have only a minimum of responsibility toward those things in their care: their daily activities consist overwhelmingly in doing as they are told.
Being a trustee is different. We have a lot of responsibility, nearly total responsibility, over those things of which we are trustees or stewards. When the owner of these things returns, He will require of us an accounting as to how we looked after His goods. You've heard all this before. Re-read the parable of the ten pounds or ten minas in Luke 19:11-27.
Being trustees means we don't ultimately own anything: not our properties, our families, our health: these are all rightly the property of Almighty God. He gives us both commands and guidelines as to how to steward these things, but He also leaves us in the dark as to much of their final disposition. However, the Lord does give us also the ultimate purposes for which we are to be stewarding all these things He delivers into our trustee care: to bring praise and glory to His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ (I Corinthians 10:31; Colossians 3:17), seeking first His Kingdom and His Righteousness (Matthew 6:33).
The Lord God has peculiarly supplied His people with the authority and the tools we will need to accomplish our stewardship successfully. In I Peter 2:9 we are told that we are "A chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light." There's the idea of praising Him again. And also that we are commissioned as a royal priesthood, holy nation, God's own people, etc., giving one the impression that we should be easy to identify. If we are declaring His marvellous deeds all the time, that will set us apart. And in Matthew 28:18-20, the Great Commission, our Lord Jesus tells us to go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in His Triune Name and teaching them to obey all His commands. II Corinthians 3:18 says we who have had the veil lifted "are being changed into His likeness from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord Who is the Spirit." Paul sets us an example to follow, I believe, when he says in Philippians 3:13-14, "But one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."
We are being changed by His Spirit into His likeness, straining ever onward and upward. I dare say, this will certainly set us apart and attract attention. As a city set on a hill cannot be hidden or a lamp not hidden away but set on a stand (Matthew 5:14-15), as "children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life" (Philippians 2:15-16), we will not only attract attention and be a beacon in the night...we'll be pretty obvious targets for the enemy as well!
You know, if we are doing all this as we are supposed to be doing it, our lives will start to resemble that of the Lord Jesus: always telling others of His Father in heaven, emphasising the difference between worldly ways and God's right ways and showing even some of the religious folks up as hypocrites. And worst of all, making enemies and catching flak because, just like Christ, we become such a big, easy-to-identify target.
Hey, I think we're on to something here. Aren't we promised persecution and suffering as Christians? Plenty of times! See II Timothy 3:12, I Peter 5:9, Acts 14:22, Romans 8:17. The Apostles rejoiced in that they were counted worthy to suffer for the Name of Christ (Acts 5:41). So, to summarize: it seems that we are expected to do a job or fulfil a role on earth, whatever our daily vocation might be, that closely parallels the job our Lord did on earth. And if we are doing the same job as He did , we can expect the same working conditions.
So how does this relate to being trustees? Trustees are acting in the place of the true owner/creator. Jesus, while in the appearance of a mere man, was the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Yet He caught flak and was hounded and persecuted when He was on this earth. If we're doing the same job as He did, representing the interests of our Lord and our God, as apparently we're called to do, we'll catch flak too. Yes, He drew adoring crowds (though they had mixed motives which He did not trust - John 2:23-25 & 6:15), but whether we draw such crowds or not, we have been promised that we'll draw flak. Why? Because of this aspect of being a trustee: we represent God's claim to rule over every square inch of the earth and to reign over every human institution ever established. If we were just doing our own thing, like all the unbelievers around us; if we were just engaged in a hobby religion, like so many others; if we were managing our possessions and families and careers and sports involvements as our peers do, for their own personal enjoyment or personal objectives, there would be no hassle. But as representatives of Christ, we are making it clear that every square inch of dirt we manage, every relationship we have, every ounce of influence we carry in every sphere we inhabit is done for Christ's glory (not for my personal reasons) and to proclaim that He is Lord of that dirt, those relationships and spheres of influence. This is offensive, because if Christ is Lord over all these things, it means He has claim over all those people who share those things, and as Lord, He can and will call them to account for their involvement with His property. That is the prerogative of Lordship.
We rarely think of this aspect of Jesus being Lord: that He is the unrivalled Sovereign, Lord and Master over everything; but that's what it means.
When our lives are lived in such a way that He is clearly proclaimed Lord over all we do, it is a reproach and offensive to those around us in precisely the same way that declaring we are home educators is a reproach and offensive to many of the non-home educating parents we meet. They know a home educator's investment in his children is generally vastly superior to their own, and the implication that they really should be doing the same is a reproach, and the further implication that they need to sacrifice their current lifestyle for the sake of their children makes them feel so guilty they get angry.
It appears these days to be particularly offensive if, as trustees of our families, we men shepherd and guide our wives and children into the same regimen of obedience and conformity to Christ's requirements as we adopt for ourselves. We do this because our lives are not our own, we were bought with a price (I Corinthians 6:19-20), and so we are now mere trustees of our lives which are now to be lived for Christ (Galatians 2:20, Romans 12:1). Our wives and children are not our own but belong likewise to God, Who has given them into our care that we might shepherd and steward and husband them for Christ. "For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church," (Ephesians 5:23). It is our duty, men, to direct the lives of our wives and children in the manner indicated by the Scriptures.
Two big areas of offence are presented by this. First, that a husband dare direct his wife. Whatever we may personally think about it, the Scriptures are clear about the different roles of husband and wife, so we all need to submit to what the Lord's Bible tells us to do. It seems to me that husbands have a far greater problem with assuming their responsibility as heads of the household than wives do of submitting to their husbands' authority. Ever since the Lord pronounced the curse upon the ground and that we men would have to earn our living by the sweat of our brows, we've been looking for ways to dodge the work, get out of or minimise every responsibility we can. We are very susceptible to the temptation to see our life's task as the fulfilment of personal peace, pleasure and prosperity. And how could we be criticised for providing our wives and children with peace, pleasure and prosperity? How? This is how: because God does not direct us to seek these things, but to seek first His Kingdom and His Righteousness (Matthew 6:33)...lead on, men.
The second area of offence is that either mums or dads would dare direct their children so closely. Children are today assumed to be autonomous (self-ruling) and that they should have the same "rights" as adults, subject to considerations of appropriate maturity. As soon as parents give their children over to the state school system, the children are taught this. Sadly many home educating parents treat their children the same way, since they too have imbibed this notion. Christian parents should have none of it: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right," we are told in Ephesians 6:1. Which means parents must be laying down the law for their children's guidance and instruction.
There is a fact of life that we parents need to come to grips with: our children will be brainwashed by somebody or something: that is, their developing minds will be biased in this way or that way by the attitudes and values and instruction given them as they grow and develop. We parents have the responsibility to direct who and what does this to our children, and as Christian home educators it seems to me we should unapologetically ensure that we parents establish in our children's hearts and minds the presuppositions and biases, the attitudes and values the Scriptures tell us they need to have. I never gave my children the idea that they had a choice to obey God or not, to do as the Bible and their parents required of them or not, to be honest or not, to steal or not. No. They had the same duty as their mum and dad, I told them: to whole-heartedly and consistently obey God in an ever-increasingly faithful manner. Yes, we will fail now and then, but it is a moral weakness, a sin, when we do, for it shows that we listened to and sinfully yielded to the voice of the tempter. When we do what we know is wrong or neglect to do what we know is right, it is not an autonomous choice: it is a moral failure, a falling into slavery to sin, acting unfaithfully toward God. Such a thing is so abominable, the Scriptures compare it to adultery. So we shouldn't copy the world and talk to our children as the world does about "making responsible, informed choices" in life: we train our children and ourselves to perform our duties to God.
As trustees of ourselves and our families and of our family name, reputation and the heritage we have received from the Lord - just like the fellows in the parable who received the pounds or talents, men - we are expected to do our best to improve and purify and sanctify these things entrusted to us by God. He will call us to account. And we will eventually pass all these things on to our heirs. They too must be trained up - by us - to steward and husband these things as a trustee for the same Lord God. We must be done with the "do your own thing" mentality we most likely grew up with and hear all around us. We keep our family close and hand-craft our family unit into a team of workers committed to helping one another achieve the common Biblical vision, shared by every member of the family, as imparted by us, the fathers. God Himself appointed us to be the heads of households. We are to ensure our families enhance the vision and extend the borders of the Christian heritage delivered to us (through family growth and evangelism) and to pass it on for the next generation for them to increase it even further. And so on until Christ returns to receive from our descendants' hands that which is His, that over which we were trustees for Him during our tenure on earth.
(Craig & Barbara Smith have been home educating their 8 children in Palmerston North, NZ, since the first was born in 1980. They helped establish local support groups, published materials, spoke at conferences and ran several national Christian home education conferences before going to work full time for the Home Education Foundation in 1998.)
April 14 this year marks exactly 90 years since hundreds of men made a self-conscious decision to die rather than let their wives and their children face death in the icy waters of the North Atlantic. The decision was not made because of a command by Captain Edward John Smith of the Titanic, although the words were spoken: it was a principle understood by virtually all on board. It constituted part of the world view of all those people, even coming as they did from very different educational backgrounds, social strata and economic groups. It was not a concept many had ever thought about before, but one they had simply absorbed from the fundamentally Christian societies in which they were reared.
Much is made of the class distinctions on board, and indeed they existed; the well-to-do of the day did not want to associate with the poor immigrants who in fact made up the "bread & butter" business of the ocean liners then. But even the First Class passengers were not kicking up their heels the way we today would imagine them doing at the time the Titanic struck the iceberg that Sunday night. The ship did not have a ballroom, and on British liners dancing was frowned upon on Sundays.1
It makes you wonder if even those pleasure-seeking people of 1912 were from the same planet as we today. Consider how men, wealthy men from the First Class section, stood back to let third-class washer-women immigrants claim those scarce seats in the few lifeboats. Consider how husbands lifted their wives and children into the lifeboats, looking into their eyes and kissing them for what they knew would be the last time on earth, then stood back to let others flee to safety.
Accounts indicate that very few of the men even tried to get into the lifeboats, and most were turned back with a glance or a word. Many of the wives, especially the older couples, decided to stay together, allowing the younger ladies to go. They would rather pass from this life together than be separated at that late date in their lives. This was true across social boundaries. One newlywed couple, on their honeymoon, decided to remain together as well. For better or for worse...2
One widower, Dr Robert J. Bateman, escorted his sister-in-law to a lifeboat and said, "Don’t be nervous, Annie. This will test our faith. I must stay and let the women go. If we never meet again on this earth, we will meet again in heaven." He threw his handkerchief into the descending lifeboat saying, "Put that around your throat. You’ll catch cold." Earlier that evening he had conducted the only religious service aboard that ship of 2,207 people, concluding with his favourite hymn "Nearer my God to Thee".3
Dr. Bateman collected about fifty men on the stern of the ship and told them to prepare for death. He led them in saying the Lord’s Prayer.3 About this time a string quartet was playing at the request of one of the senior officers. They had played ragtime and livelier selections earlier, before they knew the extent of their situation. The leader of the quartet then dismissed the rest, for their task was hopeless. Alone he began to play the hymn he’d done at the religious service, "Nearer my God to Thee". All of his companions returned and joined him. They played hymn upon hymn, turning people’s hearts to come to grips with the fact that they were standing on the brink of eternity.1,2,3
Doug Phillips of Vision Forum in San Antonio, Texas, told the Titanic story of "women and children first" to an audience of 200 Japanese Christians in March 2001, emphasising that this was once an unquestioned principle of Western society, mirroring the fact that Jesus Christ is the protector and defender of His bride, the Church. A woman came to speak to him afterwards. "She was Cantonese and had left communist China for freedom in Japan. She looked at me for a while without speaking, but her lips were quivering, and it was obvious she was trying to hold back the tears. ‘I was never told,’ she said. ‘No one has ever told me that men are to protect women... It is such a beautiful thought, but no one has ever told me this.’"4
The religious and philosophical views common in east Asia definitely reflect a different world view. According to Phillips the Japanese Ambassador wrote the following just after the Titanic disaster to the American Ambassador: "In our country it would have been men first, children second, and women last."4
John Harper had only just turned 40 years old when he boarded the Titanic with his only daughter, six-year-old Nana. Maybe the Lord had been preparing him for an icy, watery grave, for John almost drowned several times during his life. When he was two and a half, he fell into a well but was resuscitated by his mother. At the age of 26 he was swept out to sea by a rip and barely survived, and at 32 he faced death on a leaking ship in the Mediterranean.5
When their hopeless situation became obvious, this widower immediately took his daughter to a lifeboat. The flares going off in the dark sky above reflected the tears on his face as he turned and headed towards the crowd of desperate humanity on the sinking ocean liner. As the rear of the huge ship began to lurch upwards, it was reported that Harper was seen making his way up the deck yelling, "Women, children and unsaved into the lifeboats!" Minutes later the Titanic began to rumble deep within. What people thought was an explosion was actually the gargantuan ship breaking in half, just between the third and fourth smokestacks. At this point, many people jumped off the decks and into the icy, dark waters below. John Harper was one of these people.5
That night 1528 people went into the frigid waters. Only six were picked up by the life boats. One was a young man who had climbed onto a piece of debris. At a survivors’ meeting in 1916 this young man stood up and in tears told how John Harper was swimming frantically to people in the water, leading them to Jesus before the hypothermia became fatal. He told how when he replied "No" to Harper’s entreaty to receive Jesus Christ as his Saviour, John Harper took off his own life jacket and threw it to the man saying, "Here then, you need this more than I do," and swam away to other people. By God’s grace, a few minutes later Harper swam back to the young man and succeeded in leading him to salvation. He recounted how Harper had tried to swim back to help other people, yet because of the intense cold had grown too weak to swim. His last words before going under were, "Believe on the Name of the Lord Jesus and you will be saved."5
It is a stirring thing, Brothers, to hear of men such as Bateman and Harper who, when the chips are down, come through in stirling form. But know that these men did not appear suddenly from nowhere as do imaginary heroes such as Superman or Batman. No, these men had already produced track records of service to others, selflessness and a total focus on Jesus Christ and His word as the only source of truth and reliable guidance for life and death.
Robert Bateman was the founder of the Central City Mission in Jacksonville, Florida, a minister who was not afraid to get his hands dirty. He came from England to personally lay the bricks of the Mission in the city where drunken sailors poured into tattoo parlours, bars and *****houses. While sharing the Gospel, he provided thousands of meals, clothed the needy, visited those in jail and housed the homeless. He was called "the man who distributed more human sunshine than any other in Jacksonville." He had returned briefly to England to study methods of Christian social work.3
John Harper was born to a pair of solid Christian parents on May 29th, 1872; became a Christian at 13; and began to preach at 17 by going down to the streets of his village and pouring out his soul in earnest entreaty for men to be reconciled to God. He did this for at least five years while working in the mill during the day. He was then taken in by Rev. E. A. Carter of Baptist Pioneer Mission in London, England, which set Harper free to devote his whole time and energy to the work so dear to his heart. John Harper soon started his own church in September of 1896, now known as the Harper Memorial Church. This church started with just 25 members and grew to over 500 members when he left 13 years later.5
Bateman and Harper were well used to giving all to others, and when the chips were down, they did what they had trained themselves to do: give their all to meet the situation, trusting wholly in Jesus Christ for the strength to persevere under trial.
Brothers and Sisters, we are under trial now. Surely you all perceive it. New Zealand society is rabidly anti-Christian, and the forces arrayed against the family are gaining in strength and numbers. My own MP, Steve Maharey, is talking about increasing the compulsory schooling age to 19. Others have suggested it be extended at the younger end down to three. Our present government is committed to pouring all kinds of money into ECE, early childhood educational enterprises, to encourage more and more parents to leave their pre-schoolers with well-funded and credentialed strangers.
Doug Phillips points out the obvious fact that "women and children first" is not inculcated in state schools. He says a major poll conducted several years ago saw boys declaring they would never give up their seat on a lifeboat for a woman. "They want their rights," one boy said. "Let them fight for their own lifeboat seats. They won’t get mine."4 So many state schools are no more than institutionalised places of mediocrity and brutality where parents who dare to speak up are ostracised and their children victimised.....by the teachers, now, as well as by the playground bullies! I hear this kind of thing from different sets of such parents every week, and the stories are beyond belief. The March 2002 edition of Pro-Life Times has an interesting statistic: 74% of girls who lost their virginity said they did so at home.....around 4pm.....just after school and before parents came home from work.
We are thrilled our children no longer have to attend such places. But we all know that home education is not a piece of cake. We meet plenty of trials here too. The question is: are we up to the trials? What kind of fathers do we turn out to be when the chips are down, when the acid is poured on? If it hasn’t happened yet, be assured: it will. Are we committed to Christ and His word? We may be pretty consistent at following Biblical patterns when we have time to deliberate on an issue. But are we disciplined in heart and mind to automatically react in Biblical ways? We’ll only know that when the crisis happens...and then it is too late if we get it wrong.
The time we have with our children is short. The stakes are high.....we’re talking about their lives. We cannot afford to muck around or be cavalier about it. The spiritual lives of our wives and children must be paramount. Are we, as fathers and husbands, ensuring they are getting spiritually fed and challenged and shepherded to maturity? The local church is only supposed to be supplementary to our primary responsibility in this area......just as we, and not the schools, are primarily responsible for their education. Yes, these things take priority over the footy, the stock cars, the fishing, even the house maintenance and career. Women and children first.
"You shall be holy to me; for I the LORD am holy, and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine." — Leviticus 20:26
As we established at first, our children belong to God and not to us. They are a stewardship, a huge responsibility, laid upon us by God Almighty to be trained up for His purposes. And He will call us to account for the way in which we have trained them up. God claims them from the beginning, for after all, He caused them to be born into a Christian family. We do not follow the child-centred philosophies of the world and treat our children’s wants, desires and wills as sacrosanct, as off-limits to interference by us, as taboo. And we recognise both our accountability and responsibility toward the rest of the Body of Christ, the saints with whom we regularly worship and fellowship.
We as parents often struggle with the issue of our children’s conversion, regeneration by the Holy Spirit, re-birth as Christians. Many of us who became Christians in later life can pinpoint the day and the hour of our conversion experience. But surely, the ability to identify the moment of conversion should be the exception rather than the rule within Christian families. I used to scoff at people who would say to me something like, "I’ve always been a Christian." Well, I don’t scoff anymore, for my own teenaged children have said such things, and as much as is humanly possible, I am totally convinced of their regeneration. Such children have "always" been in a Christian environment. My wife and I, along with many Christian home educating parents, both wish that we had had such a consistent Christian upbringing ourselves....it would have surely kept us from some of the damaging sinful excesses we experienced as unbelievers, things we wish we could erase from our memories as they negatively influence our present Christian lives. Some Christians say to me that they wish they had not had such a protected upbringing as they had in their Christian home, for if they had experienced the vileness of gross sins, perhaps they would be more urgent in their quest for Christlikeness, in their evangelistic efforts, than they are now. I cannot disagree more with such a sentiment. Brothers and sisters: take it from me: you do not want the physical, intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual scars that sinful actions cause. You do not know what you are saying. The Lord has called us to move in the opposite direction.
All the more true of our children, who belong, remember, to God. Do they need to steal another’s property to appreciate how wrong it is? Do they need to actually become drunk or ruin themselves by immorality in order to appreciate the ugliness of sin? NO!! Take them to visit some prison inmates, take them to a pub or an A & E ward on a Saturday night to observe. Get a Christian doctor or counsellor to share with you some descriptions of the human wrecks he or she has had to deal with. Sign up as a foster family for a few months: becoming involved with a few of the many desperate "families" which exist out there will convince you of the blessedness and privilege of a Christian home. Life itself provides plenty of yucky illustrations of sin. The Scriptures warn about it over and over. But sin dwells within our own and our children’s hearts, regenerated or not, and your own family life (yes, even within the most godly of Christian homes), will provide you with plenty of opportunities to point out the ugliness and deceitfulness of sin. Hate it. Run from it. That’s what families are for: to deal with the lying, thieving, immoral tendencies in our children before they go public.
We do not wait for our children to affirm that they want to be Christians before we train them in all areas of Christian life, thought and doctrine. No. God has already claimed them. Whether you are a Presbyterian who sprinkles a newborn or a Brethren who has a dedication ceremony for a newborn, you already acknowledge that God should have an "unfair advantage" in shaping the child’s life. Self-conscious atheists have described to me how they let their children determine all their own life decisions by remaining hands-off from birth. I point out that this is still imposing their "hands-off" philosophy upon their children without asking them (I guess it is hard to ask a newborn) whether that is the way they’d like to be raised! As Christians we have this politically incorrect advantage that we know for certain what is right and what is wrong. So we don’t quibble about it or apologise for it: we simply inculcate our convictions into our children from day one. Memorise Proverbs 1:7-8 for it clearly states who we and our children are to obey: "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge ; fools despise wisdom and instruction. Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and reject not your mother’s teaching." God first, then Dad and Mum.
We do not live in a vacuum, nor are we ever truly independent or self-sufficient. We need the guidance, counsel, admonition, encouragement and example of our Christian brothers and sisters. The Scriptures specifically say the older women should be teaching the younger women (are you ready for this!) "to love their husbands and children" (Titus 2:4). Can you think of a more unwelcomed and downright nosey activity in our secularised cultures of today? Just shows how far we’ve moved away from the Biblical standard. We should welcome such input from others within the Church. And we should be prepared to lovingly and gently give such input ourselves. In I Timothy 4:12 Paul admonishes the young man Timothy to set the believers an example. It is obvious that we are to do this for our children, but it is also our duty toward all other believers. In fact, we parents can have, by God’s grace and the respect we will have with other Christian parents, quite an opportunity continually to influence other children. Likewise we should consciously select other godly parents and encourage them, give them permission if need be, to speak to our children, to chastise and correct them as the situation demands, or reward them, without the need to first fetch us to the scene.
The Christian man can have no greater opportunity to leave his stamp upon the history of God’s earth than to leave his stamp upon his sons and daughters. Our labours here, more than in any other sphere, have everlasting consequences which will follow us into heaven. "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain." (I Corinthians 15:58). Hallelujah!
From Keystone Magazine
January 2002 , Vol. VIII No. 1
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz
The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it? -- Jeremiah 17:9
Last time we established that the Lord our God is going to hold us fathers responsible for how we raise, shepherd and disciple His children who have been given to us by Him that we might steward them on His behalf. And the Lord has so ordered things that in fact we willingly co-operate with Him in their conception; that is, we cannot say to God, "I never asked for these children. Why did You give them to me?" The Lord has delivered our children into our hands, we are responsible for them, and He will call us to account for how we rear them.
We need to have a clear understanding about the inner nature of these our children. Yes, they are little chips off the old block in many ways. But don’t think for a moment they are little bundles of innocence. In a solely human respect they are lovely to behold and speak to us of human innocence like nothing else apart from the person of Christ. And they appear to do nothing intentionally bad or evil for a while anyway from their birth. Yet "I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me" (Psalm 51:5). Our children arrive in our arms as little bundles of depravity and it’s all downhill from there....unless we train them and shepherd them to higher ground.
The Lord tells us through Jeremiah (see above NKJV) that our hearts are more deceitful than anything else......that is, we are prone to self-deception! We see lovely little babies and think, "How sweet!" We receive kisses and cards from our youngsters and think, "My, but they have little hearts of gold." Be careful: their hearts are the worst parts of them: deceitful and desperately wicked, says the Scripture; so wicked one is hard pressed to understand the degree of wickedness found there. We have all very recently witnessed the incomprehensible nature of this evil in human hearts as passenger aircraft ploughed into the twin towers of New York City. While our children do not manifest evil as much as they could, as much as they are apparently capable of, to the praise of God’s mercy and grace toward us, we must not underestimate the capacity for evil that could develop within them if separated too much from His Word and His people. Charles Manson, Idi Amin, Osama bin Laden, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot were all lovely little innocent-looking babies at one stage.
Although there is that fallen nature within them which gives them a downhill tendency, this is not the natural state of affairs. Neither our children nor ourselves exist in a state of normalcy: we are cursed with a sickness called sin, which will eventually bring us to the grave. Unregenerate folks and unbelievers either think we are all basically good and morally healthy (I’m Ok, You’re Ok) or that we’re evolving in that direction and with Polyanna discount the notion of evil and put it down to misunderstandings (....or religious bigotry, a malady secular folks reckon they never catch!) So we need to carefully take our medication and follow the Great Physician’s orders, for both ourselves and our children. This is why our lifestyles do and must differ from the unbelievers: we are sick and we know it. They are just as sick, but refuse to acknowledge it. As Christians we are taking measures to counter sickness: we live and train our children to live godly, disciplined lives, obedient to the Scriptures. Unbelievers reckon life is just the way it is, so make the best of it and hope for the best. Christians, even aware as we are of our sickness and frailty, are called to a much higher objective than that....to show forth His glorious light out of these earthen vessels, demonstrating that the transcendant power belongs to God and not to us (II Corinthians 4:7).
By virtue of the children being created after the likeness of God, by virture of His grace and mercy toward them and us, by virtue of the sanctifying work of His Holy Spirit and the living word read and preached to them, by virtue of the positive effects of our prayers and examples and instructions and corrections our children do develop godly characters and sweet personalities. This is how it should be. But do note: it doesn’t happen all by itself. We recall that we are fatally infected by sin. Proverbs 22:15 says, "Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction drives it far from him." We are told to use the rod of correction, generally taken to mean corporal chastisement, to drive the sin and rebellion (foolishness) out of our children when it manifests itself, lest it be allowed to settle in and become a permanent fixture of their personalities. In addition, and just as importantly, we are to instruct in good behaviour, model good behaviour and pray the Lord will regenerate their hearts so they’ll desire good behaviour and loathe the bad.
This two-pronged approach to godly training (to love the good and loathe the bad) is sensible and logical..... but far from easy to perform. First and foremost again, men, we must be stirling examples of this. Trifling with sin is asking for trouble. If you flirt with questionable TV shows, videos and publications, your children may do more than flirt: and being young will be far more deeply, and negatively, influenced by it. Being slack in performing our duties is all the excuse a youngster needs to himself procrastinate when he should act decisively. Instead let our children see us rub our hands in anticipation of each new day, a new set of 24 hours the Lord has graciously granted that we may serve Him all the more, strive to become more like Him, give of our selves to others, struggle to understand the issues of the day from the Biblical perspective and to then order our ways accordingly. Apart from being ourselves consistent, we also need to spend time with our children shaping their tastes by our enthusiasm in loving righteousness and by our example in hating sin.
I Thessalonians 2:11-12 (RSV) says, "...for you know how, like a father with his children, we exhortedeach one of you and encouragedyou and chargedyou to lead a life worthy of God, Who calls you into His own kindgom and glory." We’re talking high standards here. And fathers are specifically alluded to as doing three things to build their children’s lives to be worthy of God. Exhort is what a more experienced man does to one much younger, what a superior does to an inferior, to bring him up to the higher level: it is mostly a one-way flow. It is drawing the immature into experiences that will try and test them but that will also be fun, exciting, challenging. Yes, there is a sense of duty about them, but that doesn’t mean they have to be dull and boring. Impart vision, men, while doing routine chores: "Mowing these lawns is tending to this property the Lord has entrusted to us, so our work is for the Lord, and He tells me all labour for Him is not in vain!!" (Colossians 3:23-24, I Corinthians 15:58). Fathers, we are to exhort our children to come up to where we (hopefully) are, occupying a place of godly character, respected in the church and community, fulfilling responsibilities to our wives and bosses.
Encourage is what men do to one another, how peers sharpen each other up: the flow is two ways. By the time our children are young adults, we should get a lot of encouragement from their fellowship, their insights into Scripture, their respect for elders, their pure relationships with their peers. There is a mutual respect, for your children know you are fair and wise and they have seen your hunger and thirst for righteousness. Though they no longer think you can do no wrong, they know you will not rest until you’ve tried to right your wrongs, no matter how difficult it is to apologise, no matter how expensive and inconvenient it is to make restitution. And your gnarled old heart almost melts as you watch them react in the same godly way to the wrongs they commit! At this time we are not ashamed (a real understatement!) as we stand shoulder to shoulder with them in the gate (Psalm 127:5). Your children don’t have to go job hunting: because of your reputation and standards of excellence and because of what people can see in your childen’s behaviour, job offers are coming in all the time.
Charge is what one does who is not going along, it is passing the responsibility on to another. Even home educated children leave home. They will take jobs away from home for a few hours at first, then maybe a couple of days a week. Then it will be full time. Each time you will remind them that their future reputations are being formed, that your own name and reputation which you have painstakingly built up over decades is also riding on their shoulders. The Name of Christ will also be adorned...or muddied....by the way they act and fulfil their responsibilities toward others. These are important concepts, and we need to charge our children to remember who they are and Who they represent. They may do a big OE or study in another city. You will charge them to keep the faith, to defend the faith, to correct their opponents with gentleness.
Training our children is a full-time job. And it is to carry on into their adulthood. How on earth can the task be done when our children are separated from us for a big chunk of time each day at school? Well, the Lord is merciful, and He appears to have ordered things so that the caring home and loving mum and concerned dad are the major influences even when a school is interposed. How much more effective can our commitment be by removing the interposed school and educating at home!
From Keystone Magazine
November 2001 , Vol. VII No. 6
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself." -- Luke 10:27
We are to engage our minds, our intellect, our understanding in order to love, serve and worship God properly. That is, we are to think. Think about this: from whence did your children come, men? Yes, from the Lord; yes, from your wife. But those children were not even conceived until you first consciously, purposefully and with much energy and anticipation, perform an act which was obviously designed to conceive that child. (Please forgive me if this sounds crude: it is not meant to be vulgar but instead to emphasise that your wife did not "fall" pregnant, nor did it happen by accident.) Maybe you didn’t have any child in mind at the time, but the child wouldn’t be around if not for your active and wilful participation in his or her conception. You are responsible, mate. And just as the Lord has forever held Adam (and through him all mankind) responsible when Eve ate the forbidden fruit, so He holds us fathers responsible when our wives bear our children. The Lord holds us responsible for our children, for providing for their physical, spiritual, character and academic development and security. "A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children" -- Proverb 13:22a. "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." -- Ephesians 6:4. "...for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons." -- Hebrews 12:7b-8.
Being responsible for Jimmy or Sue is not the same as saying the child belongs to you. Our children, just like everything else in the universe, both visible and invisible, are owned totally by the Creator of the universe. It is the Lord, this Almighty God, Creator and Sustainer of the heavens, the earth, the seas and all that is in them, even thrones, dominions, principalities and authorities (see Colossians 1:15-20), Who is not only the owner of our children but is also He Who has appointed you and me as stewards over His property. That is to say, one Day He will call you and call me to account for how we have stewarded, cared for, safeguarded, improved upon, nurtured, fed, clothed, housed and educated His property of whom He will be coming to take possession. I suspect He will inquire most keenly into how well we have taught our sons to fear His Holy Name so as to always respond with awe and respect at every thought of Him, to hate sin so as to flee from even the appearance of it and to so hunger and thirst for righteousness as to actively seek out ways to more consistently conform his entire life to the pattern of Christ in His Word. Will He not also examine the attitudes we built into our daughters, or allowed to grow there unhindered, if they do not positively demonstrate a most godly reverence, respect, modesty, humility and all those Proverbs 31 and Titus 2 virtues?
I may detect a voice asking, "What virtues are in Titus 2? And where is this Titus anyway?" A dead give-away that we are in trouble men, and have some serious studying to do just to get ourselves in the running for the task ahead: making disciples for the Lord of lords and King of kings. And just in case we may be tempted to think we are fairly up with Christian things and are doing a reasonable job, remember the counsel of Paul in I Corinthians 3:12-15. Near enough is notgood enough....not for King Jesus. We need to work at changing our "She’ll be right" attitude to a "She must be right" attitude, for He is worthy....and what’s more, that’s what He requires. "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).
We, then, are to be making disciples for Christ, fulfilling the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20 right here in our family, a microcosm of those "nations" mentioned in the verse, as a first step toward reaching "all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth" (Acts 1:8). (We should be far more competent, able and willing to tackle the nations once our children are firmly converted and discipled. And besides, our by-then-grey hair will automatically impart a lot more mana and respect to us in other parts of the world than if we went over as missionaries while still waiting for our beards to fill in properly.)
The methodology of fathers being responsible for diligently instructing their children in the context of everyday life as the Lord so graciously reveals it to us in Deuteronomy 6:5-7 has been described often. But verses 8 & 9 have perhaps not so often been described. We do not wrap or write verses on our hands or foreheads, although we do sometimes have a Scripture hanging on a wall or two in our homes. It would seem that these verses 8 & 9 of Deuteronomy 6 are surely references to something more substantial.
Verse 8 could refer to such things as ownership, leaving a seal or mark, a type of identification. After all, we have heard a lot about the mark of the beast from references in Revelation, a book full of figurative language. I am suggesting that this Deuteronomy 6:8 could also be figurative, but because it lies within a Book intimately concerned with heart and soul rather than outward appearances, these figures stand for something quite definite. One may have a mark of God or of the beast on his hand and on his forehead. That is, one’s mind and thought patterns are Biblical, set on the Spirit (Romans 8:5-6), thinking God’s thoughts after Him and taking every thought captive to obey Christ (II Corinthians 10:5), or they are set on the flesh, hostile to God and used to invent evil (Romans 1:30, 8:5-7). Likewise one’s hands, symbolising one’s entire catalogue of works; one’s works can be identified as Christian works of ministry or identified as works characteristic of the fallen angel who is the father of all lies and master of deceit.
So our very beings, what we think, say and do, even when we aren’t thinking about it (see Matthew 12:36-37), are preaching sermons to our children. They can tell the difference between a faith that is consistent inside out from one that only extends to outward appearances....and they will soon learn the different set of rules applying to each. Do not be surprised, then, oh hypocrite, when your own son can appear so angelic by organising a weekly Bible study for the church youth group while seducing the girl at a meeting of the two-member planning committee. (Yes, it does too happen. Not only can I name names, but I can say that the youths involved hardly see much wrong with it.)
Deuteronomy 6:9 talks about writing God’s commandments on your doorposts and on your gates. Again, we are talking about a lot more than those cute little silver Jewish verse holders one can fasten to the door and touch reverently each time you pass through. (That is about as efficacious as touching the car roof and lifting your feet while crossing railway tracks in order to have your wish granted.) The idea is that the Word of God reigns supreme in your home (the doorposts being the entrance or most obvious place to control the influences to your home). So what are your "gates" as mentioned in the verse? Perhaps just another word for doorposts. Perhaps as in the term "city gates" it means any place where you make decisions: your wider property, your fields, your rental flats, the business you run, the employees who work for you, the classroom in which you teach or lecture, the office team you manage, the work gang you supervise, the truck or machines you operate and whatever contracts you may consider entering into......all these things are to have the Word of God stamped over them. They are to be run by the commands, precepts, statutes and ordinances of the Lord God Almighty. And when you think about it, since He is omniscient, doing things His way simply hasto be the best recipe for success....and sure enough the Bible’s been saying just that for thousands of years already: Psalm 1:1-3, Proverbs 3:1-2.
Right, men. Once we have sorted out our own lives so that they reflect the love and standards of our gracious God, we are ready to be proper stewards of our children, who are, as we said earlier, God’s children over whom He has set us as His stewards. Galatians 4:1-2 specifically addresses this issue of holding a child back until the proper time: "I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no better than a slave, though he is the owner of all the estate; but he is under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father." So our children are in a holding pattern until they come of age at a date set by our Father God.
Now, there is a two-tier system operating here: our offspring will inherit that which we have laid up for them on this earth, and they will inherit that which the Lord has laid up for them not only on this earth but also later in heaven. What kinds of things do they inherit from us? They are both physical and metaphysical: houses, chattels, land, money, eye colour, a name/reputation, family heritage, culture, most of their character qualities, etc. Now do realise that while we like to say our children inherit such things from us, ultimately they get all of these things from the Lord, although filtered -- and corrupted somewhat -- through us parents.
What kinds of things do they get exclusively from the Lord? Those items often referred to as Providential: their talents, abilities, disabilities, giftings, ministries, callings, responsibilities, spouses, children, lifespan, etc., plus those things of which we know so little that will be enjoyed in heaven: crowns, mansions, life and ministry at the foot of the throne.
Men, listen carefully: it is our job to equip and ready and enable our children to themselves faithfully steward all these things they will be inheriting. We must be horrified at the idea of letting all these things fall into their laps when they are simply unprepared and incompetent.....due to lack of instruction and guidance on our part.......to handle them. Why should we be horrified at the thought? Because we know our children will be called to account for how they stewarded them, just as we are to be called to account. How callous to allow our children to appear before God and watch them have to fumble for an explanation. Our task as stewards of God’s children is not only to be striving to successfully manage these inherited blessings, roles and responsibilities ourselves but also to prepare these children so that they themselves, by God’s grace, may successfully manage them as well.
We want our children to grow up to be men and women of vision. Well, we’d better want that, for this is what God’s children are meant to be, those children the Lord has entrusted to us to steward on His behalf. They are to be ambassadors for Christ, ministers and messengers of reconciliation (II Corinthians 5:18-20) in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom they shine as lights in the world, offering them the Word of life (Philippians 2:15-16). Ourvision is not just to rear children who will be able to cope with a degenerate world, but to rear soldiers of the Cross who expertly wield weapons of divine power to destroy strongholds, arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ (II Corinthians 10:4-5). Men, we are first of all to be — and second we are to raise up — conquerors for Christ.
From Keystone Magazine
September 2001 , Vol. VII No. 5
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz
(The following is an email conversation with a friend who sends his children to state schools. My friend’s words are in italics.)
We still need reminding from time to time... "The end of all things is near; therefore be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer." 1 Peter 4:7 "Watch and pray".
Reminding, yes, but too many folks I’ve met seem to have allowed this to become a form of escapism from this present world, from dealing with the real issues all around us. The whole area of end times is not an open and shut case, but is fraught with all kinds of controversy. I personally think it comes down to two concepts: be constantly ready, confessed up to date, and at peace with all men, as far as it is possible with you personally; and also preparing yourself and your children as if the Lord were not coming back for another 100 years. It’s a "both/and" scenario rather than an "either/or" deal. If I was convinced the Lord was definitely going to return in my lifetime, I would never have gotten married, that’s for sure. I Corinthians 7 talks about that. But I believe He should be Lord of all no matter when He returns....that’s why we have always been keen on overseas missions as well as a thoroughly Christian education at home. You cannot send people overseas as on-fire Christians who have been trained six hours a day by the agents of paganism in our public schools; the idea is laughable.
A disadvantage, but God is mightily able to heal and change peoples hearts, minds and souls.
So why should we cause our children to be hurt so that God has to heal and change them? Why don’t we give them the advantage of a consistent Christian upbringing and training and allow God to make them into Christian witnesses the like of which the world has not seen since Whitfield, Wesley, Edwards and others who were thoroughly trained and nurtured in the faith since childhood.
OK, schools are dangerous, but so are the roads. By prayer and the grace of God they can be protected.
We don’t put our children on the roads and pray for God’s protection. We teach them to avoid the roads and cross them safely. We don’t teach them to play with fire or mess around with hot elements or walk right on the edges of cliffs so that we can pray for God to protect them. No. We ourselvestake all the steps we can to protect them from the dangers we knowexist and then pray that God will protect them from those unseen dangers and those dangers we cannot personally deal with.....this is our obvious duty and responsibility as parents. It is easy and within our power to remove them from the anti-Christian, thoroughly secular state school environment they sit in for hours every day and to replace the secular and political indoctrination they are fed while sitting in that environment with the Biblically oriented and Scripturally based truths they will need to know to take dominion of this world physically as He commanded us in Genesis 1:28 and spiritually as He commanded in Matthew 28:18-20 and II Corinthians 5:17-20. So why don’t we do it? Do the Scriptures tell us anywhere that our children will be better Christians, more healthy spiritually, by being trained up in the enemy’s camp?
I know that as Christians we should try to alter/influence things. We can’t do it by force, and the vote is too small (pity about the Christian Coalition)..., the only lasting way is by changing hearts.
Amen! Salvation is through Regeneration, not Revolution. (Conversions through the message and ministry of the Gospel, not by force or political activity.....as if conversions could happen like this anyway.) However, if politics is not an inherently immoral activity, in the way that running a brothel is an inherently immoral activity, then it is right and proper for Christians to be involved, according to their calling from the Lord, endeavouring to bring the principles of God’s word to bear upon the public policies of the nation. I mean, the alternative is just to abandon the whole thing to the devil. And why do that?
The devil is "the ruler of this world", but his rule is limited to whatever God’s will allows and is also limited by the time he has been given. God is Lord of all. What He says goes. He allows the devil’s "rule" for His ultimate good purposes.
I’m not satisfied that the "ruler of this world" is the devil. The early Christians were tortured and executed because they would not compromise on the tiny declaration, "Jesus is Lord". They only had to say, "Caesar is lord", put some incense on the altar, and they were free to go. But they instead insisted that Caesar would one day bow the knee before the Lord Jesus Christ, that Ceasar would be answerable to how he executed his responsibilities while in the flesh, on the earth. That is to say, the Christians who were tossed to the lions believed very much that Jesus is ruler of this world, now, as well as ruler of the next. Can you find a Scripture to support your idea?
I’m happy to report that I can’t find a verse to support it after all. The closest is that he is the "ruler of the power of the air" (Eph 2:2). In fact even now, "Jesus Christ is the ruler of the kings of the earth" (Rev 1:5).
Amen, brother! Amen!! Actually John makes three statements close together which indicate that maybe the devil wasprince of the world to some degree, but that Jesus ended that: John 12:31, 14:30 and 16:11. The Lord also indicates that He was entering the strong man’s -- that is, the devil’s -- house and plundering it, first binding the strong man! (See Matthew 12:29, Mark 3:27 and Luke 11:21-22 and their contexts.) Yes, the devil does appear to hold sway over many (I John 5:19), but it is only through deceit and the fact that the unregenerate heart has a tendency to lean satan’s way. In Matthew 4 and especially Luke 4:5-6 the devil is quoted as saying he could give the kingdoms of the world to Jesus, for they had been given to him (the devil) to do as he would. Now I’m sorry, but I’m really sceptical at this point, for the Scripture tells me that the devil is a liar and the father of all lies and that there is no truth in him (John 8:44). I’m convinced he was telling Jesus a whopper in these passages.
No, the whole idea of the devil being ruler of this earth gives too much power and glory and honour to the devil, it seems to me. He deserves none. He will get none from me. He’s just a squatter here, one who knows his time is short. To Jesus aloneis the power and glory and honour and dominion now and forevermore. Amen.
And anyway, He Who is in us is greater than he who is in the world (I John 4:4). I know the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour (I Peter 5:8), but the Scripture tells me I need only resistthe devil and he will flee from me (I Peter 5:9). What have I to fear from him? Nothing. What have I to fear from the even less powerful schemes of men? Even less than that. As the Scripture says, who is there to harm you if you are zealous for good works (I Peter 3:13)? And as earlier saints have said, as long as we are walking in the will of the Lord and until the Lord plans for us to go, we are effectively immortal!
I remember people at church used to be fond of saying, "If Jesus is not Lord ofall He is not Lord atall".
What verse is that? Anyway, I think this means Jesus being Lord of all areas of a person’s life. Nothing to do with the world.
Oooohhh....I reckon you may have just compromised the Lordship of Jesus Christ. There are plenty of verses that emphatically teach the Lordship of Christ over every atom in the universe. I mean, isn’t the earth the Lord’s and the fullness thereof (Psalm 24:1)? Were not all things created in Him, through Him and for Him, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities (Colossians 1:16)? Does He not uphold all things by His word of power (Hebrews 1:3)? How about the Great Commission: "Allauthority in heaven and earth has been given to Me. Go therefore..." (Matthew 28:18) Sounds pretty inclusive to me. So are you saying that as long as I keep my personal life free from worldliness, the world can go where it will, I don’t care, ‘cause Jesus and I have this wonderful relationship? So if the world includes the schools, is it ok to send our kids to institutions which by law must be anti-Christian (Section 77 of the Education Act 1964, still in force, says all instruction must be entirely of a secular character, and secular is taken to mean without any religious instruction or observance...interpreted to mean Christian instruction or observance, for as we both know, occultic instruction and instruction in immorality is fully accepted)? Are you saying that our little ones, for whom Christ died, can be immersed in a grossly secular environment everyday of the week and yet somehow it is not a challenge to Christ’s rightful dominion in every area of their lives, not to mention our Christian duty as parents that our children’s every thought be taken captive to obey Christ (II Corinthians 10:5)?
My parents had a hands-off approach to parenting, wanting us to decide things for ourselves. I think they read Dr Spock. It seems some Christians have a similar godless approach. When our Genevieve was 11, the Sunday school teacher was doing a lesson about choices. He told the whole class (it was all printed in the lessons) that they had choices to steal or not to steal, to obey their parents or not to obey their parents, to go to church or not to go to church, to sleep around or not to sleep around. These were 11 year old children, remember. Some of us parents were hopping mad at some of this stuff. But Genevieve went to the heart of the matter: she told the teacher that as Christians they should never even be given such options. Of coursewe Christians don’thave such choices, she said. It’s a lie to say that we do, for where God has spoken, the issue is settled. Christians don’t have choices because they are supposed to be slavesof their Master, Jesus Christ, and He is supposed to be theirLord. (I was impressed with her answer and clarity of thought: I couldn’t see or think past the reference about kids having the choice to sleep around or not.)
Ultimately they do choose for themselves. We can help them a very great deal with wise guidance and advice.
The point Genevieve was making was, "Why focus a child’s attention on the things he shouldn’tdo and then tell him he has a choice to do that? Why not major on all the right things to do, which so few people seem to be doing anyway, and keep reinforcing the message that Jesus -- including everything He commands us to do -- isthe only way?" Why do we keep compromising our message, giving young, impressionable minds (who are actually looking to us adults for clear, unambiguous guidance) mixed messages that, well, we would like them to follow Jesus, but we know they will be drawn to this and to that and will want to experiment around a bit, but one day we’re sure they’ll want to come back, so why don’t they just decide to stay here with us, please? Heck, I don’t have to tell my children about the sin in the world: they see it all the time, in every TV show, newspaper, magazine, radio show, movie....and they experience sin in their hearts all the time. I don’t have to reinforce that message; I need to reinforce the Lord’s message and obedience to His word. The Lord told us to love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. Ain’t much left over for messing around in other areas, I reckon. So why do we say, "You get to choose", when the Lordcommandsall men everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30) and to love and serve and obey Him with everything we’ve got? If I am sounding an indistinct note on the bugle of warning, who is the Lord going to hold responsible? Yeah,me! And this is double so with my children, for they would not be on this earth if it had not been for a deliberate act on my part. As fathers we men perform a conscientious, willful, both-eyes-open act, one that we desired and strove to do...and obviously accomplished....which put our children on this earth. I don’t believe we can now hold them at arm’s length or remove ourselves even the slightest and say, "Well they ultimately have to choose for themselves". For crying out loud, I will be doing all I can to totally bias my children a certain way, to completely bend their hearts and minds and wills to move only in one direction -- toward submission to Christ -- knowing only too well how much their own natural sinfulness, inherited from me, will be easy to work in the hands of the devil. So I will not do anything to make the devil’s job any easier than it already is. No, sir!!
Christians have both the old and a new nature. Sometimes we "give in" to the old nature. Do you not call that a choice? Only robots have no choice.
We adults, or perhaps I’d better say "I", give in because I am so used to sinning. But generally we have been sinning since the day we were born. If we were raised in nominally Christian homes, we were never taught to submit our sinful natures to Christ, to allow Him to crucify the old nature on the cross, to think His thoughts after Him. No, in nominally Christian homes we were taught to be our own bosses, to do our own thing, be master of our own fate, exactly the same as non-Christians, but with this difference: we had to act within a certain prescribed code of acceptability. Our minds and hearts were still in rebellion against God, but we simply did not manifest it by participating in (all of) the gross sins of others round about us. But we were headed in the same direction....straight to hell.
So then we got converted to Christ. Ourchildren are being reared in Christ-honouring homes, a far cry from our own experience. We should not expect the same kind of thing from them as what the world got from us. No, their lives should be miles differentfrom our own at their age. In fact, if they were to be completely and consistently trained according to Biblical standards (something my past disqualifies me from doing, for I have all this garbage left over from my non-Christian days), but if my childrenwereso raised, I believe they would be like nothing we have ever seen on this earth in our lifetimes. Now, Lord willing, my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren should reallybe something, for they will be starting on a much taller and far more solid foundation than what I had. My children will stand on my shoulders, my grandchildren on their shoulders and so on. It would be too easy for me to allow my children to grow up into the Christian mediocrity that was the only option given me as a child. No way! My wife and I have always intended that they be launched into an orbit much higher than that.
Why settle for anything less? Why make it easy for them to choose second best? No, hang on, choosing sin is not second best.....it is death. Why make it easy for my children to choose death by making them used to sinful and compromised standards all around them all the time, by allowing them notto be shocked by it, by not hating it myself with such a passion that they are likewise horrified by any association with it? Why not make them loverighteousness (as far as we are able, by God’s grace) and be so uncomfortable and ill-at-ease in the tents of the wicked that they flee from it....just as the Scripture tells them to do (I Timothy 6:11, II Timothy 2:22)? And yet all this time we must also be preparing them for an adult life lived in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation to whom they are to be offering the words of eternal life.
As Christian home educators it seems to me our task is not just to train up our children so that they can cope with this sin-cursed and fallen world, remaining faithful until the Lord’s return. No. The Gospel would seem to demand that our children make disciples of all nations, going as ambassadors of Christ, preaching a message of reconciliation and personally ministering reconciliation in all that they do. That is to say, they will be turning the world upside down! Now that’s the kind of task, long-term and with objects in view such as seeing the king of Saudi Arabia so soundly converted he influences much of the Muslim world to do the same.....that is the kind of thing we men can really sink our teeth into. Right dads? Let’s get to and do it!
From Keystone Magazine
July 2001 , Vol. VII No. 4
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz
The Industrial Revolution took dad away from the home where he traditionally worked with the entire family on the family business. Community Schools and then State funded Compulsory Schooling took the children away from home for longer and longer periods of time each day and for more and more weeks each year. Social pressure, increased mobility and erratic economic opportunities separated the nuclear family from the extended family, especially the grandparents. State subsidised Early Childhood Educational institutions supported by aggressive promotional campaigns drew the little ones out of the home. At last it was Feminism and the pressures of the economy that took even mum away from her home. I was a door to door salesman, wholly dependent on commission sales for an income, for 13 years until 1995. I can tell you honestly that I didn’t bother to start knocking on doors until 3:30pm each day, for prior to that time there simply was no one at home. Our cities have many streets lined with lovely houses — but all of them empty for much of the day.
It is rare to find a family unit where each member draws strength and purpose from being part of that larger entity (the family) perceived by each member to be of more worth than him or her self. The politically correct propaganda of egalitarianism has transformed the definition of "family" in some quarters to a mere ad hoc collection of individuals — such as flatmates even, with no legal or blood ties at all — wherein each demands his or her own rights and autonomy.
Christian families composed of Mum and Dad (who are legally and happily married) and their natural and/or adopted and/or fostered children are becoming increasingly uncommon. Then to find such an entity living in the same town as both sets of grandparents and any other relatives, all of whom are on more than just speaking terms, where the grandparents would never dream of sporting the bumper sticker that reads, "We’re spending our grandchildren’s inheritance", is most unusual indeed. And should a Christian family actually find itself in such an advantageous position, what is most likely to be its lifestyle? The children are at school and after school activities, and Mum and Dad are run ragged each week with various church and community commitments on top of their regular jobs. Even on Sunday the children are often off to creche, children’s church or Sunday school, or sitting with their friends in the back pews and then off to join the youth outreach. Hands up those who remember seeing an entire family sitting all together for an entire worship service?
Such separation is demonstrably unhealthy for the family unit. Many of us have difficulty seeing exactly why this is so, for we have very little idea of the forceful powerhouse an integrated family unit could be, since few of us have ever seen one in action. I’ve only seen wee glimpses....but enough to whet my desire to see more.
If our family experience is anything to go by, there is a direct relationship between time spent with the family as a whole and family harmony and happiness. My mother is 77 years old. She has lived and travelled extensively on every continent except Antarctica. Yet those 14 months she spent on the road, being recently widowed, with every thing that meant anything to her — us five children and those possessions we could carry in the VW Combi — were the happiest and most carefree of her whole life. We five siblings developed from a pack of squabbling brats who fought each other at every opportunity into a well-organised team who could find directions, secure lodgings and buy groceries in four different languages and tote our own considerable volume of belongings (while holding the 2-year-old’s hand) from vehicle to hotel room in one trip!
Our 9-year-old is a particularly good barometer of family unity. When we are too busy to spend a good amount of focussed time with him, he acts up. Oh, he is great at absorbing the "I’m too busy right now" line without causing a problem, for he understands the pressure of deadlines. But he also knows a fob-off when he gets one, and he then becomes a right royal pain. It is usually then we notice that those daily rituals of all being present at meals, not answering the phone during the devotions, washing dishes together, reading aloud together, having some daily formal and/or informal instruction time, etc., have been either totally abandoned or compromised beyond recognition. Re-establishing them also re-establishes sanity and harmony and security and happiness.
One ritual we established a few years ago was to have devotions after every meal, not just once a day, and to include the singing of Psalms & hymns. This has at times, when I have been sharp enough and with it enough to capitalise on the opportunity, allowed for our family as a unit to discuss eternal truths, debate current events, face and weep over personal shortcomings, evaluate Biblical ways of dealing with conflicts, etc.
Another ritual we took up with great gusto was for me to read to the children in the evenings. Let me tell you, it is very exciting to see a 20 year old daughter and an 18 year old son getting out sewing or model kits in eager preparation for an extended time of listening to their "old man’s" voice. It puts the battle over the "tyranny of the urgent" ("I’ve really got too many deadlines facing me to spend an evening reading"), and over the conflict between "the one and the many" ("I was looking forward to spending some time alone, not entertaining a crowd") into perspective.....especially now that those two older ones are gone overseas. What happened to all those plans I had of things I was going to do with them but never had time for?
Make time for your children, dads. Cultivate an attitude as in Longfellow’s poem below. Plan in the time, guard it jealously, so that, as it says in Psalm 127:5, you will not be put to shame when you speak with your enemies in the gate, for your children will all be standing shoulder to shoulder there with you.
From Keystone Magazine
May 2001 , Vol. VII No. 3
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz
Craig and Barbara Smith and their 8 home educated children and 3 Grandchildren: Genevieve (born 1980) and Pete (married 2008 with Natalie 2008 and...); Zachariah (1981) and Megan (married 2005 with Cheyenh 2007 and Dusti 2009); Alanson (1984); Charmagne (1987); Jeremiah (born Mitchell 1992 and now adopted); Jedediah (born 1997 and now adopted); Kaitlyn (born 2000 and now adopted); Grace (born 2005 guardianship).
We use a Biblical/Hebrew/Classical approach to our home education.
Stumble It!
