LONG-RANGE VIEW: See small, live small; see large, live large!

    Sunday morning worship. I was singing, praying as we worshipped. In my heart, however, I was concerned for my young teens Anna and Patrick. During that worship time I heard God’s truth come to me. It was both a rebuke and an assurance, like a two-sided coin: “I can do more with their sin than you can do with their perfect behavior.”

    I was struck by the clarity of that thought and by its immediate application in my life. We had raised our children with clear boundaries, teaching them to “obey with a good attitude.” Nevertheless, life itself was not fitting into such a neat package. They were growing and developing as their own persons and our control was lessening. We would see good fruit but also stuff we didn’t like in them. (It sounded a lot like ourselves, actually.)

    God was rebuking me that my faith and trust were not in Him but in my own ability to be a good parent. We were trying to control our kids. As we saw that we were gradually losing control, we didn’t like it. We were asking ourselves many questions:

Why are they developing these attitudes?
Why are we responding more sarcastically with them?
Why is there so little peace?
What are we doing wrong?
Why are they deliberately trying to frustrate us?

    It was in that context of life that God spoke to me during worship that He could do more with their sin than I could with their perfect behavior. He was saying to me that my kids would sin, that they were human. He was saying that He was the Redeemer: that where sin abounds, grace much more abounds. He was telling me to trust Him, to give my children to Him—again.

Proverbs 3:5

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;

    We talked about it, prayed about it, and gave our children to Him again. They were His children; we were stewards. He was Master, we were servants. We breathed deeply and let go.

    We stayed involved, prayed, cared, conversed, and continued to do the things parents do, but with a larger understanding. God was at work, even in our failures, even in their failures, even in our sin, even in their sin.


    In Matthew 13, Jesus tells the parable of the wheat and the tares (weeds). When it was discovered that the field that was sown with wheat was growing an inordinate amount of weeds, the servants asked, “Shall we pull up all the tares?” But the owner of the field said, “No.”  He knew that pulling up the tares would also destroy too many of the good plants. He counseled waiting until the harvest when all those things could be sorted out.

    That’s what He was saying to me that morning in worship. Sow the good seed and let it grow in contrast with the bad. Life will sort some things out. You will help them sort some things out. Others will step in by His grace and help them sort things out. And some things they will have to sort out with God’s help alone.
   
    God has done more with their sin than I could have done with their perfect behavior!

Trust Him.
He redeems for He is the Redeemer.

Holidays or “Hollow days”? Part 2

Jim Rohn talked about getting a good meal out of the trash. He said, “If you work hard, if you search, if you are determined, you could probably come up with some good things out of the trash heap. But is that how you really want to get your dinner? Even once?”

Of course not.

When it comes to training our kids, Halloween can be that kind of experience. As adults we can sort through all the costumes, decorations, and scary movies without much trouble. It is so easy in fact that we can forget to protect the little ones who have no filters for all that stuff.

Try Philippians 4:8 as a standard. Use each key word as a heading and list the things from Halloween that fit that heading.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—
if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—
think about such things.

Consider the age of your children as a key factor. Little children until age seven have difficulty discerning real from make-believe. At the same time they are in their most formative stage when it comes to shaping their securities and their fears. I have seen the little ones wrapped around their parents’ legs in fear all because their parents want them to “have some Halloween fun.”

One event can stay in the memory forever, especially when it is traumatic or fear-inducing. Can you remember a time when you were little and you were scared out of your wits by some fun-loving older sibling? Whether it was ghost stories or jumping out from behind a bush, do you remember not being able to sleep because of your fear?

Do you think that a big part of our lives is affected by what we do not see? Are there spiritual forces at work in our world today? The Bible mentions them and warns us. Children are often more sensitive to spiritual things than we are. Jesus spent quite a bit of time setting people free from evil spirits. Do we unnecessarily expose our children to spiritual forces in the name of fun? What kind of doors are we opening during the Halloween season? 


Are Christians different than those around them? Should we be? Is Halloween a good time to demonstrate that difference? I think it is. This Halloween, take the time to explain to your children that we are people of light and not darkness. Explain that following Jesus does require that we live different kinds of lives. Dare to be different in this culture.

It will do something in you and in your children.

(Note: Thank you to those of you who commented last week. If anyone has not read the comments from last week, I encourage you to read them. They are noteworthy.)