Verse of the Day 4/2

Through the Bible - Judges 11-12, Luke 9:28-62

 

Good morning,

Passing on our faith to the next generation takes commitment, in time, resources and the way we live our everyday lives.  You may have heard people give, all kinds of excuses why they don't make an effort to "pass it on",  perhaps you yourself have come up with excuses.  You may have heard someone say "I'm not qualiified, I don't know enough myself, or even possibly that I want my children to learn for themselves what they'll choose to believe.  More on that to follow.

 

For today's verse we'll go to a passage in 1 Thessalonians 2 where Paul is dealing with a variety of issues in the church, and he speaks of sharing his life and God's Word with the people.  As we share our lives with our children we should be sharing and living God's Word with our children.

 

1 Thess 2:11 And you know that we treated each of you as a father treats his own children. 12 We pleaded with you, encouraged you, and urged you to live your lives in a way that God would consider worthy. For he called you to share in his Kingdom and glory.  NLT

Paul implies that it should be quite natural to share our faith with others "as a father does with his own children".  This means that it should be natural,  a given, that we  teach our children to "walk worthy" of God's calling, to show evidence of His work in our lives.

 

For those who feel that they have no right to prejudice a child as to teach them the Truth about their faith in Jesus Christ,  John Piper in a sermon on Judges 2 that I also quoted the other day, had this to say.  He notes that "there are four problems with that objection.

 

1) It goes counter to all the teaching of Scripture that parents are to teach truth about God.

2) It is impossible not to teach children about God, because not to teach them is to teach them plenty. It teaches them that Jesus does not matter much, that Mom and Dad don't consider him nearly as important or exciting as new furniture, or weekends at the lake, or Dad's job, or all the other things that fill their conversation. Silence about Christ is dogma. Not to teach the infinite value of Christ is to teach that he is negligible.

3) It is not true that teaching children about God has to make them close-minded and irrationally prejudiced. It might if the parents are insecure and have their own faith built on sand. But if parents see compelling reasons for being a Christian, they will impart these to their children as well. Nobody accuses a parent of prejudicing a child's cosmology because he tells the child the world is round, and the little stars at night are bigger than the earth, and the sun really stands still while the earth turns. Why? Because we know these things are so and can give evidence to a child eventually that will support this truth. And so it is with those who are persuaded for good reasons that the Christian faith is true.

4) And, fourth, it is simply unloving and cruel not to give a child what he needs most. Since we believe that only by following Christ in the obedience of faith can a child be saved for eternity, escape the torments of hell, and enjoy the delights of heaven, it is unloving and cruel not to teach him the way. When I look at my three sons in love, I say, "O Christ, let me not be delinquent in bringing them with me to glory."

 

In summary, our challenge is to "teach your children well".   Even Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young realized this in these lines from the song "Teach Your Children Well".

 

Can you hear and do you care
And can't you see we must be free
To teach our children what you believe in
Make a world that we can believe in.

 

In Christ,

Mike

 

1 Thess 2:1-14

 

Paul Remembers His Visit

 

2 You yourselves know, dear brothers and sisters, that our visit to you was not a failure. 2 You know how badly we had been treated at Philippi just before we came to you and how much we suffered there. Yet our God gave us the courage to declare his Good News to you boldly, in spite of great opposition. 3 So you can see we were not preaching with any deceit or impure motives or trickery.

 

4 For we speak as messengers approved by God to be entrusted with the Good News. Our purpose is to please God, not people. He alone examines the motives of our hearts. 5 Never once did we try to win you with flattery, as you well know. And God is our witness that we were not pretending to be your friends just to get your money! 6 As for human praise, we have never sought it from you or anyone else.

 

7 As apostles of Christ we certainly had a right to make some demands of you, but instead we were like children among you. Or we were like a mother feeding and caring for her own children. 8 We loved you so much that we shared with you not only God's Good News but our own lives, too.

 

9 Don't you remember, dear brothers and sisters, how hard we worked among you? Night and day we toiled to earn a living so that we would not be a burden to any of you as we preached God's Good News to you. 10 You yourselves are our witnesses—and so is God—that we were devout and honest and faultless toward all of you believers. 11 And you know that we treated each of you as a father treats his own children. 12 We pleaded with you, encouraged you, and urged you to live your lives in a way that God would consider worthy. For he called you to share in his Kingdom and glory.

 

13 Therefore, we never stop thanking God that when you received his message from us, you didn't think of our words as mere human ideas. You accepted what we said as the very word of God—which, of course, it is. And this word continues to work in you who believe.   NLT