Our Love in Action

This is an exciting day! We’ve taken on the whole world! We’ve heard from a missionary to Budapest, Hungary, baptized two children, and renewed our commitment to help the parents rear their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

            As members of the Body of Christ we are to be supportive of Christians everywhere. I chose the scripture from Philippians because we can thank God for the partnerships we are forming as our church moves forward into the 21^st Century.

            I chose the scripture from Proverbs to remind us of our responsibilities as church members who pledge to support young parents. We have committed to support Charla and Ron as they give godly training and discipline to Rachel and Jacob.

            If you are a parent you understand that the job can be difficult at times!

            The Hebrew word for “train” means to “dedicate.” Thus the purpose of Christian training is to dedicate our children to God and the accomplishment of God’s will. This is done by separating them from the world’s evil influences. This is not easy because of the influence of TV, movies and the Internet.

            My wife recently attended a seminar where they emphasized the importance of limiting the amount of time a child spends with the TV to one hour per day… ideally the parent will spend that time with the child helping them interpret what they are seeing.

            That is good, but difficult when mom and dad both work all day!

            Note that Proverbs 22:6 states, “Train up a child in the way he SHOULD go” not the way he WANTS to go!  I heard a pastor teach on this recently. As an example he said he saw a belligerent 3-year-old in a store with his mother. The mom was stressed and pleading with the child. “Honey, tell me what you want to do!”

            The pastor said, “Three-year-olds don’t know what they want! That’s why they have parents!”

            Well, that all sounds noble.  But I suspect the pastor was never in that situation… he probably didn’t change too many diapers. He probably let his wife handle all those chores.

            But his principle is true. We need to train our children to be godly – and the best way to do that is to set a godly example.

           The verses from Philippians are very powerful, and so appropriate to our work today of partnering with Beverly and with Ron and Charla and their children.

            Paul states, “I thank God every time I remember you.” He certainly had an attitude of gratitude. He further states, “I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel.”

            Paul could do that because, “I have you in my heart.” That, my friends, is love! He then prays that their love “may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,” so that they can “discern what is best and pure.” He was teaching them to be independent so that they could accomplish God’s will.

            This is similar to the role of the parent. We worked diligently so our children could grow up and be on their own. We were very successful.

            But they are not so independent that they do not check with us. They call their mom for advice on a routine basis about how to take care of the kids with runny noses and fevers and other problems. They call me to make sure I am taking care myself and not overdoing it!  (Hey! You can’t win them all!)  However, our older daughter did let me do 2 lectures at the college where she teaches. Friday she called and said that two of her students said her dad was “precious” and they wanted to adopt me as their grandfather. (Oh, well!)