SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/4/2023 7:51 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-9 “Jesus Loves the Little Children”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matt. 19:13-15
Message of the verses: “13 Then some
children were brought to Him so that He might lay His hands on them and pray;
and the disciples rebuked them. 14 But Jesus said, "Let the children
alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven
belongs to such as these." 15 And after laying His hands on them, He
departed from there.”
We
begin this SD with the third key word which can be helpful in giving guidance
to parents and Christian workers in leading children to Christ. The third key word is model. The truth is that
children not only need godly precepts but godly patterns. If one want to look
at how not to raise their children they can look at the priest Eli who had two
sons and the story of them can be seen in 1 Samuel 2:12-25. There are some things in the Old Testaments
that give grounds for having an offspring actually put to death for not obeying
their parents and all I can say is that the two sons of Eli fell into that category
but unfortunately this did not happen to them and it was because of a father
who did not do a good joy in raising them.
In the end the Lord had them put to death all on the same day.
Here
is another example and that comes from the second king of Israel, King
David. I guess it is fair to say that
David’s hormones got him in trouble on spring morning as he was really not
where he should have been, fighting in a godly war, but stayed home and was
sitting on his roof top and saw a beautiful woman who actually was the wife of
one of his warriors, one of his mighty men.
David got her pregnant and then killed her husband and it was all downhill
from there. I have to say that when I
first began reading the Bible I thought that some of the things I read in the
OT was okay, but they are not. It was
wrong for David to have so many wives and wrong for Solomon to have so many
wives. It was wrong for Jacob to have
four wives as the Lord put it there should be one wife for one man for
life. It was because of God’s grace that
these people were not put to death, and it was God’s grace that He used their
sinful mistakes to actually bring glory to Himself.
I
have a quotation from John MacArthur’s commentary who quotes from an article
that Tom Cowan wrote in Eternity magazine
in May of 1979:
“Parents must be aware of
personal value of truth for their own sakes and not just for the sakes of their
children. We cannot simply make a child
believe in a truth because its’ good for them.
Their perceptive spirits will sense when we are doing something to
engineer or manipulate a certain response.
Instead it is authenticity of parental commitment to truth apart from
the lives of children that brings the freedom to share and to pass on that
truth to them. In other words, a mature
motive for passing on truth is that as a parent I hold that truth to have value
for my life, independent of my children and their response to it.”
The
forth key word is love, so it is obviously
imperative that little needs to be said about it. Only parents, who lovingly weep with their
children, rejoice with them, hurt with them, unselfishly serve them, show them
genuine affection, and sacrifice for them with effectively influence them in
the things of the Lord.
We have
one more key word which is trust. It is after parents have done everything
humanly possible to raise their children in the way of the Lord, they must
ultimately trust Him to make those efforts fruitful. Only the Holy Spirit can reach into the human
heart, including the heart of a child, and only His power can give spiritual
life and empower spiritual faithfulness.
I
read something about trusting your children when our children were in their
early teens and it had to do with the example of a farm and so when your
children began to earn trust it was like putting them in a fenced off coral,
still kind of close to the house. Next
would be like the pasture further away from the house, and eventually off the
farm for things like dates, and finally they are on their own. They have to earn more trust going from one
place to another.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: It is a difficult thing to raise children and
I hope the things that have been written in these last SD’s will be helpful to
those who are raising children.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I asked the Lord
to look over our travels as we went to watch the girl’s basketball game Friday
and today. I can say that the Lord was
with me in a very noticeable way as the trip of over 150 miles was very
difficult for me as it was raining very hard and very hard for most of the
three hours it took to get there. I am
very thankful to the Lord for giving us safety.
3/4/2023 8:23 PM
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