Thursday, October 9, 2008

Our Children and Their Faith

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.1 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
- Deuteronomy 6:4-9

“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”
- Ephesians 6:4

“To help our children come to an enduring faith in Christ, we must begin the parenting process with a clear view of their spiritual nature at birth. We must also have a clear view of the final goal of the parenting process as it relates to our children’s ultimate spiritual condition.”
- Parents Passing on the Faith, Carl Spackman, p. 13

“In each generation, the church’s most critical task is to uphold and proclaim the truth as it was delivered to her by her Lord. One important aspect of this task is the diligent preparation of the church’s children to continue to be the support and pillar of the truth in the generation to come.”
- Training Hearts – Teaching Minds, Starr Meade, p. 1

“Reader, if you would train your children wisely, mark well how God the Father trains His. He doeth all things well; the plan which He adopts must be right.”
- J.C. Ryle, The Duties of Parents


Dear Christ our Redeemer Family and Friends,

As Christians and as parents we have been given a joyful and yet sober responsibility. God’s electing love directed towards sinners is entirely His prerogative and is given freely by His grace, but this does not negate our responsibility to raise our children ‘Christianly’. In other words, with the counsel of Scripture we are to bring instruction to our children that accurately portrays man in his fallen state, God in His acts of redemption (specifically revealed in the gospel), and their need for true repentance and faith. As far as is possible our children must be brought again and again to Christ. We mustn’t assume their conversion if there is no evidence of conversion. We must instruct them, we must appeal to them, we must urge them, we must pray for them and foremost we must live Christian lives before them. Pat’s sermon last Sunday is easily applied to our homes as well. The demonstration of the power and life of Christ must be evident in us for our children to see. The greatest opportunities for discipleship and evangelism exist within our own homes. We must ‘be’ the gospel to our kids. They will never see the validity or the power of it otherwise.

Please pray for the children of COR and please pray that God would make us the godly parents He would have us to be. The next generation at COR will depend upon it.

Praying with you for our children,

Dan

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