2002-12-09
Good Morning Fellow Believers,
I am led to continue discussing the issue of divorce, with an eye to the blessed guidance about it that comes to us from God as a result of our salvation. In the previous messages we looked at ideal marriage and parenting (as set up by God from EPH 5: 21-6: 4) and at the effects of divorce on society. Today, we will focus on how divorce impacts children. As adults, it’s very easy for us to forget what it’s like to be a child. When you are smaller than everyone else, you feel quite dependant on the adults around you. It seems that with few exceptions, everything in the world is too big for you and built for bigger, people with more know-how than you have. If the home you are being reared in is loving and God-centered, you feel comfortable and can look forward to the normal activities a child enjoys. It is likely your friendships will be satisfying. However, when Satan has gained a stronghold in your household, your parents are fighting or one has abandoned the household, your feeling of comfort begins to fall apart. If you are in school, you can no longer put your mind on your lessons. Instead, you wonder if your drinking or drug-addicted parent is going to beat you, or if you will have to come home to an empty house and fix meals for yourself. Your world is coming apart at the seams, and you wonder if you are at fault for that. Many children in troubled homes either withdraw from forming close friendships, or they select the wrong kind of people to befriend.
We can get the idea of Christ’s attitude toward children immediately from MK 10: 13-16, “Some people brought children to Jesus for Him to place His hands on them, but the disciples scolded the people. When Jesus noticed this, He was angry and said to His disciples, ‘Let the children come to Me, and do not stop them, because the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I assure you that whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.’ Then He took the children in His arms, placed His hands on each of them, and blessed them.” Many adults too wrapped up in their own problems and pursuits don’t take the time to stop and realize that today’s children are tomorrow’s adults. If we want our society to become more faithful, now is the time to pay attention to the kind of homes in which these children are being raised. Dr. Laura Schlessinger harps on the need for us to take responsibility for our children and teach them to have faith in God. While many might not like her abrasive manner, she’s on the mark with this message. Children raised in homes of “dead-beat” dads or alcoholic moms, are tomorrow’s criminals, abusive parents, and non-producers. The cost both materially and spiritually to our society is painful and not pleasant to consider.
HE 13: 4-5, reveals God’s will for our marriages and homes. “Marriage is to be honored by all, and husbands and wives must be faithful to each other. God will judge those who are immoral and those who commit adultery. Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be satisfied with what you have.”
EPH 6: 4 reminds us of God’s will for the kind of parenting we should do. “Parents, do not treat your children in such a way as to make them angry. Instead, raise them with a Christian discipline and instruction.” Children who are abused or neglected are angry, and it takes years of competent counseling to have even a chance to helping them get past that anger when they grow up this way. They are questioning if they are responsible for the trouble in their homes or mimicking the only life they know, one filled with hateful refusal to resolve conflict with God’s help. There is no guarantee they will ever get over this kind of anger. We need only look to people like the two snipers recently incarcerated for their horrible crimes to see examples. The other day, I attended a class in which God’s instruction on disciplining our children was discussed. This is an intergenerational class with a few older women mentoring a larger group of ones in child-bearing age. The issue of spanking came up, and many of the younger women were taken aback by that. Here’s what the Scriptures say. PR 22: 15, “Children just naturally do silly, careless things, but a good spanking will teach them how to behave.” PR 23: 13-14, “Do not hesitate to discipline a child. A good spanking will not kill him. As a matter of fact, it may save his life.” To understand the tone of what is meant here, the Scriptures aren’t suggesting beating a child. Instead, things are clarified by PR 3: 12, “The Lord corrects those He loves, as father corrects a son of whom he is proud.” Here’s a list of guidelines that arose out of the discussion we had in this class. 1) Set reasonable, godly boundaries for children. 2) Use discipline that is age-appropriate. 3) Never discipline in anger, only in love. 4) Know your child’s personality. 5) Be consistent and always have both parents present a united front. 6) Teach children that disrespect for others carries negative consequences. 7) Teach personal accountability. 8) Teach trustworthiness, honesty, morality, self-control, and love of God. 9) Teach decision-making. 10). Teach unselfishness. 11). Model and teach a balance between giving and taking. 12) Never forget society is negatively impacted by not disciplining our children. I would personally like to add one more. 13) Teach your children to love learning for its own sake. We must remember that our children and grandchildren are gifts from God entrusted to our care. We have the responsibility and joy to raise them to be citizens of God’s Kingdom.
PRAYER: O Lord, the time we have to raise our children is all too short. The 18-20 or so years we have them in our homes goes by too fast. You have given us the invitation to join You in Your work of preparing people to come into Your eternal Kingdom, and that surely includes how we rear our children. By honoring our marriages and making You the center of our homes, we can carry out this work successfully. We build a wall of protection around our homes in which Satan cannot penetrate. Satan knocks on this wall, even comes against it with his fiery arrows, but he finds it made of the Stone that causes evildoers to stumble [IS 8: 13-15; 1 PET 2: 8]. The wisdom that You give us in the book of Proverbs is designed to acknowledge that we will have problems raising children born to be sinners. With Your wisdom and through faith in Christ we can overcome that problem inherited through the evil of Satan. Your Son given to us to suffer the pain of the cross and to later be resurrected, gives us a way out from slavery to sin and the hope that we too will be resurrected [JN 3: 16; RO 3: 24-25; RO 8: 29; HE 10: 10]. It was He Who showed us our need to lovingly raise our children to love You. Throughout Your word, You have advised us against foolish relationships based on satisfying lust, addictions, and other weaknesses that Satan brings to us. You have called us to enter into three-way covenants in our marriages with You as an active Partner. Your desire for us is to raise children who will love, trust, and obey You just as we should be doing. In RO 14: 13, we are given wise advise. “So then, let us stop judging one another. Instead, you should decide never to do anything that would make your brother stumble or fall into sin.” While I can’t presume to improve upon Your word, I would like to say that this also applies to a child. So, in humility today, we confess our sins, dedicate ourselves to being better parents and grandparents, and offer You our utmost adoration, worship, loyalty, diligence, trust, obedience, thanks, and praise. Without You, where would we be as individuals and as a society? In Christ’s name, we pray. Amen.
Tomorrow, I am led to discuss more steps we can take when under Satan’s attack. These wouldn’t be possible without the blessings of our salvation. Christ’s Atonement has indeed provided us with a way out from under Satan’s oppression. In concluding today’s topic, I must say that children often reap the harvest of their parent’s sins. That should be sufficient motivation for parents to turn away from addiction, imbalance between work and home lives, selfishness, injustice (particularly favoring one child over his or her siblings), impatience, anger, grudges, and the like. All of these evil things are Satan’s fiery darts, and real, practiced, faithful obedience to Christ places in impenetrable hedge of protection around the family unit. How very blessed we are that our loving Abba shares His wisdom with us through prayer and the Scriptures. It is He Who loves us enough to place us in congregations where we can find the support of other believers, faith-building opportunities to serve, and another place to worship Him. I used the word “another” in that sentence, because we can truly worship God wherever we are by the choices we make in how to lead our lives and be better parents and grandparents. Peter and I send you our love too.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn