Recently in Gospel Category

Your eight-year-old hears things. Your son hears wild stories. Your daughter sees the constant allure of commercials.  He hears the taunts of the schoolyard. She feels an inner dread growing out of her many fears. How do you help your eight-year-old child with such difficult issues? What is needed most is the news of the gospel; specifically, the good news of the grace of God.  The word gospel means "good news."  Matthew speaks of the Jesus proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. That is, the good news of the kingdom where Jesus is King. This good news means that people can be rescued from darkness. Your eight-year-old already knows something of this darkness.  He knows the darkness personally from the fears and brokenness caused by his own sin. He also knows of the darkness from the ugliness of the world around him. Perhaps he has experienced the death of someone close to him. Or perhaps she has heard the cruel taunts of other children. He may have experienced the vicious devastation of a "natural" disaster or the ravages of war.  Whatever the source, he has seen and experienced the attacks of the kingdom of darkness. He was born a slave to this darkness. The good news is that Jesus is able to rescue him from darkness. The gospel matters. 

For most, the statement that the gospel matters for toddlers lacks a sense of immediacy. This seems more suitable for older children and adults.  However, this perspective reveals a common underlying problem. The problem is that information transfer is seen as the primary method of bringing people to Christ. In other words, you tell someone about Christ and hope they will respond. The person to whom you are speaking is the one who holds the cards.  Your role is ultimately passive.

Whatever, it doesn't matter.

You have heard these words before. Perhaps, you have heard them from your own lips.  These words are not words of encouragement or optimism. These are words of discouragement and disappointment. They are said when we feel let down, betrayed. The irony is that often when these words are spoken they really mean that something matters very much.

God's loving plan brought me and my wife to enter into the covenant of marriage. God's loving plan resulted in five wonderful children from this marriage. God's loving plan was that all seven of us would come to know Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.  God's loving plan was to provide each of us with opportunities to serve and honor him.  So far, so good.  Everything that has happened to our family can easily be attributed to God's loving care. There have been ups and downs but we have been blessed by God's faithfulness and by God's faithfulness to act according to his word.

Parenting must embrace the reality of 1 Corinthians 15.  Why? Because there is no other way to give hope to your children.  Hope for this life must come from our awareness of the resurrection of Christ.  This, of course, presents a problem. Children, especially young ones, do not generally contemplate the events of the resurrection.  So how can they know hope in the middle of their lives--lives  that are dominated by the schedules and priorities of daily life?

The answer is that this faith and hope must first reside in you.  Paul says exactly that in 2 Timothy 1:5:

I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.

Timothy saw the hope and faith of the gospel first in his mother and grandmother. How conscious are you of the resurrection?  How much of your daily hope in life is consciously rooted in the resurrection? We are tempted to think hope will come if things go better with schedules and circumstances. While this is true to a degree, real hope comes through practical rejoicing in the resurrection of Christ.  We have been raised to a living hope. May your children see this hope in all that you do!

In a recent post we looked at the resurrection and what it means for parenting.  The reality of the resurrection is what gives the gospel power and provides hope for parents.  But this reality also presents a practical challenge for parents. Parenting has to do with immediate, daily and temporal aspects of life: behavior must be addressed, schoolwork demands to be done, clothing gets dirty, meals need to be prepared, bedtime is inevitable, children get sick. That is why the parenting life can tend to focus too much on performance and circumstances.  But when that happens, parenting skids into a life that lacks hope. To be sure, there is a fine balance that must be be maintained, but eventually a main focus on performance and circumstances will drain hope from life.

We tend to look at Scripture through one dimension--especially passages that are familiar and used for particular occasions. An example would be the Christmas story, which we tend to focus on only once a year. But by following that pattern we might miss striking applications to everyday life and faith, such as those that we see worked out by comparing Zechariah and Mary. Another example would be passages that we connect with the resurrection--like I Corinthians 15:19:  "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men." This familiar passage is often associated with Easter or with funerals. While this is an important and appropriate application of the verse, there is much, much more that God has for our benefit in these words.

Parents often try to defend their childrearing deficiencies by protesting that their situations are unusually difficult or stressful. Parents, I believe you can relate to what I am saying.  When you snap at the children, it is because "things are difficult at work." When you don't have time to play with them, it is because you are worried about the bills and trying to sort out your financial difficulties.  When you are irritated with them instead of patiently instructing them in God's ways, it is because of relational pressures in your marriage that they just can't understand. These are the kinds of "understandable" myths we tell ourselves to avoid our obligation to trust Christ in our parenting.  The attractive route is to excuse ourselves because after all, we are only human--we can only do so much.  A mechanism such as this seems to work until we come to face to face with the example and life of Christ.

Easter Week is a great time to talk about weariness. Christ's words in Matthew 11:28-30 were given to offer encouragement to weary aliens living in a hostile world. Following Christ was never meant to be trouble-free--but it is meant to be restful. Let me explain!

Parenting is a challenging task--at times even overwhelming. Because of this reality, there are countless remedies offered from every corner to make parenting easier and less stressful. Even the makers of the modern family transport, aka mini-vans, have added optional DVD players to help keep children passive while traveling to the supermarket. Yet despite all the advice and devices, at the end of the day, concerned parents are frequently left in a state of weariness. Weary not only because of the trials of the day just finished, but also weary because tomorrow is just a few hours away. In this in-between time, weariness often reaches its peak. The free advice and stress-reducing gadgets offer little consolation in this time. Even Bible verses may seem disconnected from the pressures of getting ready for tomorrow. Perhaps the most discouraging realization is knowing that in the morning you will wake up weary.