FOR I AM NOW READY TO BE OFFERED, AND THE TIME OF MY DEPARTURE IS AT HAND. I HAVE FOUGHT A GOOD FIGHT, I HAVE FINISHED MY COURSE, I HAVE KEPT THE FAITH: HENCEFORTH THERE IS LAID UP FOR ME A CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, WHICH THE LORD, THE RIGHTEOUS JUDGE, SHALL GIVE ME AT THAT DAY: AND NOT TO ME ONLY, BUT UNTO ALL THEM ALSO THAT LOVE HIS APPEARING (II TIMOTHY 4:6-8).
This series has focused on how as Christians, we need to structure our lives around the things that God consider’s important and in the order he has prescribed for us. God has to be our first priority, as discussed in the second installment of the series. In the third and fourth installments God’s plan for married and unmarried adults was discussed. Finally, we come to the last of the series and focus on what God says is the third most important part of our lives: the raising, nurturing, and caring of children.
From the very beginning in the Garden of Eden, God’s plan was for married men and women to bear children (Genesis 1:7-8). A few years back, former First Lady Hillary Clinton made a statement that the world has latched hold of: it takes a village to raise a child. While this may be true to some extent, the child must also be raised in a home with a mother and father. In the societies of modern Europe and America, we have been led to believe that children who are raised in single parent homes or in “non-traditional” families fare as well in life as those raised in two-parent homes. This is not God’s plan and has never been from the beginning.
Since the 1890s, as American society began rejecting the traditional family model and adopting the new worldly philosophies of child rearing, we have seen a gradual decline in morality and work ethics. Solomon, the author of the book of Proverbs, wrote that parents are to train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it (Proverbs 22:6). Simply put, teach a child the important things in life – how to behave, how to worship God, how to pray, be helpful to others, to be courteous and kind, to do their best in all that they do, and how to have a wholesome and rewarding fun time, and when they reach adulthood, they’ll carry those things with them long after the parents have journeyed on. How you raise your children not only will be your short term reward but will be the legacy you leave behind.
Raising children also means raising them in the knowledge of how to worship and serve God. Growing up, I did not have the benefit of a family that regularly went to church, prayed, or read the Bible. When I was was saved in Perkinston, Mississippi, the church had no discipleship program for new Christians. For nearly the first fourteen years of my Christian walk, I didn’t grow much, didn’t know much, and remained what the apostle Peter suggested, a “newborn babe” with little substance or evidence of my faith.
In Genesis there is a great illustration of how important the passing of properly worshiping God is in the life of our children. We all know the story of Cain and Abel – both sons of Adam and both were offering a sacrifice to God. While it is true that both men were offering the sacrifice of their own free will, there is an important question that must be asked: why did Cain feel that his offering should have been accepted by God? Although the scriptures do not indicate any reason why he should think any differently, notice that Abel offered a sacrifice that was accepted (Genesis 4:1-5). The Bible does not tell us who taught these two men how to honor and worship God, but it is clear that these men learned from someone – the only people that could have taught them would be Adam and Eve.
Shortly after the fall of man, God made clothing of animal skins for Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21). I have heard many preachers and theologians state that it was at this point, God taught Adam, the spiritual head of the home, how to properly worship and prepare a sacrifice for God. This instruction was to be passed on to each male child so that each would be able to make offerings and sacrifices to God; however, Cain never had it reinforced or corrected when he offered something that was not according to God’s plan. As a child, he would have been “protected” by his father’s accountability to God; as a man, he would have been accountable to God for his own actions.
An important part of being a parent is to remember what David wrote about the value of children: Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward (Psalms 127:3). We live in a society that has placed a low regard for the life of its children. Some estimate that there may have been over 50 million aborted American babies since 1963; a few estimates actually claim its in the neighborhood of 73 million. Children are seen as pawns in the chess-like battle of divorce where parents seek to punish their partner instead of considering the needs of their children. Our educational system treats them as a number that leads to higher funding instead of bright minds eager to learn what is offered. It is imperative that we see children for what they are: God’s blessing and gift to marriage. Even Eve understood this as recorded in the book of Genesis: she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD (Genesis 4:1).
Although this series focuses on family life, there is a divine order to the other things in life – after the family comes our job, our community/church service, and national service. I think we have missed out on many blessings because we have put things in our personal lives and in society that simply are not worthy of the place or time we have assigned them. Maybe, just maybe, we need to rethink what’s actually important.
