The theme of Disciple Now (read my next post first) was "True Love Waits: Living Pure Inside Out". All teenagers should go through a Bible study like this. We live in such a sex-driven culture that most teenagers (or people in general) are buying into it without much resistance. We as Christian adults MUST show them that there is another way to live, a way that God requires of us and will lead to abundant blessings. The Bible study was good in that it not only emphasized sexual abstinence before marriage, but living a life of purity in ALL areas of your life so that we can be pleasing to God. Christians are the worst for thinking if we just maintain purity in one or two areas that is good enough. It's not. God wants our all.
Any way, this weekend hit me especially hard after Jason, our youth minister, came over Saturday night to talk with the girls about what goes on in a guy's mind. He told them that guys are wired to be visually-stimulated. That's not a bad thing because that's how God made them. However this world (controlled by Satan) knows that and it taking extreme advantage of it by plastering the TV and internet with sexually explicit or at least suggestive images. Jason warned them that guys are being influenced by these things and unfortunately are hoping to act upon these thoughts with the girls they know. The girls really needed to hear this as hard as it was. I tried to stress to them to also remember that there are guys still out there trying to live for God but to just not let their guards down and try not to be stumbling blocks.
I said this was hard for me. Here's why. At the same time I'm listening to Jason talk about the moral depravity of a lot of teenage guys, I have a beautiful, innocent, precious one-year-old sleeping soundly in his crib who is going to become a teenage guy one day. It threw me into an emotional tailspin. My always-comforting God stepped in at that moment. I don't know what lies ahead, but God brought me peace reassuring me with the thought that Matthew and I have the honor of raising up Philip to be a god-fearing man who we pray will serve Him throughout his life. I have a bad character trait that if I don't know if I can accomplish something, I'd rather not try. That can't be applied to Philip. We have to raise him. Thankfully, we don't have to do it alone.
"These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up." Deut. 6:6-7
"Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." Proverbs 22:6
"Do not withhold disciple from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die." Proverbs 23:13
"The rod of correction imparts wisdom, but a child left to himself disgraces his mother." Proverbs 29:15
"Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." Ephesians 6:4
2 comments:
Sounds like it was a fun and convicting weekend. I pray that God continues to do a work in your youth and in you. With God's help, you and Matthew are already doing an awesome job. For starters, you recognize the depravity of your one year old. Most people never come to terms with that. Secondly, your loving, biblical training is evident in Philip's joyful demeanor. As you were saying, we must remain vigilant as parents, always on our knees; always depending on God; and, always learning how to parent from God's Word and older wiser Christians.
I thought of your post last night while reading Genesis 8 in The Message version of the Bible. "I'll never again curse the ground because of people. I know they have this bent toward evil from an early age, but I'llnever again kill off everything living as I've just done."
Isn't it amazing how God uses recurring "themes" in our lives?! I just stand in awe that I will read something one place and then turn to His Word and find it there, too. I'll be posting another writing piece that I wrote over the weekend that discusses how God always provides the right words with His message to us. Isn't it just like God to confirm revelations that He gives us and speak to us through a variety of sources?!? (For hardheaded people like me, who don't always listen the first time :) Melanie
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