A Better Way

Genesis 4

Some people might think God was unfair to reject Cain’s offering and accept Able’s when the sacrificial system wasn’t even a thing yet. But was it unfair? Or loving?

First, there was no punishment connected to Cain’s inferior sacrifice. It doesn’t say God was even mad at him. By rejecting the sacrifice, God was simply pointing out that there was a right way to approach God, and a wrong way.

Then, and here’s the precious part of the story we sometimes miss, God tries to teach Cain how to do it right. Like a dad putting his hand over his son’s hand holding a pencil, and making the letters that spell out his name, God is guiding Cain to do better. That’s love.

So many people today think the loving thing is to just let the child be. Let him figure things out for himself, come up with his own truth. And never, NEVER, hurt his feelings. That’s the direct opposite of God’s demonstration of love.

The important thing is NOT a child’s self-esteem or happiness. The most important thing is the difference between right and wrong. And there is a difference! It’s not loving to allow a child – or anyone – to choose that which is wrong.

Now, we see Cain is about as woke as the left is today. Instead of learning the right thing to do, instead of accepting correction and doing better, he got angry and cancelled his brother with a blow to the head. (and woke-folk think they are so enlightened. They are no more enlightened than the second generation of humanity. So much for evolving.)

Oh, Christian, let’s let God be our example. Discipline your children. Don’t giggle at disobedience, don’t shrug your shoulders and let them figure out right from wrong for themselves. Hurt their feelings when they are wrong. They’ll get over it- and be better for it. Don’t go along with your children who want to change their sex. Don’t participate in their sin. Guide them. Love them enough to tell them the truth. And keep telling them.

Teach your children to honor God, to live according to His Word, to be holy. Show them what that looks like in your own life. Because there is a right way to approach God. And a wrong way.

Which way do you want your kids to choose? Which way are you choosing for yourself?

2 Chronicles 25-28; It’s None Of Your Business

Have you ever been obviously blessed by God, and thought, “Wow. I don’t deserve that”? First of all, that should be our response every day. Every breath we breathe, every beat of our hearts, are blessings we don’t deserve.

But I trust you have enjoyed the direct blessings of obedience, too. Maybe God lays on your heart to give sacrificially to your church, then your boss gives you a raise. Or you visit that cranky neighbor when God nudges you, and you have the privilege of leading that person to the Lord. The Bible is full of examples when obedience results in great blessing.

But before you get too satisfied with yourself because of the amazing ways God has blessed you, read 2 Chronicles 28. Israel had just had victory over their brothers in Judah. 120,000 soldiers in Judah were killed, hostages and plunder taken. But the Israeli army, on their way home after God had blessed them so dramatically, were met by the prophet Obed. Listen to what he said to them:

Because the Lord, the God of your fathers, was angry with Judah, he gave them into your hand… But aren’t you also guilty of sins against the Lord your God? (verses 9-10)

In other words, listen up boys. You aren’t “all that.” You were blessed because God was disciplining Judah. Don’t get too comfortable. You are just as guilty as they. And God always punishes disobedience.

Sometimes we might be tempted to be jealous when some jerk seems to get all the breaks, while you struggle. And you’re so much better than he.

What God reminded me today is that I don’t know the whole story like He does. How God is dealing with someone is none of my business. God draws people to Himself through good times, and bad times. And He never lets me in on His methods of the heart.

If I am focused on someone else’s fortune, or if I become too prideful with God’s blessings in my own life, I need to brace myself. Sin is knocking at the door. I’d better confess it, ask God to forgive it, and be the person He wants ME to be. Anything else is none of my business.

 

 

Joshua 22-24; God’s Compassionate Discipline

When you feel the sting of God’s discipline, do you ever consider it a sign of His compassion? 3:1 tells us God allowed the enemy nations to live with the Jews in Canaan “to teach warfare” to His children. Living among the enemy would require skills, stamina, and strategies. God, because He loved them, wanted them prepared to battle.

Maybe you’re like me and think it sure would be nice if, when a person becomes a Christian, God would just straighten out the path, remove all sickness and heartache, and make life a bed of roses. But that’s not realistic. As long as we continue to have the ability to choose, we will choose sin once in a while. That’s how we are wired.

Think about it. God shows His compassion every time we sin, and He doesn’t kill us. He shows His compassion when He disciplines us, refines us through the fire, so that we can have fellowship with Him instead of being cut off from Him.

The next time you identify sin as the reason you are going through a difficulty, thank God. Our compassionate Father is giving you a chance to get right with Him.

I think of the beautiful hymn, “Amazing Grace.” The second verse says that it was God’s grace that taught us to fear Him, and it’s the same grace that erases our fear of Him. How amazing is that?

God is compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love. (Psalm 145:8)

Thank you, God, for loving me enough to discipline me, to prepare me to battle my enemy Satan, for giving me opportunities to confess sin and accept your amazing grace. You are worthy of my praise, no matter what circumstances I find myself in. You love me more than I can comprehend. I worship You.

June 20 – Parenting 101

Ecclesiastes 7-12

Just reading over these chapters doesn’t do justice to the wisdom here. I find the book of Ecclesiastes to be one I need to read slowly, and take time to digest it all. I don’t have the time, or even the desire, to dissect every verse on this blog. But I would like to share one verse that God used to get my attention today.

Since yesterday was Father’s Day, I guess I am still thinking about parents and parenting. Here is God’s advice for parents, given through Solomon in 8:11:

Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed quickly, therefore the hearts of the sons of men among them are given fully to evil.

1) Don’t do that. 2) I told you not to do that. 3) How many times do I have to tell you to stop? 4) If you do that again, I’m going to spank you. 5) Do you want a spanking? 6) Did you hear me? 7) I’m tired of telling you to stop. 8) Stop!

Sound familiar? Your child willfully disobeys you. Not once, eight times in this example. And what you’ve taught your child is that they can break your rules eight times before they have to obey. Sometime your child learns they never have to obey because your threats are meaningless.

WHAT YOU ALLOW, YOU TEACH. Not only does the guilty child learn that lesson, so does everyone within hearing distance.

Look at the crime rate here in the US compared to countries that hand down swift and harsh punishment for breaking the law. What you allow, you teach.

Parents, it is your responsibility to raise children who are not “given fully to evil,”  as Solomon says. How you discipline your child for disobedience makes all the difference in the world.

And it’s a lesson your child just might take into eternity. It’s that important.

 

June 9 – WHACK!

Proverbs 19-21

When I was in junior high (about a hundred years ago, I think) it was not uncommon to be sitting in the classroom and hear the door open just a crack. We could hear one door after another all the way down the hall open in the same way. We’d all sit up a little straighter, eyes wide open, and no one, not even the teacher most of the time, would speak.

Then we would hear that dreaded, WHACK. Sometimes we would even hear it again, WHACK! Often we’d hear a teacher scolding the guilty student in such a way there could be no mistake. A rule had been broken, and this is what happens when rules are broken.

Solomon says: When a scoffer is punished, the naive becomes wise… (21:11) You can bet more than one student learned an important lesson from those paddlings back in junior high. I know I did. I never wanted the student in the hall to be me! I became a rule-follower. It seemed the wise thing to do.

Those days are long gone because someone was more concerned about the guilty child’s ego. I find myself wanting to get up on my soapbox. Especially in light of the recent convicted rapist, Brock Turner’s light sentence, the unbelievable statement he read at sentencing, and his own father’s statement after the fact.

Let’s make it personal. Parents, do your children know the rules of your home? Are the rules enforced consistently? Are the consequences swift and painful? Hear me when I say if we don’t teach them this truth on a small scale, they won’t understand it on a larger scale. And they’ll grow up to think the consequences for breaking God’s rules are no big deal, either.

I shudder to think about the lesson other young people have learned from the judge’s decision in the Turner case. Because lessons have been learned. The doors of the classroom were opened, and instead of hearing the WHACK, they heard the teacher pat the guilty child on the back and send him on his way.

 

The way you discipline your children, the way our society disciplines law-breakers, is done in a classroom occupied by others. When the guilty are punished, the naive become wise. That’s what Solomon said through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

I pray that we are raising wise children instead of children who will remain naive. Just the other day we learned that naivety is a death sentence.

It’s that serious.

 

April 3- Do What Seems Best

Judges 10-12

The children of Israel once again worshiped idols, the false gods of Aram, Sidon, Moab, Ammon, and the Philistines. It seemed like the right thing to do. After all, their neighbors were doing it.

So God let them be enslaved by the Philistines. For eighteen years the Israelites were mistreated at the hands of their captors. Then, when they finally cried out to God for help, God told them to cry to the gods they had chosen. Maybe those wooden images would deliver them.

But then the Jews said something that hit home here in the 21st Century. “We have sinned. Do to us whatever seems good to You; only please deliver us this day.” (10:15)

The other day I told you what Kay Arthur had to say about God’s judgment on the US. God cannot NOT punish our disobedience. And it will come because God’s people have rejected Him in favor of wealth, health, tolerance, and acceptance of sin. God is going to judge this nation because too many pastors are not preaching the Truth according to Scripture. He’s going to judge this nation because the rest of us have accepted it.

We’ve been living according to what we think is best, what makes people comfortable and feel good about themselves. We go to church for a worship experience, and come away unchanged and unrepentant. How is that working out?

I would like to rally Christians to revival. To say to God what Israel did so long ago:

We have sinned, God. Do to this nation what you deem right and good. Deliver us as you seem best. Forgive us. And may Your children be found faithful through it all.

The Belt

This post is a bit different from the ones you are used to seeing from me. It’s not based on any scripture I read today. It is, however, a lesson from God’s Word in action.

I went to the funeral yesterday of a man who lived his life according to the Bible. He was a godly, prayerful, joyful man who demonstrated God’s love in every aspect of his life.

His adult daughter wrote a letter to her dad and asked the pastor to read it at the service. It was a beautiful tribute to her father. In that letter, she shared an experience with her dad that changed her life.

She admitted that, as a teenager, she did things that concerned her parents. She went to places she should not have gone. And it was at one of those places that her father came to get her. He took her home, and sat with her in her bedroom. He said something like this:

“I’m at my wits end. I’ve tried to punish you, ground you, scold you, for the things you are doing. I see the road you’re traveling is heading to disaster and I don’t know what else I can do to stop you from going there. I love you, and you are breaking my heart. Right now what I need you to do is put yourself in my place. I want you to feel what I feel when I have to punish you for your choices.”

At this point, he took off his belt and handed it to her. “You deserve to be punished for disobeying me. So I want you to hit me with this belt. I want to take your punishment, so you know what it does to me every time I have to punish you.”

The daughter said she could not do it. She could not inflict pain on her dad for something she had done. And it was then she gave her life to the Lord.

This young woman saw Jesus in the face of her father.

You know, don’t you, that Jesus did much more for you than offering to be whipped with a belt. He suffered. He died a painful death on the cross. He was rejected by his own Father, so you wouldn’t have to be. Consider that for a minute.

I pray that you will thank Jesus for taking your punishment, by accepting Him as your Savior. I pray that you will think twice before you commit that sin that cost Him so much.

And, parents. I hope you’ll take something from this father’s example. I think it’s parenting at its finest.

I’m praying for you.

__________________

I am adding to this post a few days after I initially published it. I had lunch with this man’s widow yesterday and she shared the rest of the story which I think is really important.

What the daughter did not share in her letter was that on that night when she had this encounter with her dad, he ended up whipping her with his belt. He had offered to take the punishment for her, but just because she refused to allow him to, it didn’t mean the punishment didn’t have to be paid.

Friend, that is is something you need to understand. Your sins and mine WILL be paid for. There will be punishment for every sin we’ve ever committed. Jesus is offering to take that punishment. In fact, he already has. Now it’s up to you to allow him to cover your sins with his blood. Or you can refuse the offer and take the punishment yourself.

Someone is going to get the belt. It’s either going to be Jesus or you. Your choice.

December 30

Revelation 15-18

I have shared that I spent 37 as a public school educator. When I got my first job in the 70’s we could demand obedience of our students. A call home, a swat on the bottom, or worse… being sent to the principal’s office accomplished two things. One, it taught the disobedient student that there were consequences for disobedience and those consequences weren’t fun. Secondly, it taught the other students in the class that obedience was probably a better choice.  Then some genius decided that kind of punishment ruined self-esteem and the government stepped in and told schools they could no longer teach that lesson. Today we see bullies who mistreat their classmates without fear of consequences. We read about young people who have so little fear of discipline they bring guns to school with the intent of killing others.

When I first started teaching it was a rarity for the parents of our students to be divorced. Children almost always shared the last name of their moms and dads. And it was unheard of that a student’s parents had never married. Eventually, that became less and less true. So we were told never to address a mom as “Mrs.” for fear of offending her. “Ms” became the norm. Today, a nuclear family, married parents is the rarity.

It was rare that a student got pregnant. But when a teenager did get pregnant, she was given the opportunity to continue her education at home and she certainly did not bring her new-born to school with her. But, again, we worried about her sense of self, and eventually protruding bellies became commonplace in the classrooms. Some schools even opened day care for the babies to make it convenient for the teenage mothers. Today the number of teen pregnancies is astronomical, even down into the middle school ages.

I thought about these things when I read about the prostitute in John’s vision. She said, “I sit as a queen; I am not a widow, and I will never mourn.” She has no conscience. But she’s not hurting in the self-esteem category, is she?

Are we raising kids to think like this? Entitled? Above the rest? In the attempt to protect self-esteem (which is not a biblical concept) have we neglected to teach our children to recognize sin and repent of it? Paul described himself as a wretched man when faced with the reality of his sin. Doesn’t sound like he was feeling too good about himself at that point. Shouldn’t our children learn to describe themselves in the same way in light of sin in their lives?

Recently a young mom expressed to me concern that by swatting her child on the bottom she was damaging her child’s self-esteem. She felt guilty for spanking her disobedient child. The thing is, she is a good mom. She’s a mom who is determined to raise children who love and serve God. And her young children already have a sense of God’s love and presence in their young lives. 

God spanks, doesn’t he? And it doesn’t feel good when we are disciplined by our loving Heavenly Father. But it’s necessary for our relationship with him. I don’t see anywhere in Scripture where it says we should strengthen our sense of self. Quite the opposite. Because unless we see ourselves as wretched sinners, we won’t recognize our need of a Savior.

Here’s a thought. Self-esteem is not the same as confidence. We can encourage our children’s confidence in their talents and abilities and at the same time give God the glory. It’s important for our children to have the confidence to tackle new things, refine a talent. But teaching those children that they are self-centered, worthy, better than others without consideration of consequences for doing wrong, is teaching them to think like Satan did before the fall.

Holy God, I thank you once again for prompting John to write down his vision. As I look at the prostitute he saw, I wonder if she doesn’t represent our world in 2013. Father, I pray for parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, and baby sitters. May we who love little ones not be afraid to lovingly discipline when needed. Help us to raise children with consciences and a sense of self that causes them to run to the Savior. Give wisdom, give courage, and may we love our little ones enough to discipline them like you discipline us.