Word for Today: Training Children Appropriately and Getting Things Done

#1 · April 7, 2009, 2:24 pm

Quote from Forum Archives on April 7, 2009, 2:24 pm
Posted by: masinick <masinick@...>

Dear friends,

http://www.bible.com/devotional-detail.php?juli=2454929&dtype=Proverbs
has a great devotional on discipline, training children appropriately. I will look for additional messages that speak to how to recover when we've done it wrong. I know that the first thing to do is to turn it around and do it right, and to seek God for wisdom - those are good first steps to take.

Ecclesiastes 11:4 NLT says: "If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done". The KJV says: "⁴He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap."

In the matter of discipline of children, if we do not train our children early in the appropriate way, it will be much more difficult to train them appropriately as they grow older.

The same is true in our own lives. If we do not step out and take action, whether it is at home or at work, we will never accomplish what God has intended for our lives. God wants us to always give our best, but He does not expect perfection. In fact, Jesus Christ came to seek and save that which was lost. That's us, my friends. We were lost without Christ, and if any of you still don't have Jesus Christ in your life as your personal Savior, and the Lord of your life, your priorities, control of your ethical behavior, and your first love, then you are missing out on what is best, and what God intended for you and for me. In fact, if you continue to reject Christ, you will one day find yourself in a Christ-less eternity, completely void of love, instead a place of torment. Who would wish that upon anyone? Certainly not me! That is why I write these messages, to encourage people in their faith, but also to warn those who lack a personal faith in Jesus Christ.

This is the Passover week, the week in Jewish history where the Passover Lamb is celebrated. In Egypt, the people of Israel in Moses' time put the blood of a Lamb over their door posts, and the "Death Angel" passed over their homes. This is when every first child in Egypt was killed because the Egyptian Pharoah refused to let the Jews worship God on their own terms.

For us, Jesus is the Passover Lamb. He shed His own sinless blood on the Cross at Calvary, which we celebrate as Good Friday. Then early on Sunday morning, we celebrate Resurrection Sunday, also commonly known as Easter, when Jesus arose from a sealed tomb, the stone was rolled away, and Jesus was physically seen by many - a few with faith at first, but ultimately by five hundred or more people. When Jesus arose, He both figuratively and literally conquered both sin and death. He bore our sins, not His own, that is why He was crucified and killed. He arose, defeating the power of sin, which is death.

2 Corinthians 5:17 says "¹⁷Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

The old things are that defeated sin nature. The new nature is a redeemed nature. We don't stop sinning, but we are forgiven, and with that new found freedom, we can, going back to the opening passages, step out and do our best, not being afraid to fail. We don't have (and should not want) to deliberately do wrong; we do that easily enough on our own, don't we? But there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. What that means is that we can make mistakes, we can confess them, turn away from them, striving and learning to do better, but we can be continually forgiven along the way.

Isn't that Good News?

Yours in Christ,
Brian

Posted by: masinick <masinick@...>

Dear friends,

http://www.bible.com/devotional-detail.php?juli=2454929&dtype=Proverbs
has a great devotional on discipline, training children appropriately. I will look for additional messages that speak to how to recover when we've done it wrong. I know that the first thing to do is to turn it around and do it right, and to seek God for wisdom - those are good first steps to take.

Ecclesiastes 11:4 NLT says: "If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done". The KJV says: "⁴He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap."

In the matter of discipline of children, if we do not train our children early in the appropriate way, it will be much more difficult to train them appropriately as they grow older.

The same is true in our own lives. If we do not step out and take action, whether it is at home or at work, we will never accomplish what God has intended for our lives. God wants us to always give our best, but He does not expect perfection. In fact, Jesus Christ came to seek and save that which was lost. That's us, my friends. We were lost without Christ, and if any of you still don't have Jesus Christ in your life as your personal Savior, and the Lord of your life, your priorities, control of your ethical behavior, and your first love, then you are missing out on what is best, and what God intended for you and for me. In fact, if you continue to reject Christ, you will one day find yourself in a Christ-less eternity, completely void of love, instead a place of torment. Who would wish that upon anyone? Certainly not me! That is why I write these messages, to encourage people in their faith, but also to warn those who lack a personal faith in Jesus Christ.

This is the Passover week, the week in Jewish history where the Passover Lamb is celebrated. In Egypt, the people of Israel in Moses' time put the blood of a Lamb over their door posts, and the "Death Angel" passed over their homes. This is when every first child in Egypt was killed because the Egyptian Pharoah refused to let the Jews worship God on their own terms.

For us, Jesus is the Passover Lamb. He shed His own sinless blood on the Cross at Calvary, which we celebrate as Good Friday. Then early on Sunday morning, we celebrate Resurrection Sunday, also commonly known as Easter, when Jesus arose from a sealed tomb, the stone was rolled away, and Jesus was physically seen by many - a few with faith at first, but ultimately by five hundred or more people. When Jesus arose, He both figuratively and literally conquered both sin and death. He bore our sins, not His own, that is why He was crucified and killed. He arose, defeating the power of sin, which is death.

2 Corinthians 5:17 says "¹⁷Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

The old things are that defeated sin nature. The new nature is a redeemed nature. We don't stop sinning, but we are forgiven, and with that new found freedom, we can, going back to the opening passages, step out and do our best, not being afraid to fail. We don't have (and should not want) to deliberately do wrong; we do that easily enough on our own, don't we? But there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. What that means is that we can make mistakes, we can confess them, turn away from them, striving and learning to do better, but we can be continually forgiven along the way.

Isn't that Good News?

Yours in Christ,
Brian