c h i l d r e n, w o r s h i p, & w a r f a r e
The Bible commands parents to nurture their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. We believe that as we make our feeble efforts to do what we’ve been commanded to do, that we learn to do it better in the process—God is sanctifying us in the process. If you are second-guessing your ability to do this job, find comfort in the fact that God sovereignly entrusted your child to you. This little one belongs to God and you are a steward of His little lamb. You begin home schooling His child in utero as he hears your prayers, your praise, your laughter and tears—and, of course, you even more actively begin teaching him upon his birthday arrival. Your language, your speech, your tone, your praise, your disapproval are absolutely teaching and shaping this little one in every way. In fact, if you have been waiting until baby is learning to talk before you intentionally teach him, you’ll probably have a bit of against-the-current catching up to do. Modern culture calls it “the terrible two’s” when the parents hit that realization stage–but that’s a contrived developmental stage that would more appropriately be applied to the two parents (two-years-into-it-without-teaching-my-child-any-self-control-now-what?).
I recall my husband speaking on the phone with a former pastor. “How’s Josiah doing?” he asked, “Is he serving the Lord?” Josiah was a mere 11 months old. And although we had begun to understand the beauty of God’s covenant, we hadn’t quite grasped that bit about “from my mother’s breast” discipleship. When this pastor inquired about Josiah then, Chris dubiously replied, “Well, he’s only 11 months old!” and described how Josiah was crawling all over him at the moment rather annoyingly. I don’t know precisely what counsel the pastor gave to Chris, but essentially, we both walked away that day with the monumental epiphany: “You’re the parents, why don’t you train him to sit still? ” It was obvious advice and lovingly given, but the effect was still a bit like a smart slap on the face for us both, a much-needed wake-up call. Teaching him to obey his parents and submit his will would be teaching him to worship, to serve the Lord. Oh duh! (thump self on the head) so that’s why Paul writes to the saints in Ephesus and gives the youngest ones there particular counsel to obey parents.
When we would read the Bible up to this point, for instance, we simply let him do whatever he wanted on the floor or sit on our lap and do baby gymnastics all over us. We had no expectations for him. And he met them exactly! So we started practicing snuggling on our whim rather than Josiah’s. And it was good. We learned to sit still together, to listen together. We listened to stories together and, of course, the Story of Stories together. We were teaching about God’s authority structure (better than we had before) and we began teaching him one of the first lessons anyone must learn to learn be a worshipper of Jehovah–self-control: Be still and know that I am God.
Though I know it is God’s sovereign plan, from our view sometimes it seems we just stumble and bumble quite accidently into some of His blessings. One such blessing in our life was having our children in worship. I was nursing Josiah in the nursery and overhearing the interactions between the teacher and her surly, disobedient charges, some of whom belonged to herself. Overhearing the interchanges I heard between teacher and student startled me and forced us ask, “Can we entrust our child to this kind of training?” Aye yi yi. That would be running counter to the instruction we were aiming to give our child now—Sin isn’t funny at all. Sin, disobedience, brings sadness, death, and separation from God—not cookies!
Then to further stimulate this thought, one church we attended required everyone to participate in nursery as an obligation of their “covenantal vows”, an argument I would personally eagerly debate to be neither valid nor wise. What about some guy who was a former child molestor? hmmm… We love and very much rely on God’s forgiveness and won’t begrudge that to any other repentant folks, but we’ll still choose to let our child sit on our own laps, thank you very much. Again… that was where our thoughts began—mere parental protective instincts—but then as we started to understand God’s covenant better, we began to see that God’s blessings aren’t just for the mature, self-conscious adults, but very much for his youngest as well—that God’s paternal instincts and expectations far out-do ours in nurturing, sustaining, and protecting our children. And further, that the blessings of God’s word, preaching, fellowship, communion of the saints, are for guarding all His people—all His congregation—and since He’s the boss, He gets to define that for us. And in Joel 2:15-16 , for instance, He does:
Call a solemn assembly;
gather the people.
Consecrate the congregation;
assemble the elders;
gather the children,
even nursing infants.
Let the bridegroom leave his room,
and the bride her chamber.
So we kept our kids in church to greet the bridegroom. And the bridegroom does not disappoint. In the process, they and we learned a lot. It wasn’t always easy, but we’ve found that most of the great finds in life haven’t been to the tune of immediate gratification. (:. But the hard thing became easier and in the process, the hard thing itself truly became a blessing. An amazing blessing. Our kids learned to sit still and hear the Bible, so then it was a natural progression to learn to sit still and listen in church (or anywhere we went for that matter!). And we were mutually blessed, as were others, as we saw that at a very young age (see my post on Sign Language and Early Learning Skills http://kithandkingdom.com/2011/01/05/out-of-the-hands-of-nursing-babes/ ) they were not only comprehending, but eagerly participating in sincere worship of the Lord. They learned to love the God who first loved them and to express this, however imperfectly—just like the rest of us. They learned to respond to Him by worshipping Him: by singing, by praying, by raising their hands, by kneeling, by speaking prayers and creeds along with the whole congregation. And we learned that the preached Word was as wholly relevant to their small worlds as it was to ours. The Word, good for us, was good for them too.
We saw our job was to teach and press upon them God’s expectations, not ours (which were pretty pathetic). We now saw, that the God who had mercifully called us out of darkness and calls us to holiness, calls them to the same expectations of holy living. We began to see that our personal notions of right and wrong for our children weren’t enough. God’s Word should set the standards and our job was to merely to teach and train accordingly (merely–that’s an understatement, I realize!). In other words, if something was a sin for us, then it’s a sin for them too (whining, unthankfulness…). If it’s a command for us (rejoice always, sing, love, give thanks) then it’s a command for them too. And we were to live that before them, teaching them, training them, repenting alongside of each other, turning together to the Savior in whom we find rest and salvation.
Chris and I both came from backgrounds that saw salvation from an individualistic point of view. We give thanks for the heritage we had in God’s Word, but we give even more thanks now for children God’s blessed us with who walk beside us and are the Lord’s heritage, the children who, with us, are learning that when we humbly worship Jehovah, He fights our daily battles with sin with the same strong hand that brought down walls of old.
God ordained children’s lisping praise to fight the enemy (Psalm 8, Matthew 21:15). He likens children elsewhere in the Scriptures as weapons—arrows in a quiver, speaking with enemies in the gates. When we, His people, worship, God engages in battle. Consider the first battle of Israel taking possession of the promise land—the battle of Jericho. Worship is a battle cry (Chronicles 20:22). And when our children stand at attention with us, they are God’s arrows in our hand, defying the enemy as they acknowledge with us the One who brings the walls down, the One in whom we together trust and to whom we cry out together “Hosanna, Lord, save us!”.
I’ve gotta share this link:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/pure-words/id302491511
Love Jamie Soles music. Pure Words is my favorite cd of his. (The lyrics are straight from the Psalms so we’ve used it to memorized Psalms 1-11 so far, just singing these together! Even little Eden is trying to sing along with us (her favorite and mine is Psalm 8–maybe you can get it on itunes?) Also love his album Ascending. I also like all the children’s albums—Up From Here‘s my favorite, but I can hardly choose because they’ve all been so helpful for teaching the “grammar” of Bible to the kids. There are some video clips with him singing “The Patriarch Song” and others on You Tube as well that you might want to check out. Some of Jamie Soles’ songs are available as sheet music (free!) on this link:
http://christcovenant.ca/sheetmusic/
Oh yeah, tip of hat to Pastor Wes Baker for his instructive sermon on Worship and Warfare. I don’t know the title of the sermon but you can email him yourself to inquire or support his ministry of the Word at Peru Mission:
I very much appreciated this, Rachel. It was all comands and reminders that I know as a parent we are privileged and commanded to do. I myself sin and fail myself and my children at times. This was a very not so subtle slap for me to remain diligent and remember very Clearly whom I am really disobeying and whom I am failing in my disobedience!
I love that God shows us our failings, not to leave us there in our shameful state, but to bring us, the prone-to-wander-sheep, back into his fold with green pastures and quiet waters once again. This is the paradigm for our parenting as well—a ministry of reconciliation of our children with God.
I’m so glad you posted this-it was very encouraging!
I just found you from Raising Olives. Thank you for this…a very timely reminder and, what’s more, greater inspiration. I’ve been feeling a little beaten-down in the child training game lately, and this post prompts me to think it’s in part because I’ve been focused on what I do/should expect from my child instead of focusing on what GOD expects from BOTH my child and myself. As soon as my husband gets home and settled I’m going to suggest he take a look at this.