Cling tight for you life

The Mom's Bible Study at our church has been discussing authority and obedience, how it applies to our lives and how to teach it to our children. I wanted to share my notes from this week's gathering. We listened to a recording of Mrs. Nixon, who had given a talk on this subject to a homeschool co-op.

Obedience needs to be three things to be true obedience:

1. Prompt, quick and with out delay
2. Cheerful
3. Thorough, complete, not the bare minimum

Yet, the most important thing in teaching our children about obedience is that they know

GOD will NEVER leave you


GOD will NEVER forsake you


Jesus literally went to the depths of the worst Hell. There is nothing that our children will be able to do, no where they can go, to escape God's presence.

With authority comes a covering. Think about an umbrella. It will protect you, but only when you are under the umbrella. God has instituted authority to protect us, but we have to be willing to bow our own wills to go under the umbrella. If a parent is self centered, that parent can't be under the covering of God's umbrella. We need to be submitting to God to help our children to see HOW to bow their wills to go under the covering.

My goal will NOT be to have 100% perfect obedience every time.

My goal is and will be to see my children clinging to Jesus.

Heb 12:4 "You have not yet given your lives in your struggle with sin"

Have you seen that guy in a movie who is on a plane when the door gets blown off and there is no cabin pressure? He's holding on to something, but his body is horizontal, the air pressure attempting to suck everything not strapped down out the door. And slowly one finger at a time, he looses his grip, but he's literally holding on for his life. I don't know that I have considered that it would take that kind of effort to cling to Jesus. (I have a new pursuit.)

There are times when I can't see what is going on. But we must trust in and rely on Him in times that are clothed in darkness and times that are clothed in light. There are times God will want us to go through things and we can try to avoid them, but it is just delaying the inevitable. Remember, God will find us (or our children) where ever we are.

When training our children "in the way that they should go," it can be like creating a path in the snow for a sled. If we want to go to a certain point in the base of the hill, the best thing to do is to establish your path. You may need to try out the path, and still end up running into a tree. So you start again from the top and rework the path to make the track straighter. So as we are training our children, it takes thought, preparation, trail, error and reworking.

Hebrews 12 talks of earthly fathers who do the "best that they know how." I will not be a perfect parent. But the best way to teach my children to cling to Jesus, is to be an example, and cling to Jesus, as if my life depends on it. It does.