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Raising joyful children in an angry world, a podcast dedicated to faithful parents navigating their families through a stormy culture

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On the last episode, I breached the question, will your children believe in God? And today I want to ask the question, will your children believe in Jesus? As we explore the sort of second stanza of the creed,, that says, I believe in Jesus Christ, his only begotten son. The question remains, will your children believe in Jesus, trust him with their hearts, and will the Jesus they believe in be the Jesus of the Bible, the real, true Son of God? There are two things that I see as battling us and distracting us in the spiritual development of our kids. Life with kids is very expensive and it forces us to focus a great deal of our time on material provision and miss spiritual provision The other thing that happens is if we succeed with material provision, our kids often delight in receiving the world's good. And so we chase it. We, we make a lot of time and a lot of provision in what we do regarding material. And the second thing that happens is we're all operating to one degree or another within the institutions of our world, and they can become a distraction. Our kids are constantly measured and monitored against the standards these institutions create. We often think Christianity is judging, but it's really the world if you take a look at it. I talked about this the last time, the behavior chart in school, the tryouts for sports, music, academic testing that begins before the first grade. We ask which track will my child be on? What did the teacher say about my child's behavior this week? Not many of us would tolerate this kind of micro management and charts at work but. This is what our kids are dealing with and it's not going to change because to change it would be to disenfranchise schools and institutions. So all of this reporting and attention, it forces our attention and our focus to the standards of the world. It's hard to bear that one of our children be an outcast like in the movie Divergent. And so spiritual care of the soul often falls victim to procrastination or as Charles Hummel said in his book, the tyranny of the urgent it causes, it gives birth to spiritual neglect. And this to me is why the creed is a great tool to teach and remind. What is more important and what to teach and it also becomes and helps our kids be inoculated and be resistant and not be driven by these institutions that are constantly judging them. So what does it mean to say, I believe in Jesus Christ, his only begotten son, our Lord. Who is Jesus? Well, we start with this, this section of the creed. And it says, I believe in Jesus Christ. Christ meaning Messiah and Savior. First recognizing that the title that Jesus has is Christos meaning He is the Messiah. He is here to rescue me for the kingdom of heaven from my enemy. It goes on to say that he is the only begotten son. Begotten is a Greek word, monogenous. Mono meaning one, genes like we get the word genes. The Nicene Creed actually explains this a little better when it says being of one substance with the Father. In other words, we might say that God the Father and Jesus are both God. They are of the same substance. Another way of looking at the word monogynous is one and only. And so there's an exclusivity to this. Now, it's not like the, the one and only, resort in Cabo, which is a unique place, but Jesus is the one and only kind of being that's ever existed, who is both God and man, who is eternal and yet. came and lived a human life that was 100 percent deity and 100 percent humanity. this is, this is heavy, I know, but this is who he is. And we're going to see, why this is important as we see how this benefits us. What does this mean to me as I. Believe in Jesus Christ, his only begotten son, our Lord. What does this mean for our kids? And of course, the last word of this statement is our Lord. And the word curious, as Thomas called him doubting Thomas, when he was shown the nail marks, he fell to his knees and said, my Lord and my God. And so we now see, what our relationship is because of who he is and what he has done. Ultimately. What I must believe is that Jesus came to save me, save my soul, because it was taken captive, it was bound in sin by the devil. And I have to trust that Jesus is the only means of being set free, because he is the one and only God, fully God, fully man, who came to save me. There is no other being that can do it, and it certainly isn't something I can contend and do for myself. So why does this matter? Why does this important that children grasp this? Well, I think our children and in fact, as parents, we're vulnerable to making ourselves and this world, the Lord., We live in a quid pro quo society. In other words, I do this for you. You do this for me. We find, if we don't meet a standard, if we're not high enough on some chart. We find ourselves being rejected, condemned, and these are very difficult things to deal with. And this spirit of condemnation that I have spoken about before, I mean, you know, go on your Twitter, whatever it is that you look at, whatever feed, and you're going to see a constant barrage of condemnation. This is the work of the devil. And so, if you're in this and you're coming up in this, I can't meet the standard, I'm being condemned, I'm being put down, I'm being rejected. And a group comes along and even though, you know, the behavior of this group that you're being invited to, you know, the behavior isn't right. It isn't natural. It isn't good. But the attraction of being accepted overpowers your rational judgment. And I believe this is why the right and proper understanding of God, the Lord Jesus, is critical. Because those who kind of come at this legalistically, in other words, God won't accept you until you do all these things and earn your way to heaven and contend for it all yourself or even contend with it with some of God's help. This can often drive kids into these destructive groups that we see rising up throughout our culture. I mean, here's what I even see happening in sometimes with younger children, a child gets a bad behavior report by the school. One single teacher makes the decision and maybe the teacher's right. Maybe the teacher has it wrong. I'm going to say we, we really have to be careful about surrendering power to institutions without questioning them. We all need a little of that old, country song, the day my mama socked it to the Harper Valley PTA. That may be too old of a song for you. But we have to make sure that the assessment is accurate. And then secondly, we have to ask ourselves, what caused behavioral outbursts in the first place? Was this the sin nature in need of confrontation, in need of renewal, in need of restoration from the Holy Spirit? Was it a lack of rational capacity? Where a child just simply did not understand and defaulted to their emotions, as we talked about from Thomas Aquinas in previous episodes. What does the child need to learn? Is there a piece of scripture that they can memorize that can guide them in this, away from this behavior that's causing the issue? This is what the rod of correction and the staff of the shepherd is meant in terms of leading them towards still water. This may seem like a harder path and in the short term, it is a harder path. But trusting institutional experts, steeped in behavioral science has far too many kids, being labeled and medicated or put on tracks, without any sense of prayer investigation or spiritual evaluation in this modern society. And it is, destructive. So the, so the next question then, of course, is, well, then how do I teach my kids to trust Jesus? we've said it a many times. The Holy Spirit has to open the eyes of their heart. He has to give them eyes to see and ears to hear. But we as parents have responsibility in being the preacher. So, we include the historical Jesus in our Christmas, in our Easter. We can make, the church calendar, our faith part of our normal life. So there is this other kingdom, this, this other place in which I am accepted. To me, particularly for, for small children, I would say maybe it's some way and I'm, I'm going to kind of borrow from Luther's smaller catechism and I'll include, I'll conclude with something more direct from him. But I think if we look at Luther and we were to look at Augustine, we could tell young children there are two kingdoms in the world. There's the kingdom of heaven, the true Lord, and the only true king. The other kingdom is a false kingdom, and it is led by the father of lies. That lying king He wants to steal your soul. In fact, he may steal it. He will try and trick you with his false promises. He will then try to bind you in your own sin, make you a prisoner to it. He will condemn you even to death and use his power against you. And the only one that can save you is the one and only true King. King Jesus. He rescues our soul. He brings us back to the one true kingdom. He pays the ransom For our captivity with his precious. Holy blood He binds that liar he defeats the false king and he then becomes our Lord and The liar no longer has power You are freed from sin and death and the power of the devil, and you are given eternal life, the rescue and return to the kingdom of heaven. The best part While it can only be accomplished by a King Jesus, because he was fully God and fully man. We call it begotten, but that's what it means. And he is the only one, as our Lord and our God. He becomes my Lord and my God. Martin Luther tells us that when we trust and believe that Jesus has redeemed us, we live under his lordship in his kingdom and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness. Oh, the gospel and creed now teaches me that I cannot be captured again because I belong to the kingdom of heaven. And the one and only true King, King Jesus. The ultimate battle for the heart and soul is a fight for identity. Our king invites our kids to know who they are, what to believe, and where they belong. Until next time, let's remember the words for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.