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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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In 2021, Eric Clapton and Robin Manatti wrote a song called Heart of the Child. It was released to express their concerns about the COVID Vax for kids. This is Raising Joyful Children in an Angry World. I'm your host, Paul Osborne. The essence of this song was don't break the heart of your child by letting the fears of the world get into you. It seems to deal with the physical as well as emotional. And it's at Touchy subject because it takes us to the heart of parental anxiety and the connection between trust and fear. See Clapton and Menotti did not trust the institutions telling us vaccines were safe for kids. And of course, those vaccinating their children, they didn't trust those who didn't trust the institutions. You see, this song helps us see the relationship between trust and fear, but It leaves us in this nowhere land in which confidence can be best understood. By what you cannot trust, we end up in these kinds of conversations, willing only to trust ourselves. And this generates this strange mix, pride and anxiety and uncertainty. And it's not how we want to focus the eye of our child's heart to only trusting themselves. Man, I'm not trusting pharmaceuticals or not trusting those that don't trust the pharmaceuticals. It gets down to really the heart and go back to this arguments on both sides. See, one side would say it's self evident. Look. Kids aren't getting sick from this. They're not dying from it. And of course the other side would say, look at the death count and look at this example. It's self evident. And this is where you get caught up in a mess. We tend to forget. We tend to be like the world and forget that the child that God has given us comes with a broken heart. And it's going to require a different kind of attention, prioritization of getting our kids to the great heart physician, the Lord Jesus, who came to replace our hearts. As the prophet says, he will write his law on it. He'll put his passions and purpose and joy, fill it with grace, live within it, fill it with all truth and courage and how love works. See, the heart of the child is ultimately. To build trust and it's to build trust that is not based on what is self evident But what is faithful and trusting the promise of God. This is what is so difficult about doing it One of the good parts is is that our children are Like Jesus says, you have to come like a child to trust him. And they are willing to trust. And so I think one of the ways we get to this ultimate issue with our kids is we have to tell the Bible stories. The word faith commits by hearing and one of the ways we can do it is by telling the stories and telling them in a complete and fulfilling way. I have an example recently. I had again the 5th and 6th graders. I've been in and out of this class as a sub. We were on the story of the Battle of Jericho. It's normally told to children with, they marched around the city for six days and on the 7th day they blew their horns and yelled and shouted and the walls came down just as God has promised. But the part about the sacred items. The sin of Achan, the instruction of God not to take the sacred items of gold and silver and bronze to say that they belong to the temple of God. Do not keep them. And Achan ignored the instruction. See we find out in this chapter. Who did it and why? Because before Joshua finds out about the stealing of these temple items that they weren't supposed to do, he has sent his armies up to battle a place called Ai or Ai. And instead of the hearts of the enemy melting like water, which had been done over and over, this time their hearts melt like water. And the Israelites get routed. And many are even killed. And Joshua is in, he's, he's just distraught. Why, God, did you bring us across the Jordan? Why did you let this happen to us? And God says to him, get up. Someone disobeyed. Someone took the sacred items and so the next day they line everyone up. And they consecrate themselves and 8chan comes forward and admits it. I coveted. I sinned against God. And he ends up in his family and his clan because they were complicit. being destroyed. The wages of sin is death. And they were, they became dead. They were killed. And the reason this story is important and the way that we did it. So we set up a little set of dominoes. We took out the 10 commandments. We had, someone was the lawyer. Someone was the judge. Someone was a jury. And we went through and said, did he break this one? Did he break number two? Did he, and we went through and we read them and by the end we concluded, yes, yes. In our little courtroom, HN had broken them all. And so the penalty and the wages for, for sin is death. And we, and we said, this is, do you know what self evident is? No, I don't. Well, can you count? Yeah. One, two, three. Yeah. Count to 10. Yeah. All 10 of them. And we went back through some of the words. You see, it was a self evident, right? That's what the law is. And then we pointed to the gospel, which is how we tell these stories, law and gospel. What that sin, that that eight chan couldn't resolve it in his nature. He could not affect God's wrath. So God has to solve it for us. And God sent Jesus to take our wrath that we deserved on the cross and gave us his righteousness. That's how the story was told. And then we went back and looked at some of the other stories it's not self evident that if you took some lamb's blood and spread it over your doorpost, that the angel of death wouldn't have taken your firstborn. It's not self evident. That when God says, cross this Red Sea and you're looking at this wall of water and you're walking beside it, trusting in God's promise, that's not self evident. That's faith. When you go to the Jordan River and it's in flood stage and God parts it with the Ark of the Covenant, that's not self evident that you're going to be able to get across it. In fact, the walls coming down is not self evident. Why would they come down just because you marched around six days and blew a horn? Because it's the promise of God. And we were instructing them and encouraging them to see, Ah, learn to trust in what God has done. Learn to trust in what God has done, and then discover the treasures that are in your heart. Then discover how your heart ascends because it's a new heart. See, the world's constantly coming at us and coming at our kids with all kinds of weird advice about the heart. Follow your heart. Follow your dreams. Find people that you want to be like and let your heart imitate them. Oh, we get this sort of bad instruction. No, we need a new heart. One of the things, we're at the end of football season. One of the things I see that leaks into our instruction, becoming behavior management people instead of people of faith, is we did kind of what Texas A& M did a while ago. They hired Jimbo Fisher. They give him a mock up. A fake copy of the national championship and they say, see this now, now you go do this. And it's this self evident kind of you go do it now you go win it. And that kind of leaks in. God declares he's won it. It's not mocked up. He's given you a new heart. He's promised you this. His proclamation of being a child of God. Now go play in the kingdom with the Holy Spirit inside you and God's power walking with you. And trust as you're in that garden what Jesus has promised you. Trust Jesus and recognize that sin weakens that trust. Learn to repent from it quickly and receive the forgiveness quickly. Secondly, you got to teach your kids this, this, this treasure in the heart is really largely about forgiveness. God forgives us. That's how we're able to forgive others. That's the Lord's prayer. Don't get the order wrong. We don't forgive in order to get forgiven. We are forgiven. Therefore, we can forgive. That's part of our prayer life and part of our practice. And then if we can get the warning from Luke 14, as we've talked about in the past, you gotta watch that life doesn't get so busy that when you're invited to the banquet that the Lord is throwing, that you miss it because of activities and business activities and family issues and whatever else prevents you from going there. Tell the stories, learn the prayer life, and be cautious about this thing of what is self evident. Sure. There are things that help us cope through the world and they're rational and, and, and logical and all those things. And they help us get through life. But man, understand faith doesn't work just on rational ideas. Perhaps the best way is understanding it the way Eli said to Samuel. Pray that God speaks to the heart of my child. Teach your children, God, speak into my heart that I'm in the grace that you have given me. Show me the grace. Give me a grateful heart. Help me discover the treasures that you have hidden in my new heart, as well as the courage to trust you in doing and using what you have given. And above all, Lord, help me. Guard my heart. 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.