God's Power In Children

In Psalm 8 King David informs us that God has ordained the mouths of babes, and children with strength and power, in order to silence the enemies and avengers of our faith. It is an incredible statement. Yet when look at the best selling books on parenting kids, we see pragmatic advise on succeeding in world, how to advice on fixing flaws, and admiration of pagan cultures.  King David connects the power in our kids to the creation story. Once our family recognizes God's power in creation, we will see the value of God's word in our kids. 

Transcript

Ethan: 0:03

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

0:10

This is raising joyful children in an angry world. I'm your host, Paul Osborne. I was talking last week about the need to go back to Genesis and I was talking last week about how hard it is and grinding out the hard things in teaching our kids, and almost immediately following that podcast, my oldest granddaughter ends up at the house with a book assignment for Charlotte's Web and. I and my wife have to take turns in a, okay, you read two pages and I'll read one page, grinding it out. So it was, it was brought right to our own, you know, doorstep and we had to, we had to experience what we were talking about. Well, this week I want to jump back into Genesis and why it's so important, and I wanna start with understanding it from what King David says in Psalm eight, because. David is pondering. He is pondering God's creation and the Genesis story, and then this text, this, this piece comes out and he says, out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants, in other words, children, he says, you have ordained. You have established strength you may silence. The enemy and the avenger. God puts the power into the mouths of our children in order to silence the avenger. It's an incredible thing that he's saying, and he is catching this because of his understanding in his pondering of the Genesis account. This week, let me, let me compare this to some things because this is what I, I see the world getting caught up in. I was looking at the bestselling books on Amazon. I was doing it to see what was selling.'cause when I released my book called Raising Joyful Children in an Angry World on Amazon, had low, low expectations because Christian literature and Christian parenting doesn't sell well, particularly on Amazon. But I wanted to understand. What books are selling, and you could break it down into really three categories. One is strictly pragmatic living, almost like a human resource person. Went in and gave lectures, a series of lectures to kids. There was how to call nine one one and when to call 9 1 1 And personal hygiene, how to save money, how to set goals, you know, all that pragmatic stuff. There was in other books that I would say dealt with problems specific, an angry child or a child that was difficult with speech therapy. And these books were specifically written to deal with a specific problem. They were the solution. And then the third one. It was, was kind of weird, but they were these observations of other cultures and how much better they were at raising children. There was one that went down, I think, to the Yucatan and they talked about how much wiser these parents were, even though they were living in sort of a substance farming existence now. Now nobody admires them and goes down and adopts this existence. But these were really what I would call the three categories. About the only thing out there were children's Bible stories, kind of something to read at night. And I was looking at it and I think, well, this is kind of why we don't prioritize the scripture in our culture. We are so convinced that we've gotta solve the problems that our kids are experiencing, where we've gotta give them a lot of pragmatic advice on how to live. And then the culture often adopts all these obser observations of other cultures and how much wiser and better they are. But we don't really understand what is at stake. And it is this power word that David uses in Psalm eight that I think should motivate us to teach our children, particularly this Genesis story. See, I think you, you get so trained in rational thinking. or how to fix everything, how to give basic skills that you, you don't really have an understanding of how much power and how much is being offered by God and particularly. When you have churches and you have Christianity that has sort of, uh, diminished and argued over Genesis, but doesn't really want to spend much time in it, and if you want to understand real power of God, you have to start with this book. If you want to understand what Augustine called power words, you've got to get back to Genesis. When you see this book, you see in the beginning, which is a great way to start a story. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. You see how things moved from chaos to order without form and void and dark. God says, let there be light. God saw the light and God said it was good. You see this pattern of speaking power and order and what is good into the universe. You even get up into like verse 11 in the first, first chapter of Genesis, let the Earth bring forth grass and herbs. They yield seeds, fruit, trees that bear fruit, and then reproduce with the same kinds of seeds. You see in 27, God creates male and female and blesses them and says, be fruitful and multiply. God's word. God's word speaks power. If you just think about the tree, you and I can talk to a tree all day. You can scientifically explain it. You can care for it. Which is, you know, kind of our domain in Genesis. But God says, let the earth bring forth grass and herbs and seeds and reproduce, and only he can create the tree and give the tree its purpose of bearing fruit. And that same God. Once we understand that concept, then we begin to see God speaks power. Words that bear fruit in us. You go through the scriptures. Jesus says, whoever hears these words of mine, he gives the emphasis of his words. Paul says, faith cometh by hearing and hearing the word of God. That is what, how we are converted. That's what deals with our sin, nature, and brings us new life. The, the word of the cross is foolishness to those that are perishing, but those being saved, it is the power of God. God's words have power to go into the heart, to go into the mind the psalms calls the inner parts, the conscience, all these things that are inside, and it produces fruit that goes beyond pragmatic reason. Now you need reason. I mean, you know, but reason's only gonna take you so far. And it's interesting. In our society we have power aid, power rangers, power lifting. We talk about power all the time. But what the Bible's telling you about powerful and God's words being powerful, that it creates reality. It provides purpose and meaning. It's what connects us to God, to his creation and to each other. And this is actually the battleground I am seeing when I look out there. What are we colliding with and why? Why so many get caught up and miss this? Well, you've got the circle of life. You know that famous Lion King, it's actually Greek philosophy. It says life's a circle, and it's easy to get into sort of a dystopic mindset. It's a, it's a vicious circle, our response to that should be where does the circle begin and where does the circle end? It can't be a circle, our bible says in the beginning, so we actually have something here. It gives us an actual start. Unlike the circle philosophy or the random chance, which many of our kids get taught in schools where we talk about atoms colliding, and it's just all random. It's kind of a game of chance that if done long enough over enough time, it would randomly produce something. And so there's this confidence in chance, but chance. Is nothing. It's not a being. Chance has no power, but this is the kind of thing that gets taught about the origins of the universe and where we came from. This is what is at stake. I believe in why you've got to get the Bible taught to your children. You got to help them understand Genesis. And, and you've got to put the power words in them because as it says in Psalm eight, the mouths of children is the power, and it is there to thwart the enemies of God. The enemy understands this better than we do. The enemy understands that if I can strip away your understanding that God's power speaks reality into existence, you will be more inclined to wanna solve the problems yourself by reading a book. You'll be more inclined to want pragmatic, practical understandings of how to be successful in the world so that you smell nice, dress nice, save enough money, and know when to call 9 1 1. What we're talking about when we talk about the Bible stories is the, is putting in the power words of the creator of the universe into the heart and the soul and the mind of our children. And when they have that, then they fearlessly go out and serve in the kingdom. And that is our goal. And it can only happen. When we put the power of God's word inside them.

Paul: 10:48

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.

Paul (2): 11:01

Until next time, let's remember the words for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.