In the way
Last November I posted a quote from John Loftness on parenting with faith in God and his promises for our children. But faith always has legs; “therefore how we act,” as Loftness says. I have three small children. What difference does it make that I know God is at work in them, that he has been at work from the very beginning?
- We teach them [1], [2] to name Jesus as “our Lord” and to confess that “he died for our sins and pleads with God for us.”
- When we pray, we teach them to name God as “our Father” and to look to him for provision and forgiveness. And we rejoice in his forgiveness and provision! God is far more lavish even than Mommy and Daddy in his mercy and blessing.
- We teach and expect them to sing to our savior and king, at home and at church.
- We teach and expect them to walk in the fruit of the Spirit. With every bit of good fruit we see, we rejoice and encourage them that this is God at work in them.
- We teach and expect them to obey cheerfully. Repentance for sin and rejoicing in God’s forgiveness and acceptance are also a key part of this.
- Whether or not they participate in the Lord’s supper, we teach them to thank Jesus for cleansing them from sin with his blood, and for making them a part of God’s family.
Not that we have already obtained this!
Are we training our children to be little hypocrites? Absolutely not! Rather:
- Scripture gives us great confidence that the Holy Spirit is already at work in our children, and our task is one of fanning into flame.
- The Christian life is lifelong repentance and faith. While regeneration is absolutely necessary, it is likely in the case of our children that pinpointing it will be futile. The gardener diligently tends his garden before he can even see the sprouts; and as they grow, he tenderly cares for, trains and prunes them, without knowing whether they will survive, so that they may survive. In the same way, we train our children to walk in daily repentance, faith and obedience.
- Similarly, there is a reason that Proverbs 22:6 does not instruct us to lead our children to the way, but rather train them in the way. Christian nurture is not preparation for a future driver’s exam; it is a continuous going deeper. We love our savior and king; there is absolutely no question that he is our trustworthy savior and the king of the world; and faith, repentance and obedience are simply what it looks like to love him.
Tolkien, Reading and the Ring
My wife and I have a tradition of watching through The Lord of the Rings at Christmastide. We don’t get to it every year, but we’ve just finished the cycle this time.
It’s been awhile since I read the books, so long that I find myself forgetting things. Most of all I don’t sense the loss of nobility from books to movies as much as I used to. So I’ve decided to re-read Tolkien this year. I’ve started with The Silmarillion, which I haven’t read before. I’ve already read Unfinished Tales and I don’t think I’ll read it through again now, but I will reread both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Just today, I was pleased to rediscover The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien on my shelf, one of my wife’s yard sale finds. I think I’ll try to get through that as well. And I’m excited that Mark Horne is working on a Tolkien biography.
Here’s a quote I found while paging through Tolkien’s letters, from a fascinating letter on p. 279 in response to questions about The Lord of the Rings from Miss Rhona Beare:
You cannot press the One Ring too hard, for it is of course a mythical feature, even though the world of the tales is conceived in more or less historical terms. The Ring of Sauron is only one of the various mythical treatments of the placing of one’s life, or power, in some external object, which is thus exposed to capture or destruction with disastrous results to oneself. If I were to ‘philosophize’ this myth, or at least the Ring of Sauron, I should say it was a mythical way of representing the truth that potency (or perhaps rather potentiality) if it is to be exercised, and produce results, has to be externalized and so as it were passes, to a greater or less degree, out of one’s direct control. A man who wishes to exert ‘power’ must have subjects, who are not himself. But he then depends on them.
There’s a lot of food for thought there, with applicability ranging from the inevitable failure of despotism to everything that is bittersweet about parenthood.
Questions
Our six-year-old takes after my wife in being more artistically or creatively inclined. She’s been writing little poems and stories lately, and tonight brought us the following riddle:
My guess was “goat” before I saw her answer.
Nothing can hinder him from aiding us
The fullest confidence is available to believers in their suffering because of God’s immutable covenant promise by which He has obliged Himself to believers.But the inspired writer, calling to remembrance the promises by which God had declared that he would make the Church the object of his special care, and particularly that remarkable article of the covenant, “I will dwell in the midst of you” (Exodus xxv. 8), and, trusting to that sacred and indissoluble bond, has no hesitation in representing all the godly languishing, though they were in a state of suffering and wretchedness, as partakers of this celestial glory in which God dwells. . . . What advantage would we derive from this eternity and immutability of God’s being, unless we had in our hearts the knowledge of him, which, produced by his gracious covenant, begets in us the confidence arising from a mutual relationship between him and us? The meaning then is, “We are like withered grass, we are decaying every moment, we are not far from death, yea rather, we are, as it were, already dwelling in the grave; but since thou, O God! hast made a covenant with us, by which thou hast promised to protect and defend thine own people, and hast brought thyself into a gracious relation to us, giving us the fullest assurance that thou wilt always dwell in the midst of us, instead of desponding, we must be of good courage; and although we may see only ground for despair if we depend upon ourselves, we ought nevertheless to lift up our minds to the heavenly throne, from which thou wilt at length stretch forth thy hand to help us.” . . . . As God continues unchangeably the same — “without variableness or shadow of turning” — nothing can hinder him from aiding us; and this he will do, because we have his word, by which he has laid himself under obligation to us, and because he has deposited with us his own memorial, which contains in it a sacred and indissoluble bond of fellowship.
There is always hope, even in the adversities of life, because “the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, to confirm His covenant towards them by watching for their safety.”
– Peter Lillback, quoting Calvin in The Binding of God, pp. 270-271.
Wiggly Disciples
Douglas Wilson writes of parents shepherding wiggly disciples on Sunday morning:
Many of you are here as parents of little ones and, in some cases, many little ones. For you, the worship of the Lord is a far more arduous task that it is for the rest of us. All of us are engaged in the work of worshipping the Lord, but you are carrying young ones in your arms as you perform the same labor that we do. . . .
Read on for encouragement that is really applicable to all of parenting: our parenting is unto God, and he intends for it to be a real part of our worship.
Encouragement to parents
John Loftness writes:
Humility . . . drives us away from self-sufficiency to believing in the promises of God.
Diligence alone will never make a good parent. Faith will. Faith in God’s promises. When we see what he’s promised about our children, it will shape how we think, what we expect, and therefore how we act. The only way to pray by faith for our children is to begin with a focused belief in God’s will for them. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7).
These are the words that Nancy and I abide in. They shape our prayers and fix our hope:
“And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God will all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” (Deut. 30:6)
“All your children shall be taught by the LORD, and great shall be the peace of your children” (Is. 54:13).
“‘And as for me, this is my covenant with them,’ says the LORD: ‘My Spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouth of your offspring, or out of the mouth of your children’s offspring,’ says the LORD, ‘from this time forth and forever more’” (Is 59:21).
“For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself” (Acts 2:39—read the context, too).
JI Packer quotes Samuel Clark about God’s promises: “A fixed, constant attention to the promises and a firm belief of them, would prevent solicitude and anxiety about the concerns of life” (Knowing God, p. 115). Is there any greater concern than the concerns we carry for our children? Is there any greater comfort and hope than to hear and believe the promises of the one who spoke and worlds came into being? So pray the promises about your children. And see God work, in them and in you.
A gospel catechism
Our church practices credobaptism, and I’ve assembled this catechism to help ready my children for a pastoral interview. We’re also learning the apostle’s creed, below. Some influences are my pastors Phil Sasser and Daniel Baker, and also Chris Schlect and the Westminster-based catechism for young children. I’d be grateful for suggested improvements.
Catechism
Sin
What is your sin?
Disobeying God’s word (1 John 3:4)
What is the penalty for your sin?
Death (Romans 6:23)
Gospel
What is the gospel?
Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and was raised from the dead; just as God promised. (1 Cor 15)
Father
Why does God love you?
He made me His child.
How do you know that God loves you?
He gave his son Jesus for me.
Jesus
Who is Jesus?
He is God’s son, my maker, savior and king. He is my life and my treasure.
How is Jesus your Savior?
Jesus died in my place, so I am forgiven and adopted.
Where is Jesus now?
He rose from the dead and sits at our Father’s right hand.
How is Jesus your King?
He leads, provides, cares for and protects me.
Holy Spirit
Who is the Holy Spirit?
He is my helper.
How does he help you?
He gives me life, peace, comfort, and strength to become more like Jesus.
Response
What is faith?
Resting on Jesus for my salvation (Psalm 62:5-8)
Why do you love God?
He is great and good, and he loves me.
What is repentance?
To be sorry for my sin, to hate it as God does, and to keep turning from it
Why do you obey God?
Because I love him
Church, now and then
Who are God’s people?
They make up his church.
What does his church do?
We display God’s greatness and beauty, and serve and care for one another.
What will become of God’s people?
God will keep us to the end.
What happens at the end?
Jesus will restore his creation and live with his people.
Baptism
What is baptism?
Baptism is God’s marking out a person as his own.
What does your baptism signify?
I am cleansed from my sin by Jesus’s blood, and united to him in his death and resurrection.
Why do you want to be baptized?
Because I belong to Jesus
Apostles’ creed
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven, where he sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
The Binding of God
. . . the essence of Calvin’s conception of the covenant is the notion of the binding of God. This binding is God’s own act of joining Himself with His creatures. . . . The gracious self-binding of the infinite God whereby He condescends to enter into a mutual covenant with His fallen and unworthy yet sovereignly chosen people is eloquently portrayed by Calvin in his sermon on Deuternonomy 4:44-5:3.For if God only demanded his due, we should still be required to cling to him and to confine ourselves to his commandments. Moreover, when it pleases him by his infinite goodness to enter into a common treaty, and when he mutually binds himself to us without having to do so, when he enumerates that treaty article by article, when he chooses to be our father and Savior, when he receives us as his flock and his inheritance, let us abide under his protection, filled with its eternal life for us. When all of these things are done, is it proper that our hearts become mollified even if they were at one time stone? When creatures see that the living God humbles himself to that extent, that he wills to enter into covenant that he might say: “Let us consider our situation. It is true that there is an infinite distance between you and me and that I should be able to command of you whatever seems good to me without having anything in common with you, for you are not worthy to approach me and have any dealings with whoever can command of you what he wills, with no further declarations to you except: ‘That is what I will and conceive.’ But behold, I set aside my right. I come here to present myself to you as your guide and savior. I want to govern you. You are like my little family. And if you are satisfied with my Word, I will be your King. Furthermore, do not think that the covenant which I made with your fathers was intended to take anything from you. For I have no need, nor am I indigent in anything. And what could you do for me anyway? But I procure your well-being and your salvation. Therefore on my part, I am prepared to enter into covenant, article by article, and to pledge myself to you.”
The covenant, therefore, highlights God’s grace.
– Peter Lillback, The Binding of God, pp. 137-138.
We are as the prodigal son.
Rails pattern: trim spaces on input
Problem: Your Rails application accepts user input for a number of models. For many or most of these fields, leading and trailing spaces are a significant inconvenience — they cause problems for your validators (email address, phone number, etc.) and they cause normalization and uniqueness problems in your database.
Solution: Just as the Rails ActiveRecord class uses methods like belongs_to and validates_format_of to define model relationships and behaviors, create a new class method to express trimming behavior. There are a number of ways to do this; I will present one possibility that I have used in my own code. I created a file lib/trimmer.rb with the following contents:
module Trimmer
# Make a class method available to define space-trimming behavior.
def self.included base
base.extend(ClassMethods)
end
module ClassMethods
# Register a before-validation handler for the given fields to
# trim leading and trailing spaces.
def trimmed_fields *field_list
before_validation do |model|
field_list.each do |n|
model[n] = model[n].strip if model[n].respond_to?('strip')
end
end
end
end
end
Then I write the following in my models:
require 'trimmer' class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base include Trimmer . . . trimmed_fields :first_name, :last_name, :email, :phone . . . end
While this makes the behavior available to particular models explicitly, you may prefer to make this behavior available to all of your models implicitly. In that case, you can extend the ActiveRecord::Base class behavior by adding the following to config/environment.rb:
require 'trimmer' class ActiveRecord::Base include Trimmer end
If you do this, the trimmed_fields class method will be available to all of your models.
