Pastors, here’s some good counsel from Oswald Chambers—
“Oh for that man of God who will hand over to God that hearts God has called through him! It is not you who awakened that mighty desire in the heart; it is not you who called forth that longing in that spirit; it is God in you. Are you a servant of God? Then point them to Him.”
I love that! Point them to Him!
A nice touch I appreciated in Andrew Murray’s book Raising Your Child To Love God was the prayers he included at the end of each of the 52 chapters of this book. Below are some of the lines of prayer which I found noteworthy. If you would like to read some other quotes from this book, click here. If you would like to read my book review of this book, click here.
“Give us a deep sense of our holy calling to train their immortal souls for You and for our glory.”
“By my life, by my words, by my prayers, by gentleness and love, by authority and instruction, I would lead them in the way of the Lord. Be my helper, Lord.”
“As we see the power of sin and the world threatening our children, may we plead for them as for our own life.”
“O Father, open the eyes of all Your people, that in each little one You give them their faith may see an extraordinary child.”
“I acknowledge, Lord, that I do not sufficiently realize the value of my children or the danger to which they are exposed from the prince and the spirit of this world. Lord, teach me fully to recognize the danger and yet never to fear the commandment of the King. Open my eyes to see that in the light of heaven each child is a special child, entrusted to my keeping and training for your work and kingdom. Help me in the humility and watchfulness and boldness of faith to keep him sheltered, to hide him from the power of the world and of sin. May my own life be the life of faith, hid with Christ in God, that my child may know no other dwelling place.”
“O God, teach us to feel deeply that You have need of our children. For the building up of Your temple, in the struggle of Your kingdom with the powers of darkness, in the gathering of Your people from the millions of lost, You have need of our children. We give them to You. We will train them for You. We will wait in prayer and faith, and we beseech You to inspire them with a holy enthusiasm for the kingdom and its conquests.”
“Grant that I may always live worthy of all honor. And may the holy power to train young souls to keep Your commandments, to honor and serve You, be the fruit of Your own Spirit’s work in me.”
“Make our home a blessing to others, encouraging them to take a stand for You.”
“Teach me always to speak to him of Your love so that his heart will early be won to You. May my whole life be an inspiration, guiding him to what is pure and lovely, to what is holy and well pleasing to You.”
“Dear God, help me to teach my children the fear of the Lord by instruction, example, and the spirit of my own life. May thoughtfulness, truthfulness, and lovingkindness mark the conversation of my home. May the life of all in my care by holy unto the Lord. Daily I would show them, through Your grace, how departing from every evil, doing every good, and following after peace and holiness is what true fear of the Lord produces.”
“I am weak, but I know Your almighty power is working in me to keep me humble yet hopeful, conscious of my weakness yet confident in You.”
“O Lord, we draw nigh to You to claim the fulfillment of this promise on behalf of our beloved children. Lord, may they from their very youth have Your Spirit poured out upon them that even in the simplicity of childhood they may say, ‘I belong to the Lord.’”
“Because our child has been presented to You as Jesus was, may this be the beginning of a likeness that will take possession of his whole life. Give grace to Your servants. May we be worthy parents, guardians, and guides of this child who has been given to the Lord. For Your name’s sake. Amen.”
“May my daily experience of the way in which Your shepherd-love does its work be a lesson that teaches me how to feed my little flock. … Let Your holy love in my heart be the inspiring power of all my communion with You and with them. And let me so prove how wonderfully You are my Shepherd and blessed I am to be their shepherd.”
“O God, how we bless You for the promise that our home is to be Your home, the abode of Your Holy Spirit, and that in the happy life of love between parents and children, the Spirit of Your divine love is to be the link that binds us together.”
“Set me apart as a parent so to live as one baptized into Christ’s death that first my life and later my teaching may lead my child to experience this blessed life in Christ.”
“I come to You humbly confessing my sin. Often misbehavior in my children has been met by sinful response on my part. I know that this only discourages them. I want to be a parent who models patient love, helping them in their weakness, and by my example encouraging them with the assurance that they, too, can overcome difficulty.”
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.
Are You A Saint?
The New Testament idea of a saint is not a cloistered sentiment gathering around the head of an individual like a halo of glory, but a holy character reacting on life in deeds of holiness.
From Christian Disciplines
Artists usually depict saints the same way they depicted Jesus: Someone with an angelic face, a heavenly glow around the top of their head, looking longingly up into heaven.
In reality, saints aren’t solitary but are constantly involved with other people. If there’s a glow on their face, it’s probably a glow of glistening sweat. There are callouses on their hands, and dirt under their fingernails from helping others. And if they are looking up to heaven, it’s in a moment of prayer trying to discern what God wants them to do next.
A saint is busy trying to live more and more like Jesus, Who came to feed the hungry, heal the sick, encourage the brokenhearted, bring hope to the hopeless, and show the love of God in touchable ways.
Are you a saint?
It’s a book I called a “must read for all parents” (you can read my full book review by clicking here). After typing up my notes of all the quotes I highlighted in this book, I ended up with 18 pages of notes, so these quotes from Andrew Murray’s book are, in my opinion, the cream of the crop. Tomorrow I will share some of the prayers Murray offered in his book.
“Example is better than precept. … Love that draws is more important than law that demands. … Let parents be what they want their children to be.”
“How terrible is the curse and power of sin! Through the father the child becomes a partaker of the sinful nature, and the father so often feels himself too sinful to be a blessing to his child; thus the home becomes a path to destruction rather than to eternal life. But—blessed by God!—what sin destroyed, grace restores. … Let God’s Father-heart and His Father-love be your confidence. As you know and trust Him the assurance will grow that He is fitting you for making your home, in ever-increasing measure, the bright reflection of His own.”
“God seeks a people on earth to do His will. The family is the great institution for this object; a believing and God-devoted father is one of the mightiest means of grace.”
“What God says of Abraham gives us further insight into the true character of this grace: ‘For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord.’ The spirit of modern so-called liberty has penetrated even into our family life; and there are parents, who some from a mistaken view of responsibility, some from lack of thought as their sacred calling, somer from love of ease, have no place for such a word as ‘command.’ They have not seen the heavenly harmony between authority and love, between obedience and liberty. Parents are more than friends and advisers; God has clothed them with a holy authority to be exercised in leading their children in the way of the Lord.”
“Oh that Christian parents would realize, just as Judah did, what it means to stand in that place for their child! How often—when our children are in danger because of the prince of this world, when the temptations of the flesh or the world threatened to make them prisoners and slaves, holding them back from ever reaching the Father’s home—are we found careless or unwilling to sacrifice our ease and comfort in order to rescue them!”
“Oh, that the eyes of God’s people might be opened to the danger that threatens the church! It is not infidelity or superstition, it is the spirit of worldliness in the homes of Christian families, sacrificing the children to the ambitions of society, to the riches or the friendship of the world—that is the greatest danger of Christ’s church. If every home once won for Christ were a training school for His service, we would find in this a secret of spiritual strength no less than all that ordinary preaching can accomplish.”
“With a parent’s love comes a parent’s influence. … The character of a child is formed and molded by impressions; continual communion with the parent can render these impressions deep and permanent. The child’s love for a parent rises to meet the parent’s love.”
“The first four commandments have reference to God, the last five to our neighbor. In between stands the fifth. It is linked to the first four because to the young child the parent represents God; from him the child must learn to trust and obey God. And this command is the transition to the last five because the family is the foundation of society, and there the first experience comes of all the greater duties and difficulties with humankind at large.”
“The child can only honor what he sees to be ‘worthy of honor.’ And this is the parent’s high calling: always so to speak and act, so to live in the child’s presence, that honor may be spontaneously and unconsciously rendered. … Above all, let parents remember that honor comes from God. Let them honor Him in the eyes of their children, and He will honor them there too.”
“There is nothing that drive home the word of instruction as powerfully as a consistent and holy life. … The entrance of divine truth into the mind and heart, the formation of habits and the training of character—these are not attained by sudden and isolated efforts, but by regular and unceasing repetition.”
“Love knows no sacrifice, counts nothing a burden; love does not rest until it has triumphed.”
“We don’t want to be just another family with whom God dwells and is pleased. Ours must be wholly consecrated to God. And do not be afraid that strength will not be given to keep the vow. It is with the Father in heaven, calling and helping and tenderly working both to will and to do in us, that we are working.”
“We need renewed wisdom directly from above for the individual needs of each child. Daily prayer is the secret of training our children for God. … Those who have already communicated with God and received divine teaching about their children will be those who desire still more and pray earnestly for it.”
“Nothing open the fountains of divine love and renewed love for each other more than the prayerful desire to know how to raise our children to love God.”
“Not to restrain a child is to dishonor God and the child.”
“My duty is never measured by what I feel is within my power to do but by what God’s grace enables me to do.”
“Every thoughtful parent knows that there are times and places when the temptations of sin will be more apt to surprise even the most well-behaved child. Such are the times, both before and after the child goes into a situation or circumstance where he may be tempted, that a praying father and mother should do what Job did, bring the children before God in repentance and faith and where possible to confront them with questions concerning their behavior.”
“Let us ask God to make us very watchful and very wise in availing ourselves of opportunities to admonish our children and to pray audibly with them.”
“In our family’s life, the first thing of importance must not be our earthly happiness, or even the supply of our daily needs, nor seeing to the child’s education for a life of prosperity and usefulness, but rather the yielding of ourselves to God in order to be conveyors of His grace and blessing to our children. Let us live for God’s purpose: deliverance from sin. Thus our family life will forever be brightened with God’s presence and with the joy of our heavenly home to come, of which our earthly one is by the nursery and the image.”
“‘The children of Your servants will live in Your presence; their descendants will be established before You’ (Psalm 102:25-28). Death may separate one generation from another, but God’s mercy connects them as it passes on from one to another; His righteousness, which is everlasting, reveals itself as salvation from generation to generation. … It is God’s will that His salvation should be known from generation to generation in your family too, that your children should hear from you and pass on to their children the praises of the Lord.”
“God’s purpose is that the Holy Spirit should take possession of our sons and daughters for His service; that they should be filled with the Holy Spirit, consecrated for service. They belong to Him and He to them.”
“Jesus desires that we rise above the experiences of fatherhood on earth to know more deeply the Father in heaven.”
“The earthly father must not only make the Father in heaven his model and guide, but he must so reflect Him that his child will naturally desire to emulate the One whom he so aptly represents. … In a Christian father a child ought to have a better picture than the best of sermons can give of the love and care of the heavenly Father and all the blessing and joy He wants to bestow.”
“If we are to watch over the heavenly quality of our children, we must ourselves be childlike and heavenly-minded. … Children lose their childlikeness all too soon because parents have so little of it.”
“Fathers, you have sons whom you would fain bring to Jesus to be saved, come and hear the lessons the Lord would teach you. Let these children first send you to Jesus in confession, prayer, and trust; your faith can bring them in.”
“Your motherhood is in God’s sight holier and more blessed than you realize.”
“The effect of the good advice parents give is more than neutralized by their own behavior.”
“A child should never be allowed to feel that his immaturity is not taken into account, that his young reasoning is not regarded, that he has not received empathy, or help, or justice that he expects. This will take a kind of love and thoughtfulness that parents are all too short of.”
“If you feel that you do not know how to teach the Word to them, to make it interesting or exciting for them, take heart—God will make it come alive to them if you are faithful to read it and live it.”
“I am the giver of their physical life, the framer of their character, the keeper of their souls, the trustee of their eternal destiny. I was first blessed that I may bless them, first taught how my Jesus loved me and gave Himself for me that I may know how to love and how to give myself for them. … And the more tenderly my love to them is stirred up, the more I feel the need to be wholly and only the Lord’s, entirely given up to the love that loves and makes itself one with me. This will fill me with a love from which selfishness shall be banished, giving itself in a divine strength to live for the children that God has given me.”
There’s a really cool comment in parentheses in the book of Exodus: “(The Lord made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, and Moses himself was highly regarded in Egypt by Pharaoh’s officials and by the people)” (Exodus 11:3; see also 12:36).
At Moses’ word bad things have happened in Egypt; in fact, nine bad things have happened so far. Blood, frogs, gnats, hail, locusts, and other nasty things have plagued the Egyptians, and still the general population—and even the inner court of Pharaoh—hold Moses and the Israelites in high regard!
The King James Version says it this way: “The Lord gave the people favor.”
People didn’t respect Moses because he cowered before Pharaoh, but because he feared God.
Ironic, isn’t it? We fear the opinion of people, which excludes us from the favor of God, which robs us of favor with people!
To grow in favor with people, to earn their respect, I must be sold-out to God. I must not care about the opinion of people in order to be highly favored by people.
“Ladies and gentleman, come see the amazing high wire act! Watch closely as he crosses the chasm on a tightrope without a net!” Well, at least that’s what it feels like for me.
On September 8 and September 15 we will be doing our annual Q Series at Calvary Assembly of God. These are Sundays where I don’t prepare a sermon, but I prepare myself to answer questions that are thrown at me on any topic. And I feel a little like the man walking on a tightrope without a net.
Here we go!
If you’d like to submit a question, you can do so in the comments below. You can always send questions to me via Twitter or email. If you won’t be able to attend the services, we’ll make an audio link available with my answer to your question.
If you can attend in person (each of these Sundays at 10:30am), we will have a text number available so you can anonymously text your question to the computer techs.
It’s always fun and educational, so I hope you will be able to join us.
I think we in the church may have it backward. We are far too quick to judge the success of a church by how many people “came to church on Sunday.”
The church is not a building. The church is a living organism. The church is people living out the love of Jesus in a tangible way in their world.
You can’t go to church. But the church can—and should—go to the world.
Just before Jesus ascended into Heaven He said, “All authority in Heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Therefore, build a really nice building and invite everyone to come to it.”
Ummm, not so much!
Here’s what He really said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Therefore, GO and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18-19).
Instead of inviting the world to “Come to church” why don’t you think about how you can be the church and “Go” to the world this week.
UPDATE: This post was one of the seed thoughts that went into fashioning my book Shepherd Leadership: The Metrics That Really Matter.
“Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood – the virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.” —Teddy Roosevelt
Yesterday I had the privilege of speaking at the funeral of my good friend Barney Fritcher. Barney was an amazing man who lived as much like Jesus as anyone else I have ever met.
In December 2008 I tried my hand at a little poetry, which I posted on my blog with the title Choices. It was a humble attempt at expressing myself. But Barney, who truly had a God-given gift for poetry, wrote a poem in response that left my eyes filled with tears. I read his poem at his memorial service yesterday, and found out that no one else had heard this poem before then. Since many have been asking for a copy of it, and since it is such an amazing piece, I thought I would share it here for everyone to enjoy.
May we all make the choice that Barney made to invite Jesus into our lives!
Craig T. Owens 