Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Are Your Children Learning To Live A Holy and Sanctified Life?


Are Your Children Learning To Live A Holy and Sanctified Life?

And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.
(Leviticus 20:26)


The Lord Jesus Christ is everything to me in every way, in this life and the life which is to come. I delight to do His will! ( I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart. Psalms 40:8) Obedience and submission to God is not a legalistic thing when it is done out of pure fear and adoration of God . The prompting of His Spirit, the moving of God in the heart helps us and makes us want to obey Him. Our children will see the example of love and obedience to God and want to follow. We have liberty in Christ Jesus, liberty not to sin! "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." (Galatians 5:1)


I will never forget a conversation I had with a professing believer as we were watching our children at play, I said, "Oh I want my children to be godly!" She replied, "I want my children to go to heaven." Oh dear mother please beware! "Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled. They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate."(Titus 1:15-16) Of course we want our children to go to heaven and it is a work of God that can save them. A holy and sanctified life in our Lord Jesus Christ is what He wants for His own, our children need to be taught what a holy life unto the Lord is.





With great zeal I wanted my young children to live a holy and sanctified life unto our Lord Jesus Christ, and I wondered, what does a holy life look like? There was a great deal of worldliness in the people of the church we were going to at the time, I was newly saved and wondered if there was something wrong with me, since the worldliness bothered me so much. We were home schooling our children and were involved in a "Christian" home school group but again, worldliness there too. One day a new family came to visit the group but only came once. If the only reason for that family visiting was for me to see what godliness looked like, then God fulfilled His purpose. The children in this family glowed and showed the light of the Lord Jesus Christ in their faces and talk, right then I knew, we were missing holiness in our family. (Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. Proverbs 27:17) That day I began to pray, "I want what that family has, please show us what we are missing." God was gracious to us and began a work in our lives that brought forth what I had prayed for.


I had so longed to be with other Christians, to be part of the fellowship at the church we were going to at the time. We were involved in the Awana program and worked in Vacation Bible School or anything that included fellowship. The only problem was, every time we left the activity, I felt heavy and sad inside, it didn't feel like we really belonged there but I thought there was something wrong in my own heart. One day my Husband's truck broke down for good and we were down to one vehicle, which meant no extra activity for us outside the home! My world was crashing in! We lived in the country and 30 minutes away from Church, all we could do was to go to church on Sunday, so now what? Oh how good God is !!!! Here is where many wonderful lessons of holy living began for us.


I found myself home and secluded with my 3 and 4 year old children, but this precious time in our lives was necessary for learning the secret of priority in obedience to God. Instead of looking for others to supply my need for fellowship, I learned to look to the Lord Jesus Christ and found that He is my comforter and dearest friend, He told me to be still, (Be still, and know that I am God...Psalms 46:10) As I grew in fellowship with Jesus, through prayer and reading His Word, He spoke to my heart that my children needed Him as well.


The first and most important thing God showed us was, we were listening to music that was not honoring to Him. Because it was called "Christian" music on a Christian radio station, I thought it was alright. However, we learned that this music is very seducing and deceptive, it causes emotions to rise internally which makes us more in tune with our physical bodies. I wanted to teach my children the difference between the holy things and the profane things, but the beat that is used behind the nice words actually harmed my children which manifested through their attitudes. When we stopped listening to this (addictive) music, my children were far more peaceful! My now grown daughter Leah, wrote an important post on the subject of music, to see it go to: "Music, God's Call To Holiness". Leaving the music that we loved took submission and obedience to God, but He blessed us richly.

After the music issue was resolved I had greater spiritual freedom to teach my children. We learned about prayer; see: Are Your Children Learning To Pray? It is very possible to teach your very young children to sit quietly while you pray, and listen to you. Just yesterday we were praying at a friends home with her 2 and 4 year old children, they were sitting and listening for almost 2 hours of our praying and were happy and sweet during the whole time. This is good training, Mothers.

God taught us to put on the Armor Of God, see: Are Your Children Putting On the Whole Armor Of God Daily?

We taught our children the Word of God, see: Are Your Children Filled With God's Holy Word?
Parents, teach your very young children to memorize the word of God!

It took Time, Work and Commitment, see: Are Your Children a Delight To Be Around?



Oh let us live a holy and sanctified life unto the Lord Jesus Christ! Our children will then learn what it means to be holy unto God!

And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.
(Leviticus 20:26)


Let us teach our children godliness!


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wise words, Sarah... and godly advice...

sarah said...

Praise God, Natasa!

I must speak out what God has done! He has done great things and He will continue for all eternity!

God bless you richly dear sister!
lovingly in our Savior,
Sarah

Donaldson Family said...

What a blessing your blog is for young mothers. Thank you for sharing your wisdom.

God bless you,
Jessica

sarah said...

Thank you Jessica,

All glory to God for guiding and helping His own!

I appreciate your encouraging comment!

In our Savior's love,
Sarah