God’s Design For Your Child

SUMMARY: This is the most important role you occupy: mentoring the child the Lord has placed under your influence. Lean into God, ask him for guidance, then submit to his wisdom, and you will bring up a child with whom God will be well pleased. And never, ever forget, even when they try to prove it wrong, your child was designed and built by God himself with the seeds of greatness implanted within their genetic code.

God Speaks—I Obey // Focus: Judges 13:12-14

So Manoah asked him, “When your words come true, what kind of rules should govern the boy’s life and work?” The angel of the Lord replied, “Be sure your wife follows the instructions I gave her. She must not eat grapes or raisins, drink wine or any other alcoholic drink, or eat any forbidden food.”

It may not be as dramatic as the visit Manoah and his wife received from the angel of the Lord. A mighty divine messenger probably won’t appear to you and freak you out. It is not likely that he will consume with fire the thanksgiving sacrifice you set before him. But your child is as every bit important to God as Samson was.

God would use Samson as one of the greatest deliverers of Israel the nation was to ever know. The stories of his battles with the Philistines are epic. His life was the grand story that both movies and books have retold over the ages. So to be sure, this family, and this baby that the angel of the Lord showed up in such an unforgettable way to announce, was going to become an altogether unique script in the religious history of Israel.

Yet I say again, the child that God gives you is no less important to God. That would be true of your grandchildren, too. It is also true of the children in your church, or your neighborhood, or in the classroom you manage. God has an indescribable love for them; he has plans for them that are beyond exciting; he has designed and built them with the seeds of greatness. Unlimited potential resides within their DNA.

Now it is up to you as a parent, grandparent, or mentor to figure out how to water those seeds of greatness in that child. That is a huge and sobering challenge, and you would do well to ask the Lord how he wants you to go about your task, as Manoah and his wife did in Judges 13:12. They asked the angel, “Give us the guidelines for growing this child into a great man!”

God has guidelines for you to follow, too. They are found primarily in his word. The whole of the Bible is an amazing guide for understanding the law of the Lord. Especially helpful is the book of Proverbs, which will show you day by day the way to inculcate wisdom, knowledge, and understanding into your child’s heart and mind. Another source of help is the Holy Spirit. Asking him daily in prayer to show you your child’s glidepath is a privilege you have because of your relationship with God. Just ask him, submit to him, expect his help, and God the Holy Spirit will walk with you as you train up your child in the way he or she should go. And then there is the body of Christ—men, women, grandparents, pastors, class leaders, and the parenting resources they offer are an incredibly helpful resource of parental richness that you would do well to tap into.

This is the most important role you occupy: mentoring the child the Lord has placed under your influence. Lean into God, ask him for guidance, then submit to his wisdom, and you will bring up a child with whom God will be well pleased.

And never, ever forget, even when they try to prove it wrong, your child was designed and built by God himself with the seeds of greatness implanted within their genetic code.

Choose You This Day: Pray for your child today. Ask God for wisdom in how he wants you to train them. Encourage them. And hang on to the fact that greatness is the potential within their DNA.[/shareable]

“	Don’t misconceive God; His purpose is for us to enjoy fruits, but He gave us seeds so that we can grow the fruits. Misuse of the seed is murder of the fruit! —ISRAELMORE AYIVOR

A Spiritual Vacation or a Spiritual Victory

When God Speaks—Be Quick to Obey!

SUMMARY: God always leads us in triumph. There is always more territory he has destined us conquer. There are always more enemies he has empowered us to defeat. And while a part of you may yearn to sit back and relax, the glory of what it means to be Christian is to march forward as more than a conqueror. And why would we not embrace our calling to conquer? We have the promise of God that he himself will drive out our enemies and give the honor of sharing in his victory.

God Speaks—I Obey // Focus: Joshua 13:1,6

When Joshua was an old man, the Lord said to him, “You are growing old, and much land remains to be conquered.… “I myself will drive these people out of the land ahead of the Israelites.”

We will rest when we get to heaven. Until then, there is still work to be done. I am sorry to disappoint you if you were thinking of your Christianity as a spiritual vacation. It is not; it is a spiritual victory. Of course, there are ebbs and flows in the journey of faith along with regular rhythms of renewal that we call sabbath, but there will always be more promises to possess, territory to claim, enemies to overcome, and victories to secure.

Thus, it will always be. That is the ongoing saga of redemptive history. While God brings us through challenges and gives us victory over our enemies, the end has yet to be written. Of course, the outcome has been predetermined, but it is still in the making. That is why we say he leads us from victory to victory.

While the promises of God are as good as done, and even though the outcome has been predetermined, that never means the believer gets to sit back and rest on their laurels. God’s rest is not a piece of geography—not at this point, anyway—it is a spiritual condition of triumph. That triumph is experienced in the advance of his kingdom through our lives. Through the work that he has given us to do, we are victorious—and that is what propels us along our journey of joyful rest.

That is evident in the story of Joshua 13. General Joshua has been one of history’s most brilliant military strategists. He has won conquest after conquest against enemies that were fiercer, stronger, better equipped, and more battle-hardened than Israel’s army. But God was on Israel’s side, and city after city fell into Israel’s hands. Now, after a long period under Joshua, the time had come for others to lead in the remaining battles.

Yes, battles remained. Get used to it! In preparation for the end of his career, God told Joshua to divide the land between the twelve tribes. He was to assign specific geographical territory to each tribe, even though some of it was yet to be firmly in Israel’s possession. So why divide the land between the tribes before Israel had conquered it?

For one thing, Joshua was advancing in years, and the day of his death was looming. The task would not be complete by the time of his passing. Furthermore, there would not be a singular leader over Israel for the next four hundred years as they continued to possess and settle the land, so God assigned Joshua the task of allotting the land among Israel’s tribes, clans, and families.

Behind all of this was a great promise from God: he was on their side, and he would see to it that the land came under their possession. While they would have to do work and fight wars to possess it, God tells them, “I myself will drive these people out of the land ahead of the Israelites.” God’s promise to work on Israel’s behalf was so certain that the division of the land could be made even before it was conquered. When God makes a promise, it is as good as done. God was asking Israel through this division of land to picture what he had promised. As we have seen before in Joshua, the faith principle is that we need to picture what we want to possess.

So, what’s the point? Simply this: God always leads us in triumph. There is always more territory to conquer. There are always more enemies to defeat. And while a part of you may yearn to sit back and relax, the glory of what it means to be Christian is to march forward as more than a conqueror. And why would we not embrace our calling to conquer? We have the promise of God that he himself will drive out our enemies.

Yes, the time will come for rest soon enough. In the meantime: onward toward yet another predetermined victory.

Choose You This Day: Memorize Romans 8:37-39, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

“

Any victory that does not more than conquer is just an imitation victory. While we are suppressing and wrestling, we are only imitating victory. If Christ lives in us, we will rejoice in everything, and we will thank and praise the Lord. We will say, “Hallelujah! Praise the Lord” forever.

—WATCHMAN NEE

All Hat, No Cattle

When God Speaks—Be Quick to Obey!

SUMMARY: Too many leaders today are proficient at rising to a position of power, and they might even have the systems in place to keep them there, but they have not moved the ball down the field during their time in leadership. They occupy places of importance but have no track record of impact. They are “all hat and no cattle,” as they say in Texas. Having a position of importance isn’t the end game; it’s the means to the goal. Leaving a footprint of service, blessing, and accomplishment is the best evidence of noteworthy leadership.

God Speaks—I Obey // Focus: Judges 12:11

After Ibzan died, Elon from the tribe of Zebulun judged Israel for ten years. When he died, he was buried at Aijalon in Zebulun.

Elon judged Israel for ten years, then he died. End of story! And you will find his administration not that unusual in the book of Judges. There were plenty of other leaders who occupied positions of import but had no track record of impact. They were “all hat and no cattle, ” as they say in Texas.

I don’t want to be a leader like that, and you don’t want to sit under the leadership of a man or woman like that, be it a pastor or a president. Too many leaders in our day are proficient at rising to a place of power and authority, and they might even have the systems set up around them to keep them there, but they have not moved the ball down the field during their time of leadership.

Now, to be certain, there is nothing wrong with having a position of importance, nor with desiring that. Those positions can provide much larger opportunities for impact. But a position of importance is not the end game; it is the means to the goal. Leaving a huge footprint of effective service, blessing, and mission accomplished is the best evidence of noteworthy leadership.

So what does it take to have both importance and impact? Let me offer some thoughts:

First, while you can position yourself to be important, I believe letting God promote you to places of power and authority is the better way to go. Of course, you need to show yourself winsome, committed, visionary, and skillful, but it is the sovereign hand of God that is the greatest PR machine in the universe. Let God promote you.

Second, get a vision—and not just a vision for your own fame or success. How will the people you lead be better off because of your leadership? How will your organization—family, church, business, community—creatively and compellingly make a difference by collaboratively marshaling your corporate energies to do what you do? Just how do you expect to change the world?

Third, make sure you have the character to match your charisma. Charisma will attract followers; character will keep you in leadership.

Fourth, serve the people you lead. They best lead who also serve—a philosophy that is not talked about all that much in our culture, but was clearly modeled by the greatest leader of all time, Jesus Christ. Leaders of impact are truly servants of the public.

Fifth, through your influence, make it your chief aim to make Jesus famous. I am not speaking only of what we would term spiritual “leaders.” In whatever you do—at home, in the marketplace, in the academe, in the halls of government—you are on duty for Christ. As the Apostle Paul says, “In whatever you do, do it with all your might, as serving the Lord, not men; it is the Lord Christ you are serving.” (Colossians 3:23-24)

If you desire to lead, you desire a good thing. But check your motives, make sure your goals are worthy, submit yourself to God, get filled with his Spirit, then get out there to serve the people and to make Jesus famous.

Choose You This Day</strong Whatever state of life you are in, ask the Lord to give you impact. He hears and answers prayer.

“	Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing. —ALBERT SCHWEITZER

Naming Names

When God Speaks—Be Quick to Obey!

SUMMARY: Perhaps you think that reading through the seemingly endless lists of names in Scripture is unnecessary. Maybe you think taking the time to utter these names is boring, meaningless, and a colossal waste of your time. But let me ask you this: why do you think God, in his providential oversight of bringing the Bible into existence, saw fit to include so many statistical and genealogical lists? Do you think it was merely for historical purposes? Or were they to build the faith of his people? I would argue for both. Don’t neglect these genealogical praise songs!

God Speaks—I Obey // Focus: Joshua 12:1-2

These are the kings east of the Jordan River who had been killed by the Israelites and whose land was taken. Their territory extended from the Arnon Gorge to Mount Hermon and included all the land east of the Jordan Valley: King Sihon of the Amorites… King Og of Bashan, the last of the Rephaites….The king of Jericho…The king of Ai, near Bethel…The king of Jerusalem…The king of Hebron…

We have seen it many times already in reading through the Old Testament: endless lists of meaningless names—at least, meaningless to us. But not meaningless to the people of Israel! Every name is a story—a God-story, to be specific—of God’s provision for his people and punishment for his enemies. And every time Moses or Joshua wrote these lists down, they became a kind of checklist of praise for the people of Israel. You might say that these were praise songs for statisticians. God even loves the numbers geek!

We might be tempted to just skip over these names when we come to them in our Bible reading—at least I am. But I would encourage you not to do that. As an act of worship, read the names out loud. Of course, you won’t know how to pronounce half of them, so just make them up. Remind God of what he did for his people. Of course, God doesn’t need reminding, but in reminding him, you are really reminding yourself that the activity of God is rooted in history—it is real; that God is for his people—he is not an uncaring, distant deity; and that God fulfills his promises, which includes empowering his people to overcome their enemies.

I would then encourage you to list out your own victories. Write a “faithlist” of things that God has done for you. Go back into your past and dredge up your God-stories. Write down the things he has done for you lately. Include little provisions and big miracles. Remember what God has done and memorialize it on a list. Then thank God for each one of those answers—out loud. Do it as an act of worship. Remind God of how great he is. Of course, he already knows his own greatness, but you will be building your own faith as you do it.

Perhaps you think that what I am suggesting is unnecessary. Maybe you think it is a colossal waste of your time. But let me ask you this: why do you think God, in his providential oversight of bringing the Bible into written form, saw fit to include so many genealogical and statistical lists? Do you think it was merely for historical purposes? Or are they to build the faith of his people? I would argue for both. They are to remind us that God’s work is not merely a spiritual fable; it is rooted in history. Moreover, what God has done in history is to teach us that he will do again. Since he is a covenantly faithful God, the interventions, provisions, and victories that he wrought for his people in the past, he will work into the lives of his people today.

These statistical and genealogical praise lists are powerful. That is why I would suggest that you come up with your own list from time to time in your journey of faith. There is an old gospel song authored in the late 1800’s by Johnson Oatman that captures what I am calling you to do. When I was growing up, my faith community often sang this song, Count Your Blessings. One of the verses and the chorus went like this:

So amid the conflict, whether great or small,
Do not be discouraged; God is over all.
Count your many blessings; angels will attend,
Help and comfort give you to your journey’s end.

Count your blessings;
Name them one by one.
Count your blessings;
See what God hath done.

Truly, God has been good!

Choose You This Day: Try counting your many blessings today? Make a faithlist of all that God has done for you. You will be amazed at God’s goodness and filled with more faith to take in the day ahead.

“	After nourishment, shelter, and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world. —PHILIP PULLMAN

Don’t Confuse The Gift With The Package

When God Speaks—Be Quick to Obey!

SUMMARY: Newsflash: Your spiritual leader is flawed. Gifted, yes, but also flawed. So don’t confuse the gift with the package. Lift them to God in prayer today. He or she is probably wrestling with a personal flaw. Instead of idolizing them, intercede for them. That would be the best way to return the favor for their spiritual oversight in your life.

God Speaks—I Obey // Focus: Judges 11:29-31

At that time the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he went throughout the land of Gilead and Manasseh, including Mizpah in Gilead, and from there he led an army against the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord. He said, “If you give me victory over the Ammonites, I will give to the Lord whatever comes out of my house to meet me when I return in triumph. I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”

From a historical perspective, Israel may have been scraping the bottom of the barrel when Jephthah was chosen to lead them. God had an altogether higher purpose in using this unlikely man as a judge, deliverer, and leader of the nation, but Jephthah was a piece of work. He was an outcast in his family, literally and figuratively. Born from a union between his father and a prostitute (Judges 11:1), his brothers from another mother flat-out rejected his legitimacy to their father’s inheritance. And they were not shy in telling him why he would do well to get the heck out of Dodge (Judges 11:2).

As a result, Jephthah removed himself from his father’s “real” family—there is some indication that it wasn’t just a good idea that he leave, it was good for his health, as in, they would have killed him. He lived in exile, and while there, developed quite a reputation as a fighter and leader of a band of marauders who made their living taking what they wanted, perhaps even exhorting money in exchange for protection from the locals (Judges 11:3).

Now the Israelites had once again fallen under the dominion of a foreign nation—this time, the Ammonites—and no one else in Israel stepped to the plate as a leader. So the elders turned to someone they despised but whose fighting skills they reasoned would serve them well now that they needed a deliverer. They came with hat in hand to Jephthah to ask him to lead (Judges 11:4-6). Jephthah agreed, but only after extracting an admission that they had been jerks to him all his life and that they would make him ruler over them should he win the battle against the Ammonites (Judges 11:7-11). They didn’t have much of a choice, so they agreed to his conditions.

Now here is where the story gets even weirder: as Jephthah leads Israel to war, we are told that the Spirit of the Lord comes upon him (Judges 11:29), but in the very next two verses, we see that the first thing he does is to make one of the most foolish vows you can imagine:

Meanwhile, Jephthah had vowed to the Lord that if God would help Israel conquer the Ammonites, then when he returned home in peace, the first person coming out of his house to meet him would be sacrificed as a burnt offering to the Lord! (Judges 11:30-31, LB)

Alternative meanings have been assigned to this rash vow to sanitize it for our modern minds. Precisely because of the juxtaposition of these two verses with the antecedent verse, that is, how could someone filled with the Holy Spirit make such an evil vow, commentators have suggested that Jephthah’s declaration really meant that he would force his daughter (the first thing coming out of his house) to become the living sacrifice of a young woman living in perpetual virginity. But the simplest way to read the verse is to understand that he meant to literally offer a human sacrifice if the Lord gave him victory.

Pretty messed up, wouldn’t you say? So the question is legitimate: how could someone filled with the Holy Spirit make such an evil declaration? And perhaps we wonder that in our own context when we see leaders who have been uniquely gifted by God turn around and say weird things or do dumb stuff. How could an amazingly gifted communicator or a miracle-working faith healer or mesmerizing worship leader misappropriate money, or have an illicit affair or promote a false teaching?

I think the easiest explanation for that is simply that we should never confuse the gift with the package. In other words, God’s gift is always placed within flawed human packages—and even if the person so gifted never goes off the rails, they are still sin-broken people. The fact is, God uses broken people to accomplish his purposes, and that is a grace to his people. If he used only the perfect, he would use no one.

Of course, that does not excuse bad behavior; it just explains it. So, the bottom line is that as you view the gifted spiritual leaders in your life, celebrate the gift that God has placed upon their ministry, but don’t idolize the person. Like you, they, too, are human. Furthermore, don’t limit God from empowering you with his Holy Spirit by thinking you are too flawed and unqualified. Remember, as someone has said, God doesn’t choose the qualified, he qualifies the chosen.

Thank God for his gifts. They are a grace to us.

Choose You This Day: Lift your spiritual leader in prayer today. He or she is probably wrestling with a personal flaw. Instead of idolizing them, intercede for them.

“	If God only used perfect people, nothing would get done. God will use anybody if you’re available. —RICK WARREN

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