I want for you to be equipped to minister in the context of your life, your children, your relationships, your love and your walk with God. Not to give you a list, a glossary and a form to follow.
The most important things I wish I understood earlier are:
How unreliable human reasoning is
How much we tend to look to human reason rather than the Word of God
To LOOK for the answers or principles that we could glean our answers to life from
That all these principles need to work in harmony with God’s other principles for living
And that every day He reveals more understanding of who He is and how He desires us to live.
The Word has the answers!
2PE 1:3 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.
The word doesn’t contradict it’s message or it’s methods/patterns
It is not prudish or squeamish. It deals with what is. It doesn’t hide truth. It is not overly/unnecessarily detailed in description. It honours modesty. It is not crude.
The word is to be divided accurately which in turn sets a pattern of:
Words in season
Appropriate places and times
Dealing age appropriately
On "rightly dividing" the Word for our children:
2 Tim 2:15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles (or “rightly divides”) the word of truth.
2 Tim 3:16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
ECC 3:1-11 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: 3:2 a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time.
I have never read the story of Onan spilling his seed on the ground to our children. Nor of Tamar later seducing her Father in Law.
Hearing about the babies slaughtered by King Herod at the time he was searching for Jesus – might not be the best thing to read to a 3 year old at bed time.
Studying “Song of Solomon” might not be the best timing for an adolescent son.
These are examples of ‘dividing the word’, or matching the time and season in how we handle the word – for our children.
Beyond rewards or desire for a particular outcome, we do as we do for the honour of being God’s child. I have learned disappointment when my desire or expectation for a particular fruit in a particular way has taken my focus away from simply serving God.
Be convicted in your hearts about the right way to go. Anything less will cause double-mindedness. Anything less will bring discouragement and a sense of failure when it ‘doesn’t go right’.
