“1 Therefore, putting aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, 2 like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, 3 if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.” (1 Peter 2:1-3)
In our home, nap time is a critically important time for everyone. With four children under eight (and one on the way), it is no understatement to say that it is almost more important for parental sanity than it is for the demeanor and physical needs of our younger children. A difficult situation presented itself about a year ago when our eldest no longer needed a regular nap in order to make it through the day.
My wife did a few things to augment Micah’s (my eldest child) nap time, one of which was to make sure that he would read his Bible for either a certain length of time or until he finished a full chapter before reading other books, playing Angry Birds on my iPod, or whatever. So this has been his pattern for quite some time. For a while he was trying to read through the Bible in a year, but he found that too big of a challenge for his reading abilities. But rather than get discouraged, he continued to read and usually chose his sections on his own.
I began noticing that he would tell us that he read Psalm 117 quite regularly. It wasn’t until he informed me that Psalm 117 is the shortest chapter in the whole Bible (only two verses) that I began to get a little suspicious.
“Hey, if I’ve got to read one chapter (even a few times each day), why not make it the shortest one so that I can do other fun stuff.” That was what I imagined his thought process to be – it would likely have been my own in his position. So, one day last week I decided to talk to Micah about it and told him that he should read more than the shortest chapter.
To my shock – and my extreme joy – he said that he’s been memorizing it. So, I opened up his Bible, and asked him to recite it for me. And he did. And he did it almost word for word perfectly. Not for Awana shares, trips to the kids’ prize box, or any other external reward offered to him – but because he wanted to.
Praise the LORD, all nations; Laud Him, all peoples! For His lovingkindness is great toward us, And the truth of the LORD is everlasting. Praise the LORD! (Psalm 117)
And when I asked him about this, he said that he’d already moved on to the next shortest chapter (another Psalm) and was working to memorize it.
What sheer joy this brings to my heart.
As a father, my hope and desire is for my children’s salvation. My hope and desire is that their new birth would be evident by many things, one of which is their desire to know God, His Word, and to serve Him.
I am overjoyed at my son’s initiative, implementation, and continuation of his own devotional plan that fits his personality and his abilities.
I am deeply humbled and challenged by my son’s initiative, implementation, and continuation of his own devotional plan – especially as it comes to memorization – because it shows me just how much better I could be doing.
People who have known my wife and I during her many pregnancies find it fun to guess the name of the soon-to-be-arriving addition to our family. After our first two sons, Micah and Noah, people began to see a pattern and would have fun guessing names. Well one of the criteria that I would consider is what the name means or who has had the same name in the past. And when it came down to selecting Noah’s name, I was not primarily thinking about his name-sake’s building, populating, and sailing of the ark, but I was thinking about how Peter described Noah as “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Pet 2:5).
My one and only main hope for all of my children is that the Lord saves them. All of the other hopes of a father are there – health, safety, success in life – but that one is primary. And by the grace of God, both of my oldest boys have made positive professions of faith. Last year Micah and I witnessed to one of his little neighborhood friends. Micah was helpful and active in the conversation, and that was very encouraging. Today I was talking to my wife and she relayed a story that she learned about today but it must have occurred yesterday. Hannah (almost 3) relayed the story that Noah had gone up to a neighbor boy and said the following, “You believe in fake gods but you need to believe in Jesus.” Now this friend is a little Hindu boy, and during our Bible time in the evenings we’ve talked about many things – one of which is that some people and some of our friends don’t believe in the real God.
Upon hearing this, she checked it out with Noah and found that the story was, in fact, true. Stephanie then encouraged Noah to be direct, but ask his friend if he knew that Jesus could forgive his sins if he repented and believed in Him. Noah’s reacted by saying, “Okay, I’m going to do that right now!” He marched outside, went to the fence, and talked to his friend. Now his friend reacted like most people do and didn’t want to hear about Christ, and I was pleased to hear that Noah was not downcast at this rejection by his friend.
So – back to the name – I’ve always hoped and prayed that Noah would not only believe in Christ but that he too would be a preacher of righteousness. Not that I have a 30 year plan laid out for him to get him into a pulpit somewhere, but my desire is that he would be a preacher of righteousness wherever he is. Whether he ends up in working in a factory or sitting behind a desk of a large corporation or anything else; wherever he goes, my desire is that he be a preacher of righteousness while he’s there…even, and especially, in a sandbox while playing with frogs.
I have been blessed with the opportunity to have evening before-bedtime Bible-time become a habit with my children. So much so that my kids practically stage a coup if we just sing and pray without reading if it is too late in the evening. Now I think that any child would have a desire for the consistency of a bed-time routine regardless if you read Mother Goose, Dr. Seuss, the Bible, or something else – but I am very grateful that my children have become accustomed to the Bible reading and look forward to it, and they do not really have a spoken desire to read something else.
Now if that isn’t sweet enough that my kids love Bible-time, they also love to talk about the Bible and ask questions…and that is where I am really pleased. Bible-time, in my house, is not just a time to read the stories of David and Goliath, Samson, Daniel and the Lions Den, and the birth of Jesus, but it is a time of teaching them big truths for their little hearts and minds to wrestle with. I might mention how I deal with some of the subject matter later (like the doctrine of the Trinity) and how I address it with them or what some of my goals are, but for now let it be known that we deal with some pretty heavy stuff for almost 6 year-old and a 3 ½ year old to wrestle with.
Although the nightly Bible-time that we have is very consistent, my preparedness for each time is not very consistent. I’m not saying that it is imperative that I need to study for hours each day in order to teach my children the evenings lesson (not that it would be a bad thing to do this and it would definitely be beneficial), but if we’re going to read the Bible (which we normally do) usually we read what the kids request. Noah might say, “I want to read Abraham” – this means…anything where Abraham is mentioned, and so the field is pretty wide open – and Micah might say “I want to read something that we’ve never read before,” so the field is wide open but it has lent to my not preparing anything. What I always prepare to do is to get the gospel message of their sin, God’s anger at sin, their just punishment before God, who Jesus is, His death and resurrection, and salvation grace through repentant faith – to get that message to them nightly. Now, this is no small thing, for these are the subjects that they must deal with first before any other level of teaching or application can be addressed. But, I did not like that I was walking in unprepared to deal with whatever we might read…so I tried something new yesterday.
The day before we’d read a little bit in Luke 2 about Jesus staying at the temple and interacting with the teachers. I told the boys that the next night we’d read about John the Baptist. So the next morning I read Luke 3 to be thinking about what we’d read later in order to be prepared. Now, I am not sure of which factor played the bigger role, but between having the Scripture on my mind during the day and the questions of my boys – I was greatly blessed by our Bible-time.
So without typing out our conversation (a conversation between a daddy and two small children is hard enough to follow when you’re present), suffice it to say that some of their questions, my answers, and the application of bearing fruit in keeping with repentance (Luke 3:8) and those not bearing fruit being cut down and thrown into the fire (Luke 3:9) were, I trust, helpful to their little minds and hearts as well as provoking me to want further study and understanding on some of the things in this text.
I don’t know how we would have progressed had I not been a little prepared for that specific passage, but I do know that having been prepared I was blessed more by reading and talking about the Word than other times.
…who’d’a thunk it?
So tonight – we’re reading about the baptism of Jesus. Fun stuff!
My nightly routine consists of driving home, coming inside the house, and getting mobbed by Noah asking me to play hide-and-seek (“pay hy-deek”). Well, we eat dinner, play, and do various fun things before bed time.
Stephanie normally puts our daughter down and I put the boys to bed. At bedtime, we pray, sing a song, and a set of normal questions are asked and answered (water, food, books, etc). But last night, a great thing happened. You see, sometimes there are breakthroughs or moments that bring so much joy that…it just makes being a dad so much fun. All of it is great, but the part that made my heart sing with proud-fatherly joy was about half way through when I was singing to Noah.
So tonight I did the same thing, only I brought my iPod with the recorder adapter to capture it. You can listen to it and share my joy below.
Now, I must apologize, because for some reason the recording sometimes jumps and skips a few seconds. I’m trying to figure it out, but until I can get a better recording, here’s something that, I hope, will make you smile. So, if you here the skips, it is not because of editing, its because of the recording.
Praise God for little children.
- by the way, the recorder was in the breast-pocket of my shirt...so the kids didn't know what was going on...for most of the time, any way.
My wife did a few things to augment Micah’s (my eldest child) nap time, one of which was to make sure that he would read his Bible for either a certain length of time or until he finished a full chapter before reading other books, playing Angry Birds on my iPod, or whatever. So this has been his pattern for quite some time. For a while he was trying to read through the Bible in a year, but he found that too big of a challenge for his reading abilities. But rather than get discouraged, he continued to read and usually chose his sections on his own. 
