Next Sunday is our annual “Education Sunday.” I love this day! We kick off our new Sunday School year, thank God for all our teachers, give all our students commemorative pens, and listen to a message on the importance of teaching. It’s a great day!
Last year in the August newsletter I shared an old poem that I wrote several years ago in an attempt to express my gratitude for the church’s role in the spiritual growth of my kids. I won’t bore you with the totality of it again, but I do want to repeat the last few stanzas:
Let’s ponder together the awesome wonder of God and His salvation -
And how He seeks lost boys and girls and grants them regeneration.
He uses “means,” the Bible teaches, to call His own to His Son;
Means of grace like the Word and prayer, but also a surprising one -
In an amazing way He uses us to teach the girls and boys.
We speak the words; He gives new life, and they receive great joy!
So may all our kids know this wonderful joy of being born again;
Please use us as You save them, Lord, in spite of all of our sin.
So please dear Lord, we lift this prayer: Raise up the next generation!
May they know You, the one true God, and the joy of Your salvation!
This is what we long for and pray for and cry out for – that our children will know God and glorify Him with their lives.
What gives you joy? With that question in mind, consider 3 John 4 - I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. Who wrote this? The apostle John. Remember him?
- John, the disciple whom Jesus loved.
- John, who was on the Mount of Transfiguration.
- John, who witnessed the miracles of Jesus.
- John, who was leaning on the breast of Jesus at the institution of the Lord’s Supper.
- John, who was the first, with Peter, at the empty tomb.
- John, who fellowshipped with the resurrected Christ.
- John, who saw Jesus on the island of Patmos as he wrote the book of Revelation.
- John, who witnessed heaven’s worship.
- John, who received the glorious vision of the New Heaven and New Earth and the New Jerusalem, the Holy City.
- John, who saw the river of the water of life flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, down the middle of the great street of the city.
Now – ponder all that John saw and experienced, and the wonder and the awe and the joy that must have accompanied all those experiences.
And then ponder his matter-of-fact statement in 3 John 4: “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”
Dear parents of RCC, when it comes to your kids, what gives you the greatest joy?
Think about it: John had some pretty amazing experiences. But according to his own inspired words, not a single one of them produced more joy in his heart than hearing that the next generation was walking in the truth!
Is there anything that brings you more joy than knowing your kids are saved and are walking in God’s truth?
And how do they walk in God’s truth? We proclaim to them the gospel. Over and over and over. We teach them. We educate them in the things of God. We teach them God’s Word. Again and again and again.
It begins in the home with parents. The church provides the reinforcing, supplementary ministries of Sunday School, Solid Rock, and Kids Rock; not to take over the role of the parents, but to provide help for those who want it.
Dear church family, may God grant us the grace and the zeal to always be a church that teaches upcoming generations the whole counsel of God, for His glory and their good.
Pressing on with you, with our eyes fixed on Jesus,
Pastor Butch
