We're desperately trying to work out the bugs so your comments can be viewed....between now and then, I'd still like to field questions, so I'm entering them myself. Here's a response from someone to the John 3:16 entry.....
So you are saying that if we have come to know the Lord and accepted him as our savior, then we are of his sheep, and we were chosen by him long long before we ever knew about it? What about our children, I have a huge fear for them, this keeps me on my knees begging for their salvation. Is there anything that you can tell me about that to calm my fears?
Christi and I have three little ones so I share your burden. Let me start by saying this.....I'm not sure I want to calm your fears. I like the thought of fearful parents who aren't going to contract out their privileged role of teaching and training their children in righteousness to the church staff and sunday school teachers. I like the thought of desperate, needy, clingy, hungry, burdened parents....because I believe these parents will saturate their homes with the gospel of Christ and they'll bend their knees in begging for the souls of our children. If this truth turns me, as a parent, Godward and makes me more dependent on Him and His divine work in the hearts of my children, I'm embracing it all the more!! Frankly, the more and more acquainted I become with my own failings as a parent, the more and more comforted I am in knowing that God's the Saver through and through! So that comfort in God's saving ability teams up with my fear and trembling for the souls of my children so that I parent with a burdened trust and a striving rest.
We can't save our children, anymore than we can a friend or a neighbor or a brother or a sister. But we can prepare the soil. We can bathe our homes in prayer and wonder at the glories of Christ. We can worship with our words and our actions and hope that our children smell the aroma of Christ in us and someday say "mmmmmm, that smells gooooooood." We can teach the word in daily/weekly home studies, while begging for their little souls, and hope that someday they will hear the Shepherd's voice.
Please don't let anyone calm your fears. Please don't let anyone say something to you that causes you to exhale and relax and sit back on flowery beds of ease. Parenting is a high call and we are stewards with little plots of soil. Our only response can be to do what God has told us to do.....
Deut 6:5-9 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
GREAT question burdened, fearful parent. I hope this helps. :)
Ben
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3 comments:
How does this gel with the idea of "age of accountability"? This implication seems to be that an infant who dies and who was not chosen will spent eternity in hell (and if they are chosen they will spend eternity in heaven?)
The truth of the Bible doesn't "gel" with the idea of an "age of accountability", because that's just what it is; an idea. Contrived from the finite mind of man, and found nowhere in the Bible. In fact, the Bible teaches in direct opposition to this idea. Psalm 51:5 says, "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me." It simply is not biblical to adopt the idea of an age where a human being "becomes accountable" to God for sin.
I was just pointed to this essay written by Desiring God staff that I think is a worthwhile contribution to the conversation re: young ones. Here's the link:
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Articles/ByDate/2006/1622_What_happens_to_infants_who_die/
You may have to copy and paste it to your browser.
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