Kids & Parenting

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Defending the Faith

We have taken God out of our schools, kindergarten through college. The only evidence the secular world sees of Christianity, is through a crazy sect of people who call themselves a ‘Baptist’ church that protests soldier’s funerals, or lunatics who ‘hear voices’ on television. God has become a punch-line, instead of Almighty Creator. He is rejected as Creator in textbooks as early as pre-school, with the all-too-familiar, ‘millions of years ago’. Sex and violence are commonplace in movies, television, music and video games. We are fighting a war of immorality and selfishness from every side, including the church. We are seeing and hearing about people of faith who are stealing money from the church, or pastors and priests who have been caught molesting children. And we wonder why we’re losing our kids.

My husband and I did our best to raise our children using biblical principles. We also tried to live what we believed. God was ever-present in our home every day of the week. We made mistakes, but we claimed Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” (NKJV). We knew our faith in this verse would insure their place as believers, as teenagers, and then as adults, allowing for the inevitable moments of weakness in between.

When I was in the sixth grade nearly forty years ago my parents would have to purchase gas for the upcoming work-week on Saturday night because everything was closed on Sunday, God’s day. Although my family didn’t go to church, I knew the day was special for that reason. A few years ago our church took our elementary-aged children camping for the weekend. A local congregation provided worship service to the campers on Sunday morning. Our group and a handful of others, mostly from the older generation, were the only people to attend. What bothered me most was that as we worshipped under an open-air pavilion, parents brought their children to the playground, which was right next to our service, allowing them to run and play, squealing and yelling as we tried to hear the message. “Couldn’t they wait for just one half hour?” was all I could think. There was no reverence for what was taking place, from the children or their parents.

We are in the last days. As I watch my own children who are currently in the middle of their own battles and moments of weakness mentioned earlier, I am convinced of this. I don’t have any new and revolutionary answers as to how we can help defend the faith so our children can withstand the enemies of this world, other than to do as we are instructed in I Peter 3:15. What I do know is we need to keep fighting, keep teaching, keep praying, keep setting genuine examples, and most of all, keep on believing in our loving God who has this situation covered with His never-ending grace.

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