Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Greetings, dear ones.

Thano is being a good boy at present. I hear the chainsaw screaming…because I’ve been screaming (not really) about the need to get our stack of firewood logs bucked up so the wood can be curing in this summer heat. And it looks to be another hot one today.

Already my day has taken an unexpected course…with an appointment at 10:30am…so I need to scramble.

My hope and prayer is that my devotional production of this morning with not be taken as condemnatory in any way. Please don’t allow that response.

Blessings on your own challenging day.

Love, Dad/Ray.

Do you agree with the strategy of the Creator in His design for human progeny? I begin by asking if you agree because I believe it is very important to agree—very important to comply with the way things have been set by the Creator—even though the same Creator allows you the freedom to disagree if you want. But consider again this general order—that people begin their existence as dependent babies under the oversight and care of parents. Within a healthy Biblical worldview, we have to believe that the ongoing perpetuation of human life is not just a big bunch of random chance that links individual parents with individual children. (Read Psalm 139 again.) Rather these relationships are prescribed assignments. And with these specific parental assignments come the general parental assignment to faithfully and properly nurture, discipline, and train their children while they are young and formable. Why? So that those children can learn to properly nurture, discipline, and train themselves when they move into independent adulthood—prepared to repeat that cycle with children of their own. Solomon states the ideal strategy this way: “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.”

When a person is a child, the parents do the training, examining, and testing for them. When that person is a mature adult, he is to do that for himself. And when a person is a young Christian, the Word of God, the Lordship of Christ, along with mature Christian leaders all lend training, examining, and testing so that that person can grow into maturity and do those things for himself. What an idea!

Can you think of anything more important for a mature Christian than to KNOW they are in the faith?—in right relationship with their Sovereign and Maker? This involves knowing how to examine and test oneself against the criteria of the Word of God as opposed to simply comparing themselves among themselves in the popular quest to feel good about themselves (2 Corinthians 10:12). I could get carried away with a huge list of scripture passages to use as a standard for measurement. But I’ll let you do that for yourself. Please do it for yourself! PLEASE!