Leaving a Godly Legacy, Part 12

Series:

Leslie Basham: Do you ever feel this way?

Chris: How awful a parent I think I was--compared to what I could have been.

Leslie Basham: We've all failed our children at one time or another, and God is ready to provide grace. This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss. Today is Friday, March 29.

All this week we've been in a series called Leaving a Godly Legacy. We've been challenged to raise our children according to God's plan and purpose. We'll hear from Nancy in just a minute, but we're also going to hear the reactions from some of the women who've been listening to this series along with us. Let's join them.

Speaker One: I'm the mother of four sons, and I'm 75 years old. Our three older children went through the 60s generation, which was the beginning of the disobedience that we see on television now. We lost one son to the 60s generation. The other three are all believers, but I have become a very praying mother.

What I prayed all these years for those sons and their wives and children is: "Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints--since the day we have heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God." And that's a prayer I've prayed every single day and have for years for all my sons, those daughters-in-law, and those grandchildren.

As you say, neither your parents, nor us--neither of us had all the wonderful books, the teaching, the insights of godly people teaching us. I had Dr. Spock, and he was not very good. What you're saying is that God's grace is sufficient. It really is--in how He has brought us to this point.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: We're talking about teenagers and 12-and 14-year-olds--remembering that you don't start parenting them at 12 and 14. It is from the earliest stages, where you're cultivating an appetite for something. That's where I think some parents don't realize how important those early influences are. The goal is that by the time your children are teenagers, they're involved with you in choosing things that are right; and that they're part of the process with you.

I think that if you just start at the teenage years and say, "No. No. No," it's going to be one very long, hard, losing battle probably. You've been developing a relationship with them, you've been teaching them the ways of God as it relates to respect. I would not have dreamed of facing my parents off. Not because I was afraid of them--they didn't rule our home with fear or with rules particularly--but because there was just such an instilled sense of honoring and respecting authority.

When did that happen? How did it happen? I don't know--but I know that by the time there were those issues, there was a fear of the Lord and a reverence and respect for authority. I don't want to sound like I was a perfect teenager; I wasn't. But there was certainly a restraint that I think the Lord placed around my heart--because from the earliest times there had been a sense that we as parents are responsible for these issues.

I want to say one thing about the culture. There is a sense in which the culture today is extremely challenging, and more so than the culture in which many of us grew up. But I think it can also be a tool of the enemy to make us feel hopeless and defeated, to focus on how bad the culture is today.

When you go back to the Scripture and the days in which the Scripture was written, the days in which New Testament believers had to raise their families--there's not a lot about our culture that can top some of those eras. The era of the Roman Empire was rife with homosexuality, with wickedness, with perversion. Those survivor-type of TV shows we have today were being lived out live in the coliseums in the Roman Era.

You go back earlier than that--to the early period of the Scriptures, to the Book of Genesis, just for example--and in the first chapters of the Bible, you have stories of incest, of rape, of adultery, of rebellion, of murder, of prodigal children. Those are not new sins. Ecclesiastes says that there's nothing new under the sun, and it's really hard to invent new kinds of sins. We're trying real hard today! I'm not saying that it's not difficult, extremely difficult; but I'm saying that God has always had a remnant who were willing to submit to Him and determined to walk with Him--as light--in the midst of a darkness.

It's not like we can look back on the 50s--you know the Leave It to Beaver days of television--and think it was all light then, and it was so much easier. Those days had their own kind of darkness. The greatest darkness is not so much the darkness of the culture as the darkness of our own human hearts--and our own pride and our selfishness. That's always been pretty much the same.

The expressions of it in society--and, yes, we didn't have the issues in the schools to the same extent that we do now--but sinners are sinners. And sinners need grace. What we needed to grow up in our generation, this generation needs the same thing. It's the mercy, the grace, and the truth of God. Let me also say this, the light shines the most brightly when the night is the darkest.

Chris: I was saved 41/2 years ago at the age of 37. My kids at that time were 19, 12 and 11. When you said a while ago that children will cultivate an appetite for what they're exposed to, I just sank. I thought, How awful of a parent I think I was--compared to what I could have been. The things that my children were exposed to as little children--I'm so thankful that God, when He saved me, immediately gave me a supernatural hunger to be godly.

My husband was saved not too long after that, and we decided that we were going to raise our children in a godly home. We decided to homeschool. The one daughter had already graduated and was in college, but my other two are--they will both be in high school next year. It's getting to be difficult to homeschool because I only have a high school education, but I really feel like the Lord wants me to teach them to be godly, more so than we...We do academics, but godliness is so important to me. What you said awhile ago--God transferring His heart to me to them. That's happening. I see a growth, a spiritual growth, in my kids that just blesses me.

My prayer is that they will learn to love God more than they love me, and that they will rise up and call me blessed. But there are always those struggles with them living in the days before--and they're all saved too, now. I always say to myself, I wish I could start over with my kids. My pastor's wife just leaned over and she said, "This can apply to your Sunday school class, too." I teach third grade Sunday school. I thought, That is so true. I do get the opportunity to start over. So if any of you are in children's ministry, you have that opportunity right there. I encourage you, if you're not in children's ministry, to get into children's ministry.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Chris, you've faced a difficult situation where your children already had some established ways of thinking and living; and to all of a sudden pull them out of school, to homeschool, to make some major changes and turn the ship midstream--could have precipitated a real confrontation. God apparently gave you direction and wisdom as to--knowing your heart and your hunger--as to what was the best way to do that. The way that God led you to do it may be different than the way God would lead another parent to do that.

That's where I keep coming back to this whole matter of prayer. If you're going to fight for your children--wrestle with God on their behalf, rather than having to focus your attention on wrestling with your children...Children are not the enemy...The devil is the enemy--you want to link arms with God and say, "Together we're going to hold onto these children."

But then remember, you must rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to make Christ real to your children. No matter what you say, no matter what you do--whether you start when they're in the womb or you start when they're 18--you're still dependent upon the power of the Holy Spirit. We're talking about spiritual truths. It's spiritually discerned. It doesn't make sense to the natural man.

And that, by the way, is one of the reasons that it's so important to pray that your children come to true regeneration, that they are truly converted. Not just that they make a profession of faith--but that they come under conviction of their sin; and that they are drawn by the Holy Sprit of God, to the cross of Christ, to the Gospel of Christ, to surrendering their lives to Christ--because once Christ is their Lord and their life, then you can appeal to the Holy Spirit within them to make the difference in their lives. Otherwise, you're working with flesh, you're working with natural man; and all you can do, in that case, is create a climate, an environment, that's conducive to spiritual growth. Ultimately God is the One who has to turn on the light, give them faith, give them grace, give them Christ--and you pray like crazy and get others praying with you. It's a matter of the glory of God that's at stake, and that I can get intense and fervent about.

Leslie Basham: We all need that kind of intensity when it comes to teaching truth to the next generation. All this week we've been in a series called Leaving a Godly Legacy. If you've missed any of it, why don't you give us a call and get a copy. It comes on two cassettes for a suggested donation of $8. Just call us at 1-800-569-5959 or visit ReviveOurHearts.com.

You can also write to us, and Nancy's here to let you know how meaningful it is when we receive your letters.

Nancy DeMoss: I can tell you that there has not been a single dull moment in my life since we first went on the air with Revive Our Hearts, just over six months ago. As I look back on these past months, I am so thankful for the people that God has raised up to partner with us in this ministry. What a blessing it's been to receive letters and e-mails and even calls from people who say, "We've been praying for you"--people who say, "I pray every day for you and for this ministry."

You cannot imagine how that encourages my heart--to know that there are people out there who share this vision and this burden to call women to personal revival through the principles of God's Word. Others have written to say, "God is using this ministry to change my life." What a blessing that is to hear about--marriages that are being restored and relationships that are being reconciled and people who had lost hope and were in despair, but God is using this ministry to reignite hope and grace in their lives. I'm so thankful for many who have written to say, "I want to support this ministry financially."

God has used those gifts as seeds that have been planted and are now producing a harvest in the lives of people today all across the United States who are listening to this program. If you haven't had a chance to write us yet, let me encourage you to do that. Tell us the station on which you listen to Revive Our Hearts. Tell us how God has used this ministry in your life; and then if God's made it possible, would you enclose a financial contribution? By writing that letter, by sending that gift, you're saying, "I want this program to continue to be aired in my community. I want other women to be able to hear this message, and I want to see women's hearts revived."

Leslie Basham:  

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss is a ministry partnership of Life Action Ministries.

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