JOURNEY OUTSIDE THE CAMP

Want to be a better parent? Well, you can't. A review of "Give Them Grace" by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson

As a parent who is deeply concerned with bringing up children who will follow after the Lord all the days of their lives, I've read a number of parenting books. Some I've lapped up. Some I've abandoned halfway. When people ask me for recommendations, I would only list a handful: Grace-based Parenting by Tim Kimmel, Bringing up Boys by James Dobson, Shepherding a Child's Heart by Ted Tripp and the DVD series Getting to the heart of Parenting by Paul Tripp (Ted's brother). Now, I also want to recommend Give Them Grace by mother and daughter writing team, Elyse M Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson.

What's different about this book? Some books are mind-hammering. The truth of God comes to shatter my human wisdom as I turn the pages of those books. Give Them Grace is a mind-warping book. I felt like my understanding of the gospel was melting and twisting (in a good way), like I was in a large box made of plasticine and suddenly finding it shifting out of shape because heat was applied to it. It's not that what I've understood about the gospel was wrong. It's just that when it came to parenting, I was still applying a works righteousness attitude to raising kids.

An important key to parenting: simplicity

During our Spiritual Habits workshop last Saturday, we talked about how to nurture children so that they would have their own relationship with God and that their knowledge and experience of God would grow based on daily interactions with God. The inevitable question would be with the busyness of modern life, parents and children have precious little time to spend with God, so how would anyone find the time to spend with God?

How are you teaching the Bible to your children?

Most parents understand the great need to teach their children the Bible. This is a good impulse and a very necessary one if we are to bring up the children in the way of the Lord. But there is a right way to teach our children the Bible and a wrong way. Which way are you teaching your children?

Let's take a look at two people who taught the Bible in the right way: Lois and Eunice. They appear in 2 Timothy. Lois was the grandmother of Timothy and Eunice was his mother. Timothy's father appears to have been an unbelieving Greek (Acts 16:3). Both Lois and Eunice taught Timothy from the scriptures (2 Tim 1:5). Their scriptures would have been the Old Testament to us. Both women made a great effort to make sure Timothy understood the scriptures correctly and when he finally heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, it meshed with what he knew of God from his Jewish faith and the lights came on for him and he became a believer. In 2 Timothy 3:14-15, we see Paul talking about the faith that his grandmother and mother taught Timothy:

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

Spiritual Habits of a Child's Heart 2011

This year's Spiritual Habits of a Child's Heart symposium will be held on Saturday, 23 July 2011 at Fairfield Methodist Church. The symposium is meant for parents, Sunday School teachers and Children's Ministry workers. It's a one day affair that covers spiritual formation in children, children and new media, raising children in a postmodern world, managing the transition years and raising sexually pure kids.

Brave enough to follow

Our family went one more time to listen to Stuart Briscoe. He was speaking at a missions conference at Grace Baptist chuch entitled, "Brave Enough to Follow". We would have liked to have attended the other sessions and workshops but our schedule did not permit. But we feel really blessed that we could be at the very last session where Dr. Briscoe was the closing speaker.

He spoke about being brave enough to follow Jesus. Our Lord's mission for each believer is to go into the world and bring the gospel to people who have not heard it. So many Christians today come to believe and are happy to be a believer but they stop short in their walk and do not carry on with the rest of what it means to be a Christian. We are called to go. All of us. Without exception.

A father's role in families

One of the things my wife and I discovered during the 2010 Children and Families Conference was how wives longed for their husbands to be more engaged with parenting their children. These wives acknowledged they had good and caring husbands and yet, their husbands didn't seem compelled to take a leading role in the spiritual training of the children. Indeed, they didn't take on their duties as the spiritual heads of the household.

One woman, during the closing forum, asked what she could do to get her husband more active in leading the family in worshipping God in prayer and Bible study. My wife gave an answer that stemmed from our own experience. She told the woman she could do two things: i) pray for God to act upon her husband and ii) pray for God to help her submit to her husband instead of taking over the reins of the household.

National Children & Families Conference

Scripture Union and TRAC, The Methodist Church in Singapore are jointly organising the National Children and Families Conference. This is a follow up from the first two successful conference called Spiritual Habits of a Child's Heart. Now, they've expanded the conference to cover the role of families and churches in ministering to children. It's a three-day conference with the aim of equipping parents, care givers and churches with skills and knowledge on how to develop and nurture spirituality and spiritual disciplines in children.

My wife and I are very very privileged to be part of the conference. We're running the workshop called "Developing Spiritual Habits in a Child". We wish we could attend all the other sessions too!

The conference runs 9 - 11 September 2010 at Paya Lebar Methodist Church. Brochure formation available on this PDF file.

Read. Pray. Love. Repeat.

(This article first appeared in KKMC's Focus newsletter)
by Amos and Jennifer Kwok

“Is it possible for Satan to repent and be saved? If God is so willing to save us, will he not also want to save Satan?” That’s not a question asked by an adult or even a young adult. An 11-year-old child asked it during Sunday School class.

It excites the heart of the teacher to hear such a question. It shows that the class is thinking about God, the Bible and the lesson. At Sunday School, the objective is not about being a babysitting service while the parents are in service; nor is the objective simply to teach a few Bible stories and then feel happy about it. Our objective is to disciple the children in partnership with parents and ground them in a deep-rooted relationship with God.

Psalm 1:1-3
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. 

That is the picture we have in our minds when we take on the task of discipling the children. Over the years, we have adapted, changed and refined how we go about doing this. As the world impresses its views and standards on our children, we want to counter the ways of the world (the counsel of the wicked; the seat of scoffers, etc.) by giving them a biblical worldview—teaching them to see themselves and the world through God’s eyes.

Parents are the primary spiritual trainers

My wife and I had the honour and privilege to address the fine folks at All Saints' Church this afternoon. We spoke for a little over two hours about how to cultivate piritual habits in children. (The content was very similar to what we taught at the Spiritual Habits seminar. In fact, one of the staff from All Saints' had attended that one and invited us to deliver something similar at her church.)

We emphasised the role of parents as the primary spiritual teachers of their children. After the session was over, one of the Sunday School teachers chatted with us and she lamented that in her experience, many parents had come up to her to complain that Sunday School had not done a good job instilling a spiritual life in their children. This teacher was so shocked that parents were expecting the Sunday School teachers to do the heavy lifting on forming a spiritual life in the children. What was worse, many parents did not have their own spiritual lives but recognised that it was something important that they wanted their children to have. But instead of developing their own spiritual lives and then teaching their children how to do likewise, they pushed the responsibility to Sunday School.

Goals of parenting

When my wife and I spoke at the recent Spiritual Habits of a Child's Heart symposium, we asked the question to the participants of our workshop: What are your parenting goals?

The question appears to be straightforward but the tricky part is that most parents have not stopped to think through this question. When we are at work and have a project to do, we like to start with the vision and goals. But with parenting, we have a kind of hope-for-the-best attitude which frankly, is a little alarming.

To help the participants think about the goals of parenting, we gave them four questions to work through.

1. What do you want for your children's lives?
2. What do you want them to be like when they grow up?
3. What do you deem as a successful life for your children?
4. How do you want your children to relate to God?