GODLY PARENTING IN A GODLESS AGE Eric Abwao

Maybe you have said it or heard it from others; “I’m so glad I did my parenting a long time ago when times were not as hard as today.” While it indeed may be true that in certain ways the times are more evil, we must always keep in sight what God sets forth before us in His Word as hope for parents living in whatever time and age. It must be crystal clear to each of us that God’s grace is sufficient for the task He has set on our shoulders.
Think about what it must have been to bring up your three sons when all the rest of the world around you was given to such wickedness that God decided to destroy all of them. Such was the time when Noah and his wife were called to bring up his sons.
Consider the time of Amram and Jochebed when as slaves they were yet the parents of Moses, Aaron and Miriam. In fact concerning Moses, they only had a short season to train and teach him before surrendering him into the Lord’s providence – and that into the wicked household of Pharaoh. By the grace of God they were able to instil in Moses a clear sense of who he was as a child of God, as a Hebrew and as one called to serve and fear God alone. Moses did not forget this and later chose to suffer the afflictions of the people of God instead of enjoying the pleasures he had at his disposal in the palace of Pharaoh.
Reflect about the time in the New Testament when a young believing Jew was married to an unbelieving Greek and they had a son. This son was to be raised up in God’s way in the middle of a time which was filled with so much immorality and a huge part of the population was in slavery. And so Eunice, the mother together with Loice, the grandmother, sought to bring-up this child Timothy, in the manner set forth in God’s Word. It pleased the Lord to bless the work of their hand and Timothy becomes a godly man in an evil time.
How should you bring-up children in this age? How do you provide solutions to needs they have? How do we differentiate what will be to the child’s spiritual advantage from that which would be disadvantageous? Your hope must not be in yourself nor in your children but in the Lord.
Consider Job and how he parented in his prevailing context. Kindly ask yourself, how did Job live before God and his family? And secondly, how did he parent his ten children?
JOB 1:1-5
1There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. 2There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. 3He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 female donkeys, and very many servants, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east. 4His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day, and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. 5And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, “It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did continually.

THE PIETY OF JOB
We make it very challenging for our children to walk in holiness if as parents we live for this world. I realize that as parents we can’t give grace to our children. There are many godly parents whose children are unbelievers and many ungodly parents whose children are believers. But having said this, we do know that God will bless the training of children according to His Word. God is pleased to use the means of parents’ teaching, instructing, guiding, admonishing and praying for their children’s spiritual gain.
We need to stop and ponder whether our parenting will lead our children to destruction’s ‘wide way’ or to salvation’s ‘narrow path’. As parents are we on the lonely, straight and narrow path that leads to life or the vogue and wide path which leads to damnation?
Parenting in godless times begins by focusing on the parent. We need to ask, “What is God saying about my life and my relationship to my children?” Let’s consider the very instructive testimony of Scripture about the piety of Job.
“1There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. 2There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. 3He possessed.....” – Job 1:1
First note the ordering of Job’s life. Before his possessions are mentioned in verse three, his family is introduced in verse two. And before his family is spoken of, we are first told about his walk in God. Should this not be the priority we all strive for in our lives?
The testimony of Job’s life before his family and more importantly before God was one of Biblical prioritization. Should we not all strive for the same?
Blamelessness or Blessings
Let us firmly appreciate God’s way of prioritizing things. Whereas Job was a man of great means even by today’s economic standards, (“3He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 female donkeys, and very many servants, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east.” – Job 1:3), this is not the chief way God’s word speaks of him. Rather, Scripture celebrates Job three times (Job 1:1, 8 and Job 2:3) for the fact that he was a blameless, upright and God fearing man who turned away from evil.
Job lived before God and in a wicked age he is remembered for turning away from evil. Will your children celebrate you for the same? Or will you be remembered as the dad who watched whatever vice was on the TV? Job was the family priest and demonstrated concern for his own soul and that of his children.
THE PRAYERS OF JOB
5And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, “It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did continually.” – Job 1:5

Job had a serious concern for the spiritual well-being of his children. He didn’t think of them as perfect and so laboured in prayer before God on their behalf.
There are several things we can learn from Job as a parent who prayed for his ten children.

1. He Prayerfully Followed The Life Of His Children ‘And when the days of the feast had run their course...’
   Job was aware of what was going on in his children’s lives. He kept in touch on a daily basis and knew where they were and where they were headed because he had a godly concern for their well-being. ARE YOU FOLLOWING YOUR CHILDREN IN YOUR HEART? We will struggle to pray effectively for them if they are not regularly in our hearts.
   
2. He Prayerfully Offered Himself To God
   ‘...and he would rise early in the morning...’
   Managing 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke oxen, 500 female donkeys and very many servants could perhaps have been a reasonable occasion for Job to excuse himself from labouring in prayer for his ten children. If we want to be excused from prayer because we own one car, have two children and are studying for a post-graduate degree don’t you think Job should be exempted from prayer? In spite of his busy schedule, Job rose early and prayed. HAVE YOU OFFERED YOURSELF AS AN INTECESSOR?
   
3. He Prayerfully Sought The Personal Consecration Of Each Family Member ‘...he would ....offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all’
   That Job spent time to pray for each child is already very instructive to us in an age of hurried supplication that lumps up all the children and in a sentence asks for blessing on them. But that Job sacrificed for each of the ten children is something many today will scorn. “Why kill 10 lambs? It’s too expensive. Just sacrifice one for all the children and leave the remaining nine to continue growing in your herd,” we perhaps will reason. This however is not the way Job reasoned. He spent both time and resources in praying for each of his children. How about you? Will you spend your time and resources in seeking God with each of your children? Have you ever considered buying each of your children a Bible and then reading with them early in the morning or before they go to sleep? Have you thought of employing your resources in ensuring your children get Christian schooling instead of the government subsidized secular education that will most likely point them away from God?

Do our children appreciate the consequence of sin? Job’s children clearly knew that sin leads to death. As they each saw an animal sacrificed on their behalf, they were made aware of God’s holiness and the consequences or realities of sin. How about you – Do you clearly communicate the necessity and elements of gospel holiness to your family? Job impressed upon his children the call to Biblical holiness; one that goes beyond a concern for external behaviour to the hidden predisposition of the child’s heart. ARE YOU PRAYERFULLY LOOKING AT YOUR FAMILY FROM GOD’S PERSPECTIVE?
4. He Prayerfully Persisted
‘...Thus Job did continually.’
Job was consistent in his prayer life. Verse five seems to be a record of a time when Job’s children had already left for their own homes. And yet, he continued in prayer for them even into their grown up years. It is not enough to rise up early to pray for our children once in a while. It is not enough to only pray during the easy or during the hard times. We must pray for our children at all times; whether easy or hard, whether they are young or old, whether they are still under our roof or have left to start their own families.
To be a godly parent in an evil age, we must be like Job. He modelled godly piety to his family and managed them prayerfully. 

God’s Design for the Family

God’s Design for the Family John Muketha
Throughout the world, families are disintegrating with divorce, immo- rality, homosexuality, and adultery. Physical and emotional abuse, sin- gle parenthood, disobedient children and abortion are becoming the order of the day. When a society upholds the family and family life it will be morally preserved. However, the neglect of the family unit coupled with permissive sinful influences results in moral decadence in society.
God’s design for the family is clearly spelt out in His Word, the Bible. In the book of Genesis, it is evident that the family was God’s initiative at creation. God created man and woman and established marriage and the family relationship on which every society is built. Genesis 2:18-25 is God’s blueprint that provides guidelines to a fulfill- ing marriage relationship. The family, and not the government, or even the church, is God’s first human institution. This demonstrates the great importance that mar- riage and family holds in the sight of God. No wonder this institution is subjected to serious attacks by the devil and the world more than the institutions of govern- ment and the church. We can safely conclude that the society is only as strong as the families that make it up. This also applies to other human institutions like the church.

Today the family is under attack. In the West, about half of marriages end in divorce. We have single parent families while others cohabit without any marriage whatsoever. Mar- riage infidelity and sexual activity before marriage all take their toll on the family. Homo- sexuality is the most recent of the devil’s attacks on God’s first institution as some seek recognition of same sex marriage. This clearly is an abomination in the sight of God (Lev. 18:22; Rom. 1:26, 27), which all boils down to nothing more than human rebellion against God. God in His wisdom established the home for the protection of the human race.

God has much to say concerning the sanctity of marriage. The Word of God be- gins with a marriage (Gen. 2:18-25) and also closes with a marriage (Rev. 19:7). The very first miracle that the Lord Jesus Christ performed in His ministry was at a wed- ding (Jn. 2:1-11). The LORD God himself said, “Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” (Gen. 2:18) God also tells us that if a man finds a wife he finds a good thing and obtains God’s favor or grace (Prov. 18:22). This shows the great delight and blessing which the Lord bestows upon those who enter into a marriage relationship (Ps. 128).

When a man and a woman come together in marriage they become one flesh (Gen. 2:24). God’s perfect design for marriage is one man and one woman for life. This is the natural order of creation as established by God. Christ said that from the very beginning it was one male and one female (Matt. 19:3-7). We were not meant to have multiple wives. Neither is it God’s will for two men to make a marriage or for two women. They will never fulfill the purpose which God assigned to Adam and Eve then, and husbands and wives today. God’s plan for marriage is that there would be no divorce. God takes marriage seriously and so should we and not seek to break marriages apart (Matt. 19:3-9; Mk. 10:2-12). God’s design for the family is clearly spelt out in His Word, the Bible. In the book of Genesis, it is evident that the family was God’s initiative at creation. God created man and woman and estab- lished marriage and the family relationship

on which every society is built. Gen. 2:18-25 is God’s blueprint that provides guidelines to a fulfilling marriage relationship. The family, and not the government, or even the church is God’s first human institution.

This demonstrates the great importance that marriage and family holds in the sight of God (Hebrews 13:4). As a young man hoping to get married one day, are you looking up to the Lord to provide a companion comparable to you? As a lady looking forward to marriage, put your trust in the Lord to provide the man with whom you will share the rest of your life.

It is only in the security and stability of the home that children can be properly nur- tured and prepared for life in order to be able to carry the torch to the next genera- tion (Exodus 20:12). As parents, what kind of examples are we to our children? Are we truly faithful to our spouses? The home is the first school where our children will learn how to love and care for their spouses. As a husband, you should love your wife even as Christ loved the Church. Love, cherish and nourish her as you love yourself so that your son will learn to love and cherish his wife in the next generation. You are also setting the standard for the kind of husband your daughter expects when her time for marriage comes. As a mother, you are by your life teaching your daughter how she should treat her husband when that time comes. You are also setting the standard for the kind of wife your son expects when his time for marriage comes.

Sin messed up the first family. We fail in many ways because we inherited the sinful na- ture from our first parents. It is in Christ alone that our sins can be cleansed so that we are able to fulfill God’s design for the family. We must pray for our families, that each member comes to know and love the Lord, and that Christ may truly be the Head of the home and the unseen Guest at every meal and silent Listener in every conversation.