This is one that I wrote earlier this week, but didn’t feel it was the right one for that day.  So here it is, tacked to the end.  God bless you and your precious little ones!!!

If parenting ever leaves you feeling completely overwhelmed, at your wit’s end, and befuddled, then that’s really, really good.  No, really it is.  Because you know something that billions of people in the world don’t, the ONE THING that you need to know.  You know the Name on which to call.  In the middle of the battering of our bodies by various bugs and illnesses that we called “Christmas 2009,” when it was Judah’s turn to get the stomach flu, something wonderful happened.  It was the middle of the night, and Judah woke up sick.  As I’ve mentioned before, he usually wants Daddy in the night, so I was laying in my bed, as OJ led him in his misery over to the toilet to vomit.  I listened, exhausted from my own sickness.  I heard him groaning over the toilet, and then he cried, “God, help me.  God, help me.”  In my stupor, my heart smiled.  “Thank you, Jesus.  Thank God.  We’re doing something right, baby.  He knows to call on the name of the Lord.”  If we mess up every day from here on out, miss some major theological point of education, if he falls in with the wrong crowd at Sunday school…I’m joking.  These things aren’t going to happen.  But if they did, Judah knows in his three year old heart, somewhere in the core of him, that God is real, and He is strong to save.  I smiled my way back to sleep. Judah’s sickness barely lasted a couple more hours.  God is real, Judah, and He answers.

He answers!  This is why I want to talk a little more about faith versus fear, because we have everything we need when we believe Him.  We live in lack, not because we don’t have what we need for parenting our kiddos, but because we lack faith.  We so easily can believe that there’s a way to “do it right” that we are going to miss, when we are missing the ONE who IS the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  We are like bumper cars running into each other, “Scuse me, where’s the organic aisle…have you heard about the dangers of aluminum foil…don’t let that kid ride a bike without a helmet!”  Fear is the parent’s constant companion in this world.  Seriously, the baby industry is milking us for millions with all our fear over how we can possibly handle this…baby?!?  AAAAAugh!!!!!  I need a several thousands of dollars of stuff that will be useless to me in a couple of months!!!  But we…children of God…we are not of this world.  We are the ones who were set free from fear by the Cross of Jesus Christ.

For example, the enemy loves to bring the fear that our children won’t follow the Lord.  This thought, concept, and report comes straight from the pit of hell.  It is NEVER the Holy Spirit whispering to you that your children may not follow the Lord.  The violence I have in my heart against this is something you probably don’t ever want to see unleashed.  Anything of this nature brings a, “Get thee behind me, Satan!!!!!!!” response from me.  Do I worry about it?  Absolutely not ever. I don’t entertain that vile, tormenting fear even for an instant.  Why?  Because GOD HAS NOT GIVEN ME A SPIRIT OF FEAR, but of POWER, LOVE, AND SOUND MIND.  2 Tim. 1:7.  There have been days that OJ and I were at our wits’ end, on the floor, fasting and praying for our child’s breakthrough.  There may be more of those to come.  But the fact that OJ and Suz do not know what to do does not really mean that much, after all, when Almighty God is FOR us.  In those moments, there is all-out desperation.  But no despair.  A holy cry to the Lord, saying, “You must intervene!!  I will not let go until You answer!!!”  This is a response of desperate faith, and it is pleasing to the Lord.  God answers.

We get deceived by fear because we don’t understand the ways of God.  Read this Scripture:

³⁶ And the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned and made all the congregation grumble against him by bringing up a bad report about the land— ³⁷the men who brought up a bad report of the land— died by plague before the LORD. ³⁸Of those men who went to spy out the land, only Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh remained alive. Numbers 14:36-38

Remember how I said the other day that fear was a big jerk that we should kick out of our houses?  I apologize, because I did not use strong enough language.  If you don’t know the story referenced in the scripture above, it refers to when the Lord brought the Israelites to the land that He had promised them.  At the point where they pause on the border of the promised land, the people want to know what is ahead of them.  The promised land, filled with milk and honey, is also filled with inhabitants.  But the Lord told them it would be theirs.  So they send a dozen spies to bring back the report.

Side note:  this is the very spot we find so many believers in.  They are sitting on the border of their Biblical promises (for love, joy, peace, abundant life, fruitfulness, etc.), shocked and surprised that the land is already inhabited.  They have beginnings of faith, but only enough for uninhabited land that they need not fight for.  They succumb to unbelief and fear.  “Because I have not yet experienced my portion of the land, the promises of God may not be true.”  Nonsense.  The Lord told them (and tells us) specifically that we will have all that we place our feet on (Deut. 11:23,24).  We are not given the promise of battle-free land, but of victory when we fight.  This is so important for parenting!!!!

So the spies return and 10 of the 12 report to the people on the size of the giants.  They spread fear and hesitation, and the people shrink back from God’s commands to TAKE THE LAND because of their unbelief.  Only two spies speak with faith.  So how does God feel about the fearful spies?  He kills them with a plague.  Because of their evil report of fear and unbelief, a generation disobeyed God and died in the wilderness.  When all the promises of God were there, waiting for them to enjoy, all the good things, they believed the evil report of fear and refused to fight, sealing their own purposeless deaths.  Note:  God didn’t kill the unbelieving generation, He just let them come to a natural demise in mediocrity, insignificance, and purposelessness.  But he did kill the messengers of fear.

As believing parents, we must understand that a spirit of fear is at all times bringing us a bad report, an EVIL report.  At all times, the enemy is seeking to intimidate, frighten, and cause us to hesitate to battle the inhabitants of our promised land (whatever your inhabitants are:  depression, anxiety, self-pity, rebellion, whatever) and shrink back, leaving them in place.  We become intimidated, thinking that if the promises of God were true, there would be no battle.  WE have not understood.  We must be utterly unwilling to hear the bad report of fear.  We must hear the report of the Lord over our children. When we don’t understand the ways of God, we think that if He had willed for people to have something, they would have it.  We don’t understand that God did will for the people to have the land, but because of fear and unbelief they didn’t take it.  We don’t understand the POWER of fear.  Fear, when given the chance to spread its report, will take the outcome and make it match its predictions.  Some people say it is a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Let me simplify it this way.  All day, every day, we will be receiving two kinds of reports.  One will be bad, and one will be good.  The bad one will usually be circumstancial, factual, and reasonable (until we get really bound by fear, and it can even take us into the realm of the irrational).  The good one will be based on Scripture and possibly nothing else.  Like the Israelites, we will act in accordance with the report that we choose.  Either faith or fear.  Which one we choose will determine the outcome.  See, we can think the way out of fear is to know what’s going to happen.  We don’t understand that what’s going to happen is very much dependent on whether or not we believe the report of fear.  God has holy rage against the message of fear, and eventually will “send a plague,” if you will, on the spirit of fear that torments you.  But you and I must choose whether we will be of the generation that allows our inheritance to be stolen and dies in the wilderness, or of the generation that believes the Lord and takes the good land.

So what is the report of the Lord over our children?  Is it that they are rebellious, angry, contentious, fearful, sorrowful, and whiny, and God just doesn’t know WHAT to do with them?  Or is that just us, little humans, predictably coming to the end of ourselves, as will happen at least twice a week for the rest of our lives?  Does the Lord not at all times know exactly what to do to reach my child?  Will we stop, listen to His report, and act on what He says?  Will we live simply, with child-like faith, asking consistently, “What do I do, FAther?  GOD, HELP ME!”  Because He WILL answer.  Our fearful hearts seek a formula that is fool-proof, a way of doing it that will guarantee results.  But the door to all God’s wonderful parenting methods is FAITH… that HE IS, and that He rewards those who seek Him.  God loves to give rich revelation of truths, but even more He loves a constancy of dependence, so that there’s nothing we count on more than HIM and HIS WORD.