Walking Through the Wilderness

A note to Fathers

2010-02-01T21:10:00.000-05:00

“It is the rule, I think, that we often romanticize what we have first despised” - Wendell Berry

Mr, Berry is a philosopher / farmer with whom I would not agree on economics but who has a great deal of wisdom in land stewardship. He wrote these words with reference to farmers, but I think they apply accurately to our attitude toward children.

Children are romanticized and sentimentalized to the point that we can get teary with warm fuzzies thinking about them. We talk of how sweet, precious and cute they are. Yet the reality is they are a lot of work. Joyful work. Rewarding work. But work none the less. We need to be willing to give the time, attention, sweat and effort that this work calls for and not give it grudgingly.

“Behold children are and inheritance from the LORD” Psalm 127

An inheritance in that day was most often land, and land needs to be worked. Land left to itself turns from productive fields to thorns to brush to woods. Even as a man stewards land, so we must steward our children. We must know them, their strengths, weakness, and sins. And we must clear things out here, plant things there, put fertilizer over there, and make sure the thorns on the edge of the field are kept in check. It is work, constant work, and we get tired, but it is the work God has given us to do so let us do it with all our heart.

She belongs with me

2009-11-24T18:55:00.001-05:00

I can be sappy sometimes. Often it has to do with love songs on the radio that get me thinking about my wife, Anne. Anyway I was listening to the radio in the truck and this song comes on about High School. High School is not my favorite time to dwell on so I started to change the station but as I do I hear the young woman singing about this boy who should be interested in her not some cheerleader and I smile and remember...

I remember a boy,recently dropped by his first girlfriend (a cheerleader), now at a pool party, coming up for air next to this cute girl with dancing brown eyes that almost disappeared when she smiled, and what a smile. She wanted to know if I wanted to come along on a bike ride she planned to take the next day. “sure, that would be fun” I replied.

The next day we rode out in the country to a farm with an old cabin, walked in the fields, spent most of the day together and sat on the porch and talked and talked. What a girl. Four years later I took her back to that old cabin on that farm and asked her to be my wife. We have been married for over 28 years now and I still melt at those smiling eyes.

After we had been married several years we were together with some friends form High School. A friend of Anne's told a story about a slumber party where Anne announced that the boy her cheerleader friend was dating wasn't right for the cheerleader at all he was right for her. The friend summed up, “I guess she was right”

She was. She “belongs with me”.

“House and wealth are an inheritance from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the LORD” Proverbs 19:14

The Seductivenes of Infatuation, or "But I'm in Love"

2009-09-04T22:40:00.000-04:00

As a young man I remember standing around before work on a construction site. The men were talking as they often did about people and happenings when someone mentioned that the son-in-law of a sub-contractor was divorcing. Of course he was also fired, though he had been in line to be a partner. Apparently he had met a girl who worked at an ice cream shop and had “fallen in love” with her and went home and told his wife. One man spat out, “He got his brain caught in his zipper.” Well, pardon the crudeness, but that pretty much describes the situation.

I have lived more than half my life since then and have seen this same script play out many times. It is not sex dependent; women can be as guilty of this as men. Often a marriage is going through a difficult time, one partner meets someone different, sparks fly and the course is set.

What is going on? People confuse love with infatuation.

Infatuation is easy, Love takes work.
Infatuation is temporary, Love never fails.
Infatuation is about how I feel. Love is about seeking the best for the beloved.
Infatuation is quick to get and quick to leave, Love takes a lifetime.

All that surrounds us says that “love” hits you from outside yourself and you are powerless before it. What a lie. Solomon warns us of flattering and seductive words and tells us to run. Of course you can do something when infatuation hits you. It may be fun to give in, but what pain and destruction you cause.

Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. (II Tim. 2:22)

For the sake of your spouse, for your vows, for God whose you are,

RUN!

Helping Our Children Find Their Calling, Part 2

2009-08-06T16:32:00.000-04:00

The training of our children includes their whole being: spiritual, character, physical, and mental/academic. The spiritual aspect of our children's lives is paramount. If this aspect of their training is missing, the others don't matter much. A successful man without Christ is little different from a poor man without Christ. What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world but lose his soul? (Matt. 8:36)

This spiritual training must begin early and continue as long as you have any influence in your children’s lives. The three broad areas to be addressed are:
1) Who God is.
2) Who the child is.
3) What to do about 1 and 2.

More specifically,
1) God is the holy, All Powerful, Creator and King of the universe. Everything rests in His hands.
2) Your children are created in God’s image but born in the sin that they inherited from you.
3) They are to respond to God with repentance and faith that comes from God and walk in good works that He has prepared for them to do.

A related aspect to training our children’s spirit is training their character. We want our children to be courageous, hard working, honest, merciful, faithful, and many of the other traits taught throughout scripture but especially in the book of Proverbs. These fruits are vital to seeing them fulfilling their callings.

The second area to consider when helping a child work through his calling is his personality and gifting. This is more discovered than developed. We need to understand how God has put this child together. We can direct him in his use of his personality and gifts after we know what they are. For example, is your child a “people person?” You can teach him to use that to improve others instead of making himself the center of attention. Perhaps we can direct this people person into managing others or helping people to find solutions they are looking for. Perhaps he is good at math and can think in concepts and images instead of words. Some form of engineering might be a path for this child.

To do this work of matching personality and gifts with a career, we need to become familiar with a variety of jobs and note what those who are successful in them are like. I remember years ago standing in my oldest son’s closet and realizing it looked just like Tim Quiring's garage. (Not a pretty picture.) Tim Q. was a founding elder of CGS and an EE (electrical engineer). Andrew is now getting his PhD in EE. There are often personality features common to those who practice a particular profession. Electrical engineers tend to have many hobbies and collect “stuff” from their varied interests such as rebuilding old motorcycles, computers, or stereos. An interest in model trains is also common for engineer types. We haven’t seen as obvious hints with our second and third children, but even with them we’ve noticed clues.

When we have an idea of the general direction a young person should go, we need to tailor his education to match. This is easiest when the child is home schooled, but it should always be done regardless of the type of school the child attends. Is the child bound for the hard sciences or engineering? Then he needs calculus before he graduates from high school. Is he gifted with computers? Make sure he takes some programming classes or learns thatin some other arena. Is she bound for nursing? She needs to take anatomy. Not only academic work needs to be matched with possible career training. We need to give our young people opportunities to be around people doing the calling he is considering. Can he volunteer at the hospital, radio station, church? Can he get a part time job at the restaurant or the construction site? The more experience and knowledge the child has, the better the direction will be. While doing career exploration volunteer or paid work, your son or daughter will get an idea whether this is indeed the correct direction for him.

It is both exciting and intimidating to help our children find their calling. Can God lead them without us? Of course! But what a joy to stand alongside our children as we look to their future together.

Helping Our Children Find Their Calling (Part 1)

2009-07-11T16:46:00.000-04:00

I believe that one of the duties of parents is to help our sons and daughters find their calling. Today we seem to have parents fall into two extremes, neither of which has the child's best interest at heart.

On the left side of the path is the swamp of no guidance. In this gooey, sticky mess of muck and quicksand, we lob our children, hoping that as they do what they like, they will somehow find their calling. Does he like building things? Set him up in a wood shop. Does he like to sing? Send him off to IU Jacob’s School of Music. Did he love the outdoors? He could study outdoor recreation. Whatever my child enjoys is his life’s calling, even if it has little chance of success or it is impossible to support a family doing it. He may be sucked under the muck and never be seen again.

The deep ditch on the right side of the path is the parents’ dreams ... what they did, or didn't get to do, what they think will impress their friends, what will make their children financially secure. Many a child flung into this ditch by their parents, with the best of intentions, is broken on the rocks below. Sometimes they crawl up out of this ditch bruised and bleeding and regain the path God intended for them, but not without a cost.

So if you have a narrow path of a young person’s calling, how do you help your children find it? I think there are four areas to consider: spiritual, personality, gifts, and education. My wife and I begin discussing this while our children are young, and we adjust their training as we go along to prepare them for what may lie ahead. We by no means consider ourselves expert in this area, but we are started. In the next post we will begin going through these four areas one by one.

He Who Covers Over an Offense Promotes Love (Pro. 17:9) (Grace in Marriage)

2009-06-28T14:58:00.001-04:00

My first year of marriage to my dear wife Anne was marked by more fights than I ever imagined. The first of our peers to marry, we were feeling our way forward without much instruction or friends to talk it over with. As two people learn to live together, there are the inevitable opportunities for conflict because two people just do things differently. Anne, still a college student, liked to stay up late studying. I had to be at work early. I liked the toilet paper coming out from underneath; she preferred it coming over the top. It was all the stereotypical points of conflict. There was a bigger problem, though. I was sure that Anne was doing these things to bother me. And she needed to understand how much it bothered me, so I would purposely do things to aggravate her. She might respond in kind, and you can imagine the escalation.
We made it through that first year, and after almost twenty-eight years of marriage I look back on my attitudes with a combination of shame and mirthful disbelief. My default setting now is that Anne would never purposely do anything to aggravate me, and if she inadvertently has, it must be because she forgot or just didn’t think about it. So I wonder, what made the difference? How did I change my attitude toward living with my wife? In a word – kids. As God gave us children, the marriage stopped being all about me. We had a common purpose and job. When you are on your hands and knees on the floor at 3 in the morning cleaning up vomit, you realize you need each other to do the job before you, and more than that, that you trust this person to help you more than anyone else in the world. Kids can be a great selfishness killer. It isn’t always the case, but having kids (and for us it took a lot of kids) has helped to suppress our natural self-centeredness.
I say “can” because one can still be selfish and have kids (even a lot of kids), but the Holy Spirit is working in the believer’s life to conform him to the image of Christ. That is almost always difficult. For us He used a big family; for others He may use a different means. But if you are God’s child He will be working on and with you to make you more like His Son. We want to be working with Him and not against Him.
So what does this look like in our marriage now? Anne still likes to stay up later than me. But when she is reading in bed next to me I think, “She needs time to unwind after this day. I hope this helps her,” rather than thinking, “She’s not considering me.” We still have our preferences about which way the toilet paper goes, but it just doesn’t seem to matter that much anymore. I simply can’t imagine Anne doing anything to purposely hurt me. Is this because she is a perfect woman? No. As with many of us, she has her same besetting sins she has had for years, as do I. But as we work together to prepare the arrows God has entrusted to us, I know we are both headed for the same goal, and there is no one else I would rather have with me.

1Pe 4:8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

Created for Work

2007-12-20T10:29:00.000-05:00

Work is good. While the ease of work changed in the fall, man was made for work.

I have written how work is despised in our day, a day in which the ideal job for most has short hours, high pay, and little demand mentally or physically on the “worker”, who of course, has no need of taking any work home on “their time.” Is it any wonder when I speak to friends who have employees, they often complain about finding and keeping good employees?

As a dad of five boys and four girls, I consider it a duty to teach my children to work, not only to prepare them for life, but because work is a good gift from God. So when I needed firewood the other day, I brought my boys instead of trying to get my father-in-law's power splitter going. Those boys needed to learn to split and load wood and feel the tiredness involved. Peter (12) loaded the truck himself, neatly, tightly and with enough wood to make the truck squat down a bit. Jon was introduced to the work and art of splitting a log into sticks for the stove. I wish all young men had that privilege. I do pity the young men who live in town and have their heat come through a gas pipe or electric line.

As part of our children's schooling this year, we have been requiring them to read (or listen to) a devotional book written for older boys, called Created for Work by Bob Shultz. Now maybe l like the book because Mr. Shultz is a carpenter who cares a great deal about building the kingdom of God. Or maybe I like it because he combines practical illustrations of scriptural commands regarding work. Topics range from putting art in your work to not being afraid to get dirty in your work, to God's Word being the plumb line for our behavior.

The practical wisdom combined with the Biblical insight is a joy to think about. Published by Great Expectations Books Co. this volume is a wonderful tool to help teach your sons and daughters about God's gift of work.

Dying for your Wife

2007-11-23T15:48:00.000-05:00

Several years ago I was standing by the wood stove reaching up for something on the mantle. The young man visiting our home asked, “So I am thinking about marrying _______ and am asking some older Christians who know us both what they think first.” This question surprised me at first. How should I answer such a personal question with lifelong implications?

I answered with a question. “Are you ready to die for her? And I don’t just mean take a bullet for her-- that is too easy. I mean are you ready to die for her every day.”

Many of you have guessed I was referring to Eph 5:25: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,”

I have had occasion to think about dying for one’s wife more in recent days. What does it mean for me to love my dear one like Christ loves the church? I believe it is to do what is best for her without thought of the personal cost.

Christ’s love for the church caused Him to redeem us from our slavery to sin, self, and Satan. We might have thought our need was for an easier life, maybe a reversal of the curses on the land so we could raise crops with less sweat. Maybe we thought we needed to get along better with those around us or to be free to do what we pleased. Yet Jesus knew that our basic need was redemption. In the same way, we must not seek to do what our wives want. They may not see their need, but we must seek God so that we might see it.

Christ’s love for the church caused Him to act at great personal cost to redeem us. I don’t know if we can understand the depth of the cost that Jesus paid to redeem us. I have read of the physical torture and the pain He endured yet others are tortured to death. More than the torture, the abandonment of God and suffering the punishment of my sin had to be worse. By comparison, any pain I need to undergo to love my wife is small.

I remember right before I married I bought my first nice truck. A red 1977 Datsun 5 speed with a shell. Everything worked. It was nice. After we were married I bought my wife a ’76 Monza. It was sporty but broke down before we got it home. It was junk; it even had “plug foulers” (something that kept the spark plug outside the engine block so it wouldn’t get covered with the oil that leaked into the cylinders.) I knew my wife needed a safe and reliable car to drive, so both the Monza and the truck were sold and I bought her a two year old, striped down, basic Chevette. It wasn’t much for style or comfort, but it ran for years until we outgrew it. Now that was a small thing, but it is an example of the type of thing that is needed. I liked that truck, but my wife needed something different. She may have wanted a sports car, but she needed a reliable one. That is the type of small death that is needed every day as we fulfill the Biblical command to love our wives and Christ loved the church.

Yet if we think that buying our wife the right car for them is all there is to dying for her, our vision is stunted. We must view the entire scope of her life, her home, her social needs, her besetting sins, her need for spiritual growth... It get overwhelming doesn't it? This asks the question “How do I lead this woman anyway?” but that is another subject...

Book Review: Spiritual Leadership

2007-11-11T15:03:00.000-05:00

Spiritual Leadership by J. Oswald Sanders

“No one need aspire to leadership in the work of God who is not prepared to pay a price greater than his contemporaries and colleagues are willing to pay. True leadership always exacts a heavy toll on the whole man and the more effective the leadership is, the higher the price to be paid.” J. Oswald Sanders.

One of the advantages of getting older is you get to go back and reread books that have shaped your life in the past. Spiritual Leadership, by J. Oswald Sanders, was required reading for Operation Mobilization, a mission group I worked with years ago. So at twenty years old, with that volume in my hand, I took up and read. Sanders clear and hard hitting words laid out for me then much of what is involved in being a leader.

The book is a series of messages given at OMF (Overseas Missionary Fellowship, formerly China Inland Mission) leadership conferences in 1964 and 1966. In it he examines what makes a leader, the biblical requirements of a leader, disciplines of a leader, the cost involved in being a leader, and training leaders. As I recently reread this book, I found myself continually challenged and called beyond where I am now. I have found myself rereading chapters as I try to internalize what he writes to help me order my life and priorities.

In his chapter on prayer Sanders writes, “In nothing should the leader be ahead of his followers more than in the realm of prayer… If you wished to humble anyone, I should question him about his prayers. I know of nothing to compare to this topic for its sorrowful self confessions.”
I cannot emphasize enough that this is a book that you should read.

A major warning though: Do NOT buy the new Moody Press revision. The editors at Moody Press took it upon themselves to defile Sander’s excellent work by making it gender neutral. They explicitly deny biblical directives for male leadership and have changed the book accordingly. To say this is a sad commentary on the state of the evangelical church and evangelical publishing, is understatement. Instead, look up the book on ABE books and get an older edition, there is a good supply.

Living With Your Wife in an Understanding Way

2007-10-24T16:28:00.000-04:00

You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered. I Peter 3:7 (NAS95)

We live in a society that has attempted to blot all difference between the sexes. In Church of the Good Shepherd we are intent on restoring masculinity to men. Similarly, we should be about restoring femininity to women. When I say femininity please don’t think of women sitting primly with white gloves at a Victorian tea party. Not that that is excluded, rather it is in no way the definition.

My dear wife loves to share all manner of outdoor pursuits with me. But to “live with her in an understanding way” I will not pursue them with her in the same way as I would with a man. If I take Anne kayaking, we don’t go down Clear Creek at flood, or down the Elkhorn in KY. Rather, we will go on a quiet lake or stream. This is not because a woman can’t enjoy fast water, but, because my dear one doesn’t.

I teach my sons to shoot a shotgun and .22 around junior high or high school. My daughters are welcome to try it but not expected to. (A shotgun can give a surprising kick). I think it is necessary due to occasional animals needing to disappear from the farm. I have suggested my wife also learn, but she replies, “That is why I have sons.” If I pressed it, she would learn, but I have not had a son yet who didn’t take to it right away. Boys are just different from girls; I need to keep that in mind.

When Anne and I were dating we had some fights. Some I remember; most I don’t. I can remember one vividly. I can’t remember what we were fighting about, but I remember my sweet dear one taking a can of Tab and rapidly emptying the contents about my face and shoulders. It got my attention. I remember thinking, “Hmm… there is something about this I don’t understand.” This behavior wasn’t like her at all, and I didn’t think the fight rose to the level of throwing pop… so I knew I must be missing something. What I was missing was an understanding of my wife.

So, how do you live with this woman who is so different from you in an understanding way?

It is assumed you want to obey this command.

First, you assume that your wife is not like you. God did not make her the same. I guarantee it. He made her to complement you not imitate you.

Second, you pay attention, you observe, you study your wife. What makes her smile, what makes her scared, what does she talk about for months afterwards? If you don’t know, ask questions, lots of questions. Most women love to talk. Does she need to talk things over more than you do? Does she care more about the house or the car, care more about relationships? Does she want to stay up later after the kids are asleep? To live with her in an understanding way you need to begin to understand her.

Finally, you relate to your wife according to this understanding. If she shies away from an aggressive discussion, then learn to say what is needed in a gentle way. Does she look disappointed on your dinner date at the steak house? Try taking her to a Thai restaurant. If she has been at home with the kids all day, then spend some time drawing her out in conversation. If this is sounding one sided, remember you are called to die for your wife. I have much more I want to say about dying, but that is for another post.

You may have noticed that is some ways you wife is weaker than you. Of course the Bible already told you that, so how do you treat someone weaker? You stand up for them! You protect them. You don’t get mad at them for being weaker. Rather you honor her as someone with the same standing before God as you.

Now for those of you who are yet to marry, practice living in an understanding way now! If there is a young woman you are interested in, study her. No… not just the way she looks… I know you like that… study her, her strengths, sins, preferences, and delights. Never assume she is like you – why would you want that anyway? Then when you start to understand her, act like you do.

Children and Work

2007-10-21T20:22:00.000-04:00

The Need

I was talking to some men on a work site about raising children. These men all work hard every day, yet there seemed to be the assumption that the children should free from work to help the family. They believed that it was OK for them to work at school, and good for them to work at sports/ play, but chores around the house or working to help support the family were thoughts foreign their mind.

History would laugh at this idea; after all, children eat - shouldn’t they help get the food? Large farm families were the norm with everyone wanting to do their part to help with the work. Perhaps it is the abuses of child labor at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution that caused people to believe that children shouldn’t work.

Yet we were created for work. Adam tended the garden, and “… for six days you shall labor and do all your work…”, the Decalogue thunders at us. Work is a good gift from God.
And what better heritage could we give to our children than knowing how to work and how to work hard? (OK - Love for God, His church, and those in the kingdom of darkness would rank above work, but it’s up there, and will serve them better than a love of soccer or a volleyball scholarship to college.)

So if you are with me, the question becomes how to teach them.

Working Together

Children learn by example more than by word. Do you work? Do your children see you work, or is all your interaction with those God has entrusted you with training based on play, sports (the male state religion of this nation), movies, and vacations?

I am a not the greatest businessman. (Just ask my accountant.) Yet one of the reasons I don’t “get a job” and work for someone else is that I can involve my children in my work. This spring I got in a bind with too many jobs going on at once. Andrew, my oldest, came down between graduation and leaving for his summer internship and bailed me out. This summer my 13 year old, Jon, has come in, to save my back, time and again. My boys learn how to work hard and also that labor = pay, something that eludes those who just see money appear.

In hard times my boys will tell me not to pay them, that they “just want to help.” It is humbling for a man to have his children help support the family, but I believe it is good for them and for me.

So what if you aren’t self employed? Can you do more than “take your kid to work day?” Is there work to be done around the house? If it is like mine there is always work still to do, so do it together. Children can start helping out almost as soon as they can walk. Do you live in a condo with a maid and cook? Volunteer to work at a Habitat for Humanity site. Cook for the rescue mission. Cut the church lawn. Help someone move. There is always work to be done -- do it together. Outside work is especially good for boys, so see where they can participate. One of the reasons we chose to live on a farm is to provide our kids with opportunities to sweat as they care for the animals and land.

Tools for Teaching Work

Stories are a powerful teaching tool. I don’t mean to discount plain instruction, but stories make learning painless. There is a series of books that teaches the principles of work and business better than any other I have run across. Ralph Moody wrote a semi-autobiographic series with the hero “Little Britches.” Set around the turn of the last century, “Little Britches” grows up in rural Colorado, moves back east, and returns to the west again. He learns from his dad in book one, becomes “the man of the family” after his father’s death in book two, and so on. Geared primarily for boys, the girls also play an important part in the supporting of the household. These books are great for read aloud.

Another excellent book for teaching children about work is Created For Work by Bob Schultz. I'll try to post a review of that book at some later date.