Pray For Your Son: 31 Day Challenge—Day Three

Mike Leake 3 Comments

Today’s prayer comes from Dave Fields:

That he would hear and heed the Lord in the voice of his parents

Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck. (Proverbs 1:8-9, ESV)

In our media-saturated world, our children will hear many messages from a myriad of voices each day. Some of these voices echo the voice of the Lord—others are serpentine. Often the hardest voice to listen to is the one of their father and mother. The world often says that father and mother are old-fashioned and ill-informed about today’s pressing issues. We need to pray that our children have parents that echo the voice of the Lord, and that our children would heed our gospel-informed voice.

Father, we pray today that our son will hear our voices as parents more clearly and more certainly than those in the world.  We further pray that we will use messages that are full of Your wisdom and Your grace and that they will fall on ears that are eager to listen.  We pray that they will indeed be adornments upon the neck and head of our son this day and that there will be a renewed spirit of communication between he and us.  We pray that we will only speak that which is from you and that he will listen with an open heart.  We pray for our son today, Lord to hear you through us as his parents.  Amen.

Dave Fields and his family serve as missionaries on the north coast of Honduras at hospital Loma de Luz.  Dave is the IT director of the hospital.

When Sermon Illustrations Sit For Twenty Years

Mike Leake

In 1720 an inquisitive young man set to observing spiders. What had captivated his mind was the curiosity of how a spider can spin a web from tree to tree. Through curious observation and various experiments he came to a satisfactory answer. Upon all of this he noted:

[From this] we see the exuberant goodness of the Creator, who hath not only provided for all the necessities, but also for the pleasure and recreation of all sorts of creatures, and even the insects and those that are most despicable.

Apparently the spider never scurried it’s way out of this young man’s imagination. In 1741 that same man penned these words:

and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock.

And again

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.

That young man was Jonathan Edwards and the sermon from 1741 was his famous Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God. I mention Edwards’ early work, Of Insects, and his later iconic sermon, to make the point that God uses the whole of our lives unto His glory.

When Edwards was captivated by that spider there was no thought in his mind that twenty years later he would use a spider web to illustrate the plight of sinful mankind. He just observed God’s glory in the spider and his web and enjoyed it. That’s the way these illustrations like this come. We live life. We enjoy God and His creation and somewhere along the way God picks those back up and uses them to further His kingdom.

The lesson for us today, as pastors, writers, teachers, and disciples is to live life. If you go through the world looking for illustrations, sermon topics, blog articles, etc. you will miss life. Just live, observe, and enjoy. God might take a spider from twenty years ago and give you a powerful illustration.

Pray For Your Son: 31 Day Challenge—Day Two

Mike Leake 1 Comment

Today’s prayer come from Davy Marcelo:

Day Two: That he would be saved

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. – II Peter 3:9

Christian parents want nothing more than for their son to be saved.  For many we do not know the how or the when of this highly-anticipated, life-altering milestone in their son’s life, because he is still a youngster.  But we still pray for his salvation daily, waiting upon the Lord to do His saving work.  Some might be in a different boat: their son is already “of age” and is still unsaved.  Let us be reminded of the character of our loving and merciful God: He is “patient” and “not wishing that any should perish” but desiring “that all should reach repentance”.  Hallelujah!  If your son is still “wandering from the fold of God,” don’t despair – Today and every day, pray faithfully and earnestly for your son’s salvation!
 
Lord, thank You for the joy my son brings to me!  I pray that You would bring him to saving faith in Jesus Christ.  Nothing else in this world matters if his name is not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life!  May Your Holy Spirit do His convicting work, so that my son would receive this gift of salvation, according to Your good pleasure.  I pray with confidence in Your unfailing love for my son, Amen.

Davy Marcelo makes his living working in Corporate America but finds his passion in serving as an associate pastor to his father.  He is married to his beautiful wife Lizette, and together they have an energetic toddler son named Johann Seth. 

A Little Help for Family Devotions

Mike Leake 2 Comments

I scan his body looking for a cape. Shocked that I don’t see one I assume that he’s one of those superheroes that doesn’t actually need a cape to fly. He just gets stuff done.

The superhero I’m talking about is Super Dad. Suddenly his passionate preacher voice draws me away from cape gazing and back into his talk. “If we don’t disciple our children we are worse than unbelievers. Listen guys, I know that its tough. I know that you are busy. But what do you gain if you gain the whole world but lose the souls of your children?” his voice now rivaling that of a Seahawks home game.

Looking around I see several head nods and hear a chorus of Amen’s. I retreat back into my own mind. I wonder about these men. Are they like me? Will they be inspired by these talks, go home, start family devotions, have an awesome week, then find themselves feeling like crap a few months later when they hear a talk like this one and realize they haven’t done anything resembling family worship for about two months?

Fast forward a few weeks…

I’m not the guy in the pew this time. I’m the guy speaking and noticing people like me nod off into their own thoughts. The message is about intentional and organic discipleship in the context of relationships. It’s simple really. Live life with one another and be intentional about causing the gospel to bear on your life and the person you are discipling.

I use my best preacher voice*. “Listen guys we aren’t talking about leading a guy through a book study. This isn’t teaching a theology class. This is just hanging out with another guy, living life before him, and showing Jesus with your life and lips”.

Discipleship is tough work. But it’s not a difficult program or concept. Honestly, simplifying it like this is a breath of fresh air. And then it hits me…why in the world don’t I have this same philosophy with my own children?

A little help from Wax

A few weeks back Trevin Wax told his story of apologizing to his son. His 9 year old thought that he had heard all the Bible stories and wondered why church was necessary. Trevin explains:

For months (maybe years), I’ve conditioned him to think that attending a worship service is all about learning. From our Saturday night prayers (“Be with us tomorrow, Lord, as we go to church and learn more about You”) to after-church conversations (“What did you learn in Sunday School today?”), our way of talking about church is predominantly educational. No wonder he thought we should move on. If church is school, then eventually, you graduate, right?

I’ve done the same thing. Family worship. Devotions. All of these things can simply become times for information dumping.

I’m also learning that I have a tendency to treat family devotions like one of David Platt’s Secret Church sessions. (If you aren’t familiar with those it is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant). These aren’t sustainable. And that is why I lead them for a week and then fall into discouragement, despair, and ultimately neglect.

A little help from Buzzard

Last week Justin Buzzard gave 10 tips for discipling our children. They are simple. It’s all about living life together. It’s the model of discipleship that we’re encouraging guys in our church to follow. Live life together and show Jesus with your life and lips.

Listen, I’m not saying stop your family devotions. Do what you can with them and keep stretching yourself a little. There is great value in sitting down with your family, cracking open a Bible, and proclaiming the excellencies of Christ. Same thing with singing together, praying together, and doing missions together. Don’t neglect these things.

But at the same time let’s not pretend that your family devotion time is the primary means for discipling your children. It isn’t. It’s in the little things. It’s when you go out for ice cream, learn Math, play Minecraft, throw a baseball back and forth, comb the hair of her dolls, and live life together. It means having times of repentance, celebration, mourning, exhortation, and everything in between.

This is less complicated but it is not easier. You don’t need a cape to pull it off, but you do need Jesus. Drink deeply of Christ and you’ll have plenty of Him to pour into the life of your kiddos.

—-

*I’m still working on my preacher voice. Right now I’m similar to Barney Fife when he got really excited.