If you desire to grow in Christ, the words "Yes, Lord" will become the most important words in your vocabulary. Each time you express those words, you are expressing a heart of obedience. That's a good thing!
"Yes, Lord" means you not only agree to His wishes, but you accept His terms for any action He may request of you. A powerful walk with the Lord is a series of "yeses" with corresponding actions once you submit.
Did you know that in God’s eyes there is no such thing as a generation gap? That whole concept is nothing more than spiritually ignorant, psycho-babble hogwash. Spiritually alive parents who have chosen to invest in their children, considering them more important than themselves and spiritually alive children, who have chosen to invest in the family by the power of the Holy Spirit, have no time to buy into that ridiculousness.
The generation gap concept was created by spiritually impotent people, who attempted to incorporate their impotence into guiding and directing their offspring. It is nothing more than a way to excuse their inability to lead their children as they continue to walk in their own ways and thinking. What they really need to do is submit to God through Jesus Christ so that the life of Christ can flow in them through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is God’s wisdom, strength, love, etc. that we need – not ours. Ours will not truly get the job done. Of course, each generation has its own tastes and preferences; but communication, understanding, mutual love and respect, discernment, and prayer overcome any differences and allow generations to flow together with peace and harmony.
Raising godly children requires a lifetime of investing in them, most of the time in ways that violate our personal comfort zones. It is going to take a lot of surrender of our own ways to the Lord, a lot of prayer, a lot of selfless choices, placing their well-being above our comfort; and a lot of heart work. Yes, heart work. However, the eventual satisfaction and rewards of seeing a child being formed by God and the character of Jesus going forth through our children more than compensates for whatever price we may have to pay.
Godly children, who eventually become godly adults, are the goal and heart desire of Father God for both marriage and family. His standards are higher than the world’s standards and most of the standards in the typical church of today. He is after the heart of our children, not their compliance. His methods raise the bar in comparison with “normal” child rearing.
[While education is vitally important and must be part of any child’s growth process, which child lives a more significant life – one who has all of the degrees in the world, a successful business, and a mediocre life in Christ; or one who has the priorities of God as his priority, dedicating himself to bringing others to significance while having few of the successes of the world?]
Investing in our children God’s way creates generations of strong, healthy children, who are full of integrity and inner wealth and capable of not only overcoming any of the challenges that come their way, but actually prospering because of them. Raising children God’s way brings proper credit to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and a testimony of His eternal work.
Knowing this, each of us has a choice to make at some point in our lives. This moment may be that time for you. You can approach child rearing with an attitude that your children are the ones who need to conform to His ways on their own, or you can settle it in your heart, once and for all time, that who you are and who you become in Christ is a major factor in determining who they will become.
Let’s talk more!
Jim Corbett
“I am preparing you for the darkness ahead. Be assured, it is on the way. As a festering sore, those who hate Me are beginning to infect each corner of the world. Soon it will appear as if those with loud mouths and deceitful hearts are winning over My Word. Do not be fooled. My Word will stand. My promises will happen. I am God; there is no other!”
Psalm 3:1-6 AMP
1) Lord, How they are increased who trouble me! Many are they who rise up against me.
2) Many are saying of me, there is no help for him in God. Selah [pause and calmly think of that]!
3) But You, O Lord, are a shield for me, my glory, and the lifter of my head.
4) With my voice I cry to the Lord and He hears and answers me out of His holy hill. Selah [pause and calmly think of that]!
5) I lay down and slept, I awakened again, for the Lord sustains me.
6) I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people who have set themselves against me round about.
Psalm 46:1 AMP
God is our Refuge and Strength [mighty and impenetrable to temptation], a very present and well-proved help in trouble.
Psalm 119:89 NIV
Your word, O Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens.
Isaiah 46:9-10 AMP
9) [Earnestly] remember the former things, [which I did] of old; for I am God, and there is no one else; I am God, and there is none like Me.
10) Declaring the end and the result from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure and purpose.
Isaiah 48:3 NIV
“I foretold the former things long ago, my mouth announced them and I made them known; then suddenly I acted, and they came to pass.”
The Word of God can be trusted no matter how loudly enemies portray their power, no matter how strong they might appear; and no matter how often they violate the truth. Everywhere in today’s world there are those who say that the Lord Jesus is not Lord and King. Nothing changes the fact that He is. Everywhere in today’s world there are those who deny the fact that the Word of God is real. Nothing changes the fact that it is and that it is directly from God. Now is the time for each of us to determine in our hearts to believe fully what we know to be true.
Confirm in my heart what You have taught me, Lord,
Jim Corbett
Fathers, are you only disciplining your children when they do something wrong, or do you spend your life nurturing them in the path they should go? Discipline alone on a continual basis leads to a “I can never do anything right” attitude in a child. It leads to a beaten spirit that says, “Why try? He won’t like what I do anyway.” This attitude fosters the seeds of rebellion and heart separation. It turns a child away from a father’s sound biblical influence of love and encouragement to his or her peers’ worldly perspective.
Nurturing, on the other hand, leads to loving interaction and proper companionship between father and child. Their relationship is like the one between a craftsman and his apprentice.
A true craftsman is a person with practiced skills, skills that over time make him an expert because of the perfection found in his work. When a craftsman takes on an apprentice, the purpose of their association is to hand down the craftsman’s skills to someone who chooses to be a study of him. The craftsman guides, instructs, directs, and nurtures the skills of the apprentice with understanding and patience as he learns. It is a relationship for the good of the apprentice. When the skills handed down are mastered by the apprentice, he is then a craftsman himself and the process is completed. The new craftsman has what is necessary to function properly in what he does.
So it is supposed to be with a father-child relationship. The father - a man who has learned what he knows from the throne room of his Father - is ordained to pass those skills down to his offspring by guiding, instructing, and teaching his children so they can navigate their time in the world with Christ-like character. This teaching includes loads of love, encouragement, and enthusiastic monitoring. The result for you is a person who is ready to function as a significant legacy. The benefit to the child is the ability to fulfill his or her task of representing Christ properly to a dying world. Your children are waiting for the wealth you have to give them!
Let’s talk more!
Jim Corbett
“Jesus always completes what He has begun in you. The work of the cross is as powerful today as it was on that day on Calvary. His blood is as fresh this moment as it was the moment the first drop left His body. My Word is as sharp and powerful as it was the instant I spoke. Nothing has changed. Nothing has diminished over time. My promises are real and for all of eternity. They are as accurate as when I gave them to My vessels.
"All that I have said will come to pass. It is unfolding this very moment. You can rely on the cross, My Word, and My promises. Apply them to your life. Nothing can stop them from accomplishing what I intend them to accomplish. Trust in them, because you can trust Me!”
Isaiah 48:3 NIV
“I foretold the former things long ago, my mouth announced them and I made them known; then suddenly I acted, and they came to pass.”
Isaiah 66:9 AMP
Shall I bring to the [moment of] birth and not cause to bring forth? says the Lord. Shall I who causes to bring forth shut the womb? says your God.
John 1:1-5 NIV
1) In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God.
2) He was with God in the beginning.
3) Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
4) In him was life and that life was the light of men.
5) The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
Romans 8:38 NIV
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Ephesians 3:14-19 NLB
14) When I think of the wisdom and scope of God’s plan, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father,
15) the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth.
16) I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will give you mighty inner strength through his Holy Spirit.
17) And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love.
18) And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is.
19) May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it. Then you will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
Hebrews 12:2 NIV
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith…
Feeling our present and future pain of separation from the Father, there was nothing that He could do but spend His life for us. His focus was on our loss. He cared about what would happen to us if He didn’t intervene on our behalf.
Having no separation between His heart and the heart of His Father, He also took as His own the loss that the Father had because of the sin of mankind, which caused separation. Father longed for all those He loved to cherish His glory for their well-being. Because the Father felt that way, so did Jesus - not in an elementary form of human caring, but with all of the compassions of the Father. When He moved in compassion, our needs and pains were taken on by Him as His own.
I believe, Lord. Help my unbelief,
Jim Corbett
