YOU TOLD YOUR KIDS THE DEVIL COULD DO WHAT?

I talked with my son who lives in Mexico last night.  I couldn't do what he and Kim do.  I don't have the sacrifice it would take to live in their world.  I admire them greatly.  And, it caused me to reflect on something that impacted me all these years when I once heard a strong sermon when in preaching school in Dallas.

One of my preaching heroes, Charles Coil, told of a young teen that wanted to do mission work on the continent of Africa.  Her mother had a fit.  Grandmother's sympathy for her daughter talked her granddaughter out of her dream; your mother will just die if you leave.  The young woman submitted to parental and grandparental fears and stayed home....began to live with a hippie....and her life was a vast failuristic dud.

Coil's point was that afterwards the mother and grandmother wished a thousand times over they had let their precious girl pursue the dreams of her heart.  They would prefer she lived serving God away from them rather than walk in front of them no longer toting that faith she once treasured.

I never forgot my friend's passionate plea for parents to let go for their kids' sake.  Mine were all preschool age at the time.

When Tim called home from Sunset at about age---oh 18 or 20---and asked me to pray for him and some others to find doors opening for Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East in order to become embedded into the Muslim culture, I knew not to flinch.  He expressed that should such opportunity unfold it would most likely mean the end of earthly ties. 

I knew not to flinch.  I was proud he could envision the possibility. 

He did not go there....yet.  His family, though, has been in Guadalajara for around nine years.  The setting, to me, is rough and rugged and carries that increasing Mexican threat of the bad side of things. 

Again, I remember Charles Coil's admonition to get out of the way of His progress in our kids. 

So what's this have to do with you? 

Be of great care when you respond to your children's imaginations.  Yes---mark it down---they will encounter difficulty and they will be hit with substantial stress.  That goes on just going off to college....or shopping at Wal-Mart.

Rather than fight their faith (which you have prayed they would have for how many years now?) with disgraceful fear, why not endorsed their faith that these are no longer your little ones in short pants hopping off to daycare? 

No, these are the ones you toted off to VBS and groomed them to believe God could cause the walls of Jericho to actually fall down and that if the devil didn't like it he could sit on a tack.