Loving Our Future Generation

How can we love our grandchildren and great grandchildren when they have not been born yet? How can we care and cultivate their life in God before their existence on earth is a reality?

I love the study, Walking with God in the Desert, by Ray Vander Laan. Ray describes different trees that grow in the desert and one in particular that he points out is the tamarisk tree. This is a slow growing tree that must be planted, cared for and cultivated unlike other trees that grow in the desert. The one who plants the tree will never experience its shade or the resources it has to offer because of the slowness of its growth. However, future generations will enjoy all this tamarisk tree provides.

Abraham not only had great faith in God but he also had a great love for the future generations he was promised by God. These generations he never knew, but he loved them by his present actions. He planted and cultivated a tamarisk tree in the land that God promised would belong to his family of future generations. What love! He did not benefit from this cultivation, yet he gained such satisfaction in knowing that God would fulfill His promise of provision to his family to come.

Ray points out the importance of loving our future family to come as well. He describes the experience and benefit of wandering in the desert with Moses and the Israelite nation after God brought them out of Egypt. Ray says this,

“After the Israelites rebelled in the desert, God disciplined them by forbidding them to enter the Promised Land at that time. He also kept them in the desert until everyone twenty years old or older had died. Certainly that generation of God’s people failed often, but they spent up to forty years accomplishing something they would never enjoy the fruit of – training their children and their grandchildren in the ways of the Lord. Their lives focused on those who would follow them, and God blessed their efforts! In effect, their children were their tamarisk tree!”  

This helps us see our children in a different light – they are our tamarisk tree as well. So, back to our original question, “How can we love our unborn grandchildren and great grandchildren?” By loving our children and teaching them to love the Lord and follow Him all the days of their life. If they are following God, they will be able to give the faith they have to their children, and so on. In this process our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren provide shade for the burned, nourishment for the hungry, water for the thirsty, healing for the hurting, and so on. Our duty today is to cultivate our tamarisk tree(s)!

“Understand, therefore, that the LORD your God is indeed God. He is the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations and constantly loves those who love him and obey his commands” (Deuteronomy 7:9). 

Rebuke Gently and Forgive Generously

Sitting at the dining room table one afternoon, I was homeschooling my nine and seven year old in their academic studies, when suddenly it occurred to me that the house was unusually quiet. With a five and three year old (who were boys) somewhere in the house, I knew that quiet equaled trouble! I began searching for Nick and Scott (my two young boys) and guess where I found them? They were happily stuffing toilet paper (by the roll fulls) in our downstairs toilet. After many disciplinary situations that day, this was the final straw for me. I sat down on the bathroom floor, and I cried! My two sweet boys hugged me and said “I sorry mommy, we won’t do it again.” How could I not forgive them (again)?

Jesus commands us to forgive others who sin against us. He said, “If your brother or sister (or child) sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them” (Luke 17:3-4). The apostles replied to the Lord’s command with “Increase our faith!”

Nothing takes greater faith than to forgive others who have hurt or sinned against you (repeatedly). The apostles had seen many miracles performed by Jesus by this point, but it wasn't in these they asked for increased faith, it was in needing to forgive others.

There is an important reason why Jesus wanted the apostles to forgive others who had sinned against them. This reason is critical to this passage, for if we miss this we won’t forgive for the right reason. In most cases if we miss this very important piece to this passage, we won’t forgive at all; instead we will remain in our selfishness that nurtures our own hurt instead of helping others be free from their potential doom.  

Just before Luke 17: 3-4 Jesus spoke to his disciples in verses 1-2 and said, “Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. So watch yourselves.”

Rebuking and forgiving anyone who has sinned against us is also a way of escorting them out of being a stumbling block to others. If we refuse to rebuke, these people never know they need to change. They continue to be obstacles to others’ faith. If we never forgive then we become the obstacle to them by never giving them a second chance to grow from their sin and find the courage to change. Rebuking and forgiving work hand in hand in helping a person be free from the potential damage they could cause not only to themselves but to others in their path.

When it comes to raising children, this is why discipline is so important. Without discipline, we keep our children immature and stunt their spiritual and positive influential growth. With discipline we raise spiritual giants that effect progressive change in their present and in their future.

Today’s lesson is simple: Rebuke gently and forgive generously. 

My Flesh May Fail...but God

The difficulties the Israelite people endured in the desert were meant to be a strengthening tool that equipped them for a good and fruitful life. If only they had listened.  “God led them through the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought them water out of hard rock. He gave them manna (the bread of angels) to eat in the desert, something their fathers had never known; God did all this to humble and to test them so that in the end it might go well with them” (Deuteronomy 8:15-16).

Likewise, God takes us through our own desert experiences in which He uses as tools to equip us. We may face financial uncertainty, challenging children, a stressful marriage, difficult family relationships, unanswered questions, health issues, etc. You can fill in the blank of your present condition ____________.

However, if we respond to these conditions in humility, God fills our tool belt with endurance, faithfulness, new vision and perspective for our destiny in life, and fresh insights of Who He is. If we use these experiences (while difficult) for us, we come out refined and armed for the next experience. Each experience provides us with undying instruments (instruments of heavenly power vs. earthy might) that help us forge forward in victory.

The challenge is that many of us falter under the circumstances and conditions we face. Just like the Israelite nation, we choose not to learn, instead we choose to forsake God’s teaching and satisfy our survival with man’s wisdom. And we wonder why we find ourselves returning to the same desert experience over and over. Why? Because we refuse to learn.

On the other hand, there a few that has the courage and humility to bow to God’s disciplines in life and see them as treasures not waste. They see them as opportunities not obstacles. They use them to better their Christian life not hinder it.

God is faithful, this we can always count on. Often in these desert times, all we have to go on is God’s trustworthy character. We can look to Who He is so that in the end we become more like Who He is. We see what He sees, do what He does, and face uncertainty with faithfulness and power.

Our faith in God does not always remove the difficult emotions we feel, for Asaph writes in the Psalms of the many challenges he faced and he was quite transparent in his disposition, but one thing was different. Asaph wrote, “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26).  His focus was different. His trust was in God not his conditions not even in his hopeful relief. He recognized that even though his heart was overwhelmed, God was sovereign over his heart not just his condition.