Tell Them A Story

I'm not a parenting expert.  In fact, I already feel like I don't have a clue what I'm doing as a parent.  I may have only been a parent for a couple years, but I already know that being a parent is tough work.  Joyous, wonderful, difficult work.

I am not writing as a parenting expert--that would be naive and presumptious.  I am no expert.  Many of my own theories have been proven wrong over the past couple years, and many more will be proven false in the years to come.  Far from an expert, I feel more like a shipwrecked man, trying to grab on to a lifeboat, calling his fellow shipwreckees to find the lifeboat too!

I write today about a secret weapon that I believe is ordained by God as a parenting tool.  It is a tool that is important for toddlers to teenagers to adult children.  It is a tool that a parent yields even after the tool of discipline has outgrown its usefulness.  It is a tool that can still be used long after a child has moved out, but is still useful to mold a young child.  This tool is one we see in the very fabric of Scripture itself.  Do you want the secret weapon?  Here it is?

Tell your kids a story!

Think about this.  In the earliest section of the Bible (Torah), we see a command that says this:

"These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.  Impress them upon your children.  Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."  Deut. 6:6-7

Now, this command isn't all that unique to our faith.  Most faith documents encourage parents to teach the law (the way of pleasing God) to their children.  What is unique, is the method which they used to impress this faith on their children.  Notice that Deutoronomy is framed as a story.  It isn't a legal document just listing all the rules, it is a story showing how the laws came to be, and how they played out in the lives of faithful men and women in the past.

Most of the Bible is written in story form.  That is not an accident.  That is a God-ordained (and even God-breathed) lesson in how to grow in the faith and how to pass on the faith.  Tell a story.

Our kids need more than the rules.  They need the story.  They need to know the story of God, and they need to know how God's story intersects and changes your story.  Can I encourage you to share a few stories?

Share stories straight from the Bible.  They need to hear the God-given stories.  Root their life and faith in the stories that have shaped faithful men and women for thousands of years.

Share stories of faithful people from your lifetime.  Share stories of those who inspire you.  Visit with missionaries, or invite them to stay with you when they visit the church, and invite them to tell some stories.  Stories of faithful people today help connect the Bible story with our modern life.

Share stories of failure and faith.  The Bible doesn't show God's people to be perfect.  Don't be afraid to talk about your failures.  Don't be afraid to use your life to help your children and teens learn.  If we are honest with our mistakes, and with the results of those mistakes, we help keep them from choosing the same mistakes.

Share fictional stories.  One of my mentors would tell stories that always ended with a talking dog sharing a moral.  Yeah, it happened.  And it helped.  Not every important story needs to be a true story.  Tell you kids stories that inspire you--whether true or not.

Stories shape our thoughts, and our thoughts shape our life.

Tell your kids a story!

Apologizing for God

I have been convicted recently, and I want to share my struggle.  I can admit that I do think it is a sin issue, although I don't think I would have ever considered it such even a month ago.  However, the reality is that this struggle has hurt my relationship with God, and hurt my testimony to those around me.

I have been feeling the urge to apologize for God.

Sitting in a room with eager learners seeking real answers about the real God of the universe, I have felt tempted to apologize for what we find.

It's not that I am refusing to teach the truth of Scripture--I am much too convinced of the truth and accuracy of Scripture to do that...

...but what I seem to have lost conviction about was the goodness of God.

At the root, its about shame.

Shame, embarrassed to share the hard truths of the Bible.  The truth that the Bible tells the story of a God that is beyond our expectations and understanding.  The truth that this God does things that I can't defend or argue as good.  It has made me squirm to talk about how God has reacted to sin in the past, what he has called sin for all time, and so many more things that I can't begin to describe it.

And at the root is my culture, my generation.  Though better trained to know the truth, I am equally able to drown in the culture around me.  I find it difficult to separate myself, my identity, from the culture that surrounds me. The culture of tolerance and timidness; sarcasm and sexuality; activism and apathy.  This is MY culture, and it has a tremendous impact on my life.

And it broke me.  It led me into the lie that I can decide whether God is good or not, that I am somehow qualified to criticize the character of God.  The God who has created ten thousand suns and beyond, who knit my brain together and allowed it to think and work--I am going to try to criticize this?  I am going to try to apologize for his actions?

____________

A student sat in my office confessing a struggle; a sin.  Looking at me, they sought God's word on this issue.  What does the book say?  What does it reveal?

And I hesitated.

And that is when I noticed the destruction inside me.  That is when I resolved to make a change.  That is when I prayed for forgiveness, apologizing to God for how I had avoided Him instead of apologizing for Him to those around me.

And I felt his goodness around me, surrounding me and wrapping me in his truth and justice and goodness and love.

For part of the great truth of the gospel is that he is never far away, even when we try to make Him so.

And as I continue on this journey of being in love with the actions of God, the teachings of God, and the character of God, I ask--will you pray for me?

Have you ever found yourself apologizing for God?  What caused your hesitancy? I hope to hear from you!

The Bible Is...A Story

Have you ever wondered why there are four gospels instead of just one?  Have you pondered why the Old Testament tells the story of the Kings of Israel and Judah, just to go back and retell them?  Why was the law written down twice in the first five books of the Old Testament?

The answer is simple, but it may make you slightly uncomfortable.  It is simply because the Bible is a story.

The Very Thing I Was (not) Eager To Do

I once threw change at a homeless man in Cincinnati to avoid talking to him any longer.

I threw it, it went everywhere, and I turned and left him to pick up the pieces of my generosity.  It wasn't 24 hours later that I was pulling out my wallet to pay a big tip to a horse-and-buggy driver to show off in front of my friends.  I was self-centered, fearful of those that were not like me (and who I thought were lesser than me), and ignorant.

And perhaps it should be noted that I was attending the National Missionary Convention.


At twenty, I was on the fast track to becoming one of those hot shot ministers that could preach to large crowds and do fantastic things.  I had helped write and design the curriculum for the NMC's youth program for that year, and would be helping teach it throughout the weekend.  I was there to be an expert.

And yet I knew nothing.

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My first year in ministry and I am surrounded by a new reality.  In my first month I am going to a different type of missions gathering.  A group of 10 of us, half of them teenagers, are going to talk with Islamic refugees.  We are not going to preach, nor are we going to accomplish some great work.  We are simply driving five hours from home to spend the day having conversations in English, helping them get accustomed to their new life in the United States.

I talk to an elderly man as we walk through the park.  He is weathered from horrors that my life cannot comprehend.  He asks about my family, and why I do not yet have children at the age of 23.  I balk and try to explain the intricacy of being stable before having children to a man who was uprooted and moved across the world just a year before.

He asks about my faith, and I share that it is in Jesus the Messiah.  He came to bring good news.  I asked about his faith.  He shares that when he was young they would have stoned any man found out to be a follower of Jesus the Messiah; and those were the good old days.

As we leave for the return home.  This man, whose pride is killing my brothers, embraces me in a hug--a deep sign of respect.

On the ride home I realize:

The one thing I know is that I know nothing.


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Now a four year ministry veteran.  I know less than I did before, but yet I know more.  On trips to serve or listen or talk I have learned that these places, these people are crucial.  They belong to God.  I am struck now, this very morning, as I read again through Paul's letter to the Galatians, about a simple agreement between Paul and the other leaders of the church:

"All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do."


Let me be likewise eager, O God and Father of this homeless soul.

Bedtime Stories, Foundations for Eternity

We sat down on mom and dad's bed sometimes.  Other times I would lay my head in mom's lap down on the couch.  Pajamas on keeping my small body cozy in a creaky old farmhouse.

Magical moments followed as my mother would open up a book and transport us to another world.

I was one of the Boxcar Children.


I was a Hardy Boy


I was the young boy who thought of the amazing things I could do if I was to run the zoo.


"Formative" is too academic to describe what happens when parents read to their children.

Spiritual.

Indescribable.

Fulfilling.

And as I prepare to welcome my first God-designed child into this world, I seek stories.  Story time must be a part of my child's life.  Stories that make us laugh, cry, shudder with fear, leap with joy!

Stories that reveal unseen things; things bigger than explanation.

Stories that connect with God's presence.

Stories that fill little (I can't tell you his name yet)'s heart and mind with a foundation that will weather the storms that come later.

And I need your help.

Please share with me your favorite books to read with your kids, your kids favorite books to reread.  Also, share with me stories you'd love to hear told, characters that inspire you, historical events that ground your faith, anything and all!

I want to write stories, and share the best that are already out there.  Thank you for helping prepare me to become the dad I so desire to be.

In Him,

Matt