For dad only:
Faith
We had to admit my three-month-old daughter to the hospital when she came down with a rare disease. I remember the first day I was able to hold her. Her body was limp from paralysis and about all she could do at the time was open her eyes and look at us. I held that little bundle close in amazement.
In your Father’s arms
My walk with God has to be like my daughter in my arms. Faith means coming to Him and not bringing my agenda or my abilities to the table. He scoops me up and carries me through a life I can plan out but not figure out. Living for God is less of what I do and more of where I let Him take me.
Do you have needs for your family? Put yourself safely in His arms. Uncertain future? Let Him take you step by step. Mistakes from the past? He lifts you out of those things and brings you forward.
Children who trust
Rather than raising strong-willed children, you want to teach them to relax in the Lord. They have hurdles for their futures that they can try to clear by their own abilities, or they can learn to let the Lord carry them. Faith is simply putting ourselves in His embrace and trusting His way to be best.
Don’t raise kids who think faith is a manipulation tool. We do not come up with the plan and tell God what He is going to do. Faith means we trust His plan and let it shape our actions and attitudes. Raise kids who are content in the Lord and fill the world with more people who know what it means to relax, not just live in tension.
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Read this to the kids:
Hanging Safe
Rusty chased after a lizard as it scurried across a big rock. He and Dad were hiking with a friend who knew a lot about mountain climbing.
“So, Troy,” Dad said, “how long have you been climbing?”
The man shrugged, causing the coils of rope on his shoulder to heave a little. “Long as I can remember, I reckon,” he said. “I’ve been over these hills a thousand times.”
“Have you ever been climbing anywhere else?” Rusty asked him. Stepping back onto the trail, between the two men.
“Yep. All over. Been to the Badlands, several spots in the Rockies, and even out to the Grand Canyon.”
“Do you ever get scared?” Rusty asked. He listened to the crunch of their boots in the gravel path.
“I’ve been in some tough situations,” he said, “But I know I have a home beyond this earth. That’s what faith is, you know. You have to depend on God even when life seems out of control.”
No one said much as they came to a nice view of the valley below them. Rusty was glad he had worn his spring jacket when the chilly gust of wind came up the valley.
“That’s what I’ve learned,” Troy continued, “that a lot of people don’t seem to get. You can’t make God do anything. Living for the Lord is not about how high you can climb or what you can do at all—it’s about knowing He’s got your back. He won’t let you down. You can trust Him to hold you when there seems to be no way out.”
“Look! A deer!” Rusty said, pointing.
“Two of them!” Dad said in a whisper.
The three of them stood and watched the deer eat some leaves and then move on over the other side of the hill. They began walking again, following Dad’s friend Troy. He took them to the base of a cliff. Looking up the rock wall, the man said, “This is a moderate climb. Should give you both enough of a challenge to be fun.”
Rusty looked at Dad and grinned. “This is going to be a blast.”
Dad nodded, looking up at the rock wall.
“What I’ll do first,” Troy said, “is climb up ahead of you and secure a rope.”
“You’re going to free-climb it?” Dad asked.
“Yeah, there’s nothing to this one,” his friend answered. “See the little ledges on the way up? Plenty of incline to this rock face and places to stop and rest. It will be fine.”
Without another word, Troy started up the rock wall. Dad and Rusty watched him go. He did not seem to have any trouble finding places to put his hands and feet as he maneuvered up the cliff. The sun shone brightly on their backs as they faced the wall. Rusty could see the shadow of his jacket perfectly on the rough, brown rock in front of them. It flapped in the breeze and made him look bigger than he really was.
They watched until Troy disappeared over the top. A few minutes later he called out, “Look out below!”
His blue rope came dropping down, leaving a small coil on the ground near them. Then another rope came down, followed by another. Troy came down next. He looked like a spider riding a strand of web down as he bounced off the rocks with the rope streaming through his harness.
When he got to the ground, he pointed to the harnesses Rusty and Dad had carried up on their shoulders and told them to put them on. Rusty put his legs into his. It was like he was putting on pants with no legs. He pulled the harness up tight and tried to make it comfortable. It felt weird no matter what he did.
Troy helped snug it up and told him this was his seat if he slipped off the cliff. “Just hold onto your rope and plant your feet against the rock wall. You have to trust the harness to hold you and not get scared.”
“Okay, I’m not,” Rusty said.
Troy looked at his jacket and said, “Are you still cold? You might want to take that off so it does not get caught in the rope.”
“How would it get caught in the rope?” Rusty wanted to know.
“Look,” Troy picked up one of the ropes hanging from the rock wall and pulled it through a ring on the front of Rusty’s harness. Then he passed it through another ring and doubled it back. “See?” he said, “this way the rope slides through as you climb up. But if you start to fall, it catches like this and holds you right there.”
“So how did you come down so fast?” Rusty asked.
“If you pull this rope up like this as you go down, it slides through easily. If you want to stop, just do this.” He showed them both how to let the rope feed through and how to stop themselves.
“Cool. I’ve never done this before,” Rusty said as Dad helped him finish securing his harness.
When they were all ready, Troy explained to Rusty what kind of rocks to look for so he could grab ahold with his hands and push up with his boots.
“There is always a way up,” Troy said. “I just went up here free climbing, so I know you can make it, too. You just have to figure out the best path for you. If you get in a jamb, just work your way back down and try a different way. Okay?”
“Okay,” Rusty said, watching Dad climb up ahead of them.
“I feel like a mountain goat,” Dad said.
“You look like an octopus,” Rusty said. They both laughed.
Rusty started up the cliff with Troy working his way up between the two of them. Troy stayed below Rusty to help coach him along to find good handholds in the rocks. Some of it was easy climbing and Rusty did not need much help. About halfway up the rock face, Rusty began to get hot. The sun was beating down on them and his jacket was getting warm.
“Whew, it’s hotter up here than I thought,” Rusty said.
“I was thinking you should leave your jacket behind,” Troy said. “You work up a lot of heat just climbing these parts.”
While Troy helped Dad find a good foothold, Rusty held onto the rope with one hand and leaned against it while unzipping with his other hand. He had to tug pretty hard to get the jacket untucked from under his harness. Once his jacket was open, he felt a little more fresh air and continued his climb.
Dad and Troy had come to a ledge to stop and rest for a minute. Rusty climbed up and joined them. They sat and looked out over the valley and the breathtaking beauty of God’s creation. The wind started to pick up. If Rusty tried to look down, he began to get a sinking feeling inside his stomach, so he grabbed his rope to steady himself.
Dad and Troy were standing up and prepping to climb again. Rusty pulled against his rope and hopped up. He climbed off to the right, secretly hoping to race them and beat the other two to the top. He made some good headway, and heard Dad say, “Look at him go!”
Then his foot slipped.
Rusty thought he had a good hold on the rock above him, but his hand slipped off, too, and he fell away from the rock wall just a little. Instantly his rope harness caught and stopped him from falling.
“You are getting ahead of yourself,” Troy said.
“Whew!” Rusty said. “Good thing I had this harness on.”
“Really, you should climb like you don’t have any safety. Sometimes people take too many risks when they know the rope will catch them.”
Rusty started climbing back up again, more carefully this time. Once he got up a few feet, he noticed the rope was getting in his way. He looked at the thing and realized something was wrong. He climbed back down until the rope was tight enough to hold. Clouds were starting to move in and block the sun.
Rusty examined the rope to figure out why it was jammed. “Oh great!” he said. “My jacket is stuck in the rope loops.”
“What?” Dad said.
“I was afraid that would happen,” Troy said. “Stay there, I’ll come over.” Troy climbed sideways and worked his way back down to Rusty. He grabbed ahold of the jammed jacket and tugged this way and that. “Looks like you got yourself into a mess, son.”
“If I can get back to the ledge, I could get it out,” Rusty said. “It’s just stuck because of the weight on it.”
“Well, you can’t climb down. What if you climb up a little and get the weight off of it?”
Rusty pulled himself up a few inches. Troy tugged at the jacket and rope. It would not budge.
“I think I am going to have to cut it out.”
Rusty sighed. “It was my favorite coat.”
Troy looked at the tangle for a second. “I’m not sure I could do it safely here anyway. Tell you what, you stay here and sit tight—your harness will hold you just fine.”
Rusty watched Dad climb on up without him.
Troy blocked his view as he head on up. “Don’t worry,” he called over his shoulder, “just sit tight in your harness. It will hold you.”
Rusty tried to enjoy the view, but he accidentally looked down and panicked. He leaned in toward the rock wall and tried to find a place to hold on.
“If you try to hold on like that for too long,” Troy shouted down, “your arms might cramp up. Just relax. Trust your harness. It will hold you. You will need your strength to finish the climb.”
Rusty tried to sit back and relax again. Far off in the distance, he saw a big bird flying. He watched it come closer and closer. Then he realized he was watching a bald eagle. The bird flew close to the cliff wall like it was checking him out. Rusty turned his head when it went behind him and watched it go by.
The sun shone through a break in the clouds and put a spotlight on the valley below. Slowly the spotlight crawled up the valley, right up the rock wall he was on. Rusty watched in fascination as the spotlight moved and widened up the rocks until he was in it and the air all around him grew warm again.
Find out what happens next time.
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Now discuss it!
When have you had to trust God for something you could not do anything about?
How was Rusty’s harness a lot like faith?
What are some things God carries us through when we cannot go on by our own power?
Sickness, job loss, death of a loved one, meeting new people
How do we try to climb on ahead without God’s safety sometimes? What trouble can that get us into?
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Read God’s Word together:
Trusting for the Basics
A prophet named Elijah, from Tishbe in Gilead, said to King Ahab, “In the name of the LORD, the living God of Israel, whom I serve, I tell you that there will be no dew or rain for the next two or three years until I say so.”
Then the LORD said to Elijah, “Leave this place and go east and hide yourself near Cherith Brook, east of the Jordan. The brook will supply you with water to drink, and I have commanded ravens to bring you food there.”
Elijah obeyed the LORD’s command, and went and stayed by Cherith Brook. He drank water from the brook, and ravens brought him bread and meat every morning and every evening.
After a while the brook dried up because of the lack of rain. Then the LORD said to Elijah, “Now go to the town of Zarephath, near Sidon, and stay there. I have commanded a widow who lives there to feed you.”
So Elijah went to Zarephath, and as he came to the town gate, he saw a widow gathering firewood. “Please bring me a drink of water,” he said to her. And as she was going to get it, he called out, “And please bring me some bread, too.”
She answered, “By the living LORD your God I swear that I don’t have any bread. All I have is a handful of flour in a bowl and a bit of olive oil in a jar. I came here to gather some firewood to take back home and prepare what little I have for my son and me. That will be our last meal, and then we will starve to death.”
“Don’t worry,” Elijah said to her. “Go on and prepare your meal. But first make a small loaf from what you have and bring it to me, and then prepare the rest for you and your son. For this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘The bowl will not run out of flour or the jar run out of oil before the day that I, the LORD, send rain.’ ”
The widow went and did as Elijah had told her, and all of them had enough food for many days. As the LORD had promised through Elijah, the bowl did not run out of flour nor did the jar run out of oil.
(I Kings 17:1-16, GNB)
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Let’s talk about it!
When the land had no food or water, Elijah had to hide from the angry king. How did God provide him food?
How did Elijah need faith and trust in God to feed him?
Did the brook dry up because Elijah lacked faith?
No. It dried up because of the drought. God was taking Elijah to a new faith experience.
How did the widow have to trust the man of God when her food and water were as good as gone?
She made him food when they had so little.
How has God provided for your family when you were in need?
Role play: God calls your family to help start a new church. You don’t see your old friends anymore and money is tight. How can you keep trusting in God anyway?
You speak to a friend about Jesus, but he rejects you and doesn’t want to talk to you anymore. How does your faith in God carry you through this rejection?
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Memorize it!
Proverbs 3:5
Trust in the LORD with all thine heart;
and lean not unto thine own understanding.