According to Solomon, to everything there is a season (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8). Birds fly south in winter, bears and other animals hibernate during the cold months, and in Middle Georgia, kids go back to school in August. And coinciding with our children going back to school, Lit Nation at FBBC is up and running. Our youth are now engaged in a complete Christian Enrichment program on Sunday and Wednesday night. I’m still old school so I call it, Back to Sunday School, The Lesson Before the Lesson.
The simple truth is, our children’s – all children’s, survival in this ever changing and dangerous world is linked to their relationship to God. And that relationship begins at home.
Give a few thoughts to the following quotes:
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted. Vladimir Lenin.
Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world. Vladimir Lenin.
Give me the child for the first seven years and I’ll give you the man. Jesuit Maxim.
I am not asking you to debate whether the individual credited with making those statements meant it for good or evil. But I am encouraging you to consider the central theme running through each.
There is a battle raging for the minds of our children – all children.
Fear not though, our Omniscient God gave us the solution before we knew there was a problem.
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6 KJV.
That training begins at home, is taught at Sunday School, and then reinforced at home again. The Lesson Before the Lesson.
We have been charged with teaching our children before the world does.
Joseph was a teenager when he had the dream that landed him in trouble with his brothers. Soon after he told his brothers about his dream, they plotted to kill him and ultimately sold him into slavery. Jospeh relied on his relationship with God -The Lesson Before the Lesson – to help him escape a plot of death, make Godly decisions while in servitude, survive a prison sentence and ultimately rise to the second most powerful man in the world at that time.
David’s life probably can be described as a series of “ups and downs,” that began when he was a youth and continued into his adult life. Since David was not serving in King Saul’s army when he fought Goliath, he was probably under the age of twenty. (Number 1:3) Yet his relationship with God is evident by the offence he took to the words of Goliath. Although he did not begin his reign as king until age thirty, his relationship with God began as a youth.
Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were teenagers when they were taken from Jerusalem and held in captivity in Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar changed their names and attempted to erase their religion and culture. The most powerful man in the world failed in his attempt to turn them away from God. When they were tested, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah stated: If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” Dan 3:17-18 NIV
Joseph, David, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were taught the Word of God at a young age, and they did not depart from it.
We are sending our children off to school this month to be taught The Three Rs – Reading, Writing and Arithmetic.
My hope is that they have already been taught “The Lesson Before the Lesson!
By: Henry L. Hopson, Jr.