Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, April 29th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. Today we are going to hear how you, working together with the Holy Spirit can help your children understand a lot about who God is and His plan for their lives. Stay tuned.
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Now, we're talking today about how we communicate theological concepts to children, and this is going to date me a little bit, but I will never forget – I think I was in the second grade, and I was attending a vacation Bible school at our church, and on this particular day, the pastor came in to speak to the vacation Bible school this particular morning.
Dennis: Right.
Bob: And his message to us – again, I …
Dennis: Was this before or after the Flood?
[laughter]
Bob: That's cold, that's cold. This was in the '60s, all right?
Dennis: Well, they're just wondering.
Bob: And I was – I had to be 7 or 8 years old, and here is what I remember the pastor saying. He said, "You children should read your Bible. In fact, how many of you like "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.?" See, this is how I'm dating myself. You remember "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." don't you?
Dennis: Sure, sure, uh-huh.
Bob: And I raised my hand, because I loved "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." U.N.C.L.E. stands for the United Network Command for Law Enforcement, and they were fighting the evil forces of T.H.R.U.S.H. and Napoleon Solo and Ilyra Kurayakin were the secret agents. I mean, I could go on with this.
Dennis: It was the C.S.I of that day.
Bob: So I raised my hand, I said, "I love the 'Man From U.N.C.L.E.,'" and the pastor said the Bible is more exciting than "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." And I remember thinking, "Well, then I want to read the Bible."
Dennis: Did you buy it at that point?
Bob: Well, I went home and started reading my Bible, and I did not find the exciting part when I'd try to dive right into it. I go, "I don't see any techno cam where they're communicating on their pen," like they were in "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." But so I kind of gave up on it right away. But his intention was good. He was trying to point us in the right direction.
Dennis: Ultimately, he is right. But for a 6 or a 7-year-old who is competing with the high-tech nature of media, I mean …
Bob: I didn't quit watching "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.," I'll tell you that much.
Dennis: Yeah, there you go. You know, this week we've been talking about how we can teach biblical truth about who God is to our children, because it's a command of Scripture that parents are to begin this relay race. Actually, they are to continue the relay race. Maybe some of the parents didn't grow up in a Christian home but you know what? They can start their own relay race of truth.
And with us is a professor who has become the professor of Practical Theology here of FamilyLife Today, equipping parents to be able to do that – Dr. Bruce Ware. Bruce, welcome back.
Bruce: Thank you, Dennis.
Dennis: Now, he does that professionally at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the professor of Christian Theology. We've dubbed you here of Practical Theology.
Bob: Isn't there somewhere in your bio – haven't you taught a course called "Practical Theology?"
Bruce: Oh, sure, yes.
Dennis: Well, he's taught it to his children, Bethany and Rachel, and dedicated a book to them, and it's called "Big Truths for Young Hearts," and it's teaching and learning about the greatness of God. It's all about a big word called "theology." It means passing on the truth about how God is.
And, Bruce, if Barbara was here, this would be something she would get on her soapbox about, because she really doesn't think that we, as parents, are equipped to be able to teach our children about the Trinity, in general, and specifically about who the Holy Spirit is and what His purpose is and why He came and what He is all about.
So the first question I want you to unpack for us is what does the average listener today need to know about the person of the Holy Spirit? Before we get to our kids, let's just speak to the adults for a moment.
Bruce: Right. You know, when you look at Scripture itself, of the teaching of the Spirit, there is one thing that is so clear all the way through, and that that is He is the – His primary role is empowering the work of the Father and the Son. So He always assists in some capacity. He comes to empower a prophet to speak the Word of the Lord correctly, but it's generally not a word about Himself, for the most part.
In fact, you can even think of the whole Bible as being inspired by the Spirit, 2 Peter 1, verses 20 and 21 says, "Men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God," and yet the Bible is not principally autobiographical. It's the Spirit's inspiring men to write about Christ, primarily.
And so you realize, boy, when you see the Spirit rightly from the Bible, you realize here is One Who, though He is God, He is equal in His essence, in His nature, with the Father and the Son, and yet His role all throughout redemptive history is one in which He is an assistant. And, in fact, some have talked about Him as the forgotten member of the Trinity.
Dennis: Yes.
Bruce: But, in one sense, He wants to be forgotten. You know, when the Spirit indwells a person, the Spirit's presence is made know not so much in showing for the Spirit but showing forth Christ. So, really, in everything that the Spirit does, He seeks to bring honor and glory to Christ.
Bob: When I was growing up and even in trying to explain this to my children, the things that kind of came to mind when I think about the Holy Spirit were images from the popular culture. I thought about Tinker Bell from Peter Pan, you know, who is this little fairy who flies around and I think in the original Peter Pan, it was kind of a flashlight beam as opposed to an animated figure. Do you remember that?
Dennis: Sure, sure.
Bob: And then I remember Casper the Friendly Ghost.
Dennis: That's what I remember.
Bob: So I think about the Holy Spirit. We talked, of course, about the Holy Ghost in the old days, right?
Bruce: Sure.
Bob: So how do you help a child understand the true nature of what we're talking about when we talk about the person of the Holy Spirit if they're thinking about Tinker Bell or Casper or whatever the modern-day equivalent of those things is?
Dennis: Well, we talk about the Father and the Son, and we have illustrations of what a Father and a Son looks like, but when it comes to a person being the Holy Spirit, we don't have a visible illustration.
Bruce: No, we don't, and, of course, this is one of those areas – Bob, you mentioned in a previous program, Deuteronomy 29:29, "The secret things belong to the Lord our God." That's the first half of the verse. And, of course, that's true here where we cannot comprehend what it means to be a person without a body, without a brain. How do you have a mind without a brain? And yet God is Spirit. We learn in John 4 the Father Himself is Spirit in nature, does not have a body. Christ – or what I should say, is the Eternal Son, apart from becoming incarnate, taking on human flesh, does not have a physical existence. So God, as a whole, is Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is one of the persons of the Godhead who, like the other persons of the Godhead, has no body and yet is fully personal as emotions, thoughts, actions, will, and, in fact, carries out all that happens in the universe by the exertion of His power and does so as a person. Yet we cannot comprehend what that is because it's beyond our understanding as human beings.
Dennis: And so here we are, as parents. I mean, I'm listening to you, and I have to say, "I hadn't thought about some of those things," before you just rattled off, and yet, as a parent, I am to introduce my children to who God is – and my grandchildren – and one of the members of the Trinity that I need to begin to explain in terms of a secret is the Holy Spirit, especially when they place their faith in Christ.
Because at the point a person places their faith in Christ, they are baptized with the Holy Spirit. He comes to indwell them and live within them, and the choice, then, becomes ours – will we be filled with the Spirit, or will we quench or grieve the Spirit?
Bob: In fact, we often talk about Jesus coming to live in your heart, which is not necessarily a biblical concept. Would we be better off saying that it's the Holy Spirit who comes to live in your heart?
Bruce: Yes, I think where we get that from is when Jesus says in Matthew 28, "I will be with you always to the end of the age." But how is Christ with His people? He is with them through the Spirit whom He sent – His Spirit. And so Christ is with us as He has sent His Spirit who will mediate to us, bring to us, the very presence of Christ in His work in us and through us.
Dennis: Okay, let's talk about your two daughters, then, Rachel and Bethany. How did you teach them about the Holy Spirit and when did you start teaching them? Because this was one of the challenges Barbara and I faced, and it's why she would raise this question in the first place – is how do we teach our kids who He is, what He does, and how He works – I almost said it, didn't I? How it works. No, it's not – it's "He" – how He works in their lives.
Bruce: Yes. Well, I started when they were pretty young, but I realized – Bethany was about 7 years old, Rachel was about 4 when I started teaching through these truths of the Christian faith. And, of course, at first it was very, very simple – simpler than what I have written in this book, for example. So I couldn't have taught them all of those things at ages 4 and 5, but, honestly, by ages 7 and 8, they were actually getting an understanding of many of these truths in much greater grasp of it than I really thought would be possible.
Another thing I just want to say to encourage parents in this is never to forget that that same Holy Spirit maybe is the subject of discussion right now with your children, is the Holy Spirit who is at work in opening eyes to see these truths in ways that could never be understood apart from the Holy Spirit's illumination, His enlightenment.
And so we need, as parents, to realize we really cannot convey what we would like to. Even the things that we do know, we can't convey those things in ways that our children necessarily will get it right. But it requires the work of the Spirit. So to have this dependence, this heart of dependence on what only God can do by His Spirit in the lives of our children.
Dennis: And I thought where you were going there, Bruce, for a moment, was He is the Spirit of God who convicts a person of their own need for salvation.
Bruce: Well, that is absolutely true.
Dennis: And He is the one who creates the new birth that makes an old creature a new creation, and, as parents, we can't do that. We want to move our children from the old ot the new, from being lost to being a child of God, but we can't do that. We are dependent upon Him to do that in front of our very eyes.
Bruce: That's right, yes. But what the Spirit uses, then, is truth from His Word. So I think sometimes parents think, "Well, if my children can't get this, then I'm not going to try to convey these truths from the Bible to my children. It's beyond them." But it's not taking into account the way the Spirit can work with that truth. I mean, why did He give that truth to us? But He intends to use it.
I mean, if you look through the Bible, you see "Spirit" and "Word" always go together. And so the Spirit uses the Word as His means to open their eyes to see the beauty of the truth and, by that, bring them to Christ and then grow them in Christ.
Bob: So if your child came to you and said, "Daddy, I was praying the other day, and this thought came into my mind, and I wondered, is that from the Holy Spirit?" First of all, does the Holy Spirit do stuff like that – put thoughts in our minds when we're praying, and then, secondly, how do we know if that thought is from the Spirit or from somewhere else?
Bruce: Yes. Well, I believe that the Holy Spirit can put thoughts in our minds; that is, lead us to think in particular ways. This is part of His work, to convict us of sin, He brings those things to mind as well as positive things and things that would incline us toward what is good. But the only test we have of whether the Spirit has led in a particular way or directed in a particular way is from the Word itself – the Scriptures. This is the grounding we have of the Revelation of God, and we cannot trust our own sense of what the Spirit may have indicated. Apart from that Word, we are in very risky territory when we do that.
Bob: Bruce, let me ask you what I think a lot of parents really wrestle with – a 5-year-old child comes and say, "You know, I would like to pray to ask Jesus to come into my heart." And Mom and Dad are thrilled when a 5-year-old child says that. And so maybe they get together, and Mom talks, reads some Scripture, prays with the child, and then she walks away and goes, "Okay, what just happened there? Did my child come to faith, how do I know, what do I do?" How would you coach a parent when a child comes home from vacation Bible school and says, "I prayed at vacation Bible school to become a Christian today." Do we celebrate with the angels of heaven that there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents, or do we scratch our head and go, "I wonder if that really took?"
Bruce: Right, right. Well, again, that's a great question, Bob, and I do think this is another area where you walk a fine line, and you can err on either of two sides. One is, by pooh-poohing the whole thing – "Oh, a 5-year-old, this couldn't be the case," and really depriving – if, in fact, this conversion has taken place, depriving this child who is now a believer in Christ of reveling in forgiveness of sin and entering into eternal life.
On the other hand, you don't want to presume immediately that this, in fact, has happened. And so you encourage and say, "Honey, you know, if this was a genuine expression of your life, of your heart and longing, this is wonderful. I rejoice with you." You know, one of the evidences that this is a true belief of your heart is that it will continue. And so let's just keep talking, and if it has, my goodness, it's just the beginning of this growth process as this child grows to understand better who God is and what their own sin is and what Christ has done and the glories of the riches of His Word.
Bob: And let me jump ahead now 12 years later, and your 5-year-old is now a 17-year-old, and you did see back when they were 5 some indication that they had a tender heart for God, and they were studying the Word and a lot going on but now, at 17, there is no interest in the things of God. What kind of a conclusion do you draw, as a parent, about what's happened to your child?
Bruce: Well, you pray, you pray a lot for those children, and you never give up praying. You never give up on the power of God to take hold of that life again. If there is a longstanding rebellion, disinterest in the things of God, I do think that you, at some point, begin to wonder whether, as a child, this person really did truly come to Christ, truly was converted because we know from Scripture that the evidence of the work of the Spirit in the life of the person is what helps us know that this person truly has been saved.
But, on the other hand, there can be these long periods of time, and then someone does come back, the Lord brings them back. And so I think we need to wait for that, pray for that, hope for that, and when that happens, I think sometimes it's hard to know for sure if the person was saved originally or if they came to Christ at this point.
But it's a challenge, indeed, but one I think parents need to, again, not fall off on either side of either dismissing their children as unbelievers altogether, and concluding that there is not hope for them, or of, my goodness, of assuming that that original statement of faith as a child was true and not urging them to come back to the Lord.
Dennis: You know, there are two things going on here. One is the simple concept of not hindering your children to come into a relationship with Christ and of always making that invitation real clear – that God is interested in knowing us, walking with us, and, frankly, the older I get, the more mysterious the new birth really is. Jesus compared it to the wind, you know, you don't see it, you feel it, you see its results, but it's still a bit of a mystery, you know?
But not only not hindering a child but, secondly, giving them false hope because they made a decision when they were young, therefore, they really are a true follower of Christ. And, you know, I can't answer that question for every parent, because it's a difficult one to call, the question that Bob was asking you here. But what we need, as parents, is we need a way to impart, number one, who God is.
Secondly, who we are in light of who God is, which means, thirdly, we need a Savior, and we need to know God the Father, God the Son, and, as we talked about today, God the Holy Spirit, and this book, "Big Truths for Little Hearts," I just think – I think there's going to be a lot of parents benefit from this; aunts and uncles who may have an objective of teaching their nieces and nephews about who God is because they're the only believer in their family. But in the process of teaching them, you're going to learn a ton as an adult.
And, Bruce, I want to thank you for not only being a great scholar but for taking those lofty concepts and bringing them down to – well, as I like to say, "putting the cookies on the lower shelf" where most of us live and where most of us can understand these great truths of Scripture and begin to apply them in our own lives. Thanks for being with us and thanks for helping our listeners, too. I think a lot of our listeners are really going to benefit from what you've shared here. Thanks.
Bruce: Thank you, Dennis. Thank you, Bob. It's been a pleasure to be with you.
Bob: Yeah, this has really been great, and I can imagine a lot of our listeners are going to contact us to find out more about how they can get a copy of "Big Truths for Young Hearts." That's the name of Bruce's book, and we have it in our FamilyLife Resource Center. You can go to our website, FamilyLifeToday.com, and the information you need about the book is available there.
Again, it's FamilyLifeToday.com. On our website, we also have information about a great storybook for children called "What God Has Always Wanted" that gives them, in picture book format, and overview of the story of redemption. It helps them understand that what God has always wanted is a relationship with us, and His plan of redemption is about sending His Son to reconcile us to Him. It's a great storybook for kids. There is information about that book on our website as well – FamilyLifeToday.com.
You can also call toll-free 1-800-FLTODAY, that's 1-800-358-6329, and someone on our team can answer any questions you have about the resources we've talked about here today, or they can let you know how you can have the resources you need sent to you.
And, of course, I need to remind our regular listeners that today and tomorrow the last two opportunities you have to register for an upcoming FamilyLife Weekend to Remember Marriage Conference – we're hosting these conferences in dozens of cities throughout the country in May and June. And if you register now for one of these upcoming conferences at the regular rate, we're going to give you a second registration absolutely free. So basically your registration gets paid for, and your spouse comes free – no cost.
But to take advantage of that special offer, we have to hear from you either today or tomorrow, and you have to let us know you listen to FamilyLife Today. So if you're registering online at FamilyLifeToday.com, and you're filling out your registration form, when you come to the keycode box on the registration form, type in my name. Just type in "Bob," and we'll know you're a listener. Or call 1-800-FLTODAY, 1-800-358-6329. Say, "I listen to FamilyLife Today," or "Bob told me to call, and I want to attend a Weekend to Remember Marriage Conference," and you will be eligible for the special offer we're making this week. So let us hear from you today or tomorrow, 1-800-FLTODAY or online at FamilyLifeToday.com.
Now, tomorrow we're going to hear from a man whose life was profoundly impacted by reading storybooks. Mark Hamby joins us tomorrow, and you'll hear his story. I hope you can join us.
I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. We'll see you back tomorrow for another edition of FamilyLife Today.
FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas – help for today; hope for tomorrow.
