Dear Children and Grandchildren,

I have enjoyed the Word of God more than I ever have since I am no longer preaching 3 or 4 times a week and am not pressed for time. Some times I find things I'd like to share with all of you, or some of you individually. With your mother's encouragement I'd like to start a "Bible Blog" and share some of my thoughts with you. Last night I told Joanna that I opened a can of "Pork and Beans" for supper, (your mother is in Arizona helping Becky while Adam recuperates from a serious operation) but I found no pork so I renamed it "Beans and Beans". With a hearty laugh she wondered if I had "looked under every bean?' I trust what I send you will have some "pork" but if you find it to be only "beans" just push the delete button.

Ps.119:168 "I have kept Thy precepts and Thy testimonies: for all my ways are before Thee," As you were growing up one of the things I was careful to emphasize in our daily devotions was that the time would come when you would no longer be under the eye of Mom and Dad but you would never be out of sight of God's eye. What an encouragement we find here to keep God's Word. "all my ways are before Thee,"

"Experience makes many a paradox plain, and this is one. Before God we may be clear of open fault and yet at the same time mourn over a thousand heart-wanderings which need his restoring hand."--C.H. Spurgeon

"I may hide Thee from my eye, but not myself from Thine eye."--Wm. Gurnall

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Ephesians 6:1, 2

Dear Children and Grandchildren,

In 1999 your mother/grandmother gave me a book entitled BAXTER’S PRACTICAL WORKS VOLUME I, A Christian Directory. This was written 400 years ago but much still applies today. I have been reading and studying these “practical works” for 11 years. It has 907 pages and this morning I found myself on page 454 “THE SPECIAL DUTIES OF CHILDREN TO THEIR PARENTS.” I just finished the chapter on the duties of parents to their children. I wish I would have read and put it to use 50 years ago! It has been some time since I have sent you a message, but this Richard Baxter chapter has caught my attention and I’d like to share it with you in the weeks to come. Some of this will not apply directly to you children, but I am trusting that our grandchildren will benefit since much will apply to them. It is long so I will make some personal abridgements.

Direction I.

Be sure that you dearly love your parents; delight to be in their company; be not like those unnatural children that love the company of their idle play-fellows better than their parents, and had rather be abroad about your sports than in their parents’ sight.

Remember what sorrow you have cost them, and what care they are at for your education and provision; and remember how tenderly they have loved you, and what grief it will be to their hearts if you miscarry, and how much your happiness will make them glad; they take your happiness or misery to be one of the greatest parts of the happiness or misery of their own lives.

Make not their lives miserable, by undoing yourselves. Though they chide you, and restrain you, and correct you, do not therefore abate your love to them. For this is their duty, which God requires of them, and they do it for your good. It is the sign of a wicked child that loves his parents less because they correct him, and will not let him have his own will. Yea, though your parents have many faults themselves, yet you must love them as your parents still.

Love, Dad and Grandpa
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