“CELEBRATE NATIONAL CHILDREN’S DAY”

“Sunday, March 3, 2013”  

I am finding the encouragement to celebrate the National Children’s Day in our local paper, THE NORTHLAND AGE, Tuesday, February 26, 2013.

Children in THAILAND
Picture / Alan Collingwood

“The parenting job never came with a manual,” I am reading there also.

I looked up The Collins Concise Dictionary and learned that a manual is a book, a book especially of instructions or information.

And there is a book of Instructions for the parenting job. Parents have duties. Children must be corrected and children must be instructed.

The manual for the parenting job is the Bible. But the Bible is also the book of instructions for the parents.

Can I close with what Martyn Lloyd – Jones said:

“A MAN WHO DOES NOT LIVE A LIFE OF OBEDIENCE HIMSELF SOON CEASES TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT THE FACT THAT HIS OWN CHILDREN SHOULD OBEY HIM.”

When I read this morning in the Bible the question Moses asked the officers, I was no longer reluctant to write this post.

“‘Have you allowed all the women to live?'” he asked and continued, “‘They were  the ones who followed Balaam’s  advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the LORD’S people.'” (Numbers 31:15-17)

“God created into woman a particular power to influence,” is  Eugenia Price writing in her book called WOMAN TO WOMAN in the first chapter.

She is pointing out that it says in the Bible, that in the Garden of Eden the tempter did not go to Adam, but to Eve and that Eve influenced Adam to eat. Why did Adam eat? Because Eve talked him into it!

SIN  entered the world and infected all human nature she says through a woman’s influence!

She says also that man’s influence is different to the influence of a woman. She says “Women scar hearts  and souls.”

And let us remember that a woman is writing this about women!  

Tauranga Bay is in the North of New Zealand at the East Coast and I call it THE DREAMING PLACE.

Tauranga Bay, Northland, New Zealand

Tauranga Bay, Northland, New Zealand

‘”Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven.'” – Matthew 10:32

In the NZ Baptist (February 2013) Murray Robertson is writing about the decline of the movement of the Baptist Churches in New Zealand.

In an article called “Vision for the Lost or Lost Vision?” by Major Harold Hill in the WAR CRY (23 February 2013) I am reading about the fading vision of the Salvation Army in the West.

“An early-days Salvationist was an uncomfortable person with whom to share a railway compartment. You would be ear-bashed on the subject of salvation. Today, many of us are more anxious to demonstrate our inoffensive normality,” says Major Harold Hill in the article.

But there are still Baptist Churches that are “swimming against the tide” and grow and Murray Robertson  says this about them: “The thing that struck me most of all about the group was their obvious sense of joy in speaking to others about the gospel. Even those who didn’t see themselves as evangelists spoke about this.”

PERSONAL EVANGELISM  is the answer to Church Growth.

My Pulpit is the World. Not long ago I talked to German speaking young men in a restaurant here. I had one business card left in my pocket and gave it to one of them.

“‘But whoever disowns me  before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.” – Matthew 10:33