Encouragement to Parents

My family and I were at our small group last night. We were asked an ice breaker question, "name one of your most favorite moments during the last month." Everyone took turns sharing something that had blessed them over that period of time. I shared with them something that happened in our home last Sunday, and they encouraged me to share it on my blog for encouragement, so here was my answer.

Last Saturday night after our family Bible study, my oldest daughter started to show some sad emotions. She made the statement, "I feel like there is a wall that is separating me from God right now." My wife and I asked her a few questions to see if we could fish out more detail, and possibly help. She was unsure of why she felt the way she did, and didn't respond with anything other than "I don't know why, I just feel like there is." I told her that I wanted to do a Bible study with her the next day after Church, and that I would not prepare at all, we would do it together.

Later Sunday afternoon my daughter and I went down into my office and started to talk a bit. I took out a piece of paper and wrote out in front of her, the sentence I heard her say the night before, "I feel like there is a wall that is separating me from God right now." I opened up the OliveTree app on my computer (it is just a Bible software program that works both for my phone and my computer; any concordance, or on-line site would be able to get you the same results) and faced it toward her. I told her we were going to search through the Bible to see what it said about "walls" and the idea of "separating". Figuring most of the results from Genesis through Ester would probably not be of much help, I restricted our search results to Job through Revelation.

We started our search with the word "wall". We found a verse that said that if there was a wall, with God's help, we would be able to jump over it; one that stated that a wall could be only in our imagination; and that the wall that separated us from God was broken down at the Cross of Christ. Next we searched the word "separate." Our results were that nothing could separate us from the love of God, not even our feelings; that the wall of separation between us and God was shattered at the cross. On and on we skimmed over verses until my daughter had eight or so written down in front of her, along with how they applied to her statement. Through this time, her spirit was softening, and the Spirit of God, through the word of God was penetrating her mind, convincing her of the truthfulness of His words, and the bankruptcy of her own feelings to determine truth. We talked about her feelings, and they are good and God given. But as we travel on this train track of life, we must place our reason car before our feelings car. The reason car, after reading the truthfulness of the word of God, is able to see clearly that the train is not heading toward a wall of separation. The feelings car needs to be in back of the reason car. When it is back there, it can scream all it wants that it is headed for a wall, but reason see's the tracks clearly. Eventually when we get to the place where the feelings car thought there was a wall, and instead of crashing, we sail unharmed right through it; the feelings car will know it was a tunnel all along and will follow along quietly; at least until the next obstacle.

After our brief study, I held my daughters hands and we prayed together. I encouraged her to keep her eyes open, and fixed upon the verses she had just written down, while she spoke to the Lord. When we were finished, her mind was fixed and steady on the truth of God's word. It evidenced itself while she prayed aloud on Sunday night, and again on Monday night. I hope this encourages you, and possibly gives you an example of using the Scriptures to instruct and guide the children God has given you. God's word did all the work, and provided all the wisdom.