daily java

Daily Java:

After that generation died, another generation grew up who did not acknowledge the Lord or remember the mighty things he had done for Israel. (Judges 2:10-3:31)

Someone once said “God has no grandchildren.” That statement has been attributed to Billy Graham. Whether he said it first or not, it is absolutely true. Just because you are a godly man or woman doesn’t mean your children are going to be worth anything.

The Israelites saw great and marvelous miracles directly from the hand of God. They knew his power. but then they got old and died and their kids grew up. The kids had heard of God’s power, but had never really seen it, not like their parents and grandparents. To them it was all second hand stories, “how were things when you were young, grandpa?”

When the Israelite kids grew up, they grew up with a second hand faith. And it did not impact them like it did their parents. So they started looking around, seeing what other options they had in life.

Canaan, the land in which they lived, was full of interesting stuff. And a lot of it was very attractive to the kids. So they began to buy into it. They began marrying outside the nation of Israel, they began to forget God completely. After all, the things he had done were, so they thought anyway, irrelevant to their lives. This was the modern world. After all, dad, this is the13th century BC. We are not living in the old days now.

And when they did, when they began going to alternative ways of life, they left God. The faith that their parents had, no matter how great, as not their faith. They really didn’t have a faith as such. They had a tradition. There is a fat lot of difference between a tradition and a faith.

Before long, they had totally left God. And when they did, they got in trouble and knew of no where else to turn. Someone came in and began to oppress them, rule over them/ they became someone’s slaves.

Then they remembered the stories. Were they true? Their parents thought so. So they called on God for help and he delivered them. Now their faith was real and persona. But they had kids and it started all over again.

It amazes me at the number of hedonistic young female singers whose daddies were pastors. They grew up in church, singing in the choir and singing specials. The church loved them and they loved the church. But then they got older and somehow, their lifestyle changed. They no longer had the relationship with their church they used to. And that was because they had never really gotten any kind of relationship with God. It had all been superficial.

When the relationship with God isn’t real, they fall away. There is no real underpinning, no foundation, no belief. Someone hears them sing and they go to a studio, others like them and before long, they are swallowed up in the entertainment industry. The were not children of God, but rather tried to be grandchildren.

Lots of people who were great in the Bible had sorry kids. The kids never got the relationship down. Eli the prophet had lousy kids, as did his protégé, Samuel. King David had bad children. Even God himself had one son who turned from him (Luke 3:38).

There is no way to live a godly life without a godly relationship. You cannot be saved on the coattails of a relative, no matter how great they were.

daily java

Daily Java:

One day some parents brought their little children to Jesus so he could touch and bless them. But when the disciples saw this, they scolded the parents for bothering him. Then Jesus called for the children and said to the disciples, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children. I tell you the truth, anyone who doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.” (Luke 18:15-17)

The parents brought their children to Jesus. They wanted him to bless them, or just to touch them, to heal them, to kiss them. There was something about him that kids liked. His lack of artificiality, his strength, his goodness – something. And he welcomed them. but the apostles saw them as hindrances, beneath his dignity to have little babies throw up on his robe. They tried to stop them from “bothering” Jesus. He had a fat lot more important things to do than sit around holding wet babies and dirty children.

But Jesus welcomed them. and, as usual, he turned them into an object lesson. Look at these kids, he said. They are what I want you to be like. “You grown men,” he said, “I want you to like these little kids.” And it probably baffled the apostles. You would think he wanted us to grow up, not regress into children. What Jesus wanted, however, was the attitude of a child.

There is an attitude in a little child that Jesus wanted in his disciples. It was an attitude of dependence and humility.

Little children know they are little children. They are under no illusions as to their independence. They know they need their parents. They know that they are not capable of doing a lot of things and need the help. They are aware of their need.

When we get to thinking that we are so great and can do anything, that is when we get in trouble.

In 2 Corinthians 3:4-5, the apostle Paul said: We are confident of all this because of our great trust in God through Christ. It is not that we think we are qualified to do anything on our own. Our qualification comes from God. About the time we think we have it all together, we lose it all. About the time we think we have the strength to do whatever we want to do in life, we lose that strength. When we finally think we have the key, we lose it.

The point is that if we try to live our lives ourselves, without the grace of God, we will lose our lives. We will lose completely. We only win if God is with us.

The child knows that. He won’t eat dinner unless you cook it. He won’t get to school or have a snack or clean sheets or a warm and comfortable home unless you give it to him. He is dependent on you. He does what he can and he has responsibilities. But ultimately, he is dependent on you, the parent.

It is a hard thing for an adult to grasp, that dependence. It is difficult to be dependent on someone else – even God – when you have been taught to be independent all your life. But that is what the grace of God is. It is the strength God gives those who are able to accept their own failure and his strength.

We tried it ourselves and look where it landed us. Now we give ourselves to God and we are once again strong.

hitting jesus in the nose

Hold on to the pattern of wholesome teaching you learned from me—a pattern shaped by the faith and love that you have in Christ Jesus. Through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us, carefully guard the precious truth that has been entrusted to you. (2 Timothy 1:13-14)

I was probably six or so. It was the Church of Christ in Freeport, Texas. My mother was teaching Bible class and was blessed with my presence.

She was teaching about Jesus and how he is everywhere. As little children, we were trying to figure out several things simultaneously: how he was everywhere, why it mattered to us or anybody else for that matter, when we would be through, when lunch was, what we would have, what the girl across from me was doing.

You know. Vital theological stuff.

But, of course, there was a variable in the equation. Me. I have always had a problem with keeping my mouth closed anyway. So when she said he was everywhere, I said, Is he here in this room. She replied, yes. Is he here near us? Yes. Is he here beside me? Yes.

So I reached over to where Jesus would be if he were there and I hit the imaginary Jesus in the nose, while making a POOF! sound. You know the sound they make in westerns when they hit each other. The other children laughed.

She was so excited for my theological breakthrough. And she rewarded me later with a spanking.

The point? The point is that she was trying her best to teach me what Jesus was and who he was to the best of her knowledge. Now the fact that I was a smart mouth little twerp didn’t deter her. She kept on.

My mother was, and is still, a good woman. She had her flaws and her problems, yes. As do we all. But here she was, a young woman of maybe 24 or 25 trying to teach a bunch of little children something that even learned theologians do not fully understand.

And she did a good job, I think. She instilled within me a love for God that lasted through my stupid years, and keeps me today.

That pattern of sound teaching is one that many do not have. They had to get it themselves or they do without it. But I had a godly mother who tried her best to instill it within me, within my heart, within my soul.

That is a strong pattern. And in that pattern is power, Holy Spirit power, the kind that you cannot find anywhere else: the love of a godly mother for her child.

My wife was that kind of woman and her mother too. I pray that my children can be.

And I thank God for my mother.

Ruby is her name, by the way. Ruby Lorena Cliver. And she lives in Tyler, TX.

daily java

Daily Java:

For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. (Romans 8:29)

It was Freeport, Texas, about 1960. I was ten or eleven years old, riding my bike when I first met my children.

I rode by a house and a man was pulling up in his car. It was a gray convertible and he was wearing a gray suit and tie with a hat and a briefcase. Typical office worker type.

As he got out of the car, two little girls in frilly dresses came running out shouting “Daddy, Daddy.” He picked them both up and went in the house.

At that moment, I knew I would one day have children, a wife, a family. And even at that young an age, I began to wonder what my children would be like.

It was seventeen more years before Abby came along and five more before Sam was born. But it was one of those things that happens to people in the course of their lives. The child thinking one day I will be a man with a family.

That is quite a stretch for a grubby little kid on a red bicycle. But it happens to everybody at sometime in their lives: the knowledge that one day they will grow up.

The same thing happened with God. Before the world was even created, before the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters of the deep, before time even began, God knew you.

King David wrote, in Psalm 139: You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.

The Lord told the prophet Jeremiah I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations (Jeremiah 1:5).

Before it all started, God knew he would have children. He knew that they would have trouble and that his own Son would have to become like them. And like a father prepares for his family, he prepared for us.

Before anything else began, he looked down through the years and saw me. He saw my goods and my bads, my strengths and my weaknesses, my successes and my failures. And he loved me.

When I saw those children running out to meet their daddy in 1960, I fell in love with my children. And before God even started dividing the light, he fell in love with his children.

i love watching mothers and little children

I love watching mothers and little children. I believe that there is nothing that is more beautiful, especially in context, than a mother with her little child.

She will be walking in the store, talking to the child, maybe even asking it questions about various vegetable choices or sale items, as if it really understood.

Of course, by talking to the child like that, she is preparing it for hearing real things, for listening to real language. There is nothing worse than talking baby talk to a child. It needs to hear real words.

In fact, studies show that the more you talk to a child like a real person, the more the chance that the child will grow up to have greater intelligence.

I also love to see a child and have it see me. Today, I was waiting for Ella to have her haircut in the mall, and a mother came by pushing a little bitty girl.

I saw her about the same time she saw me. She was looking at me in that way that only little children have. So I wiggled my mustache. I can do kind of the same thing with my upper lip that Samantha on Bewitched could do. Only with a mustache, of course. She couldn’t do that.

The little girl watched in amazement. That was the most amazing thing she had ever seen. No one had ever done that before. Then she screwed her mouth and tried her best to replicate the gesture. She couldn’t, of course, but then her mother took her away.

I love to see a child like that. It is a moment between me and the child alone. Nobody else. The child, more than likely, will not remember it, except as part of the visual fabric of the day.

When I saw her later, you could tell she remembered me but didn’t know why. She had seen too many other astonishing things in the interim.

Children see so much that after a while the look on their faces almost resembles astonishment more than anything else.

Can you imagine seeing new thing after new thing and then off to the next? One thing after another, moving along as if on a life conveyor belt. The child become somewhat calloused after a while. It just sits and watches. It is still all astonishing, but it becomes a spectator.

When I went to Germany in the army, I felt like that. And I had a little understanding of what it was like to be a child, unable even to read the signs for the bathroom. I would walk and look, one new thing after another.

Of course, I had a framework to put it in. I also had a certain gift for languages and could, after a time, figure out some of the signs. After all, it doesn’t take a lot of brains to figure out that toiletten and toilets are the same.

But a child has no contextual framework. Everything is new, and because they are being pushed along at someone else’s speed, everything is equal.

Brand new people, ready to learn and take their place in the unending line of humanity. And my mustache plays a little part.

my son's first day of kindergarten

I just read an article about a man’s son’s first day of kindergarten. I thought about my own son, Sam’s first day and it made me miss him.

He lives in Kansas City and I don’t get to see him or my grandson much.

He looked forward to his first day of kindergarten so much. I took him to school and walked with him up to the school. Children, of course, were everywhere, noise was high. I offered to hold his hand, but he said, no, Dad. He was just too big to hold hands.

However, the closer we got to the classroom, the smaller he seemed to get. We walked down the hallway toward his classroom and he reached up to hold my hand. He suddenly wasn’t too big.

When we got to the room, he was obviously afraid. We looked inside and there were a few children already there sitting around coloring or drawing or just sitting. They all looked up to see who was coming in with equal amounts of fear, dread, acceptance of their fate.

He stood there for a minute, and I let go of his hand. He was so small. Was I really ready to surrender him to the machine? No, but what could I do? It was time.

I stepped back. He looked at me again and began his long lonely plod to a table where a little girl awaited her unwelcome guest.

The teacher came over and I told her Sam’s name and she went to him and welcomed him.

Since he was, after all, raised in church with lots of adults around and had been in Bible school all his life, he rallied but was clearly reluctant for me to leave.

I clearly remember my first day of kindergarten. My mother, who had to have been incredibly young – 24? – walked me to school, OA Fleming Elementary in Freeport, TX, and left me in the hands of the teacher. Since we only lived about 6 or 7 blocks away, it was a simple task.

When school was over (I do not remember much of the day except for a turn war over some toys) I came out the front door. I didn’t see her, but I figured I could just walk home by myself.

As has always been my wont, I turned the wrong direction and went towards town rather than our house, 527 W 8th St. I remember the address so well.

The territory looked absolutely unfamiliar to me but I kept on. After a while, I got to a gas station and went up to the attendant. Of course, they had guys who came out to fill your car and all.

I asked him in my best adult voice, Excuse me. Could you tell me the way to 527 West 8th St, please? As he probably stood there trying to figure out what to do, a man in a pickup truck called my name.

It was Fred Zimmerman, my dad’s supervisor. He recognized me. He asked me why I was there and I told him I was walking home, of course. He knew I didn’t live there and that my mother was probably beside herself by this time not having found me after school.

He took me back to school and my, probably, as I don’t really remember, just having had an adventure, probably crazed mother. Her little boy was gone, having been taken. That wasn’t a big deal in those days, being an absolutely safe society.

I picked up my son after school. I wasn’t going to let him get away. He was a timid child anyway and probably wouldn’t have gone far.

I miss that little guy.

vbs is over

VBS is over, and now everybody is going back to normal. Analyses are being made, pictures are being looked at, funny things discussed, problems observed, next year’s VBS is initially forecast, and kids and adults have another great memory of church stored up in their hearts.

VBS does more than just teach. That’s good and necessary, but there is always more to these kind of things. It also causes fellowship.

Everybody got together for a full week and did all kinds of things. And the amazing thing about it is that very few were actually paid to do it. The vast majority, if not almost all, were doing it voluntarily. They did it out of pure love. They gave up time after work, time when they could be doing other things to stand around and jump around and sing and play and teach a bunch of kids.

That is the amazing thing about almost every VBS: it is done almost entirely on volunteer effort. People do it because they love God and they love children.

The tiredness at the end of the week is worth it because they have done something great with their week. They have shown active and sacrificial love to a hundred or so kids. And they have done it out of the generosity of their hearts.

People in the world do not understand this. To them it is a waste.

Jesus said, This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers (1 John 3:16). He “put himself out” for us, to make it sound minimal, I guess, when he gave up Godhood and took up humanity. He gave up part of himself to be with us.

VBS workers do the same thing. They give up time and energy and sometimes money for teaching materials and all. For one week, they lay down their lives for a bunch of children.

And it is a beautiful thing to see: people with that much love and compassion and desire to teach the love of Jesus and his grace in our lives.

VBS people are among the elect of God. Again, Jesus said, Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it (Matthew 10:39). People lost a lot of time last week, but they have gained a lot of glory.

Thank God for our VBS workers. They are angels in his kingdom.

loving our children

I used to think that we went in and out of God’s love depending on what we were doing at the moment.

That is absotively not true.

It is a lot harder to leave God’s care than we think. God holds on to what is his.

And he loves us. After all, we do the same with our kids. Just because they mess up, we do not throw them away.

“I broke a vase, Dad.” “WHAT?! Get out. You are no longer my son.”

If that is your response, you need to pray to God for forgiveness and maybe to your kids too.

The word says that we are able to do good things for our kids and we are just flawed human beings. If that is true, how much more would God be able to do for his children.

Matthew 7 says, Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

God gives us the ability to love our children as he loves us. And we do not desert our kids. Neither will he.

And no one can take them from him.

abby's 33rd birthday

We had our daughter’s 33rd birthday today. I made enchiladas and Ella baked a chocolate cake with white buttercream frosting. Abby’s special request. Even though she doesn’t like nuts, we put them on half the cake. Somehow a plain buttercream frosting doesn’t seem all that appealing without them

What really struck me is that she is 33 years old. She has had a rough life in many ways, but it seems as though it were just a short time ago that she was little. The same with our son, Sam. They are full grown adults with families and jobs and cars and stuff.

I miss them.