This Sunday during the 9 am children’s program Dori Baggs will share details of how the children of Tenth can be involved in the capital campaign. As her testimony below demonstrates, Dori has thoughtfully considered why these programs are integral to the campaign. So, before you hear about what is in the works, be sure to read Dori’s piece and consider why it is so important for the children of Tenth to be engaged in the campaign.As many of you were, I too was motivated by Dr. Cassidy’s sermon during the Global Outreach Conference in November. [To link to the MP3 of this sermon, click here.] The quote he used from Martin Luther… “There are only two days…today and that day…” what a thought! What fresh energy for the task before us. In my own reading in scripture I too have been challenged recently by a passage in Psalms that Dr. Cassidy referred to in his TenthPress article. The article was a charge from Psalm 71 for those of us in the “second half of life.” Verse 17-18 reads, “O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come.”
This verse has also given me a deeper desire…by God’s grace I want this to be the verse our children are quoting 30-40 years from now! How does that happen? By being a living word now in front of them…living out the gospel in our families, in our ministries…in our communities. Carefully teaching them from the Word during the few short years they are in our midst before they graduate from high school. Many people discount the impact children can bring to a campaign like this. I’ve been dismayed by comments I’ve heard from people who find the idea of “shaking up little kids for a few pennies” laughable, saying it really won’t do anything! If some adults think this is true, how many children will believe so too?
My goal in this committee is to teach the children from scripture that children are important to God! That God has used children (and continues to do so), to teach important spiritual lessons. God has asked children in the Bible to make sacrifices…not just the adults around them. This is a concept many parents avoid. We may suffer, but we want to insulate our children from it. We all know the very familiar verse in Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Teaching our children the spiritual discipline of stewardship and sacrifice is part of that training. How can we expect our children to sacrifice as adults if we’ve shielded them from it all their lives. We need to teach counter-culturally to our children who hear from the world around them, that the very best life is the accumulation of “stuff and things.” We need to teach them from the Word, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Luke 12:34
I look at the biblical example of the child Samuel in 1 Samuel 1. We tend to look at Hannah’s sacrifice, what she gave up…but I want the children to see that Samuel sacrificed too. He sacrificed growing up in his parent’s home in order to serve the Lord. You have to believe, even though its not spelled out in scripture, that Hannah spent those early years with Samuel before he was weaned, telling him over and over again about the goodness of God and the joy of obeying him and serving him. Now…I do a good bit of babysitting and I can tell you that most young children cry when their parents leave…for a few hours! Do you marvel like I do that Samuel did not pitch a fit when his mother left him with Eli? Why not? He knew literally from his mother’s knee, that God was good, that His plan was perfect.
Look also at the biblical example of the boy with five loaves and two fishes in Matthew 14. We look at the miracle of how Jesus multiplied the meager meal into a feast for 5,000, but I want the children to see the sacrifice the little boy made. I mean…here he is…the only one in that vast crowd who thought of packing his lunch! Next thing you know these men, the disciples, are sniffing around for food and find him! Can you imagine how he may have felt initially? “You want my what?!” But, when the disciples told him it was for Jesus the boy willingly gave it to him, not knowing the miracle that was to come. Why did he do that? Do you wonder if he heard his own mother and father talking about Jesus at home…was he learning from them to love him, to trust him…trust him enough to give him his food?
I want to teach the children to give joyfully, as it says in 2 Corinthians 9:7, “Each one must give as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” Contrast this mindset to the fictional character Charles Dickens portrays in “Bleak House” in Mrs. Pardiggle. She showcases her five sons to Esther, proclaiming their overwhelming generosity in giving to the poor and to various charities…however, as she recounts what they have “sacrificed” the boys all make angry, irritated and insolent faces. You can see from their body language that the “sacrifice” was made for them…not by them willingly.
God can use our children to teach us about faith…real faith, believing that he will do that which he has promised. I want to encourage each of you, along with myself, to commit ourselves in spending the “the last half of our life,” as Michael Cassidy puts it, by obeying the directive in Psalm 78:4, “…to teach the next generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might, and the wonders that he has done.”
