Wednesday, July 01, 2015

Serving with your children

Serving your your children can be a tricky thing to do. You have to ask yourself things like, "Am I willing to take my kids to the inner city to serve Jesus?" or, "Do I want to take my kids on a plane to serve in a foreign country?"

This Sunday I preached on Nehemiah chapter 3. There is a great verse tucked in here that really caught my attention:
Shallum son of Hallohesh, ruler of a half-district of Jerusalem, repaired the next section with the help of his daughters. Nehemiah 3:12
Here is a guy who is out working hard with his kids. Since I’m a dad with young daughters, I imagine Nehemiah going around encouraging the workers, and then he sees one man serving with his little girls out in the hot sun. We don’t know their ages, so any guess is speculation on my part, but I imagine the girls helping to clean up the rubble. They are moving the stones they can and laughing and giggling the whole time. They are helping their dad plaster and get the stones in just the right place so the wall will be as strong as possible. Their laughter and joy encourages those around them and motivates them to continue working hard.

Now this father probably could have completed the work faster without his daughters there. If you’ve ever served with your children it can actually take longer to work with them. But as the Church we are called to train up those who are younger and this is a great example of a father who did this!

I want to be like Shallum. I want to follow his example of serving alongside my kids, right in my hometown. That is why I am going to take part in our upcoming backpack drive at CPC this summer.

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