Raise Up A Child | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Raise Up A Child | Previous Challenge Entry
By Shawn Greer
10/31/07
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Each week, children of all ages file into classrooms of various sizes to learn about the Lord. To learn about the Lord? Hardly. These children come to play and socialize! They come because it’s fun. They come because they get to be with other kids. They come because it’s so much better than sitting in the main sanctuary with Mom and Dad.

For the Christian parent, it’s an opportunity to have an hour and a half of uninterrupted quiet time of learning and hearing the Word. Devotions at home are filled with distractions: “I’m hungry”, “He hit me!”, “She put dog food in her mouth” – or worse, silence in the other room, which consistently indicates someone is doing something they’re not suppose to.

So we look forward to that time when we get to sit and listen to someone else teach God’s Word, meditating on the events of our week and finding a bit of solace from our hectic lives. And we trust that the adults left in charge of our precious little ones are keeping them entertained and out of trouble. It seems too much to hope that our children are letting the Word of God soak into their little minds. But we do. That, after all, is the real purpose of Sunday school, isn’t it?

The unbeliever calls it brainwashing…claiming we fill their little minds with ideas about who God is and what He’s done. We force them to believe in an Almighty Creator, contrary to the scientific public school teachings of evolution (which is rumored to be supported by evidence, though I have yet to see any). And we are accused of eliminating all other religious teachings, denying them the opportunity to make educated decisions about their own beliefs. Of course, by the time they are old enough to know better, we’ve filled their heads with so much nonsense that they couldn’t possibly choose anything but Christianity.

Matthew 9 speaks of a father who brought his child to Jesus. The boy had been saddled with an evil spirit that tore into him, causing him to foam at the mouth, crying out, gnashing his teeth, and withering away. The demon often threw the boy into the fire or water, trying to kill him. The disciples had tried to cast out the demon, but they could not. In desperation, the father pleaded with Jesus to have compassion and help them.

Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things [are] possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. Mark 9:23-24 KJV

As a Christian parent, I often cry out to God with tears, asking Him to have compassion on my children and to help them through the trials of this life, even though my unbelief is sometimes as strong as the father in Mark 9.

Proverbs 22:6 instructs us: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” And so, I send my children to Sunday school, knowing that they are being given another opportunity to be hear God’s Word. And since, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, (Romans 10:17 KJV), I pray that their faith will be strengthened even just a little bit more by that hour and a half they spend playing and having fun with other kids in that classroom down the hall from the main sanctuary, where God, in turn, is helping my unbelief.

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