The great gamble: to let them choose. God enters this Free Will arena armed with a trumping sacrifice and a consuming nature that IS ferocious love. He is fully prepared to be rejected and fully prepared to be embraced. He spares no cost and He counts no costs while He lavishes His love indiscriminately, wastefully, and unabashedly. He’s in hot pursuit of those who will respond to His still small voice that beckons a soul to come and find rest in a restless world.
He knows He’ll be scorned by many more than He’ll be loved, yet He is undeterred. He is fully acquainted with the grief and shame His loyal children will often bring to His name. He grins when we are indignant at the idea of ‘forgiving 70x7’ as He calculates the number of times He’s shown forgiveness to each one of us scoffers. He tries to raise our downcast and weary souls towards Him, yet we pledge our allegiance to the distracters of this world. Yet, He woes still. He takes the gamble, paying the price to make the wrong right and invites us into communion with Him. He’s a gamblin’ Man!
Discipling my boys helps me to understand just a bit more about this love of a Father who pours into His children with whom there will be no guarantees. Guaranteed reciprocation of a passionate love, well, it’s just not there. The start of my discipling journey was rooted in the the fear of ‘what if’s’ which crowded and cluttered my brain to the point of massive frustration. My fears loomed large through our devotion time---what if the boys did not chose to know the redeeming grace of their Father? What if they did choose the path of a fool who rejects God and accumulates misery quicker than credit card debt?
My devotion time was my personal fire insurance: get them into heaven and outta hell. So when I met interruptions in Bible time my frustration would mount. It was a regular Jerry Lewis wipe-a-thon: three bottoms, two spills, three sets of hands, three snotty noses, and one head full of oatmeal. How was I to lead these boys into God’s kingdom with these constant interruptions? Wasn’t it all supposed to be more serene and Little House on the Prairie- like? There were just too many tears, too many messes, too many time outs, too many times of lost patience and yelling. At this rate I could barely get breakfast cleaned up before it was time to begin lunch, much less disciple these boys!
This is all a reference to when they were young, however, now as my boys are 7, 7, and 8, it’s not much different. Slightly less chaos ensues on a regular basis, but often our table time is still full of the messes I thought we’d be done with by now. Our first day of school this year Chris worked from home so he could see the boys off. He decided to lead Bible time at the breakfast table. Since he is always at work during Bible time, surely he must have been thinking, ‘this pattern has been in place for a long time now, I bet this is going to be a really cool discipling time with my boys.’
Well, Will and Wyatt, both within 3 minutes of each other wiped up the frozen blueberry juice puddles on the table with their first day of school shirts instead of napkins, a water cup was knocked over covering the table in water, frozen blueberries (a coveted breakfast treat) had left their name sakes impression on all 3 boys hands and faces instead of the spoon that lay right beside their plate, and one interruption was met with another, repeatedly.
I saw Chris’s frustration and felt my own. Wasn’t it supposed to be smoother than this? “This is why I wrote the devotions,” I whispered to Chris. “I get it, the whole process can be very frustrating. Sometimes it can also be pretty awesome. Mostly it’s just run of the mill. But one thing I know is His truths ARE sinking in, there is no denying that.”
I questioned the worth of doing this devotion time for years and God just kept showing me juice for the squeeze in the most unexpected ways (talked about in other devotions). We were obeying God’s commandment to take His precepts and ‘get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night,” Deut. 6:1-8.
God also showed me that anything practiced in fear is doomed from the start. He is slowly prying my fingers from the fairy tale I’d been fabricating in my mind and attempting to create in real life. Little boys and fairy tales are quite simply oil and water. God was asking me to find Him in the midst of my mess, not after the mess was cleaned up.
God revealed my desire for a fairy tale life that placed Him in a neat little box and removed Him as a necessity in my life. He questioned my motives and my desire to know Him in His intimate roles the Bible calls Him to be: Friend, Intercessor, Redeemer, Rescuer, Sustainer…. How was I to come to know the Lord in these roles if this discipling life could be packaged so neatly and full of guarentees?
To move forward in my discpling journey with the Lord and discpling my boys toward knowing the Lord, two more dreams had to be given an unceremoniously burial. First---having regular Bible time would erase (or at least drastically reduce) the number of tears and quarrels that spilled over from too many of our days. God said no. There will be tears, there will be fights, there will be bonking on the heads, there will be yelling, there will be spankings---find Me there and see what I have to teach you. I figured, what’s the point then? He said, ‘to know Me,’ not to make your life easier. That’s discipleship Jennifer.’
Second dream to be buried---that devotion times would guarantee hearts that would respond to God’s invitation of love. Oh, ok the messiness of daily life in a Christian home I was coming to grips with, but no guarantee that the boys would come to know and love the Lord?! How was I to give that up?
God asked me to consider His heart for His children. He has taken a huge gamble with us. He could have programmed His creatures with obedient hearts that quickly responded to His love. Instead, He took a huge gamble with us by allowing this free will to reign. He was asking me to share my heart for knowing the Lord through His Word, as He’s commanded in Scripture, and that was it. I was not responsible or accountable for the decisions my boys would make with that information. I was accountable to teach them God’s Word. They would be accountable for the decisions they would make concerning it. Scary, but it lightened the load I felt. I was accountable for teaching them and sharing my heart, as He has commanded. They were responsible for the decisions they made regarding that discipling.
If perfect love casts out fear, I had to allow God’s perfect love to penetrate all my fears so I could release them and be free to share my love relationship with God with my boys. I moved away from fire insurance and into a sharing of His abundant goodness and grace throughout every generation. As much as I would still choose a Little House on the Prairie-like devotion time, I have waved the white flag on that dream and accepted the happy and not so happy chaos that often ensues around here that encircles everything we do in a day, including our Bible time. I’m willing to partner with God in this great gambling adventure for the hearts and souls of His children and there doesn’t have to be any guarantees for me to be sold out for His cause.
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