PARENTHOOD
a divine stewardship

Helping Our Children to be Saved

Our primary responsibility in raising our children is to provide them with an atmosphere that is conducive to their receiving the Lord Jesus as their Savior, Lord, life, and all-in-all. At a certain point we may also have the joy of introducing them to the Lord for their initial salvation. For this reason, we need a clear understanding of specific and practical helps we can render them to help them to be regenerated with the life of God.

This issue of Parenthood continues to address the burden of bringing our children not only to believe in God, honor God, and fear God, but to know Him in a personal and intimate way. Their first experience in God's life is regeneration-to be born again of the Spirit (cf. John 3:5-6; 1:12-13).

In the first chapter of his book entitled Preaching the Gospel in the Way of Life, Witness Lee presents the way to help people to be saved. We are reprinting a portion of that chapter here. Although the book is focused on introducing unbelievers to the Lord, the principles are very appropriate for us to apply to the way we help our children to be saved.

The first and most vital factor that we must practice in preaching the gospel to others is to pray. As our children reach the age of responsibility, it is increasingly important that we bear them up in prayer before the throne of God's grace. We should earnestly pray that their hearts may be soft and open to receive the Lord. We also must learn to practice to live and walk by faith. We must exercise our faith to believe that what the Bible presents to us are the plan, purpose, and accomplishments of God that have produced for us a perfect redemption. When we preach the gospel to others, including our children, we must believe that what we are speaking is based on the divinely written will-the testament of God's inheritance bequeathed to us through the death of Christ. Our believing transmits faith into our children as we speak to them of our wonderful Savior.

What may come as a surprise to us is that we should learn not to try to make them too clear concerning the gospel; rather, we should lead them to pray to receive the Lord in simple faith. Finally we need to know what verses to speak to them to bring them into a firm and deepening experience of their salvation.

In preaching the gospel two matters are very important. First, we have to pray. We always need to bear the burden for people's souls with a praying spirit. This not only means that we have to spend time to pray; even more it means that we have to always bear the burden in our praying spirit, looking to the Lord and touching the throne of authority, that the Lord will move in the hearts of those people for whom we have been praying. We must pray in this way, in a continuous way, and in a claiming way, to claim these souls for the Lord's testimony.

EXERCISING FAITH TO PARTICIPATE IN THE POWER THAT IS UPON THE BODY

Second, we must learn ... to walk and to work by faith, not by sight, appearance, or feeling. To seek feeling, sight, or appearance means that more or less we have an evil heart of unbelief, even an evil heart of disbelief. We have to honor the Lord by taking what He has told us in His Word. This is living faith. Never pay attention to your feeling, to appearance, to sight, or to any kind of circumstances....

The Bible Being a Will

We Christians are strange. We believe and hold on to some things in the Scriptures without any feeling, but we do not believe in other things in the Scriptures; we will not hold on to them until we have the feeling. Recently I asked a brother, "Brother, do you know that you have been saved?" He said he did, so I asked, "How do you know?" He replied, "Because the Scriptures tell me." This is right.

The Bible consists of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Many Christians do not know the right meaning of the word testament. Testament is not a synonym of the word covenant. Using our human words, a covenant is an agreement, a contract, and a testament is a will. A will is not merely an agreement. In a covenant, an agreement or contract, there may be certain promises, promising something will be done for you. In a will, however, everything is completed and ready for you. The Bible is a will in our hands. It is not a book of teaching or even of promises; it is a book containing a will. In it there are thousands of items telling us that everything is ready for us. Christ was incarnated, lived on this earth, was crucified and resurrected, ascended, was seated and enthroned, and has descended as the Spirit. Everything is finished. What does it mean that Christ is sitting in the heavens? It means that everything is accomplished, finished, and ready, waiting for us to enjoy. A will goes into effect at the time the giver dies. Without the death of the giver, the will is not good. After the death of the giver, however, the will is in effect. The Giver of this will has died already, and He is living in the heavens as the Executor of His will.

What we go to tell the sinners are the items of this testament, this will. What is the preaching of the gospel? The preaching of the gospel is the proclaiming of the items of this will. When we go to a sinner, we must help him to realize that he is a sinner. Then we can read the will to him. We can first read the item in the will that tells us that our sins have been put on Jesus, that He has borne our sins on the cross. Second, we read the item that says that due to Christ's redemption our sins have been forgiven. Then we read the item that says here is the remission of our sins. It is not that God will forgive us but that, according to the will, God has forgiven us already. Likewise, the remission of sins is here already.

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