Hughes Disciplines of a Godly Family (Trade Paper Edition)

1. Auflage 2004
ISBN: 978-1-4335-1991-8
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten

Disciplines of a Godly Family covers such topics as establishing a solid family heritage, promoting affection between family members, encouraging godliness in children, using appropriate discipline, and helping children cultivate enriching lifelong habits. The Hugheses also offer tips for fun and affordable family vacations, creating family traditions, and starting a prayer notebook. They even give us a suggested list of books and videos that should be in every family's library. For those struggling to parent their own children or to equip other parents for this task, a more practical, honest, and common-sense guide will be hard to find.

R. Kent Hughes (DMin, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is senior pastor emeritus of College Church in Wheaton, Illinois, and former professor of practical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hughes is also a founder of the Charles Simeon Trust, which conducts expository preaching conferences throughout North America and worldwide. He serves as the series editor for the Preaching the Word commentary series and is the author or coauthor of many books. He and his wife, Barbara, live in Spokane, Washington, and have four children and an ever-increasing number of grandchildren.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hughes, R. Kent

Hughes, Barbara

Leseproben

INTRODUCTION: THINKING CHRISTIANLY ABOUT THE FAMILY Life wasn’t easy for us in the summer of 1963. Here is how Barbara recalls that summer: Kent was both a full-time college student and a full-time swing-shift worker in a factory in East Los Angeles. I was two weeks away from the delivery of our first child. Though we had saved carefully and lived on very little, school was so expensive that, according to our calculations, we would only have about $160 when the baby arrived — not nearly enough for the anticipated hospital cost of $250 and the doctor’s fee of $250. We had no idea what to do — except pray. What happened is unforgettable. I went to the doctor for my regular checkup. As the doctor, who was not a churchgoing man, perused my chart, he noticed that Kent was planning to attend seminary. He asked a couple of questions, then casually remarked, “We don’t charge the cloth.” I was perplexed: “What’s the cloth?” He explained that cloth meant the clergy — preachers. All that we now needed was the $250 for the hospital. When the night came for the birth of our lovely daughter Holly, Kent put on his Sunday best and escorted me to the hospital for the sacred event. Perhaps the doctor was just being kind when he said that Kent was the most excited father he had ever seen. We like to think it was true. There was only one problem: Kent had only $163 in his wallet. When he returned to claim his two “girls” and stood nervously before the cashier, waiting for the bill, he tried to think of what to say to convince her that he would pay. She then presented him with the grand total: $160. She explained that I had been admitted just as the day was changing, so we were charged for one less day. With the extra three dollars in hand, Kent ran from the cashier to the florist with just enough money to lavish a bouquet on his wife. These events surrounding the birth of our first child are not only a landmark in our family history — they also foreshadow the main themes of this book. Here are those themes: The family is the object of God’s special concern. Perhaps we can even say that God is on the side of the family against the vicissitudes of life. Realistically speaking, in a fallen world the family is always in a precarious state (financially and in other ways). A Christian family is dependent on God’s grace and providential care to see it through the difficulties that are an inevitable part of family life. No family is strong enough to manage its affairs apart from God’s provision. In view of these things, parents should embrace the ups and downs of family life as comprising one of the chief arenas in which they relate to God and to each other. Parents should consciously organize the history of their family into a story of divine providence; they should not let the events of family history simply be lost or forgotten. God can be trusted to bless the families of believers. This is not to deny that terrible tragedies engulf some families; it is only to say that it is in the nature of God to provide for and bless his people. August 10, 1963, became a treasured stone of remembrance for the two of us. God miraculously met our needs, giving us a substantive sign of his smile upon our family. And the undiminished joy of that occasion was repeated three more times in the next few years — each time with increased intensity of joy. As a matter of fact, the birth of our first child set the tone for the entire experience of raising our family of four to maturity. It has been a continuing celebration. All of our children were born before Kent finished seminary; so those early years were lean. Although the doctor who delivered Holly did not charge “the cloth,” other service providers and retailers did! But through the succession of clunker cars, the “doing without” while others had money for things, we were joyous . . . and the joy persisted. Today, past midlife, after more than forty years of marriage and eighteen grandchildren, we can say that our family, with its natural ups and downs, is an unceasing source of joy. We only have one regret — that we didn’t have more children. Of course, not everyone feels as we do about parenting. The visible public lives of our time, from Winston Churchill to Gloria Steinem, chronicle the tragedy of those who had a parent or parents who for one reason or another neglected their role. It is no surprise that Churchill’s diseased, self-absorbed father was so neglectful of his pathetically needy son, or that Gloria Steinem’s revulsion for motherhood was related to her pathetically needy mother. Such neglect is now commonplace in the world. What is surprising, however, is that a similar malaise is often found among professing Christians. We have personally counseled men and women whose churchgoing, Bible-reading parents have frankly told their children that they wished they had never given birth to them. Still more have confided that, while their parents were never so direct, they nevertheless conveyed that their children had thwarted their potential. One young man told us that he could not remember a day when his missionary mother did not remind him that she had sacrificed her ministry potential to have a family. She actually believed that the children were holding her back. But more often the telltale sign among Christian parents of a defective parental perspective is an ambivalence about family. Outwardly these parents give lip service to the privilege of parenting, but inwardly they carry the attitude that parenting is a burden to be endured. BEHIND THE CONFUSION How do such attitudes come to dwell in Christian hearts? First, many people are captive to a culture that defines self-worth and fulfillment in terms of contribution, name, education, and money. Society applauds the person who designs a building more than it does the one who attends to the architecture of a child’s soul. Our culture values a face that is known to the public far more than it does a countenance reflected in a child’s eyes. The world sets a higher priority on attaining a degree than on educating a life. It values the ability to give things more than it does giving oneself. This approach to self-worth has been relentlessly sown by modern culture and has taken root in many Christian hearts, so that there is no room for another self — even if it is one’s own child. Another factor that regularly contributes to the parenting-is-a-burden attitude is the inconvenience of pregnancy and early childrearing. Eric and Julie had been married for three carefree years when Julie became pregnant. Both proudly welcomed the pregnancy and happily announced it, to the congratulations of family, friends, and church. Soon, however, Julie’s initial enthusiasm was dampened by morning sickness, which for her became a perpetual mal de mer — seasickness — with no port in sight. Gradually Julie’s nausea lifted, and she began to eat — and grow and grow. She was pregnant and fat, and she felt ugly — despite Eric’s remonstrances. Neither was very happy. Their sex life had taken a nosedive when she was so sick, and now, understandably, it wasn’t at its optimum. Eric was secretly resentful, and Julie was bored and vaguely fearful. She missed her friends at work and wondered how well she would perform at delivery. “That little person in there,” they mused, “has sure changed things.” Caleb’s birth went reasonably well, but he was colicky and susceptible to ear infections. Julie and Eric were in for several months of interrupted sleep and messy tasks that they both resented. Of course, they both loved Caleb intensely. That never changed. But Julie did not sense that she was a good mother and began to feel inadequate. So she did the natural thing — she minimized and even avoided that which made her feel inadequate. Her unhappiness made dieting difficult, so the weight stayed on. One morning as Julie was cuddling Caleb, she teasingly said, “You cost me — I lost my figure over you.” It was a refrain baby Caleb was to hear again and again. Meanwhile, Eric found himself a little jealous of Caleb. Caleb was getting the attention he once had received from Julie. The prevailing attitudes toward family coupled with the necessary inconvenience of pregnancy and childrearing have poisoned the perspective of many young couples, though they are sons and daughters of the church. Not only are there scores of parents who consider family to be inhibiting, but there is also a growing number of young couples who are putting off a family until they have achieved professional success and thus will be able to minimize the inconvenience through their wealth or by limiting their family to one or two children. What is needed is a renewed understanding of the foundational principles of the Christian family — principles on which the disciplines of a godly family can be built. Without a firm foundation, the disciplines are unlikely to flourish. The right foundation is rooted in God’s Word. WHAT THE BI B L E SAYS ABOUT THE FAMILY When our first child came, we announced her birth with a joyous line from the psalmist’s praise of children: “Children are a heritage from the LORD” (127:3). This declaration is a concise expression of the age-old regard that God’s covenant people had for children. Indeed, the opening chapter of Holy Scripture records the divine commission to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28),...