Facilitating a healthy spiritual environment for our children will provide optimal opportunities for their development to be all that God intended. This week, I popped in for a surprise visit to the church camp that my children had attended all week. Like the goal of most church camp environments, I observed an emphasis on spiritual growth, an atmosphere of obedience in most young people while accompanied by a heart to change and grow that permeated the campers and even affected the counselors. While I cannot report on the direct results of this particular church camp week, I do not doubt that this yielded plenty of fruit to God's glory and for the good of the young people. As a father, I am instructed to create an atmosphere that would be conducive to the spiritual formation of my children. (Ephesians 6:4) And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. There are two observable variations of this response responsibility: Become an Authoritarian Dad that demands his children obey because he himself has a misplaced desire that he is trying to satisfy, or remain an Authoritative Dad, who does not abdicate his spiritual responsibility by being absent, passive or even relying on other people to do for him what he does not dare to do. I have determined to help my children, after their week of camp, to keep their spiritual decisions that were made in faith this week.
Three determinations will guide the guard of the hearts of my Christian young people. I am determined to ask them open-ended spiritual questions to help them retain the knowledge of God. I am determined to help them facilitate a reconciled life before God and others. I am determined to help them view the Christian life as a walk with God that offers some solitary "No" answers while offering many abundant "Yes" affirmations.
Asking open-ended spiritual questions will help serve and facilitate formable growth while in cooperation with the will of our young people. It may be cliché, but it is a truth that bears repeating, "those who are persuaded against their will, are of the same opinion still. Biblical parents cannot hijack the will of their children but woo to work in cooperation with them.
Church camp is generally viewed as a time to get right with God and others. Why should our everyday Christian life be different from this seemingly minute task? Helping as a buffer reminder to live a reconciled life will bring relief from the weight of unnecessary carried baggage of our young people and will function to facilitate optimal mental health. I'm sorry, I was wrong, please forgive me; I agree with You and Your word (God); are all words that can bring instant relief from an unreconciled life with God and others.
Lastly, the Christian life is an abundant life with Christ and not just a set of directional trappings. Camp does help children to “learn Christ” (Ephesians 4:20), but the Abundant Christian life is found in an acquiesced will bent toward the very life himself: the Life of Christ in us. (Galatians 2:20) May they see Christ in me, and may I provoke them to access the “life-giver to produce the product of the Life of Christ in them as their life is hid with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3) Christ’s life offers so much more than randomly placed rules by cultural subsets: He places willful restraints for optimal living to the abundant “yes” life. (John 10:10) “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” Jesus.
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