As many of you know, Corinne and I have just reached the exciting and successful conclusion of two years of adoption red tape. We’ve been blessed this past month to bring home our two new sons, Bedza and Samuel. What an amazing experience it has been so far to take our family of six and make it a family of eight. With our two new sons coming home, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the verse above. What does it mean to “train children to live the right way”?
I spent many years as a history teacher, a Phys. Ed instructor, and a basketball coach. Needless to say, when it comes to raising my kids, I’ve taken many opportunities to show and teach them the value of physical fitness and the joy of sports. I am sure there are some of you reading this who have seen the Mannes kids and Mike out at the park practicing soccer, shooting hoops, running on the track or playing football. This has been a lot of fun (for me ) and I'm glad that all my kids have remained physically active. It has been interesting to bring my two new sons to the park. In the orphanage where they grew up, there wasn’t a lot of time for sports or physical activity, so they have been excited to learn, and I'm happy to teach them. I'm quite sure they’ll grow up enjoying being active as much as the rest of us do.
Although with our family expanding, I’ve been thinking of a more important part of the legacy that I’d like to pass on to my kids and beyond; spiritual fitness. I’d like to share with you a few thoughts on what I think God’s challenging me with:
1. Make Bible reading a priority. Much like the Word of life brought life to dry bones in the book of Ezekiel, I truly believe that His word still has power to shape, to transform and to bring life. I want to teach my kids and model to my kids that time spent in the word of God is time well spent.
2. Prayer is a privilege. A God so powerful that He shaped the universe cares enough to listen to you….take advantage of it.
3. We are called to be His hands and feet. Jesus said that whatever we do for the “down and out”, we’re doing for Him. I want my kids to see that I care for the spiritually, physically, emotionally and relationally down and out. In the midst of that, I want to make sure that I am His hands and feet to my own family…not forgetting about them.
4. I want to cherish my wife. Paul said in Ephesians that as a husband I have an opportunity to model the love Christ had for the church by laying down my life daily for my wife. I want my sons to have in me a good model for how to treat a lady. I want my daughters to have in me a great standard for the kind of guy that will be their husband.
At the end of the day, I want to pray that God would bless the good seeds I’ve planted into my kids. And the times I’ve failed….the times that I’ve planted bad seeds, I pray that God would grant a crop failure to those bad seeds through His grace and mercy.
