When I was a child I would go to the fabric store with my mother where she picked out a pattern to make a quilt. After deciding on the print, the employee would cut every yard at a mark on the top of the material and lay them on top of one another. What followed is so clear, and for the purpose of this analogy, each one was exactly the same. I Timothy 1:16 implies that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners and sacrifice himself. It was for this cause Paul received mercy from God so that Jesus Christ would display his perfect patience and longsuffering towards him. He was to be the firstborn, the prototype, or example to those who would thereafter believe. Although our children will make choices that seemed too much to bear at times, the inner man that God created in them is like the tip of the iceberg. What is going on underneath the surface although you can’t see it, is the spiritual formula that breeds the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and the rest that could only have come from him. Like trees near the rivers edge, their roots will run deep and our influence that comes from God produces a character that is defined in Christ.
The love, and passion, and what his crucifixion accomplished goes far beyond any words that I can muster up. So many people before us and even today have sacrificed their lives in pursuit of a “New Life In Christ” that defines him and not us. I pray with expectation as God becomes the counsel and authority in your life that this ministry and book will be secondary tools to the bible and cause you and therefore your children to become a living sacrifice and do the same. God developed a picture in my mind of families united and experiencing complete harmony, but it will be necessary to at least acknowledge that both trials and elations await you because that is what God says.
God’s eternal purpose in Christ became my personal PASSION as a young parent. It is described as a strong and barely controllable emotion that includes suffering for a cause. I was describing to a friend that I feel like a freight train, fully loaded, going downhill, and without brakes. I will stop for nothing and I am no different than anyone else who has been enlightened to the height, depth and width of God’s unfathomable riches. There is a force at work on our behalf as we begin to realize why men died and continue to sacrifice themselves and their lives for the sake of others. God has given us many examples in scripture and the church today, but the most influential one is our Christ (defined as savior). The details of his life must not only be read about, but experienced. Then what follows is described as a “NEW CREATION” when everything that mattered so much slowly and methodically loses its value and grip on you. At this point on your journey, you and therefore your children become brand new and the purpose for which you live is no longer your own.