Standard Jet DBnb` Ugr@?~1y0̝cßFN_b7 (/` {6M߱mCw63y[*,|*|~`d f_Љ$g'DeFx -bT4.0dv Y   S  Y   Y Y  Y Y  Y  Y  Y  r Y s Y E Y a Y d Y 2Y  Y   Y  jY ConnectDatabaseDateCreateDateUpdate FlagsForeignNameIdLvLvExtraLvModule LvPropName OwnerParentIdRmtInfoLongRmtInfoShortTypenif(YYIdParentIdName        OY04X4S Y Y Y  Y 2ACMFInheritableObjectIdSID44 4YObjectId Y  SY  Y Y Y  Y  Y Y  Y AttributeExpressionFlagLvExtra Name1 Name2ObjectId Ordernzf edY"ObjectIdAttribute -Y  SY Y Y  Y  Y  Y  Y  Y ccolumn grbiticolumnszColumnszObject$szReferencedColumn$szReferencedObjectszRelationship rt gF YYYszObject$szReferencedObjectszRelationshipYv1b N  : k & W  C t/ @@X  @@OJmJLJkQkiQ^JmYdbkWYfkmJL^Qk`kvkJMQk`kvkdL[QMmk`kvkhoQiYQk`kvkiQ^JmYdbkWYfkmdfYMbdmQk`kvkOL  @~  @ @           d k f  t .@ .@Topic Notes4@DDD88888886 @.@.@MSysRelationships5DDDDDDDDDDB .@.@MSysQueries588888888886 .@.@MSysACEs522222222220 .@.@MSysObjects588888888886 .@.@MSysDb4.........., .@.@Relationships5<<<<<<<<<<: .@.@Databases544444444442 .@.@Tables5.........., jYNY Y d YID TitleCommentsddddddYYIDPrimaryKeyHv1b@?LVALt3{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;\red0\green0\blue255;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs22 The Children For Christ\par by Andrew Murray\par \par 31 Daily Devotions\par \par Preface\b0\par \par God is awakening in many hearts the longing to live a truly consecrated life, to be and do all that He would have of us. No sooner has the surrender to such a life taken place, but the desire comes to have all who belong to us partake of the blessing, specially to have our home life, with all its affections, its intercourse, its duties, sanctified too. Many a parent finds this a hard, almost a hopeless task. In the days when their own Christian life was half-hearted and feeble, the spirit of the world was allowed to come in and get possession. With a partner or children who do not entirely sympathize, where the help and hearty response of spiritual fellowship is wanting, the consecrated one finds it difficult to maintain the personal life. How much more to influence the whole circle, and lift them up to the more blessed life that has been entered on!\par \par To parents who are in this position, to all parents who long to have their homes truly consecrated by God's presence and service, God's Word has a message of comfort and strength. It is this: that God is willing to be the God of their house, and with His Divine power to do for it more than they can ask and think. If they will but open their hearts in faith to rest in the promise and the power of God, He will prove Himself to be for their house what He has been to themselves. The one thing needful is that they should know and believe what He has undertaken to be and to do as the God of their seed. They will find that the lesson they learnt in entering upon a life of entire consecration is just what is needed here again. There all was comprehended in the one word, surrender -- the surrender of faith and obedience. They surrenderLVALed themselves to expect and accept all God had promised, and to do all that He commanded. This surrender of faith must take place definitely with regard to the family. As a parent I put myself and my children into God's hands, believing that He will fulfil His promise, yea, that He does at once accept and take charge. I confess the sins by which I have prevented God from working through me as He would for my home. I yield myself to be His humble, holy witness -- His loving, obedient servant, and humbly but trustingly I say, `O when wilt Thou come unto me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.'\par \par A parent's faith needs just what the faith of every believer does -- to understand, to get an insight into what God has undertaken to do. 'By faith we understand.' When faith has seen God planning and undertaking, it is a simple thing for it to rest and trust, to praise and act. I trust that this little book may help believing parents to meditate on God's revelation of His purpose with the family, and to see what abundant ground there is for their expecting Him to fulfil their desire to have their house holy to the Lord. It is as we get into the mind and plan of God, that faith will grow, and its power be manifest both in ourselves and those for whom we are believing.\par \par In a note at the close of this volume, on the Church's duty to parents, I have explained the origin and the object of the book. I send it forth with the prayer that it may be blessed to make our glorious God better known, as He would fain be known and honored, as the God of the families of Israel, and that this knowledge may strengthen many a parent's heart to a larger faith and a more entire consecration of home life to their God.\par \par A. M.\par \pard\cf1\lang1033\par ----------------------------\par Placed into E-Sword TOP format by David Cox, \cf0{\field{\*\fldinst{HYPERLINK "http://www.davidcox.com.mx"}}{\fldrslt{\ul\cf2 http://www.davidcox.com.mx}}}\cf1\f0\fs22 \par dcox@davidcox.com.mx. \par \langLVAL2058\par } SvCo06 Days 33-37y3, 05 Days 26-323, 04 Days 20-25p3, 03 Days 14-19~S3, 02 Days 8-13z53*01 Days 1-73(00 Murray - Children for Christt3PDLVAL3{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs22 FIRST DAY \endash The Family as God Created it\par \b0\par `God created man in His own image: in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. And God blessed them; and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.' Gen. 1: 27, 28.\par \par God's purpose in the creation of man was to show forth and make visible to the universe His own unseen glory and perfection. He was not only to have single points of resemblance to God; in all he was and did upon earth he was to prove that he was indeed created in God's image and after His likeness.\par \par The traits of that likeness were very varied and most wonderful. In the dominion he was to have over the earth, he was to exhibit the power of God as King and Ruler of the universe. In the wondrous mental powers with which he was endowed, fitting him for this work, there was to be seen the image of God as the All-wise. In his moral powers there was to be some reflection of the light that is inaccessible and full of glory: God's righteousness and holiness were to be revealed.\par \par But then there still remained one trait of the Divine perfection, the very highest, to be set forth. God is love. As Infinite Love He lives not for Himself alone, but finds all His blessing in imparting His own life. In His bosom He has the Son of His love, begotten of the Father from eternity. In the Son He has peopled the universe with living beings, that upon them the fulness of His love might flow out. As the Loving One He is the fountain of life; as the Living One He is the fountain of love. It was that in this, too, man might bear the image of God, that his whole life might be a life of love, and that in loving he might give life to those on whom his love might flow forth, that God created man in His image, male and female. In the home on earth, in the love of husband and wifeLVAL, of parent and child, were to be reflected the love and the blessedness of the Father's home in heaven, were to be imaged forth the deepest secrets of the life of Godhead in the fellowship of the Father and the Son by the Holy Spirit.\par \par It is to this last and highest trait of the image of Divine perfection -- man's creation, to shadow forth the mystery and to enjoy the blessedness of a life in love -- that we want specially to draw attention. In undertaking the study of God's Word for the sake of discovering what it teaches us of the parental relation, we must ascend the true Mount of Sources, and follow up the stream of Divine truth to those hills of Paradise whence they all take their rise. We will find the sure foundation of the family constitution, its purpose, its law, and its glory in the teaching of God's word: `God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.'\par \par Let us think of it for a moment. In God's love, and the fatherhood which sprang from that love, we have at once the highest glory and the deepest mystery of Godhead. Because God is love, He must needs have some worthy object on whom His love can rest, in whose fellowship His love can find its blessedness. Because He is God, the only and all-perfect One, that Son must be the only One, the Father's image, and the Heir of all things. Before the world began, from eternity, God was in Him the Most Blessed One. In God's Fatherhood of Christ is His perfection and His blessedness.\par \par Man was created after that image of God which was seen in Christ. When man had fallen, Christ came to take us up into fellowship with Himself, to give us a share in His Sonship and Heirship, to make us too the children of God. In Him, and His life given us in regeneration, we too become the sons of God. God's Fatherhood of believers is the deepest mystery, the highest glory, the perfect blessedness of redemption. The Fatherhood of God is the summing up of the incomprehensible mystery LVALand glory of the Divine Being.\par \par And of this Fatherhood the father of the family on earth is to be the image and the likeness. In the life he imparts to his child, in the image he sees reflected, in the unity of which he is conscious, in the loving care he exercises, in the obedience and the trust he sees rendered to himself, in the love in which family life finds its happiness, the home and the fatherhood of earth are the image of the heavenly.\par \par What a solemn and what a blessed view this truth gives us of the parental relation! What a sanctifying influence the right apprehension of it would have upon its privileges and its duties! How much better, in the light of this Divine origin and purpose of the family, we can understand and value our relation to our children. And how, on the other hand, all our intercourse with them would strengthen our obedience and our confidence towards the Father in heaven! We should see how the action of the heavenly and the earthly home on each other is reciprocal. Every deeper insight into the Father's love and the Father's home would elevate the intercourse in the home on earth, and enlarge our expectations as to the blessing the God who appointed it will certainly bestow upon it. And every experience of what the love and blessing of a home on earth can be would again be a ladder by which to rise up and get nearer the great Father-heart in heaven. `In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth: 'the two in correspondence with each other -- the home in heaven, with the Father there, the original of the home on earth, and the father there.\par \par How terrible the curse and the power of sin! Fatherhood in the likeness of God, the communication to another being of a life that was to be immortal and ever blessed, and the establishment of a home of love like that in heaven, was to have been the high privilege of man, as God created him. But alas! sin came in, and wrought a fearful ruin. The father makes the child partaker of a sinful nature; thLVALe father feels himself too sinful to be a blessing to his child; and the home, alas! is too often the path not to heaven, but to hell. But, blessed be God! what sin destroyed grace restores. And as in these meditations we follow God's revelation in regard to the family, we will find that all the purpose and provision of God's grace point back to the restoration of what at creation was intended -- the fatherhood and the motherhood of earth, with its love and its home, its care and its training of the children, the reflection and the fellowship of the home and the love of the Father in heaven.\par \par Let every parent who feels conscious of his own shortcoming, and longs for wisdom and grace to do aright the work entrusted him, look back in faith and hope to the heavenly origin of family life. The God who created it has redeemed it too, and creates it anew. He watches over it with tender interest, and meets with His own Father-love and blessing every parent who desires to be the minister of His holy purpose. Would you truly be this, begin by making God's thought your thought; the fatherhood and the family on earth the image and the likeness of a heavenly original. Look to God as the Author of your family life; count upon Him to give all that is needed to make it what it should be. Let His Father-heart and His Father-love be your study and your stay; as you know and trust it in adoring love, the assurance will grow that He will fit you for making your home, in ever-increasing measure, the bright reflection of His own.\par \par O Thou great and holy Creator of men! Thou hast placed me, too, in the wondrous relation of parent with a child owing its life to me. Thou wouldst give me, too, the happiness of living a life of love, the Divine joy of loving and being loved. Thou hast placed me, too, in a home to be the image of the home in heaven, where the Father and the Son dwell in everlasting love.\par \par O my God! I humbly confess that I utter these words with shame. How little have the perfect loveLVAL and joy, the purity and brightness of heaven, been reflected in the home given to my charge! How little I have even understood my calling, or truly aimed at the high ideal Thou hast set before me! Father, Forgive us, for Jesus' sake!\par \par And hear me, when I beseech Thee to guide my meditations, and to help me in the study of Thy Holy Word, that I may learn more fully to realize, what Thy purpose is with the fatherhood and the motherhood of this earth, and with what interest and love Thou lookest on each home given up to Thy protection and guidance. Teach me to know Thee in Thy infinite Fatherliness, that the study and the experience of that Divine Original, after which the parent's heart was created, may fit me to be a true parent to my child. And let a Father's love and blessing rest on our home. Amen.\par \par \b SECOND DAY -- The Family as Sin made it.\b0\par \par `In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth.' Gen. 5: 1, 3. \lquote Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.' Gen. 4: 8.\par \par God created man in His own likeness; Adam, the fallen, begat sons in his own likeness, after his image. As in the former expression, telling us of man's high origin and destiny, we have the key to the mystery of the incarnation, and redemption to eternal glory; so in the latter we have the light that shows us whence sin has such fearful and universal power. It was one of the wonderful traits of God's likeness that man had the power to give life to others. When sin got the mastery, that likeness was not extinguished, but terribly defaced; he still had the power to bring forth, alas! in his own likeness. By one fell blow sin, in conquering Adam, had conquered the race. If ever the race is again to be delivered from the power of sin, it will doubtless be by this power of man's bringing forth in his own likeness being regained and renewed to bLVALe the power for re-establishing God's kingdom. The parental relation has become the strength of sin; when God restores it, it will be the strength of grace.\par \par If we want to realize the full significance of this word, `Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image,' we have only to study the story of his family at the gates of Paradise. It will teach us lessons of the deepest importance in regard to the family as sin has made it.\par \par Let us mark how the father's sin reappears and ripens in that of the child. `Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself.' In these two great commandments we have the sum of God's will concerning us. Adam had transgressed the first, and in sinning had cast off the love of God. His firstborn refuses subjection to the second, and becomes the hater and the murderer of his brother. Had Adam continued in the love of God, Cain had certainly loved his brother. With Adam's sin his nature had become corrupted; that nature had been imparted to the son in his likeness. The child's sin was the fruit of the father's.\par \par This first picture of family life God gives us in His Word, what a somber light it casts on our homes! How often parents can trace in the sins and evil tempers of their children their own shortcomings and transgressions! How the remembrance that their children have inherited their evil natures from themselves ought to humble them, make them very patient and gentle, as well as very earnest and wise, in dealing with the offenders, and lead them to seek what alone can cure and conquer this evil power -- the grace and the life that comes from above! Let parents not be afraid of realizing fully that God visits the sins of the fathers on the children; it will urge and encourage them to believe that He will no less remember the mercy to the fathers, and make the children partakers of that too.\par \par Let us note further how in that first child's sin we have the root and type of all children's sins. The faLVALmily had been destined of God to be the image of the bliss of heaven, the mirror of the life of love that reigns there. Sin enters, and the first family, instead of being the emblem and the gate of heaven, becomes the type and the portal of hell. Instead of the love and help and happiness for which God had appointed our social relation, envy and anger and hatred and murder render it a scene of terrible desolation.\par \par The root of all sin is selfishness -- separating first from God and then from man. How early in the little ones in the nursery does it manifest itself! How continually does it come up in the intercourse with companions in school or play! How often it rises even against the parent, and refuses the love or obedience that is due! Let believing parents study with care what Holy Scripture reveals of love as the new and great commandment, as the fulfilling of the whole law, as the way to our dwelling in God and God in us, and seek for nothing so earnestly as this: the reign of love in their home. Let them watch over every manifestation of a selfish or unloving spirit, as a seed of the tree that bore such bitter fruit in Cain, and count no care or prayer too great to have it banished. Let them not be content, as long as there are no striking outbreaks of the evil; let them fear and root out the seeds which often ripen so terribly in after life. Let nothing less content them than to make it their aim that grace should restore their family life to what God created it to be -- a mirror and a foretaste of the love of heaven.\par \par Let us not in this too forget the influence of the parent's life, as set before us here: \lquote In his own image, after his likeness.' These words refer not only to a blessing lost in Paradise, and to a curse that came with sin, but as much to a grace that comes with redemption. Not, it is true, by natural birth in the flesh can a believer beget a child in his likeness, now renewed again after the image of God. But what nature cannot accomplish, the prayer anLVALd the life of faith can obtain, in virtue of the promise and the power of God. As we proceed in our inquiries into the teaching of Holy Scripture concerning the family life, we shall find nothing come out more clearly than the blessed truth that to believing parents the promise is given that their child may be begotten again after their likeness, and that God will to this end use them as the instruments of His grace. To the prayer of faith, manifesting itself in the godly training of the child, the blessing has been secured in covenant -- `I will be a God to thee and to thy seed.' As faith and prayer claim the promise and the power of God, the influence of the daily intercourse will make itself felt, and there will go forth from the consecrated lives of father and mother a secret but mighty power to mold the lives of the children, either preparing them as vessels of grace, or establishing and perfecting them in it.\par \par And so we come to the blessed but solemn truth: Let parents be what they want their children to be. If they would keep them from the sin of Cain, who loved not his brother, let them beware of the sin of Adam, who loved not the commandment of his God. Let father and mother lead a life marked by love to God and man; this is the atmosphere in which loving children can be trained. Let all the dealings with the children be in holy love. Cross words, sharp reproof, impatient answers, are infectious. Love demands and fears not self-sacrifice; it needs time and thoughtful attention and patient perseverance to train our children aright. In all our children hear us speak of others, of friends or enemies, of the low, the vulgar, the wicked, let the impression they receive be, the love of Christ we seek to show. In all the intercourse of father and mother with each other, let mutual esteem and respect, tender considerateness and willing self-forgetfulness, prove to the children that love is possible and blessed.\par \par Above all, let us remember that it is the love of God that is the secLVALret of a loving home on earth. It is where parents love the Lord their God with all their heart and strength that the human love will be strengthened and sanctified. It is only parents who are willing to live really consecrated lives, entirely given up to God, to whom the promise and the blessing can come fully true. To make our home the nursery and the type and the foretaste of heaven, the ordinary half-hearted religion will not suffice. The love of God shed abroad in the heart and the home and the life by the Holy Ghost -- it is this, this alone, will transplant our home from the gates of Paradise Lost, where Adam dwelt with Cain, to within the Paradise Regained, where even amid the weakness of earth the image of the heavenly is seen, and the home on earth is in the likeness of the home above.\par \par Blessed Lord God! we bow before Thee in deep humility. We desire to feel more deeply the terrible power of sin in ourselves and our children, and the danger to which it exposes our beloved home. We come to confess how far as parents we have come short in that pure and holy love which Thou didst mean to be the beauty and the blessedness of family life. In our intercourse with Thee, and each other, and our children, and fellow-men -- O God, forgive us the lack of love! And oh! let not our children suffer through us, as they grow up in our likeness. Deliver us, we pray Thee, from the power of selfishness, and shed, oh! shed abroad Thy love in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.\par \par And, O God! bless our children with the Spirit of love. Give us so to walk before them in love, that Thy Spirit may use our example and our likeness to form them to Thy Holy Likeness. Give us a deep sense of our holy calling to train their immortal spirits for Thee and Thy glory. Inspire us with faith, with patience, with wisdom to train them aright. Oh that our home on earth might be to them the pathway, and the gate, to the Father's home in heaven!\par \par Blessed Father! let us and our children be Thine wholly and forLVALever. Amen.\par \par \b THIRD DAY -- The Family as Grace Restores It\par \b0\par `And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou, and all thy house, into the ark: for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.' Gen. 7: 1.\par \par `By faith Noah prepared an ark for the saving of his house,' and was made a witness to future ages that the faith of a believing, righteous parent obtains a blessing, not for himself only, but for his children too. The New Testament teaching, `By faith he saved his house,' is in perfect accordance with what is recorded in the Old Testament history: `I have seen thee righteous before me: come thou, and all thy house, into the ark.' Even Ham, who, as far as his personal character was concerned, manifestly deserved to perish with the ungodly world, was saved from the flood for his father's sake and by his father's faith. It is the proof that in God's sight the family is regarded as a unity, with the father as head and representative; that parents and children are one, and that in the dispensation of grace, even as in the ministration of condemnation, it is on this principle that God will deal with the families of His people.\par \par We know how it was this fact, of parents and children being one, that had given sin its terrible power in the world. Or was it not in virtue of this that, when Adam had sinned, his whole posterity had been made subject at one blow, as it were to sin and death? Was not the flood, as well as the fall, a proof of it? We see the children of Seth sunk as deep as the children of Cain, because Seth too was a son whom Adam had begotten in his likeness, with a sinful nature to be handed to his children too. Was it not this that gave sin such universal empire to thousand generations? The family was sin's greatest stronghold; children inherited the evil from their parents. The unity of parents and children was the strength of sin.\par \par Noah's deliverance from the flood was to be the introduction of a new dispensation -- the first great actLVAL of God's redeeming grace on behalf of a sinful world. In it God manifested what the great principles of the economy of grace were to be. These were life through death; faith as the means of deliverance, the one channel through which the blessing comes. And further, it was now to be revealed whether the family was to be one of the means of grace. There was every reason to expect it would be. It had been sin's mightiest ally, the chief instrument through which it had acquired such universal dominion. This principle was now to be rescued from the power of sin, to be adopted into the covenant of grace, to be consecrated and made subservient to the establishment of God's kingdom. How otherwise could the declaration be verified, 'Where sin abounded, there did grace much more abound,' if sin alone had the power through the parents to secure dominion over the children? Nay, in this very thing we are to have one of the brightest displays of redeeming grace -- that the relation of parents and children, which had become the great means for the transmission and establishing the power of sin, was much more to become the vehicle for the extension of the kingdom of God's grace. And though many ages would have to pass ere the promised Seed of the woman should be born, yet in anticipation of that holy birth the seed of God's people were to share in the blessing of their parents. It was on the strength of this hope that the children of righteous Noah were blessed with their father.\par \par Let believing parents understand and remember this. The man who is righteous in God's sight is not dealt with only as an individual, but in his relation as parent. When God blesses He loves to bless abundantly; the blessing must overflow the house of His servant. It is not only for this temporal life, and the supply of its many needs, that the f