Have you lost it?

"That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death." (Philippians 3:10)

If we believe that following Christ means that we can live without difficulties, we are believing a lie. He is not our “sugar daddy”. It doesn’t matter how many dollars we send to the television preacher or evangelist, we will still have to work hard and pay our bills on time.

If we truly live our lives pleasing to God, people will not like us. We cannot claim to belong to God and not live a cross-cultural life. To do anything less is to live a sensual existence that denies that life is in reality transitory.

I have rubbed shoulders with people who understood this first-hand. One gentleman in particular comes to mind. He was a teacher in a language school, and every time he opened his mouth it was evident that his teeth were extremely crooked. In a rare moment, he explained to us what had happened to him. It seems that he had been in a concentration camp in what is currently the Czech Republic twice; once under the Nazi’s, once under the communists. Although I do not know whether or not he was a Christian, he knew what it means to take a cross-cultural stand for freedom and not count one’s life as dear. But he dared to be cross- cultural and stand for freedom, the very things we take for granted every day. He didn’t receive medals or advancement for his sacrificial work for his countrymen, instead he received a shovel to his face, and afterwards no medical attention. He had been forced into exile, but in his heart the drum of truth continued to beat and he pleaded for his country with anyone who would listen.

Give me liberty or give me death!

In our country we do not face physical retribution for having unpopular ideas. We have been conditioned to believe that the goal of our entire lives is to make sure that people “like” us, or understand us, or that everyone should feel “comfortable” with their life choices. All it takes for us as the wimpy, spineless church we are is for someone to get their feathers ruffled, then we immediately back off and recant!

But truth is truth—and it is the only thing that can set us free. Half-truths are like eating potato chips; they taste great going down, but are passed out of our bodies without making any positive contribution whatsoever on our health and well-being.

We are soon to approach the end of the second century of this Satanic experiment called Compulsory Schooling. It is not, nor has it ever been, a godly attempt to educate children. From its very foundations it has been designed to destroy the influence of the Church and the Christian family.

"What the church has been for medieval man the public school must become for democratic and rational man. God will be replaced by the concept of the public good… The common schools…shall create a more far-seeing intelligence and a pure morality than has ever existed among communities of men."

--Horace Mann, founder of the compulsory schooling movement,

"The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new—the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism."

--John Dunphy, in The Humanist

"The state is the order of liberty, and the school is the means whereby citizens are prepared for the good life. The state has become the saving institution, and the function of the school has been to proclaim a new gospel of salvation. Education in this era is a messianic and a utopian movement, a facet of the enlightenment hope of regenerating man in terms of the promises of science and the new social order to be a achieved in the state."

--R.J. Rushdoony in his book, The Messianic Character of American Education

It doesn’t matter that our children never witness a school shooting, or get tricked into taking drugs, or even emerge from high school as virgins. The damage has still been done. The evil is not in a certain class, or event, or book, it is embedded in the system. Every day that we submit our children and our families to that system, we are cooperating with the plans of the enemy. We are saying, "It doesn’t bother me, as long as it doesn’t bother me."

Obviously the schools are not Christian. Just as obviously they are not neutral.

The Scriptures say that the fear of the Lord is the chief art of knowledge; but the schools, by omitting all reference to God, give the pupils the notion that knowledge can be had apart from God. They teach in effect that God has no control of history, that there is no plan of events that God is working out, that God does not foreordain whatsoever come to pass…

"The big lie of the public schools is that the God of the Bible is irrelevant. The textbooks never mention Him. Everyone assumes that children do not need to know anything about God, God’s law and God’s Word in order to become educated people. This is Satan’s own lie."

--John Thoburn

But it should bother us. It should bother us because the choices we make about whom to marry, how many kids to have, where they will be educated, etc. are not just arbitrary. They are important, and they have consequences.

Children are not nuisances or economic drains, they are sacred trusts. They are created in the image of God, and thus require our respect and demand that we lose our lives for their sakes, just as if they were Jesus Himself.

My friend in Bulgaria understands this.

Oh, Sherry, what a nice article! Would you mind to pray for our family? To find way for us to homeschool here, in Bulgaria? To have at least one more of these precious gifts of God - you have 14 and 1 on the way :-)

Her testimony should shame us. She doesn’t feel judged or condemned when I write about the tremendous responsibility we have in training our children; she understands that responsibility and yearns to be able to take more responsibility for her children.

Dear Brothers and Sisters, are we so committed to our own convenience that we forget Whose we are? Have we been lulled to sleep, honestly believing that the world’s system will not affect our own children when they are subjugated to propaganda at earlier and earlier ages, for hours and weeks and months at a time?

There are some really nice people who are greatly deceived. They don’t ride brooms or wear pentagrams. But in all their sincerity, they believe evil, destructive things, and they whole-heartedly pass on these evil things to others. This is not a new thing. But today we try to psychoanalyze it all, to make it all fair and make sure that everyone feels “valued”.

Life is not therapeutic! The devil is real, and he doesn’t want us to make it. He uses unwitting people all of the time to attack us and discourage us and make us feel bad. The only place we should find solace is in The Rock, onto which we should fall and be broken.

WHEN WILL THE CHURCH IN AMERICA STAND UP?

So homeschooling is a little difficult, so it means that we must change our lifestyles, so it means that people will misunderstand us and we will face negative comments, etc.

SO WHAT?!!!

We need to grow backbones. We need to lose our lives.