Do Our Children Have Hope
We live in a society today where our children exist in fear. They do not feel safe in school, at home or even in their churches. We have seen news stories where children are killing children, where babies are being used as financial negotiating tools, and where children have become the object of sexual desire and perversion. Child-care workers who make less money than fast-food employees are raising someone else's children. Teachers, in many states, make less money than grocery clerks do. Parents have become ghosts to their families, often letting an older sibling or complete strangers care for them. Today's parents sometime use the TV, computer, or video games as baby sitting tools, figuring that they can have a few moments peace while the child is occupied. While television shows sometimes contain messages of hope, they are often lost within a flurry of sex or violence. Super heroes today defeat the bad guy (if you can tell good guys from bad guys) by total annihilation. The news is full of people who want not justice, but retribution. In our churches children are told that the end of the world is near, often Pastors talk about these days as "end days". Statistics are reported daily that tell inner-city children they have little hope of living past the age of twenty. When we look at this world, is it any wonder that our children seem to have very little hope?
Many of you are thinking at this point, "Where Is The Hope"? What is hope really? Romans 8:24-25; "For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it." The dictionary definition of hope is: 1To desire with expectation of fulfillment. 2.Confident expectation. 3.That which is desired or anticipated.
Our children need 'to be taught today that there is hope. Earlier I said that we teach in our church that we are in the end times, and that it takes away hope. Let me make myself clear, Jesus taught us when he wes here that we were in the end times. Every generation since then has said that these were end times. He told us to look for signs, and that when these had come to pass it still was not yet the end. Christ told us that the end of the world would come as a thief in the night, that we would not know the hour. Our children need to be taught that through Jesus Christ there is hope. Christ tells us in the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John verses 1-3; "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." Jesus was not sent here to take hope away from us, he was not sent here to judge us. Jesus was sent here to fulfill the requirements for our salvation. John 3:17; "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved." Our children need to know that no matter who they are, where they come from, what they have done in the past, that there is someone who will accept them as they are. That someone is the Lord God. Jesus sits at the right hand of God today as our intercessor and that God is willing to accept them if they are willing to accept the word as truth, repent of their sins, and trust in him. Our children must be taught that they can trust God, they have already been taught that they can't trust man, but they need to know that they can trust God. Our children must also be taught in the ways of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, that man does not have the right to judge, that we must learn to accept one another, that we must respect one another, and that we must LOVE one another. Can our children have hope? They can, once they realize that God Is HOPE.
Written By
Elder A. Greg Bielanski
Grace Missionary Baptist Church
Warren, Michigan