Brad Harrub recently wrote about what he saw as the certainty of a coming persecution of Christians in what was once a Christian nation. He spoke of some things that he believed would happen within even the next five years. While we can’t fully predict the future, we can see that the current path is leading us quickly in that direction. Already the health care law is forcing some religious business owners and religious non-profits to choose whether they will pay for certain "health care costs" that they don’t believe in or just go with the flow of government interference. The question of what to do ourselves and what to do to prepare our children for an increasingly hostile environment is one that should get us all thinking and acting. Brad nailed the most obvious thing that we all must do and that is teaching our children to have a deep love for the Lord: one deep enough that they will die for Him if need be, but also deep enough that they will live for Him. I believe there are some of us who could muster the courage in a one-time deny-Christ-or-die situation to do it, but what about living day in and day out in fear of discovery, abuse, jail, torture, etc. Could we keep our faith and love for Jesus over the long haul. My wife said last night that it would be easier to just be killed and get it over with and no doubt she is right, but we don’t know what will happen. In the first century, James was beheaded and that was it for him, but Paul suffered many times over the years: beatings, scourgings, stoning, imprisonment, etc. There is no way to fully prepare for the unknown, but we can look to history to learn some things that could be useful in preparing ourselves and our children. I certainly do not have all of the answers, but I have been giving this very thing some serious thought (even to the point of beginning to work on a fictionalized account of a family dealing with these things in the near future) over the past couple of years. These are some practical things, in the order I estimate to be the most important to least important, that might be beneficial in such times.
They will be presented as a series of articles on how to build your family in each area with some resources to point you in the right direction. I certainly don't have all the answers in any of these areas, but we can learn much from those who have gone down similar paths before us.
Here is a list of some of the things we will discuss in depth in the upcoming articles:
1) Love the Lord
2) Get that Government is not God
3) Focus on the Future
4) Examine Extreme Examples of Endurance
5) Build Boundaries
6) Christian Connection
7) Make Money Matter
8) Live Light
9) Relevant Reading / Value Viewing
10) Study Survival Skills
11) Discover Deprivation
12) Watch and Wait
13) Cautious Communication
14) Emergency Education
15) Congregational Changes
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