Faith that Acts

Two nights ago, my wonderful husband took our oldest, Keaton, to the Emergency Room to have her breathing checked out. For about 24 hours, she had been wheezing and sounding out of breath. I had called the pediatrician and they could not see her that day, so our option was to either hope she made it through the night or take her to the hospital! (No time wasted in deciding there!) Well...suffice it to say, Keaton is now using a nebulizer after being diagnosed as being in an "asthmatic" state. Not a huge surprise here, we have family members who struggle with this too.

The night before the trip to the ER, we had prayed over and annointed Keaton at my husband's leading. There have been times in the past where we have seen God mightily work in this way. And He still may. But our main cry that night was, "give us your wisdom in this Lord." I thought about the groups of religious people out there who believe either God heals without medicine or you just let the person progress in their sickness and die. "If one of you says to him, 'Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,' but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." James 2:16 Aren't we called to walk by the light we're given? If God offers us a way to endure, we need to act on it, still praying that He will intervene and deliver us completely. We could apply this to so many situations.

For instance, some may say we should not formally educate our children at all, but simply let them grow up, learning from the environment by osmosis, and really hope they become intelligent. I sure am glad the doctors who have operated on my loved ones weren't trained by osmosis. This is concerning. I know there are actually "homeschoolers" out there who actually lean this direction. But to me "train up a child in the way he should go" shows there is a plan of action in place. "Apply your heart to instruction and your ears to words of knowledge." Proverbs 23:12. (This was my 6 year old's first bible verse of the school year and we both still remember it!) This also applies to discipline. I recently went on a Christian mom's blog (nobody I know) and read the comments on whether to spank/not spank. Amazing input from people on both sides. However, many people tend to act on subjective experience (how they were raised, their personal experience with results) rather than on Biblical revelation. One mom in particular had it right, I believe, out of about 44 comments. Many people are afraid to spank because of how it affected them as children (done poorly) or that they will lose control and abuse their kids. Once again, faith and action is required. It's difficult to discipline effectively when the parent him/herself is not in daily fellowship with God. It's impossible, really, to parent well without daily fellowship with God and his word.

Well, I will get off my soapbox for now. But please know that as always, I write these things to remind myself of how the Lord has taught me and from whence I've come. Amazingly, there will be tons of believers in Heaven with me who parented differently, schooled or homeschooled differently, worshipped God differently, and in general, whose lives were lived much differently than mine while here on earth. But one thing will be the same...we will all have been called out of darkness into the glorious Light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. "For it is by Grace you have been saved, through faith, and not from yourselves, it is the gift of God---not of works, so that no one can boast." Ephesians 2:8-9