194 God speaks to us through our parents - a podcast by Dr David Petts - Pentecostal preacher, former AoG Bible College Principal

How God speaks to us  Talk 10  God speaks to us through our Parents

 

So far, all that we have said has centred very much around the Bible. We have said that God speaks to us through the person of Jesus, but what we know about Jesus we derive from the Bible. We have also considered various ways in which God speaks to us directly through the Bible, but now we turn our attention to other ways in which God speaks to us.

 

We’ll start by looking at how he speaks to us through other people. But even here our knowledge of what the Bible teaches will be vital. Well-meaning people can get things wrong and anything they say must be filtered through our understanding of what the Bible has to say.

 

Of course, God can speak through anyone he wants to – he once even spoke through a donkey (Numbers 22)! But in the next few talks we’ll be concentrating on four major categories of people through whom the Lord may speak to us – parents, preachers, pastors, and prophets. As usual I’ll be illustrating what the Bible has to say with examples from my own personal experience. Today our subject is parents.

 

Parents

The Bible is very clear in its teaching that children should learn from their parents about the things of God. We are told to honour our parents, to obey our parents, and to heed their instruction. It follows, therefore, that one way that God has chosen to speak to us is through the instruction and advice of our parents. It is our parents’ responsibility to explain to us the truth about God, to show us by their teaching and example the difference between right and wrong, and to advise us as to the best course of action when we are unsure of what we should do.

 

I am personally very grateful to God that my parents fulfilled that role in a wonderful way, but I am very conscious that not all my listeners will have had Christian parents and that some may have had a very different experience from mine. My wife, Eileen, is one example of this. Her parents, despite many good qualities, were by no means ideal, but they did send her to Sunday school and at the age of seven Eileen was led to the Lord by her Sunday school teacher. Since that day she has always sought to be the kind of person God would want her to be and, was determined that when she became a mother she would be a better parent to our children than her parents had been to her. The fact that our three children, who are now in their fifties, have all grown up to love and serve the Lord is in my view largely due Eileen’s godly influence. So, if you did not enjoy the benefit of ideal parents, please remember that the Lord can help you to be a better parent to your children than they were to you.

 

However, as I have said, my experience was very different from Eileen’s. I remember how, at the age of eight, I was sitting on my father’s knee when I asked him, Daddy, how good do you have to be to go to Heaven? I think the question was on my mind because of something that was called David’s good boy chart. This was a chart my father had made, rather like a calendar, with space for each day for him to stick on it a coloured sun or moon or star depending on how my behaviour had been that day. I think he had made it because my mother had been having some problems with me during the day while he was at work. When he got home, my mother would tell him how I had behaved that day and an appropriate sticker would be applied to the chart. If I’d been good, it would be a sun, not so good, a moon, and so on. I think I must have been wondering how many suns I would need if I wanted to go to Heaven!

 

My father explained that it wasn’t a question of how good we are, because none of us is good enough to go to Heaven. That’s why Jesus came to die on the cross to take the punishment for our sins so that all who believe in him would have everlasting life. Then he asked,

 

Do you believe that, David?

I replied, Yes, of course I do.

And why do you believe it? asked my father.

Because you have told me, I said.

That's a good reason, he said, but one day you will come to believe it for yourself.

 

That's the first time I can remember that I was consciously aware of the truth of the gospel. I suppose that, like many who have been brought up in a Christian home, I can't put a date on when I first believed. It feels as though I have always believed. I cannot remember a time when I did not believe. I used to be concerned about this, especially when so many Christians can remember a specific date. But then I heard an illustration that was very helpful and which at the time of writing is particularly relevant because this week Eileen and I are celebrating our 60th wedding anniversary. Now I have never forgotten our wedding anniversary, but even if one year I had, I would never have forgotten that I am married and who I am married to!

 

The point of the illustration is this. The date that my married relationship with Eileen started is relatively unimportant compared with our relationship now. The same applies to our relationship with Jesus. What matters is not when our relationship started, but am I in relationship with him now? Am I trusting him now for the forgiveness of my sins and my home in heaven? And if I am, then the exact date it all started is relatively unimportant.

 

So I cannot remember an exact date when I first believed. But I can remember the day when I decided to give my life to Christ. And again, it was through my father that I came to that decision. Every Sunday afternoon my father used to teach the teenage Bible class in our Baptist church. I remember sitting listening to him week after week talking from John 3:16. The challenge was not so much, Did I believe? but rather, What would I do about it?

 

I decided that, if God loved me so much that he sent his Son to die on the cross to save me from my sins, the least I could do was to give my life to him. So the next time our pastor made an appeal for those who would surrender to Christ and obey him by being baptised in water, I walked forward in response and was baptised on July 19th 1953.

 

So it was through my father’s teaching and my mother’s example and encouragement that I became a Christian. As we have said, one of the ways God speaks to us is through our parents and the most solemn responsibility of every Christian parent is to show their children the way of salvation.

 

But there are other ways too that God uses our parents to speak to us. The book of Proverbs emphasises again and again the wisdom of paying attention to the advice of our parents and in both Old and New Testaments we are told to honour our father and mother. And surely if we honour and respect them we will be grateful for the advice they give us.

 

Of course, when we are young children and not yet mature enough to make wise decisions for ourselves, it’s appropriate that our parents should tell us what to do. We should obey them. But when we are mature adults it’s not so much a question of obedience as of honouring them and listening to their advice. And in between our childhood and our adulthood we have the period of adolescence. This is a time of transitioning from obedience to honouring and I am grateful for my parents’ wisdom in encouraging me as a teenager to make my own decisions while at the same time offering their advice as to what might well be the right course of action to take.

 

One example of this was when, at the age of 12, I had to decide whether to opt for studying Greek or German at school. My father pointed out that if I opted for Greek it might help me if, in the future, I needed to study the New Testament in greater depth. Within three years I was translating parts of the Greek New Testament and eventually taught Greek for many years in our Bible College. Neither my father nor I could possibly have known this, but I believe that through my father the Lord directing my steps according to his plan for my life.

 

A few years later, at the age of 17, I was offered a scholarship to read P.P.E. (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) at Brasenose College, Oxford. A year before this I had already felt a call to serve the Lord as a minister and, when I received the news about the scholarship, I was initially unsure as to whether I should accept it. Perhaps I should be applying to Bible College instead?

 

I asked my father what he thought, and he suggested that I should take into consideration that God might well have a purpose in my going to Oxford, especially bearing in mind that places at Oxford were pretty hard to come by! As I look back, I’m glad I took my father’s advice. I was baptised in the Holy Spirit just four weeks before starting my course at Oxford and was used by the Lord in spreading the Pentecostal testimony to other students and conducting Bible studies and prayer meetings seeking spiritual gifts. The type of degree I was reading was relatively unimportant. I knew I was at the right place in the right time. And my Oxford degree has opened doors for me that might not have been open had I studied elsewhere, including invitations to speak in universities and colleges not only in Britain, but further afield in Europe, Africa and the United States.

 

So in this talk I have tried to show firstly from Scripture and then from my personal experience that one way that God speaks to us is through our parents. Much of what I have said has related to my father who, in my early years, clearly had a very great influence on my life for which I will always been grateful to God. But ultimately we must decide for ourselves what the Lord is saying to us, whoever it might be that he has chosen to speak through. And that applies not only to parents but also to the preachers and pastors and prophets through whom he also speaks to us.

 

Break for August. Resume in September.

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