Waste or Wealth?

Why do you spend your life on children?
Why do you have so many?
You have no time for yourself, your dreams, your fulfillment, your own interests!
What a waste! Children this, children that, all you do is children!
What a waste! You’re tired, you’re sick, you’re worn out. What a waste!

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Governing Your Family

“For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.” Genesis 18:19

There are three things very remarkable in this verse.

1. That Abraham used parental authority in governing his family: “For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him.” He did not think it enough to pray for them, or to teach them, but he used the authority which God had given him—he commanded them.

2. That he cared for his servants as well as his children. In Genesis 14:14, we learn that Abraham had three hundred and eighteen servants born in his house. He lived after the manner of patriarchal times; as the Arabs of the wilderness do to this day. His family was very large, and yet he did not say, “They are none of mine.” He commanded his children and his household.

3. His success: “they shall keep the way of the LORD.” It is often said that the children of good men turn out ill. Well, here is a good man, and a good man doing his duty by his children—and here is the result. His son Isaac was probably a child of God from his earliest years. There is every mark of it in his life. And what a delightful specimen of a believing, prayerful servant was Eliezer! (Gen. 24.)

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Revivals That Stay

Revivals are among the charter rights of the church. They are the evidences of its divinity, the tokens of God’s presence, the witness of his power. The frequency and power of these extraordinary seasons of grace are the tests and preservers of the vital force in the church.

The church which is not visited by these seasons is as sterile in all spiritual products as a desert, and is not and cannot meet the designs of God’s church. Such churches may have all the show and parade of life, but it is only a painted life.

The revival element belongs to the individual, as well as to the church, life. The preacher whose experience is not marked by these inflows of great grace may question with anxious scrutiny whether he is in grace.

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