By Dr. Barrett Mosbacker, Head of Briarwood Christian School –Part 2
Only what you take with you. What Luke takes with him into the cave is fear and his own depraved nature, which, if not recognized and controlled, will consume him just as it did his father.
Like young Skywalker, our children are far more vulnerable to what lurks within them than anything on the outside. The gravest danger our children take with them into life, their own sin nature: an enemy they will carry all their lives. This is a mortal enemy. We make our children even more vulnerable if we refuse to recognize that they have a sinister evil within them, trying to break out and lead them down a path of slavery and destruction.
Our children are more likely to experience suffering because of their own sins than outside circumstances. How many lives have been ruined by pride, lust, or cowardice? How many reputations, families and careers have been devastated by pornography, fraud, lying and a host of other sins? How many children have squandered their potential because of laziness?
We want to believe the best about ourselves and our children but doing so is dangerous. We and our children have an evil nature that will destroy us unless God graciously intervenes. Minimizing this truth sets our children up for great moral, personal, and professional failure. For example, parents have told me their children never lie. Really? These people are either deluded or easily fooled. Everyone lies, including children. They are just as susceptible to their sin as we, their parents and teachers, are.
To raise spiritually mature, mentally tough, emotionally sound children, prayerfully and passionately point them to Christ the Saviour of their souls. Only Christ can save our children from their own depraved natures. Everything else is secondary. Unless Christ gives them a new life a new nature the Darth Vader within will destroy them.
