Greatest Joy Children Walk in Truth 3 John 4

PASTOR’s CORNER Sept 12, 2019

DO YOU HAVE GOD-PARENTS? ARE YOU ONE?

Down the street from where I grew up in Guelph, There were Italians, Scots, Greeks, Danes, and host of families from other nationalities. But dearest to me were the Steiger family from Switzerland. My best friend Bernie and I spent a lot of time together in elementary and high school. He even started to come to church Sunday evenings with our family and to youth group. His family grew up attending a United Church much like the church their parents were part of in Switzerland and one thing that struck me as different was how this Protestant family had god-parents for each of their four children. All the way from Switzerland they would get letters and presents in the mail. These aunts or uncles or good friends of the family too their role as god parents seriously. Those with Roman Catholic background recognize the practice readily.

But for Protestant only a few churches continued the use of god parents to make covenant promises to walk beside children being baptized and to encourage them in the faith. The vows of god parents were seen as promises to teach the basics of the faith to these children. The idea seemed to be that the vows of faith are made by the priest or by godparents with a promises to instruct them as they grew. Most Protestant churches however reformed the practice to have parents present their children to the Lord with them promising before the church to bring them up in the Christian faith. (You can read about this in a book David Walters lent me The Shaping of the Reformed Baptismal Rite in the 16th Century). The child’s later profession of faith was the vow that was really part of their baptism done many years earlier. But in both cases, with parents or with god parents making the vows, ongoing instruction, catechism formally and discipleship informally, was seen as essential to baptism. Like Jesus commanded, disciples are made by baptizing and teaching them. (). While I am glad that parents make this promise in infant baptism as we practice it, I am still very thankful for the promise the congregation make to pray for the child and help in his or her instruction.

One of the most moving funeral experiences I’ve had at Covenant came early in time here. One adult daughter, grieving the loss of her mother, asked me to find the verse that talked about the apostle John’s greatest joy being when his children walked with the LORD. She wanted to share that with her siblings in her eulogy. The verse is : I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. Not all her siblings were walking in the LORD and she wanted to share her mother’s heart with them. That is kind of the same role and desire that god-parents were to have. And that desireshould live in our hearts for all this church’s sons and daughters, those walking with the Lord, and those who have strayed away.

While we don’t have god-parents, I am sure that you can remember with gratitude those who prayed for you and spoke the faith into your life. I am also sure that this desire lives in you for others, whether your own children, siblings, or dear friends. How thankful I am for friends, family, and especially you our church family who pray and speak into our children’s lives.

This Autumn our second left the house it is gratifying, and even a little surprising to find out that he misses us. in this time of transition, a poem she heard long ago came to her in the middle of the night. Wherever our own children are at, wherever the young people we pray for are at - this is a model of how to pray for them. Here is the poem translated from the Dutch. Let’s be faithful in prayer, fulfilling the promise we made in baptism for the sons and daughters of our congregation.

3 John 4 ESV

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.

Prayer for My Children

I put the names of my children in your hands.

Engrave them with indelible writing.

That nothing and no one can ever blot them out again,

not even it Satan sifts them like wheat.

Hold thou my children when 1 must let them go

and always leave Your power above their weakness.

you know how immeasurably the world will hate them,

if they don’t follow in the ways of the world.

I am not asking you to spare my children any grief,

but be their consolation.

when they are lonely and scared.

will tor thy names sake, keep them in thy covenant,

and never let them be alienated from you,

never, their entire life!