I felt his little body tense up next to me in the pew. We had arrived at one of those interludes during the worship portion of the church service where everything gets a bit quieter, lights are lowered, the music softens and the worship leader begins to speak from the heart; a mini-sermon if you will. “Church”, he said, “If you don’t enjoy singing in worship here on earth then you’re definitely not going to enjoy heaven!”
As soon as I heard those words my heart sank because I knew how they would be interpreted by my inquisitive, busy, rambunctious 8 year old son. A little boy who hated singing in public and only stood up during worship because we required that of him. A little boy who would much rather be building Lego sets or running around outside. A little boy who was just beginning to understand what it means to follow Jesus. I gave him a squeeze and a smile and spent the rest of the service praying for wisdom as I knew my husband and I would need to address this inaccurate statement proclaimed from the pulpit.
As we drove home that day, I glanced behind me at my son seated next to his little sister and said, “Hey buddy, there’s a lot that we don’t know about heaven. But, we do know that we’re not going to be spending all of our time there singing. And you don’t have to love the worship service at church to experience all of the joy that is waiting there for us.” He gave me a smile and a nod and went back to looking out the window, no doubt anxious for lunch and playtime.
But while that may have satisfied him in the moment, I couldn’t help but feel upset that I was even having to make such a correction. And I wondered how much of that statement was going to impact his feelings about God,church and worship as he got older. I could say a lot about the current iteration of worship music and how so much of it is shallow, feminized, and me-centered but that is not the focus of this particular story.
Given that my husband and I are Gen-Xers who grew up attending church on Sunday morning and youth group on Wednesday night, we’ve pretty much heard every Christian cliche imaginable. But it was only when we became parents that we realized how much precision matters when it comes to the way in which we speak about God and His Word. Psalty the Singing Songbook may have taught us the books of the Bible but he was wholly inadequate in answering the deeper questions about the very nature of reality itself. Questions for which even children need answers. And while the responses may need to be tailored to their level of comprehension, children deserve to hear true, accurate answers as much as adults do.
As a stay-at-home mom to young children, my days were filled with the routine tasks of homemaking and meeting the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of my family. But we reached a point where we realized that not only had the Sunday school model we had grown up with failed to prepare us to “contend earnestly for the faith” (Jude 3), but that same model was essentially still being used for our children. And, especially in recent years, it has become startlingly apparent that both biblical literacy and biblical fidelity are sorely lacking in our churches.
When the worship pastor made his declaration about who will and who won’t enjoy being in heaven, I knew enough to recognize that the statement wasn’t correct, but I didn’t know enough to be able to articulate to my son WHY it was incorrect. The women’s conferences and retreats I’d attended since becoming a wife and mother may have told me how amazing and special and loved I am but they never taught me what it meant to have a biblical worldview. They never tackled theology or doctrine, or ever answered those big questions like, “So, what WILL we actually be doing in heaven?”
I wish I could say that we began to earnestly seek the answers to those questions right then and there. But while we knew that something was lacking, it would be a few more years before my husband and I would fully recognize that we had to make a change. If we were going to be able to steward our children well, we needed to put in the effort to be properly discipled ourselves. And once the floodgates opened, it revealed just how much we didn’t know. There were never doubts about our salvation but we had become stagnant in the process of our sanctification.
In John 17 Jesus is praying for his disciples, and when we get to verse 17 he says, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” To sanctify means to be holy and set apart. This passage reveals to us that the driving force behind our sanctification is truth. And what is truth? His Word is truth.
As Charles Spurgeon summarized, “The more truth you believe, the more sanctified you will be. The operation of truth upon the mind is to separate a man from the world unto the service of God.” In order for me to be able to continue in the process of sanctification and mature in my faith, I had to actively be seeking the truth and then passing that along to my children.
Throughout my years as a stay-at-home mom, I would often ask my husband, “Why do they always come to me with all of the crazy and difficult questions?” Usually this was in moments of exhaustion and exasperation. And he would reply, “It’s because they spend most of their time with you of course!” But, when I finally quit being satisfied with the glorified Ted-talk style content that permeates so much of evangelicalism today (especially for women!), I not only found the answers to my own questions, I grew in confidence to be able to answer the questions of my children and also to engage with others whose beliefs are at odds with or even hostile towards classical Christianity. The impact this has had on my role as wife, mother and maker of my home is immeasurable. I have the huge responsibility and incredible privilege of helping to bring order to chaos, clarity to confusion and peace to turmoil. And while I will most definitely fall short at times, seeing each question or each challenge through the lens of a biblical worldview changes everything.
Now, you may be wondering if I ever did find out the truth about heaven. Well, I can’t overstate how thankful I am for discovering the ministry of Stand to Reason under the leadership of Greg Koukl. In his book, ‘The Story of Reality’, Greg devotes a chapter to this subject and I have found so much comfort in his own acknowledgement that the descriptions of heaven we often see or hear don’t sound very appealing and are largely in-accurate. I’m with my son in thinking that spending eternity singing and playing the harp doesn’t sound all that great if I’m honest. But, while there is so much mystery about the next life, we can trust in what has been revealed to us in God’s word. Greg says this, “...we will experience life better than the best we ever thought possible since - above all other mercies - we shall be his and he shall be ours. Forever.” The home I create here on earth for my family will never fill the longing we all have in our souls for our true home. But, as I faithfully serve the Lord, I hope that I’m giving them a glimpse of what is to come.
