August 16, 2018 Show with Nancy Snyder on “The Gospel for Moving Targets: Helping Active Children Grow in Grace” (Part 2)

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister

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George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday. On this 16th day of August 2018,

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I'm so delighted to have as a returning guest today Nancy Snyder. Many of you heard

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Nancy not long ago when she conducted part one of our interview on the gospel for moving targets, helping active children grow in grace.

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Well, today we are going to be entering into part two of this subject since it is a massive subject and her book is fairly lengthy on that issue.

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Nancy is the former K -12 student support services coordinator at Logos Academy in York, Pennsylvania, and she has experience as a homeschooling parent of four, and she is an interpreter of conferences and translator at seminary courses for deaf pastors.

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In fact, some of you recently heard the interview we had just on Monday the 13th, this past Monday, with Kevin Hamilton.

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He is a deaf pastor and our interpreter that day was Chuck Snyder, Nancy's husband.

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And today, as I said, we are going to be discussing part two of the gospel for moving targets, helping active children grow in grace, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Nancy Snyder.

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Thank you so much, Chris. And I'm so delighted to also to have one of our rare in -studio visits from a man who is like the

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Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. He is my webmaster for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and without Eric Nielsen, this show certainly could not exist, and he does a lot more for this program than people even realize.

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And it's so great, Eric Nielsen, to have you in studio as my co -host today on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Thanks, Chris.

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Glad to be here. And before we go back to Nancy, please tell our listeners something about the

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Evangelical Free Congregation in Illinois, where you serve on the Elder Board. Okay.

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My church is Community Evangelical Free Church of Champaign -Urbana. We're located right there close to the

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University of Illinois. We meet in Judah Christian School, and in fact, we've met there for, we were realizing, 30 years now.

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We look a lot like a church plant, but that's intentional because we want to try and spend as much of our money as we can on foreign missions, and God has been gracious to us in allowing us to send a number of people from our congregation over the years.

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And if anyone was at the first G3 conference, that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio had an exhibitor's booth present.

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Both Eric and Sandy, his wife, were there doing the vast majority of the work at the exhibitor's booth.

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I think Sandy was doing more than all of us. She was running around and handing out flyers and drawing people to the booth.

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But the last two, you went solo, right? Yes. This last year,

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I had to go solo because Sandy is an instructor, and so she was preparing for her semester.

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But yeah, that was... That's right. We've only had two already, and this is the third one.

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That's right. And you will be, God willing, there at the third one, and we don't know yet whether Sandy will be.

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Yeah, we'll just have to see what the Lord has in store as far as Sandy coming. Great. Well, send her my regards.

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I will. And I want to give our listeners also our email address if they have questions about parenting, and specifically on Nancy's book,

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The Gospel for Moving Targets, Helping Active Children Grow in Grace. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. And once again, I just want to read a couple of the endorsements for this book for those of you listening to this program for the first time.

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Dr. Sinclair Ferguson, who's one of my favorite preachers of all, says, Nancy Snyder knows what the word rambunctious means.

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She has seen it in action in nurturing her own children. If you are a parent, chances are you have also seen it and wondered how to handle it.

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If so, The Gospel for Moving Targets is just what you need. In fact, this is a book for all families.

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It is full of mature biblical wisdom and a real understanding of how Christian character is formed. Anyone who buys

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The Gospel for Moving Targets to help them love their children will find its teaching transforming them first of all.

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And that, of course, is exactly how God means family life to be. And then also

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Jerry Bridges, the late Jerry Bridges, who I had the privilege to interview a couple of times before he went home to glory.

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Many of you recognize his name from his book, The Pursuit of Holiness, and my favorite book by him is

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Trusting God Even When Life Hurts. Jerry Bridges said about this book,

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The Bible is meant to be applied to one's daily life, but how to communicate this to small children is a challenge.

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Nancy Snyder has given us a creative way to do this involving the children in the learning process.

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This book should prove useful to parents, grandparents, and anyone else working with small children.

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All of your children are adults now, correct Nancy? That's right. Now, I know that not all of them, do any of them have children of their own?

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Are you now a grandparent yet? Two of our sons have children of their own, yep.

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And so I am sure that not only are you putting this book to use, even though you wrote it yourself,

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I'm sure that they are now using it for their own children. That's right. So we have four sons, three daughters -in -law, and three grandsons.

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So you can see that we had to import the girl, but we're getting there. And I'm going to start this program, the second part of this subject that we've already began in a separate interview.

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And by the way, anybody who wants to hear the first interview that we did with Nancy on the Gospel for Moving Targets, later on you can go to ironsherpinsironradio .com

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and go to the archive. It says Past Shows Podcast, and you can type in S -N -Y -D -E -R and that will come up.

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But we may do some overlapping obviously, but since your book is titled

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The Gospel for Moving Targets, and the subtitle is Helping Active Children, energy is obviously a central theme in the book that involves nearly everything else you've written in the book.

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And this is an area that is very prominent in the minds of parents, because even though I'm not a parent,

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I'm with parents and their children and grandchildren quite often. And I see the frustration on their faces and hear it in their voices, and especially when we're in a public place, when we're in church and they're misbehaving, when we are at a restaurant and they are just refusing to obey and they're running around.

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So I want to start off with energy solutions. What solutions do you have other than, and I don't know if you're completely opposed to this, but it seems in a day and age where everything requires a pill, where psychologists or even physicians are telling parents, we'll just give this pill or that pill, and people are drugging their children just to basically slow them down and quiet them down.

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But what are your solutions to an abundance or overabundance of energy in kids?

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Oh, that's a great question. Thanks. So in The Gospel for Moving Targets, it's comprised of these short little lessons that families or churches,

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Sunday schools, anybody can do with children. And one of the units in Section 1 is called

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Energy is from God and for God. So the children learn, first of all, that energy is a gift from God.

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And like all of God's gifts must be used the way he said. So when

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I have taught this to children, I sometimes have them brainstorm some other gifts from God.

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And I remember one little boy who said, my lunchbox is a gift from God and I need to use it the way he said, so I shouldn't have hit so -and -so with my lunchbox yesterday.

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But you know, kids can really get that idea that gifts from God still have to be used the way

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God says and that energy is a gift from God. In this section of the book, they also learn that emotions are gifts from God and they are energy that we are to use to love

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God, love others, and solve problems. So they do simple little activities like in one lesson, there's a traffic light and it's sort of an energy green light and an energy red light and they play games with it.

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So the children learn it's actually a very advanced skill when you need to go from times when you're allowed to be high energy, maybe you were outside, you know, whether it's on the sidewalk coming into worship or you were out on the playground for recess or you were at a park with your family and then you come in and it's time to quiet down because the baby has to go to sleep or you're about to begin worship.

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And that's actually a really advanced skill for children. And we don't even think of it as a skill.

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We think, what's wrong with them? They're not doing this, but we haven't taught them how to do it.

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And so there are some specific lessons that teach them how to do it. And they go through the story of Noah, for example, to see ways that he and his family would have used energy to know, trust, honor, love, and obey

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God. And look at other sections of scripture that show how people either use their energy wisely for good or use it unwisely and look at the consequences that happened because that's another really advanced skill.

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When children begin to get that their problems don't lie outside of them, but they actually come from their heart, within their heart.

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And rather than blaming something outside of them, they work to manage their emotions, to rule over their emotions rather than letting their emotions and their energy rule over them.

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That's another game changer for kids. Now, one of the things that I have seen working when

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I look in the pews next to me or nearby me or even in the pew that I'm sitting in, when

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I see parents or grandparents calming down their little children, I've seen something that works, but I don't know necessarily that all

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Christians would agree that this is appropriate during a worship service. What seems to work is a coloring book or some kind of a restaurant.

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I have seen many of the restaurants these days, like Chili's and places like that, they have kiosks with little computer games on them.

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Now that seems to just keep them frozen and focused on that, and they don't speak, you don't hear them.

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But in church, as I said, coloring books. Now, do you think that a child—I mean,

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I'm talking about very, very young children. Do you think that it is appropriate to distract a child from what is happening at a worship service in order to quiet them down, even if they're too young to even comprehend really what's going on?

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So it depends to me somewhat. I would have, and maybe it's my age, but I would have an aversion to letting a child color a picture on an iPad during a worship service.

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But I wouldn't have a problem having them color in a coloring book with physical pages. Now maybe that's a prejudice of age.

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However, it's just so easy for kids to tune out when they've got a screen in front of them.

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And I think that my children, and many of the children

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I know, could actually attend quite well. My kids would have said they could attend better when, most of them, when they had something in their hands that they could do, like a coloring book where they could, you know, take their crayons and color on the pages.

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And in fact, you know, my oldest son, who is a mathematician and probably, at least theoretically, knows better now than when he was young, that it took so much more energy to do one thing at a time than to do two things at a time.

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And he would play clarinet while he was reading physics. I mean, I'm not just talking about when he was little.

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This went on for quite some time. So I'm not opposed to...

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Some families even have a special little carrying case or special little box, and they might call, some families actually call them

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Sabbath books, and they have things in them that they only get out during worship.

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I think it's also really great to sit beside your children and draw pictures of what is being said in the sermon, and that sort of bridges that gap.

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Ah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, they can draw right along with you, but you're pointing them to what's going on, and so I think that is useful.

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And I wouldn't want to make, you know, hard and fast rules about it, because scripture doesn't, but I would want whatever the family does to have an eye on drawing the child's heart to worship

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God with the congregation. And as long as you don't draw horns on the pastor,

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I think that would be it. That's right. And of course, it seems very obvious to me that parents are letting their children use the pew bibles and hymnals as coloring books.

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Very often find that when you're sitting at the pew. Now, Eric Nielsen, you have six children.

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Are they all either teens or adults by now? Yes, they are.

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I have five daughters and one son, and my youngest is now 15. Wow.

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Now, have you noticed a difference between the girls and the boy in regard to energy and how it is unleashed?

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Yes, the boy tended to jump off of things and run into things and do more physical sorts of activities like that.

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And for the most part, the girls have always been a lot more laid back, and it's been easier for them to sort of sit, listen, that sort of thing.

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All of my children are fairly mellow anyway. Yeah, the ones that I've met. I admit,

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I don't have the higher energy children that a lot of other folks do. Now, does your experience,

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Nancy, not only in your own home, wait a minute, all of your children are boys?

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They are. Yeah, that's right. So you can't compare other than in your school setting. In your education setting, have you found what

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Eric has said to be a fairly normative thing, or is every family different when it comes to the overabundance of energy with children between girls and boys, the comparison?

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I think it is often true. I've certainly met some very, very high energy girls, but you know, that bent towards the physical, that bent towards jumping off the dresser, if nobody teaches you that actually we don't practice

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Olympic dives off the dresser, then that is pretty typical of boys.

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And well, one of the things that is, it's actually a division in the body of Christ, and perhaps even more so amongst those of us who are

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Reformed than in other areas, there seems to be a divide over whether it is appropriate to have a nursery and children's school as a separate entity from the corporate gathered body of adults in the worship service.

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Do you have a set opinion on that, or do you think that that is just a liberty that churches can disagree on?

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Right, I do think it's an area of freedom, and I do think that it is a ministry of mercy for churches to offer it for parents who,

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I mean, let's just say there's a mom who has real high energy children, and her times in the

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Word are always interrupted, and she does pray with her kids, but those are really sort of scattered times, too.

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It's not, they're puddles, they're not, you know, when she, maybe before she had children, and she had these deep pools in which to dive into the

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Word of God and prayer, and now she's jumping in puddles with her children. And it may be that the corporate worship is her only time where she can really focus, and so I do think it's a ministry of mercy for a church to provide it, but I don't think that anybody should be frowned upon for not making use of it, and that we need to give each other freedom and grace to make use of the gift, if the church offers it or not, according to what, you know, every family has,

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I mean, every Christian family has, in one sense, the same calling to disciple their children for the glory of God, and yet under that big happy umbrella, there is a lot of freedom and flexibility for variation.

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Yes, and do you think that there is anything that a child is being deprived from if he is in a nursery setting or a church school setting until, you know, he is at a typical age where he can actually pay attention to what is being spoken of by the pastor?

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I don't know what the age that would typically be, maybe six or seven, I don't know, but do you think that it seems that there are some of us in the

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Reformed faith and perhaps other places that think that by osmosis or something, the children who are not at all able to absorb what the pastor is saying are somehow being nurtured and nourished by just being present there?

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You know, what are your thoughts on that? Right, well, my bigger concern is that in some corporate bodies, this continues through the teenage years.

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They never worship as a whole body. There's always age segregation, and I think we are definitely short -changing those children and young people in serious ways.

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So, I tend to think, and this isn't hard and fast, but I guess, well, growing up, my children didn't have this option.

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So, we were in a small Deaf church. Not only that, but they were having church in their second language, and I remember one of my children having just tears pouring down his face because he was working so hard visually just to pay attention.

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He wasn't crying. His eyes were just watering, and then I remember my youngest son, this is when the Deaf church moved to meet in the

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Deaf club. The Deaf club is sort of the center of the Deaf cultural unbelieving world, and I thought, oh, isn't this precious?

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He's taking notes on this sermon, which is not easy to do when it's in American Sign Language because every time you look down at your paper, you miss what's going on.

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And when we got home and I asked to see, like I said, the church met in the Deaf club, and he was writing down everything on the wall, including how much beer costs at the

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Deaf club Friday night and things like that. So, obviously, there were things he was picking up by osmosis that weren't what

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I was intending, but I remember going to the church of one of my, some of my students were in this church, and they were to, it was a

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Spanish -speaking church, and they were to read scripture, and I just wanted to support them and go to their church, and I was working my hardest to understand everything that was going on in my baby

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Spanish, and it was, the service went at least two hours before these little guys read their scripture, and I asked them the next day, did you understand what was going on in church?

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Because they're strong in English, but not in Spanish, and they said, oh, no, we hardly understand anything.

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But as I watched, and these are very, very active boys, and as I watched the church, and it was a small congregation, just passed them from person to person for the whole two hours.

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What they picked up by osmosis was love. They were in a covenant community that poured out love on these moving targets, and somehow kept them going for two hours.

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So I think there are a lot of unseen benefits that God pours out as we do struggle to make corporate worship accessible to our children.

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We have a listener that prefers to remain anonymous who wants to know, do you think that it is appropriate to use these child leashes that have been used with children in public to prevent them from becoming missing and getting hurt?

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You know, I remember hearing a discussion like that on TV, a discussion about that,

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I should say, where there are people who are just furious, saying that just because it looks like a dog leash that you should never do that.

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Well, let's be honest, a crib looks like a cage. I mean, if the person is really just trying to prevent their child or children from being kidnapped, from wandering away and being lost, getting into mischief somewhere and falling or whatever, is that an okay thing?

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Have you seen that yourself? Have you used that yourself? You know what I'm talking about. Right. I have seen it, and I do have the same inward cringe, but I just have to come back to the fact that all of these things that aren't specifically addressed are areas of freedom where we use physical principles, and you know, when

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I think, I'm a special, my background's special ed, okay, and so I have worked with children who wear helmets all the time because they have a seizure disorder, and they might not have a seizure every day, but when they do, they don't want a chance of them falling on the concrete and cracking open their heads.

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That's a gift. A helmet is a gift. Most of us don't want our kids walking down the city streets with helmets on, but for those who need them, it could be a gift.

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As active as my children were, and I will say that three of our four sons were pretty off the charts when it came to activity level.

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In fact, one of them who was adopted out of a traumatic background and did have a child psychologist as one member of his team, and the first time the psychologist met with him, he came staggering out of his office.

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That was about 20 minutes, and he said, I've never met a kid like him. This is not what you want to hear from a child psychologist.

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I have never met a kid like him. He's like a pinball in a slot machine. I've never seen anything like this.

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So despite all that, and despite having at very close developmental stages, two of them like that, so the third brother was older by that time, somewhat older.

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I still preferred having a hand on each of their hands to having a leash, but I'm not going to condemn people who have found that it's a way to keep their children safe and a way to keep their parental frustration levels and patience level glorifying to God, but no,

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I never did it. And I do have that same inward cringe, but I fight against it. I don't think that inward cringe that I have is 1

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Corinthians 13, mom. Right. Well, we have to go to our first break right now. And by the way, anonymous, if you want to give us your full name and address off the air, obviously, we will make sure that you get a free copy of the gospel for moving targets, helping active children grow in grace.

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It will be shipped out to you by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible book service, CVBBS .com.

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And this is compliments of our friends at Shepherd Press. So just send us your full mailing address and we'll get that out to you as soon as possible.

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We're going to our first station break right now. If anybody else would like to join us, our email address is

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ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

28:52

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Nancy Snyder and the gospel for moving targets. Hi, Phil Johnson here.

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I'm executive director of John MacArthur's media ministry, Grace to You. And I'm also an occasional guest on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio.

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So I'm delighted that from January 17th through the 19th, my friend Chris Arnzen and I will be heading down to Atlanta for the

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G3 conference, where I'll be joining James White, Steve Lawson, Votie Balcombe, Mark Dever, Conrad Mbewe, Todd Friel, Josh Bice, and a host of other speakers to address the topic of biblical understanding of missions.

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Chris Arnzen and I hope to see you all at this very important conference. Make sure you stop by the

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Iron Sharpen's Iron exhibitors booth to say hi to Chris. For more details, go to g3conference .com.

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That's g3conference .com. See you there. Hi, I'm Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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Steve Lawson, founder and president of One Passion Ministries, as well as teaching fellow for Ligonier Ministries.

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I serve as professor of preaching and oversee the Doctor of Ministry program at the Master's Seminary in Los Angeles.

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I would like to recommend the church where one of my preaching students, Andy Woodard, serves as the pastor.

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It's called New Covenant Church, NYC. They are a Reformed Baptist church that meets in midtown

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.nyc. They believe in a sovereign God who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

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If you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching, which is simply biblical preaching, in New York City, I'd like to recommend that you visit

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New Covenant Church, NYC. Again, their information can be found at www .ncc

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.nyc. Have a great day. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said,

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This is not a routine or run -of -the -mill heart surgery. It is very complicated.

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Lord has placed him in with his loving and gracious and merciful hands. We are now back to our discussion, part two of our discussion on the gospel for moving targets,

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Helping Active Children Grow in Grace by Nancy Snyder, who is our guest today.

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In studio with me is our webmaster here at Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Eric Nielsen, who happens to be an elder of an evangelical free church in Champaign -Urbana,

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Illinois. If you have questions of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. You have a section in your book, Nancy, that feelings are gifts from God, and I'm sure that you would agree that much of the world of Christian psychology, and some might call it

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Christian pop psychology, ran too far with the notion of focusing on our feelings, and I think that Christian psychologists, even very famous ones and world -renowned ones who are prolific writers and so on, and very powerful presences in the media have taught a version of self -esteem and the importance of self -esteem that has become a very damaging thing,

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I think, in the body of Christ. Tell us about your thoughts on the self -esteem movement and also on specifically what you are writing about in regard to feelings.

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Yeah, I think when the Bible teaches that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, it assumes that we sinners are always thinking about ourselves.

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Even if it's, you know, frankly, my background growing up with parents who were addicted leans more to shame, but that is still extremely self -absorbed, okay?

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Always thinking about how to avoid shame, how to not look bad, and so that word from Christ is not a call to have high self -esteem.

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All through the Scripture, what we see is an acknowledgment that we sinners are bent away from the glory of God, always striving for the glory of self, and that we need to fight that.

36:54

We have this call to come and die, to die to our self, whether that takes the form that looks like arrogance or the form that looks more like shame.

37:08

So when I talk about feelings as a gift from God, I don't mean that they should be indulged.

37:18

I mean that if we don't, if God hadn't made us people with emotions, we couldn't have the relationship with Him that we can have when

37:30

He makes us new in Christ. Without our emotions, we don't properly love God. You know,

37:35

He doesn't, He didn't create us to just be these robots that do the commands of Scripture, as if we could discount all the commands that, you know, frankly address emotions.

37:49

But one thing that I'm seeking for children to understand through this first section, which is called

37:59

Dealing with Feelings, is to look behind their feelings on a child's level and notice and repent of what they're treasuring that isn't

38:12

God. So the child, for example, who blows up because he, there's only one gold crayon and he has to wait for his brother or his classmate to finish using it before he gets to turn with the gold crayon, can search behind that and see what he's treasuring, and children can get really savvy at this.

38:34

So one of our sons really struggled with anger, and every night when he was a little preschooler,

38:43

I would, when I would go in to pray for him at bedtime, ask him what he was angry about.

38:49

And you know, before he could even necessarily name the number, he would be like, what's that number after 14 that's not called 15?

38:59

And he could tick off the 15 things he was angry about, and I prayed about every single one of them, and if I forgot one, he would add, you forgot to pray that I'm mad that the dog growled at me, and I'd be like, you mean when you pulled on his, you know, his fur?

39:15

And then after a year of this, one night he said, I'm really only angry about one thing.

39:22

And remember, he's still a preschooler, okay? And I said, what's that? And he said, I'm mad that everyone in the world won't do what

39:29

I want them to do all the time. And I thought, I'm with you buddy, that's my struggle too.

39:37

But he got to the heart of it, and kids can do that when we adults help them in a biblical way to trace behind their emotions.

39:48

I remember there's a fantastic book called, written by Lou Piolo, called

39:53

The Heart of Anger, and it helps children who deal with anger. And you know, we read this book, and we put all of its visuals into these notebooks, and every time our younger two kids were angry, we had them work through those notebooks, and I remember the day, we hadn't yet gotten to their heart, which is the goal, but I overheard them say to each other, they're about to blow up at each other, and they said, let's not get mad, we don't want to have to do our notebooks, okay?

40:25

So again, you know, we hadn't gotten to the heart yet, but we had cleared the debris, and that's what

40:31

I'm trying to do in section one of this book, is clear the debris on the runway to the heart, so that when you get to section two, which is the gospel straight up, what it means to live out of union with Christ, from the book of Romans, in a really hands -on kind of way, that you have opened the doors to help children understand how the gospel applies to them and their struggle, with whether it's anger, or fear, or whatever the overwhelming emotions that they struggle with are.

41:03

Great. You actually reminded me that I've got to get Lou Piolo on my show, because I don't think that I have ever had

41:09

Lou as a guest. I remember years ago, when I worked part -time for Calvary Press Publishing, they were the ones that first brought that book into print,

41:20

The Heart of Anger. Yeah, you've got to fix that, get him on your show. Yeah, I certainly will try.

41:26

I remember I did, before I had my own show, I had arranged an interview with him on Andy Anderson Live, on a radio station that I worked for, for 15 years, but it's a good reminder.

41:40

Johnny wants to know, I know that there are differences of opinion between those who believe in covenant theology.

41:45

Some view children as a mission field, some view them as covenant children that do not need to be evangelized.

41:52

What is your guest's opinion? Oh, your guest is still wrestling with that one.

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So, I understand both perspectives.

42:08

However, even if you're coming from a strong perspective that children are members of the covenant community, that they have, through infant baptism, been initiated into the covenant community.

42:32

When you look at Scripture, it is hard to see that, just take the book of Genesis, for example, and you look at everybody's children, so many of those early, you know, the patriarchs, had some of their children who did not keep covenant with God.

42:57

Okay, so I think that even if you view your children as members of the covenant, that a reading of Scripture leads you to at least say to your children, um, you have been baptized into the covenant community, and you are called to keep covenant with Christ.

43:22

Okay, so even if you baptize your children as infants, what you might need to say to them is, you are in this covenant as long as you keep covenant with God.

43:36

Through Scripture, we do see that there are curses that come down on covenant breakers, and you're blessed if you keep covenant.

43:45

So, I would say that my husband and I, in the midst of, as I mentioned in the last program, we interpret both for people who are paedo -baptists and people who are believers baptism, believe in believers baptism, and we, when we interpret for these people, we become them.

44:11

We sign the sign for baptism differently, and so I think we took a ground of encouraging our children that they were called into covenant with God, and they were called to covenant keepers.

44:30

I wish I had emphasized that even more. I should add right here that for Chuck and me, parenting is definitely an out -of -weakness -comes -God -strength journey, and any wisdom we've gained is solely because God promises to give wisdom to those who lack it.

44:48

So, we married, actually, against the advice of the person who did our premarital counseling, who said,

44:54

I don't think you should... He did personality tests, and he was in our college, the college fellowship director, and he said,

45:09

I think you need to rethink this thing, and what we had in common was that our childhoods were significantly impacted, so in very different ways, by addiction in our families, and we loved

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Jesus, and we didn't have a clue how to build a Christian marriage or a Christian family, but, you know,

45:27

God keeps covenant with the clueless, and God has promised to give wisdom to those who lack it, and it's actually a little just staggering to me to be in this position, but the gospel for moving targets has grown out of weakness and is all to the glory of God, who magnifies

45:46

His strength when we are weak. Amen. And I know that it's not even as simple as a division between paedo -baptists and credo -baptists or baptists on this issue, because even folks like Dr.

46:01

Joel Beakey, who is a paedo -baptist, who I love, who's a dear friend, who I've had on this show many times, he takes a view, even though he is a paedo -baptist, he treats children as a mission field, unlike many

46:15

Presbyterians do, so it is an interesting issue of division. The one thing that I'd like to also add is that, as my friend

46:24

Peter Jeffrey, who's now in eternity with Christ, he titled a book, one of the many books that he wrote,

46:34

Christians Need the Gospel Too. So, I mean, when a pastor is preaching to a congregation, he's not to get up there and say, now this is only for the lost people in the room.

46:48

That's exactly right. Yes. I mentioned in your last show, without giving names, and then

46:54

I noticed I was instructed just by listening to you, Chris, I noticed how gracious you are at giving honor to people who have made an impact.

47:05

And I mentioned my first pastor's wife and daughter, and those are Rosemary Miller, who is a missionary with Surge, formerly

47:13

World Harvest Mission, which she started with her late husband Jack Miller, and she's the author from Fear to Freedom and Nothing is

47:20

Impossible with God, and also a book on parenting, which she wrote with Deborah Harrell and Jack Krampenauer, and I hope

47:27

I'm saying their names right, called The Gospel -Centered Parent. And she really was the one, she and Jack Miller, who's now with the

47:38

Lord, who helped me to understand the gospel and the importance of, you know, counseling myself in the gospel on a daily basis, preaching the gospel to myself on a daily basis.

47:51

And her daughter, Roseanne, also was a very gifted teacher, and Roseanne and Jim Trott, if I could have chosen a family for our children to grow up next to, it certainly would have been

48:04

Jim and Roseanne. Roseanne is a minister, she and Jim, in their home church in Philadelphia, as well as in Belize, and the

48:13

Gospel for Moving Targets, they are credited as being the influence behind that whole second section on the gospel, and I'm very grateful to them.

48:23

Praise God. And going back to the area of feelings, even though, as we've already said, there is a false and dangerous idea that promotes self -esteem that is really an attempt to build up pride in people, when that is actually a sin, do you think that we who are

48:50

Reformed have, some of us, have had a tendency to overlook human self -worth?

48:59

I think there's a difference between pride and self -esteem and recognizing self -worth, recognizing gifts and talents, in fact

49:09

I think it's sinful to ignore gifts and talents that God has given us, and also to recognize, even though we were unworthy of Christ's love and Christ's sacrifice, that He viewed us as worth very much, so much that He died on the cross and received the wrath of His Father to redeem us.

49:34

So, I mean, isn't that something that we are to instill in the minds of children, that they are very valuable?

49:40

Even Jesus Himself speaks of us being more valuable than sparrows, so there is something about teaching worth, not only to children, but to adults, self -worth.

49:52

Right, right. So if it's under the rubric of, for the glory of God, then

50:01

I think that keeps us from erring on the side of making too much of people.

50:11

So Jesus died because He wanted a people to be

50:19

His bride, and He also died for the glory of God. And we're called to always treat people with dignity, whether we need to have hard conversations, whether we need to talk to our children about their sin, we still always treat them with dignity because they're image bearers, and the way we treat them reflects our worship of God.

50:45

So if we keep those rails, the glory of God and the dignity that's not inherent to us, it is a reflected dignity that, because we're made in the image of God, then

51:01

I think we're going to be pretty faithfully God -glorified. Amen.

51:09

And by the way, I forgot to mention to Johnny in New York City, you've also won a free copy of the

51:15

Gospel for Moving Targets, Helping Active Children Grow in Grace. And you've also, because you're a first -time questioner, you've also won a free copy of the

51:25

New American Standard Bible. So please make sure we have your full mailing address in New York City so that cvbbs .com

51:32

can ship that out to you. That's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

51:37

And once again, we thank our friends at Shepherd Press for providing us with these books. We're going to our midway break right now.

51:44

Our midway break is a long break. It is intended to and actually required by our friends at Grace Life Radio, because they need to air their own public service announcements and their own commercials and so on since they are in Lake City, Florida.

52:02

So please be patient with us as we take this elongated break. Use this time to write down the information provided by our advertisers so that you can patronize them because we need our advertisers in order to remain on the air.

52:17

So the more you patronize them and make use of them, the more likely they are to remain with us as advertisers.

52:23

And also write down questions for our guest Nancy Snyder and send them to chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

52:30

That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

52:41

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. It's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

52:47

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Nancy Snyder and more of our discussion on part two of the gospel for moving targets, helping active children grow in grace.

53:05

Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio here. I want to tell you about a man I have personally known for many years.

53:12

His name is Dan Buttafuoco. Dan is a personal injury and medical malpractice lawyer, but not the type that typically comes to mind.

53:20

Dan cares about people and is a theologian himself. Recently he wrote a book titled Consider the

53:26

Evidence for the Bible. Ravi Zacharias wrote the foreword. Dan also has a master's degree in theology.

53:33

Dan handles serious injury and medical malpractice cases in all 50 states. He represents many

53:39

Christians in serious injury matters all over the country. Dan is an exceptional trial lawyer.

53:46

He wrote the test for the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and currently his firm has over 100 cases that have settled for 1 million dollars or more, and in approximately 10 different states.

53:59

In Illinois, his lawyers had the fourth largest settlement in the state's history. In New York, his case involving a police officer made the front page of the

54:09

Law Journal. If you have a serious personal injury or medical malpractice claim in any state,

54:15

I recommend that you call Dan. Consultations are free. There is no fee unless you win.

54:22

Dan Buttafuoco's number is 1 -800 -669 -4878, 1 -800 -669 -4878, or email me for Dan's contact information at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

54:36

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Transcribed by https://otter .ai

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