Today's promise: God blesses those who seek after him
Setting An Example
"In everything you do, stay away from complaining or arguing, so that no one can speak a word of blame against you. You are to live clean, innocent lives as children of God in a dark world full of crooked and perverse people. Let your lives shine brightly before them."
Philippians 2:14-15 NLT
Domestic Publicity
William Wilberforce is remembered as the parliamentarian most responsible for ending the British slave trade. But to the people of his own generation, he was the man who changed the way the British viewed their role as parents.
Wilberforce did not marry until he was nearly 40. But as Kevin Belmonte notes in Hero for Humanity, once Wilberforce became a husband and the father of six children, he took up his new responsibilities with relish.
It was not unusual, notes Belmonte, for him to excuse himself "from important deliberations with fellow MPs to go out on the lawn and have a race with the children."
Belmonte says it was through Wilberforce's example that British households "increasingly…became places where parents spent more time with their children, educating them, praying with them, reading with them, and playing with them." Wilberforce resigned his powerful seat in the House of Commons in order "to take a more active role in education and rearing his children."
Sadly, these days, too many Christians in business or politics neglect their families. Wilberforce is a reminder of what every Christian father should be in spite of great demands on his time. For the sake of his children — and for the sake of his witness — he must be "at home, a candle set on a candlestick, as well as abroad in a city built upon a hill."
Adapted from How Now Shall We Live? Devotional by Charles Colson (Tyndale) pp 559-60
Wilberforce did not marry until he was nearly 40. But as Kevin Belmonte notes in Hero for Humanity, once Wilberforce became a husband and the father of six children, he took up his new responsibilities with relish.
It was not unusual, notes Belmonte, for him to excuse himself "from important deliberations with fellow MPs to go out on the lawn and have a race with the children."
Belmonte says it was through Wilberforce's example that British households "increasingly…became places where parents spent more time with their children, educating them, praying with them, reading with them, and playing with them." Wilberforce resigned his powerful seat in the House of Commons in order "to take a more active role in education and rearing his children."
Sadly, these days, too many Christians in business or politics neglect their families. Wilberforce is a reminder of what every Christian father should be in spite of great demands on his time. For the sake of his children — and for the sake of his witness — he must be "at home, a candle set on a candlestick, as well as abroad in a city built upon a hill."
Adapted from How Now Shall We Live? Devotional by Charles Colson (Tyndale) pp 559-60
Content is derived from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation and other publications of Tyndale Publishing House
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