I was saved in 1974 at 18 years of age. I don't have one of those testimony's of a life filled with riotous living prior to salvation. I was a faithful Roman Catholic,…somewhat moral, but lost and in need of a Saviour. Regardless of what kind of testimony one has...the main thing is...are you saved?
The Lord gave us the whole Bible for a purpose...it is for our “admonition” and “learning”. Rom 15:4;1Cor 10:11 In the Bible, there are “ensamples” and “examples” 1Cor 10:6,11…these are patterns. The Bible gives us good patterns to follow and shows us bad patterns that we are not to follow…we must be discerning to know the difference.
The Bible tells us that we are to "teach others" 2Tim 2:2 what we have learned. Many times that teaching is right from the Word of God. We as fathers need to teach our wives 1Cor 14:35 and our children Prov 22:7. Not only should they learn the Word of God...but they should learn from our past experiences whether they be good or bad.
We must be careful that we do not glamorize our past before the cross...but we should also be honest with our kids. We must admit when we have failed...we must apologize when we have done wrong. Our children can learn from our past successes as well as our failures.
When looking at the life of Abraham...we see two major lapses of his faith Gen 12 & 20 which led him to not trust God and to lie about his wife. Both incidents were 25 yrs. apart. Isaac was born (Gen 21) right after the last episode. The Bible is silent concerning Abraham's sharing of his failures with his son Isaac in this regard. I wonder if he had shared these with him... if Gen 26 would have ever occurred. Isaac repeated the same failure as his father…we are prone to repeat the same failures as our parents unless we know about them and learn from them.
Dads, fathers, and pastors...be open and honest about your fault's and failures in life. Children must learn from their parents past failures.
One might be saying...it is not right to bring up the past...but, let's remember that the Bible is a record of the past failures and successes of men. We are still reading these recorded events thousands of years later. Would we want our past, good and bad to be in print for the whole world to see? Thousands of years later we are still reading about Abraham’s failures.
Let’s learn from the past failures of ourselves and others…remember…they were written for our learning!
Bro. Ken Parrett
Joshua 1:8,9
