E. V. Hill, His Wife's Funeral

As part of the pastoral labor my wife and I do a fair bit of pre-marital counseling. As we were doing some more of such counseling this Fall I remembered hearing, while in college, a recording of Pastor E. V. Hill preaching his wife’s funeral. It was a powerful sermon filled with insight and anecdotal wisdom on marriage and parenting. Since I have lost the tape I had of the sermon I searched youtube and was delighted to find that the sermon is available there. It is found in two parts and is well worth listening to.

The sermon was preached in 1987 and is titled “My Wife’s Death in Biblical Perspective.” His text was Job 1:21, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Throughout the sermon he refers to his wife with the name he called her, “Baby.” He explains at the beginning of the sermon that he did not choose to preach her funeral to display special strength; rather, he said, “I stand fulfilling a task my member asked of me.” His wife, one of his church members, asked him to preach her funeral so he did so.

The first part of the sermon (all of part 1 and into part 2) Hill expounds “The Lord giveth” in reference to his wife as a gift from God. He said, “In my wife He gave a great gift.” Along the way he acknowledged the labors of his wife’s parents in raising a godly pure woman. In this section he digresses to talk about parents’ (especially fathers’) roles in selecting spouses for their children (about 2:55-6:50 in part 1). The story of him turning away from his door a young man who had come to see his daughter is classic. It is a good example of fathering well and is humorously told. Hill told the congregation plainly, “some of these relationships have to be broken up!” This was no passive fathering! He also said, “You can’t get no race horses out of mules!” He goes on to encourage male headship and to extol the femininity of his wife.

At the end of Part 1 and beginning of Part 2 (you can just pick up at the beginning of Part 2) he tells a couple of stories to illustrate his statement, “She was my protector.” These stories move me even as I listen to them for the 50th time. He tells about a time when he took on a business venture that she had warned against and then he lost a large sum of money in it. She did not berate him or hold it over his head. Rather, in a very touching way she extolled his virtues rather than his failings. At another time when they did not have enough money she did not complain but tried to obscure the fact that their lights had been cut off by setting up a candle light dinner. Of these instances he stated: “She could have broken me at that point. … she could have broken my spirit … and demoralized me.” But instead she supported him and believed in him. There is also the story of how she sought to protect him from a death threat by placing herself in the way (you’ll have to listen to it).

Lastly, he takes up “the Lord taketh away” (about 4:30 in Part 2) making the important point that a sign of Christian maturity is being able to say “Blessed be the name of the Lord” not only when the Lord gives but also when He takes away. This is such an important point. Then as he repeatedly shouts “Blessed,” it seems to me that he is right there practicing what he is preaching, blessing the Lord in that moment acknowledging that the Lord had indeed taken away the wonderful gift He had given in Mrs. Hill. The sermon closes in a moving anticipation of heaven.

I could listen to this sermon over and over. It means a lot to me for various reasons not least because I have been blessed with a wife who has supported me in similar ways. This model and message needs to be shared. So I encourage you to listen to this sermon and pass it along to others.

GGG blog tour

I am pleased today to be hosting the Gum, Geckos & God blog tour here and at The Children’s Hour. I previously listed all the stops Jim Spiegel, the author, would be making on his blog tour.

This is an excellent book that I commend to all my readers, particularly those with children or grandchildren. It is essentially a collection of conversations the author and his wife have had with their children about the faith. Typically then Jim reflects a bit on the topic that was discussed for the reader. I was particularly encouraged by the model of living out Deuteronomy 6, particularly verses 6 & 7:

These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.

This book shows good examples of parents simply paying attention to their children and making the most of opportunities to talk about God. You don’t have to have a theology degree to do this. You simply have to be intentional and engage your kids.

Another key thing I noticed in the book is how often the children themselves raise questions about the faith. When your children ask questions you have the greatest opportunity to teach them because their interest is already piqued. So I asked Jim:

What have you and your wife done to create a setting in your home such that your kids naturally ask about and speak of things concerning God? Of course kids ask questions, but what leads to them so naturally asking about God? God seems to be a natural part of life, and while any Christian parent would hope for this I find many who wonder how this can be accomplished.

Jim answered:

Our kids' readiness to ask questions about God traces back to a number of factors. Some of these are not extraordinary, such as our consistent involvement with our church and our teaching them the Bible. But we are also intentional about pointing out biblical lessons which play out in our daily lives as a family. We constantly come back to the Golden Rule, particularly when the kids are fighting or behaving selfishly with one another. I can't count how many times we've said to them, "Now how would you feel if s/he did that to you?" This is such a powerful question because it forces them to apply the Golden Rule. Although sometimes it feels like this doesn't get through to them, over time the impact is evident.

Also, as is clear in Gum, Geckos, and God, my wife and I constantly draw biblical lessons from nature, whether its observations about insects, gardening, or family pets. We also weave theology into our conversations about popular culture, from Star Wars to baseball. The more we do this, the more naturally kids will do this themselves. Our hope and prayer is that this will develop in them a fully integrated faith, where they consciously apply their Christian worldview to literally everything they experience.

These are all positive things that we do to theologically fertilize our kids' minds. But one significant choice we have made is a particular kind of abstinence: the elimination of TV programs from our home. We do have a television, but it doesn't pick up any channels. So our kids can only watch DVDs and videos which we have screened beforehand, and their time doing this is quite limited. TV is not a default entertainment in our home, nor does it function as an electronic babysitter. Consequently, our children spend more time than most kids reading, doing crafts, and playing outside, so they become more active thinkers. This has the added benefit of preventing them from being exposed to thousands of commercials which are so powerful in conditioning young minds to have a consumer mentality. So for our family, the elimination of TV has been the ultimate case of addition by subtraction. I highly recommend that parents give it a try. Yes, it's difficult (at first), but the benefits are amazing. And not just for the children. Your marriage will benefit as well!

Gum, Geckos, and God

I am happy to be participating in a blog tour by Jim Spiegel promoting his new book Gum, Geckos, and God. Jim teaches philosophy at Taylor University and is the father of four children. This book is a record of various conversations that have come up between him and his children as they have talked about God and the Christian life in informal settings. You can see more about the tour at Zondervan’s site.
This is the tour schedule:

July 21- Spunky Homeschool
July 22- Beauty from the Heart
July 23- At a Hen’s Pace
July 24- A Holy Experience
July 25- Family Voice
July 28- Ted Wins
July 29- In a Mirror Dimly
July 30- Oversight of Souls & The Children’s Hour
July 31- Christians in Context
August 1- The A-Team Blog
August 4- Embarking
August 5- Challies.com

On its day, each blog will post a question about the book and Jim’s answer. Readers can then ask further questions in the comments section. As you can see I will host the tour on my children’s literature site as well.

I am excited about this book and have really enjoyed reading it. I hope you will stop by for the tour and check out the stops at the other blogs as well.

Shepherd Press Newsletter

I appreciate the work of Shepherd Press, and their regular newsletter is a good resource. They produce a number of good books primarily on family life. Their best known book is probably Tedd Tripp’s Shepherding a Child's Heart , which is a great book.

My point here though is their email newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it. Here is an excerpt, written by Tedd Tripp, from the most recent newsletter. Great exhortation and reminder.

Until your childrenhave seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, until theyhave come to see that he is the Lily of the Valley, that he is theBright and Morning Star, that he is the One who is altogether lovely;until they have seen and understood that it is worthwhile to divest of everything, that nothing in all the earth matters but knowing and loving Jesus, they will never know him and love him and serve him.They might play church. They might even be teen VBS helpers, or go on short-term mission’s trips, but until they are convinced that Christ is the treasure, they will never truly know him.

You cannot over-estimate the importance of showing your children the glory of God. If they do not know who God is, how God thinks,what God feels, and why he does what he does, they will have no grounds for finding joy in him, no reason to celebrate his abundant goodness and no basis for finding satisfaction in him. Delight in God cannot occur in an intellectual vacuum. Your careful display and demonstration of the wonders of God’s glorious being is crucial for your children. Joy in God is the fruit of what you know to be true ofhim. The spiritual heat of joy, delight, and wonder in the face of God cannot take place in a conceptual vacuum.

Wow! My purpose in my children's literature blog, The Children's Hour, is to recommend books we find helpful in pursuing this goal, though this from Tripp reminds me of how far we are from meeting this goal.