Your Cry Shall Be Answered

Family – December 2017 – Grace & Truth Magazine

Your Cry Shall Be Answered

To be a parent in any case is no light thing. Being a Christian parent is an even more serious and responsible position.

Christian parents, gazing on their loved little ones, realize that they are parents of their flesh, and by heredity their children possess the same fallen nature they know to be in themselves. Many times the children have a strong leaning toward those passions and sins the parents know and have emphasized in their own cases to their sorrow and shame. Yet for themselves, Christian parents have had the happy experience of the grace of God and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit within, and as a result they possess the new nature. By the Spirit given to them as believers they know themselves to be in Christ. However, they cannot necessarily assert this about their children, and they are acutely conscious that new birth and faith in Christ are not transmitted from parent to child. Such is the situation – one that causes deep and serious exercise of heart.

Onlookers frequently express surprise when young people who have been raised in very godly homes become notorious in ungodliness. It is sometimes suggested, in agreement with the arguments and insinuations of Job’s three friends, that such a situation must be the result of grave sin or poor training on the part of the parents. However, we must remember that when converted the greatest of sinners may become the most devoted of saints. This should not cause any surprise. Children have inherited the Adamic nature of their parents with its particularly ugly features, which, except for the grace of God, would still be seen in the believing generation. Reminded of this, the parents must continue until God’s grace intervenes with their children.

What Can Christian Parents Expect From God?
Do Christian parents have any ground for expecting such intervention? May they, in the midst of their exercises and anguish of heart, rest in the confident anticipation of a work of God which in His own time would result in a great and saving deliverance for their beloved children?

We answer this important question by referring to the Gospel record and taking note of the seven occasions on which the Lord Jesus was approached by a parent on behalf of a child. They are:

1. The daughter of Jairus (Mt. 9; Mk. 5; Lk. 8). The daughter was 12 years old and already responsible before God. Her father, Jairus, was a ruler of the synagogue, and the impending catastrophe was the final one: his daughter’s death. In this great trial Jairus found his resource in an appeal to the Lord. He was heard, yet death was not averted as, doubtless, he expected with more or less faith. Events had conspired to hinder, but the Lord did not alter circumstances to preserve the child’s life. By grace, Jairus’ appeal did not fall on unheeding ears; it was answered with a fullness of power that went beyond the father’s faith: His young daughter was restored to life.

2. The daughter of the woman of Canaan (Mt. 15; Mk. 7). The parent here was a Gentile from an accursed race, and her daughter was grievously vexed with a demon. As the Lord traveled through the area of Tyre and Sidon, a stronghold of the devil (Ezek. 28:11-19), this poor woman brought the case of her child to Jesus. She was not heard immediately. The Lord used the occasion of the intensity of the mother’s deep concern to work a wholesome state of honesty, humility and confession in her soul. It was when she took her true place and expressed her faith in the largeness of His bounty which would overflow to a Gentile dog, as she was scripturally, that she got the full desire of her heart: her daughter’s deliverance. Her appeal was effectual. She was heard!

3. The lunatic, son of a certain man (Mt. 17; Mk. 9; Lk. 9). This case has several features of special interest. In the absence of the Lord, who was at the time on the Mount of Transfiguration, the man brought his son to the remaining nine disciples. They failed to cast out the demon, offering a poor testimony regarding the power of the Master. Hence, knowing all too well the destructiveness and stubbornness of the demon who held his boy in bondage, the father approached the Lord with weak and shaken faith, saying, “If Thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us” (Mk. 9:22 KJV). This gave the Lord the opportunity to demonstrate two things. The first was His supreme power, which was utterly beyond the possibility of challenge by the adversary. The demon did his worst, as though he would wreck the body of this poor boy if, indeed, he had to vacate it. Yet, the Lord raised up the lad and delivered him to his father in perfect soundness. The second thing the Lord demonstrated was that the only “if” which could by any possibility be introduced into the case concerned the faith of the parent – the one who made the request addressed to His grace and power. The great response of the Lord – “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth” – was full of encouragement and made in reference to a parent’s application to Jesus for the deliverance and blessing of his child.

4. The little children brought that He should put His hands on them and pray (Mt. 19; Mk. 10; Lk. 18). This case also is of peculiar interest. The children in question were very young. “Little children,” “young children,” “infants” are the descriptions given in Scripture. We are not told with any exactness who brought them. In each gospel the matter is left impersonal. Presumably the parents brought them; if brought by others, it only makes the Lord’s reception of them the more remarkable. The disciples, moreover, were actively hostile to the request, yet “He took them up in His arms, put His hands upon them and blessed them.”

5. The mother of Zebedee’s children with her sons (Mt. 20). In this case the “children” were no longer young but were full-grown men. They were even the Lord’s acknowledged disciples, His chosen apostles and near the end of their period of instruction by the Lord in person. The request by their mother did not concern their deliverance or blessing, either physical or spiritual. It had to do with their advancement and honor in the coming kingdom of displayed glory. A mother’s natural pride and pleasure in her sons sought its gratification at His hands – and was refused!

6. The son of the widow of Nain (Lk. 7). Special features are again prominent here. The dead son was a full-grown man and the only son of his mother, and she a widow. There is no record that the poor woman, widowed and weeping, uttered any appeal as the two crowds met – a dead man the center of one; the Christ, the Prince of Life, the center of the other. Even though no cry for help passed her lips – maybe even unaware of the true identity of the Living One – He saw her. Having compassion on her, He said, “Weep not.” He “touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still, and He said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And He delivered him to his mother.”

Touched in His infinite compassion by the sight of a mother’s lamentations, which were added to a widow’s grief, unasked He acted. The power that was always the servant of His compassion worked a deliverance which she never expected, and dried up her tears.

7. A certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum (Jn. 4). Here again we meet with the pleadings of faith. The father went personally to Jesus and implored Him to come and heal his son. True faith had to be tested. The unbelieving crowd was content with nothing but signs and wonders; faith that merely rests on visible displays is no true faith at all. Under the test the nobleman redoubled his pleading and was then met by the word, “Go thy way; thy son liveth.” Here his faith triumphed, for without the slightest display which appealed to sight the man took the Lord at His word and went home. He was met on the way by his servants with the joyful news of his son’s recovery, which had taken place with miraculous suddenness at the very hour when Jesus uttered the word of power concerning him. No wonder that this father believed and his whole house! The thing of note was that he believed before, for faith is taking Him at His word – believing what He says, because He says it.

An Answer To Our Question
We have briefly reviewed these seven Gospel instances that we may obtain a scriptural answer to our question. The question was, be it remembered, “Have Christian parents any ground for expecting God to intervene in the blessing of their children?” The joyful answer is, “Yes, they have most abundant ground for expecting it.”

Is their child an infant? The Lord Jesus took infants into His arms and blessed them. Is the case a daughter or son afflicted by the power of the devil, or near to death, or actually in death, or even a son grown to man’s estate and claimed by death as its prey and insensible to all beside? In each case He heard and provided deliverance.

True, in one instance there was delay through circumstances that were permitted to hinder. In another there had to be first a work of honest self-judgment in the soul of the afflicted Gentile mother. We also saw the gentle rebuke of feeble and shaken faith in an anguished father. Testing of very genuine faith that it might the more distinctly be manifested was seen too in our examples. All these spiritual dealings with the parents necessitated some delay. Yet in every case their cry was heard and abundantly answered.

Still there was one exception, which was the more remarkable inasmuch as those making their request were already definite followers and servants of the Lord. They were, indeed, the only ones of the seven of which we could confidently affirm this, and they were the only ones that met with a refusal! Rather than coming for blessing, healing and deliverance, they had come for honor and preferment! Here is the secret of their disappointment, and therefore the lone exception is the one which proves the rule.

We who are Christian parents may then with confidence get upon our knees to bring the cases of our children to the Lord. If we bring our requests with a desire for their prominence and glory, that our natural pride and pleasure in them may be enhanced by their being distinguished either in this world or the world to come, we have no ground for expecting the Lord to act. But if we bring our children before Him so their desperate need may be met and their blessing accomplished, He will hear us. The varying circumstances on our side will be no hindrance. We ourselves may be Jews or Gentiles, people of little faith or defective faith, or strong faith, or even so overpowered by grief that we make no audible appeal at all – it is all the same. The children may be young or old, afflicted in mind or body, or with no affliction at all – it is all the same. He will deliver according to His will. He will bless. He will do it in His own time, so as to spiritually exercise and bless the parent as well as the child – which may mean delay; but He will do it, and do it tenderly, even taking them up in the arms of His love to bless them.

No longer is He upon earth that the anguished parent heart may cry out before Him, “Master, I beseech Thee, look upon my son” – or “daughter” as the case may be. He is exalted in the heavens with all power at His disposal. Yet He is unchanged in His compassions as in all else, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever.” Therefore your cry shall be answered by the unchanged and unchanging Christ in the same unchanging way.

Is not this enough?

By F. B. Hole, Adapted