A families’ Rubicon

Throughout the week I’ve been thinking on some of the talks men gave during our fellowship on Sunday. We gather each week with believers in a home church and each week our meeting is in the form of an open meeting – meaning, that in addition to singing and prayer, the men share what the Lord’s given them to share in the way of a message or a testimony or whatever. I generally take notes so that I can review the talks later or so that I can look up whatever Scriptures have been cited. Occasionally one of the men will share something that really gets me thinking or really confirms something the LORD’s already teaching me, or has been impressing or guiding here in our home. I love that we can always learn… I love that the Lord continually shows us new angles of His Truth.

Some of the men, though they might not see or appreciate the comparison, remind me of my husband’s younger self. Their zeal, their fervent love for the Lord and the Truth, their determination to lead their families and their passion for the Word is so refreshing and encouraging. I love the enthusiasm of younger believers – it’s really motivating; motivating to redouble the efforts or to revisit that which the LORD has clearly shown in His Word, to reexamine those things that the Lord directed in earlier years. We get older… we get softer –or so it appears. We appear to become lackadaisical in some ways — we may lose a bit of the fire we once had. Some would say this is weak and some would then tend to discount or overlook an older person. But I think sometimes all we need to do is spend a little time around someone older to see what’s really going on and the older need to spend time with the younger… someone idealistic and zealous for the Truth and the old fire is rekindled. And the younger person may need to take a long walk with the older one to see the view down the road. What this also shows me is that both are needful in a fellowship… both are of tremendous, inestimable value — both need the genuine fellowship of the other. Fellowship takes time… it really takes time; and in our harried world, time’s becoming more and more precious — anything threatened becomes more precious… time, age, health, ability…

So what have I been mulling over? One of the men shared about his family studying ancient history, and drew some analogies to the time of Julius Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon. Crossing the Rubicon made a bold statement, passing the point of no return, Caesar said, “The die is cast.” Our friend likened that move, or the crossing the Rubicon, to our walk with the Lord: that point we lay down our lives at His feet, that time we say we will follow Him no matter what… no matter what others do, no matter what it costs, no matter what happens. He shared a bit about his family and decisions they had made as a family.

History gives us lots of those analogies, those points of no return, those times where the die is cast. Families have to come to that point if they are to walk on with Christ – if they are to be obedient to the cross. A family has to decide the here and now things… the from here on and the from now on things of life. For each family, the from here on and the from now on things might look different one from another family. But the from here on and the from now on things might include: from here on and from now on: we will walk with Christ. From here on and from now on: we will have no divorce, we will have no idols before God, we will walk in faith. From here on and from now on, we will live as a loving, working, courteous, loyal, faithful family. We will cross the Rubicon. We will walk on, we will engage in the battle and we will fight to the end. The die is cast. Our I will’s will stand firm in Jesus.

My husband and I, right before we were married, made a determination with several I will’s and several we will never’s. Along the way, the Lord has brought us to the water’s edge and we’ve had decisions to make: to stay there or to step in and cross the river. When He put on our hearts to leave our childbearing to Him, to give Him Lordship of the womb, we had to cross the river, the die was cast. When He led us to discipline, to homeschool, to guide and train up our children in the way He has, we had to cross the river… the die was cast. We’ve had to mark those decisions well, we’ve marked some with stones because they’ve been challenged, they’ve been tested, others have scoffed, things haven’t always been or seemed rosy and we’ve needed to be reminded: we crossed the river, the die was cast.

By whatever naame or idiom or phrase, every Christian family needs to come to the River. And then, hopefully, to the point of decision… the point of no return: their own Rubicon – their own: “Choose ye this day…”