The Lord calls the devil the “father of lies,” and everyone that rejects Christ and His truth has Satan as their spiritual father. Many truths in the Bible are hard to understand or even accept without the indwelling Holy Spirit, but before we reject what the Bible says we need to talk to someone who has personally experienced what God has said.

I had to apologize to my adult first-born son for not seeing what God was trying to show me in His Word about my children when he was in the third grade of public school. I believe this was the time when the public schools were beginning to teach more than they should, and the Lord was trying to get this across to me – through my son since I wasn’t getting it from my reading in the Bible.

The school bus stopped right out in front of our home where our son got on it, but this particular day the bus didn’t stop. I went out and found him hiding around the side of our home. I asked him why he didn’t get on the bus and he told me he didn’t want to go to school. I asked him why but he couldn’t give me a reason, he was just afraid to go. I kept him home that day.

I had to take my crying son to school the next day and walk him up to his classroom teacher asking her if she knew why he was afraid to come to school. (He had never done this before.) I asked her if she knew anything that had happened to him in the classroom or out on the playground. She didn’t have a clue. Every morning my husband and I prayed for him, over him, and to the Lord about him. We spoke God’s Word over him; we did everything that we knew to do to calm his fear.

The principal even checked in with the bus driver and there was nothing we could find that could’ve happened on the bus. The principal and I agreed that I would drive him to school and leave him with her and then she would take him to his class after he had calmed down. This went on for weeks. I can’t tell you how this broke my heart to have to leave our son in that place day after day. But, why did I believe I had to? Why was I convinced that “public” school was where all four of our children should be?

After some weeks our son didn’t fight it anymore, or cry about going to school. We never figured out what was wrong that he would carry on that way. It was a complete mystery to us all.

About thirty years later the Lord revealed it to me: God was trying to show me that I was to teach them at home. So I asked the Lord why He didn’t just come right out and say that to me, back then?!

Like most Christian mothers who still have the worldly culture in them that they grew up with, I needed God’s wisdom to raise my children up for Him. When the public schools no longer want children to learn or talk about the God of the Bible, and don’t allow any praying in the Name of Jesus – what should you do with and for the children God has put in your care?

I prayed for all my children as I sent them off to the public school each day. I was ignorant of what God wanted me to protect in my children. Children will believe anything they are taught until they have reason not to believe what they were taught. No wonder the devil is after children. It’s important that a child is fed the truth at home so they recognize lies and false information.

In the public schools today we have all kinds of people teaching children: homosexuals, pedophiles, atheists, communists, Satan worshipers, etc.; teachers with strong immoral and political agendas being pushed on kids. Public schools are to teach children the basics: reading, writing and arithmetic; the skills they need to go into their own interests of work and to become “skilled” in what they enjoy doing. Employers are finding less and less competent skilled employees – while employers are required to pay their employees more and more.

As a young mom I didn’t understand the right and the requirement that God gave parents to teach and raise their own children, or at least to make sure that those who are teaching your children every day are God-fearing, truthful about God and what He says is right and wrong.

It wasn’t until our third-born child (daughter) was in junior high school that I understood what my Father required of me, and I began home-schooling her and then our son who was two years younger than her. Our daughter bloomed once I took her out of that unholy system of education. It was extra work for me each day, but it was a good trade off. She has home-schooled her own children and so has our younger son’s wife their children.

If the school is teaching that which is contrary to the Word of God and contrary to your instructions for your children, then ask God to show you His way of escaping this destructive system and work with others of like mind and heart for the good foundation your children need. When they are older they can be educated in their own interests without compromising the truth and their faith in God.

Proverbs 23:15-18 “My son, if your heart is wise, my own heart also will be glad; and my inmost being will rejoice when your lips speak what is right and true. Do not let your heart envy sinners, but live in the fear of the LORD always. Surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off.”

The ideas and philosophies being fed to children and university students today is clearly the government requiring their teachers to assume the role of parents in teaching and training up children in the way the government wants to use it’s citizens. Sheer evil! As God’s people we need to do what is right for our children so they grow up in the truth and love of God, in the way we were created to think and live eternally with our Father God.

“….and does not eat the bread of idleness.” What does God mean by this?

One might think the definition of “idleness” is to do nothing or to have nothing to do, but to actually do nothing is not at all possible. We are always doing something otherwise we do not exist or we are in a comatose state of mind and on our backs being cared for.

Learning and eating have one thing in common: they both meet the needs we have for our purpose in life. The physical and spiritual are connected. You are what you eat!

Bread has a bread-maker. The Lord is giving us the insight here in that we learn to be idle. From the moment a baby starts to hear and see – the baby becomes active, and all the more active as their mind and body becomes stronger.

Idleness has a teacher, and it is not God or any of God’s ‘faithful’ servants. We can be very active in meeting our own needs and expectations and yet never accomplishing our true purpose in life. We can have big goals and have self-discipline each day in achieving those goals, but if our goals have nothing to do with God’s purpose for our lives then we have lived a life of idleness.

What we are taught – is how we will think. How we think is how we will live, which in turn influences other people, especially our children. So then it is very critical in every aspect of our lives that we are learning truth and wisdom from God’s Word and Spirit.

Fulfilling our purpose in life requires sleep: resting our body and mind from daily activity. (Sleeping is not idleness for it has a good purpose.) Far too many Christians have come to the pit of burn-out because they didn’t listen to their body or to the Holy Spirit. I love that about my Father; that He truly cares about our physical well-being far more than we do. He’s not in a hurry, so why should I be in a hurry? He’s in control, so why should I try to be in control? He’s not worried about my future, so why should I worry?

It’s idle to go along with the thinking and ways of the world, which is under the control of the devil (temporarily). It’s astute to check everything out with God’s Word and Spirit before we “eat” what the world wants to feed us – because once it is digested – it affects us and others around us.

Idleness is self-centered. Mental depression and physical illness are symptoms of idleness, and so are broken marriages, addictions and poverty.

Idleness produces idols because an idle person is always thinking about himself and how to get all that he wants.

Jesus brought it all out this way: “For the idolaters eagerly seek all these (earthly/physical) things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.” Matthew 6:32-33

I’m reminded of how Jesus spoke and taught everywhere He went with His boys (His disciples). Jesus referred to Himself as the “Bread from Heaven.” His teaching (bread) was so nourishing that it drew crowds of people wherever He went and they were not concerned about going without physical food when they were with Jesus no matter how long it was. He is our food, in a spiritual sense. His words satisfy our spirits and bring fullness of life.

Jesus told the woman at the well that His water would never let her thirst again. She of course took this in a physical way, while He was speaking spiritually. Jesus always taught the spiritual using the physical because they are very much connected. Until He gives us His Spirit we are limited in what we can see and understand. His words to her that day fed her soul and sent her running into town to tell everyone about Him, and people believed in Him as the result. This should also be our practice: sitting and talking to Him each morning, letting His words digest so that we go about our day accomplishing the will of God.

Jesus told His disciples that they knew nothing about His “food” because His food was to do the will of His Father who sent Him and to finish His work. (John 4:34) No matter what we do in life we need to feed on God’s Word each day and listen to God’s Spirit so we gain wisdom to know how to apply ourselves in doing His perfect and acceptable will.

People need to see true Christianity as it was with the first generation of Christ’s followers. As it is, what people see today of ‘modern’ Christianity is tasteless and unfulfilling. We need to keep to the “ancient path” of the perfect and acceptable will of our Father and Lord Jesus Christ.

You might have a career that makes you feel good about yourself, but it’s an idle career if you are not living out God’s purpose for your life. You might be a high government official, but unless you use your position to support God’s eternal values and laws, you are idle and wasting your time and strength in that position. You might be a good soldier or the highest ranking officer in your country’s military service, and even winning a war, but you are idle if the purpose for the war is not noble by God’s standard (good overcoming evil). You might be a church pastor with thousands of active members and still be idle, and teaching idleness, when you keep your congregation on the milk of the Word, keeping them in an “infant” state of mind. (Babies are all about attention, comfort and having things done for them.) You might have spent thousands of dollars on a college degree, but if you don’t have the heavenly wisdom to know the right thing to do with that knowledge – then you have wasted that knowledge and all those years in college. You can become famous to this world for something or be the wealthiest of all people and still be living a life of idleness – because it’s all about you.

“As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear….For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ.” 1 Peter 1:14-19

Idleness is passed down generation to generation and all it produces is the empty life.

Do you ever inwardly feel ashamed or foolish for constantly running to God for every little thing that happens or that you hope will happen, or that you don’t want to happen? Do you think you should only go to God for the most critical things, or when you are in a crisis or in great loss of some kind – hoping that He’s real and that He cares about you?

Father God wants us always conscious and convinced that He is favorably present in our lives, and waiting to be active by our dependency and trust in Him. This fulfills our Father God and it fulfills us.

Jesus said to His first disciples (who wrote down what He said to them so we could also have what He said) that they would start asking “the Father” in His Name after He leaves them and sends them His Holy Spirit in His place. Jesus told them that because they had seen and known Him – they had therefore seen and known the Father. Jesus was very personal and intimate with His first disciples and this taught them that the Father would be just as personal and intimate with those that He fills with His Spirit.

If you don’t read the Bible, you won’t really know the kind of relationship the Father wants to have with you. In God’s Word to us – we see His intimate involvement with His children. We see His mercy and forgiveness. We see His acceptable will for us, His anger with our disobedience and His discipline with our stubbornness. We see His faithfulness in directing us, protecting us and meeting our needs. We see His longing for fellowship with us, His pleasure and generosity with our faithfulness. We see His promoting us and prospering us, His positioning us for His use, and we even see His punishing of us – as a true Father who loves His children must do.

God loves us more than we will ever fully understand. All through eternity we will be ever-learning of just how much our Father God loves His children.

The only reason our Father would have in completely rejecting someone and treating them as His enemy is if on our death-bed we CONTINUE to deny and reject Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, as our Savior and Lord.

“What enthusiasm some people have for God, but it is misdirected zeal. For they don’t understand God’s way of making people right with Himself. Refusing to accept God’s way, they cling to their OWN way of getting right with God by trying to keep His law. For Christ has already accomplished the purpose for which the law was given. As a result, all who believe in Jesus Christ are made right with God.” Romans 10:1-3

“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” Acts 4:12

“Anyone whose name was not found in the Lamb’s Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire.” Revelation 20:15

“Therefore, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved. And anyone who trusts in Him will never be disgraced. Jew and Gentile are the same in this respect. They have the same Lord, who gives generously to all who call on Him. For everyone who calls on the Name of the LORD will be saved.” Romans 10: 9 -13

“You have shown me the path of life eternal. In Your presence is fulness of joy; at Your right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” Psalm 16:11

“Your kindness and Your mercies O LORD, pursue me all the days of my life, and I will remain in my Father’s house for days without end.” Psalm 23:6

Constantly running to the Father and continually calling on Him – truly honors Him. God is pleased with our child-like faith in Him, and even more pleased when we take His written words and apply them in our life. When I admit to Him my own weaknesses and confess my own faults – He is faithful to do what He says He will do, and eager to show Himself to us in great and mighty ways. Our Father God desires a very personal and intimate relationship with us; to just sit and talk about whatever – because His nearness – is my good!