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Dad’s Role in Cultivating Courage in the Cause of Christ
July 1, 2002
Michael Evans
 
What images do the following names evoke in your heart and mind? Innocent Hamilton, Godly and Patient Wishart, Apostolic Knox, Eloquent Rollock, Worthy Davidson, Courageous Melville, Prophetic Welch, Majestic Bruce, Great Henderson, Renowned Gillespie, Heavenly minded Rutherford, The Faithful Guthries, Heart-melting Livingstone, Zealous and Steadfast Cameron, Constant and Pious Renwick?
To me these names evoke a sense that these must have been truly great men. How will future generations refer to us when our bodies return to the ground?
Will we have titles like “Earthly-Minded Evans, Work-a-holic Williams, Less-than-happy Henderson, Play-a-lot Preston, Leave-me alone Lambert, or Give-up Easily Grimes?”
What about your children? How are they now known? How would you like them to be known? Think up some good adjectives that describe your desires for your children, add it to your family name and share it with them.
I began this column with a list of names of men who courageously gave their lives in the cause of Christ. They lived well and then they died well, though prematurely, from an earthly standpoint.
Each one of these men is part of a great company of men from the 16th and 17th century in Scotland, known as the Scottish Covenanters.
The years 1660-1688 are known historically as “the killing times” in Scotland.
During this period hundreds of Scottish Reformed Presbyterian ministers and laymen were put to death for the cause of Christ.
The two major issues had to do with their opposition to the King, who made the state the authority in spiritual matters and who also made one minister superior in power and authority over other ministers.
Suffice it to say that the issues were huge and worthy of revolts. If you would like to read brief biographies of these great men, which make riveting reading for the whole family, you can find them all in a 627 page book titled, The Scots Worthies by John Howie, Pub. Banner of Truth Trust.
As I gaze out on the cultural landscape of our day I see trouble and tribulation on the horizon.
Make no mistake, the United States is still the Disneyland of the world. In fact this is one of the reasons that raising spiritual warriors is so difficult.
How are our children to learn this character quality of courage for the sake of the Gospel when the up-front challenges are so puny?
We can read the biblical accounts of men or whom the world was not worthy in Hebrews Ch. 11.
We can read of the saints who were beaten, imprisoned, scourged, sawn in two, stoned, and put to death by the sword. And these are good things to do!
But, what’s a young lad or lass to think when he hears dad complaining to mom about how much it’s going to cost to home-school next year? Wondering aloud how you’re ever going to make ends meet?
If we hope to raise children to be men and women of courage we must model that now, in the present.
By the grace of God alone a man’s children may exceed him in faith and courage. But this is not the norm.
If we have great hopes, dreams, and expectations for our children, they ought first to be realized in our own lives… demonstrated by a willingness for honest feedback from the female half of the marriage.
A firm Faith in Jesus Christ and His Word is the fertile soil in which courage is cultivated in young hearts. Surely this is the kind of soil which produced hearts like the Scottish Covenanters.
One of these Covenanters was a man by the name of Alan Cameron. He was cloistered in an Edinburgh prison charged with treason while his son, Richard Cameron was fighting a battle in which he was hopelessly outnumbered.
Bruce of Earlshall had surprised Richard and his troops. When they realized there was no hope for success they gathered around their leader Richard Cameron and he said to them:
“Come, let us fight it out to the last; for this is the day that I have longed for, and the day that I have prayed for, to died fighting against our Lord’s avowed enemies!”
Richard Cameron was killed on the spot. His head and hands were cut off and taken to the Edinburgh prison where the enemy showed them to Richard’s father, accompanied by a cruel question.
“Do you know them?” He kissed them saying, “I know them….I know them. They are my son’s my own dear son’s. It is the Lord-good is the will of the Lord, who cannot wrong me nor mine, but hath made goodness and mercy to follow us all our days” (pp. 424-429).
Another of the Covenanters, by the name of David Hackston of Rothillet, also evokes great admiration…at least in my mind.
Hackston was tried in a kangaroo court. He also refused to grant to the King that authority which was reserved for God alone.
As he was carried away by the executioner to the Cross of Edinburgh he was permitted to pray but not to speak to the people who had gathered.
I’ll let you hear the rest in John Howie’s own words: “As they stopped at the scaffolding his right hand was struck off by the executioner. And, after a little time had passed his left hand was also cut off.”
“He was drawn up to the top of the gallows with a pulley and suffered to fall down a considerable way upon the lower scaffold three times with his whole weight, and then fixed at the top of the gallows.”
“Then the executioner, with a large knife, cut open his breast, and pulled out his heart, before he was dead, for it moved when it fell on the scaffold.”
“He then stuck his knife in it, and showed it on all sides to the people, crying, ‘Here is the heart of a traitor.’”
“At last he threw it into a fire prepared for that purpose; and having quartered his body, his head was fixed on the Nether Bow, one of his quarters, with his hands, at St. Andrews, another at Glasgow, a third at Leith, and the fourth at Burntisland” (pp. 430-434).
Granted, most of us will probably not be called upon to suffer for Christ in these kinds of ways. But what is it that produces these kinds of men?
What is it that deposits this kind of courage? What is it that causes this kind of endurance to enter the human soul…even unto death?
The answer of course, is that God does it. And He seems to do it through the faithful modeling of parents who pray and prepare and propel the arrows of their quiver out into a hostile world.
May we heed the counsel of Hebrews 12:1-3 when the writer exhorts believers to “…lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us…”
May we be men, and in turn, may our children be children who become men and women, who lay aside every outward thing in the lifelong joyful running of the race that God has marked out for us.
Whether this “race” ends in a “natural” death, a tragic death, or a martyr’s death is quite irrelevant to the fact that everyone who finishes the race will receive the “crown of life which God has prepared to those who love Him” (James 1:12).
The next time we’re tempted to complain or whine about some ridiculous superficial problem may we stop and think about what it is we are modeling for our children.
Then, may we repent, embrace the Cross and press on courageously toward the goal!
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