Why We Give
Why We Give
Why does the Highlands Study Center/Saint Peter Presbyterian Church appear on our special offerings list when God provides monetary blessings? There are at least three reasons and they each relate to our family situation, some details of which would help explain our motivation.
Becky and I have what Doug Wilson laments as a "good testimony", meaning that we were converted later in life and sin had plenty of time to run unchecked and produce lasting consequences. Of the three daughters produced during failed prior marriages and raised outside our home, one is pregnant out-of-wedlock, one who professes Christ is scheduled to marry a non-believer in November, and the third remains in a semi-comatose condition two and one half years after an auto accident at age 17, never having professed Christ.
In His faithfulness, God has more than balanced the scales. We have a delightful, radiant fifteen year old daughter who is growing in grace before our eyes and the three of us just returned from Kazakhstan with two wonderful little boys. We live on a small farm in southwest Louisiana, and we worship at a small PCA church in Lake Charles.
R.C. Jr's ministry has impacted our lives for quite some time now. We became familiar with him through Tabletalk, which is one of the resources we use during family worship. Several years ago we decided to spend part of our vacation time attending the Ligonier Conference in Orlando. A portion of that conference consisted of workshops that were scheduled around the plenary sessions and R.C. Jr. was one of the speakers conducting a workshop. We signed up, attended, and were very impressed with both his style of teaching and the content. The following year we did the same thing and it's fast becoming a habit. In fact, we were disappointed to learn that he was not participating in this past year's Orlando conference, but as it turned out, we could have stayed home and heard him virtually in our back yard. He was conducting a worldview conference in a small church in Sulphur, Louisiana at the same time, which leads to one of the reasons we have decided to support his work.
Two years ago I was asked to head up our church's first annual culture conference which was to feature R.C. Jr. This required several conversations with R.C. to coordinate the number of messages, topics, flight arrangements, etc. He was very agreeable, even volunteering to do an extra session to fill in our schedule and to preach for us on Sunday. When the smoke cleared, he had delivered six lectures in a day and a half and taught Sunday School and preached on the Lord's Day. The messages dealt Scripturally with the Christian's relationship to God, to his family, his church, his employer, and the state and were very well received. Everyone felt he had done a superb job and that he had exceeded the call of duty. He stepped on some toes and left us in his debt and then came back this year and did the same thing for a sister church just down the road. We feel privileged to support R.C.'s efforts because we have seen firsthand the quality and effort that God's grace has allowed him to provide to small congregations around the country. He continues to be a blessing.
A second reason for our support involves our primary goal of raising up godly Christian children who actually desire to assume their proper Biblical roles and are equipped and trained to do so. For the boys this means becoming godly men who serve their Lord, love their wives, and lead, support, and protect their families; for our daughter, to serve Christ through her special musical gifts and to respect her husband and support his ministry and to train up their children through home education. R.C.'s teachings have proven very valuable as we progress toward these goals. I can't help but think of R.C. talking to Darby when I hear Becky going through very basic catechism training with the two boys, neither of whom speaks English. (Joshua is four and Russian, Caleb is two and one half and Kazakh.) "Caleb, who made you?" God!"What else did God make?" God made all 'tings'! Some of their very first English words acknowledge God and glorify Him. It is rewarding to know that our occasional contributions are helping to provide other families with the tools and encouragement to help them train up godly seed that can stand alone against the pressures of our deteriorating culture. We have experienced the sadness and loss that inevitably follows when parents abdicate their responsibility to do so.
The third reason we support the study center involves the similarity of lifestyles that we share with R.C. and his family. Ours is a very rural existence. We raise chickens for eggs and meat and much of our produce comes from our garden. Our beehives produce 30 to 40 gallons of honey per year, and we produced a good watermelon crop this summer. We are starting our second year of a stocker cattle operation that appears promising. We drive 60 miles to attend church, and we have home educated our daughter, Mandi, from the beginning. We've even managed to survive for half a dozen years without a functioning television set in our home.
Often this lifestyle is maligned, especially by modern evangelicals,as too fundamentalist, too retreatist. We don't feel this to be the case at all - ours is a basic training facility behind the lines. Becky and I are relearning some basic self-sufficiency skills that are necessary on a farm, and our children are learning to love reading and writing as well as the responsibility of caring for farm animals. We are all learning from the Word of God on a daily basis and growing in our understanding and appreciation of the Reformed Faith and covenant theology. God frequently orchestrates encounters that provide each of us with opportunities to explain and defend our positions with the Scriptures. With the help of resources from R.C. Jr., Ligonier, Doug Wilson, Steve Wilkens, Gary DeMar, Doug Phillips, and especially our pastor Jim Jones, we are learning to explain and defend our understanding of what God would have us do. All of these men and many others deserve our support and yours as well.