Bringing Children into the Kingdom of Darkness
BRINGING CHILDREN INTO THE KINGDOM OF DARKNESS
MIKE CUNNINGHAM
MAY 17, 2009
Suppose it was possible for you to press a button enabling you to fast-reverse yourself back to the day when the thought of becoming a mother or father first entered your mind. In all probability that day would have been much earlier for little girls than boys. I don’t know about you, but I have never seen a little boy play with dolls and pretend he was a daddy. Now press another button and fast-forward yourself to the time you were about to get married and, with God’s blessing, start raising a family. Then suppose before you tied the knot God somehow revealed to you each event which was destined to occur in the lives of your children. However, there would be one exception: you couldn’t know with absolute certainty if your children would become saved. Take a moment and, from the time of conception to today (May 17, 2009) think about the good, the bad and perhaps awful things your child would experience and the accompanying mental anguish, deep sorrow and grief you would be destined to endure including those times which you were powerless to do anything about. At this point, God gives you the choice as to whether or not you want to bring that child or children into this dark sin infested world, or as the Bible describes it; the kingdom of darkness. What would your decision be? Before you answer, factor in the possibility that back in that particular period of time you may have been a newborn babe in Christ with an immature faith or perhaps you had not yet experienced the “new birth.”
Last week in my Mother’s Day message in which I mentioned the fact that mothers who were great role model’s haven’t been confined to mom’s living during biblical times. This morning I would like to pick up where I left off and bring to your attention a couple of remarkable parents whom I believe shine like brilliant beams of light piercing the spiritual darkness of Vermont. Each of them suffered the tragic loss of a child at a young age and, in total dependence of Christ’s strength working within them, turned their grief, heartbreak and sorrow into a much needed ministry through which God is blessing other Christian parents who are suffering the anguish associated with the death of one of their children. Allow me to share an email I received from our friend Guy. I’ve been saving it since January of this year because I believed that when the timing was right the Lord would want me to share it with you folks. It concerns two of his coworkers who were and continue to be a blessing to Guy and many others.
Hi Mike. Here’s the email I received from Randy and Marsha Morris after the birth of their child. The doctors had recommend that they “induce labor” when the baby was just 20 weeks old due to severe lung and kidney problems they had detected, (of course this was code for “abort the child”). Marsha and Randy firmly said no. They honored God, and if you ask them they will tell you, they were very much blessed. Randy and Marsha grew closer to each other and closer to God, and touched many hearts in the process. They also had time to enjoy their baby before the Lord took him home. Here’s the email from Randy and Marcia to all those who provided prayer support during Marsha’s pregnancy.
“As of 11:15 AM on January 6th, Skylar Dylan Morris was born into this world at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire. He lived for an amazing two hours with us and his grandparents before going home to our Heavenly Father at 1:05pm. For those who prayed for a different outcome, do not be discouraged. While our child was called back home it doesn’t mean that your prayers were for nothing or that your faith was weak. On the contrary, your prayers will have shown that you understood that our Creator was the only one capable of changing the circumstances. Even though the circumstances didn’t change in the way we thought hoped or requested, I pray that you will all have grown closer to him as I know we have. God has granted Marcia and I great comfort in these last few months and we are thankful for the time that we had with him. Whether we live for an hour or a century, it is all like a blink of an eye compared to eternity. Thank you all and God bless!”
I ended the first part of today’s message about role models by saying: “A few weeks ago the Lord blessed me greatly by bringing a remarkable role model back in to my life. I hadn’t seen or heard from this mom in almost ten years. Last year she authored and published an insightful book which I can’t speak too highly of. Please pray for me this week as I craft my sermon and try to glean the biblical principles she applied which gave her Christ’s strength to draw upon during a tragically agonizing period in her life; spiritual strength enabling this mom to be used by God to become a sort of spiritual steamroller he used, and continues to use, to crush those evil cosmic forces of darkness under her feet. Her name is Elvia.”
Commenting on my recent sermon, “Preaching In The Kingdom Of Darkness, Elvia wrote, “Mike. I don’t think very many pastors are as willing as you are to be as transparent as you were in your message. I believe in doing so a pastor connects his heart to the heart of his sheep. You are a treasure to your people. I hope they love and appreciate you.” I sure don’t have a corner on being publically transparent. For instance, allow me to share the following.
On a bitterly freezing morning between 2:00 and 3:00 am, on the Tuesday before Valentine’s Day in 2000, John and Elvia Atherton of Shelburne were suddenly awakened by the ringing of the telephone. It was from Kenny, a friend of their youngest son Brian. Elvia recorded that never to be forgotten event in her journal. Her sons friend “…said that Brian had flipped out on some kind of drugs, had jumped out of the car in which they were riding, and had taken off, running, into a field of deep snow in the nearby town of Williston, Vermont.
My husband, John, and I quickly got dressed, grabbed some warm items of clothing and blankets for Brian, and sped out to the field. When we arrived at the site we met the one police officer who had been sent to help. The headlights of his car were strategically facing toward the road in order to give us Brian’s exact location. Kenny was out in the snow and had finally found him. John trudged out desperately in the thigh deep snow to help bring Brian out. It was impossible to move quickly and he was exhausted. John carried him to the police cruiser where I was waiting. I felt his neck for a pulse, first one side, then the other—TWICE—no pulse. I turned around and the rescue team had just arrived. I told them he had no pulse; somehow they knew. They had brought the defibrillator with them. They tried to resuscitate him but were not successful. Then they carried him to the ambulance and did CPR all the way to the ER. They hoped that after they thawed him out, they would be able to restart his heart. We waited, hoped, and prayed for over an hour in the hospital waiting room. After doing everything they could, the doctor came out and told us the bad news. Brian had been in the snow for about two hours! The doctor, who had worked in the ER for over 30 years, had never seen anyone’s feet frozen so solid. He expressed his deepest sympathies, and left us with our friends, who had come to the emergency room to support us.”
Elsewhere in her book adds: “He went out that night with a couple of friends to a party. They purchased some psychedelic mushrooms and some pot. By the time they’d left the party to drive home, Brian was pretty high—so high—in fact, that he was in a very agitated state and insisted on getting out of the car. He was very hot and it was bitterly cold outside, but he jumped out of the car even before it stopped, running out into a field of snow and paying no attention to the frantic pleas yelled by his friends. They could not persuade him to come back into the car. They were obviously scared for Brian, but they were also afraid for themselves because they had drugs in their possession. Thus, instead of pursuing Brian, they drove off leaving him in the field alone while they searched for a place to ditch the drugs. It was only after they’d taken care of their needs that they returned to the field and finally called us.”
“Talk about an inviting “exit ramp” off the right road! I had strong, legal, and legitimate reasons to be angry and be bitter towards many people. There were obviously Brian’s two friends who, even before leaving to get rid of the evidence, had said “No” when a neighbor near the field—hearing the yelling to Brian—came outside and asked them if there was a problem and if they needed help. After refusing the neighbor’s offer, they drove away. There was the young man who had sold Brian the mushrooms and pot. His irresponsible selling had helped set the tragedy in motion. And then there was the one lone police officer who was merely sitting on the side of the road in his cruiser when we arrived on the scene, despite the fact that it was the coldest night of the year, and he knew there was a young man lost out in a field of snow.”
Journal Entry: June 1, 2000. “John and I had Memorial Day off and I was able to go for my walk. While I was walking, the Lord showed me a couple of things. First of all He knew how I felt. He also had watched His Son die and had watched Him being carried, just as I watched John carry Brian out of the snow that night. God’s heart broke, too. He has the same terrible memory that I do., except now they are living happily ever after for all eternity, together forever. Oh, God! I miss him. I have this new picture of how I’m feeling. It’s as if we are getting further and further away from Brian. As time goes by, every day we take more steps away. I remember when I was walking away from an old relationship. Every day I would take one more step away, and I continued each day to be further and further away. At that time, however, I was always aware of the fact that no matter how many steps I took away from the relationship, it was only one step back!”
“Not so with Brian. We keep taking steps away from him, but as we do it’s like crossing the Grand Canyon. On a bridge Tarzan might have made! It’s a rickety kind of bridge with only a single rope on either side for hand rails. The bridge itself is made up of 2-inch by 6-inch pieces of wood about three feet long., with a two-inch space between each. If you look down through the spaces, you can see the bottom of the Canyon. However, as we take steps forward on this unique bridge, the pieces of supporting wood behind us disintegrate, so even though we desperately might want to turn around and go back, we can’t. The bridge behind us is gone, and Bri is back there on the other side of the canyon, and we are further away than the last time we turned around. It’s so sad.”
“I understand now how and why people get stuck on this bridge. They don’t want to move further away, they don’t want more distance. They don’t want to lose their loved one any more than they already have, so they stop, they camp out and slowly freeze in place. This is not healthy. We must go on. We must rebuild our lives without Brian. This is very difficult because we really don’t want to. Oh, God, once again I need your perspective! I know you have a perspective for me that will make sense and help me to go on and continue my journey without him… The Lord answered that prayer, too! He spoke to my heart and said, “You’ve got it all wrong, Elvia. Every step you take is not a step away from him, but is a step closer to him. He is no longer behind you but instead is now in front of you.”
At this point I would like each of you folks to ask yourself this question: if God had revealed to me before my child was conceived that he or she would leave the kingdom of darkness in such a tragic manner; would I want to become that child’s parent? And knowing everything I do today, but not what the future holds for my other loved ones, how can I trust God and put them in His hands? Elvia addresses this concern: “trust anchors and supports all the bridges, and my ability to trust God became a huge issue for me after Brian died. I struggled a lot with the fear of losing Michael and John, wondering how I could trust God with their lives when He had allowed Brian to die in such an untimely manner. It’s easy to trust God when all is going well, but not when your worse fears are realized. It has been said that there is no such thing as trust without unanswered questions. I sure had a lot of those! So I did what I needed to do: I asked God. In answer, He showed me I have always approached trusting Him from angles that would benefit me. In other words, I have trusted Him for things, not just plain trusted Him. For instance, I trusted Him for happy endings: If I was a good parent, my kids would not go through things like rebellion, drugs, and crime. I trusted Him for the protection that would keep them from harm. In fact, I trusted Him for lots of things, and many of them have brought me heartache and pain over the last ten years. Basically, I had a lot of unrealistic expectations. Now He is saying to me, “Trust me…period. Don’t trust me for John and Michael’s lives, but instead trust Me, period, no matter what!” I prayed that He would help me to get from where I was to the place of total, unconditional trust, because there is no way I could do this without Him.” Talk about being transparent and honest. Wow!
After reading my follow up sermon entitled: “Christian Role Model’s In the Kingdom Of Darkness,” Elvia offered the following feedback: “It is very difficult to try to download a personal experience with God into someone else’s life. I guess you would have to have known me during the aftermath of my son’s death and know me today to be able to say God has done a miracle in this woman’s life. On the other hand, one only has to imagine what it would be like to lose a child and what it would feel like and look like years later to see that a life filled with joy is not the norm. The truth is that God will restore the years the locusts ate, if God be for us who can be against us, the Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear, yea though I walk thru the valley of the shadow of death…Thou art with me. I want to tell you there is LIFE in the Word of God and there can be life after death (here on earth) but you must choose it.”
“We all have the power to choose, it was given to us as a gift called “free will” We can choose to speak the Word of God, believe the Word of God, and live the Word of God or not. We can believe that what has happened to us is bigger than God. We can say and believe “I will never get over this”. We can stay hurt and angry and grow into bitter cynical Christians, Mike. Or, we can choose healing, wellness and recovery for ourselves and for the glory of God. Which is the better witness for our families and unsaved friends? God has called us to be overcomers! They who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they will mount up with wings as eagles, they will run and not grow weary, and they will walk and not faint. He is also talking about us!”
“It is a process, a marathon, there are no shortcuts or EZ passes but day by day, one day at a time, He will walk us thru the unimaginable, carrying us when necessary, in order that we might be Christians who reflect His love, His power, and His grace Mike. If it is for freedom that He went to hell and back to set us free, why then would you and I be willing to settle for anything less? We must participate and cooperate with the process He is working in and through our lives. We must say no to ongoing bitterness, anger, revenge and the like. We must say yes to forgiveness and healing and walk in obedience to His Word that it might become life to us here and now. Christianity is not just about the hereafter, it’s so much more than that. God wants us to not only experience Him here and now but our experience of Him should cause others to want to know Him too. It has been said that we are the only Bibles some people will ever read. If this is true, then let us be about the business of our heavenly Father, just as Jesus was, and become contagious Christians. Let us be the best examples of victory in Jesus that we can possibly be. That is my goal and that is my message. It is my desire to bring hope to the hopeless and freedom to the captives. What He has done in my life He wants to do in yours, Mike. “For I know the plan I have for you says the Lord, plans for good and not for evil, plans to give you hope and a future” This is you and me He is also talking about and talking to. Let’s choose to believe what He has said to us and then let’s act on it. I’m believing that He who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete it.” Today Elvia has a very fulfilling ministry conducting seminars to help others as they struggle through their grief. Asked if she would have chosen to have Brian if she knew in advance God would take him from her two weeks before his twenty-first birthday, Elvia quickly and emphatically answers, YES! In closing I would like to share the following endorsement for this much needed excellent book.
Such a heartfelt biblically sound practical guide for navigating through the grief process could only have been produced by a fellow Christian who has already made the journey. The reader will profit greatly by Atherton’s testimony of the awesome power of the indwelling Spirit strengthening and sustaining her along the way as another one of His followers being used by the Lord to once again trample those evil cosmic forces of darkness under Elvia’s feet.
One Step Closer” ought to be required reading for anyone aspiring to enter the Christian Pastoral Ministry and those who have been Spiritually gifted with that of mercy and compassion. I wish I had access to this insightful resource years ago. I intend to keep several copies on hand to give to Christians grieving over a loss through the sudden death of a loved one as well as those experiencing the unexpected death of their marriage. And–in humble reliance upon the Lord’s blessing One Step Closer”can become
a powerful evangelistic weapon in the Lord’s Arsenal Christian’s can utilize in the relentless spiritual warfare raging throughout this dark sin-infested planet. Pastor Mike Cunningham, New Covenant Baptist Church, South Burlington, Vermont.
Lord willing, instead of my sermon on June 28th. the Sunday after Father’s Day; Elvia will be with us to share her testimony. Please invite some of your friends. Mike
Mike,
Your sermon spoke to me as I have been through the same struggles and trials as Elvia and John.
God puts what we need in our path to get us through our struggles and burdens– be it through books, bible verses, friends or family. If we keep our hearts open and be willing to accept where He has placed us; I know we will be blessed with comfort, strength and courage to continue our walk closer to Him. If we listen and be not afraid of the trembling we face, we will, with God’s blessing, be rewarded tenfold.
Thanks,
Lori
Mike,
First off, I like it that you are so transparent because you touch more people that way. I like these kinds of sermons. They are a very humble way of teaching spiritual truth. By allowing yourself to become vulnerable you come across as a real sincere preacher pouring out your heart to the hearts of those you are preaching to.
This sermon reminded me of a woman I know who had an abortion because the ultrasound indicated her unborn baby had serious health issues. She still suffers guilt. The next time she became pregnant she knew the Lord, and when the doctors wanted to do an ultrasound she said no. She gave birth to a child who has Down’s syndrome. The doctors told the woman they warned her it might happen. She loves that child very much and is glad she didn’t take their advice. Elvia’s bridge illustration brought back memories of the conclusion I came to recently about the death of my Mom. For me, there is no turning back either. I’m just so happy my Mom is doing so much better than we are right now, Mike. Thanks for the sermon.
Bob
Hi Pastor Mike,
I know John and Elvia well – they have been through much and have come through everything with such strength and victory through Christ.
Bless you and take care,
Gina Sears 🙂
Nice sermon, Dad
Just the thought of losing one on my kids makes me sick. I feel for all parents that have to go through this kind of pain. A very close friend of mine just lost his daughter and we have been praying for his whole family every day. I let him know today at church that we have been and will continue to be praying for all the family. I pray also that someday they will all reunite in Heaven. Only God can help people through such a difficult time.
Love,
Mike
Whoa!
While I was in NY doing a workshop on grief, you were in So. Burlington preaching my message to your church. John said “of all the people who have ever read your book and done a review on it, Mike is the first person who has ever understood the bridge!”
You have embraced the heart and soul of my message and have conveyed it to your people along with another incredible real life experience of the death of a child. You shared the amazing faith of two other parents who put everything they had into God’s hands and let Him choose the fate of their young and innocent child. They came out on the other side with God’s amazing perspective “Whether we live for an hour or a century it’s all like the blink of an eye compared to eternity.” What a powerful statement! He was able to see it from God’s eyes in the midst of his grief. God is so faithful when we put Him first.
Elvia
Mike,
I found your message to be very comforting.
For me the basic truths apply not only to the catastrophic losses such as those you shared, but those which also threaten our trust in God; losses such as losing our job and income, another person’s love, our health or being the victim of an attempted character assignation. It’s a good reminder for anytime we feel like we’re losing our trust in God, believing that He cares for us, or even if He exists in the first place.
John
Thank you so much, Mike.
I don’t know if you were aware or not, but both my boys had issues when they were born and we almost lost both of them.
My oldest had to have open heart surgery at 3 1/2 months and at one point during the operation we lost him but were able to bring him back. He is now 24 and doing very well.
My youngest was born with a blood issue and spent over 28 weeks in ICN. If I had a dime for ever time we were told he wouldn’t make it I would be a very rich man. He does have bi-lateral hearing loss but at 22 he’s working and doing fine.
Were these hard times? yes they were. Because of the stress we faced I think it had something to do with our marriage failing at that time. But I would do it all over again!
My two boys have shown me the true meaning of courage and faith. Both boys have had “last rites” given to them; watching that being done to your babies is not easy but God had a plan and I have trusted and continue to trust in that.
Birth is a gift from God and only he should decide what takes place; let us hope and pray that the world returns to that someday.
A great sermon Mike,
God bless you.