Big Truths for Young Hearts conference at CBC Nashville, part 1

I attended the first session of this conference at Community Bible Church in Nashville last evening with a couple friends and thought I'd blog about it today.

In recent years, CBC has drawn some well-known pastors and teachers for the Nashville Conference on the Church and Theology (John MacArthur, Bruce Ware, D. A. Carson, Steve Lawson). This weekend, Dr. Bruce Ware is returning for a parenting conference which focuses on helping us know how to teach Bible doctrine to our children.

Dr. Ware is a theology professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY and is currently the president of the Evangelical Theological Society. I've heard him speak at the Desiring God Pastor's Conference several years ago and really enjoy his clarity, precision, and passion in communicating biblical truth.

Session 1 of the Big Truths for Young Hearts conference focused on getting us as parents to grasp the truth of God's exclusive and incomparable claim to be God alone. We looked at numerous texts from the Old Testament (most from Isaiah 40-46) but narrowed down to three areas where the prophet Isaiah focused his message on this truth about God. It can be summed up this way:

God is exclusively and incomparably God as he is (1) Creator of Heaven and Earth, (2) Redeemer of his Chosen People, (3) and Sovereign Ruler over Good and Evil.

I think the point of all this was to impress us with the necessity of knowing God in his essential character and utter uniqueness before setting out to teach our children about Him. Often, there are assumptions made about God when teaching children, or conclusions drawn, that are simply not true. For example, much of contemporary teaching of children focuses on creation. God made the animals, the stars in the sky, and you and me. The erroneous assumption may be this: God made all of these things because he needed company or was in some way incomplete without them. But the Bible teaches us that God does not need anything. Rather, he made all things to put on display his greatness and to fill us, who are empty, with Him! Wouldn't it be great if our children grasped this concept from an early age?

The final two sessions will bridge this foundation to skill in parenting and imparting truths that we as parents have come to embrace. Looking forward to thinking about my wife's and my role as disciplers of our four young children and praying they will come to love God deeply by knowing Him and his ways.