Psalms 19 says that “the testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple.” This is the action of a loving God who gives his sons and daughters testimony to make them wise out of their simplicity. God has also given his earthly fathers to their sons and their daughters to help them become wise because all of us are simple and we need the help of our father in heaven. God wants fathers to come alongside their sons to communicate to them sound judgment when it comes to judging disasters and they need to hear from their father “Don’t prejudge that disaster because God is sovereign”.
Psalm 19 says that the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. This is the action of a loving God who gives His sons and His daughters testimonies to make them wise out of their simplicity. God has also given earthly fathers to their sons and their daughters to help them to become wise in their simplicity because all of us are simple and we need the help of our Father in Heaven and God has ordained it that He would give us earthly fathers to stand in His place to deliver His great commands and precepts so that we would not be stupid or simple. God gives fathers to sons to come alongside them to communicate to them sound judgment when it comes to judging disasters. And there will be disasters in the future of every son.
Every son needs to hear his father say, son don't prejudge that disaster. This was the confidence that David had In Psalm 31 verse 15 when he said, My times are in your hand. Well there's a story that comes out of the battle for Iwo Jima that illustrates the importance of this. It's the story of Black Friday and it illustrates why sound judgment and discernment is important even when judging the blackest of days. Black Friday.
Pre-judging disasters is something boys should always learn to avoid. When difficult circumstances strike us our tendency is to do a couple of things. We over interpret them, we way over interpret them and we often end up coming to the wrong conclusions and what's worse we become subject we become slaves of the of the feelings that they generate This kind of overconfidence can lead a boy to all manner of misinterpretation, which will cause not only his heart to be misled, but he will also mislead all who are following him about the meaning of that disaster. The presumptuous often experience significant angst at the beginning of their evaluation but often later sometimes many years later they're pleasantly surprised to see in how many ways that disaster was the gateway to more blessings than they ever could have imagined. It opened doors, it blew open windows, The sun was beaming brightly through them and the blue sky and the clouds were so beautiful as they looked back to see the true result of that disaster.
This is why I'm convinced David prayed, keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Well my father's friend, Ani Ojima, his best friend, Arthur Burry, experienced such a disaster. It came from the worst disaster of the Pacific War of the 7th Air Force, and it happened in June 1st, 1945. Twenty-five P-51 Mustangs from the 15th Fighter Group took off from Iwo Jima and one single plane came back.
They all collided in midair. 23 of the 25 pilots were killed. No one knows exactly why it happened. It was probably a powerful wind from a typhoon that we'll talk about in a minute that they were flying through and it caught them by surprise. That storm took their beautiful flying formation and mangled them together and sent them to their deaths.
Typhoon Nana was most likely the culprit. Their calamity came upon them as they were on a massive bombing offensive against Osaka. Three fighter commands were in the air. Hundreds and hundreds of ships were in the air. A hundred and seventy Mustangs were on the escort.
And when they were 250 miles from Iwo Jima, this gigantic force passed over the leading edge of clouds that reached out over the horizon and the flyers assumed that the storm had been properly analyzed and judged to be safe. No way was it safe And the communications were unclear. After the tragedy, there were some heated accusations and debates among the Army Corps brass because so many men died. Only two men from the 15th Fighter Group came back from that mission. Both of them were my father's buddies.
Eddie Bates and Second Lieutenant Arthur Bury were those two friends. They both came back home from the war and they lived long lives and I had the pleasure of getting to know them when they were in their 80s. Eddie Bates' plane was malfunctioning so he broke away from the group and headed back to Iwo. Before everything came unglued, he made it back safely without any further mishaps. Not so with Arthur Bury.
Arthur Bury's plane started malfunctioning, so he pulled away from the group and headed back to Iwo Jima alone. Unfortunately, Burry's engine did not revive and it quit about halfway back to Iwo Jima So he bailed out of his airplane. He was flying a P-51 that he had named the Betty Ellen. Bury was engaged to a girl named Betty back home. The other fellow who flew the plane was married to Ellen, hence the name Betty Ellen.
These two men escaped Black Friday for one reason their engines quit. If their engines would have performed well they would not okay if their engines would have performed well they would have been thrown to their deaths in Black Friday when Brie realized that the Betty Ellen was destined for the bottom of the ocean He was at about 2, 000 feet and he crawled out of the cockpit down the side of the wing and slipped off into the air missing the tail. Burry's parachute opened and if he had any illusions he was floating to safety They would be dashed soon enough. He was dropping into a section of the Pacific Ocean, which would be hammered by this massive typhoon, Typhoon Nana. The Congressional Record would contain these words about Arthur Burry, quote, his survival is one of the miracles of this war.
It was fairly calm when he plunged into the Pacific on that day, but the weather was turning really, really fast. So there he was, floating in his one-man rubber raft, and he would soon be riding 50 foot waves and the winds would be blowing 120 miles an hour. Now just think about that for a second. He's 275 miles from mainland Japan in a raft not much bigger than the lower half of his body and there he is in 50-foot waves and the winds are absolutely howling. So for six days this man not only would be subjected to this beating by the weather but he would drink only about a half a quart of water and about a handful of pemmican.
And that privation would almost kill him. Typhoons are no joke. They strike fear into all seafarers and whoever has to ride them out and every year they roll through the Pacific Islands and everybody remembers again how small they are in the middle of the power in the midst of the powers that God is invested in nature in the Atlantic Ocean these storms are called hurricanes Off the coast of Central and South America they're called cordonosos, meaning to strike with a cord. The Hawaiians call them Taino, while the Australians call them Willy Willys but in the Indian Ocean they're called Cyclones but when you get to the Pacific Ocean they're called Typhoons and Typhoons they are. While Burry was bobbing around in those 50-foot waves in that one-man rubber raft, Typhoon Nana was doing a good job wrecking some of the biggest ships in Admiral Halsey's fleet.
The heavy cruiser the USS Pittsburgh lost the bow of the ship and two other cruisers just like it suffered frame damage. Several aircraft carriers sustained flight deck damage. The USS Bellow Wood had her elevator destroyed. The destroyer, the USS Samuel N. Moore, suffered major superstructure damage.
The escort carriers, Wyndham Bay and the USS Salmaoua, had part of their flight decks blown off by this typhoon that was bobbing Arthur Burry around in his little life raft. The tanker USS Millikoma suffered substantial topside damage. This typhoon destroyed 43 planes not counting the 33 airplanes that were swept overboard and plunged to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Typhoon indeed. The contrasts were stark You know while these large ships were getting their decks ripped off and their bows broken in half and their frames mangled, Arthur Bury was in his little rubber life raft.
Now Arthur had been trained for this. In training, my dad and Burry were taught to tie themselves into their rafts. To do this, they were supposed to save some of their parachute cord. So before the parachute got away, they were instructed to cut the cord and tie their bodies to the raft and they had to do that anyway or else that parachute would drag them all over the ocean. Fortunately, Burry had the presence of mind to tie his body to that raft.
He put the rope through his belt straps and then onto the raft so that he would have a tether close by hooked to his body. It was a good thing he did because those 50-foot waves and those 120 mile an hour winds would flip that raft over over and over. Okay so here's what the congressional record reads about this. Pacific Fleet headquarters Guam forced down in Japanese waters a Mustang pilot, Second Lieutenant Arthur Bury, Davenport, Iowa, rode out the full fury of a typhoon in his frail one-man rubber raft. His survival is one of the miracles of this war.
Bury, a husky lad of 21, had been on this tiny, bobbing raft for hours as the typhoon howled with unabated force. He clung desperately to his raft. Several times, he doesn't remember how many, he was washed off by the impact of the towering waves which swallowed his craft bouncing him around like a rubber ball but each time Burry managed to crawl back on board how he does not know you know one day a seagull landed on the raft, and Burry tells me that he was afraid to shoot the seagull with his .45 because he thought he might hit his foot. And near the end of the six days, he was babbling incoherently, talking about the impending rescue of his flyer comrades. He knew they would come.
He could hear them talking overhead. He called out to them. He could hear them. They were just over the horizon now, and he could hear them laughing and talking and singing. He's hallucinating.
They seem to be having a party. He said, I knew I could just hear them as plainly as I hear you, he told me. He insisted, he insisted they seem to be having such a good time And I remember I got mad because they didn't invite me to the party, but I was never really worried. I knew the boys would come and take me out of there. One of the men who picked him up, Hosking, I believe was his name, said that Burry's body was covered with sores.
His skin was badly lacerated and apparently from the constant rubbing against the rubber fabric of the raft and he was extremely sunburned. He was delirious and talking incoherently. Soon the voices grew louder and closer and then the submarine Trudda appeared while on rescue duty and rescue duty meant that there was a sub that would leave Guam and pass by Iwo Jima and head toward Japan looking for downed flyers and that's what the Trota was doing but they were seeking refuge from the storm by going deep to escape the turbulent waters because it was so it was so rough usually it was calm at 200 feet under the surface but not on this day. It was really rough, unusually murky and throwing the submarine around at 200 feet because of that storm. Because it was so rough, so deep, they decided to come up to the top and just see if there's any outside chance that it wouldn't be so rough on the surface and so even though the waves are still 50 feet the captain ordered the men to get up on the conning tower and looked for drowned airmen with their binoculars and it just so happened that when they came out of a trough and up on the peak of a wave, Burry's raft was on the crest of another wave at exactly the same moment and the man in that conning tower saw him.
So the sub immediately started for the place where they lost saw the saw the rubber raft and so when they approached the raft they threw him a rope and Burry cordially threw the rope back and he said my men have a destroyer coming on the way to pick me up he did this twice but the third time they just went in and got him and they picked him up 300 miles north of Iwo on a direct line to Osaka Well the submarine Trotter's crew members welcomed him into that sub and they would gain another family member and they treated him like family for decades after the war. The Trotter never sank any ships, never found herself in the right place at the right time for heroism. They did find themselves in the right place at the right time for Second Lieutenant Arthur Burry. Burry's rescue might have been one of the most important things that crew ever did during the war and they celebrate it every year. This should not be forgotten.
It speaks so clearly of the miracle working hand of God in time of storm. The odds of survival are almost nil, but God has a different plan. No matter how bad it gets, there are greater powers at work because God is the supreme governor of all powers, and He will, by the force of his own perfect and unstoppable will, bring glory to himself even when things look the darkest. Not only did the Trutta save Arthur Burry's life, but a newspaper clipping about the incident in his hometown had a remarkable effect years later. So immediately after Burry was rescued from the sub, the Truddah, the Davenport Democrat newspaper ran a story about the rescue and they put his picture in the paper.
The front page headline read Davenporter adrift at sea six days off Japan tells of his struggle to survive and this newspaper clipping contained a picture of Burry in uniform and it would start a chain of events that would reunite Burry with his long-lost family because the article contained a picture of him as well as a detailed story of his experience in that typhoon. Now let's go back many many years to when Burry is two and a half years old. His mother dies in an automobile accident from a drunk driver and the family fell on hard times. His father was not able to provide for the children. So under the advice of a number of professionals, Arthur Burry's father put all of the children into an orphanage to be adopted out.
And these children, ranging from nine months to 16 years old, were placed in an orphanage in Davenport, Iowa. A year later, Arthur, age three, and his two younger younger sisters left the orphanage to be adopted into good homes and the remaining five children stayed in the orphanage until they graduated from high school and then they moved to different places around the country. Well in the spring of 1948 two years after the end of the war one of Arthur's long-lost sisters who was 32 years old at the time, was cleaning out her attic. She was on a spring cleaning mission to throw old newspapers away, and she picked up a stack up in that attic and took it down to the street. And then she walked back up into the attic for another load and when she arrived back into that attic she looked down and saw a picture on the front page of the Davenport Democrat And there was that article with Arthur Burry's picture in uniform.
And she looked at that picture and said to herself, you know, that looks like my brother Hank, who was older than Burry. She said, could that be my baby brother Arthur? She felt that the that the man in that newspaper clipping looked too much like Hank and she determined to find out if it was indeed Arthur. So she quickly contacted the newspaper, ended up finding out that it was her long-lost brother. And she sent a letter to him, and he was living in Los Angeles, asking if he was indeed her brother.
And he was. The rescued pilot in the Democrat was her younger brother. This was an amazing, unintended, blessed result of Burry's plane failure and those six days he spent riding out one of the worst typhoons of the Pacific War. The kind providences of God often come in the form of some failure or quote, disaster, that sends us in a direction we never intended to go and looks horrible at the time. In this case an engine failure saved Arthur Burry's life and his his buddy Eddie Bates.
Stories like this remind us that we should reserve judgment about our trials and tribulations for another time. Fathers should come alongside their sons and help them not to prejudge their disasters. God knows what He's doing through all of our sufferings. These engine failures, these typhoons, these whatever are good examples of how blessings are often cleverly disguised by God as difficulties. We often misinterpret the events wrongly by prematurely declaring them disasters or evil or something like that and later on we see that God was working something far beyond our own imaginations.
It was a better plan. God orders our steps so that His glory would be revealed even when we might think that those situations were disasters. It reminds me of the story in John chapter 9 verses 1 through 3 which reads like this, Now as Jesus passed by, he saw a man born blind from birth and his disciples asked him saying rabbi who sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind and Jesus answered neither this man nor his parents sinned but that the works of God should be revealed in him." Jesus was teaching his disciples this same principle that they should not prejudge what looked to be disasters and he was saying to them this man's blindness is it was not a disaster at all that it was intended to bring forth the glory of God for such a moment as this that the healing powers of God Almighty would be displayed in his life. That was the reason for his blindness. It wasn't a disaster at all, but it was something that would bring about great blessing.
The Lord Jesus Christ was teaching his disciples in the same way that fathers should teach their disciples in their houses. That they should see what seemed to be disasters as grand theaters for the mighty works of God that are to be revealed in them. How can a father help his son to keep from prejudging disasters? Well, first, a father must guard his own heart to see that he is not overly presumptuous himself. He may be tempted to weigh in on a matter that he should leave for the judgment of God.
This is exactly why David cried out, Lord keep back your servant from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Often these presumptions have dominion over us and we become their slaves and then we make everyone under our care their slaves as well. The interpretation of the disaster may not even come in his lifetime, for God is working across a wide range of purposes and some things need to be left in the hands of God to discern. Presuming to know why is a study in futility, which is why Solomon said in Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verses 7 through 10, he said, surely oppression destroys a wise man's reason.
And a bribe debases his heart. The end of a thing is better than its beginning. The patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. Do not hasten in your spirit to be angry, for anger rests in the bosom of fools. Do not say, why were the former days better than these?
For you do not inquire wisely concerning this." Solomon brings front and center all of the temptations that men have to prejudge disasters in this passage of Scripture and how important it is for us to be patient to not judge the former days is better than the current and not to become angry over a situation He says that this kind of anger rests in the bosom of fools. Well, 60 years after the end of the war, I asked Lieutenant Arthur Bury what is the lesson from this life raft? And he quickly replied with two words that sum up everything that this disaster represents. He said, Scott, be thankful. And yes, it is for us to be thankful for all that a mighty and sovereign God delivers to us.
He says that he was always thankful to be rescued but he never dreamed that when his engine quit just how thankful he would be for all the things that happened as a result of that famous typhoon and that submarine rescue and that appearance on the front page of the Davenport Democrat. Psalm 18 verses 16 through 19 I think speak of this so beautifully. He sent from above. He took me. He drew me out of many waters.
He delivered me for my strong enemy, from those who hated me, for they were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my support. He also brought me out into a broad place. He delivered me because He delighted in me." This is the wisdom that comes from refraining from prejudging disasters. God promises that He will bring you out into a broad place in His own time and in His own way.
And so it is for us not to prejudge the disasters but to look for every signal of the glory of God in them and to make sure that we do not waste these disasters on our silly emotions, but that they would cause us to lift our hearts in praise to God and say to Him, Oh Lord, my times are in Your hand. Well, here's some questions that you might discuss together as a father and son for reflection and conversation. Maybe the first thing that you might do is to just discuss the unintended consequence of Arthur Burry's calamity at sea? Or talk about some of the disasters in your experience that ended up as blessings. Or what scripture is there to encourage you during your times of trial?
Is there a particular trial in your past that you prejudged? Is there a particular trial that you're in the midst of now that you are prejudging? Well as God has become our Father who instructs us as sons that we would trust him with all of our hearts so God gives fathers to sons and every son needs a father hear him say don't prejudge your disasters I believe that the most powerful way that a father teaches his son not to prejudge disasters is by teaching him Bible doctrine and specifically the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. Every son needs to hear his father say, Son, trust in the sovereign hand of God. There is this doctrine that needs to be thoroughly and carefully taught all the years of a boy's life to help him Have his wits about him when he's going through difficult times He needs to understand what job understood in job 42 to When he said I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
When a boy is going through dire straits and he will, he needs to have that deeply embedded in his heart and he needs to have a hundred illustrations of how true it is from the great men of God that we see in Holy Scripture. How should a man like Arthur Bury look back on his calamities from Iwo Jima? Or how should the boys who stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima look back on such a terrible situation? This is such a critical question for how a boy looks back on distressing situations makes all the difference in the world and this to me is one of the greatest issues that a father must get a grip on if he is gonna raise a son in any kind of a world. He has got to help his son know how to look back on monstrous situations.
He's got to help his son know how to interpret those situations. How do you help him interpret things when bad people show up and do bad things? You know, here's an example. The boys on Iwo Jima had to look back on a mind-numbing terror. There were heart-wrenching choices on those beaches and in every foxhole that that men occupied there were compromises that were forced upon them would they view their blit yeah let lit up what would be that what would be their view of the fanaticism of that enemy that they encountered on Iwo Jima?
What kinds of conclusions would they draw from such a barbaric experience? One of the ways that these men dealt with it is that they shut it up for 50 years and never spoke about it. Others grew bitter against the Japanese and some were never able to shake it. The stories like this are legendary. Anybody who knows a World War II veteran or anybody who's on Iwo Jima understands That this was one of the mighty challenges that these men faced when they came back home from the war.
When difficulties strike like this, the normal human reaction is to blame or to get bitter or to be filled with regret and see oneself as a victim. This happens because of the common temptations that accompany trials. And it's here where the devil may be able to storm the doors of our hearts, for the history of our lives is often littered by incomprehensible situations that sometimes include the evil actions of other people that we don't think we ever deserved. And so when our boys went ashore on Iwo Jima, they got a ferocious enemy. The protective fanaticism of the Japanese during World War II can be documented in a number of ways.
Here's one. We need to understand that no foreign army had set foot on Japanese soil for over 5, 000 years. And when Commodore Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay in 1853, he was very seriously and very carefully rebuffed. We also need to understand the Bushido Code, which is the way of the warrior, which demanded no survivors. We also need to understand the purpose of the battle for Iwo Jima from the Japanese perspective.
It was to scare away America from its march toward Japan. The Japanese knew that much more was at stake than that little fly speck of an island. And General Kuribayashi made his intentions plain. Here's what he said. He said, if American casualties are high enough, Washington will think twice before launching another invasion against Japanese territory.
Kuribayashi was wrong. Our boys were filled with foreboding going into that battle. And the Japanese were too. They knew that they were going to die. They were under a death sentence.
They were instructed that since they would not leave the island alive, that they had to take 10 American dead with them. The enemy was in a death grip and everyone knew it. Kuribayashi was there, 75 feet, underground in his bunker, writing letters to his family, instructing them for how they should live without him because he knew that his days were numbered. How do you prepare sons for situations with such ominous consequences that are felt by everyone? What can a father do to prepare a son when he feels the rising emotions like this, to do the right thing without freezing up in the midst of all of his trials.
Our troops knew about the internal conflicts that went with such devastating circumstances. According to Colonel Joseph Alexander, quote, victory was never in doubt. Its cost was. What was in doubt in our minds was whether there would be any of us left to dedicate our cemetery at the end or whether the last Marine would die knocking out the last Japanese gunner. How do you prepare sons for threats that are so large and evil is so powerful?
How do we respond in this world in which we are strangers in a strange land knowing that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one as John said and that the serpent of old the devil and Satan deceives the whole world as it says in Revelation 12 verse 9. How do you prepare sons to look back on difficult situations and see them through the eyes of wisdom? In short, preparing our sons to look back on difficulty begins with the communication of a doctrine, the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. And this doctrine is the bedrock, not only of a biblical philosophy of history but it is bedrock for the soul. A person's philosophy of history is of enormous significance.
It should be obvious to everyone that if you view history like a Marxist or a Hindu or a Christian, that there are some tremendous differences. In the same way, a soldier's view of history, or a Christian soldier's view of history, will have a dramatic influence on how he understands his battles and if he was on Iwo Jima, the battle for Iwo Jima. If he looks back on that battle or any battle as just a collection of chance events dictated by the whims and passions and the powers of men, he'll think one way about it. But if he looks back on it with an awareness of the orchestrating sovereign hand of God, he will come away with completely different interpretations and convictions and I might add emotions about it. One thing is certain, if you have a truly biblical understanding of history, the difficult stories will rise from being dead-end tragedies to be things that glorify Almighty God.
One thing is certain, if you maintain a truly biblical understanding in history deep within your heart, the disasters will rise from the dead and they will become paragons of the glory of God. Not only will they give you insight into the past, but they'll give you steadiness today and hope for tomorrow. There are hundreds of passages of Scripture which define the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. Here are some of the key verses that I believe sons need to understand if they're going to be even capable of interpreting the past correctly. Proverbs 21 1 makes it clear that God governs the hearts of kings and all in authority.
The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever He will. Psalm 33 verses 10 and 11 make it clear that God destroys or He modifies any plan He wishes. The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to naught. He frustrates the plans of the peoples.
The counsel of the Lord stands forever the thoughts of His heart to all generations. Lamentations Chapter 3 verses 37 through 38 make it clear that God even causes evil for His own purposes. Who has commanded and it came to pass unless the Lord has ordained it. Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and evil come? Amos 3 verse 6 says, Does evil befall a city unless the Lord has done it.
Daniel 4, 34 and 35 make it clear that God does what He does for His own purposes. It says, all the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him, what have you done? Genesis 50 verses 18 through 21 make it clear that God causes all things to work together for good even when they were meant for evil.
The text reads, And Joseph said to his brothers, Please come near to me. So they came near. Then he said, I am Joseph your brother whom you sold into Egypt. But now do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here. For God sent me before you to preserve life.
For these two years the famine has been in the land and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you who sent me here but God and he has made me a father to Pharaoh and Lord of all his house and a ruler throughout the land of Egypt Then his brothers also went and fell before his face, and they said, Behold, we are your servants. And Joseph said to them, Do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God? But as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.
Now therefore, do not be afraid. I will provide for you and your little ones. And he comforted them and spoke kindly to them." Deuteronomy 2, verse 30 makes it clear that God hardens the hearts of those He pleases. But Sihon, king of Cheshbon, would not let us pass through, for the Lord your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate that He might deliver him into your hand as it is this day. Exodus 20-20 makes it clear that God tests His people with trials.
And Moses said to the people, Do not fear, for God has come to test you, and that his fear may be before you so that you may not sin." Deuteronomy 20 verse 1 makes it clear that God goes with his people through the trials that he himself ordains. When you go out in battle against your enemies and see horses and chariots and people more numerous than you, do not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God is with you who brought you up from the land of Egypt." Now these statements may not conform to everyone's popular understanding of God, but they are what the Bible says of Him. And this is where we must begin in training our sons to view their disasters properly. For our vision of God is the foundation not only of our view of history, but our very souls. And that foundation will be the defining influence in a boy's life.
It's because it is founded in a vision of God. And that vision will affect every relationship that boy will ever have, and it will either make him wring his hands in worry or cause him to lift his hands to heaven and say, Lord, my times are in your hands. Fathers need to make several things clear to their sons as they prepare them to contemplate the past. First, he needs to make sure his son understands that the events of the past are not accidents. Second, that the events of the past are ordained by God for His glory.
Third, that the events of the past will work together for their good. The truth of Holy Scripture is that God will always give His children away through whatever dire straits He ordains. This was the understanding of history that filled the heart of Joseph, and this is the understanding of history that ought to fill the heart of every son. Fathers ought to teach their sons the doctrine of the sovereignty of God and say to them, my son, do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, Fear not. So how will you help your boy look back on the trials that he'll experience?
Well, if he's going to succeed, a father needs to help his son have this doctrine in order. And so a boy must know the God of the Bible, the true God, who knows the number of hairs on his head, his thoughts before he thinks them, his steps before he takes them. He should hear the words of God to Joshua. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous.
Do not be terrified or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." Well here are some questions you might ask one another to discuss this. First of all, how about this question? Explain the importance of your view of history. What are three key scripture references that help you understand the doctrine of the sovereignty of God? What do these scripture references teach about fear?
Explain the providential view of history that undergirds Psalm 23. Discuss the principle of a providential view of history and the difference that it makes in a person's life. And may it be said of us that God was our help and that we would be able to sing with all of our hearts all the days of our lives and that our sons and daughters after us would sing these songs with even greater vigor than we could sing them. O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast and our eternal home. Under the shadow of Thy throne, Thy saints have dwelt secure.
Sufficient is Thine arm alone, and our defense is sure. O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, be Thou our guard while troubles last and our eternal home. Thank you.