Last week, my son left our home for Parris Island and boot camp to begin service in the United States Marine Corps. From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, the Marines are an elite group of fighting heroes, and my wife and I are walking a little taller this week because of our son’s affiliation with the Devil Dawgs, a nifty little nickname if ever there was one.
But, beneath the surface, I’m also a little worried.
A small voice, tinged with a subtle note of anxiety, has whispered dark ideas into a corner of my heart and mind: Yes, he’s being trained to defend our country as part of an elite force second to none, but what if something happens to him?
Soldiers are grievously injured in training.
Soldiers prepare to take the fight to our enemies, but … sometimes the enemy gets the better of things. Sometimes, soldiers die in war or even while training for war.
Jake is the last of the four children to take wing from the Robinson nest. He’s 18, recently graduated from high school. Besides high school football and a few camping expeditions, what has fitted him for this grueling service?
If you have sent a son or daughter to military service or to a far-flung land as a missionary in long-term service of Christ’s gospel, you’re likely acquainted with the voice whispering similar sentiments.
What Am I Preaching to … Myself?
In his classic work Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures, Martyn Lloyd-Jones rightly says the most persuasive and pervasive preacher in our lives is us. We preach some message to ourselves constantly, and how we handle change and adversity hinges largely on the mental sermons we are preaching.
In the hours after we said goodbye for now to Jake and watched on Life 360 as the dot representing his USMC bus sink slowly southward from Charlotte toward Parris Island, I thought about MLJ’s words and tried to preach a biblical sermon to myself on letting go of my son in light of God’s sovereignty. Here are a few homilies that have made me feel better:
- God is meticulously sovereign.
His providence touches every molecule, atom, and subatomic particle — and, yes, even the cells that compose my children.
God created every atom and every child, and He has written the script for both in eternity past according to His infinitely wise purposes — purposes that, Job reminds us, cannot be thwarted by the machinations of drill instructors or foreign enemies (Job 42:2).
Such sovereignty covers Jake, his instructor, his fellow recruits and every second of these next 12 weeks on Parris Island. In other words, nothing can hinder God’s care for my son because God is sovereign. And no greater security can be found than that which exists in God and in His Son.
- My kids (and everyone else’s relatives) are immortal until God calls them home.
Psalm 139:16 says it all: “… in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” We speak of accidents, but from God’s perspective and according to His sovereign will, there are none. God has ordained the day of our birth and the day of our death. Until then, we may live without fear of an untimely end.
This tells me that boot camp will be a safe place for him — just as safe as my own house. When it is our day for God to call us home, the day written in His book of history, regardless of whether we are at home asleep, driving on the interstate, or rappelling from a helicopter, our time of homegoing is entirely in the hands of an all-wise God. I cannot ultimately protect him any better in my home than can his drill instructor at boot camp.
- Even the devil cannot touch my children without God’s permission.
Satan attacked Job, but only with God’s permission. In Job 1-2, God allows the devil to have his way with Job — to a degree. God sets the rules. Satan is God’s devil, a created being. God sets the rules. Similarly, Satan’s ability to attack my children is limited by the hand of a sovereign and good God. As Spurgeon put it so well, “All the hounds of affliction are muzzled until God sets them free.”
As Martin Luther put it, Satan is a lion on a leash, and God reins him in and gives him slack according to His kind purposes.
- I must live to worship God, not my children.
I’ve been a father for nearly 24 years and a husband for 31. It’s hard to imagine loving anything or anyone with such an intense love as I have for my two sons, my two daughters, and my wife. It’s easy to see how they could become an idol on the throne of my heart — a place rightly occupied by Christ alone.
Jesus’s words in Luke 14:25–26 have always hit me hard: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life he cannot be my disciple.” Is Jesus inviting us to hate our families? Of course not. But here’s what He is saying: “The deep love you have for your wife and children should almost be like hate compared to the love you have for me.” Wow. That’s hard to do. Yet, if I really love my wife and children, I will love Jesus more. I will serve my son better during his weeks in boot camp if I love Jesus supremely. Yet, that’s not easy because of the profundity of the love I have for my son, his siblings, and his mom.
Still, We Pray Without Ceasing
Indeed, God is meticulously sovereign, but He also uses means to accomplish His ends. One of those “ordinary means of grace” is prayer. The Lord uses our prayers (Acts 1:19) to accomplish His will — an infallible will of decree He has ordained before the foundation of the world.
You can rest assured our family will be praying many times a day, fervently, for ourselves and our soon-to-be Marine these next few weeks. You can pray for us, too, that we will rest in the grace of a good and sovereign God.
