Family Dedication (December 2019)
Last Sunday, we gave thanks to God for the wonderful joy of dedicating three families to the Lord and covenanted with one another to love and care for these families.
The three familes are: (L-R) Donald and Emily with baby Edward (almost 4 months old), Rachel and Jing Ren with baby Elliot (3.5 months old), and Jonathan and Kiyoko with baby Kazumi (7 months old).
Pastor Eugene clarified that family dedication is not baptism, but a wonderful opportunity for parents and all of us as a body of Christ to commit to discipling these parents and their children whom God has entrusted to our care. Referring to Psalm 145:1-4 where David says, “I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts."
Pastor Eugene reminded us that we have this shared responsibilty to commend the glories of God to the coming generation, so that these children will come to know the same God whom we know and love, and in turn love and worship Him.
This was followed by the parents making the following commitments:
We commit to wholeheartedly glorify God, to trust in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His finished work on our behalf, and to depend on the power of His Holy Spirit.
We commit to sacrificially love each other so that our marriages faithfully reflect the love of Christ for His Bride, the church.
We commit to love God’s church: to invest ourselves in building Christ-centred relationships in this community, so that our children can also be discipled by others in this family of faith.
We commit to raise our children with godly affection instruction and discipline. As God has entrusted to us the responsibility for discipling them, we will endeavour, with God’s help, to teach our children the Good News of Jesus Christ and what it means to live by faith in Him.
The GBC family in turn made the following commitments to these families and the Lord:
We, as fellow members of Grace Baptist Church, commit to sacrificially love your families and reflect the grace of Jesus Christ by sharing our lives with you.
We commit to encourage you in Christ and to love these children that God has given you. We will endeavour to partner with you to raise these children in the faith and ways of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
We thank God for giving us the gift of life and the gift of children, "a heritage from the LORD". We pray that His grace will fill the lives of these parents daily so that daily they will reflect the grace of Jesus Christ to their children and through their lives, God will make Christ clear to these children. We also pray that we will come alongside these parents to encourage and help them, spiritually as well as practically, that we will be a source of strength and encouragement for these families. We pray that we will get to know these families and also reflect His ways to these children.</p>
At the end of the family dedication, each family was presented with a book entitled “Raising Kids in the Way of Grace” which we hope will give them some encouragement and support for their parenting journeys.