Our Children Have Special Needs

We hear much in the media of the many children up and down our country who have special needs. These special needs are many and varied. They range from special medical needs to special psychological needs. If a child is to progress in any way these special needs have to be met with equally special treatments. These could be one-to-one teaching, having medical equipment at school, or other special facilities.
There are many people who spend a lot of their time raising funds to provide for these special needs. Leaflets are pushed through our doors urging us to give generously to help special needs children. Jumble sales are held, cakes are baked and sold, much time and effort is expended to make sure that these children have their special needs met.
These, I believe, are worthwhile activities. We need to care for those children who have special needs. To ignore these needs and to hope that they go away, or to put these children in with other children and expect them to get on, is obviously wrong.
As I have already mentioned these special needs are many and varied. However, I would like to add another special need to this list, a need that all of our children have. These are their special spiritual needs. “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it”.
Our children are sinners. By nature they are “dead in trespasses and sins”. They are “out of the way” – the way of God. Each one has a special spiritual need, which is to be taught about the Lord, His commandments and His salvation. They need to learn to glorify Him in everything they do.
Now, how should we deal with these special spiritual needs? Surely we must take the matter very seriously and expend all the effort we can to train them up in the ‘right way’.
Read these words of Moses spoken to the Israelites concerning the word of God:

“And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up”.

This passage from Deuteronomy indicates how diligent we must be in teaching the word of God to our children, “...speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up”. The passage also says, “Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes”
. I do not think I need to emphasise the importance this passage puts on the amount of time we should spend dealing with our children's and our own special spiritual needs. Like those children with physical or psychological needs, we should not put our children in an environment that would be unhelpful to those needs. So why do we entrust them to a state school system that doesn’t teach them that ‘right way’? In fact, in most cases, they will be taught the very opposite way.
Returning to the passage in Deuteronomy, it clearly teaches that the word of God must impact on all aspects of our lives. Why should this be any different for our children? All subjects in school cannot and should not be taught in a vacuum. Everything should be taught in the light of the Scriptures. This does not happen in your average school. This will only happen in either your home or a Christian school. Take heed to your own children’s special spiritual needs.