My dear child in the Lord,
I have been given the duty of guarding you in the faith and supporting your growth in Christ. You have many good people around you to lead you as a child of God: your parents, your pastor, and many good friends and relatives. Listen to your parents. Listen to your pastor. Most importantly, listen to Jesus Christ.
That’s really all I’m writing to tell you. Listen to Christ. The rest of these pages are just more complicated ways of saying that. Any teaching or support I could pass on to you will always come down to that. But sometimes it helps, to show how the more complicated things we struggle with in our lives are actually very simple when you see what they really mean.
Some of what I am writing here for you won’t seem very interesting when you first read it. Some of it might seem overly-complicated at the time. But there is a possibility that, one day, as you grow older, some of those complicated things might become more useful.
You see, I am not really writing these pages to teach you the same things that your pastor or parents will teach you. Well, I am—in that I know they’ll be teaching you to listen to Christ too. You should trust them to teach you the main things you need to know. But the point of what I want to pass down to you here is some of the ways those main things fit into the nooks and crannies of daily life. I want to share with you the things that I myself hadn’t learned when I was growing up, and which I wish I had.
As you grow in wisdom and stature, the world will continue to throw lots of weird and crooked things your way. Sometimes when that happens, you won’t be prepared with an answer or response. When that happens, first go to your pastors, and your parents, and your brothers and sisters in Christ. But I pray these words help prepare you for some of it too.
But no matter what challenges you face, the answer is always: “Listen to Christ!”
Your affectionate sponsor,
Bryan