When my son Joabi was in year 7 at Kowhai Intermediate School in Auckland 2017, he came home after school one day and said, “you wouldn’t believe what happened today?” We asked what it was, and he proceeded to tell us his class had a session called ‘mindfulness’.
Mindfulness is a form of meditation that’s been used widely in New Zealand classrooms as a tool to manage, or rather to centre the emotional and physical awareness of students. It was sold to the Ministry of Education by a New Zealand organisation to improve the overall child-wellbeing-outcomes. In other words, it was sold as a classroom management tool. For ten minutes or so, the students sit quietly and listen to meditational music of various kinds. The root principle of mindfulness is based on eastern meditation, which is the emptying of your mind of any thought whatsoever.
Meditation isn’t bad: God calls us to meditate on his Word and Truth. Joshua told his people to “meditate on God’s law, day and night, and you’ll make your way prosperous, and you’ll have good success.” (Joshua 1:8). The Psalmist wrote, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly… But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.” (Psalm 1:1-2). Psalm 119:15, “I will meditate on your precepts (God’s law), and contemplate your ways.”
Eastern meditation is demonic, its foundation founded on Hinduism. How many other similar lies like this that you know of are in the public system, and our children are being subjected to in this country?
Matthew 12:35 says, “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.”
What says then of an empty mind? Jesus continues further down in Matthew 12, that when evil spirits find an empty ‘house’, they will dwell there.
We asked Joabi what he did. He said he asked his teacher if he could sit outside the classroom with his book during the session. He was granted permission, and he sat outside alone. We were so proud of him. We immediately sent an email to the teacher that we didn’t want Joabi to participate in the programme. The teacher was very respectful and understandable.
The next day Joabi came home and said, “Guess what happened today?” My anticipation was off the scale, but I pretended otherwise. He continued and said with a big grin, “I had a friend join me outside today with his book.”
It is a strategy of the enemy to attack God’s foundation of ‘family’ through our children.
On Friday 11 October, I attended 501 Conference in Auckland. The theme was “Overcoming Deportation”. I heard testimonies from numerous deportees mostly from Australia, who emigrated to Australia with their whole family when they were just a few years old. Somewhere along the line, they got into trouble with the law and were eventually incarcerated. On the day of their release, they were deported back to New Zealand with just the clothes on their back, leaving their family behind in Australia, their parents, siblings, spouse, children, and sometimes grandchildren.
The politics, justice, grace, forgiveness, inhumane, righteousness, compassion, and much more, many of you would be debating in the context of, on any one of those areas. Somewhere along the continuum, you would find a reasonable landing place as the basis of your perspective. But that’s not the point of this piece.
Most if not all the deportees that spoke at the conference had found Jesus on their return. I thank God for those who are Jesus’ hands and feet to these men and women for the Word of God has transformed them. The cycle of destruction is broken, and the Love of the Father, the salvation through the cross, has found residence in their hearts.
As I sat through the conference, Jesus’ words were quickened to my spirit, “a wise man who built his house on the rock, and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on the house: and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.” (Matthew 7:24-25)
As men, fathers, head of our families, our job is to build our house on the Word of God. So when the enemy presents its demonic, evil forces in a deceitful way, our children and our family’s foundation is solid, and they can fight back.
It doesn’t guarantee we’d be spared from any challenges in life, nor guarantee there won’t be any damages. But Jesus said, ‘if it is founded on the rock, it will not fall’.
It’s never too late to replace, rebuild, and deepen our foundation on The Rock – that is Jesus.
In His richest blessings
Frank Po Ching