I know I needed this post from The Blazing Center this morning when crying kids seemed to be crawling out of the woodwork at 5am.
Behold, children are a heritage (gift) from the Lord…PS 127:3
I was recently talking to a friend about parenting and he said, “When my wife and I were walking through challenges with our teens, we found that it was more about us than them.” How profound! And I didn’t even need to travel to Tibet to hear this sage wisdom.
God gives us the gift of children for our joy. Oh how they delight our hearts when they’re cooing in the crib, beaming when they see us as if we were the morning sun rising upon them.
But God also gives us the gift of children for our sanctification.
When the baby is crying for her bottle at 5 a.m. it’s an opportunity to grow in grace. When Junior breaks your Ming Dynasty vase into a thousand shards, it’s a chance to seek God for patience. When your teenage lawyer points out every loophole in your reasoning as to why he can’t go to bed at 4 a.m. on school nights, and you’re tempted to anger, it’s a sanctification moment.
Our children can be wonderfully godly, yet because they are sinners, wonderfully disrespectful, deceptive, selfish, lazy, unresponsive and worldly (hey, sounds like me). Remember, when you’re child tempts you to anger or despair, it’s more about you than them. It’s about your sanctification. It’s an opportunity to grow more like Christ.
When our children sin, it can reveal our own sinful cravings for an easy life, our impatience, our self-righteousness, our cravings for control, our lack of trust in God, our self-sufficiency, our anger, our desires that others admire us, and so much more. Seeing these sins in ourselves can humble us and drive us to the Lord for grace, wisdom, and endurance, in the end making us more like Christ.
Tell your child today, “You are God’s gift to me. I’m so thankful for you.” And praise God that he loves you so much he gave you Junior so you won’t love your Ming Dynasty vase more than Jesus.