By His Grace

As I think about my children and what I want them to become one day, I desire for them to be people who LOVE the Lord with their entire being and share Him with each person they come in contact with. I desire for them to love others as Jesus did, be a reflection of Him at all costs.

But you see, the problem with that is: I am their mom. I love Jesus fully but not so fully.  I am an imperfect being who makes many mistakes so therefore my children will pick up my weaknesses as well as my strengths. They will live out the way my husband and I train them now. We have to train and discipline now with the future in mind. But we are flawed humans, so we MUST rely on the Father to do the ultimate work in their hearts and lives. I am only the tool that God allows to direct my children in the way they should go.

I do not desire for my children to be well behaved and responsible, but not have Jesus. I do not desire for them to marry the right person, have the perfect job, but not have Jesus. I want Him to be first and foremost in theirs lives.

Don't get me wrong, I want my children to have nice things, enjoy live, but more than that I want them to have Jesus because that is where true contentment is found.

So, my challenge today: Are you training your children with methods that create "behavior modification?" Meaning you do things that will change their behavior for a desired result. OR Are you training your children in a way that reaches the heart and leads them to Jesus? When we train the hearts of our children then, we will see true results. It is then that they realize they cannot live apart from Christ and will desire to follow Him completely.

The Clean Out and Disobedience

Friday we did not go anywhere. We had plans but one of my children decided that they were not going to obey me so we stayed home. I felt that it would only get worse if I did not really deal with it. I was a little frustrated because we were ready to go and this pops up, not to mention I was looking forward to the event. After a rough start we did have a really great day. For a while, I questioned myself about my decision, mostly because I WANTED to go and hated that "I" missed out. As the day went on, God really confirmed to me multiple times that I made the right decision. I knew that if I quickly walked out the door and shoved it under the rug she was going to act out once we got there as well. I had to DEAL with the issue at hand OR I could ignore for later and then forget to deal with it (and this often happens sadly to say).

 

So, this brings me to this post. Today turned into "clean out" day. I decided to clean out the fish bowl in my daughters room that was way overdue. When I did that I had to be careful that the rocks did not go down the disposal. As I was cleaning up some of the rocks with a papertowel I accidentaly pulled the rubber lining from the sink. When I did I was simply grossed out to say the least. It was super yucky, not to mention stinky to the core. For the record, I should have known this piece came out to clean but did not. So, I got clorox clean up and an old toothbrush and begun scrubbing the rubber lining and around the disposal. I had wondered why I could not get rid of the smell at times. I would pour different things down the drain and "clean" it, but obviously not good enough. Oh and to top it off: I forgot to put the rubber lining back in before starting the disposal and stuff came spewing out everywhere....YUCK!

 

And this leads to my next confession:

 

We have lived in this house for 7 years come December. We had to get a new refrigerator when we moved in. That being said, I should know my refrigerator really well, huh?!? Last week my son wanted an icecream that was on a stick. My husband gave him the ice cream and later could not figure out what he did with the stick. He said he assumed he ate it all. Neither one of us could find the stick anywhere and we were NOT convinced that he threw it away. After days of not knowing, we find it in the door of the refrigerator. He never finished the ice cream and it had melted. It was really sticky and gross. All of the bottles were sticky on the bottom, etc. So I clean that out to discover that that shelves on the door come out. I was shocked. That led to me cleaning ALL the shelves on the door. Then, it hit me: if these come out surely the shelves and drawers in the refrigerator do too. So I continued this gruesome journey until done. Now my refrigerator is spotless, for a night anyway. I have been cleaning that refrigerator out for 7 years wiping out shelves and drawers and never discovered that. I was frustrated at times that I could not get all the grime, but obviously not frustrated enough to figure out how to really clean it out.

 

I believe we are this way in our spiritual life sometimes. We clean the outside good so that others think we have it together. We can hold up the act for a while anyway. But when we deal with beahavior modification, we can't hold it together very long. It all comes spewing out just like my disposal did AND it was yucky. We have to get in there and "deal" with these heart issues or the yucky stuff in our lives will come spewing out whethere we like it or not. Why am I acting and doing the way I am doing? Why is my child acting this way? What's causing this behavior? Sometimes we don't know, but we can read the Word and allow God to "clean" us up from the inside-out. When I clean if it's cleaned on the outside, but messy on the inside I do not feel like it's really cleaned. In our lives, it's not really cleaned and pure if we can "act" clean and pure on the outside, but there's no change on the inside. God's Word is what transforms us, molds us, makes us.

 

It is so amazing because we only have to come to Him and surrender completely to Him. When we do this, He takes care of the rest. He did that for us on the cross. He went through all that for us to be FREE. Free from ourselves, the things that hold us captive.

 

Challenge: What is it I need to "deal" with? If I don't know, God knows. Ask Him to reveal it or simple clean you from the inside out. Don't know what to do with your child? Take them to the Word and prayer. That is the only thing that got our day shifted. Without it, our day would have continued downward.

Psalm 119:9 says, "How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your Word."

In a contaminated world, we have to constantly take our children to the Word of God for real transformation. If you are having a hard time knowing where to start, check out the The Child Training Bible . It is an awesome resourse to get you started.

Discouraged

2 Corinthians 12:9 says, "But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ's power may rest in me."

 

A little background on this passage: Paul had a thorn in his flesh. His thorn was a messenger from Satan sent to torment him. Paul pleaded with the Lord to remove the thorn. Although God did not remove Paul's physical affliction, He promised to demonstrate His power in Paul.

 

I want to point out a few things here:

 

1. "My grace is sufficient for you."

Grace is unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification.

Sufficient means enough to meet the needs of a situation.

 

This means that God's "divine assistance" is enough to meet the needs of my situation.

 

2. "For my power is made perfect in weakness."

God's power is perfect or without defect when I am weak.

 

3. "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ's power may rest in me."

Boast means to "the act or an instance of boasting:brag." How many times do we hear people "brag" about their weakness? Not so much! Maybe it's time we start so that Christ can do His perfect work through us!

 

So many times, we get discouraged because we cannot make something happen the way we want it to happen, but Paul is saying it is a good thing to be weak. When we are weak, God's power is made perfect. We are better to be weak and relying on God and His PERFECT power than ourselves.

 

As a parent we have SO many decisions to make from what to eat for dinner to discipline that it is easy to get discouraged when we do not see immediate change. We have to rely on God and His perfect power to step in and do it's work. We cannot do this alone. If we want to see lasting change, we have to rely on God to transform our hearts and our children's hearts' from the inside-out.

 

 

 

 

 

Final Thoughts on Anger

It is amazing how there are so many opportunities to get angry with our children. BUT the more time I spend in God's Word, the more peace He creates within me. The more peace He creates within me, the more peace my children tend to have. So, I must be a in the Word allowing Him to work through me!

 Does that mean that I never have trouble keeping my tone lower and speaking with gentleness (Proverbs 15:1)? From being quick tempered and displaying folly (Proverbs 14:29)? No, but that just means that I have God working through me. Colossians 2:10 says that "I have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority." So Christs' power in me can help me to overcome these things that try to consume me and lead me to tear down my children and stop them from being all that God created them to be.

One final thought, "It always protects. always trust, always hopes, always perseveres." 1 Corinthians 13:7