To Delight in Our Children
Finding quiet moments in the day to write here are pretty much non-existent. I try to get my brain to focus and create amidst the chaos. Life is full. Life is beautiful. Some days are harder than others. Sometimes the weighty thoughts that befall us as parents are heavier than we thought we could bear. At the end of every day, I have learned to ask only two simple questions.
Did I love well?
Did I preach the gospel to myself and my family?
Grace falls. It fills in the gaps for us. I have been clinging to this verse for close to a decade...first as an untaught child and then as a parent.
I know, at the end of the day, the only good and beautiful things that can come from my children are a result of Christ. They are the result of the most precious whispers of the Holy Spirit, brought about by God the perfect Father. I rest sweetly in that. Its so easy to over think this whole thing. It's easy to fall into moral parenting that focuses more on action than heart. It's easy to lean too hard on pseudo grace and refuse discipline. My prayer is always that the Holy Spirit would illumine the hearts of our children to the gospel.
I have heard that the two things that children yearn for are stability through clear boundaries and to be delighted in. Consistency is an ever present prayer. I constantly ask God that I might delight in my family. May my girls feel cherished. These things are hard when attitudes are fully present. Justice and mercy only meet perfectly in Christ alone. I ask that He would let me be like Him and point them to him in every instance. It is easy to start seeing our children as their sin nature because we believe it to be our job to flesh those things out. The thing is that delighting in is always more productive that dwelling on. Does repentance need to come? Absolutely. We must remember that our identity is in Christ and not the sum of the mistakes made. Our failures are simple road maps toward the gospel of Jesus Christ. May we point our children home and delight in the image of our Maker in them.
I have been thinking about what a privilege it is to serve and pray at camp. The familiarity of it can sometimes make you lose the gravity of what you are dealing with. I sometimes think that is why we are confronted with spiritual warfare. It wakes us up when we would much more readily walk through life half asleep. Right now, we have the privilege of praying for the staff of one of the largest churches in the fourth largest city in the nation. What an impact they can have. May Jesus pour out His Holy Spirit on these leaders to share the gospel. May they be equipped, strengthened, and encouraged.
Pray us all well, friends. Love y'all.
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