A good friend of mine gave me one of the most memorable, provoking thoughts one Sunday morning. We had a potluck meal in the fellowship hall after our morning worship service and Bible class. My kids were probably 2 and 4, and there must have been a full moon that weekend, because my kids were on some serious candy crack that day. I was wrestling with one in my arms while the other one spilled her drink. My friend came and helped me clean up the drink. I complained, “Please tell me this is a phase.” She encouraged me in a way I didn’t expect. “Of course. This is one phase. There are many more to come. At least when you’re ready to go to sleep tonight, you know where your kids are.” See, the phase my friend was in was that she had a sixteen year old driving here and there and everywhere and a college sophomore several hours away.
God has sprinkled so many blessings into our lives to make every phase interesting. We are blessed with a phase at home being completely dependent on our parents and building a relationship with them. A phase meeting new friends when we start Kindergarten. A phase when we start college and become dependent apart from our parents; so on and so forth.
We are given so much advice on parenting from the Father of Blessings like Ephesians 6:4 when He inspires us through Paul to bring our kids up in the ways of the Lord, or through Solomon when he wrote in Proverbs 22:6 that if you bring your child up with the right values and the right perspective, he will never depart from them.
The Bible never tells us that parenting is easy. But even in parenting we must follow the example that God gave us as the most loving Father. We often confuse the world’s love with the love Jesus showed us. The world’s love is about acceptance for what you want in this life, but God’s love is about instruction and discipline for the life to come. Isn’t that how we should raise our children?
Proverbs 13:24 says, “Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.” I’ve been at home all day watching Peyton planking on the floor because he’s “bored and has nothing to do.” He got in trouble this week and has lost all of his electronics. He’s driving me nuts. The easy thing to do would be to just give him what he wants. He’d leave me alone, get off my floor, show me the utmost gratitude, and I’d get to see that adorable freckled smiley face. But, the right thing to do is stand firm with the consequence. I’m raising a future driver, a future husband, a future coworker, a future elder…I’ve got eighteen years to teach him to find hope in the instruction and wisdom that comes from the Lord.
The hardest part about parenting is something I had not thought about until recently. You know, God created us with free will (Matthew 22:37). He calls free will a gift because the benefits of choosing to love Him versus forcing us to love Him are incredible. But what a gut wrenching feeling! Jeremiah 1:5 says that God loved us before we were even formed in the womb. He surrounds us on the daily, protecting us from evil and harm (Psalm 121:1), yet He still allows us to make our own choices. Unlike us, He does have the power to control our actions; however, He gave us the power of free will instead.
This is part of His parenting example. We’ve got to allow our children to have free will when they reach adulthood. It’s part of the plan. When they are married, they must no longer call you for everything-their husband/wife takes precedent (Genesis 2:24). They must establish faith on their own, separate and apart from the faith of their youth group, preacher, or parents (Romans 14:12). We have eighteen years to show our children why God is the foundation of our life. They need to see our love and service to our neighbor. They need to hear us talk about our temptations and how God brings us through them. If they don’t see the goodness of God in your life, why would they ever want Him as a part of theirs?
There’s a reason many dads cry walking their daughters down an aisle. It’s hard giving your girl away to her next phase of life, but it’s a part of God’s plan. His plans are always perfect. We can’t control “the way our child will go,” but we can control the example we set for them in the time they live under our roof. And always pray for them! (Notice that praying and worrying are two different things.)
When a baby bird learns to fly, the momma bird has prepared him as much as she can, but ultimately, the flying is up to the baby bird, himself. Be comforted by Matthew 6:26, “Look at the birds of the air for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” Follow His example of taking the hard road instead of the easy road in every phase (Matthew 7:13-14), and you will be blessed.
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