As a parent, I have the privilege and honour of shepherding my children – a daunting task made possible only by God’s finished work at the cross and the continual surrender of my will to His. As a parent, I have probably given more advice to my children than to any other person. Honestly, sometimes those advice can be so out of sync with God’s Word, even though they are given with the best of intentions.
It is not easy to see your loved ones suffer, especially when they are your own children. The following story is one where I, as a parent, tried to intervene for my child, only to realise that I was on the path to messing it all up.
My older daughter has been learning a certain sport for quite some time now. This sport requires rigorous fitness routines and drills. It is intensive but very important to master this particular sport. Every time I would see my daughter doing her exercises with pain and suffering, my heart would break just a little more. So I decided to throw in my golden piece of advice. I told her that it was okay to cut corners during her drills when the coach was not looking. I encouraged her to cheat, be a little sneaky when she got tired. This past week I felt the Spirit of God reveal my folly in this advice and I was deeply convicted.
The first question that came to my mind was – what kind of foundation am I laying in my children’s lives? Am I already teaching them that it is okay to get away with some things when no one is looking? In this case, to cut corners while the coach was not looking. It made me ponder long and hard the spiritual implications of what I was teaching – that it is okay to sin when no one is looking. This was no longer about our physical bodies aching. This was about our relationship with God and how I was steering my child away from God, even if it was borne out of my ignorance.
Learning from my mistake made me think through certain questions – what foundations have we allowed to take root in our lives that now need to be uprooted? Which areas of our lives have become immune to the voice of God and spiritually dull?
So often we take our cue from the world around us, even though we profess proudly that we are followers of Christ. If we were to pause and reflect regularly, we might discover certain areas where we have allowed the “little foxes that spoil the vineyards” (Song of Solomon 2:15). The Christian life is one where we are constantly being made new in the image of the Creator (Colossians 3:10).
We need no longer be stuck in our old ways because we are now a new creation because of the Spirit of God that dwells within us. Let us humbly come before God and allow the Spirit that searches everything (1 Corinthians 2:10) to reveal our hearts. Let us be aware of the little leaven that has the capacity to spread through the whole dough.
Once we become aware of what the Spirit reveals, let us repent before God and pray for Him to help us live in submission under His good, pleasing and perfect will (Romans 12:1–2).
Going back to my story, I felt the need to seek forgiveness both from God and my daughter. We had an amazing discussion about how we can allow God to permeate every moment of our lives. In the end, my daughter sweetly confessed that she had been struggling to follow my advice as it just didn’t sit well with her. Praise God!
Contributed by Lal Zadeng Changkija
Lal, a servant of Christ, makes her home in Delhi with her husband and their two delightful daughters.
Nice Article