Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Devotional Snapshot 49 - Parenting

"As you bring (up your child), carefully teaching him the ways of the Christian life, one day he reaches a point of maturity where the Holy Spirit does the work in his heart and he sees himself as a sinner before God with a sinful nature that cannot please God." The Christian Home Shirley Rice

Lamentations 3:22, 23 "Through the LORD's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness."

Lord, You answered my prayer for a "rich in thought and conversation" time with our son. He has graduated Bible college. He has more knowledge about You. He understands a little more of Your love and mercy. He admires the Christian man of passion and has goals to be ever learning.

We sat in a coffee shop, downtown Omaha, with live jazz and listened to his dreams. What a man dreams tells a lot of the man. What he has become is due to Your grace and mercy and I thank You again. He had his struggles with clinging heavy sins as any young boy, young teen would have. As I have. As all of humanity has. But these verses remind me again of the safe place to come when at the end of the day I look in the mirror and see sin staring back at me or see it on those I love. "Through the LORD's mercies we are not consumed because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning." The goodness I see in my children is not due to my parenting it is due to You...only You....to Your mercy and Your compassion which will never fail!

Does that mean I am off the hook to live the Christian life before my children? Does that mean there are no consequences to my "too busy" life, my wrong priorities? Do I say "Oh well, it doesn't matter what I do."

"What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?" Romans 6:1,2

The answer is no! We must be authentic Christ lovers before our children. We must let them see our walk line up with our talk. If not, we may find them struggling longer and harder to get it right because we did not model it in our home.

And yet where we have failed...and we all fail as parents...the Lamentations verse is true. We are all under His grace and mercy and His compassions will not fail us or our children. Wonderful Savior!

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