Paul Tripp has written another helpful piece on parenting
where he speaks to the issue of parents responding in inconvenience as a
result of living for our own "little kingdom."
He speaks clear to the heart and it is relevant not only for parents, but for all.
Here is an excerpt from the post. I have provided a link at the bottom. Read it in its entirety and you will be encouraged and convicted. ------------------------
The sin, weakness, rebellion,
or failure of your children is never an imposition on your parenting. It is
never an interruption. It is never a hassle. It is always grace. God
loves your children. He has put them in a family of faith, and in relentless
grace he will reveal their need to you again and again so that you can be his
tool of awareness, conviction, repentance, faith, and change. And because in
these moments he asks you to forsake your agenda for his, this opportunity of
grace is not just for your children, it’s for you as well.
But my problem is that there
are moments when I tend to love my little kingdom of one more than I love his.
So I’m impatient, discouraged, or irritated not because my children have broken
the laws of God’s kingdom, but the laws of mine. In my kingdom there shall be
no parenting on family vacation days, or when I am reading the paper on my
iPad, or after ten o’clock at night, or during a good meal, or . . . I could go
on. And when I’m angry about interruptions to my kingdom plan, there are four
things I tend to do.
1. I tend to turn a
God-given moment of ministry into a moment of anger.
2. I do this because I
have personalized what is not personal. (Before we left for the amusement
park that day, my children didn’t plot to drive me crazy in the parking lot.)
3. Because I have
personalized what is not personal, I am adversarial in my response. (It’s
not me acting for my children, but acting against them because they are in the
way of what I want.)
4. So I end up settling
for situational solutions that don’t really get to the heart of the
matter. (I bark and order, I instill guilt, I threaten a punishment and
walk away, and my children are utterly unchanged by the encounter.)
There is a better way. It
begins with praying that God would give you new eyes; eyes that are more
focused on his eternal work of grace than on your momentary plans for you. This
better way also includes seeking God for a flexible and willing heart, ready to
abandon your agenda for God’s greater plan. And it lives with the confidence
that God is in you, with you, and for you and will give you what you need so
that you can face, with courage and grace, the parenting moment that you didn’t
know was coming.
Paul Tripp is
a pastor, author, and international conference speaker.
You can read it in its entirety here.
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