Spiritual Parenting

Today’s Reading: 2 Kings 21; 2 Chronicles 33; John 4

In this current culture, I believe the biggest challenge is spiritual parenting. You cannot drive more than 10-15 minutes before you are overran by inappropriate posters, bumper stickers and even worse, profane people. Protecting our children and grandchildren from the onslaught of evil in this day and age is nothing short of a miraculous and powerful work of God’s Spirit. Throughout several chapters in this portion of scripture, we read of the rule of kings—some were good and some were evil. Many of them were young when they began ruling. In this portion, one of the longest ruling kings was Manasseh. He was very evil—he even had Isaiah sawed in two—a real nice guy. However, somewhere in the midst of his reign, after a period of suffering, he turns to the Lord. “And when he was in affliction, he besought the LORD his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, and he prayed unto him: and he was entreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that Jehovah was God.” (2 Chronicles 33:11-13) As you read through the book of 2 Chronicles, you see the good, bad and the ugly list of kings. Why did some of these kings do good and some evil? Anyone that has parented children in to adults can tell you this one thing—your kids will ultimately make their own decisions. Yes, it is true, sooner or later, they will decide what they will eat, what they will wear, who they will marry, where they will go to school or maybe that they do not even want to go to school. They will even decide on their own, if they want to follow Christ. It will be out of your hands. Pastor Rick realized from being a youth pastor early own in the ministry that you only have so long that you can tell your children what to do, then you must pray that the influence you have over them will be enough to guide them to the best decisions. I would marvel over Rick’s gentle but firm parenting skills—his ability to diffuse rebellion with wisdom. He would persuade (sometimes they even thought it was their great idea) to make better decisions. Above all, I believe that because we thirst for God, our children ultimately have that same thirst. “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6) They saw us praying, reading our Bibles, and dealing with pain and difficulties while not forsaking our faith. And yes, they saw us fail, but many times, when we were especially wise, they heard us repent and open up about the kinks in our amours. We laughed a lot together, made going to church more than once a week a family value, not to be debated, and they learned that prayer was a daily part of family life. We made room for them to openly discuss questions of faith and if we did not have answers, we helped them seek out the answers. We gave them room to make decisions and when they failed, we encouraged them to rethink the steps by which they arrived at the bad decision and helped them establish better patterns for next time. Above all, they knew that home was a safe place and that there would always be enough love to go around for every one, even the lost lamb. What was most important in our home was not how good we looked on the outside, but who we were on the inside because eventually that person will appear. As we saw the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives, we would celebrate and know that we were on the right path. We thanked God for His mercy and grace in parenting. In the end, each one of these kings had a decision to make, they all had seen both good and bad in previous family members who were also kings and ultimately their decision was theirs to make. May God rise up spiritual parents who have the courage and wisdom to rise up courageous and wise followers of Christ.

Blessings in Christ, Carol

Next Reading: Nahum 1-3; John 5