The Conviction to Parent

Parenting is incredibly convicting.

Seriously.

Try disobeying God in an area of your life while explaining the necessity of obedience to a child. It's doable, but it certainly isn't comfortable. I sat down with Isabella today, for what seems like the millionth time, to talk about obedience and what it means.

I feel like I'm on repeat sometimes as I listen to myself talk about the same thing over and over again...

But every time I have that discussion I am reminded of some area of my life that is not rightly aligned to God's standard for me as a Christian. I am convicted of just how guilty I am of disobeying my heavenly Father, even in the midst of discussion that is centered on the disobedience of a child toward her earthly father.

Discussions about

    obedience,

        patience,

            attitude,

                discipline,

                    consequences

then drive me to humbly and honestly consider my own relationship with God.

Discipline is then infinitely harder because I feel as though I am disciplining myself in some vicarious way. That's probably a skewed understanding of discipline, but I can't help thinking that sometimes God uses that conviction to lead me to repentance and thus draw me closer in relationship to Himself.

Just as I have found that conviction within me grows as I walk through life as a parent, so also is grace all the more real to me. I think this is because in spite of my frustration over yet another blunder on the part of my child, I constantly feel the overwhelming desire to extend grace and show mercy for her error based on the very grace and mercy which were shown to me at the cross. This doesn't mean that my wife and I don't discipline her, but it does mean that we are honest with her about the grace that we have experienced in Christ. She gets her fair share of spankings. But she also gets her fair share of second chances. We want her to know as she grows in understanding that discipline is both external and internal. It is the external ordering of our behavior to line up with God's standard for holiness. But, more importantly, it is the internal change of heart that comes with conviction of sin and repentance before a holy God. Without both, it's guilt at best and hypocrisy at worst.

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That you might know Christ,

Big

What characteristics of God do you take for granted?

As I was reading through Jeremiah this morning, I came across this verse and it just grabbed my attention.

"I will make him draw near, and he shall approach me, for who would dare of himself to approach me?" Jeremiah 30:21

A few observations.  

God is so undeservedly gracious to us. In addition to that, God makes Himself so accessible to us. He says in His Word that we may "with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." What a personal God we have!

This verse is also an incredible reminder of the fact that we can do nothing to earn our salvation - it is God who draws us to Himself. Honestly, if it depended on me coming to God or being "good enough," I would never come to God for salvation or be saved from my sin in the first place.  I'm entirely too selfish and prideful.

At the same time though, because of how easy it is to access our Father and how extravagant His grace is, I'm convicted of how small I tend to make God. Whether we're experiencing the mountain or enduring the valley, we tend to make much of our selves and our needs - it's all about us, right? As a result, we severely underestimate who God is and what God is capable of doing. It's not that we can actually limit God in reality, but it's almost like we put Him in this box so that we can understand Him better and then forget that God never fit into that box in the first place. No, not even the smallest facet of God can be contained in such a way!

Praise Him for His bigness! Praise Him for His fearful and awe-instilling size! Were our God able to be stuffed into a box, only to be pulled out when we had exhausted all other resources or wanted something from Him like some cosmic genie in a bottle, we would serve a small and incapable God indeed!

How glad it makes me to read this morning the words of Jeremiah and to be challenged to expand my understanding of the big-ness of God and to have an appropriate fear before Him. How convicting it is to me to think about how much I presume of God - as if I deserve anything other than the hell He saved me from.  I'm praying that today I live in the confidence of Christ's blood.  But I'm also praying that today I live with a healthy fear of the God I serve, who says to Jeremiah "who would dare of himself to approach Me?"