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“Is Your Home Filled with Grace?”
Categories: children, Christian life, family, grace, parentingMany homes operate from a basis of fear and performance, focusing on right knowledge and right behavior. If that's all we want from our kids (right knowledge and right behavior), perhaps a fear-based or performance-based system is what the doctor ordered.
Often I have discovered the most important thing to me when my kids are with me in public is that they behave correctly—that's my bottom line—because if they don't they might display what a horrible job I'm doing as a parent. If no one acts up in a major way, I chalk it up to success.
But a child can easily perform the right way while his heart remains bound by darkness.
When we think about it, don't we really want kids who desire to obey, who love us, and who demonstrates an inner strength of character which will govern them even as they leave the constant influence of our home's rules? There's the rub, as Shakespeare might say.
How does God parent? How does God deal with us, His sons and daughters? Does He not lead us with copious amounts of grace?
John 1.14 says the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and His glory was "full of grace and truth." Three verses later John compared Moses with Jesus: "For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." Jesus did not only embody truth but also grace. When we speak to one another, Paul instructs us to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4.14).
Does that sound like your home? Are you parenting from an attitude of grace and love? Introspectively, I look back and realize I often have not been. Many times I have spoken harshly with my children because they were not following my laws to the standard I'd like. The clothes they hang up in the closets are wonky. They don't fold my socks and...ahem...other things correctly before stuffing them in my drawer. They don't scrape the dishes well enough before putting them in the dishwasher, so we sometimes have to re-wash. They daydream when they're supposed to be doing their school work, and it takes SO MUCH LONGER than it should! They don't answer me back respectfully enough.
I'm not sure I speak the truth in love often enough. I'm not sure my speech is always "what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers" (Eph. 4.29).
As I think of my failings as a parent, I think about how God deals with me IN my failings. Does He speak harshly to me? Does He make my life miserable? Does He constantly remind me I'm a failure, or does He constantly encourage me to do better, assuring me that He still loves me, accepts me, and will not forsake me? The latter is the truth. If God deals with me with such grace, should I not then fill my own home with grace?
12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
