Experiencing God at Home (14 page)

We talk with many discouraged parents who worry that they have grown too old or out-of-date to successfully relate to their teenage or adult children. Yet the truth is that, just as God seeks to grow up children, so He is fully prepared to bring parents to maturity as well. Before you give birth to your first child, God will be working in your life to prepare you for parenthood. It may be that one of the reasons God took twenty-five years to give Abraham his promised child was because it took that long to prepare Abraham to be the kind of parent required to raise a future patriarch.

As you welcome the first baby into your home, God may well be working on eradicating selfishness in you that could hinder you from being the caliber of parent he wants you to be. People are born with a natural tendency to be selfish. That has to be purged if we are going to raise our children well. Some people enter adulthood filled with anger, or with a sarcastic tongue, or a lazy streak. All of that has to go if we are going to be in a position to help our children experience God.

If God grants you more than one child, the Holy Spirit will seek to make whatever character adjustments are necessary in you to help you be successful. If you have both boys and girls, you will require additional fine-tuning! We grew up in a family with four boys and then one baby sister at the end of the line. Understandably, we were quite comfortable roughhousing and “trash talking” with our sons! But our daughters were another story! As men (and “manly men,” we might add), we both had to learn how to relate to our sweet little daughters. That involved additional growth on our part! Thankfully God, and our wives, helped us make the adjustments in our parenting so we could effectively raise our sweet daughters.

Conclusion

God
is
at work around you! And He is actively at work in your family. You must learn to recognize God’s activity whether it is in, through, or around your home. It is also critical that you quickly respond every time God chooses to do a fresh work in you as a parent. In the coming chapters we’ll look closely at what this looks like.

Questions for Reflection/Discussion

1. Where do you see God working in your family right now?

2. If you don’t recognize where God is working presently, why do you think that is?

3. What might you do to identify where God is at work in your family? Consider:

• Going away for a weekend with your spouse and praying and talking about where God is at work.
  
• Taking each of your children out for a meal and asking them probing questions that might reveal God’s activity in their lives.
  
• Taking time to pray in an extended way over each of your family members and asking the Holy Spirit to enlighten your understanding to His activity around them.
  

4. Could it be that something in your life is hindering God’s work in your family? If it is, take immediate action to remove the impediment.

Chapter 9

God Calls Us into a Love Relationship

Wind in My Face (An Example from Tom the Sea Captain)

My family tries to coordinate our schedules during the summer so we can take a week’s vacation together. This past summer we rented a small vacation house in Penticton, British Columbia, situated between two lakes. We enjoyed the beaches, floated down the canal between the lakes, visited the summer music festival, ate great food, and checked out an amazing farmer’s market spread across three city blocks. But the highlight was renting a small ski boat for tubing, something we had never done before. Each of the family members had their chance to ride in the water tube. Thumbs-up signal was for “go faster and crazier”; thumbs down signal was for “slow down, you are scaring me to death.” I enjoyed bouncing my teenage son around and seeing him laugh and scream as I pulled him back and forth across the wake behind the boat. I loved stopping in the middle of the lake just to jump in the warm water with my kids and watch them do flips off the side of the boat. But the enduring memory of that time was looking over at my youngest son, Conor, as we drove into the sunset, wind whipping his blond hair and a huge smile on his face as he sat looking out from the front of the boat. He turned around and said, “Dad, this is the best day of my whole life!” At that moment I felt like I had finally achieved a long-standing goal as a dad, which was to help my kids enjoy life and to appreciate being together as a family. We have to work hard to schedule those times now with busy college schedules, part-time jobs, sport camps, fund-raisers, and church activities, but it’s so worth it. Building a love relationship takes intentional and consistent effort. No one is better at that than God. His goal for us is to enjoy Him and to delight in being a part of His amazing family.

Mommy Help!

“Mom, I need help with my hair!”

“Dad, I need more contact lens solution.”

“Mom I need a sack lunch tomorrow.”

“Dad, I need a ride to school early for practise in the morning.”

“Mom, I need $20 for school photos.”

“Daddy, I need help to spread my jam on my peanut butter.”

“Mommy I need help to wipe my . . .”

It seems that every time we turn around, our children need something from us. To a certain extent it is nice to be needed. Good parents want to provide for their needs and to help them thrive. Every child has different kinds of needs:

1. Physical needs,
   such as a safe home environment, eating a balanced diet, proper clothing, adequate sleep, and safety from harm
   
2. Emotional needs,
   such as feeling wanted, a supportive family, freedom from manipulation and emotional abuse, and a stable/predictable home life
   
3. Spiritual needs,
   such as connecting with our Creator, fellowship with other Christians, support and encouragement in our faith, and good models of Christlikeness
   
4. Psychological needs,
   such as affirmation, laughter, acceptance, being told the truth, and a healthy home environment
   

The Ultimate Need

There is one particular need, however, that when met, addresses all the others: love. Perhaps that is why love is foundational to the two greatest commandments (Matt. 22:38–39). Out of His infinite love, God created us with a need for love. Significantly, of all the creatures God created, only humans have the capacity to return love to their Creator (unless, of course, we count puppies). This is part of what it means to be created in God’s image (Gen. 1:26).

God calls each member of your family into a love relationship with Himself. This is not something that can be forced on your kids, nor can we respond to His love
for
them. We can only create an environment for our kids to want to follow our God. Have you noticed that whether it is cars, jewelry, sports, books, classic movies, guns, crafts, flowers, vacation spots, or fast-food restaurants, children often like the same things their parents like? Richard has faithfully cheered for the Buffalo Sabres hockey team for more than forty years. They have never won the Stanley Cup (though he will be quick to tell you they
should>
have, several times). But guess what? Richard’s son Daniel is an avid fan too. They both get the NHL cable station simply so they can watch their beloved Sabres play on TV. Daniel has Sabres paraphernalia and devotes many hours to learning about their young players developing in their farm system and about the renovations to the players’ locker room. Why, you might ask? Is it a rare genetic brain disorder passed down from father to son? Well, maybe. But if the truth is told, Daniel loves the Buffalo Sabres because his
dad
does. More often than not, our children will grow to love what their parents
genuinely
care about. How sad when our offspring can enthusiastically chant all of our college football cheers and recite lyrics from our favorite songs and movies, but they show little interest in our God. When we enjoy God, love to be with His people, appreciate His blessings, and find great pleasure spending time with Him, our children notice. They know what we
really
care about.

Remember when Jesus met some of His disciples at the Sea of Galilee after He had been resurrected? He intended to use them to spread the gospel message across the world. But there was one thing He wanted to settle with Peter first. Three times Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love Me?” (John 21:15–17). Jesus knew that if Peter didn’t get his love relationship with Jesus settled first, nothing else in his life would matter. Every one of us has to honestly answer that same question.

Campfire Chat (An Example from Tom)

I was once asked to bring the devotional thoughts in the morning and the fireside chat in the evenings at a summer youth camp. I brought my son Conor with me so he could ride horses, run the ropes course, and practise some archery. During one of the fireside chats, I mentioned the importance of putting God first in our life. I said even though my wife and children meant everything to me, if I had to choose between my relationship with them and my relationship with God, I would choose God. On the way back to our car that night, Conor looked up at me with a quizzical look on his face and asked, “You would give up your
family
?” I thought for a moment and replied, “It’s not that I don’t dearly love my wife and children, but the Bible tells us to love God more than anything else in the world.” He said, “Oh, I know. And that’s the way it should be.”

Abraham had an opportunity to teach his son Isaac a similar lesson (Gen. 22:9–12). Isaac was the son of promise, the one through whom a nation was going to be built. He was also probably spoiled, the only son of older parents, and had everything he wanted. (After his parents waited twenty-five years for him, can you imagine the toys stockpiled in his nursery when he was born?) Once Isaac became a teenager, his father took him to the top of Mount Moriah and proved to God, and to his son, that nothing was more important to him than God. Isaac saw firsthand that his father’s relationship with God superseded everything else. Seeing his dad’s dedication propelled Isaac to make a similar commitment himself. On that historic day, Isaac learned far more from his father’s actions than from his words. What would your children say is the most important thing in your life? (They can tell, by the way.)

One of God’s harshest rebukes of His people was for abandoning Him for false gods. It grieves God when His children turn away from Him. One of the Ten Commandments specifically warns, “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exod. 20:3). God understood what it was like to have rebellious children! Listen to what God had to put up with from His people:

• “Therefore, fear the
  Lord
  and worship Him in sincerity and truth. Get rid of the gods your fathers worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and worship Yahweh.” (Josh. 24:14
  hcsb
  )
  
• “The Israelites did what was evil in the L
  ord
  ’s sight. They worshiped the Baals and abandoned the L
  ord
  , the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They went after other gods from the surrounding peoples and bowed down to them. They infuriated the L
  ord
  .” (Judg. 2:11–12
  hcsb)
  
• “When Solomon was old, his wives seduced him to follow other gods. He was not devoted to Yahweh his God, as his father David had been.” (1 Kings 11:4
  hcsb
  )
  
• “And in every single city of Judah he made high places to burn incense to other gods, and provoked to anger the L
  ord
  God of his fathers.” (2 Chron. 28:25)
  
• “I will pronounce My judgments against them for all the evil they did when they abandoned Me to burn incense to other gods and to worship the works of their own hands.” (Jer. 1:16
  hcsb
  )
  
• “They have returned to the sins of their ancestors who refused to obey My words and have followed other gods to worship them. The house of Israel and the house of Judah broke My covenant I made with their ancestors.” (Jer. 11:10
  hcsb
  )
  
• “But you have done more evil than all who were before you, for you have gone and made yourself other gods, and molded images to provoke Me to anger, and have cast Me behind your back.” (1 Kings 14:9)
  

The Israelites would have loudly protested that they still loved God. After all, they continued to observe the Sabbath. They celebrated religious holidays and donated offerings at the temple. Their schedules were filled with religious activity. But God saw their heart. He knew how they really felt about Him. He recognized that they had other priorities and loyalties than Him. God described Himself as “a jealous God” (Deut. 5:9). He will tolerate no rivals for our affection. He is dissatisfied with lip service or the occasional donation in the offering plate. He will settle for nothing short of us loving Him with
all
of our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30). We may attend church every Sunday. We may loudly proclaim our belief in Christian doctrines and uphold moral standards, but God knows where He stands in our priorities.

Disconcerting Questions (An Example from Tom)