Are you delighting in your children?
Delighting in our kids can be easy when they’re behaved and excelling and well, delightful. We praise them and kiss them and post sweet pictures of special moments on social media. #Blessed.
But what about when they’re whining and fighting and angry and hurting? What does delighting in our children look like then?
The truth is, when we learn how to delight in our children in those moments too, the whole parenthood thing gets so beautiful.
Every child is a gift from God, and as parents we are entrusted with raising them up in the way they should go. So we take them to church and we teach them to pray and we make them mind their manners. But then they throw tantrums and fight others and fail classes and lie. That is when delighting in your children has to run deep, and that’s why it should start early. Start right now.
Delighting in your children is loving them fiercely in discipline and instruction.
“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Ephesians 6:4
This means we have to do the work to correct our children when they make a mistake. We must love them enough to show them the truth in all situations, especially in their sin. That doesn’t mean we condemn, provoke, or ridicule them when they fall down. No, it’s actually the opposite. The Love Verses say it best, so I’ll let them speak;
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
When there is sin in our child’s life, we have to meet them there with love and kindness and the truth of God’s word. We don’t say we are right and they are wrong, we bear the burden of sin together believing God is right there too.
As a mother of two small children I know I have many a trial yet to come. So I ask you to prepare with me now. Satan is after our children and our families and we shouldn’t just sit around and wait for him to show up.
I’m asking you to delight in your children today. Meet them where they are just as the Father meets us. Love them hard. Fight for them. Don’t let the sin of the world limit the joy that can be found in your family today.
Fit Grit & Grace 