Raising kids is hard work, right? The challenges are many; the rewards are distant, and half the people around you don’t get why you live the way you do.
Meantime, you’re slogging it out in the trenches, trying to retain your sanity and questioning whether your efforts make any difference.
May I encourage you?
The enemy of your soul wants you to believe that your parenting isn’t significant. He’s selling you a lie that your hard work is for nothing.
There’s a reason Satan wants you to give up and settle for mediocrity. There’s a reason he wants to steal your vision to raise wholehearted f0llowers of Jesus.
The devil knows that your faithfulness as a parent foils his plans for mankind.
After all, his work is to lie, steal, kill and destroy — and you are raising a generation whose destiny is to speak the truth and restore others back to God.
Contrary goals, indeed.
See, we belong to an upside-down kingdom which Jesus described as a little seed or a bit of leaven. In this kingdom, change happens incrementally from the inside out.
In this kingdom, it’s not the people who are a “big deal” that get the accolades.
No, it’s the ones who are faithful with what God has called them to do. It’s the ones who persevere in the midst of pressure, discouragement and ridicule.
It’s the ones who carry out the will of God, day by day.
It’s the exhausted dad who gets up from the couch for the umpteenth time to discipline a disobedient child, because her character development is more important than his comfort.
It’s the weary mom who gets up for the third time that night to pray away her toddler’s night terrors, because she wants him to learn to trust Jesus in all things.
“…with such sacrifices God is pleased.” — Hebrews 13:16
It’s the mom and dad who take time for their marriage, recognizing it as a sacred covenant and a picture of a bigger Love Story.
If this sounds like your life, good job.
Your steadfast obedience has a powerful influence on the culture around you.
At a recent conference, I had the privilege of hearing pediatrician, speaker and author Dr. Meg Meeker talk about the crazy direction our society is headed.
In trying to encourage her teen patients to avoid sex, Dr. Meg has faced serious backlash — from their parents, no less!
Why? Because today’s cultural paradigm — based on secular individualism — is that sexual “freedom” is an American right. So now we’ve even redefined marriage and family, opening up a troubling Pandora’s box.
If marriage is no longer a sacred covenant between a man and a woman, and it’s only about two people who love each other, Dr. Meg pointed out, then what’s to stop a bisexual person from living with two people, one of each gender, and raising a child together?
Or a transgender individual raising kids with several other adults of various orientations?
Here you are in the middle of a world gone mad, modeling family as God intended.
You pray over dinner. You read Bible stories. You show your children how to love others while refusing to compromise the truth.
You live out God’s will in a thousand simple, faithful actions, 24/7, 365.
Ever seen a thick cement sidewalk heaved and cracked from tree roots underneath it? That huge tree started out as a tiny seed — yet over time, it broke hardened stone to pieces.
Keep up the good work. You are planting seeds by the very way you live — gospel seeds that crack hearts of stone and bring transformation, one life at a time.
It doesn’t get more important than that.
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