I’d love to state that it is a privilege and an honour to be children of God, and this honour cannot be compared to anything in the world.
God has a way of getting his message to us each moment, so we don’t remain in the dark.
These lovely two years old twin girls have been thumb sucking since they were a few days old. It didn’t matter much to me at the time, but now I have made several efforts to stop them from thumb sucking, like putting some bitter herbs on the finger, using a plaster, putting the entire five fingers up in a sock, and securing it, but all proved abortive.
I observed that when they sucked their thumb, it moved all their attention to sucking and distracted them from other important things around their environment.
One of the nights, as I kept on taking their fingers out from their mouth while they slept, I became pissed, and in my mind, I reasoned, “can’t you girls just stay a few moments without thumb-sucking? Ahhh!!!”
At that point, I could feel God smile at me, and then He said these words to my hearing; “This is the same way I struggle with you daily on some habits which profits you nothing but you’d rather not let go.” And then He left me still with a smile. I felt it so strongly.
I knew those words were true to bits.
As parents, we are always looking to improve our children.
We instruct them and expect that they follow our instructions. We scold them, hoping that they become better people.
Sometimes we even struggle with them, but we neglect the instructions, reproof, and corrections from our own parent (God), maybe because we do not see Him with our physical eyes, but I know that those who are His children feel his presence and hear Him( John 10:4, 27).
The way we look out for our children is how our father looks out for us and constantly desires that we be better people. He gave us His word, we kept it aside, but He never stopped speaking.
He uses every means possible to keep us away from spiritual pica because they don’t profit us but rather take our attention away from the most important things we should pay attention to.
The question is, have we allowed God to work out perfection in us before we try it out in our children/wards?
Have we opened our arms to His reproof, discipline before we are fit to discipline our children/wards, or do we feel we’ve outgrown Him?
It’s the same parenting journey. If we want the best results from our children, then we must learn to be to God what we want our children to be to us.
Remember, He will not always strive!
