How to Protect Our Kids From Us!
Was hanging out this morning in my favorite “spot” once again. It is a gorgeous morning in Buffalo… a beautiful city in the spring!
Anywho I started reading Proverbs 20 (I thought it was April 20 so i read the Pro 20… I know its the 21st… it was early) from The Message when I read verse 7 and was about to blow by it when something grabbed my attention…
God-loyal people, living honest lives, make it much easier for their children.
For those who have been tracking with us at Renovation you know we have talking about the Battle Within and how important our heart is. For most of our lives whether we are in “church” or outside of it we have spent a lot of time and effort modifying/monitoring our behavior… which is not all bad of course.
What we have discovered though is that Jesus told us that if we focused more of our attention on monitoring our hearts than our behavior would take care of itself. When the heart is right our behavior seems to be right.
One of things that is hard to see and experience is when our decisions that come from a self-centered – broken heart causes us undo heart-ache and pain… and how it complicates our lives and the lives of people who are counting on us…like our children.
Sin complicates… period!
So back to the statement that King Solomon makes… God loyal people…
So I took out a pen and paper and wrote out what a God-loyal person/parent would look like…
We would KNOW God which would lead to TRUSTING God which would lead to LOVING God which would then influence our HEART. Which then would influence our BEHAVIOR… what we said, what we did and what we thought.
The effect/outcome would be for good… our lives, marriages, home, work, friendships, money, time, our passions. Could I say this would be an abundant life?
A person/parent Un-loyal to God would look like…
We would NOT know God so we would not trust God, no love for God would then influence our hearts which would then influence our behavior.
The effect/outcome would be for bad… our lives, marriages, home, work, friendships, money, time, passions would all be influenced by a broken, self centered heart…
Which causes bad/sinful decisions that complicates (screws up) not only our lives but our children’s lives… our kids pay the price for our un-loyal hearts.
BUT…
If we are God-Loyal – our kids BENEFIT from our loyal hearts
Just something to think about…
