Parenting is about who we are as a person in the first place. It is learning about our flaws, needs, growth, and potentials. It is about our concern, as parents, of our own sinful behavior and how we’re going to make it right.
The apostle Paul has this to say for parents in Colossians chapter three, verse twenty-one: “Do not stir up your children, lest they become discouraged.” Simply put, we should not sin against our children but, instead, treat them with as much kindness and respect as we treat any fellow adult in our lives.
We should be exemplifying from such a perspective that it is easier for them to see love, hope, and inspiration that would move them to action. So that when they emulate us, we’re able to allow God’s work in us through parenting.
Parenting isn’t just merely the bringing up of children to become independent and competent adults, but is something more than that. It is, for one thing, about guiding the children and to lay the foundation by which they would always desire to fully seek God as their father. A parent, therefore, should become a source from which he or she no longer is the man or woman who live in his or her own person, but Christ who lives in him or her.
We should be demonstrating to our children that God’s principle work best for us in such a way that would convince them that God’s laws are worthwhile, and that the divine principles we’re teaching them are for their own good.
God’s work must truly be our own. If we could demonstrate to our children that God’s way work for us, we’re sending them a message that they, too, could accomplish extraordinary things when they learn to cooperate with the grace of God. We must turn their hearts to their true Father in heaven—the Almighty God.
As He Grows Up: A Memoir 