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While sitting on a park bench with one of my adult children, as usual, we were philosophizing about life. But the words I heard, touched a deep conviction I have held my whole life.
“Mama, the thing that most opened my heart to God was watching the way and Daddy lived. You adventured by our side and pondered issues with us, saw beauty, chose to love, asked for forgiveness, learned and discussed theology while honoring our thoughts, celebrated sunrises, sunsets, served people, feasted—it was a whole life approach to a believing life.”
The way we live, the relationships we have, the values we hold, the character lived out in our lives, the way we honor all human beings, reflects what we really believe to be true about God. You cannot separate your life from your faith. Yet, it seems that many are supposed “Christians,” but what distinguishes those who claim this from those who know God and live out His reality, those who are disciples of Christ and His ways.
Much of what I was taught to believe as a young Christian has changed dramatically. I realize that much of what I was taught was prescriptive, (in a theological box) but not necessarily what I found to be true in the Bible.
Yet, when we ponder Christ, we learn so much about parenting and truth, and what it looks like to follow hard after His ays. God is the greatest Giver of love. He is a provider—look at nature; the garden of Eden with all its animals and colors and food crafted for our pleasure. He gave us ideals, as we see through scripture. He saw that we were lost and falling and ultimately, He came amongst us, giving up all the comforts and honors He held in heaven to serve, wash feet, feed, laugh with, and encourage His own precious disciples.
Our life with God is not measured in the rules or goals or laws that He gives. But, as the Author of these ideals, and bound up in His love and care for us, God uses truth to work on our hearts. He demonstrates Himself through Christ in a relationship with us as a servant, a husband for the bride of Christ, a friend of the common people with whom He broke bread.
He comes as the servant king, the one who lays down His life, the one who is humble and meek. As a good parent, God gives us wisdom and guidance so that our lives will be healthy, strong, protected.
So God becomes our pattern for parenting. He served and loved and sacrificed and gave of Himself, so that we would long to be holy out of our gratitude and reverence and love for He who provided us with everything. He called His disciples to serve, to love, to give, and to be holy. He did instruct them and train them, but it is no wonder they wanted to follow them to their deaths. He gave them true life, beauty, and love that filled their deepest needs and longings to live a purposeful life. He never asked his disciples to do what He had not first done himself. His life modeled His instruction and admonitions. He served and gave and then asked them to do the same.
And so after three years of intense friendship, when he said, "Greater love has no one than this, that a man lays down his life for his friend," they had heard it, seen if modeled, felt the benefit of it, seen the integrity of it in their teacher, and so they willingly embraced this high ideal.
Consequently, it is not in getting the rules right or in defining all of the rules and theology that will make our children want to serve God. It is in laying down our life for them, serving them, listening to them, loving who God made them within the context of a call to holiness, that will secure in them a desire to love God with all of their hearts. By seeing our love, they will more easily understand and receive God's love, as it will already be familiar to their hearts and brains.
How might you show your children the love of Christ anew, this weekend?
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