God is the only perfect parent. Our best attempts as parents to use the rod while remembering mercy are flawed by our own fleshly impulses. At times mercy gives way to excessive leniency, permissiveness, or passivity. Or we can gravitate toward the opposite extreme and "stir up" too much wrath and apply the rod too severely.
At the end of the psalm, we are reminded that God chose David - out of the sheepfolds - to shepherd His people Israel. Likewise, God has chosen us parents - as weak and frail as we may be - to shepherd the hearts of our children. Certainly David had his failures. Nevertheless, God Himself described David as a man after His own heart (Acts 13:22). "So he shepherded them according to the integrity of his heart, and guided them by the skillfullness of his hands" (Psalm 78:72).
May God grant me such character and competence, that my children "may set their hope in God and not forget the works of God but keep His commandments" (v. 7).
Pastor Matt, as a parent and as a child of good parenting I can relate to the Lord and the children of Israel. Today being a parent it is so much harder to parent our children than say 30 years ago, and then 30 years before that. While wickedness and evil have always prevailed, it is so much greater an influence in the lives of our children. I cannot imagine how many more influences Satan could use 10 to 30 years from now to blind our children. Because of this, in disciplining our children, sometimes it is hard to find that place we as parents need to be to meet out discipline to our children that we love and want to protect. How it must have hurt God to see the children of Israel behave in such a disgraceful fashion inspite of His goodness and patience with them. His patience is so great. I think we as parents today might not be able to be as patient for such a long time. But what is so great is that God says, "All things work together for good to them that love the Lord." So whether we discipline our children sometimes out of anger or love, or a mix of both at times, because we love the Lord, he will work it out for good, and the good of our children, in His time.
ReplyDeleteI wish my Mom told me how tough parenting was going to be before I became one. It is rewarding and heartbreaking at the same time. What is key I think is that if when we are parenting our children and do it in an ungoldly manner so as to anger our children that we confess that to our children so that Satan does not gain a foothold and destroy the communication between the child and parent. Although I know that our children are going to be angry when disciplined until they humble themselves, even when we are parenting according to God's word.
Mary Elloyan
God, in an act of mercy, caused me to start listening again to my parents, after a wayward period in my early 20's. I found out that it wasn't true that 'modern' times had passed them by. They pointed out for me things that I couldn't see:
ReplyDelete1) That the 'great' apartment that I was about to move into had just been burglarized through a second story window.
2) That the car with the great stereo I wanted to buy had a lousy motor.
3) That the non-Christian girl I was interested in being unequally yolked with did not truly love me.
4) The need to do my job professionally and reliably, whether it was a good day or bad.
5) My mother showed me what true faith in Christ was, from reading about Him only, to taking steps of faith because I truly trusted Him.
That's the short list.