Your goal is gentle self control; model self discipline before you discipline your children.
Before discipline, ask this question:
Can I correct my child right now with gentle self-control?
If not, then wait until you can achieve the goal.
Yet understand this:
Of course you know these posts don't tell you EVERYTHING about how to raise godly children!
In fact, I'm not even saying that I've told you THE MOST IMPORTANT THING about how to raise godly children.
I can say this: Discipline is the foundation of a parent's job description.
It is the foundation, but not the supreme motivation.
Love is the supreme motivation, as it is written:
"Love never fails."
And as it is written again, "Love covers a multitude of sins."
- In other words, if you feel you've ever failed as a parent, today by love you may cover those failures.
- By love, if you can do nothing else, you can always succeed as a father or mother.
Hear the words of a fictional and factual father--from the father of Superman, and from my own father:
"You will make my strength your own. You will see my life through your eyes, as your life will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father. And the father, the son." Jor-El to Kal-El, from the movie "Superman Returns."
"Your children will love what you love and hate what you hate." Edward Howard, my father, told to me on Father's Day.
In the first three blogs I focused you on self-discipline as the foundation of discipline for your children; for you to model self-discipline. The reason is your ultimate motivation in discipline: IMITATION.
If you take nothing else from these blogs, understand this:
Your children come from you, and are becoming you.
- If you love them, you will not fail.
- Whatever you really love, they will also love.
- Whatever you are, they will become, or resist becoming for the rest of their lives.
I hope to write an eBook that deals in detail with raising godly children.
Until then, start with you; start now.
Love them, and model to them what to love.
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