LONG-RANGE VIEW: See small, live small; see large, live large!

    Sunday morning worship. I was singing, praying as we worshipped. In my heart, however, I was concerned for my young teens Anna and Patrick. During that worship time I heard God’s truth come to me. It was both a rebuke and an assurance, like a two-sided coin: “I can do more with their sin than you can do with their perfect behavior.”

    I was struck by the clarity of that thought and by its immediate application in my life. We had raised our children with clear boundaries, teaching them to “obey with a good attitude.” Nevertheless, life itself was not fitting into such a neat package. They were growing and developing as their own persons and our control was lessening. We would see good fruit but also stuff we didn’t like in them. (It sounded a lot like ourselves, actually.)

    God was rebuking me that my faith and trust were not in Him but in my own ability to be a good parent. We were trying to control our kids. As we saw that we were gradually losing control, we didn’t like it. We were asking ourselves many questions:

Why are they developing these attitudes?
Why are we responding more sarcastically with them?
Why is there so little peace?
What are we doing wrong?
Why are they deliberately trying to frustrate us?

    It was in that context of life that God spoke to me during worship that He could do more with their sin than I could with their perfect behavior. He was saying to me that my kids would sin, that they were human. He was saying that He was the Redeemer: that where sin abounds, grace much more abounds. He was telling me to trust Him, to give my children to Him—again.

Proverbs 3:5

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;

    We talked about it, prayed about it, and gave our children to Him again. They were His children; we were stewards. He was Master, we were servants. We breathed deeply and let go.

    We stayed involved, prayed, cared, conversed, and continued to do the things parents do, but with a larger understanding. God was at work, even in our failures, even in their failures, even in our sin, even in their sin.


    In Matthew 13, Jesus tells the parable of the wheat and the tares (weeds). When it was discovered that the field that was sown with wheat was growing an inordinate amount of weeds, the servants asked, “Shall we pull up all the tares?” But the owner of the field said, “No.”  He knew that pulling up the tares would also destroy too many of the good plants. He counseled waiting until the harvest when all those things could be sorted out.

    That’s what He was saying to me that morning in worship. Sow the good seed and let it grow in contrast with the bad. Life will sort some things out. You will help them sort some things out. Others will step in by His grace and help them sort things out. And some things they will have to sort out with God’s help alone.
   
    God has done more with their sin than I could have done with their perfect behavior!

Trust Him.
He redeems for He is the Redeemer.