In The Diner

I am sitting here writing a lesson on the Tribulation and listening to a mother down a few tables yell at correct her children. It reminds me that children and tribulation (not the Tribulation) have much in common.

I have always been an expert on raising children. Well, that is, until two years ago when my own son was born. (Here he is with the remnants of his first piece of his Thomas the Tank Engine birthday cake on his lips.)

I have listened to parents correct children for years, and have been convinced that many times, parents correct children out of their own frustration rather than out of a desire to raise up their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Then I hear myself do it, and am even more convinced that I often do it out of frustration because I am inconvenienced. Certainly he is wrong in disobedience. But when I allow my own frustration to rule correction, I am also wrong.

As parents, perhaps our tempers too easily flare. Our voices too easily raise. We are upset, not because the child is living in gross open sin, but because their shenanigans inconvenience us. When we correct people (whether children or those whom the Lord has committed to us for ministry and discipleship) out of our own frustration, we have ceased to make disciples of Christ. We have simply started making our own disciples--people who do not inconvenience us or bring shame to us, rather than making disciples of Christ--people who do not inconvenience him, his gospel, or bring shame to his name.

Disciplining our children must be viewed as a disciple making opportunity, an opportunity to teach them what pleases God and what does not. While we cannot be sure of their spiritual state, we can take seriously the need to teach them the ways of the Lord.

The job of a parent is not to raise decent, upstanding citizens of an earthly kingdom. It is raise children whose citizenship is in another world, who are disciples of the King, and who live like it in this world.