Psalms 101:2 I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. O when wilt thou come unto me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.
The other day we were busy working and realized it had been several minutes since we had heard anything from Elianna. That’s almost never a good sign with an alert two-year old running around the house. After a quick search we realized that Elianna was in the bathroom with the door closed, a big no-no. We came in only to find that she had placed all of her bath toys in, sad to say, a forgotten-to-be-flushed toilet, last of which was her favorite stuffed Barney doll from a good friend in the States. That was an enjoyable clean-up. Needless to say, a little discipline was in order.
Why do we have to discipline our children? I mean really, who likes doing that? The truth is though, that if we don’t discipline our kids, they will never learn to obey us. And if they never learn to obey us, how will they ever learn to obey the Lord? In teaching them to obey authority, we are actually teaching them to obey the Lord.
But here’s the kicker. If we aren’t obeying the Lord like we should, no discipline will ever be effective enough on our children. Are we following after the Lord wholeheartedly all the time? Are we setting a good example? I wish we could say we have a squeaky clean record. What we have is a huge responsibility. And we have innocent eyes always watching, just waiting for the next opportunity to show the world what they’ve learned. The sad reality is that our kids don’t do what we tell them to do, they do what we do.
Young eyes are always watching, regardless of whether they are young physically or young spiritually. And we have a responsibility before the Lord to be a good example to them. Let’s ask the Lord to cleanse us and mature us so that we can be lights to our children, our brothers and sisters and all the world around us.