Today's Devotional
April 11, 2008
Subject: What A Great Parent
Deuteronomy 10:17 "For the LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward."
I really do get into "parenting." I like thinking about new approaches to relating to my children. Sometimes that also includes the 180 children that I have at school. Recently I had this idea about how I could motivate my daughters to clean up after their horses. Previously I complained ad nauseum about how "these are your horses and you don't clean their stalls, you don't feed them and you don't spend enough time with them, etc... I was stressing myself out more than I was having any effect on them. Then I realized, if I'm doing all of this work, I should be getting paid. Realizing that my daughters maintain a bank account with money made from allowance and good grades, I put out a new order stating the conditions for my cleaning and work with the horses accompanied by the prices for my services. Now I don't remind them to feed the horses because if they forget or simply don't do it, I earn money. There seems to be no more stress related to the horses and their care and the girls do much more.
God is the perfect parent because He provides the perfect motivation for us as His children. He does it without stressing and fuming and shouting and the beauty of it is, we can't pay Him off to get Him to "clean the stalls." He cleaned them for free. He did it out of love for us. Often we try to pay Him off with service, works and "being good," but none of that is necessary. He simply wants us to acknowledge that He "cleaned the stalls" one day on that old rugged cross.
Today think about your motivation as you try to get obedience from your children or your coworkers or others. Think about Christ and how He never seemed to be stressed when He wanted obedience. What a great "parent."
Carlen
