Removing Specks in Your Family
Two parenting cliffs you can fall off: Permissiveness and Legalism. Manage the tension between the two by leading out in your own repentance so your students can see grace for themselves.
A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.
Luke 6:40
Families are to make each individual better.
There are two cliffs on each side:
The cliff of permissiveness
The cliff of legalism
Neither are the way of Jesus.
Parents, your role isn’t to let them figure it out for themselves…nor is it to pluck every speck out of your child’s eye.
While ignoring the log in your own.
First, do you have a habit of your own repentance?
Repentance towards God.
Repentance towards others.
If your students never see you apologize to others (especially them), they’ll never think you have a practice of removing the log from your own eye.
If your students never see you praying and repenting to God, they’ll never think you rely on God for your forgiveness and salvation.
Your students don’t need a perfect parent, they need a parent desperate for Jesus to remove sin and transform.
And yet your student doesn’t need a permissive parent.
I read a study about the public’s feelings about sex among teens.
One graph stood out. Among 45-54 year old evangelicals, the percentage of those who thought sex among 14 to 16 years olds was always wrong was the lowest of any age group.
At the time students need a strong vision for God’s design, the parents abdicated their role as spiritual leader.
“Do not judge” does not mean to turn your back.
It means you lead towards a vision of Jesus that says he alone gives Life inside our soul. It means you lead out in repentance so that you don’t have any logs coming out of your eye. It means you give grace to your students because they will never be perfect. It means you don’t ignore the battles they face day-in, day-out.
It means you don’t try to clean up every speck.
It means you lead them to Jesus who died so every speck is removed by him.