"My son, if your heart is wise, my own heart also will be glad"
The greatest joy for parents is that their children are wise; that they know how to make decisions that bring glory to God, blessing to others, and prosperity to themselves. Sometimes these triple-win choices are very difficult to discern. But when a parent watches their children work through options as they face a decision and come up with a decision that honors all three components of a good decision, it rejoices a parent’s heart exceedingly.
Too often parents feel the pain of watching their children make the selfish choice of doing only what the child wants or seeing their children make the better choice of including what would benefit others but not pushing all the way to wisdom and pleasing God as well as pleasing others and pleasing themselves. Wise children are a great joy.
When a parent watches a child make decisions that are beyond pure selfishness, then the parent knows that they have succeeded. If all the child does is make more sophisticated selfish choices, then the parent has failed for the baby born to them had a fully developed sin nature capable of selfishness to the core of their being. It is only in removing some measure of selfishness’ constant expression have parents succeeded. A test for good parenting: Do your children make choices that demonstrate an other’s or God-focus, or are they always overcome by their own inherent selfishness?
Until tomorrow,
Gil Stieglitz