KNOW YOUR CHILD
Psalm 139:3 AMP
You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and you are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
When was the last time you read Psalm 139 and pondered the tremendous blessing of the truths written there? God knows you! God knows me! I don’t mean in a scary way, as in, O my gosh, God sees all my evil, all my ugly thoughts, all my bad stuff, and it embarrasses me, shames me and makes me want to hide!
No, I mean God gets me. God understands me deeply. God is intimately acquainted with how I think, process, and feel. God knows my likes and my dislikes, my capabilities, my strengths, my fears, my gifts, my talents, my calling, my ways of going about life. God understands my unique makeup, and what motivates me, what discourages me, what lifts me up, what brings me down. God knows the things I am passionate about and the things I could care less about. God has made an intense study of me and who I am. He has done the same thing with you. As David goes on to say in this Psalm, “Your understanding of me brings me wonder and strength!”
These truths have been an extraordinary encouragement to me as I’ve walked with God over the decades. It’s brought me tremendous comfort and encouragement knowing that God truly understands me. God shepherds us with emotional intelligence.
Dads, It is of utmost importance that you study each of your children, that you know them, that you understand what makes them tick. What are their capabilities, what are their interests, what is their unique emotional makeup, what motivates them, what demotivates them. We must possess the emotional intelligence to father them well. We must truly understand them as our child. We can’t just be “a bull in the china closet” sort of dad, forging ahead, confident of our own stupidity.
I have observed first hand over my many years of Pastoring, fathers who did real harm and damage to their child because they did not understand them. They did not parent them with godly, wise, emotional intelligence, and over time, it drove a wedge between the father and his child. Many of those kids became disillusioned with God and Christianity.
This was one of the great insights God gave me and helped me with in my fathering journey. I was not trying to make each child a mini-me. I was trying to help them be who they were created to be. Even now it has helped me tremendously seeing my adult children as their own unique person, with strengths, interests, emotions and callings from God, that are unique to their life. It has been a very special thing for me, even now as an older man, to discover in a deeper way some of the unique interests of my children, and the unique and special ways God is leading them and using them, as I have simply taken the time to carefully, attentively look, listen and understand and then go out of my way to encourage and support them in these God given interests and desires, sharing in the joy of their successes and achievements. I strive to know their unique challenges, and the unique trials and obstacles of their lives personally. I fervently pray for them every day in these matters. I regularly reach out to see how it is going for them in these matters. I strive with all my heart to know my kids well.
Notice the way God does things, then fall into line. Don’t fight the ways of God.
Eccl. 7:13
Never forget this principle. Observe how God parents his children. Then fall in line and do the same thing! Don’t fight and resist God’s ways! Cooperate with them, learn from them and imitate them.
Helping you become a Strong Disciple,
Because of Jesus,
Pastor Mark Darling
