Advent Devotionals
Advent Devotionals
When Pleasing Our Kids Becomes Idolatry
If Your Kids Were in Charge
The Bible tells us that Josiah became king at eight years old. It’s hard to imagine what kind of decisions he was making. What would you do if you were the most powerful person in the kingdom and you were still a kid?
If my kids were in charge of our family right now, we’d have ice cream or cookies at every meal. Actually, we’d have ice cream and cookies for every meal. We would eat a lot more pizza, and our vegetable intake would plummet. We’d see their friends all the time, but we would never do homework. Our video game and movie budget would skyrocket. There would be no more bedtime and no more alarm clocks. Chores would be a thing of the past. (Except for me. I’d still have dishes and laundry and other things to clean as they saw fit.) If my kids were in charge, there wouldn’t be any more rules about screens, devices, or phones. I’d spend our retirement savings and even go into debt so we could have a trampoline and a pool and more pets and a multitude of huge, elaborate, lavish LEGO sets.
What would your home life be like if your children were completely in charge? What would you have for dinner? How would your kids want to spend your money? What would your kids want to do every day?
Good News for Parents
Adam Griffin
This book provides parents with a gospel-centered perspective to navigate the challenges of parenting. With this hope, they can embrace their role with peace and confidence, trusting that Jesus is renewing both them and their children day by day.
If your kids were in charge of whether you read the Bible together as a family, would it ever happen? If your kids decided where you went to church, would good doctrine play a role? If your kids decided if you went to church, would you ever go? If your children set the ground rules for behavior, apologies, and reconciliation, how would etiquette shift in your home?
If your kids were in charge, how would they treat you differently? Would they honor you with their decisions, or would they find more ways for you to degrade yourself in order to honor them? If your children ruled your life, would they serve you or just expect to be served?
Kids for Kings
Children are wonderful. I love kids. But children make terrible gods and masters. When children are in charge, they make childish decisions. Most kids would use authority tyrannically. Even the sweetest kids can become a bully if they’re given enough power. It’s rare to find a child who is adept at self-denial and selflessness. Being “childish” is usually associated with the opposite—indulgent and selfish preferences.
I’ve seen families operate as if the wishes of the child are the most important consideration for a parent. This is a form of idolatry. It’s rooted in something good, a blessing from God: children. But that love has grown out of control when pleasing children is more important than leading children. It’s a problem when gaining the affection of your kids is more important than glorifying God in how you lead your kids.
It’s also not a great way to develop resilience, maturity, and godliness in the next generation. If kids only do what they want to do and get whatever they want to get, what will form in them is not godliness but entitlement. If we conform to the wishes of our children, if we surrender our wisdom for the sake of a child’s opinion, we might delight them and even make our own lives temporarily easier, but we are not serving them best, and we are not discipling them. It will give our kids an honor that is only due to our God.
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Self-Control
Praise God that our kids should not become our masters! In Christ, our families have self-control, not kid-control.
The word “self-control” makes it sound like God might be saying, “We are our own masters!” However, that is not what the Spirit is cultivating in us. It’s way better than that. Truly. To become the masters ourselves would be no better than kids being in charge. The fruit of the Spirit is not the power to become masters over our own lives. What kind of freedom would it be if we were freed from one tyrant only to replace them with another? No. We are not our own masters either.
God gives you the strength to face temptations and leads you to choose what is good, even if it leads to a harder life. The gift of self-control is given to bless you. You don’t have to do the sinful things that seem right to you. In Christ, we throw off that sin that so easily entangles and pursue a better way to live—God’s way.
This goes back to the lie that Eve believed in the Garden of Eden. Eve thought that being like God, replacing God, would be better for her. She indulged her sinful desires and rejected God’s authority in her life. That did not emancipate her; it enslaved her to sin as her master. Any master other than God is an idol.
Self-control is the emancipating power of the Spirit that sets us free, not to master ourselves or be mastered by anything else but to be able to say we submit to the best master, Jesus. Self-control is sweet relief from being under the rule of anyone but Christ as King. It is the strength of God’s Spirit in us to refuse to obey the will of anyone else but God. In Christ, sin and our selfish desires are no longer our masters. Jesus alone is our King. What a sweet relief! If our heart desires sin, we don’t have to act on it; the Spirit gives us self-control. If even our love of delighting our children pressures us to wander from Christ, we don’t have to listen; the Spirit gives us self-control.
Self-control comes from two things. It’s a God-given desire to do what God desires, and it’s a God-given strength to honor God in what we do. It’s freedom from a desire to disobey God, and it’s freedom from the detriment that comes from dishonoring God with our lives.
You have one master, and he is the best.
Loving your kids does not mean you must be committed to obeying your kids. It means you will commit to leading your children into loving their God, no matter what it takes. Let’s lead a life and a family whose highest priority is the will and honor of God. Let's root out any temptation to replace him with ourselves or to replace him with the pleasure of any human being. It’s very difficult sometimes for us to notice when we have slipped into following other masters.
That’s why God describes it as a trap. He says that the “fear of man lays a snare.” (Prov. 29:25) A snare is a trap that is hidden. You fall into danger unknowingly. When we live our lives making decisions based on what we think will please the people around us, as if they were our masters, we step into danger. Living to keep our kids happy makes our life “easier.” It’s easier, and it’s dangerous.
Let’s lead a life and a family whose highest priority is the will and honor of God.
Jesus says that, “the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many” (Matt. 7:13). And the writer of the proverbs reminds us that, “there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” (Prov. 14:12). When we conform to the godless whims of our children or seek their love over God’s, we will operate in a way that seems right, that is “normal” and common, but it will not lead to righteousness and holiness for our family.
Here is the good news. You do not have to surrender to the whims of any earthly master. Paul appeals—literally pleads with Christians—to “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:1). The fruit of the Spirit is self-control. Being led by the Spirit fosters incredible strength in you. You can row upstream. You can run uphill. You can parent differently, set free from the oppression of masters other than Christ.
We have an appetite for sin, but sin is not our master. We face a culture that does not drive us toward Christ, but our culture is not our master. We love our children, but kids are not our kings. We have a heart that is hostile toward the ways of God, but we are not our own master. The good news is that our master gives us the strength to follow him.
Adam Griffin is the author of Good News for Parents: How God Can Restore Our Joy and Relieve Our Burdens.
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