LOVE

What must it have been like, to exist as God no less, and watch as your son was being beaten, mocked, abused, jeered at, hated, spat on, thrown away, tortured and then murdered? Yes murdered.

The definition: The unlawful, intentional killing of another human being with the intent to kill.

Unlawful, because, He broke no laws, he was and is sinless, he had to be, otherwise He would not have measured up to being a perfect sacrifice.

Intentional, obviously.

Killing, obviously.

Human being? Well he had to be, you can’t kill God, and He needed to die to be offered as a sacrifice and regain the authority for us as a man that Adam lost as a man when he disobeyed in the Garden.

I look at my son, when he sleeps, when he’s playing, crying, laughing, sitting, standing and every moment in between, and I am filled with love, it overpowers me, it permeates my being and drips from my pores. How did God watch as His Son was put to death, for a group of people that for the most part, would never truly appreciate the sacrifice? I shudder when my son bumps his head, what was God’s expression when Jesus was whipped, spat on and brutally tortured?

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It’s Not About Smacking! Part 2

Well, here we go, part 2.

I think its important to note that as much as our children will need grace from both God and ourselves, we will need grace from them. We are not perfect, we will get it wrong, sometimes horribly. But I believe that so long as the driving force behind your actions is a Godly love for you child, a deep desire to see them grow into all that God has planned and to not let anything get in the way of seeing Gods plan for their lives unfold before them, even if it is themselves, then we will be able to correct any miscalculations in our course as parents.

My Dad didn’t hit us as children, or at least I can’t remember, but he had a look that stopped us dead. The mere thought or warning of this look made us behave, well it made me behave, I can’t speak for my brother. But, even that is not enough as it is an external motivator. We need to train our children to be internally motivated to what is right, so that even when everything around them is saying do this or do that, their default setting, their point of reference is an internal compass informed by what they have learnt.
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It’s Not About Smacking! Part 1

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog entitled “Stop naffhousing the kids!” I had some questions regarding where is correction dealt with in the bible, so here we go.

I have been reading a book by Larry Tomczak called God, the Rod and your child’s bod, and I have been greatly encouraged and stretched and educated and, and and and…

I believe in smacking, but have been enlightened and encouraged by the fact that, it’s not really about smacking at all, it’s about biblical correction in the context of a loving relationship between parent and child. All who see and have experienced “smacking” and have become resentful, angry, disillusioned, frustrated, hurt, abused etc, must understand that their experience is not biblical correction but being at the receiving end of someone who had authority over you, expressing their idea of correction, not in love, but in hurt, retaliation and anger.

So, let’s get into it. I have taken many of the ideas below from Larry’s book, so get hold of one!

Remember this:

“IT’S BETTER TO BUILD CHILDREN THAN TO REPAIR MEN!”

L. Tomczak

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Missing you

Yesterday as I was taking part in my weekly ritual of Saturday afternoon sport, I felt God lay a sentence on my heart. His nudging urged me to come home early and see my own son.

The sentence was “I am missing you”. I believe God was announcing His position and our next move. Our Father is always present, with arms wide open waiting for us to take up our prodigal son calling and run back into his arms.

God is, always has been and always will be waiting for us to realize His love for us. He longs for us to lay down our busy lives at the alter of what truly matters. We complicate, we necessitate and then package, in triplicate, plans and ‘to do lists’ of things that only end up accomplishing one thing, rendering us too busy!

To busy for what? To busy to realize that we miss Him too.

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