God Has a Plan For Our Children

As I watch from a distance how some of my children are making a mess of their lives it breaks my heart.  In saying that I have some who are doing well (according to my standards) so my first question as guilt engulfs my heart, “where did I go wrong, I raised them all the same, same standards, same love, same God.

It’s tough being a parent at the best of times but for me what breaks my heart the most is having to stand on the sidelines and watch my kids make things hard for themselves. Now we all may have different interpretations on what that is.

It could be getting bad grades in school when you know they are better than that, smoking, quitting school, getting in trouble with the law, drugs, running with the wrong crowd, self harm, rebellion in general, running away from home, turning their cell phone off when they go out at night, stealing from you, constant lying, bad temper, drinking or bad relationships.

I am personally familiar with all of these things either in my life growing up or experiencing them second-hand through some of my own children.

We want to protect them, we want to save them, we don’t want to see them suffer and most of all we want them to find Jesus and have that same relationship that we have with Him.

So having to watch them, sometimes  from a distance, whether they are living at home as  a preteen, teenager or living away from home as a  young adult it can sometimes  be torture for us as parents.

Now some of you might not relate to this. Perhaps your children or child followed you in the ministry, stayed at church, stayed at school, resisted temptation or listened to your wise counsel.

You scratch your head wondering if I should give back my parenting license. Trust me if I had one I would have surrendered it long ago.

Kudos to all you parents who can’t relate but to those who can hang in there.

I know I have questioned myself over and over trying to figure where I went wrong, what could I have done better.

I had to go back into my youth and compare. My parents were loving and kind and they thought they were doing the right thing by me by sending me to Hebrew school when I was very young. I like most Jewish kids had my Bar Mitzvah when I was thirteen. A Jewish custom that brings a boy or girl into adult hood.

My first proclamation as a young man after my ceremony to manhood was that I was now old enough to make my own decisions. So I quit my “church” as my first official decision as a grown up at thirteen.

In the ten years following until I found Jesus at twenty three I experienced much of the above, quitting school, smoking, drugs, weird friends, wrong crowd, running away from home, lying, stealing, in trouble with the law etc. I was no stranger to finding my way off the straight and narrow.

Were my parent bad parents? No way. They were loving and kind and did the best with me which I will always be grateful.

It was my life and I was living my own personal story that I would one day tell to many. God had a special plan for me and an off the beaten path of  getting me into His  fold.

I was an honest to goodness sinner. After all, isn’t that why Jesus died on the cross? For us sinners?

“Yes Lord,  but not my children. I went through enough for all of them, they shouldn’t have to experience what I did.I wanted to protect them from all that, I didn’t want them to have to suffer from bad decisions, the bad things in life.

We have taught them about Jesus since they were little, we taught them to pray, we taught them to love, we taught them the best we could.”

But the fact of the matter is this, who are we to decide how God intends to bring them to Him? We don’t. Our job then turns to believing that in spite of  the hardship that some of our children inflict on themselves, it  is part of God’s plan for them.

We can’t live our lives for our children and we  shouldn’t live our  lives through our children. We have to learn to give them to God and trust the Lord for the outcome.

I will be the first to admit I made mistakes with my children that if I had a second chance and if I could I would them. But I can’t.

What I can do is give them up to God. Trust God that He knows what he is doing and that we should lean on what Timothy said “for this is good and acceptable in the sight of our Saviour; who will have all men be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:3-4 KJV)

That “all men” includes our children.

He has a plan for our children and that is the bottom line.