The Secret to Successful Children

While I realize the title might seem a bit immodest at first glance, please don’t assume I’ve got all the answers.  Having just passed the day when we celebrate Fathers, I must admit that every father I have ever known has some deficiencies and many don’t have a clue when it comes to rearing successful children.  How, then, do children become wonderful, successful adults, as have my own children?  Some of it is luck, since they don’t come with specific instructions; some credit may certainly be due to the help from adults other than parents, like supportive grandparents or friends; but most of the credit goes to teaching children the two basic principles found in the heart of our Heavenly Father.  What are those two principles, you ask?  Ahh…THAT is the secret to successful children!

But God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.   Romans 5:8

If God is for us, who can ever be against us?   Since He did not spare even his own Son but gave Him up for us all, won’t He also give us everything else?   Romans 8:31-32

The first and greatest lesson our kids need to learn is that God loves them completely and will do anything for them.  His love for us is the picture of what we like to call “unconditional love” – that genuine, accepting, sacrificing love each of us WISHES we demonstrated to our children, but which usually devolves into the more traditional “if you do this for me, I’ll do this for you” kind of parenting.  God says (and we must echo this to our children) “I love you; I’ll provide for you; I’ll pay any price to see that your life is filled with blessing.”  And then He did it by offering Jesus to keep His promise.  Not because we’ve EARNED His love, but because He loves us completely.  How do we prove to our children we’re not just saying the words?  It’s not always easy, but stay the course.

And lest you find yourself feeling pretty good about expressing your love at this point, the Second Principle may be the most difficult for us to understand and pass along to our children, but it, too, is based on unconditional love.  It is this: Life is filled with choices and consequences. 

“…if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.  And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God…But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments…The Lord will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do…”   Deuteronomy 28:1-2; 15-20

The pages of Scripture are filled with decisions that create undesirable consequences.  Actions that produce pain and loss.  Proverbs overflows with lessons for parents who fail to allow painful outcomes when wrong decisions are made by their children.  Is it any big deal when your child fails to prepare a project and you step in and save them through your efforts?  Yes, it is.  While you might believe you’re fulfilling Principle One by sacrificing for them, you’re defying Principle Two by negating the consequences of their choices.

I’m confident that it’s not easy for God to watch a person self-destruct in life – to watch someone He loves deeply do everything wrong, even to the point of rejecting Him and spending eternity suffering because of it.  But the pain is supposed to act as a deterrent; the suffering is designed to cause a person to want something different.  Saving our kids from suffering the pain of consequences isn’t the same as patching and kissing their skinned knees.  The latter is kind and loving; the former is selfish and short-sighted.

As a parent, I was more consistent teaching Principle Two than always demonstrating my unconditional love.  But since both Principles are paired together somehow in the heart of our Omniscient, Loving God, it seems my children learned them both – not by luck, as I stated earlier, but because God is faithful.  I know that because He’s still teaching me.

Jacob