God's Huge Lesson

Yesterday was a REALLY rough morning at our home.  A power struggle ensued early and continued for a few hours between my oldest, his momma, and then his daddy.  It caused my husband to go to work quite later than normal.  It was one of those win and win decisively moments for my husband.  After a while I grew tired of the battle and wondered if we should even be fighting  it.  There comes a point in dealing with children that you have to ask if the goal is to really win the battle or to focus on showing your child who God is by grace and mercy.  Unfortunately, some times these things aren't clear or don't coincide because of our sinful nature in desiring to be right and be "the parent" or because we forget that we (the parents) are how our children learn who God is.

All while this struggle was going on I was questioning my abilities as a mom, fearing that my son would grow up to walk away from the LORD, reject his family, etc... all because of the struggle that was happening.  Ugly words were said - 6 year old words - wishing his family away - wanting to be in control, just fueling my worries even more.

Then God decided to show us all His grace in a perfect picture of His Son through ours!

After this power struggle had settled with my oldest, his brother decided to be defiantly disobedient.  Discipline would need to be delivered.  Immediately, the older stepped in and said, "I don't want him to have to have punishment.  I'll sit in time out in his place."  And so he did.  Whoa!  What a picture of what Jesus did for us!  He took the punishment in our place!  My son showed me Jesus.  He showed all of us a picture of Jesus.  My husband explained to both boys that this is exactly what Jesus did for us when He died on the cross.  Of course, this won't be allowed to happen all the time - but for one morning, when the struggle seemed so great, God turned the tables and showed us all a lesson.