Real versus Ideal

Isaiah 45:5-6, 9-12 (CEV) 5“Only I am the Lord! There are no other gods. I have made you strong, though you don’t know me. 6Now everyone from east to west will learn that I am the Lord. No other gods are real. … 9Israel, you have no right to argue with your Creator. You are merely a clay pot shaped by a potter. The clay doesn’t ask, “Why did you make me this way? Where are the handles?” 10Children don’t have the right to demand of their parents, “What have you done to make us what we are?” 11I am the Lord, the Creator, the holy God of Israel. Do you dare question me about my own nation or about what I have done? 12I created the world and covered it with people; I stretched out the sky and filled it with stars.”

Essential ingredients:

1. Practice depending on God.

2. Meet your kids where they are, at every stage of their life.

Philippians 2:5-11 (NIV) 5In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: 6Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! 9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

3. Set an example that they’ll be proud to follow!

Deuteronomy 6:5-9 (NIV) 5Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

4. When you’re wrong, demonstrate humility.

Admit it.

Talk about it.

Use it.

5. Set a “grace pace” that they can follow.

Ephesians 1:5-8 (NIV) …5he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—6to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding…

Special Announcement:

Colossians 1:17-18 (NIV) He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.

Everything we do is for the glory of God.

While change is inevitable, God’s purposes will never change.