Creator or Creation - What is YOUR pleasure? Who are YOU Trying to Please?



Where do your priorities lie? With the Creator or with His creation? 
Who are you trying to please?
Things that should make you go hmmmmmm...

All of the Disney Princess stories dictate that we should teach our daughters that there is no better happiness (or “happily ever after”) than running into the arms of a man and riding off with him on the back of a horse off into a sunset.  While true love is certainly something worth looking forward to, the stories have it wrong.  The truth is our children should FIRST be taught that there is no better relationship than falling head over heels in love with one prince - the Prince of Peace.
 

What if we taught our children to sing love songs to Him?

What if we encouraged our children to find out who they are in Him?

To communicate with Him?

To grow in Him?

To develop a relationship with Him?

What would this give our children?  A confidence and desire in discovering who God created them to be.  A true self - confidence, not as the world gives – but as God gives.  It would teach them how beautiful they are in the eyes of their Heavenly Father.  It would set the example of how we are to love, because no greater love is there than what God gave us through the shed blood of His son, Jesus Christ who died for forgiveness of our sins.

“God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

I saw a great quote once.  It said this:

“And when the prince reached the top of the tower, he found an empty room because THIS princess wanted to have HER OWN adventure!”

There is no greater adventure a girl can have than discovering WHO she is in Christ.  It is an adventure that will last ALL the days of her life.  For we are ever changing, ever growing, ever discovering and I believe we will until He calls us home to be with Him.

For our boys, learning to love God and look to Jesus as their example would show them how to be the leaders that God has called them to be. 

“But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.” (1 Corinthians 11:3)

My own personal opinion is that God made man the head of each household, but He made woman the neck and everyone knows that the neck turns the head. J

The most important relationship a girl first has is with her father. We live in an imperfect world, in many circumstances a girl is in a situation where they have not/do not have a healthy relationship with a male figure and it skewers what a relationship with someone of the opposite sex should be like as that girl grows into womanhood.   One of the biggest mistakes that occurs is when a girl believes her own self-worth is based upon what someone of the opposite sex thinks of her or that she needs a guy to make her happy.  Instead of running after the Creator she runs after his creation.  I would call this “putting the cart before the horse.” True self-worth can only be found in knowing who you are in Christ FIRST.  The truth is you cannot find self-worth in the eyes of someone else, before you can learn to love someone else you need to love yourself (be comfortable in your own skin) and know who you truly are.

 In the book of Genesis God created Adam, Adam had fellowship with God before God brought Eve into His life (and notice God brought Eve into Adam’s life, Adam did not go “looking” for Eve).  God knew exactly what it was that Adam needed and fashioned a helpmate for him. (You can read all about this in Genesis Chapter 2).  There is an order to things and a reason for that order.

For those of us who are parents and have tried to instill a strong foundation and love for God and His Word within our children, we must also realize that God has only loaned our children to us.  They belong to HIM.  Our duty is to “train them up in the way they should go” (Proverbs 22:6) “and when they are old they shall not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6 continued).    

There are times when we try and our children rebel and go against ALL we have taught them to be.  This is where our trust in God has to come in.  This is where we recognize that while we can instill a foundation within our children with the best of our ability, we cannot give them our faith.  They have their own journey to experience.  They do not belong to US they belong to God.  We cannot give them our walk with Him, they have to develop this on their own.  Just as we have a “personal” relationship with God, we have to allow them to have their own personal relationship with God and this is where trust and prayer come in.

The BEST thing you can do for your child is pray for them and remember that as much as you love them, God loves them MORE and to remember that along with all the other qualities God provided you with, He gave you free will.  Just as you have free will, so do your children.  They have a choice.  How hard it must be for God to see us make choices that hurt us rather than help us. Wrong decisions instead of decisions that would benefit us… How wonderful that God can turn around and use our “bad” choices to glorify His work in spite of ourselves.  Hopefully drawing us closer to Him in the process… Trust your children to Him, even when you don’t see the “fruit” that you would expect to see having raised them in a Christian home, because like a seed you have planted in the ground, you cannot see on the surface what it is that God is doing deep below.  Keep praying, keep hoping and keep believing – even when it seems as though your prayers are in vain.  Prayers are never in vain.  God hears each one.  Sometimes we just have to give our son/daughter to God and trust that God knows what He is doing, because He does and sometimes He reveals it to us and sometimes He chooses not to.

"So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow." (1 Corinthians 3:7)

We live in a sinful world, one that does not teach the importance of having a personal relationship with God, so deciding to have a personal relationship and make Jesus your Lord and Savior goes against the grain of what the world is teaching, no wonder it is so hard for our children to keep their heads above the sewage of what the world dictates is important and calls how they have been raised or what they believe as “politically incorrect.” (Talk about peer pressure… Even grown -ups give in to it.  You must hold yourself to the standard of “The Jones’” and if you don’t, you have fallen below the proverbial bar).  Those poor Jones’, what constant pressure they must feel.  Honestly, who is it more important to impress other adults or God?  Because when they stand before Him, what has been deemed as ‘successful” in the eyes of the world and other adults will be mere rubbish to God and as far as my Word shows me – we stand before Him ALONE, taking nothing of this world with us, other people’s opinions won’t matter  – all that will matter is what GOD thinks…

We have it so wrong.  We are so deceived.   And oh yes – make no mistake about it, I have seen Christians also take that “Jones’ mentality” into the church with them.  If you don’t belong to “this school” or join “this Bible study” you are “not” an “in” Christian, or if you don’t live in “this community,” or socialize with “this family” you must not have enough faith or be strong with your walk or “right” with God.  Or God forbid if you have “fallen” or “sinned” or in “a prodigal state” (as if not all of us come up short every day of our walk…).  The dangerous part of this is the church should be a place where you can fully get the support and help you need for whatever point you are in your walk, for whatever you are struggling with and whether or not other Christians admit it – we ALL have things that we struggle with), what a shame that in most circumstances we don’t feel as though we can confess or admit them to one another without being judged… (Ouch… Someone just stopped reading this post…) It is a dangerous mentality to have.  How can a hurting church successfully minister to the outside world without first trying to get their own house in order?  I believe this is what the letters to the churches in the book of Revelations  (Chapter 2) is all about.  We ARE the body of Christ.  If your finger feels pain – the whole body feels it.  (Honestly, think about the annoying pain of a paper cut – who does not dread getting one of these???) We are called to encourage each other and build each other up – not rejoice in tearing one another down.  There is no perfect church – we won’t be “perfect” until Jesus returns.  The church that acknowledges that they are filled with “broken people” is the church that gets it.  We are to walk in humility and the knowledge that it is only the shed blood of Jesus Christ that differentiates us between those that don’t know Jesus at all.  And with that being said, if God has blessed you with a Pastor who recognizes this and encourages the body of Christ to be transparent and merciful and humble and encourages what Jesus said was the greatest of the commandments:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:37-38)

Then thank God for him and pray and support your pastor in whatever way needed, because that is a pastor that as a friend of mine is in the habit of saying over and over and over again  “gets it” and understands and is fulfilling the calling that God has given him watching over His flock.

What else can we do?

We can walk humbly as Jesus did, looking to Him as our example.

We can pray and ask for wisdom and guidance and admit that we don’t have all of the answers, but recognize that we know who it is that does.
We can to the best of our ability give our children a strong spiritual foundation and pray that God will put in their lives people that will build upon it and help them grow and know their worth in Him.

The ironic thing is that one of our promises is:

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all else shall follow." (Matthew 6:33)

Who knows better than we do what that "all else" should be? (Be it a mate, be it provision, etc...) The thing is He desires us to seek HIM first. 

The best gift we can give our children is a strong foundation in Christ.  To teach them to look to Him as their example and IF they fail or fall or come short help them to understand  that we ALL  fail, fall and come short and that God is there to pick them up and give them a new beginning.  It is nothing but His grace, His mercy and His love that gets us from one part of our individual journeys to the next. And who knows better than God what is around the next corner? Things come as a surprise to us, but to the One who sees everything in full, it never does.