Your Kids: Delight or Disruption?

Delight:

Her little fingers stick to my pinky as we walk hand-in-hand across the parking lot and into Kroger. (Residue left over from something she ate, I hope.) Her teddy bear is under her right arm as she sucks the thumb we are trying to get her to stop sucking.

She asks if we can get a little cart her size. The south entrance has no little carts, so we head to the north entrance and find one on the way. Joy! She puts her teddy’s legs through the metal wire basket of the cart before she begins pushing. Little did I know then that adjustment of the teddy will ensure that our trip to the store takes four times longer than intended.

Proudly she follows me with her cart and teddy, just another shopper at the store. Once we’ve completed our list we head to the U-scan. “I can do it, daddy,” she says as she starts to scan our groceries. She surveys each item to find the barcode and then plops it onto the scanner to await the beep of success. I load the bags. We head for the exit, pause to adjust teddy, and then make our way to the car while jumping cracks and watching for traffic.
 
I’m the richest man in the world.

Disruption:

Her dirty hand sticks to my finger as we walk into the store. She just had to bring her stuffed animal, and she won’t stop sucking her thumb.

She asks if we can get a little cart her size. Now we have to walk all over the place trying to find one. Once we get one, I have to constantly stop and wait for her to adjust her teddy. Then she wants to scan the items we bought. That takes forever as well. We need to rush out of the store because we took so long.

Parenting is so exhausting.

Which is it? Disruption or Delight?

One thing you notice as a parent is that there are some grandparents who revel in things that used to frustrate them. The messiness of a toddler that can easily overwhelm a young mom is admired by grandma. A grandpa giggles at the young boy who struggles to sit still, while the boy’s dad gets frustrated.

If today’s stress is tomorrow’s treasure, then might it follow that today is filled with a little more treasure than stress? I can describe the shopping trip with my daughter from two different perspectives, first as a delight and second as a disruption. What makes the difference? Me.

What the Bible calls “walking by the flesh” leads to a day filled with disruptions, but, what the Bible calls “walking by the Spirit” leads us to find delight, in even the hardest of days.

The bad news is that our flesh desires things that are against the Spirit of God living inside of us. Your flesh is at war with God’s Spirit in you, and what the flesh wants is gratification. To make matters worse, your flesh never stays satisfied.

The good news is Christ has set us free from slavery to the desires of our flesh and indwelled us by His Spirit so that we may walk by the Spirit. When we walk by the Spirit, we do not gratify the desires of the flesh.

Know the attributes of the flesh and the attributes of the Spirit.

As the saying goes, “if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck, chances are it’s a duck.” When Paul gives us a description of the desires of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit in his letter to the Galatians, he is showing us the attributes of both, that we might know by our actions whether we are gratifying our flesh or trusting in the Spirit of God.

If I am constantly viewing my kids as a disruption to my plans, the issue is not my kids, it’s me, trying to gratify my fleshly desires through their behavior.

No parent wakes up wanting to view their kid as a problem or disruption to their day. As Christian parents renew their minds in the truth of what Paul teaches in Galatians 5, they learn to delight in their children.

In Galatians Paul teaches us that our fleshly desires are opposed to the fruit of the Spirit. So, if the fruit of the Spirit is the love of God and others, the flesh loves the self. While the Apostle Paul’s list of fleshly desires can seem broad, they have the common thread of being self-focused:

“Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Gal. 5:19-21a).

As parents we can grow discouraged and ashamed when we think about the many times we have viewed our children as disruptions or problems. But we ought to be encouraged, because the living, breathing, powerful Spirit of God lives inside of us and is transforming us from flesh-gratifiers to Spirit-walkers. We have the promise that God has set us free in Christ, so we are no longer slaves to our fleshly desires (Gal. 5:16).

I bet Christian grandparents look back at the time of having children in their house and wish they had delighted more, treasured more, and rushed less.

Our kids are not a burden, they are not in the way, and they are not problems to be solved or fixed. They are gifts. Yes, they are foolish at times. Yes, they need discipline and instruction. Yes, they are sometimes disruptive, but they are not disruptions to our lives.

If we have been living constantly angered by all the smudges, the stains, and the disrupted plans, may we repent and mortify the desires of our flesh. If we find ourselves delighting in what used to anger us, may we rejoice in the evidence of God’s Spirit alive and at work in us. God doesn’t promise fewer disruptions, He promises Himself in the midst of disruptions.

Could there ever be anything more delightful than that?

Joey Turner
Pastor of Missions and Adults
(Originally posted in Rooted.)