Exasparation

This will be a bit of a review for those who were in worship yesterday for Father's Day. I chose to look at Ephesians 6:4 which says, "Father's do not exasparate your children, instead...... The word instead breaks things up as Paul starts with a negative and ends with a few positives. Pauls tells us as fathers, and parents alike for that matter, not to exaparate our children. Do not make them mad basically, because when we do things to purposely make our children mad we are making them sin. A lot of people don't see eye to eye with me on this matter but think this way.
I had a young lady that I was working with at the Homeless Coalition, she was an awesome young lady and she was working hard to get her life together in her early highschool days. She had brought her grades up, she was attending school regularly and rarely did she get into any trouble at all. One night, her mom took her shopping with her and they tried on some clothes and her mom talked her into leaving with those clothes on and they got caught. To be completely honest when I found out she had been caught stealing from a retail store I was ticked. When she got out and came by the office I met with her and let her know how disappointing it was to see her work so hard just to fall back like that. Then, she let me know that her mom made her do all of it and later the mother admitted to it, even said her daughter cried and put up a huge fit against doing it. How sad, a mom making her daughter steal. That is so aggravating and goes against everything good parenting stands for. But, before you go pointing a finger I am sure there have been times where you have somewhat provoked your kids into being mad at you. If ever, you have done this you are making them sin. Obey your mother and father, is a comand that carries a lot of weight and it is listed with stealing, killing, coveting and all the others, so if you have made your kids mad at you(not by discipline or regular interaction) but truly, purposely made them mad at you are you really any different than the story I shared above? I think not.
We are to love, train and nurture our children in a manner that brings them to love God and us. The greatest job of any dad is to teach his children to love God and if we do that then we have succeeded as parents. We don't need to raise doctors, and pro athletes, and straight A students to be successful in God's eyes, simply love God with all your heart, soul and mind and raise your children to do the same!
Thanks for reading and have an awesome Monday!