November 6, 2005

• Regrets…

  I’m doing some reading this morning in Paul David Tripp’s book, Lost in the Middle: Midlife and the Grace of God. (Tripp also wrote ”Age of Opportunity” which is one of my favorite books on training teens. I read somewhere that he is the brother Tedd Tripp who wrote Shepherding a Child’s Life.)  

  
  

  Midlife  has been a most interesting season of life. (I turned 48 years old in June).  I’m fascinated by the lure of it’s power to expose sin in this old heart of mine. Thoughts and beliefs are being exposed that I’ve never had to deal with in the past. I’m thankful for this! It’s always a  mercy from God when He presses us to deal with our sin.

  
  

  I wanted to share a few quotes with you.

  
  

  “We all tend to take the unrealistically demanding boss, the consistently rebellious child, the all too impatient spouse, the rude neighbor, or the gossiping extended family member as proof that the seeds of what we are harvesting, in fact, belong to someone else.”

  
  

  “An angry father who has just ripped into his rebellious son will tell himself that it is vitally important for his son to respect authority. This justification recolors his sin of anger against his son. Or a wife, who has developed regular patterns of gossiping about her husband’s sin to her friends, will tell herself that she is seeking prayer and accountability. She now feels comfortable doing something that the Bible calls sin…. It’s an old argument that goes something like this, “His sin makes my sin not sin.”

  
  

  “In our sin, we offer ourselves spiritual vacationland that is in reality a stinking swamp of sin. It gives us what anyone who is aware of his sin craves: Freedom from guilt.”

  
  

  This really hit a nerve in me! Oh, let’s call it what the Bible calls it… it’s really exposing SIN in me! I was thinking back to when my children were in their teen years and some difficulties we were having. God began dealing with the way I was responding to my teens difficulties.  It wasn’t ‘fun’  … I didn’t ‘enjoy’ having my parenting flaws exposed. Especially since I had a ‘home schooling business’ and was working with other mother’s on a daily basis and was supposed to have some answers for them in training children. I was sinking during that time. I had no clue how to handle the difficulties we were experiencing. But, praise God I knew who’s hand I needed to be holding on to and where to turn for help. God was my strength and an ever present help in my times of trouble.  

  
  

  Now, my children have children of their own. I don’t want to appear to them as mother who thinks she never failed and was perfect but oftentimes I wonder if this is exactly how I come across. I want my children to know that I KNOW I failed at times but that my heart was always to be the best mother I could be to them.

  
  

  I praise God He has replaced my heart of stone with a heart of flesh. He mercifully exposes the sin in our hearts. Like an onion He gently peels one layer off at a time. The stink would be more than we could bear if He exposed the entire reality of our heart’s depravity in one moment of time.

  • 10:47 am
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