Owner or Ambassador?

We will look at the second area of distinguishing between the two styles.

2. WORK: what you define as the work you have been called to do.

OWNER: Owner parents think their job is to turn their children into something. They have a vision of what they want their children to be, and they think that their work as parents is to use their authority, time, money, and energy to form their children into what they have conceived that they should be. Many children are breaking under the burden of the constant pressure of parents who have a concrete vision and are determined that their children would be what their parents have decided they would be. Owner parents tend to think that they have the power and personal resources to mold their children into the children they envision.

AMBASSADOR: Parents who really do understand that they are never anything more than representatives of someone greater, wiser, more powerful, and more gracious than they are, know that their daily work is not to turn children into anything. They have come to understand that they have no power whatsoever to change their children, and that without God’s wisdom they wouldn’t even know what is best for their children. They know what they have been called to be are instruments in the hands of One who is gloriously wise and is the giver of the grace, that has the power to rescue and transform the children who have been entrusted to their care. They are not motivated by a vision of what their children could be, but by the potential of what grace could cause their children to be.

Next week we will learn about the third distinguishing factor. Till then let us meditate on this and see where we need to change.