Owner or Ambassador?

Today we look into the last area of distinguishing between the two styles.

4. REPUTATION: what tells people who you are and what you’re about.

OWNER: Owner parents unwittingly turn their children into their trophies. They tend to want to be able to parade their children in public to the applause of the people around them. This is why so many parents struggle with the crazy, zany phases that their children go through as they are growing up. They’re not so much concerned about what that craziness says about their children, but what it says about them. Children in these homes feel both the burden of carrying their parents’ reputation and the sting of their disappointment and embarrassment. Owner parents tend to be angry and disappointed with their children, not first because they’ve broken God’s law, but because whatever they have done has brought hassle and embarrassment to them.

AMBASSADOR: These parents have come to understand that parenting sinners will expose them to public misunderstanding and embarrassment, somehow, in some way. They have come to accept the humbling messiness of the job God has called them to do. And they understand that if their children grow and mature in life and godliness, they become not so much their trophies, but trophies of the Saviour that they have sought to serve. For them, it’s God who does the work and God who gets the glory; they are just gratified that they were able to be tools that God used.

Hope these parenting devotions are of help to you in raising your children into Kingdom children. God bless you and enable you to do so.