It is difficult being a husband and a father. I am the father of four children who are blessings from the Lord. I have two older and two younger. The younger ones are 3 and 1-1/2 years old.
One of the greatest difficulties I find is dealing with my children when they whine and complain. Sometimes I do not know what to do about it. I decided to look into the Bible to see what God thinks about complaining.
As I searched the Bible, I found out that God actually hates it when his people whine and complain. The Israelites were in the wilderness for forty years due mostly to their complaints. They were slaves in Egypt for four-hundred years prior to their forty year desert experience. The people were being provided for in every way, yet complained about almost everything. When they would complain, the Bible says that God’s anger burned within him. Have you ever felt that way? Ya, me too.
What happened in these circumstances is that Moses would intercede for the people. Moses would plead to the Lord that he would show mercy to the people; that he would not give them their deserved judgement. Moses here is a picture of Jesus Christ. He is the one who intercedes on behalf of his complaining sheep.
What does this mean for us and our complaining children. Well first, it is not wrong to have anger burn within you when your children are complaining against your authority. Ephesians 5:1 tells us that we "are to be imitators of God." This means that in every way, we are to mimic God. He is perfect and we are to strive towards that goal with the help of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. If we are putting good and righteous restraints upon our children, and not unjust and needlessly burdensome restraints, then we have every right to have anger burn within us at times. But then what? We are to look for the Person Moses pointed us to, to Jesus Christ; he is to be the mediator between my anger and my children's sin of complaining. My children deserve to be punished for their complaining. Jesus pleads with me on behalf of his shed blood for their sins. He accepts them because his death was sufficient to make atonement for their complaints. And because of this, my anger is suppose to subside. Then, I must use good and godly wisdom and discipline to correct them towards thankfulness. After all, the Israelites still needed to wait forty years to make it to the promise land.
It's hard being a dad, but not nearly as hard as being God! He is infinitely more patient and kind than me.
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