Instructions for Daily Living
Instructions for Daily Living - being a Parent
“Hear instruction, and be wise, And refuse it not.”
Proverbs 8:33
How many of us apply instructions toward our daily living? How many of us instruct our spouses, children, close family members or people we deeply care for on a daily basis?
How many of us love to be instructed?
The fact is, not many of us. It’s too personal nowadays to tell someone how to live, but we sure like to point it out afterward don’t we? Think about what it was like growing up, being parented, being told what to do all the time - how do you compare if you have children now? Do you discipline the same, teach the same, guide the same?
Giving instruction is hard. It involves specifics, repetition and time.
Telling someone what to do is easy and requires less effort and time on your part.
If I told my son to clean his room, it would be easy for him to do it the way he thinks about it. He’d probably pick up some clothes, move some things around and then get a little distracted. Overall it would be pretty decently done, just not to my standards.
If I told my son to clean his room, and then gave him instructions such as; put your dirty clothes in the laundry, fold your clothes and put them in your drawers, put all your legos away and make your bed the way I showed you - it would be more specific to what I wanted him to do.
When raising children I use to think to myself, there’s no instruction manual. One after the other, I made plenty of mistakes. The children weren’t mistakes, my parenting was a disaster.
No instruction manual - I’ve heard that used so many times for things that people feel they failed at, or were doing miserably. This has been applied to marriages, families raising children and people raising other peoples children. This is just a short list.
We always want instructions for things that are hard. Or if we do something without instructions, we end up going back and making adjustments, because we were just wrong. Or we wish we were able to do it over.
Having children is different from raising children. Raising children is hard. At times I was just a father, and sometimes I was a parent. Being a parent involves work, sacrifice, discipline, love and well, parenting.
My dad had this saying when I was growing up that I couldn’t stand, “if you’re going to do something, do it right the first time, or you’ll just have to do it again”.
This usually meant, listen to me carefully when I tell you do something. Because usually when we didn’t, it meant a told-you-so was coming and a repeat attempt at whatever we were cleaning, fixing or making.
I look back a lot now and wonder what my life would’ve been like then if I had a healthy relationship with God. It probably wouldn’t have changed much in the pre-teen period, but it definitely wouldn’t have hurt in my younger adult years.
The point is, if my parents would’ve had a relationship with God, the less likely I would’ve been to not have a relationship with God. We had religion, just not relationship.
This relationship is not just a any relationship. It’s a relationship that is based on having eternal salvation, having the Holy Spirit, prayer and the Bible to guide me every single day. And this only exists because I realized I couldn’t do it by myself. I set everything aside and asked God to take control of my life. This meant, giving Him control.
It’s not a part-time relationship. It is a full-time commitment loaded with sacrifice and obedience, reward and judgement, blessings and encouragement.
Church is not a relationship. Fellowship is not a relationship. Prayer by itself is not a relationship.
Unsaved people go to church. Unsaved people have relationships. And unsaved people can pray.
Only people who put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ to be Lord over their life can pray to God with the expectation that He will listen. When you turn your life over to Jesus Christ you are baptized with the Holy Spirit. Only then are you a child of God. A member of the heavenly family.
The instructions for every single thing you will do in your life comes from one book - the Bible, from having the Holy Spirit guide you and having a relationship with God.
You can have parents who have no relationship with God giving children with no relationship with God instructions on daily living and it will be worldly instruction. Period. That was me.
They can have the greatest intention in the world, and it won’t matter. They can appear to succeed at so many things and it won’t matter. They can be your best friend. It won’t matter. They can love you with all the love in the world, it won’t matter. They can believe all they want that everything is going so well, and maybe it is. But they won’t have the single most important thing in their life, a relationship with God that comes with eternal salvation.
I know. That was me. It’s not an excuse. It is where I was versus who I am.
Our relationship is with God and our instructions come from the Bible. How we apply the instructions is through the Holy Spirit living inside of us. We get all of this because Christ died on the cross for us and we realize we can’t do all of this on our own.
There is nothing else.
Wanna know how to fix a car, read the manual. Wanna know how to live your life, read the Bible.
Having a car in your garage doesn’t make you a mechanic, it just means you own a car. Carrying a Bible to church doesn’t make you a Christian.
And just because you have children, this doesn’t make you a parent. Teaching, guiding, loving, forgiving and instructing using the Holy Bible makes you a parent.
I failed miserably at a lot of things. Do you want to know why?
I didn’t take God seriously and I didn’t have a relationship with Him where I put Him first. That’s it.
I don’t blame it on alcohol, sin nature, women, my dad, my family or anything else.
I didn’t have a relationship with God.
My hope is that you will take the time today to get to know God by reading the Bible, praying to Him and learning to let Him lead your life.
“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:”
2 Timothy 3:16
“Train up a child in the way he should go: And when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
Proverbs 22:6
“The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel;
To know wisdom and instruction; To perceive the words of understanding; To receive the instruction of wisdom, Justice, and judgment, and equity; To give subtilty to the simple, To the young man knowledge and discretion. A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; And a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels: To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; The words of the wise, and their dark sayings. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: But fools despise wisdom and instruction. My son, hear the instruction of thy father, And forsake not the law of thy mother: For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, And chains about thy neck. My son, if sinners entice thee, Consent thou not. If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, Let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause: Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; And whole, as those that go down into the pit: We shall find all precious substance, We shall fill our houses with spoil: Cast in thy lot among us; Let us all have one purse: My son, walk not thou in the way with them; Refrain thy foot from their path: For their feet run to evil, And make haste to shed blood. Surely in vain the net is spread In the sight of any bird. And they lay wait for their own blood; They lurk privily for their own lives. So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; Which taketh away the life of the owners thereof.”
Proverbs 1:1-19