Isaiah 53 teaches us that we are healed by the stripes of Jesus. When the Romans whipped our Savior, God was whipping our Savior. The text teaches that it pleased God to bruise His own Son. And He did it for us! That torture and death inflicted on Jesus was a physical one backed by the eternal and powerfully divine judgment of God. "Jesus took our eternal punishment in hell for us when He was whipped and when He died," as I tell my kids. That is key to me because it provides a connection point between their spanking and Jesus. The one Jesus took killed Him for our sins. The one I give them (not a whipping of course!...or a 'whoopin' as my grandparents used to call it!) is a symbolic reminder of the greater one Jesus took for them. So the spanking can be used not only as a painful too to remind them of the punishment that awaits them when they disobey, but it can also be used as a tool to remind them of the cross, a physical act with a heavenly lesson.
The spanking can come at any point in this 'outline' or discipline session. It can be woven seamlessly into any point. It may be that you need to explain this to your child before you spank. Doing so may give you a cooling down period in which hearing these things you are saying will benefit you as much as your child. Spanking at the beginning may be better for your child. They know it's coming. And our lesson may be lost in their anxiety of waiting for the inevitable. For goodness sake! Let's get the spanking over with! But then again, leaving it to the end may be a useful tool sometimes, for in building that anxiety we can lead up to the climax of the discipline session by praising God that a spanking is all they get for their sin! It could be eternally worse! Each parent must carefully think it through, spanking at the wisest time, while being sure to explain the truth along the way.
I change up this 'outline' from incident to incident, provided I'm batting a 1000 that day or that week! Of course that would be a rare week in my personal life. But my point here is that I want to avoid the appearance of a lecture. Don't memorize what I said above. Just memorize the points and go with the flow. Kids hate lectures. Let's don't make the session worse by provoking their already sinful hearts to further irritation with something we can make fresh in a moment's worth of mental energy.
But that can only happen when the cross is fresh to you! Examine your own heart before disciplining your kids. Doing so will show you your own sinfulness, something I desperately need to see before I discipline my kids. Otherwise, I'll spank like a Pharisee, hypocritically inflicting pain both emotionally and physically with an air or superiority. When I've acted this way before, I have set a trajectory for my kids that means they are less likely to love me. I'm a disciplinarian to them when I act this way. I hate that with a passion. I know the love the heavenly Father has for me, and I want my kids to see me that way. The cross makes all the difference in the world here. If it is not pressing down on my own sinful heart, bringing all its mercy, grace, forgiveness, peace and hope with it, it is less likely to be felt by our kids when we are disciplining them.
May God grant us the grace and strength to lead our children in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake!
The spanking can come at any point in this 'outline' or discipline session. It can be woven seamlessly into any point. It may be that you need to explain this to your child before you spank. Doing so may give you a cooling down period in which hearing these things you are saying will benefit you as much as your child. Spanking at the beginning may be better for your child. They know it's coming. And our lesson may be lost in their anxiety of waiting for the inevitable. For goodness sake! Let's get the spanking over with! But then again, leaving it to the end may be a useful tool sometimes, for in building that anxiety we can lead up to the climax of the discipline session by praising God that a spanking is all they get for their sin! It could be eternally worse! Each parent must carefully think it through, spanking at the wisest time, while being sure to explain the truth along the way.
I change up this 'outline' from incident to incident, provided I'm batting a 1000 that day or that week! Of course that would be a rare week in my personal life. But my point here is that I want to avoid the appearance of a lecture. Don't memorize what I said above. Just memorize the points and go with the flow. Kids hate lectures. Let's don't make the session worse by provoking their already sinful hearts to further irritation with something we can make fresh in a moment's worth of mental energy.
But that can only happen when the cross is fresh to you! Examine your own heart before disciplining your kids. Doing so will show you your own sinfulness, something I desperately need to see before I discipline my kids. Otherwise, I'll spank like a Pharisee, hypocritically inflicting pain both emotionally and physically with an air or superiority. When I've acted this way before, I have set a trajectory for my kids that means they are less likely to love me. I'm a disciplinarian to them when I act this way. I hate that with a passion. I know the love the heavenly Father has for me, and I want my kids to see me that way. The cross makes all the difference in the world here. If it is not pressing down on my own sinful heart, bringing all its mercy, grace, forgiveness, peace and hope with it, it is less likely to be felt by our kids when we are disciplining them.
May God grant us the grace and strength to lead our children in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake!
[Source]: Rob Wilkerson III on Miscellanies on the Gospel
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment