When your child doesn’t come to you for help
by R. Douglass Mahaffey
My dad used to jokingly tell me, if you are ever out and about and you get arrested, don’t come crying to me. He was joking of course... I hope. Then there were times that he would tell me when I legitimately needed him, but didn’t turn to him, “Why didn’t you come to me when the problem started?”
Often times we’re guilty of doing the same thing to God by not going to Him in prayer when we find ourselves in a jam. In Ephesians 4, the Apostle Paul specifically instructs us not to grieve the Holy Ghost by not making Him our first point of contact in a crisis situation.
God desires to be there to help us when the going gets tough. That’s what any father’s desire is for his children. God put our dads in a leadership role as head of and responsibility barer of the family. Traditionally, it is the man who proposes marriage to the woman he has chosen. By doing so, the father is taking on the responsibility role as the person accountable for everything in his family.
When a family is torn apart by divorce, the father is usually the one to be separated from his family. Even in most cases of adultery where the father was not the guilty party, he is still the one that leaves the rest of the family, leaving the children to cope with life without a father.
It is still possible to see the pieces of the family put back together again, if God is allowed into the situation to bring about healing of the marital and parental relationship.
In instances where he was the one guilty of the affair, thinking that healing is impossible is the first step in quenching the Holy Ghost from bringing about true change, repentance, and resolving the issue at hand to fit back the pieces of the broken model that God instituted and ordained.
In the instance of a child doing poorly on a test, and not coming to his or her parent to ask for help in something that they don’t understand, the child can also grieve the Holy Ghost. Not allowing the person that God trusted to be the parent and help out in times of confusion or misunderstanding, is a huge step on the way to a division in trust, respect and hope of the parent/child relationship growing to one that pleases God.
No one has ever been completely perfect in their lives. Even the professionals with years of training and God-given talent make errors in performance, judgement and morality. It is not a shameful thing to go to the Father when one needs help with an issue they are facing.
Our friends fail us. Our family fails us. Even the churches we go to don’t always have all the answers and resolution to problems we face. God is a prayer away. Show me a person who is good at bringing others down around them due to their problems, and I will show you a person with no prayer life and no faith in God. If they would only turn to Him and trust His way in all of life’s circumstances, they will not only see a miracle come to them, but the people around them won’t have to ask if they go to church. They will see the goodness of God in that person through the life they live.
A man was buying a soda one day at a supermarket. He paid with a $20 bill. He saw the clerk inspect the bill to make sure it wasn’t fake. She performed all of the tests that she was trained to do. Before she put the bill in the drawer, she took a tissue and rubbed the dollar bill with it. Inspecting the tissue, she put it in the drawer and gave the man his change and receipt.
The man was perplexed. He said, “Ma’am, I know you have all the inspection tests that you have to run on the dollar bill, but I didn’t understand the reason for the tissue test.”
The clerk said, “Well sir, I was checking to see if the print of the dollar bill smeared on the tissue Yours did, so that was how I knew it was real. The real thing rubs off.”
If we allow God to help us in time of need, and if we maintain a healthy prayer life, and we stay fed in God’s word and line our lives up with His word, God’s goodness in us will rub off onto others around us.
R. Douglass Mahaffey - Founder and Publisher of The Wise Conservative.
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