To Disciple and Be Discipled

I find myself discipled when I study words like honor, which follows with honorable, respect with respectful, correction with correct, instruction with instructed, restraint with restrained. We must become students before we can become teachers. (1 Tim 1-5-8)

To disciple is to teach, to train or bring up. To discipline is to educate, instruct, cultivate and improve. To correct is to set right. To punish is to chastise. To chastise is to correct. To honor is to respect, to be in submission to. To be honorable is to be worthy of respect. To submit is to surrender without murmuring. To discuss is to resolve, to examine. To control is to restrain, to overpower.

These words will guide a parent’s journey and will either be to our destruction or to our praise. There is the principle and the method. We cannot deny the importance of the principle but as to the method of how it’s applied we have much to decide. If we are guided by these principles through intention but fail to apply them in appropriate application we have failed. It is only by both the intention and the application that we may raise our children in the way of the Lord. It is not enough to say you’re sorry if you don’t mean it. It’s not enough to say you love Jesus if you don’t live it. It’s not enough to require something of your child which you have been ignorant to uphold yourself. (Rom 10:3-4)

My father-in-law has said that “little children are not problems to be solved; they are little mysterious to unravel.” We need greatly to understand our children for who they are and not what we want them to be. To love them even when they are wrong and not tare them down even more. To praise them and lift them up and stop expecting more. To be kind to their feelings and not embarrass them to put them to shame. To be tender to their needs and not grow weary of their ways. To listen to them and not ignore their plea’s. To be sensitive to them and stop thinking to yourself. To be tender to them, most of all when they have done wrong. Do unto your child what you would have your child do unto you. This is the example in which you give your child to live by.

To do these things we are teaching them a better way, we are educating them to improvement of mind and character unto the Lord, we are setting right the wrong ways, we are showing them our submission to the Lord that they may have respect for us and for God. We are becoming worthy of His praise and we are resolving with our children matters of the heart that when God examines us He may be glorified and when these attributes are exercised we have no need to overpower them. For they have become our “willing” disciples as we make witness of God. (Pro 14:5-6)

-Stacey Wallace