Leaving a Legacy, Part 3

Back to our parenting goals....If we are honest many of us want our kids to be:

v the smartest,

v the prettiest,

v the most popular

v and the best rewarded

Tim Kimmel says average parent may not articulate these priorities in such an obvious way but often our true priorities are NOT what we say they are, but are revealed through our:

® choices for our children’s time,

® our emphasis on their performance,

® our concern with how they compare. Looking to those around us as our barometer of success

Am I telling you that you need to rethink this years Christmas letter…. Perhaps (lol).

Listen, there is nothing wrong with achieving wealth, power, and fame unless you need any of these things to feel significant or complete. This it the truth...mark this down: If a person grows up measuring himself or herself by these worldly standards, they're never going to be content. More importantly, they're going to miss living the life God meant for them to live.

Listen, it is not just our children measuring themselves against these worldly standards. We as parents start the comparing and measuring.

In the previous generation keeping up with the Joneses meant measuring and competing with cars and homes. Today’s generation competes through their children.

Everything is set up to fuel this. As they take their first breath we begin to compare them to a standard. It starts with the Apgar, and ends with the SAT. In between, we rank and score them to death.

Not that Apgars and SATs are a bad thing…It just becomes a detrimental thing when we use those standards to either pat ourselves on the back that our children are so much better than everyone else’s or beat ourselves up because they do not meet an average.

But raising our children with a Biblical view rather than a world view means that the measuring stick of success is the word of God.

2 Corinthians 10:12-13: We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise. We, however, will not boast beyond proper limits, but will confine our boasting to the field God has assigned to us, a field that reaches even to you.

Listen, this should provide a great deal of relief for us as parents. The legacy that we leave is no longer measured by what rank our children are in high school, no longer is it about being the best, or the most athletic. No longer is it about who walked, talked, or used the potty first.

We get so caught up in all of this. Comparison is the thief of joy.

God is NOT interested in your child’s earthly success but his or her being great in the Kingdom of God.