I know I should try harder but often I take the easy way out.
I didn't do well in this department with my two oldest children so I am trying to be better with my two youngest.
What am I talking about?
If you are a parent you might be able to guess.
I'm talking about chores. Chores are good for kids, for everyone. It teaches us how to work. It teaches us responsibility.
The reason I fail is I let the complaining and whining win.
One thing I've tried to do this summer is make sure my two youngest have their rooms picked up. My standards aren't high. They know this.
But they still complain.
Yesterday my youngest daughter came up with a new tactic. I walked upstairs to wake her up for Sunday School and saw her room was really messy. She had told me it was picked up the night before. I said to her, "Your room is a mess."
She said, "No it isn't."
"Yes it is," I said. "You need to pick it up later."
"No, it looks great," she said.
She stuck with this story all day yesterday even though we both knew it was messy.
She has agreed to clean it today because I am withholding something she wants.
My youngest daughter has been used by God in my life, I think more than any of my other kids to teach me about my own inadquacies. She pushes all the time. She is moody. She is defiant. She is angry. She is sweet. She is sweet for a reason. She is brilliant. She is exhausting!
She's a lot like we adults can be in our relationships with God.
When she denied the obvious truth yesterday I wondered if we do the same thing sometimes.
Are there times when God points out a behavior we need to change and our response is to deny it is a problem and ignore His loving correction?
I've been there.
Oswald Chambers writes, "Our Lord knows perfectly well that once His word is truly heard, it will bear fruit sooner or later. What is so terrible is that some of us prevent His words from bearing fruit in our present life."