Parental Boundaries
F for Father. When dad or mum says no!
As a mum to early teenage boys, I understand the importance of intentional parenting. A huge part of this involves setting boundaries for your children early on in their lives and as they move from one stage to another. When they were cute little toddlers (oh how time flies by), I taught them about respect, self control, establishing routines, health and safety etc. All of these were geared towards establishing the boundaries of what can and can’t be done in those areas of their lives and in our home. Almost every time my husband or I set a new boundary, it was met with resistance and tantrums, still does. No honey you cant watch cbeebies first thing on a weekday you must get ready for the nursery. You must eat your spinach and broccoli, before you get deserts. No you can’t sleep with mummy and daddy, you have to sleep on your own big boy bed. You cannot speak to your elders in a rude way, and you’re certainly not old enough to stay home alone yet, the baby sitter will be arriving in a few minutes.
Even now in their teenage years, we occasionally create new boundaries. Luckily they now understand the concept of boundaries and that it is for their benefit. Occasionally they ask for stuff and we either outrightly say no, or we tell them when we could get it for them.
This is a typical parent child relationship. All things being equal the child doesn’t disown his parents simply because they said no to him or asked him to wait. I was listening to a clip of a Christian podcast and the speaker said, (I am paraphrasing) if you get disappointed with God or turn away from Him when he doesn’t give you what you want or even disciplines you, you cannot call Him Father, because fathers get to discipline and set boundaries for their child. That hit me like ton of bricks.
In my walk and relationship with Jesus Christ, I proclaim him as my Father, especially since my earthly father, Benjamin died over 19 years ago. My earthly father loved me, he raised me right as much as he could, taught me to follow Christ. He also disciplined me well. I was a stubborn kid, his first child, so he did not spare the rod on a few occasions when his words had fallen on my selective deaf ears. On those occasions it never occurred to me rebel against him or run away from home. Ok, I thought about running away from home a few times but I knew there was no place on earth where I would be loved as much as I was loved at home.
So when I heard those words from the podcast, it occurred to me that I had never thought about God as a parent in the same way Benjamin was my father. This has helped reframe my feelings about my unanswered prayers. As my Father, he has either said No, which is a full sentence. Or he has said not yet, which means I just gotta wait because He said so, or I have to eat a figurative spinach & broccoli before I can have my desert.
