Come quickly...

This post might only make sense to Sonny and I but he asked me to document all the things we learn about our relationship with God through parenting and this is one lesson that we seem to be revisiting often...

We do not read a lot of parenting books mainly because we do not have a lot of time. The only one we have read so far was recommended to us by our friends Ross and Staci King who we look up to greatly as godly parents. The book is called To Train Up a Child by Michael and Debi Pearl and it talks about the importance of children being trained to come when they are called. Not only does this just make parents' lives more enjoyable, it is so necessary for the safety of our kids. If our children hesitate to come to us, they could be putting themselves in a life-threatening situation (ie- if cars are coming). So, we have spent many minutes training Asher to come when he is called. Most of the time he is very good at coming; even when he is in another room, we have taught him to drop everything and come when we call him. It is so encouraging to see how joyful he is when he runs to us and sees our delight in his obedience!

As Sonny and I were training Asher, we started to think of our relationships with the Lord. The Lord wants us to drop everything and obey Him, knowing that He tells us to do things because He knows they are best for us. We know that He must delight in seeing us excited to obey Him.

Lately though, Asher has put a new twist on his "coming" when he is called. The last few times we have called him, he has invented different ways of "coming"- ie crawling, hopping slowly, skipping around us. At first, we thought it was funny but the more we thought about it, we decided that we wanted him to come quickly when he was called. If he is standing in the street and we tell him to come and he starts to crawl to us- this could be very dangerous. So, lately we have been telling him, "Asher, come quickly" and he is doing better. Sonny and I were talking about this too and we thought about our relationship with the Lord. How often does He tell us to do something and we try to come to Him on our terms (crawling, hopping, whatever we feel like). This is not obedience. I heard from another couple this awesome phrase, "delayed obedience is disobedience." This is so true. Just as we want Asher to come quickly when he is called, so the Lord wants us to "drop everything and obey" when He tells us to do something.

I was reading Genesis today and I saw that obedience in Abraham when God told him to circumcise his whole family (the males). Though Abraham had had times in his past where he had not obeyed fully, by the end of his life he did. I was so encouraged by that. Genesis 17:23 says that "the very same day, as God had said to him" Abraham had circumcised the males in his family. I want to be like this. I pray that I will continue to grow in obedience to the Lord and "come quickly" when I am called by the Lord.