The mystery of the way God works is that he sends fools to rescue fools and because he does, it takes grace to be a tool of God’s agenda of rescuing grace.

Jesus is your life, and this frees you and your children from the burden of asking them to give you what your Savior has already given you.

If your eyes ever see and your ears ever hear the sin, weakness, and failure of your children, it is never a hassle, never an interruption, never an accident; it is always grace. God loves your children and has put them in a family of faith, and he will reveal the need of their hearts to you so that you can be his tool of rescue and transformation.

It’s not your weaknesses that you should fear, but your delusions of strength. Delusions of independent strength are a curse because they tell you that you have power that you don’t truly have and they keep you from resting and relying on the power that is yours in the presence and grace of the One who called you to be his representative in the

simply devastates a relationship to make something personal that is not personal. It makes your children feel that they are being accused of something they did not do.

When we go off and rip into our children, we are responding as a fool. A fool turns moments of ministry into moments of anger. A fool personalizes what is not personal. A fool is adversarial in these moments in his responses. And a fool settles for quick solutions that do not get to the heart of the matter.

Here’s the humbling conclusion that God, in grace, led me to: I am more like my children than unlike them—and so are you. The reality is that there are few struggles in the lives of my children that aren’t in my life as well (materialism, relationships, wanting my own way, attraction to the world, subtle idolatries, etc.).

So each day you look for another opportunity to advance that critical conversation one more step and because you do, you don’t consider those moments where correction is needed to be interruptions or hassles, but gifts of grace afforded you by a God who is at work in the hearts and lives of your children. So you’re not mad at your children for

mean you should look every day for every opportunity to point your needy kids to the presence, promises, power, and grace of Jesus.