Parental duties
Today, Saturday (September 28, 2024), at the dawn prayer meeting, we proclaimed the word of God based on Romans 12:16 under the title, “Conflict is an opportunity,” and applied it in various ways to the duties of parents in raising children. I am writing this article while thinking about the duties of parents again:
1. It is entirely by God’s grace that my wife and I have become parents of three children. This means that although my wife and I are not qualified to be parents of three children, God has given us precious lives (children) as a gift.
2. God is allowing our children to receive grace from us. That means that in my case, as a father of three children, I have done many wrong and sinned against them, but my three children do not feel bitterness or resentment toward me. I think this is an amazing grace and miracle of God. I am a father who receives grace, forgiveness, and love from my children.
3. After I married my wife by the grace of God and received our first child, Charis, as a gift of grace from God, I encouraged my beloved wife to draw a (clear) boundary between us so that no third party, our child, would interfere in our marital relationship. However, baby Charis was born with an illness, and we could not draw a clear boundary with her and we could not help but fall deeply in love with her. After Charis passed away in my arms, God gave us three children as gifts: Dillon (who experienced God’s restorative love), Yeri (who experienced God’s abundant love), and Karis [whose name means the same as our first baby Charis’ English name (“grace”), who made us confess, “God is love”]. However, my husband and I seem to have fought a lot while raising our three children. That means we allowed our three children to interfere with our marital relationship. Therefore, we argued and fought because of our children. To that extent, my husband and I were immature and failed to draw clear and healthy boundaries while raising our children.
4. Nevertheless, the Lord was not only personally raising each of our three children, but also raising me and my wife. As parents of three children, my wife and I had different ways of raising them, and when we each thought we were right or tried to emphasize and push our own ideas, we had no choice but to argue and fight with each other. In that process, our pride and foolishness were bound to be exposed. However, God’s amazing grace and love is that through that process, the Lord allowed us to see our differences more clearly. And furthermore, the Lord helped us understand the reason why my wife and I had different ideas about raising our children. The reason is that my husband and I grew up in different backgrounds. They had to be different. How can a couple have the same backgrounds? Our parents are different, too. And how many differences can there be between our parents in their marital relationships? So, my husband and I each received love from different parents and were influenced by them differently, so our methods of raising our three children were bound to be different. However, through our marital conflicts, the Lord gradually helped us realize these differences, and instead of comparing them, He began to help us complement each other in raising our children. So, as I began to see my wife’s strengths as a mother of three children, I began to respect her parenting style. And my beloved wife began to respect my parenting style. However, the Lord Bodhi made us a team as a father and mother of three children, and gradually led us to do team family ministry. While respecting each other’s parenting style’s strengths, He helped us complement each other’s weaknesses, allowing us to raise each child in a variety of ways.
5. As I went through this process, I was truly thankful that the Lord, the master of our family, loves us so much and has shown us mercy and compassion. He has taught us and made us realize many mistakes regarding raising our children, and He still does. Of all those teachings and realizations, the one that has had the greatest impact on my heart, is the one that has been and will continue to have the greatest impact on me. More than anyone else (even more than my husband and I), God the Father loves our children the most. So, when I was struggling as a father, not knowing what to do and how to love my three children properly, the Holy Spirit reminded me of the Lord’s precious teachings and realizations, helped me hold on to them with faith, and made me rely on God, which has brought me to where I am today.
6. I cried a lot in front of God because my heart was so hurt and tormented. The reason was that they were God's most beloved children, but as a father, I could not love them, and the things I tried to do in my own way, saying that I loved them, sometimes did not help them at all and actually harmed them. So, as a father, I reproached myself countless times because of the guilt I felt. Then, while praying for the salvation of the soul of my beloved youngest daughter, Karis, I prayed, "Lord, even if you take my physical life, please save my beloved Karis." Even though it was insufficient, the Holy Spirit made me risk my own physical life (support it) to pray for the salvation of my beloved daughter’s soul, and in the end, when I came to know that God gave Karis, whom He loved more than anyone else, a precious faith as a gift of grace and made her believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, I received the precious grace to believe in and rely on the God of salvation even more. Not only that, but the Lord faithfully built my family, called my beloved son Dillon and gave him a calling, so he is currently attending seminary and serving as a college evangelist (pastoral intern) at a church as a college evangelist. He has also continued to serve the Christian club at the university he graduated from since graduation. Then, not long ago, He allowed me to marry Jessica, whom I had met and dated for about 4-5 years on the mission field, and start a family. My beloved daughter Yeri, who was called by the Lord to Japan for a year of missionary work, returned to Japan this Wednesday for her second year of missionary work. The amazing things the Lord is doing in her life are allowing my wife and I to see with eyes of faith that the true God is fulfilling the promise in 1 Peter 5:10 for Yeri.
7. Today, during the Saturday dawn prayer meeting, I preached God’s word with the title, “Conflict is an Opportunity,” centered on Romans 12:16. Then, I applied the word I received to my family. In the midst of that, the teaching the Lord gave me was that, as the head of a household, I was arrogant and foolish and committed countless sins against God and my family, but God bestowed upon me amazing and abundant grace, love, and mercy. Truly, God works amazingly in the lives of each and every one of our family members, whom He loves more than anyone else. I pray that the Lord will further break and shatter me as the head of the household, so that I may follow the humble heart of Jesus (see Philippians 2:5-8). Also, I earnestly pray that the Lord will pour out even more of His amazing wisdom on me, so that I can raise my children with love, one heart, and one mind together with my wife, who has been given to me as a great gift of grace, according to His will, His heart, and His love, so that He may establish all of them, as well as their descendants to be born in the future, as God’s workers with Christ-centered dreams, and that they may be preciously used for Jesus, the gospel, and the kingdom of God.
[(Romans 12:16) “Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly Do not be wise in your own estimation”].