Bad parenting.

So I've been thinking a lot lately about my lack of patience, consistency etc. towards my kids, and I've come to the realization that I'm a bad father. Simple. I'm trying, but a lot of the time I'm more concerned with my own wants and needs than what is good for my kids. I was feeling all down and stuff but then it dawned on me: If you are a father, you are a bad one. Sorry if you hadn't already realized that but it's true. Be honest. How often are you impatient with your kids? Don't have time for your kids? Are more interested in the game or some movie than your kids? Hey, even if you put your kids on a pedestal and give them everything they want you're gonna give em some kind of complex that the world will not uphold for them as they get older. Bad bad bad. Your kids are gonna have some baggage from your bad parenting. I'm willing to bet that if you spend some time on it you can probably figure out some bad character traits and emotional junk you inherited from your bad dad.

Here's the good news.

There is only one who is a good Father. And he's willing and ready to adopt your kids. He's perfectly patient, perfectly consistent, and perfectly just. (By the way - your kids suck too, but this father has provided a way for that to be taken care of.)

The God of the Bible is that perfect Father. And through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ his Son your kids can be accepted as his kids.

The single greatest thing that an earthly father can do for his children is to point them to Christ and to a relationship with a Father that will never let them down and never abandon them. Teach your kids that repentance and faith in the resurrected Son of God is their only hope at a truly good Father. We will fail our kids in so many ways. But God will not. Our fathers failed us in many ways. But God the Father will never fail us. His love is steadfast, his promises sure.

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. (Ephesians 1:4-8 NIV)