Have you ever used this verse in your parenting in order to warn your child?
Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. (Galatians 6:7 ESV)
Here are some helpful words from Tedd and Margy Tripp that I wish I had read and thought about years ago BEFORE I simply "dished out" Galatians 6:7 to my children.Let's be honest. We think of consequences or reaping as negative—something God does to us rather than for us. And we tend to use these truths about God to beat up our children spiritually in a desperate attempt to keep them on the straight and narrow. The truth is that sowing and reaping are wonderful mercies of God to inhibit sinful desires and show the paths of life. Consequences should be presented in that light.
Take the time to tell your children the truth about sowing and reaping...Illustrate and practice biblical sowing and reaping in your home. Keep a family notebook of illustrations of sowing and reaping that you find in the Scriptures, in church history, and in family and community life. You will find a lot in the news. Identify and rejoice over positive illustrations, laugh at the comic illustrations in everyday life, comfort one another and pray over the sad and painful illustrations, seek God to learn from them and to find courage and faith to sow to the Spirit rather than to the flesh. Consequences are deterrents and protection against sowing to the flesh.
(Instructing a Child's Heart, copyright©2008, page 77)
For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. (Galatians 6:8 ESV)
(Photo courtesy of Franky242 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.)
