What a pleasure to hear from Rebekah Hawk this week! If you’d like to learn more about her, you can stop by the contributors page.
“But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.”
With tears streaming down his face and sobs convulsing his whole frame, my nine-year-old son hugged me. “I’m sorry I had such a bad attitude!” he cried. In that moment, though we were both now crying, we were enjoying the sweet fruit of reconciliation.
In the Greek, reconcile’s root word ἀλλάσσω (G236) has, as part of its definition, the idea that “one ceases to be angry with another and receives him into favor.” What made this restored favor with my son so special is that God has been changing my whole heart toward how I ought to discipline and correct my children.
For many years, I have struggled with the concept that I am almost always demanding that my children behave in ways that I do not consistently behave myself. Inflicting consequences on them for sins I was also committing felt horribly hypocritical; yet if I did not reinforce the rules, I knew my home would devolve into chaos and I would be shirking my God-given role as a mother.
What’s a mama to do?
Enter the beautiful Word of God, and a most helpful book called Habits of the Household. Habits is teaching me that discipline is all about reconciliation—it is the entire goal! I would always get so hung up on the justice aspect: I thought I needed to constantly hand out punishments and consequences, yet those consequences seemed to punish me more than my disobedient children! Their hearts had not changed; my children and I were still angry with each other; and I had a nagging suspicion that I was missing something huge in the process of training my children up in the way they should go.
Now, confronting my children’s sin with the goal of reconciling even when or especially as consequences are being enacted has radically changed my posture toward them. My goal is not to change their behavior, but to receive them back into favor! I model reconciliation by consistently asking for their forgiveness when I wrong them. My children need to understand that I am fighting against my sinful desires just like they are, and we all need Jesus’s help to do what is right.
What I love most about this reconciliation approach to discipline is that I am constantly reminded that this is how my heavenly Father corrects and directs me. He is always reconciling me to Himself. His Spirit continually shows me my sin, and though I expect to be received with the harsh consequences I know I deserve, His voice holds no angry condemnation. He impresses on me what I need to do to make it right, and as I obey Him, He restores my joy—He lavishly celebrates that He has received me back into His favor!
The miracle of The Prodigal Son is that those in Christ experience being received back into the favor of God every day, perhaps a dozen times a day, and the celebration never slackens.
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