Growing up, I had one dream: to play in the NFL. When adults would ask me what I wanted to do for a real job, I would retort, “Being in the NFL is a real job. They pay you to play football.” My junior and senior years of high school playing for the varsity team, however, proved to be a painful reminder that my dream would not come to pass. At 5’11” with a slight frame, I wasn’t fast enough, and too much contact caused many injuries. Since I couldn’t crack the starting lineup, it became painfully obvious that I physically could not withstand the rigors of playing the sport at a higher level.
That limitation, like many others, was easy to see. But as parents, there is one area of life where we often believe that we are invincible: time. Many of us think that we can always do more, so we load up our kids’ schedules (and our own) with sports, music competitions, and challenging academics. But unlike athletic ability, artistic talent, or intelligence, everyone in the world, no matter where you live, has a 24-hour day.
This limitation comes with both good news and bad news. On the one hand, everyone is limited in the same way. Unlike athletic ability, where some are really fast or really big, we are in no way more disadvantaged than anyone else. But unless we move to another planet, there is absolutely nothing we can go to lengthen the day. Some can train to be faster, stronger, smarter, or sing better, but no matter what you do, none of us will get a 25th hour in the day. Given that reality, here are three truths we need to apply to our lives as parents.
Determine What’s Most Important
In a parenting Sunday class I taught at our church, one exercise I had parents do was to write a mission statement for their child. This is a practical exercise you can try as well. The statement should be two sentences or less and encapsulate what you value most for your child. We have many desires and goals for our children, but the exercise of putting these priorities on paper has a way of making us think long and hard about what’s most important.
Most Christian parents will probably say they want their children to be Christians and disciples, follow God, love others, and the like. But when you look at your schedule as a parent, you need to evaluate if your schedule really lines up with that mission. Ephesians 6:4 tells us as parents to raise children in the training and admonition of the Lord. The goal for everyone—parent or child—is to be conformed to the image of Christ. If you desire for your child to grow in Christlikeness, take a long, hard look at whether or not each activity in your family’s schedule justifies that mission, and be willing to part with the activities that don’t.
Practice the “One In, One Out” Rule
We all have a 24-hour day, no matter where we live. That means that if we add an activity or a project to our lives, we need to remove something else currently in our lives. This is indeed a hard practice, but a necessary one because our time on this earth is limited. We have to remember that James 4:14 says that we do not even know what will happen tomorrow. We are “a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”
When our two kids were younger, we had a ritual called “the purge.” Anticipating that birthdays and Christmas would result in the accumulation of more toys, we had each child, before their birthday and before Christmas, pack a bag of toys they were willing to part with to be given to Goodwill. This was in part because our house didn’t have much space, but the same is true for our schedules. Time is even more limited.
If your son wants to embark on a new sport, consider quitting the current one. If your daughter wants to take up a new hobby, consider restructuring her commitment to other hobbies. If you want to start serving in a new ministry in your church, consider resigning from your current one. These practices seem harsh, but they preserve your ability to focus on what’s most important and allow you to live with the humility that you don’t control the time—God does.
Know Who Is Beyond Time
The 24-hour day limits us, but God is beyond time. What takes humans years to discover or accomplish, God can do in the blink of an eye. Behind our constant overscheduling is often a sense of pride—that we have the ability to be superhuman—when the reality is that we are frail and broken people. But God has always been, currently is, and forever more will be. He knows the past, present and future.
Proverbs 3:5 says to “trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” It is so easy for us, as parents, to lean on our own understanding as to how parenting should work. We feel that we need to put our kids in competitive academic environments at an early age so that they can take AP Calculus by the tenth grade and go to a prestigious institution. We must have our child specialize in a travel sport at age five so that they can get a college scholarship. As a result, we can see the amount of time spent in church as the enemy of success for our kids.
But the Lord says in Matthew 6:33 to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.” This doesn’t mean that if you spend a lot of time reading the Bible, praying, and attending church, your child will make the elite sports team or get into Princeton. But it does mean that if you put God first, he will take care of you and your family and show you that success in your relationship with him far outweighs the world’s definition of success.
As parents, we want our children to succeed, so we sacrifice and go to superhuman lengths. But the beauty of the cross is that we don’t have to burn ourselves out running that race. We don’t have to fit 48 hours’ worth of work into one day—because Jesus paid it all. We may think that we have to impress God with a certain kind of resume, but Jesus became our righteousness when he died on the cross. This means that life in Christ is not about who accomplishes the most from a worldly perspective. Instead, it’s about joyful obedience to God in response to the gift of eternal life through his Son.
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