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Leading with Love
by Linda Rex
One of the difficulties of life as a single parent is the need to do things for your children which are normally done by both parents. It’s really difficult to play the role of father and mother for a child. There are some things only a mother does well, and some things only a father is really good at. We do the best we can as single parents, but there are some things we just can’t do.
It was easy for me to see early on as a single mom, I could never provide for my son or daughter the feeling which comes when a dad recognizes, values and affirms his children. I could recognize the hunger for this affirmation and attachment, but I still could not fill those needs.
A father has the capacity to destroy his children’s self-worth and crush their belief in themselves and in their ability to succeed simply with a glare or condemning word or by indifferent neglect. But he also has the ability to teach a child to take on challenges and to believe he or she can do the impossible. He can teach them what it means to be loved and valued as a human being. It’s all in how a parent leads.
I was raised in a family which valued authority because of what they believed about who God was. In the early years, dad was in charge and nothing happened without his approval and direction. We feared him and did our best to be good kids so as not to upset him.
As an older adult, I realize now my dad repented of this way of leading the family, and began to mellow over the years and eventually learned and used the power of love and understanding to bring about change in his children in place of authoritarian control. As a teen, I experienced his grace and understanding in many ways. He understood in his later years that leading in love is much more effective than leading by control and coercion.
Control and coercion are external motivators. Motivators like shame, guilt, fear and anger are also external motivators. Dictators, controlling and dominating people, and terrorists like to use motivators such as these to force people to agree to their expectations and terms in an effort to create a society in which everyone does the same thing. These external motivators may create a form of unity, but it is a unity that is merely in form, not necessarily in content. In other words—you may have a person’s compliance, but you don’t necessarily have their wholehearted obedience.
The most powerful thing a parent, and especially a dad, can do, is to love, truly love, their children. This is the kind of love which sets healthy boundaries for a child and enforces them, not punitively, but with grace. This is the kind of love which values each child as a unique person, and so finds their bent and helps grow them to be that person God created them to be.
When a parent has a strong, healthy relationship with a child in which they really see that child for who he or she is, and value their child as a gift from God, and are deeply involved in their child’s life, this creates a bond of love between the child and the parent. This bond can be highly motivating for the child, causing them to make healthy choices when they are being influenced to make unhealthy ones.
Granted, life happens, and every person is different. Some children just go the wrong way, no matter how well loved they are. But this does not negate the reality, that when our family participates in and reflects the divine perichoresis, and is filled with love and grace, there is a strong bond of love which binds everyone together in love. There is a tolerance and respect which would not otherwise be there. Children find themselves motivated, for the most part, to do the right thing from a place inside. Love is an internal motivator which supersedes any other external motivator in its ability to create genuine unity.
I believe this is why the apostle Paul stressed the need for a husband to love his wife, and for parents to love their children. Paul’s culture taught men to rule their wives and to insist that women and children submit to their leadership. Authoritarian rulership and coercion in a family may create external obedience temporarily, but they often crush the hearts of children, foment rebellion in teens, and can eventually destroy people. I have seen and experienced the tragedy that results in such leadership. The broken hearts and minds it creates are a testimony to its ineffectiveness and destructiveness in the long run.
Love, however, creates a familial bond of unity, which motivates those involved to treat one another with respect and concern. Discipline—and here I mean training, not punishment—given in love and tempered with grace, enables children to learn to live within healthy boundaries, while giving them room to grow. In this type of environment there is freedom—freedom to be the people God created us to be, and freedom to treat each other with love and respect. Freedom goes both ways because it is bound up within God’s love.
I was speaking with Doug Johannsen yesterday, and he reminded me that a father, and a husband, is meant by God to be the source (read “head” in most translations) of this love within a family. He is to be the one who pours this love so abundantly over his wife and children they cannot help but love him back and love one another. He is to be the source of this love which binds the family together in unity. Why is this true?
Because this is how our heavenly Father so loves his Son in the Spirit. He loved him so much he gave him all of this which he made. And the Son, and the Father, so loved us, they created us and gave us everlasting life through Jesus in the Spirit, so we can live in the midst of this superabundant love both now and forever.
It is this love, poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, which is to be the basis on which our families are built. This love which he receives from the Holy Spirit enables a father and husband to love his wife and family with the same love which caused Jesus to lay down his life for humanity. And this love creates an environment in the home in which a family can live together in real unity.
This is the same love which we as single parents must draw upon to enable us to love our children and care for them when we are unable to fill the role of the missing parent. This love of God shed abroad in our hearts is the source of unity, love and grace in our family. And we can trust God to do in and through us what we cannot do on our own to care for, love and minister grace to our loved ones.
Loving Father, thank you for the great love you shower upon your Son in the Spirit, and that we participate in this, your superabundant love, through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension, and in the gift of your Spirit. Grant us the grace to live in loving communion with one another in our families, churches, and communities, in the same way in which you live in loving fellowship with your Son, and with us through Jesus and by your Spirit. Amen.
“Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.” Eph 4:1–6 NASB
“Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity (lit. the uniting bond of perfection).” Col 3:14 NASB
To Hire a Sheriff
By Linda Rex
Good Friday: There was a time in my life where one of my favorite authors was Zane Grey. One reason I enjoyed his westerns was because he illustrated well both the beauty and depravity of the human heart and spirit. Granted, by modern standards, his writing may have been laborious and tedious at times. And I understand history was much more complex than what was described in the pages of his books. But the whole idea of humans taking on the adventure of settling in a new land and being transformed as they faced the dangers and challenges inherent with such a change has been inspiring and instructive to me.
One of the concerns wrestled with by inhabitants of the newly settled West was that of law and order. Former citizens of the Eastern seaboard took it for granted the average person was bound by an inherent need to do what was best for the community and to live by standards of honesty and decency. Having officers of the law available to enforce these expectations was assumed. But such individuals did not exist in the West in the early years. What did exist was the inner law, however misguided, of the hearts and minds of those venturing out into areas which were unsettled by those not native to America.
As small towns grew up, one of the settlers’ first items of business might have been to begin to enforce law and order. The citizens of these small towns would come together and agree to hire or elect a sheriff. These sheriffs usually weren’t picked because they were nice, friendly folks. Rather, they were almost always men who could draw a gun at lightning speed and track down and bring to justice evil men who preyed upon others. These sheriffs often were just as hard, cold and calculating as those men the townspeople were hoping to get rid of, but that was the price the townspeople were willing to pay in order to have law and order in their community.
If you were to drop down into the midst of one of these stories, you might find yourself standing in front of the general store, facing a ragged-looking pony. Looking up the street you’d see a tall, lean man standing quietly on the dusty road, his body tense, his guns low, and his hands hovering close by his holsters. He’d be intently staring up the road at something.
You’d lean a little to the left to look past the pony, and you’d see a couple of nasty looking fellows, both of whom are sporting wicked leers and heavy artillery on their belts. At this point, you’d decide you’d be much safer inside the general store, especially since all the other residents would have vacated the street several minutes ago.
Imagine at this point if instead of electing a tall, dark gunslinger for sheriff, the townspeople had hired Jesus Christ. Yes, I realize that even trying to imagine this possibility might cause excruciating mental torment, but please bear with me.
These two, twisted, violent men are well known in their community for the horrible things they have done to men, women and children, and for the wretchedness of their character and behavior. They are cold, calculating, and evil to the core. And they are facing a man who looks at them with eyes of compassion and understanding, but who is not wearing any form of law enforcement equipment. What would happen next?
I can’t imagine any author of Western novels creating such a storyline. The West wasn’t “won” by mild-mannered men in robes and sandals. Law and order wasn’t established by someone offering multitudes bread and fish, or by someone telling parables and healing the sick. This isn’t what we associate with the civilizing of early Western America. To even imagine this possibility creates a huge level of disbelief in our hearts and minds.
In the same way, the historical event of Good Friday stands out in my mind as an enormously unbelievable and countercultural event. It seems we as human beings refuse to accept the reality we are more inclined to resolve our issues through the application of force, violence and control than to resolve them by offering ourselves up in humility, service and sacrifice. To handle the depravity and brokenness of human nature by giving oneself over to be beaten, ridiculed and crucified just doesn’t make sense to us. Yet, this is what Jesus did.
God came to earth and we crucified him. It’s as simple as that. When Jesus Christ could have drawn upon all the power inherent within himself to execute deserved retribution on all who hated him, abused and crucified him, he instead offered himself up as a sacrifice. Even though God could have created law and order by forcing people to do everything the way he wanted it done, God gave us instead the freedom to choose and to make mistakes. And the Father even offered us his beloved Son, and we treated his Son shamefully, rejecting his most precious gift by destroying the One who came to save us.
But it was in that very effort of ours to destroy the One who was given to us God did his most amazing work. It was in our rejection of and crucifixion of Jesus Christ that God bound us to himself with inseparable cords of love. Through the resurrection, what was meant for death and destruction has become our salvation and redemption. This is God’s most amazing creation of all—a new humanity built in the midst of and out of the depths of our depravity, evil and brokenness. God said we were worth every bit of suffering and loss the Father, Son and Spirit had to experience in order to bring about his perfect end.
Unlike the perfect Zane Grey ending where the cowboy gets the girl and puts the criminals behind bars or under the gravestones in the local cemetery, God gives us a more perfect ending. He works it out so he has us, with him, for all eternity. He gets transformed, healed, renewed children to share his life and love forever. And in my humble opinion, that is the best possible ending to the story which includes the events of Good Friday. What more could we ask for?
Lord Jesus, I don’t understand how you could just stand there and let us do to you what we did. But you allowed us to do to you whatever we wanted—and it turns out we treated you shamefully, rejecting you and your love, and we tried to destroy the most precious gift your Father could have offered us. It is amazing how your Father took this very act and used it to bind us all to you in an unbreakable bond of love. Now we are yours, God, forever, in the grace offered us in you, Jesus. Thank you for your unfailing love and forgiveness, through Jesus Christ and by your Spirit we pray. Amen.
“So Jesus said to Peter, ‘Put the sword into the sheath; the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?’” John 18:11 NASB
Thoughts On Being a Father
by Linda Rex
Father’s Day is approaching and I’ve been thinking about fathers and manhood, and this thing called being a father to a child. Last night I saw a new car ad where this intrepid father was continually saving his son from imminent disaster. The ultimate save came while his son was gazing awestruck at a cute girl—the car stopped by itself rather than running into the back of another car.
Great car technology—but I’m not sure about the fatherhood part of the ad. To me it somehow seems wrong that the one person in the family whose natural instinct is to teach boys how to take risks and to attempt dangerous things is the one who’s constantly trying to rescue his son from disaster.
I wonder sometimes if many of us have become too “civilized.” We can be so busy protecting ourselves and/or others from every possible danger that we begin to lose our humanity. Our lives become almost artificial—distanced from the beauty and wonder of all that God created for our enjoyment and blessing. We are so jaded and bored and numb that we even find ways to create pain or passion so that we can feel somewhat alive, at least for a moment or two. And our relationships with one another are too often just as inhuman and dead.
That brings me back to fatherhood. True fatherhood draws its nature from God and his Fatherhood and not the other way around. Unlike human fathers, God the Father does not have a consort or female counterpart. He is the Father of the eternally begotten Son of God and always has been. From him and through the Son proceeds the Holy Spirit, eternally. The Father is not the Son and is not the Spirit, yet he is one with the Son and the Spirit.
God is a relational being—he is defined by his relationships. Humans, made in the image of God, were created for relationship—with God and with each other. As humans, we are also defined by our relationships—we are fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, aunts, etc.
When we read what Jesus Christ taught us about his heavenly Father we are being given an insight into a relationship that existed before our human time began. The Son of God took on human flesh and in that human flesh, his relationship with his Father continued. Here are some things we can learn from him about his father/son relationship:
- Jesus (the Son) and his Father are one (a unity, an essence) (John 10:30)
- Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in Jesus, so Jesus does whatever the Father does (John 10:37-38)
- The Father knows the Son intimately and the Son knows the Father intimately, (John 10:15) so whoever knows the Son, knows the Father (John 14:7)
- The Father loves the Son because the Son’s heart is self-sacrificing and loving (John 10:17)
- The Father glorifies Jesus (John 8:54) Jesus glorifies the Father (John 7:18)
- The Father sent his Son Jesus, and did not leave him alone, but was with him, because Jesus always did what pleased his Father (John 8:29, 42)
- Jesus (as God in human flesh) did not act on his own initiative but spoke what the Father taught him to speak (John 8:28)
- Knowing Jesus means knowing the Father—you see One, you see the Other (John 8:19)
- The sustenance of the Son is to do the will of the Father (John 4:34)
- All that the Father has is the Son’s (John 16:15)
- The Father has given Jesus his name (John 17:11-12)
It would be difficult to find a human father/child relationship that reflected such oneness, love and unity. We tend to prize our individuality rather than our oneness and we tend to prize our privacy and separateness rather than our openness and transparency. We want to make a name for ourselves, not being content to just bear our father’s name (perhaps for good reason). We let pride or fear or shame get in the way of our relationships with those we love.
As I learn about the nature of God as Father, I find that he is a Father who takes great risks for the sake of having a close relationship with each one of us. The greatest risk he takes is in giving you and me and every human who has ever lived the freedom to choose to love him or reject him. He wants each of us to choose to love him freely, of our own volition, because we want to.
And he knew that giving us that freedom meant he would have to give his Son to us as a gift—the gift through his life, death, resurrection and ascension. Whatever it cost him, the Father gave his all, his best, to us in his great love for us.
He’s adopted us as his children. He’s made a place for us in his life and in his relationship of love as Father, Son and Spirit. He knows us intimately and invites us to know him intimately. He has given us his name—we are made in his image, to reflect him. He has shared his glory with us. He has gone all the way—done everything he possibly could to win our love. Now it’s up to us—what will our response be?
And what about those of us who are fathers? Have you ever thought about what it means to be a father and what it means to take the ultimate risk of loving freely, fully, completely without any assurance of being loved in return? Have you ever poured yourself out so completely for your child(ren) in the face of their rejection that it seems there is nothing left?
All that you do as a father is a participation in the Fatherhood of God. You are not alone—God was a Father first and he has included you in that by allowing you to be a father too. Look to him and lean on him, as a son with a father. Let him lead and guide you, and fill you with his perfect love. He, as your Father, will enable you to be the father he created you to be. Trust him to do it and he will.
Thank you, God, for being our Father—our Daddy-God, who loves us completely, perfectly and joyfully. Thank you for giving us fathers who can participate in your fatherhood and so share your perfect family life with their families through Christ in the Spirit. We trust you to heal, comfort and strengthen all those who are fathers that they may fulfill their calling to lead and parent their children. And we trust you to comfort and heal those who have lost their fathers, or who have been deeply wounded by those who should have protected and cared for them. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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Our Life in the Trinity 