[#life Series] Parenting Part 1Sample

A Unique Role

If you opened this devotional and thought, “Parenting? Oh my goodness, that is like so far off,” then this is what you can do: You may take information like this and put it in your pocket. Maybe you need to understand this topic now for the future. Or you may want to understand what your friends or other people are going through.

This is either going to be a truth about something you are dealing with right now, or it is going to be a tool for you to be able to help somebody else. Whether you are a parent or a grandparent, want to be a parent one day, are just an amazing aunt or uncle, or maybe a teacher—whatever it is, developing the ability to file these things away builds the capacity to connect with other people and help them.

If you are parenting, maybe there is a piece of pain in that experience. Maybe it is a joy, or maybe things didn’t turn out like you wanted them to. But say this to yourself: “I am doing the best I can; and I need Jesus.” We all need the Lord in an amazing way.

Parenting is a very unique role that you have, or will have, in life. I remember one day when my kids were little, and after church they came up to me, joking around, and started calling me Pastor Gregg.

“Pastor Gregg, let’s go home. Pastor Gregg, we are hungry. Pastor Gregg, where is mom? Pastor Gregg…”

I got down on my knee and I said, “Come here for just a second.” They weren’t in trouble or anything like that. And I said, “I want you to know something: A lot of people call me Pastor Gregg, but only two people on the entire planet call me Daddy. I want you to call me Daddy.”

There is a uniqueness to the role. There are a lot of business people, a lot of teachers, a lot of pastors, but there is only one mom and there is only one dad in each person’s life. Even though they may have some other persons around them, you get to be that grandfather, that grandmother, or that aunt, or that uncle. Take this unique role and say, “Let me use it in a way that is going to bless this child, help him grow, and make a difference in his life.”