Sometimes I feel like this is more of my personal parenting storytelling blog than a Coaches blog. I’ve been thinking about that, and while I don’t want to get too carried away with stories of my boys, here’s what I think. Coaching is about relationships. Life is about relationships, primarily our relationship with God. And there aren’t many things in my life that help me understand relationships better than my kids. Healthy relationships lead to healthy people leading healthy lives. Healthy people leading healthy lives can be really great Coaches.
I’ve been reading Genesis at bedtime with Jack and Will, a chapter at a time (by the way, we will be skipping chapter 38). Earlier this week, we read about Abraham and the Lord’s command to him to sacrifice his son Isaac in chapter 22. That might be the most difficult story in the entire Bible for me personally, so I can only imagine what it sounds like to someone 5 years old. Trying to explain why this man would be told to and willing to kill his own son…not easy to do. They never did a “Veggie Tale” on this one. Too bad, that would have been sickly hilarious.
But here’s what I came up with. I told the boys that God wants us to love him more than anything. He also wants us to understand that his love is greater than anything. When we can grasp some of the depth of his passion for us, our passion for him is the natural result. I didn’t put it quite like that, but that was the gist of it. God helped me see something new that night. I’ve sometimes felt as if when I don’t love Jesus more than anything, then I am just a crummy guy. And while there’s no doubt that sometimes I can be a crummy guy, now I’m seeing that when I don’t love Jesus more than anything, it’s because I’m failing to embrace the power of his love for me. I’m failing to bask in the glory of knowing and enjoying him. That realization is a big deal. It takes us from a place of guilt to a place of worship.
In a related note, Will confessed to me that night that he thinks he loves computer games more than God. I guess we’ve got something to pray for. Gotta love the honesty.
80’s Lyric