Parental Idols

"Whose Idols are in the Way?" This was the name of the chapter that probably has been the most convicting to me as a parent. It is from the book, "Age of Oppportunity" by Paul Tripp.
Here were the idols that he listed that as parents we can hold so tight to:
1. Comfort-We may secretly wish that our lives were a resort. That the only demands on ourselves are those we place on us. We may live for comfort and believe that we are somehow entitled to comfort. That any time 0ur child or another person brings us discomfort they are disrupting our lives. As parents if we demand peace and quiet, tranquility, space, etc from our kids we are in danger of seeing our children as the enemy, because we all know that kids do not always bring comfort. We may begin to act out of frustration toward our children and even resent them.
2. Appreciation-How many times have we served our kids and expected them to appreciate it? Not that it is wrong to teach our kids to appreciate things we do for them, but is that our primary motivation for serving them? A sure sign that you have set up an idol of appreciation in your heart is when you find yourself saying something like, "I can't believe you have done this to me after all I have done for you."
3. Success--Believing that if we do our part as parents our children will turn out as success stories. And if they don't we worry what others will think.
4. Control-The author points out that there are probably two ways to live: A) Trusting God and living in submission to His will and His rule, or B) trying to be God.There is little in between. As sinners we seem to be better at the latter than we are at the former.
When we live our lives trying to control our children we will only be focused in on the outward changes in our children, not so much caring about transformation of the heart, so long as I have my thumb on my child everything is okay.
5. Respect-Being convinced we are entitled to respect. Being focuses on this may cause us to "lord" it over our children and abuse the authority God has given to us. When we are only motivated by, "I deserve respect from you." Then what do we teach our kids? We obey mom and dad just to respect them, what about the other dimensions to obedience? Isn't there love involved and relationship?
Having one or more of these idols can cause us to lose balance as parents. All these things are essential keys that parents do actually need to teach their kids, but only for the purpose of training our children the admonition of the lord. We can become so focused on one or more of these that it then becomes our primary motivation for our own selfish desires.

I am also thinking about how these relate in other relationships in our lives. I can see how these things become idols in our hearts when we begin believing lies from the devil. We begin believing that we have rights and we must fight for them, or maybe we believe we deserve so much more, or perhaps we even believe life is supposed to be easy.

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