Snapshot

2 Kings 14:3
“And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, yet not like David his father: he did according to all things as Joash his father did.”

A warning to every parent is found in the verse above when it says, “…he did according to all things as Joash his father did.” Amaziah learned how to rule his kingdom from his parents. Whether good or bad, the habits he learned and the actions he performed on the throne were things he learned from his parents. Had Amaziah’s parents been the example their whole lives instead of straying from the LORD in their older years, he may have been a great king in Judah’s history.

Parents always need to understand that someone is watching. The eyes of your children are watching what you are doing, and they are learning how to live as an adult from your every action. If you want your children to serve the LORD their entire life, you had better realize that your actions do have an impact on who your children will become. Let me give you a few thoughts of advice that you can learn from the life of Amaziah.

First, your children tend to take a snapshot of your life to determine how to live. The verse above says that Amaziah did all that his father did. Amaziah looked at the whole life of his parents and patterned his life at the product they produced with their life. Your life is producing a product for your children to copy. You may want your children to only copy the good in your life, but they are packaging your life together as one product to copy. If you don’t want your children to copy the bad habits of your life, you had better get rid of them quickly so they won’t include those bad habits in the snapshot they take of your life.

Second, your children rarely rise to the level of your spirituality. Verse 4 says, “Howbeit the high places were not taken away…” One thing I always caution parents about is that they need to raise their standards higher than the level of where they would be comfortable with their children living. If you live at the level where you would want your children to live, you will soon find out that they will never quite get to that level. One of the mistakes many parents are making today is that they are raising their children to be godless because they have lowered their Christ-honoring standards to a world-pleasing standard. If you want your children to please the LORD, you had better raise the standards of where you would want your children to live so that if they choose not to rise to your standard of living, they will still be living within the confines of God’s Word.

Third, the latter years of your life are just as important as the youthful years of your life. Amaziah saw his father lower his standards when he got older, and that is what led him not to serve the LORD completely. Just because your children are no longer living under your roof doesn’t mean that your responsibility to train your children is over. Always understand that you are always training your children. In the senior years of your life, you are training your children to grow old. Let me ask you, are you training your children to serve the LORD when they are old, or are you training them to let up and compromise in their older years?

My friend, someone is watching you, and that someone is your child. Live your life in such a manner that the snapshot of your life creates a spiritual picture for your children to follow.

Author: Allen Domelle