How Can Parenting Help Me Grow in the Likeness of God?

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. -Ephesians 4:22-24

On our journey through life, we are called to grow in the likeness of God.

"So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him" -1 John 4.:16

God is love. We are called to grow in love, to embody love to the greatest degree possible. God wants us to grow in love because

• He desires a relationship with us

• He knows we will experience more happiness the more love we embody, and

• He can bring a direct, felt sense of His love to others through us, so that they may experience His love as well

There are many ways in which we grow in love. We have many relationships which challenge and offer us the opportunity to be more loving. I am an assistant coach for my daughter's Upward Sports soccer team right now and we are learning about how soccer is an opportunity to grow in the loving likeness of God.

But one of the most powerful ways that God grows us in His loving likeness is through parenting.

We all want to love and be loved by our children. Perhaps more than any other relationship we have on earth, we desire a loving connection with them. We can walk away from all sorts of relationships, but we can never fully walk away from parenthood. And this love can not only bring out all sorts of emotions in us that we didn't know where there, but it can make us want to do what it takes to change so that we can connect better with our kids.

The Promise of Parenting is that God will use parenting to grow us in His loving likeness. He uses all our experiences on earth to do so, but parenting is a unique and especially powerful way in which He does.

As we parent, when we notice ourselves struggling to embody God's loving likeness, we can participate in God's plan to grow us in love by taking steps to address those things, our “old selves”, and use the steps to “put on our new selves”, growing in love through each challenge we are faced as parents.

If you would like to learn more about what is standing in your way of showing up as your most loving self, please see my Free Guide to The 4 Roadblocks.

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