The Image Of Christ

A friend of mine shared a blog post on Facebook speaking about how we are the image of Christ to our children and I have been unable to get this thought out of my mind recently. It truly is a profound thought to ponder. As parents we have the ability to show our children exactly what God looks like through our actions, speech and attitudes. On the flip side of that, we can also show our children the exact opposite of who Christ is. I can only pray that as a parent I am at least somewhat portraying an accurate picture of Christ to my children. I keep in mind however, that I am human, and humans have the capability to sin, this means I will inevitably misrepresent my Lord from time to time. The apostle Paul writes:

“Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” 1 Corinthians 11:1

This is a goal we can set as parents, that our children will follow us as we follow Christ. I had written in a much earlier post about "The Mirror Concept." In that post I shared that our children will begin to display the things they see us doing and saying. So, if they see the fruit of the spirit flowing out of us, then there is a good chance we will begin to see some of those things appearing in our children. Let’s lay aside our humanness and fleshly nature and put on the character of Christ each morning. There is no other way our children can follow our example if we are the ones running the show. It truly has to be the Lord's leading and guiding that our children see in us. We as humans capable of sin, can not possibly portray Christ with any amount of accuracy to our children if we don’t let him have control of our hearts first. This can be such a difficult thing to do at times because I know for me, I like to be “in control.” But my idea of being “in control” is only going to miss the mark of me being able to display His image to my children.  

What a tremendous responsibility we have as parents, to be able to introduce our Heavenly Father to our precious little ones through our actions, speech and attitudes each and every day. I can only figure that the Lord must have an enormous sense of trust in order to lay such a responsibility in the hands of mere mortals. By His grace and mercy He will lead us and guide us how to accurately portray his character to our children. What a special honor!

Lord help us, because left to ourselves there is no possible way that we can accurately display your character to our children. It is only by your Holy Spirit moving within our lives that our children can see your image in us. Forgive us, Lord, for those times that  we do not show our little ones a true representation of who you are. Thank you that you trust us enough to carry this responsibility of showing our children who you are, and what you look like. It truly is a blessed honor!