I’ve always wanted my kids to be strong-minded and believe in their abilities to accomplish great things. When one of our kids was about to enter high school I told my wife we needed to figure out how to toughen them up. My concern was that timidness might result in future struggles. Meekness was a weakness in my mind, so it needed to be purged away.
How do you replace meekness? By making them more self-reliant and helping them to believe in themselves. Not until recently did I realize the fallacy of my thinking. Taking this approach was steering my kids away from God and His blessings. I now see I was parenting more from our culture’s truth than the Bible’s truth.
Think through this with me.
If we aim to make our children more reliant on themselves the result will be more pride, perfectionism, and then anxiety as they seek to maintain their onward and upward trajectory through life.
The same is true for us. Take a second and ask if self-reliance is producing these things in you?
Worry is a telltale sign that we’re relying on our strength and wisdom rather than God’s. This is described in Matthew 6 where Jesus explains that we worry because we don’t look to God’s reign and His faithfulness to care for us. This is where biblical meekness comes in.
Meekness is not a weakness – it’s a strength!
Biblical meekness is standing back and yielding to another. But the one we yield to is God, who is more than able to give us all that we need.
It’s the opposite of pushing your way through life with an “I’ll Get R Done” attitude. It’s having the faith to wait on the Lord and to act when he reveals His will.
According to mental health professionals, we have an anxiety epidemic happening among kids today. Is much of the answer found in the simple phrase, “Let go, and Let God”? It is simple, but founded on the greatest source of strength and flowing with peace.
Will you join me in first showing, then teaching, our kids to stop relying on themselves and to trust in the Father by echoing our Savior’s words in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Not my will, but Yours be done.”
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