What we commonly refer to as paternal or maternal love is really agape. It is present in both the believer and the unbeliever. The unbeliever is not able to attain to the full level of agape because he doesn't know where he got what little he has.
He is not hooked up to its source. But the believer is attached to the source of agape.
You Need Agape In Your Home
Your relationship with your children must be based on agape. Ten years ago, almost all of us saw our children as valuable and precious. But today we are finding out that is not true. Some of the things you hear about people doing to their kids lets you know that not everyone sees his or her children that way.
You have to realize and understand the value and preciousness of your home and those who are in it.
We dismissed a babysitter once, because we came home from an event, and she was on the phone talking about one of our children. If we see our home with our children as valuable and precious, then we are not going to have anyone looking after our children who doesn't agree with that.
Our daughter MiChelle has so many different definitions of the kind of baby and child she was because people have told her all kinds of things. They said that she cried all the time and that she was a bad baby.
But, truthfully, MiChelle was the happiest of our babies. She rarely ever cried. I recently told her, "Look, you just need to stop listening to other people and listen to me and your dad!"
Actually, we didn't have any bad children because we believed that the minute they reacted and responded to the word "no," they were old enough to be disciplined. But we didn't jump on them for every little thing they did, either. We knew they were children, not adults.
You have to let children be children. When you jump on them for every little thing, you are not going to learn the type of personality they have. You'll try to make them like you, and they'll hide who they really are from you.
But what you don't want is to have someone around them calling them bad and saying all kinds of negative things about them. You simply can't let people talk negatively to your children.
Study references: Ps. 25:12-13; 112:2
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