Understanding Foreknowledge

A lot of people struggle with understanding the biblical teaching of foreknowledge. Specifically they want to know how God can know the outcome of a situation without having controlled the specific details. The longer I parent, the easier it is to understand foreknowledge. Now there is a difference in God's perfect foreknowledge and the parental equivalent that each of has. Parental foreknowlege comes through years of painful experience.

As a parent, how many times have you made statements similar to these:

• I know that isn't going to lead to anything good.
• I told them not to do it - but I just know they aren't listening to me.
• I have a really bad feeling about . . .

Call it instinct, experience or foreknowledge, but as parents we often get opportunities to learn god-like lessons in our life. The longer I parent, the more I realize how much God loves me. I have a greater appreciation of the foolishness HE puts up with and the times that he pleads with us, "don't do it, don't do it, don't do it."

My father allows me to exercise a certain level of foolishness and folly in my life. Sometimes its because I am just too stubborn to listen, at other times He allows me to fall on my face to learn a valuable lesson. As a parent I struggle with knowing what that balance is with my own children. As my children get older, I want to give them more freedom and liberty, but when you see a train wreck coming their way your first instinct is to pull them from the tracks.

The hardest part of parenting is knowing when to take pre-emptive action. I know parents who are so passive that they enable the worst kind of behavior in their children, and others who were so overbearing that once their children left home for the first time, they rebelled and experimented with every imaginable behavior. So I continue the hard task of parent children who are rapidly becoming young adults. I struggle with balance, I struggle with managing expectations, I struggle with letting go.

"God watch over my children and grant them wisdom in their daily walks. Forgive me the times I have failed them. Forgive me when my example is not as it should be. Forgive them of the foolishness of you youth. Watch over them with a careful and loving hand as they travel the path from childhood to adulthood."  Amen.