Family Resemblance

Dear friends, we are already God’s children…we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is. And all who have this eager expectation will keep themselves pure, just as he is pure. (1 Jn. 3.2-3)

As the father of young children, I wonder from time to time if I am messing my children up. Lysa TerKeurst, our Treasures of Christmas speaker from 2009, even has a book out called “Am I Missing Up My Kids?” Maybe some of you parents out there sympathize. At times I think, “What weird traits, annoying habits, or sinful tendencies are these kids going to pick up from me?” I hope they pick up all the good traits and toss all the bad ones. They already say things that I say, do things that I do, and there’s not much I can say to reverse this. Imploring kids to “do what I say, not what I do” is a useless proposition.

I’m not saying that this tendency of kids to emulate parents is all bad. Hopefully I am modeling good behavior as well as bad, and they are picking up on this. I read my Bible in the mornings, and they notice this. If I get busy doing something else first, one of my kids will often say “Daddy, don’t you want to get your Bible?” My point is this: for good or for ill, our children will always tend to behave like us.

When it comes to our Heavenly Father, do we have this same pattern of emulation? God tells us to “be holy, because I am holy (Lev. 11.45). Do we start acting like God the longer we know him? His habits ought to "rub off" on us, just like our earthly parents' habits do. In God, there are no bad habits to pick up, only good ones. Habits like unconditional love, compassion, faithfulness, truth-telling, and graciousness are ones that should be "rubbing off" on us.

Let’s pray that we can each start acting more like our Heavenly Father, that people would recognize a “family resemblance” in us. What if people who observed us said, “Hey, you must belong to Jesus Christ’s family. I can tell it by the way you’re living.” That could be pretty cool.