“Do you know we haven’t had biscuits in four weeks?”
That question was posed by my oldest son last week. Angela (my wife) has spoiled our children. She has them on a regular Saturday morning rotation of biscuits and pancakes. One week she bakes homemade biscuits, the next week she makes pancakes. Every Saturday. Everyone knows on Friday night what is coming on Saturday morning.
The regular rhythm of Saturday morning breakfasts was interrupted by travel over the Christmas holiday, and Wyatt missed his biscuits. So, Angela made biscuits…lots of biscuits, like 3 or 4 dozen biscuits (I was given the menial task of cooking sausage links). Then, she smiled as she listened to the kids count how many they had eaten with butter, syrup, and jelly.
What I want you to notice though, is not the generosity and love of a mom that spoils her children, but the kids who missed their biscuits. For as long as they can remember, they have been fed Angela’s biscuits at least twice a month. When they didn’t get their biscuits, they missed their biscuits. When the biscuits returned, they ate lots of biscuits on Saturday, then on Sunday, and we toasted the rest with cinnamon and sugar for breakfast on Monday.
Parents, what are you feeding your kids? What are you training them to crave?
Do they crave good things? Do they crave holy things? Godly things? They won’t crave these things naturally. Their inclination, like yours and mine, is toward self-gratification. It is our responsibility to train them to desire good things.
Truthfully, it isn’t hard to get kids to crave hot biscuits. It is another thing altogether to teach them to desire broccoli or salad or green beans.
Likewise, we must work to train them to desire God’s church and God’s word and God’s ways.
I watch Angela make biscuits. It requires a lot more work to knead and roll dough, cut biscuits, grease pans, and clean up afterward than it would to open can of biscuits. But, I’ve noticed through the years that this work is not burdensome for her, it is joyful. She makes biscuits with joy because the kids love them (OK, it isn’t just the kids. I can eat my weight in her biscuits, and have on more than one occasion tried).
Biscuit-making is a labor of love.
Likewise, as we train our children to desire the things of the Lord, it is work, but it is not a burden. It is a joy to train them to know and love the God who gives good gifts to his children. After all, if we who are evil know how to give good gifts to our children, to give them bread (or biscuits) instead of a stone, “how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”
Teach your children to desire the things of the Lord today. Prayerfully, their appetite for holiness will only increase and they will spend their life consuming God’s good gifts.
