Making your kids your god (Idol Worship)

This was written several years ago, but needs to be reinforced:
 
I want you to repeat this in your heart after me. “My kid is not going to be a professional athlete.” Go ahead and say that to your heart. Talk to yourself. You may be going, “My kid is excellent.” But still statistically he is more likely to be struck by lightning while being eaten by a shark than he is to become a pro athlete. 

So let me set the record straight because I think I get a bad rep. I love sports. I think sports are awesome, as long as they’re a game. It’s when it’s no longer a game but life that you’ve gone off the deep end…

Do you know how I know this? Because my son is playing t-ball. He’s five-years-old. And I watch dads yell at their five-year olds, sixyear-olds, seven-year-olds in t-ball. “We practiced this! Get your head in the game!” He’s five, he just learned not to wet himself. Are you serious? 

And I know it’s you because you don’t do that with other games. Like when your boy or girl are with their cousins playing freeze tag, you’re not freaking out and screaming at them. They’re not playing hide-and-go-seek upstairs with you shouting from downstairs, “Are you serious? Focus!” It’s just a game. It doesn’t matter. But all of a sudden, now that it’s organized, you lose your mind...

Can I just lovingly do this knowing that some of you are never going to come back? When you get home today, go pull your yearbook out of the closet or attic, flip to that team photo that you’re in or that photo of you catching a touchdown pass, and I want you to hug him, tell him goodbye, shut the yearbook and put it back up…

Your children’s extracurricular activities should not govern your home. It is a foolish error for several reasons. One, making kids your god turns them into turds that you then release upon society to have to deal with. 

So then we’ve got coworkers and neighbors who are unbelievably obnoxious because of you. And then second, they’re going to leave your house. You want them to. I know right now maybe they’re five, six, seven-years-old, but there is going to come a day where you love them with all the love you have in your heart right now, but they’re going to have to get out of your house. And then do you know what you’re left with? Your spouse.

So if the focal point of your existence is your children and then they’re gone, that puts you in this really weird spot with the spouse who you should have been doing life with this entire time. Biblically a home revolves around a husband and wife under the banner of the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

What we should be imparting to our children are the wonders and glory of a Creator God who loves them, longs to save them, and rescues them from the fallen hurt of this world. And then let’s play some ball, let’s cheer them on and let’s root for them, whether they’re excellent or horrible.

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