Decisions, even small ones, can have vast and unintended consequences.  Like a secret agent on a mission, one errant decision can cause the whole plan to unravel calling for everyone involved to "abort the mission" because circumstances have changed and success is no longer possible.

My daughter has been given a few responsibilities around the house.  For this she gets an allowance of $1.25 per week, and included in these responsibilities is the daily task of feeding the dogs and checking to make sure they have water.  Should she fail to feed the dogs even once during the week, she forfeits her allowance for the entire week.  Some may see this as a bit heavy handed, but I am trying to teach her consistency in self-discipline, and the idea that failure to hold up her responsibilities will have great consequences.

If she doesn't feed the dogs, then the dogs who depend on her, the dogs who have done nothing wrong, would go hungry.  (To be sure, I'd feed them myself, but only after she has gone to bed.)  She might forget, and in fact, even if she remembers I have told her that she does not have to feed the dogs if she does not want to, but the dogs will go hungry if she does not, and she will get nothing for an allowance at the end of a week.  She will not be reminded of her responsibilities.  The choice is hers.

So far, she has had a few close calls, and maybe one day she will slip up and forget, but the knowledge of leaving hungry dogs outside to suffer for her own actions has made an impact on her.  What is more, the idea that she could do a whole weeks worth of work to lose it all at the end by forgetting has her leaving notes to herself, reminding herself to feed the dogs.  She is learning a lot of lessons here.

It may not seem fair to some that she should lose her whole allowance if she misses feeding the dogs once at the end of a week, but consider this; we can go our whole lives building a reputation, and lose it all in a moment.  I also believe we lose a lot more than just our reputation when we choose to do what is wrong.

I believe God has a plan for our lives, and His hand of providence is ever willing to bless us along that path.  We can choose to stay on that path, or we can choose to stray.  The choice is ours.  God will not be there hovering over us to remind us that sin is going to have consequences, we simply must choose.  Whether we like it or not, choosing to sin will abort God's hand of providence in our lives as we kick off a chain reaction of events that sends us off of God's plan for our lives.

A striking example of this exists early in Scripture where, in Genesis chapter four, Cain chooses to abort God's plan for his life.  Notice how God never intervenes, even when it will cost Abel his life.  Cain always has a choice in his actions.  In the end, Abel is murdered, the parents suffer the loss of a child, and Cain is marked for life.  Even today we think rather poorly of the first child born into this world, because he had a choice, and because he chose to abort providence the earth would never grow for him ever again.  Genesis 4:12a "When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength;"

The good news is, you may choose to abort providence in your life, but God is not without mercy.  Your life may have strayed far from God's plan, but God is in the reconciliation business as well.  This is one aspect of God that many Christians I know love to embrace for themselves, but detest when God shows mercy on others who have wronged them.

If you are ever tempted to sin, take a moment to realize you have a choice here.  You can choose to do what is wrong, and God will not come down from heaven to stop you.  Regardless of how awful your sin might be, God will not intervene.  You must fight that spiritual battle yourself, but know that if you lose that spiritual battle and give in to temptation, there will be vast and unintended consequences, and you will abort God's providence in your life.

If you are someone who realizes how far off God's plan for your life you have strayed, there is still hope.  God is a God of judgement, but only against the unrepentant heart.  God is also a God of mercy to those who would come before Him with a humble heart.  James 4:6 "But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble."  Psalm 51:17 "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise."

Today, I am married with two children, and God is a greater part of my life than He has ever been before, yet still the past haunted me.  My father was verbally and physically abusive, and for years I have asked the questions many people ask about how God could allow such things to happen.  Sometimes I come across some truth that helps, but for many years I simply held God at a distance without ever even realizing it.  God was God - powerful, almighty, and omnipotent - that was it.

Up until recently though, I never could latch onto my part in the relationship I had with God.  I had a great head knowledge of who God is, I started my prayers with the words "Dear Heavenly Father" and could even talk about being a child of God without ever understanding the relationship I possessed.

The other day, while reading "When God Whispers Your Name", I came across these words: "You may get your looks from your mother, but you get eternity from your Father, your heavenly Father."  The words "heavenly father" struck out at me, challenging me, and my attention focused on the next words.  "By the way, he's not blind to your problems.  In fact, God is willing to give you what your family didn't.  Didn't have a good father?  He'll be your Father."  The book then quoted Galatians 4:7 "Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ."

I am reminded by the prodigal son, who once he recognized he was not even worthy to be called a son any longer, came back home only desiring to be a servant in his father's house, only to have his father embrace him and reclaim him as a son.  Then it dawned on me that for years now, I have been struggling with coming to God as a son, because of my own past.

My own father rejected me and rejected any attempts at reconciliation later in life.  His refusal to be a father had spilled into my own perception as a child of God.  I could serve God, but I could never seem to accept my relationship as a son of God.  To that end, my life had been focused on serving God.  Serve God in the choir, out on soul-winning, visitation, teaching a Sunday school class, in missions work, being an usher, working in the Children's ministry, oh I had the title of "servant of God" down pat.  The problem is, that is where for so many years I had been taking my value.

As a worker in the secular world, you only have value to your employer if you produce.  Stop producing on the job, and soon your boss will stop producing a paycheck.  Your value is in your ability to serve the interests of your employer.  However, in my family, my daughters' value is not tied up in what they do around the house.  In fact, for the first few years of their life, productivity meant either cleaning vomit off of myself or changing a smelly diaper.

Because they are my children, they have value.  Period.  That's it.  The only thing they need to do to realize that value is claim their title as my daughters, and accept my unconditional love.  They do not need to earn my love.  They are my daughters whether their performance is good or bad.  I love them because of their relationship to me, not because they are productive or do well.  In my mind, they will never lose value.

However, if they ever refuse to accept my unconditional love, because of some personal shame or guilt they feel, then in their own mind they would lose that value.  Just like the prodigal son, their only recourse in their own mind may be to try to earn value once again by being a servant.  This is where I found myself, and it was at this point I began to realize my value to God is not in being a servant, my value to God is in being a son.

If you have come to a point in your life where God does not feel so much like a heavenly Father anymore, maybe you need to take a step back and ask yourself, are you trying to be His servant or His son?

In our house, we have slowly begun to raise Alabama fans.  We do not sit down and educate our daughters about how important it is to root for Alabama, but they pick it up.  They see us watch the football games, see me cheer when one team does something I like, and hear me groan when the other team does something I do not like.  "Which team are we cheering for," my daughter will ask, "the red one or the orange one?"  She is learning to love what I love not because I am sitting down trying to teach her to love a thing, she naturally tends to gravitate toward areas of my life that occupy my time.

What we want to teach our children about life is not something they learn, what we actually practice in life is what teaches our children whether we want to or not.  This was my first learning experience: If what you do teaches your children, what are you teaching them about God, about the Bible, about a relationship with God?

I really enjoy the tablet PC I received for my birthday last month.  The functionality it has for work, reading books, surfing the web, sending and receiving emails, and even the games can really occupy a good bit of time.  However, I recently heard a message about how what we do teaches our children, and my mind went to the times when I was playing a game on my tablet PC and how quickly my daughters came to me, peering over my shoulder, watching me . . . and learning.

"This is what I love, this is what is important to me" is the message I was communicating.  Whether I like it or not, that message was coming in loud and clear to them.  The good thing is, I don't have to communicate that message.  I can change that message, simply by changing what they see.

Earlier this week I sat down and brought up a Bible verse on the tablet, and without me calling for them my daughters had quickly settled next to me, watching me, and began asking me what I was doing.  I had picked  Colossians 4:6 "Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man."  I wanted to teach them something about how they talk to each other as sisters, and in an effort to teach them through example, they taught me.

"Right now I would like for you to think of something nice to say."  My oldest thought for a moment and said, "I like you because you're cute."  To which my youngest replied, "I don't like to be cute," with a small frown.  I looked at my oldest, "You just said something kind and nice, but she didn't hear it that way.  Like the verse, we need to know to answer every person we meet, which means we need to know how to talk to people so they will understand what we mean.  Can you think of another way to say what you mean so she will understand and like what you said?"

After a few moments of back and forth communications between my two daughters, both having found ways to speak kindly to each other, I turned to my youngest and asked, "So, what did she say to you that was kind?"  The response came, "Uh, I don't remember."  I told the oldest to repeat what she had said, and began to think about the two lessons I had just learned.

Sometimes we speak to our wives, our children, and other people in ways we believe are good and kind, but they don't always hear it that way.  When they take offense, the tendency is to get defensive instead of modifying our speech.  As well, even when a good message does get across to someone, it is usually quickly forgotten.  So, we should all learn to speak more effectively at speaking kind words, and then learn to repeat that message as often as possible.

This was my second learning experience: How would you respond to someone who had learned to speak kindly to you in an effective way, and repeatedly did so over and over again affirming and reaffirming good things about you?