Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Boundaries”
Our Bible verse for today: “The one who will not use the rod hates his son, but the one who loves him disciplines him diligently.” Proverbs 13:24 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “Enforcing boundaries is an important part of loving someone”
Many years ago Dr. James Dobson from Focus on the Family coined the phrase “Tough Love”. Tough Love is a parenting concept which teaches that when we love someone we sometimes must be tough with them for their own good. With respect to children, they need firm boundaries in order to learn right from wrong, and they need to experience discipline when they violate those boundaries. If the parent fails to discipline the child when needed, the parent has failed in their role as teacher, mentor, and trainer. Sometimes tough love is the highest form of love.
But the concept of tough love doesn’t just apply to the parent/child relationship. It actually spans the spectrum of relationships and ages. Whether we’re dealing with a minor child, an adult child, a spouse, a relative, a friend, or a co-worker, sometimes tough love is needed, and failure on our part to initiate that tough love translates into enabling bad behavior.
In recent years I’ve been devoting a lot of time to working with men in various levels of incarceration, helping them to break free from the endless cycle of drugs, crime, jail, and then repeating the sequence. Currently I’m reading a book by Donald Smarto entitled “Keeping Ex-Offenders Free!” In one section he writes about applying “tough love” in our efforts to help ex-offenders get their lives turned around:
“The type of structure the church needs to provide ex-offenders is not unlike that provided by parental authority. Love must nurture and understand, but it must also provide boundaries, limits, and standards. The parent who never communicates values to the child, who never says no, is not helping the child grow. Without guidelines, the child drifts into an environment without boundaries and fails to develop mature values and a sense of responsibility.”
Smarto concludes with this: “Real love for ex-offenders must include discipline. But discipline does not concern itself merely with punishment. That is a common misconception. The word discipline has at its root the word disciple, which means to show people the right way through example and modeling.”
Regardless of the relationship we’re talking about, clear and firmly established boundaries, the enforcement of those boundaries, and appropriate consequences when those boundaries have been violated, is actually one of the highest forms of loving someone. For us to do less for them is to fail them.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 