The Sin of the Parents

There’s one thing I ALWAYS appreciated of my mother.  Growing up, she never acted as though she never did anything wrong.  She would often admit to her failures and thanked the LORD for helping her through them.  As a child and teenager, she often would look at me and say, “Terry, the way you’re behaving now is not the way I behaved when I was your age.  You did not get that from me because I did the wrong thing.”  By her not being ashamed to admit her failures in front of her child meant a lot to me, because I could remember this one particular thing she did wrong and I did not want to follow in her footsteps.  When I was 15 years old, I heard a voice speak to me.  This voice said, “Terry, if you do not ask me now, you will be just like your mother.”  I immediately started to cry.  I understood exactly what the voice meant.  I cried out and said, “LORD, please do not allow me to do that.”  Then suddenly, a peace came over me.  You see, even though I hated this particular sin that my mother committed, hating it would not prevent me from falling in the same footsteps.  Some parents may not have been good parents and the child grow up hating the things that their parents did—thinking that by hating it, it will cause them to be good parents to their children.  This is not true.  What really would happen is that they will only end up doing the same thing their parents did to them to their own children.  When truly the ONLY way is asking the LORD with a contrite heart to help you not to go the wrong path as your parents did.  This is what the voice was saying to me.  And praise the LORD, it worked!