This is DiscipleNow weekend in Paducah—an entire weekend for students to spend focused, concentrated time seeking the Lord with other students. We are praying for God to show himself mightily in the lives of our students over these 36 or so hours.
As DiscipleNow began with opening worship, we were reminded of the differences between contracts and covenants.
When people enter contracts, they seek to minimize their responsibilities and maximize their rights. When people enter covenants, they live to maximize their responsibilities and minimize their rights.
Take a look at many aspects of society, and you’ll probably see more evidences of contracts than covenants. Friendships are too frequently contractual in nature. Marriages are often seen as contractual agreements where both the man and the woman unfortunately seek to advance their rights and to retreat from their responsibilities. How sad it is that so many parents seem to be shirking their responsibilities to love, care for, and raise their children—and are seemingly doing as little parenting as possible so that they might have more time to make the most of what they consider to be their rights.
We’ve filled out lots of paperwork over the last year, and we’ve signed our names more times than we care to remember. We travelled to Louisville, KY this past summer to get our fingerprints recorded. And while some might see this adoption as merely a contract, it’s more than that—it’s a covenant.
On May 8, 1999 when we said our wedding vows to one another in Nashville, TN, we entered into covenant. When Jack was born on November 15, 2003 and when William was born on January 8, 2006 and when Isaac was born on November 20, 2007, we realized again and again and again the responsibilities of our covenant relationships with our boys. We are learning every day that parenting is not about rights, but responsibilities.
Adoption is a covenant. We are vowing to Benjamin that we are going to bring him into our family and that we are going to parent him. In coming years, we will be driven by our responsibilities as parents—not our rights.
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” Jeremiah 31:31-34.
God graciously made a covenant with us through Christ.
“And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins’” Matthew 26:27.
“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba Father!’” Romans 8:15.
As we think about God’s covenant with us, we want our faithfulness to our children to be a reflection of God’s faithfulness to us.
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