by Elder Mike Chon

Since February is “Encouragement Month” at our church, I was thinking about what it means to encourage one another. I first began to think about our church and how we can encourage each other, especially since every Sunday many opportunities are presented in how we can accomplish this. Whether serving in the different aspects of the Care Ministry or writing encouragement notes or even a music note, which by the way I’m hoping to see soon, which are all good ways to encourage one another. But the question we all have to wonder is “for what purpose am I encouraging my fellow brother or sister toward?” And hopefully we can all answer and say that we are encouraging one another so that we will help each other to love God and Christ more in our lives. As I began to think more about this, I couldn’t help but think about how my family, especially how my kids encourage me to love God and Christ more.

For those that do not know, my wife and I have three kids. Our oldest son is three and a half years old, our next son is two years old and our youngest is a daughter and she is 9 months old. You may be wondering how three such young children can ever encourage me to love God and Christ more. Let me explain. For those that know our family, you know that our three kids are pretty active and loud. Usually what you see at church is not even half of what occurs at home. Defining them as “active” is one of the biggest understatements that you can ever say to us. Here are a couple of examples of what our kids can do, especially our boys. One day, our boys decided to come into my office and within a matter of minutes they emptied my shredder and covered the entire office with the shredded paper. Then on another day, they managed to go into our bedroom empty out all the clothes from our drawers, pull all the sheets off the bed, and knock off the clock from the wall in a matter of a few minutes. Now these are a couple of incidents that our “active” boys can accomplish in record time. So how do they encourage me to love God and Christ more?

Before I had children, I always wanted children. But my motive for wanting to have children was purely selfish. The only reason I wanted to have children was that they were fun and cute, and that it was something that married couples have to call themselves a “family”. But soon I realized that having children is not about meeting my needs but instead they are one of the instruments that God uses to make me holy. There is not a day that goes by that God humbles me in my role as a parent. In my attitude toward my children, my selfishness, my anger, my frustration, my lack of patience, my lack of love, and my belief that I need to have control over them. Even though they make mistakes and even sin against me and with each other, my heart continues to be challenged in how I respond in those moments. As parents our greatest desire is to see our children love the Lord with all their heart, soul, and mind. My greatest fear is that I would provoke them and cause them to be discouraged (Col. 3:21). That they will grow up thinking that they need to please daddy and that they will be fearful of punishment if they don’t do that. What kind of God am I communicating to our children when fear of punishment motivates them to please another man? So how do they encourage me to love God and Christ more?

My children have shown me that being a godly parent cannot be done by reading books on parenting, by going to seminars on parenting, by listening to “advice” from other parents alone, but instead it needs to be founded on God’s love for us. Each day has its challenges, but through them and spending time with our children my love for them continues to grow. I cannot imagine the love that God has for us to be willing to sacrifice His own Son for people that hated Him. Not only that, but my children are the greatest examples of God’s forgiveness in my life. I have often asked for forgiveness to my children for my lack of patience, for my anger, for punishing them too severely, and they have always been so quick to forgive me and extend love to me. With all of these things, they remind me so much of the gospel that has saved me from the life that I once lived and how truly it is something that I don’t deserve. They are a daily reminder of God’s love for me and Christ’s sacrifice on my behalf. As parents, we face many challenges and difficulties, but through them all, we have the blessing to be able to grow in our love for our Lord and Savior through the ministry of encouragement from our children.