I love the 17th chapter of John.

In it we get a glimpse of Jesus’ parental heart as He prays for His disciples. There are so many aspects of His prayer that my heart echos for my children.

Something that stood out to me today was a sentence He said, not once, but twice:

“They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.”

He then goes on to say, “for their sakes I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.”

This challenged me to ask myself:  Can we echo this and say that our children are not of the world *JUST AS* we are not of the world? In other words, can we look at our children and say, “be holy as I am holy”?

Can we say that we have consecrated ourselves for their sakes – meaning we have separated ourselves from profane things to be cleansed and purified, and then dedicated ourselves to God?

Have we cut away the world from our lives in the same degree we wish our children would? Or are we compromising in some areas?

How is the world seeping into our priorities, our time, our thoughts, our values, our pleasures?

As Christian parents, we don’t want our children to be ineffective or unfruitful in their knowledge of Christ.  We want them to bear much fruit for the glory of God. We want them to be set apart from the world, purged from all that would tarnish, purified so that they may be vessels of honorable use in the hands of God. We want them to be polished arrows, mighty weapons for God’s glory.

But how will they become that if we are not allowing the Lord to purify us as their influencers and leaders?

“For their sakes” – There’s no greater motivator to ask the Lord to sift me and to follow in obedience with what He brings to my attention than our children’s sakes.