I love you and...

There’s a bad parenting habit I’ve been trying to break, and it’s as simple as four words:

“I love you but…”

I love you but you need to listen to me. 

I love you but you can’t have that knife. 

I love you but it’s time to clean up your toys.

Seems harmless enough. But I would argue that when we throw out those four words, we’re actually clouding out an incredibly important theological truth.

Because how many of us have trained our own ears to mishear God’s Word in this way:

I love you but you need to confess your sin.

I love you but you need to let go of control over your health.

I love you but suffering is part of this life.  

We tend to insert "but" into God's plan, even as my children do the same when they don’t FEEL my actions or instructions are loving...  

A shot doesn’t feel loving to an infant, and a curfew doesn’t feel loving to the increasingly independent teen.  

But a parent knows that love requires discomfort, in order for true maturity and health and safety to be in order.  

When we portray our explanations and instructions to our children as an exception of our love, and not an inclusion, we confirm what their young minds are already falsely perceiving: 

Mom must not love me because she sticks me in time out every time I say “no”.  Dad must not care about me because I’m not allowed to use his tools.  

In our parental guidance  (not to mention, in ALL our interactions with friends and neighbors), we need to learn to replace that “but” with an “and”.

I love you and so you need to have a consequence for your disrespect.  I love you and so you need to finish your chore. I love you and I think you have had enough dessert already.

Even as flawed parents, we have this chance to show our kids that what we do is out of the desire to see their utmost good.  The good that is sometimes temporarily uncomfortable.  How much more so does the Perfect Father know how to love us, even as we feel discomfort?  How much more can we trust his love evidenced through EVERY aspect of life:

God loves me and he allows this difficulty that presses me closer to him.  God loves me and so he demands that my thoughts and actions are transformed, day by day, to be more like his own. God loves me and I will know more of that love through obedience.

We have to stop interpreting those trials he's allowed and those instructions he's given, based on how we feel about it.  Our kind and wise, perfectly true and unchanging Father has no “I love you but’s” for his children.  Every single difficulty he allows and every command he gives is out of his unshifting, eternal love.

I am a forgiven, free saint, in Christ.

This means, I don't have to worry about punishment.  Redeemed children of God are not punished-- they are blessed and they are cared for and they are disciplined. ALL out of love.

SO even in the most difficult of situations, and even when what God is asking of you FEELS uncomfortable... There are no "buts".

JESUS LOVES YOU AND LOVES YOU AND LOVES YOU SOME MORE.  Yes, _______ doesn't seem loving-- but the cross has proved to us, that He who did not withhold his own Son will withhold no good thing.  

Trust his love.