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Key Bible Verse: Remember that you also have a Master—in heaven (Colossians 4:1). Bonus Reading: 1 John 1:8-10

You return from the office still smarting from missed deadlines and obnoxious coworkers. You enter a house of noisy children and an exhausted wife who, instead of ministering to your pain, needs your help. Over dinner the two teens start arguing and you finally lose it, exploding in a harmful—if understandable—tirade of anger and frustration.

Good parents never scream at their children, right? Well, this is the real world, and it happens. So now that you've blown it, what are you going to do about it?

In many households, such situations are never truly resolved. Instead, the children know that they'd better stay away from whichever parent exploded and that eventually things will calm down—until the next time. Yet the Bible points to a better solution. Sooner or later, the parent needs to say something like this to the family: "I owe you all an apology. I'm deeply sorry I exploded at the dinner table. I was wrong to do so and I ask for your forgiveness."

When a parent sincerely apologizes and asks forgiveness, he demonstrates to the child that even parents aren't above the law. We answer to a higher authority, the One we worship.

—Patrick Kavanaugh in Raising Children to Adore God

My Response: Have my children ever heard me ask for forgiveness? Why or why not?

Thought to Apply: Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.—H. JACKSON BROWN JR. (author)

Adapted from Raising Children to Adore God (Chosen, 2003) by permission.

Copyright © 2006 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine. Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Lord, I want to feed my family spiritually as well as physically. Fill me so that I can pass on the overflow.

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