Potty Training
We’ve restarted trying to potty-train Micah. We originally tried a few months ago, but he didn’t seem interested so we decided to wait. Now he seems ready so we’re gonna give it another shot.
Edy took to the potty pretty quickly. (Although recently we’ve been struggling to get her to use it.) Micah, however, is having a tougher time. He’ll sit on his potty just fine, but he doesn’t want to actually pee in it.
Amanda has decided to use the bare-butted method, and for the most part it worked great today. We only had one accident this whole morning with him running around stark naked from the waste down. The thing is, he still doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of putting his pee in the potty. It gets frustrating at times.
Nearly every parent would agree that raising kids is not an easy task. Teaching them to grow and mature takes a lot of time and effort. At some point most every parent has thought that it would be easier just give up–to let their kids stay the same. It would be so much easier to rock and cuddle them to sleep every night than fighting them to go to sleep on their own. It would be so much easier to let them keep the pacifier than suffer through the tantrums. It would be much easier to let them stay in diapers than take them to the potty every half hour and wash clothes twice a day.
But maturity is a necessary step. It’s 100% acceptable for a toddler to act the way they do, but if a 40-year-old trying to behave the same way is incredibly inappropriate. If my son were to take off all his clothes and run around the house naked while company was over, everyone would probably say, “Awww, isn’t that cute?” But if you were to do the same thing, everyone would probably run for the door and never talk to you again.
Maturity is a natural step in growing physically. Why do we, then, ignore it in our spiritual lives? Why is it okay for someone who’s been a follower of Jesus for years to look and act exactly the same as when they first met Jesus? It’s not okay for a 15-year-old to say, “I’m good just as I am. I’ll act this way for the rest of my life”, but we’re perfectly fine saying, “I’m good enough. I’ve changed enough for Jesus. I don’t need to mature in my faith any more.” Why?
I listened to a sermon today by Perry Noble, and in it he said something to the fact that we should never stop maturing in our relationship with Jesus. There is always a “next step.”
I think too many of us, however, look at our lives and accept “good enough”. We look at where we are and where God wants us to go and think, “It would be so much easier to just stay here.”
Too many of us are like the Hebrews Paul writes to and says, “You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food” (Hebrews 5:12).
No matter how difficult, painful, or unsettling it is, maturing is a necessary part of the spiritual process. Sure it may require giving up things we hold dear–our money, our jobs, our lifestyle, even our families–but Jesus has mandated that we hate our lives and everything in them in comparison to Him. If you’re not willing to give up everything for Him, then we cannot be His followers (Luke 14:25-26)!!!
So my question for you is this: where have you been unwilling to mature? What have you been holding on to that has kept you from growing in your relationship with Jesus? What has God been asking you to let go of, but you’re too afraid to obey?
Whatever it is, I encourage you to let go of it in order to experience the best life possible that Jesus has for you!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
No Responses Yet to “Potty Training”