Day 310
II Chronicles 30:8
"Now be ye not stiffnecked as your fathers were, but yield yourselves unto the Lord, and enter into His sanctuary, which He hath sanctified for ever: and serve the Lord your God, that the fierceness of His wrath may turn away from you."
King Hezekiah authorized a letter to be sent to all of Israel, inviting them to come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover - something they had not done in a long time. The letter encouraged them to discard the rebellious ways of their parents who had brought trouble in the land. They were admonished to serve God, thereby bringing divine.favor upon them.
All of us have parents, either by natural birth, through legal adoption or through custody. Whoever raised us taught us things by word and example. We may love and respect our parents, but we must examine all they packed in our bags when we begin to reach adulthood. Some of us will not be able to find much good at all, because our parents were poor examples. Others of us will be able to find many good things, because our parents positively influenced our lives, and we find it easy to walk upright because of their teaching and examples. In every case, however, there should be something we need to unpack. As great as our parents may have been, they were not perfect.
If we picked up any bad habits, dispositions or characteristics, it is not easy to get rid of them because, after living with a person for so long, we could have subconsciously begun to imitate their behavior. Therefore, we need to pray about our desires for change, and allow God to help us devise a plan to reverse wrong patterns and replace them with good ones.
We may also need to look beyond our parents, if we had other relatives who had a good deal of influence over us. Let us lay aside everything negative we may have picked up through association and renew our minds to help us do better.
I will examine what I have copied from my parents or other relatives with whom I had relationships. With God's help, I will discard the bad and hold fast to the good.