Danny ChaiI’m still undecided on the plasma TV thing. Partly because I’m concerned on the effect it will have on my future children. What I mean is, I dunno, I feel very strongly that self denial is an important part of the Christian life, when done for the right reasons, and I want to impart that value to my children. When I say the right reasons, I mean in order to give more to others, or to be able to relate to people you might want to minister to better, or as a witness, stuff like that.
My concern is, there’s really no way to effectively communicate that value to my kids when I’m simultaneously indulging myself in whatever I want. I think the hypocrisy would shine through. So a part of me thinks there is value in wanting something and being able to comfortably afford it, but still not getting it for the sake of a higher purpose. I’m just trying to figure out if that applies here.
You know what my #1 hope is in relation to my kids is, and this might sound weird. But my prayer is that they will not be the focus of Jieun and my life. I want us to be good parents. I just don’t want it to be that they dominate our lives and schedules. Specifically, I don’t want them to prevent us from being actively involved in whatever ministries we’re involved in. Parents of small children always say you can’t understand what it’s like until it happens to you, and that’s true. But I’ve seen many inspirations and models of godly parents who, even with small children, have continued to be actively involved in ministry. Like a pastor I know with 3 boys, who, from the time they were really young to now, was still enormously active, visiting all the small groups, doing the morning prayer thing, myriad evening meetings throughout the week, leading short term mission trips in the summers. I’ve seen that it’s possible.
So yeah, kind of a strange thing to want, but that is one of my biggest hopes, that having kids doesn’t stop us from being actively involved in serving.