Sibling Sanctification

Posted by AngelaP | 0 comments

Sadly, the Parsley home has been a home of strife lately. Not strife between husband and wife but strife between siblings. This in turn enters into and disrupts the peace of the entire home. Just as if husband and wife quarreling in front of the children causes a disruption of peace in the home, so does sibling rivalry.

It has always been my goal to keep our home a place of peace. The world outside of our home is just plain crazy. There is not much peace to be found out there. Home should be a place where the family can just be together in harmony. It is a place that certain stability should be found.

Lately my girls have been at each other’s throats! It is driving us mad. We are desperate for this behavior to stop. We have been crying out to God about it over and over. One morning God impressed these verses on my heart to share with the kids.

“What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure” (James 4:1-3, NLT).

As I shared this with them they seemed surprised. The fact is that they did not want to be fighting all the time either.
Learning that these selfish desires are in their hearts they have started to see that they need God to live at peace with one another. They are not capable of doing it themselves. They are learning that they need to take these things to God. He is the one who can solve or resolve any problem or issue. He is the one who can see correctly straight into their hearts. He can help them to make the wrong situation right by exposing their hearts.

I really like that they are learning to see their hearts correctly. This activity is helping them learn to talk to God first
about their problems. It is helping them learn to assess their heart’s desires with God’s help. They are learning to listen to God and do the right thing in His strength.

I believe that these sisters are the very strongest tools thus far God has brought in their lives to grow them and make them more into His image. There are battles that have to be mediated. Daily I continue to point them to the Scriptures about what God says about a matter. It is tiring but in the end I believe we will have sisters who love one another better and look a whole lot like Jesus in the process. I thank Him for showing us this.

Angela Parsley, of the international ministry Refresh My Soul Ministries, is a wife and homeschooling mother to her 2 young daughters. Angela is also a contributing author to a devotional book entitled, “Standing on the Promises of God” and Radical Revolution, a devotional site for teen girls through Proverbs 31 Ministries.