When we have the opportunity to speak into the lives of children, we must avoid the danger of being overly critical, which can lead to hopelessness and self-deprecation. But we also must avoid the danger of lavishing false praise, which can lead to arrogance and an unrealistic sense of self-importance and self-efficacy. Perhaps more than anyone else, children need to hear the truth in love. But if they don't see, hear, and know your love for them, then the truth they hear may not be true at all.
How many father-son and father-daughter relationships have been destroyed, not by what was said, but by what was heard? What if these fathers had planted the seed of love and cultivated it before planting the seed of truth?
Truth spoken into a heart filled with pain, shame, doubt, fear, and insecurity is ripe for rejection unless the child hears the love in the truth being spoken. Truth spoken in love and received by children who know they are loved is ripe to yield the fruit of godly change.
If you grow the tree with love, when the time comes to separate the bad fruit from the good fruit, the pruning shears of truth are less likely to destroy the tree.
