A4P Guest: I feel so hypocrite whenever I try to talk to my kids about sexual purity. Am I a hypocrite for telling them to wait for sex until marriage as the Bible says even though I was not fortunate enough to do it that way?
A4P: Well, I hope you are feeling like a hypocrite about your past, not your present, am I right?
A4P Guest: Correct! I feel bad about my past. I didn’t do dating and marriage according to the Word of God. Yes, once I know the truth, I turned around and I’m now married and live a praiseworthy life before God and man.
A4P: Excellent! Good for you! Well, feeling like a hypocrite when you talk about the life you didn’t live in the past is normal. Since you have no good track record, you may feel like you are not the one to talk about it. But who can then tell your kids about it other than you? And who can be the best story teller than the one who has been there? Think about it!
This is what I do with my kids. When I get to the point where I feel like the devil is whispering into my ears saying “You’re so hypocrite,” I will say to them, “You have no idea how lucky and blessed you are to have a mother who tells you this because I didn’t have anybody to tell me all these and because I didn’t have anybody and didn’t have any clue what I was doing, I messed up real bad.”
Well, my daughter usually doesn’t pass me by like that. She presses on, asking, “How bad was it?” And one of my boys will say, “That is enough information. We don’t need to hear it all.” Yeah, they save me from her, lol.
If one or all of your kids tend to ask you more questions than you expect, make sure you address them all to the best of your knowledge. If you have to ask or read, do your homework and get back to them. Don’t ever think that they don’t know what they are asking. They usually do and they have good reason.
Hoping that your kids won’t press you like my kids, try to be open with them about your past; but make sure you take into consideration of their age and mental and emotional maturity level. And remember, don’t try to present “the perfect you” to them; but the “real you”. If you do that, they find it easy to see Christ and His powerful grace and mercy in your life. Otherwise they think that you are the end of perfection! Since you and I know that you are not, when they find you tripping, they will be very disappointed to the point of not wanting to know God or His Word. Show them what kind of a merciful God they have; a God who is good at giving strength to the weak; and hope to the hopeless. This will show them the way back to their “Home” if in case they decide to take “the wrong exist” in their life. ///