Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
1 John 4:11
Siblings bicker, quarrel, and occasionally fight. We all know this; if you have more than one child in your home, it is hard not to know this. As parents, we must pray in two ways concerning this.
First, we must pray that the Holy Spirit would help our children to know their sinful desires and to put those desires to death. “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions [lusts] are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions [lusts]” (James 4:1-3). Our children bicker, quarrel, and fight because they have wrong desires; they want themselves to be right and their siblings to be wrong so they contest anything their sibling says. They want the toy that their sibling were given, so they steal it and hide it. We need to pray that God would take the selfish desires of our children’s hearts and make them selfless, which cannot happen without the work of the Spirit.
Second, we must pray that our children to love one another. The goal of our parenting should not be quiet but peace. It is easy to get quiet; peace is more difficult. People can hate each other in the quiet, and many times the quiet can amplify the hate. But peace only comes through love. As 1 John 4:11 states, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” For our children, the “one another” refers to many people, but especially their siblings. As our children’s relationship with us as parents is a training ground for obedience to God, so also our children’s relationships with their siblings is a training ground for loving others, both in and out of the church.
Siblings can be difficult to love, because of their proximity and the thousand small offenses that occur in the life of the home. But yet our children must learn and love responding to their siblings in love, so that when they deal with others, whether in marriage, the work place, or at church, they can love them.
Let us pray these things over our children:
O Merciful and Gracious God, we acknowledge that You are love and that You have indeed loved us through Jesus Christ. As Christ selflessly hung upon the tree, You likewise taught us how to love each other. Yet we see in our children quarreling, bickering, and conflict. Too often, they allow their desires and lusts to control their thoughts, words, and actions rather than allowing Your love to govern those things. Therefore, change the hearts of our children so that they would have right desires, desires that ordered by Your perfect Word and by the selflessness of Christ. Teach our children through Christ’s example and command to love one another from the heart and through their thoughts, words and actions. Grant this, O Gracious God, for the sake of Your love. Amen.
Ancient Words 