Responsibility

So when you were growing up did your parents ever find you doing something you shouldn’t be doing and ask​,​ “What in the world are you doing?”

I want us to think for a minute about that phrase that we so often remember being used in a negative context and try to flip it around.  Let’s try to catch kids doing something right.  Let’s find kids doing something great and good and ask​, “What in the world are you doing?” --simply ​t​o​ emphasize the fact that we need to be thinking of how we can do something good.  There are a lot of different ways we can​ ​ask this question.  We can put emphasis on different words to give it a different meaning.  For example we could say​,​ “What in the WORLD are you doing?”  That way we would be emphasizing that in this great big world ​and ​there are lots of different things we could be doing.  Or we could say, “What in the world are YOU doing?” We could make it personal.  Actually this month we want to do that we want to get kids to recognize they have a personal responsibility.  Or we could ask, “What in the world are you DOING?​, ​" stressing that ​there is an action involved in this​ responsibility.

The definition we use for responsibility is, showing you can be trusted with what is expected of you.  And we want kids over time to realize they have an opportunity to demonstrate who God is to the world around them by the way they respond to that world.  Think about the word responsibility.  We want our children not only to understand how they should respond to the ability God has given them but also how important it is to respond to God’s ability to work through them to change the world around them.  Thus, your​​​ job this month as a parent is to help​ your children explore some principles about responsibility and then catch them doing it right.  Then​, when you catch them doing what they are supposed to be doing,​ ask them,​ “What in the word are you doing?”

Luke 16:10 reminds us, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.”  It is our goal that we would find opportunities to live out the gifts and graces that we have been given to show God’s love to the world. That people would see God as they watch us live responsibly.

For the entire month we are going to be asking the question, “What in the world are you doing?”  So I ask you,​ “What in the world are YOU doing?”  It’s the idea of responsibility.  Not only responding the ability that God has given me but to respond to the ability that God has to work through me to make a difference in the world around me.