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The following is an extract of Pastor Craig Hill’s Blog: Avoid the Trap published on April 23, 2013. Satan has been using an ancient trap to injure our children for thousands of years. Its design has never changed, it’s nearly always effective and it continues to claim thousands of victims every day. When parents fail to separate the identity of their children from their behavior, they have just fallen into that trap. The trap might look something like this. Mom catches her daughter in a lie. Her immediate response is to say, “You little liar, no one wants to be friends with a liar.” Instead of correcting the behavior, the mother cursed her daughter’s identity and implanted an expectation of a life without friends. A better response would have been, “Honey, I love you, God’s loves you and you’re a good girl. But when you tell mommy a lie, you are not acting like the little girl God created you to be. So, go to your room and I’ll be there in a minute to help you remember who you are.” In that simple example, Mom is not going to leave the behavior unchallenged, but she is also not allowing her daughter to identify with the sin. There are consequences for wrong behavior but the consequence should never be the destruction of identity. Aren’t you thankful that God is able to separate our behavior from our identity? He loved us so much that while we were yet sinners, He sent Christ to die for us (Romans 5:8). Craig Hill holds a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree from Carleton College in Russian Area Studies and Geology and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the University of Chicago. Upon completion of his formal education, Craig worked as a corporate manager in the oil and gas exploration industry for several years. Being an experienced pilot, he later founded and managed a Learjet charter service. During these years, Craig (being fluent in the Russian language) frequently took time off from his business endeavors to minister the Gospel to the peoples of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Craig met his wife, Jan, through Youth With a Mission. Having a specific interest in ministering to marriages and families, Craig pursued an internship and later a volunteer staff position at the New Life Counseling Center in Denver. He subsequently taught counseling and missions on the faculty of the Marilyn Hickey Bible College. In 1987, the Lord raised up Craig as Senior Pastor of a local church where he and Jan served for seven and a half years, until he was called by God to devote his full-time energy to the ministry of Family Foundations International. Through his past experience in missions, counseling and pastoral ministry, God has given Craig unique insight into marriage, family, financial and interpersonal relationships. This has resulted in his ability to identify for many people, root causes of relational conflict, compulsive habits, low self-esteem, workaholism, lack of financial provision and other undesirable life patterns, which are repeated from one generation to the next. By interweaving personal stories with biblical truths, God has anointed Craig to pierce through the veil of the mind to minister to the depths of the heart, resulting in real life change for many. Visit us at http://www.familyfoundations.com/ URL for Blog Post: http://www.familyfoundations.com/2013/04/avoid-the-trap/
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