Scott Aniol, PhD, is Executive Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of G3 Ministries. In addition to his role with G3, Scott is Professor of Pastoral Theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas. He lectures around the world in churches, conferences, colleges, and seminaries, and he has authored several books and dozens of articles. You can find more, including publications and speaking itinerary, at www.scottaniol.com. Scott and his wife, Becky, have four children: Caleb, Kate, Christopher, and Caroline.
If you want to glorify God as you're playing with your brothers and sisters, there are a couple things that we need to remember. Ultimately, we glorify God by obeying his commands. Jesus said, if you love me, you will do what I command. So we need to think about what God has commanded us. And as children, you need to think about how God has commanded you in interacting with your brothers and sisters.
First and foremost, a very clear command in scripture is children obey your parents, honor your father and mother. As you interact with your sisters and brothers, you need to be thinking about what do your parents expect of you? Are you obeying your parents? Are you honoring your father and mother in how you are interacting with your brothers and sisters. Even just thinking about that is going to help you a lot.
You come up to a situation of conflict or an argument. If what immediately pops into your head is, what would mom and dad want me to do in this situation? How can I honor God by honoring my mother and father? That's going to help you a lot in determining how you ought to act with your brothers and sisters. You will ultimately honor God if you honor your father and mother.
There's also another important principle we find in Philippians chapter 2 that I think is something that you should have in your mind as you interact with your brothers and sisters and that is this, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. We are born naturally selfish. You want the best toy, you want to be able to do what you want to do, you want, you know, whatever book you want to have. We need to reorient our minds according to this principle in Scripture to think about others more than ourselves. And this leads to a final really important point that Paul gets to in that same passage.
After he says, don't think of others or don't think of yourself think of others, He says, let this mind be in you, which also was in Christ Jesus. He uses Christ as the ultimate example of this. If you, as you're playing with your brothers and sisters, if you think, how can I honor mom and dad, how can I serve others rather than myself, and ultimately, how can I imitate Christ, That is going to impact you greatly? Think about Jesus and his, we know he had brothers, probably he had sisters. How would Jesus interact with his brothers and sisters?
That is how you ought to act. And if you act in that way that imitates Christ, then you