Sincerity
“Love one another deeply, front the heart.” – 1 Peter 1:22b
My kids have been struggling to apologize with a sincere heart. The apology is thrown out there with no real meaning behind it. We do a recipe for apologizing that looks like this:
Person 1: I’m sorry for…
Person 2: I forgive you.
Person 3: How can I make it better?
Person 4: You can…(give me a hug, not to it again, fix it by…)
We talked about why we do the second part of this strategy. I wanted to show what repentance really looks like, so I acted out a couple scenes where I did something wrong, apologized and then did it again. I also did a couple half hearted apologies like I have seen lately. I let them analyze what I was doing wrong. It is important for them to truly seek forgiveness with their hearts, and this does take intentional training on my part.
