3 John 1:11-12 Imitate what is good

3 John 1:11-12 Imitate what is good
There is an old saying, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” meaning that if someone is imitating you then they obviously admire you and the type of person you are. Having young children, I have realized that children don’t always pick out the best qualities in an individual to imitate? They don’t look at someone and say, I really like this about them, so I am going to copy that, and I don’t like this about them, so I am going to ignore it. They are all in so most of the time they end up imitating the good and the bad of those that they look up to the most. As a parent this is scary because, I know how messed up I am and how much who much I don’t want them to repeat the mistakes I have made in my life. Therefore, it is so important from a young age to teach our children the word of God and to look to Jesus as their role model and no one else. John tells Gaius that he should seek to imitate that which is good and to shun that which is evil and then he mentions a man name Demetrius who is a good example.
As a shepherd John wanted Gaius to know that those born of God do what God wants them to do and that there are standards. As parents we must continually remind our children of this same thing, pointing good examples to them and those who may be bad examples. Sometimes this means we must out ourselves and apologize for the way we acted or something we said. We must let them know that it was a poor example and we shouldn’t have behaved different and then point them in the right direction. The last thing we want is for our children to grow up thinking that we are the example they should be imitating. The only example worthy of imitation is that of Jesus Christ, we want our children to grow up imitation the one who showed all of us how to love. It is ok to have role models to look up to in this world but they should all be looked at as men and women who fall short, our ultimate role model should be that of Christ who will never fail or let us down.