Every sinner struggles with some degree of spiritual blindness.
Let me crank this up even further for you. Unlike a physically blind person who knows that he's blind and does things to cope with his handicap – hear what I'm going to say – a spiritually blind person is blind to his blindness. And so your children actually think they have an accurate view of themselves. They actually think they're okay and they actually believe that they know themselves way better than you do. They're not only blind, they're blind to their blindness. Now stay with me because I'm going to take you someplace here. So this child who's walking around thinking he has an accurate view of himself and thinking he's okay has you approach him. And you begin to get in his face and tell him how bad he is, okay? You're criticizing him for something. What's going on inside of him? What's his experience of that moment? His experience is of injustice because it seems like you're misjudging him, because given his view of himself, what you're saying doesn't seem to be accurate at all. It seems mean. It seems unkind. It seems unloving. And so as he's listening to you, you're activating his inner lawyer and he's defending himself against you before he ever says his first word. It's a failed strategy. Quit lecturing your kids. Think about how Jesus taught. Jesus made very few of what we would call lectures. In fact, the teaching of Christ doesn't look anything like our modern sermons, does it? What did Jesus do? He told stories. He asked questions. Why? Because He said, "I came to give sight to blind eyes. I get what's wrong with people. They're blind." And so if you believe in the heart, if you believe the heart is the control system, one of your main goals is to be an instrument of seeing because until your child sees himself with accuracy, he won't have a hunger for help and he will resist your wisdom and intervention as a parent. It's only when he sees himself and he sees, "Yes, I do do wrong things. I do desire wrong things. I do think wrong things. I need help," that he begins to get committed to be participating in the parenting that you're trying to do. Now, as I'm saying that, some of you are going to need to fight your cynicism. Because we have gotten so cynical in Western culture, we don't actually believe that a child could want to be parented. But that's what happens. As I function as an instrument of seeing, I give the Spirit of God an opportunity to begin to work personal insight and conviction into the heart of this child and he begins to want to change. You got to hear what I'm about to say. This is hard. You have no capacity whatsoever to change your child. Zip, nada, none. Give it up. You got no hope ever of changing your child. No matter how well you act towards your child, if that child doesn't transact with God, he won't be okay and your job is to set up that transaction. There was an old counseling joke that said, "How many counselors does it take to change a light bulb?" And the answer is one, if the light bulb really wants to change. There it is. There it is. So let me give you a series of five heart questions. This is very practical. This is street-level. This is practical as it gets. You say, "Well, Paul, I don't know how to get at heart issues with my child." I'm going to give you five heart questions. They're not in your notes. This is free and these questions take seriously what we've said about the heart. They are a biblical way of thinking about how a human being functions, okay? And so the order of the questions must not be changed. You don't have to use these questions in this particular form. You know, invert the words themselves, but the order is important. Here's the first question: what was going on? What was going on? Just get some kind of telling of the situation. Don't worry about the fact being biased. It's impossible for a human being to talk about a situation without talking about it with bias, right? If I took a picture of this room and you took a picture of this room, whose picture would be right? Well, probably a combination, but you always picture life from your perspective. So don't worry about that. Get a telling of the situation.
Transcript: Session 4
GETTING TO THE HEART OF PARENTING
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