Now notice the second question: what were you thinking and feeling as it was happening? What were you thinking and feeling as it's happening? What does that question go after? You can talk. The heart. Now, why is that the second question? Because we're teaching our children that no matter where you are, in every location, every relationship, every situation, your heart is always interacting. Your heart is an endless fount of interactivity, that there's always interaction going on inside of you. That's what it means to be a human being. You're never passive. You're always interacting. You're always interpreting. You're always desiring. You're always wanting something. You're always wanting to avoid something. You're always putting things together. Your heart is always active.` Okay, third question. What did you do in response? That goes after what? Words and behavior. Now think with me, why is that the third question and not the second? Because we're saying that the behavior and words were not formed by the situation, they were formed by the way my heart interacted with the situation. Now, even if you don't get good answers, you're teaching your children to think biblically and to own responsibility because in the first question, the camera looks this way, but from then on, the camera is looking this way. Do you ever have your children tell you the story of a situation and they're not in the video? Right? It's all about other people. It's all about situations. It's like they weren't there. So you're turning the camera toward them. Fourth question, why did you do it? What were you seeking to accomplish? Why did you do it? What were you seeking to accomplish? That goes after what? Give me a word. Motives, goals, purposes. Why did you do it? What were you seeking to accomplish? Now break from your writing just for a moment and look up here. What we've done now is we've bracketed behavior with the thoughts and motives, interpretations, desires of the heart. When Hebrews 4 talks about scripture, it says scripture has the ability to cut through the layers and it exposes, it judges the thoughts and intentions of a person's heart. The heart does many things, but the two most important functions of the heart is the heart is always thinking and the heart is always desiring. Your behavior is always the result of what you think and what you desire. Wrong thoughts, wrong desires, wrong behavior. Fifth question, what was the result? That question goes after what? Well, consequences or a better biblical word, harvest. Galatians 6:7 says, "God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, he reaps." Whatever you plant, you harvest. If question five is the harvest, look at your questions, where in the questions were the seeds planted? Two and four. The seeds are planted in the thoughts and motives of the heart, they grow the trunk of behavior and produce the fruit of consequences. Now, get this. One of the things you have to buy into is that change is a process and not an event. Your goal in asking these five questions is not to have your child sign on the bottom line that he's desperately needy and broken inside, and he will forever from this moment, honor your parenting and submit to it wholly. What you're trying to do is take another step in insight. And so this four-year-old is going to hear me talking about his heart and he's beginning to put together what that means. And the six-year-old is beginning to make connections between his heart and his behavior. And this eleven-year-old now has learned to think about himself in a distinctively biblical way. And the 16-year old now has an elaborate understanding of where he's weak and where he's strong, where he tends to be tempted, where he tends to not like authority. You see, it's a process and every conversation I'm having, I'm trying to get at the central issues of the heart. The very first time I use these five questions was when one son was four and one son was two because they're actually very simple. And the two-year-old was playing with a Tonka truck that was owned by the four-year-old. They're made of metal.
Transcript: Session 4
GETTING TO THE HEART OF PARENTING
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