you flush red, they're loving it because they've got a little bit of authority in that moment.
This is a big deal because sinners don't love authority. Sinners love these two things. These are the two lies of the garden. The first lie is autonomy. What is autonomy "I'm an independent human being and I have the right to choose how I'm going to live my life." That's why you will never hear one of your children at this age saying, "Mommy, if you could just tell me to do more things, that would be helpful. I love when you command me." You'll never hear that because children have bought into their autonomy, so they don't have a clue what's healthy to eat, but they'll fight you when you want them to eat something that's healthy. Get it. That issue is not about food. What is it about? Authority, autonomy. "I don't want to be told what to do." That's why people say, "We don't want our dinner table to be stressful." Then win the battle because if you hold on, if you say, "I'm your mom. I'm your dad. I know it's healthy for you to eat. You don't. I don't want to develop patterns that are going to be unhealthy for you later in life and you'll pay the price for them because this is a preparatory time, I'm going to exercise my authority." You go through a couple years where that's hard and then after a while no one fights you anymore. By the time our children 5, 6, 7, and 8, we had no supper time battles because they knew it was our job to create a diet. They didn't have a vote. If you give your child a vote, guess what? They'll take it and they'll out-vote you every time. It's your job. It's not about diet. It's about authority. It's very, very important. How about honor? This is treating my parents with respect and esteem because of the God-appointed position of authority. Now you should want to be worthy of respect. Did you hear what I said? You should want to be worthy of respect because you are representing God and this passage says, "Fathers don't exasperate your children." You should not do mean, cruel, selfish things that anger and embitter your children. You should want to be a person who is worthy of the respect that your children should give you, but I want to say this. Your children must not attach the level of their respect to the level of your perfection. You're respected because of your position. You realize you're in this position as a flawed human being and you're going to make mistakes. It's like I respect the president because of his position. I may not always agree with the man but I respect the office, the importance of the office, the exercise of the authority of that office. That's where your children should be. They should have a respect for your position. They have a knowledge that you're not perfect and you should always be willing to talk about that. There are times when you need to confess your sin to your children. You need to go back and say, "That was wrong. That was about my anger. That wasn't pleasing to God. I know I hurt your feelings." But the respect should be because you're in that position and in that position, you represent the perfect authority of God, although you don't do that perfectly. Does that makes sense? And so there's some things that need to be said about that. Your children should not address you as a peer because that confuses authority. Some of you will struggle with this. Moms and dads, your kids don't need you to be their best buddy. They're going to have plenty of those. They need you to be a parent because you're the only ones they have. Now, that isn't being mean. You have times where you throw back your head and laugh with your children. One of the things I love about our gatherings as a family in the holidays, we were all together, everybody came in for Christmas is how much of the time we just laugh. We just laugh. We are comfortable with one another, we laugh, that's a good thing. So it's not being distant and mean and all too formal, but you must understand that you're not their peer. This means there are jokes that would be okay to go on at this level that should not go on this way. Your children shouldn't call your stupid because that kind of critique is always made from above. That confuses authority.
Transcript: Session 5
GETTING TO THE HEART OF PARENTING
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