dependent on God and dependent on all the tools God would use so that we could live properly. The child wants to be self-sufficient. I mean, maybe you've seen a child learning to tie a shoe and he doesn't know how yet. When you reach down to help him, he pushes your hand away. This child could fumble with those laces forever and they would never turn into a knot because he doesn't know how to do it. But there's an instinct in him that puts away, he'll say, "I can do it. Don't help me." You see that? That is a refusal to accept my neediness, a refusal to accept my dependency. And so you say to your child, "Because you need mommy's help doesn't mean you're a bad person, doesn't mean you're defective. We all need to be taught. We all need to be learned. We all need to learn. God's given you parents to teach you things that you wouldn't know without them." Now, you get the model already. You got to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. You got to have time to do that. You can't be too busy yanking your children here and there with all these activities that are the chasing of the American dream; and you have no time to have productive conversation with your children, so you reduce it down to yelling orders and enforcing punishments and you call it Christian parenting. And it's just not because you're not instilling these basic concepts into the heart of the child. And as you instill those concepts in the heart of child, you give the Spirit of God an opportunity to work change in that child. This is big stuff, this authority stuff. Some of you gave that away when your children were young and you're dealing with that now. I would suggest you go back to your children and you confess that. Say, "I made mistakes when you were young. They gave you a view of life that's wrong and I would love us to have a fresh start and a new beginning." Own it. Have the conversation. Talk about those gaps because that was authority battles that you're now having at 14, 15, 16 didn't start at 14,15, and 16. They started at 18 months and 2 years and 3 years and 4 years. And you win the battle there, heart change takes place there, then you carry that legacy on further in the life of the child. Now, well, let me just finish this. God gives promises here. As I live God's way I will enjoy the respect trust, friendship, freedom, responsibility and opportunity that results. When a child submits to authority, he's living inside of the laws of the universe the way the universe was designed and when you do that good things happen, right? When you live according to design, good things happen. SESSION 6 A train is a wonderful creation, it goes very well on tracks, but you cannot drive that train across a meadow. It'll stop. You can't drive a boat down I-85. It's a wonderful creation, but you've taken it outside of design. We all are aware that God has designed His world in particular ways and when you stay inside of that design, good things happen. If you've read Age of Opportunity, you know, we had real children and we went through many of the things that families go through, the struggles of raising children who are, in fact, sinners. But because we tried to lovingly and faithfully, perseveringly enforced the importance of authority, when our sons began to go out into the workplace, they got rave reviews because they were respectful, they worked hard for their money, they were willing to do things that their boss asked them to do, they arrived on time. I'd show up to pick up one of my sons and the boss would grab me and say, "You have such an amazing boy. He's so reliable." You know what we're harvesting? Three years old, four years old, five years old now living in the blessing of that and because of that, they got greater authority than a teenager would normally get in the workplace because they were trustworthy. They weren't super spiritual kids, they didn't glow, but there was something basic about life that they had submitted their heart to and they carry that into the workplace, and there was blessing as a result. Don't you want to give your children that blessing? Some of us right now have children at home that are hell-bent on failure, on stress, on conflict because these basic building blocks are not in their heart and that's why this period of time is so important.
Transcript: Session 6
GETTING TO THE HEART OF PARENTING
59
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs