first, but God began to work in this kid's heart and began to see the value of living in a different way. He was protected from himself and that anger wasn't able to go as far as it could go. I'll never forget when he was released from that place. The first time I met him, he walked in the door of my office, he threw his arms around me and he wouldn't let go of me. And he just kept saying, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. You gave my mom the courage to do this." And he said, "Look at me. I'm actually a nice guy. My mom's not afraid of me anymore. I have a job." And we just laughed and applauded and celebrated. He needed protection. You wouldn't let your child run out on the street. If the fence wasn't big enough, you'd move, right? Then why do we let our children march towards spiritual danger and we act like we're powerless? Don't act that way. There are parents, right now, you need to get yourself help because it's out of control. Get help, get help, get help. Now, how do we know what we're supposed to be doing during this period of time? I want to say to you don't give in to the cynicism of your culture. A culture would tell you there's very little good that can happen during this period of time. One writer said if you add the word teenager to any other word, the second word immediately becomes negative. Should I try? Teenage driver? Did it work? So what are you supposed to be doing? I'm very concerned that because many of us aren't goal-oriented, so we don't have goal directed responses, we are involved in reactive parenting with teenagers. Goal-oriented responses are conceptually and morally driven. "I've thought about what is right, I get what's going on with you and because of that, I have a sense of direction." That's very different than "I sort of don't have a sense of direction and I just react to whatever is the issue of the moment". That tends to be much more emotionally laden and much more emotionally driven. And reactivity as a parent, generally, isn't as productive as being goal-oriented. Now, in order to be goal-oriented, you have to get what a teenager is and how a teenager struggles because the typical struggles of a teenager will form your opportunity and your job descriptions. Does that make sense? Because your interaction with those struggles is the way you provide preparation and protection. Now, where do we get that definition? You can't go to the Bible to teen one verse one and begin to read because your Bible, in case you didn't notice this, isn't arranged by topic. In fact, the Bible never uses the word teenager. So we might as well just pack it up and go home because you had no help from that book at all. Well, that's not true. Although the Bible never uses the word, the Bible has amazing things to say about this period of time we would call "youth". Probably a more ancient, more expansive category than the more recent western culture category, "teenager". As I was preparing this material many years ago, I began praying, "God, direct me to a place where there's Your information about this period of time." And I was reading, as I regularly do, through the book of Proverbs. Proverbs encapsulates God's wisdom and I've determined I'm going to read Proverbs 'til I'm wise. Luella very sweetly says, "Keep reading." And I was reading the first several chapters of Proverbs and I realized that the format, the structure there is a father giving instruction to his son. Son, heed my wisdom. Son, listen to my correction. Son, listen to my counsel. And I thought, well, that's great. There's a father talking to his son. I'm going to read this over and over again, and so I started reading that. I literally read those chapters – about a chapters – hundreds of times, over and over again. And as I read those over and over again, something very interesting happened. Themes began to rise to the surface. You know what a theme is? A theme is something that's often repeated. You recognize a piece of music by a certain theme of its notes. I could hum some notes to you and you would know immediately what the music was.
Transcript: Session 9
GETTING TO THE HEART OF PARENTING
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