Category: Parenting / Passionate Legacy

Children will grown up and decide for themselves a way of life that seems good and life-giving to them. Parents who live out their walk with God in a way that is attractive and life-giving will find that they can pass on to their children a Christian worldview and the values and habits that will serve them well in their life as adults.

These articles are from a project on Christian Parenting called Passionate Legacy and contain biblical wisdom that has been tested over years of practical application in our own home, and in the homes of countless families we know. Drawn from rigorous research, counseling with whole families as well as parents of teens, school-age children, and young adults; raising two daughters, and serving as foster parents for over 90 children, the principles and practices in these articles have been developed, tested, and refined in the crucible of real life in the modern world.

Passionate Legacy began as a curriculum for parents and evolved into a small ministry with a life of its own, including the more than 80 articles contained in the Parenting section of the Loved Alive website.

Parenting / Passionate Legacy

Leading a Child to God

Sandra

Foundational Principles for Leading Children to God

Being in charge of a small human, a new life, is an incredible privilege and a massive responsibility. We all want our children to experience a love relationship with God and giving them that is a daunting task. Who you are as a person, is the biggest factor in your children’s choice, regarding whether to follow God as an adult. Children grow up to see God through the lens of how they were treated by their parents. If your goal is for your children to know God, then demonstrate to them who God is, by the way that you relate to God. You will treat your children according to the way that you believe that God treats you. Here are four truths that I hope you can experience for yourself, so that you will be able to pass it on to your children.

  1. We were made for connection.

The design for connection is imbedded in creation. It is not good for man to be alone. We are created in the image of a trinitarian God who exits eternally in relationship. God experiences abundant life in relationship where He loves selflessly and sacrificially, and He is loved selflessly and sacrificially. God wants to share the joy that he experiences in relationship, with us. The Bible is a narrative that details a covenantal relationship between God and his people, where God provides safety, security, acceptance, grace, and comfort for them and they depend on him for everything.

A baby’s ability to navigate emotions and future relationships is shaped by the quality of her connections to her primary attachment figures. When babies experience emotional unavailability with her parents, it leads to the experience of shame. Shame is a sense of deficiency and inherent lack of worth. Shame is the feeling that there is something very wrong with me, I must be inherently bad. Shame is a preverbal emotion that can be experienced before other emotions. Preverbal feelings can get lodged in our bodies because they are stored as emotions rather than words. This makes them very powerful over our lives because it operates outside our conscious awareness. Later in life, shame leads to isolation, withdrawal, hiding, and coping through addiction, in order to soothe the emotional distress.

When parents are emotional available, that relational connection allows babies to experience joy, calmness, and security. Babies can’t experience them without connection. A newborn’s immature brain uses the adult’s brain to organize itself. Healthy connections lead to the ability to relate to others with greater trust, connection, and compassion. In relating to each other we activate relational soothing, in which shame is replaced with acceptance, fear is exchanged for a deep sense of safety, sadness is alleviated by presence, and pain is soothed by comfort. In meaningful, connected relationships we are able to integrate our emotional experiences into a healthy concept and dwell richly in community with God and others. We become regulated in relationship. We are created for connection. It is our design.

God is emotionally available to you. The names of God demonstrate the way that God relates to his children. He is the one who is present, our shepherd, the God who is with us, our comforter. Be emotionally available to your children the way God is available to you.

2. You are enjoyed by God.

God the Father the creator of the universe loves you, cherishes you, and enjoys you. God not only wants a relationship with us, but he delights in us. God is a father that enjoys and delights in his children. How great is the love the father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God (1 Jn 3:1). Do you know that you are enjoyed by the Father?
People can be told that God loves them, but until they see it in a person’s eyes and in their voice, and feel it in their chest, they have no idea what loving and being loved is all about. Every person gains a sense of their worth and value in the first few years of life. A baby comes into the world looking for someone who is looking for her. She is looking for her parent’s delight. She is asking the questions: Am I worthy of love and protection? Are others reliable and trustworthy? If babies don’t get those questions answered in the affirmative in childhood, they make up another story about themselves. The first task that a baby has in life is to allow herself to be loved so that her life can be a response to someone’s delight, rather than a life of working hard, trying to earn the love of others.

You are a source of joy! Experience that truth in your walk with God and teach your children that they are enjoyed, because it will lay the groundwork for their future relationship with God where they are able to allow themselves to be enjoyed by Him.

3. Love is not conditional

The love of God is not based on our behavior. As your children become verbal convey to them that love is not based on what they do, but on who they are. They are loved because they are made in the Father’s own image. Their identity is in Christ. One way to teach them this, is to demonstrate it in your own life by turning to God for your identity and value. Depend on God rather than the things you do, or what others think of you, for your sense of enoughness. Experience the unconditional love, acceptance, and delight that God has for you. Remember that there is nothing that you can do to lose the love that God has for you.

Another way to demonstrate the unconditional love of God is to never withhold love as a means to change behavior. This may be hard to believe, but someday your children’s behavior will test you. You will be tempted to get angry and withhold love. But I would encourage you to never withhold your love or affection as a means of punishment, because it sends the message that love, and affection must be earned. God’s love and affection is given with no strings attached. It is unconditional and not based on our behavior. We don’t lose our place in the family because of our behavior. It is possible to discipline and give consequences without a break in the relationship. Withholding affection leads to shame, a belief that there is something inherently wrong with me, I am bad. The feeling of shame leads to blaming others rather than taking responsibility. It also leads to anger, aggression, and a movement away from others in self-protection. Discipline within the context of loving support and empathy, teaches children to move away from shame towards healthy guilt. Guilt is the feeling that I have done something bad rather than I am bad. Guilt produces regret borne of love and empathy for others, which often leads to reparative action, such as confession, apology, or making amends.

When children grow up in homes where love is withheld, they come to believe that their worth is based on their performance, and they hold on to the feeling that they are never enough. It sets them up for a lifetime of proving their worth to others and to God and it makes it difficult to accept the grace of the gospel message. So, remember to always express unconditional love even in the midst of discipline.

4. It is safe to confess and there is always a way back.

Demonstrate that there is no shame in being a fallible human and admitting your failure to God. It is safe to be vulnerable and transparent with God, he does not judge or punish but he is faithful to forgive our sins when we confess (1 Jn. 1:9). The gospel always provides a way back. Confess your sin, especially your sin of finding your worth in the things that you do, the things that you have, and what others think of you. Demonstrate to your children how to depend on Christ alone for all her deepest unmet needs. He is the only Source of Life, The Living Water. Proclaim the gospel every day by showing your children that everyone is in need of God and will always be in need of the gospel throughout our lifetime.  

Demonstrate your humility by asking your children for forgiveness when you wrong them. Again, there is no shame in admitting we are needy fallen people. Teach them to have safe, vulnerable relationships where repentance and reconciliation are the norm.

In summary, if you want to be a good mother, then get to know what a relationship with the Father is like. Experience His love for you and pass that love on. Discover who God is as your comforter and provider. Learn how he loves you. And as you are loved by Him, accepted by Him, and as you experienced His grace, you will be transformed into the likeness and character of Christ. As you experience the way love transforms you and causes you to love Him back, let that shape the way you relate to your children. And rather than trying to simply make them good, love them well and allow that to lead them to the only One who can transform them from the inside out.

Parenting / Passionate Legacy

We Don’t Have to Know All the Words (Part II)

jgolling

Here are the last three points.

4.We must teach our children that their acceptance is not based on being good.

In the same way that our children’s worth does not come from the things they achieve, children do not become acceptable because of their good behavior.

The most powerful way to teach your children that their value is not based on what they do, is to express your love and acceptance of them when they are bad. When we withhold love and acceptance from children when they misbehave, we are teaching them a works based righteousness. If our children think that if they sin, we will be disappointed in who they are, then they are not learning the gospel.

If the gospel is true, then we don’t lose God’s acceptance. Jesus is the propitiation for our sin. A payment that satisfies. If the payment is satisfied, then God cannot be dissatisfied in us. God is able to accept us, not because we are good, but because our debt of guilt has been fully paid, once and for all. So when we are afraid that He will not accept us because we have done something wrong, we are negating and minimizing what he has done for us. Rom. 8:1 says “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Rom. 8:39 says that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. There is nothing that we can do, that will cause God to not want us anymore. If we are dissatisfied in our children when they sin, we give them a picture that the enemy would want.

Satan wants our kids to believe that if they don’t get good grades, and stay away from the bad stuff, and don’t perform, then you’re not proud of them. And he wants them to believe that they can get good grades, never sin, and perform perfectly and that it is possible to earn their own value and attain their own righteousness. This is works based righteousness, and it’s the best strategy to keep children from becoming dependent upon God (Act like Men-Joby Martin). Children need to know they are accepted by God, and they can’t earn it.

5.We must face our own continued sin and need for Jesus.

The worst lie that we can teach our children, is that Christians no longer sin. Teach your children that you are in need of Jesus every day, just like they are. Adults are not beyond sin. Recognize that and live that, and you will inspire your children to live in dependency on God!!

If we want our children to have an accurate picture of who God is and who they are, then we have to know the truth and live out the truth in our own inner lives. The truth is that we as Christians still sin, we are not perfect, we struggle every single day with pride, judging others, looking down on others, comparing, competing, controlling, manipulating, misleading. We can sometimes deceive ourselves into thinking that we are “good” because we live a moral life, and we try really hard to follow all of God’s commands, and we don’t do any of the big sins. But even as Christians, sin is in our hearts, and we still need the healing grace of the gospel every-single-day.

God’s grace is not just an absence of condemnation, it is His unmerited favor, God is for us, not against us. He desires good for us not evil. Grace reverses the law. The law says we have to do it, but grace is God saying “I will help you do it”. Grace allows us to face our sinful hearts, and as we are received with acceptance and we are forgiven, our hearts are transformed into people who are less and less drawn toward sin, and more and more drawn toward Christlikeness.

When God reveals our sin, we can either respond with systems of self-justification to ease our conscience, or by admitting it, confessing to God and others, and receiving God’s grace and mercy. When we self-justify, we teach our children to hide sin, explain it away, deny its existence, or blame others. When we as parents, practice authenticity and vulnerability by confessing our sins, we model to our children the gospel, and how the power of the gospel works out in everyday life.

We need to ask for our children’s forgiveness when we have wronged them. When we say “I was prideful, I’m sorry I said that, will you forgive me?”, we live out the gospel.

We need to allow them to see us confess our sin to our spouses, and allow them witness the grace and healing that comes through living out the gospel. Our families should function as redemptive communities, where we regularly confess sin, repent, ask for forgiveness, and experience fully restored relationships.

Authenticity is the practice of being honest about who we are before God and others, and is the lack of posturing and pretending. This is who we want to be, and who we want to teach our children to be.

We need to work very hard to not perpetuate the delusion to our children that they can achieve perfection. We are not good; they are not good. That’s why we need Jesus. We need to live in truthfulness and humility. We don’t have to live a life of posturing and pretending, denying our sin, and fearing our failures. We need to receive God’s love every day for our sense of worth, and we need to confess, repent, and receive God’s grace every single day. We need to live in dependence on God.

James 5:16 says, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” Confession should be a regular part of our lives, if we don’t think we have regular sin to confess, we are experiencing self-deception, and we’re not looking deep enough at our motives and thoughts.

6.We must provide a redemptive gospel community for our children.

When our children sin, we must not distance ourselves as if we can’t relate. We need to identify with them. We are sinners too. Sin is a human condition. It is a problem that’s a part of our very nature. There is no sin that our children will ever commit that we are not capable of as well. As we admit that we are alike, we convey our need and excitement for the gospel, because it is our only hope as well.

We don’t respond to sin with “How could you?” As if it’s such a shock that a Christian would sin, or so out of the ordinary. We are humbly aware of our own sin. We understand their inner struggle, because we have been there and we would be there, apart from the amazing grace of God. If we want to reflect the love and grace of God, then our children need to know that there is nothing that they can do to cause us to lose our love for them.

Both Galatians 6:1 and 2 Tim. 2:25-26 paint a picture of the one in sin, as being caught in a trap and in need of rescue, and both verses mention that this rescue must be done gently.

Home and church should be a space where it is safe for our children to be vulnerable and acknowledge failure. A space where we respond with calmness and grace, and the promise to walk with them through their struggles, rather than judging and condemning them.

We must not have a “life as a final exam relationship” with our children, where they are constantly evaluated and critiqued, where there is no room for making mistakes and being human. The belief that we must be perfect to be acceptable, drives us into denial of our sin, and keeps us from ever experiencing the grace of the gospel and transformation of our hearts. God does not expect us to “know all the words”, he does not expect us to get everything right, he does not expect perfection, he accepts us based on the work of Christ. God’s unconditional acceptance makes it safe to admit our sin, face it, confess it, repent of it, and grow from it.

Home and church can be a gospel community where we live out the themes of grace, forgiveness, deliverance of sin, reconciliation, new life, and hope. When we extend the grace of Christ that we have received, to our children, we train them to live honestly and in the open and fully dependent upon God.

Parenting / Passionate Legacy

We Don’t Have to Know All the Words (Part I)

jgolling
I work as a Para-educator teaching children to read, and we do something called a reading record where we listen to a child read a few pages of a book, and we mark all of the words that they miss.  I have a second grader who I have worked with for two years, whose name is Calvin.  He is a cute little blond boy with a round face and crooked teeth.
So one day I was doing a reading record on Calvin and he mispronounced the name Jose’.   He said “Josie.”  So I marked it wrong.  Calvin stopped and asked “Why did you mark that wrong?”  So I told him, “In Spanish the J is pronounce like an H.”   Calvin answered, “I don’t want to speak Spanish, I want to speak English and I read it the right way in English!”  He started crying.  He took off his little glasses and was trying to wipe away all of his tears. “Calvin, why are you crying, it’s OK to miss a few words, nothing is going to happen because of this test.  You don’t have to be perfect.” I told him.   He said “But I want to be perfect.”   I said “But Calvin no one is perfect, that’s impossible.  Do you know that adults don’t know all the words?  Did you know that when I’m reading, I come to words that I don’t know, and I have to learn new words?”  His eyes got big, and he said, “Adults don’t know all the words?” and I said “No, No one ever learns all the words, we are always still learning, no one is perfect.”  He sniffed, wiped his eyes, put his little glasses back on, and started reading again.
Somehow, at some point, Calvin came to believe the lie, that in order for him to be acceptable or “enough”, he had to know all the words.  For him to have value, for him to be “good enough”, he had to get everything right.  And we as Christians, can unconsciously believe this same lie, that in order for us to be acceptable, valuable, or “enough”, we have to get it all right.  We have to measure up.  We know cognitively, that we are “saved by grace”, but we often live as if God is happy with us when we get things right, and disappointed in us when we don’t get it right.  We live as if perfection is possible, and that if we could only achieve it, we would be acceptable.
In the following blog I want to offer just a couple of suggestions that might be helpful as you take on the task of leading children into a daily dependent walk with God.  I will post the first 3 points today and the last 3 points some other time.
  1. We need to do our own inner work.
The main thing that you bring to the children that you lead, is the person that you are becoming.  The person that you are, is what will be reproduced.  I’m sure you’ve heard it said, “more is caught than taught”.  So it’s important that we do our own heart work.  We can’t give children something that we don’t have ourselves.  We need to know that our value comes from God’s unconditional love for us, not from the things that we do, or from the things that we have, or from what others think of us.  Our value is a gift from God, it can’t be earned, and it can’t be taken away.  We are at all times loved and accepted by God.  When we are secure in Christ, our hearts are full, and we have a storehouse of resources to pour into the hearts of those around us.
  1. We must find our own value in God
A fullness and security in Christ begins with knowing our identity in Christ. What I mean by that, is that our value comes from God’s unconditional love for us, not from the things that we do, not from the things that we have, and not from what others think of us.  Our value is a gift from God, it can’t be earned, and it can’t be taken away.  We are at all times loved and accepted by God.  We are never more or less valuable than anyone else, so there is no need for comparison.  We are always “enough” in Christ, we don’t have to earn it or prove it, it’s just a fact.  We don’t need any other dependencies to fill us.  God meets our need for love.  He meets our need for acceptance, He meets our need for security, safety, significance.  He is the source of Life, and he completely fills us to over flowing, so that we can give out of our fullness.
So we need to ask ourselves “what am I looking to for my sense of worth, or my sense of being “enough”.  And then we need to do the hard work of transferring all of our dependencies to Christ.  We may look to relationships to meet our need for love, we may look to money and possessions for a sense of safety and security, we may look to our talents, success, career, positions, intelligence, or competence for our sense of value, or feeling like we are “enough.”  We need to recognize these things and transfer our dependency to God, and allow Him to meet all of our needs, and to be the Source of Life that he is meant to be for us.
Your kids will grow if they see you growing and transforming.  As you grow in security in Christ you will naturally become less judgmental, you will become offended less often, you will not be as easily angered, you will be able to apologize, and your children will be drawn to that.
The reason that we are easily offended is because we are insecure, and we need people to believe certain good things about us to feel like we are “enough,” and when they don’t it really hurts.  But when that need is met in Christ, we know we are enough regardless of what others think, and we free others to have their own thoughts and opinions.
When we get angry it is more often than not, about our self-concept, rather than what someone actually did to us.
Sometimes when we are insecure, we bolster our security by comparing ourselves to other people (my beliefs are better than theirs, I’m more talented than they are, I’m not as bad as they are).  Children learn by watching us.  If they see comparison, judgment, pride, and insecurity in our lives, they pick up on it.
Children are watching how we take correction and failure. They are learning from us about judgment and comparison, pride and insecurity.  And we are teaching them where to find their value.  As you grow in your understanding of who you are in Christ, He will transform your character into his likeness, and children will catch that from you.
  1. We must teach children that their value is in God
We need to be careful what we are leading our children to believe about their identity.
Sometimes, we can accidentally teach our children, that their worth is found in their achievements.  We praise our kids for good report cards and for performing well in sports.  What we praise, teaches them what makes them valuable.  Ask yourself if you celebrate who your kids are, or what they have accomplished.  As Joby Martin puts it, we are un-gospeling our children when we lead them to believe that their worth is found in their achievements.
We need to gospel our children by calling out their God given identity in Christ.  We need to encourage them with the worth that is bestowed upon them as humans made in the image of God, not from the things they have done.  We need to be very careful not to invite our children onto the treadmill of performance.  We need to frequently remind our children, that their dignity and value are gifts that cannot be lost by a lack of talent, success or praise.
Parenting / Passionate Legacy

What Do We Teach Kids About Handling Conflict?

jgolling

A lot of kids are taught that getting an adult during conflict, is tattling.  It is very common for parents to require children to solve problems among themselves.  This method doesn’t lead to positive conflict resolution skills; it leads to the opposite.  When children are left to themselves to stop a conflict and the other child won’t stop, or share, or cooperate, violence and retaliation are really the only option they have.  Older siblings and bigger kids have a lot of power and they don’t know how to use their power in a benevolent way.  They are self-centered and haven’t learned how to use their power for good yet.  When kids are left to fight it out, the youngest ones can be subjected to emotional and physical abuse.  They learn that there is no such thing as justice, and that violence and retaliation are their only option.  The youngest also learn that they are not valuable enough for even their parents to care when they are being treated unfairly and even abused.  And the older kids learn to practice the abuse of power over the weak. 

An alternative to this would be to help kids learn to utilize authority as a resource.  When our kids were young we always had the 3 steps of “how to stop a fight”, posted on our wall.  The first step was: If someone is doing something you don’t like, tell them to “stop” in a nice voice.  Or, if the fight is about a toy or game, agree on a way to take turns.  Set a timer and do rock-paper-scissors to see who goes first.  The second step was: If they don’t listen, tell them that if they do it again you will have to get an adult.  The third step was: If they still don’t listen, get an adult.
When adults get involved it is not for the purpose of finding out who “started it” and to punish them.  The role of the adult is to remind the children of the tools like rock, paper, scissors, and the timer, and to ensure that everyone is treated with value and respect.  The adult teaches and enforces the biblical principles of #1 we respect and honor others because they are made in the image of God, #2 we don’t repay evil with evil because evil does not defeat evil it perpetuates it, #3 always confront in love, and #4 that they deserve to be protected because they are valuable.  Children need to be taught these principles on an ongoing basis because they aren’t born with this knowledge, they need repeated instruction. The way that children learn to treat other people, how they allow themselves to be treated, and how they handle disputes at home, will go with them into relationships at school.
One of our roles as parents is protector.  God has put authority in place to protect us and enforce the laws (Rom.13), we need to model this order at home.  A healthy view of authority is that authority is good and can be called upon to enforce justice. Children should be learning that they can turn to authority for justice rather than getting revenge. If a child genuinely needs help, he needs to be able to get it.  Children need to know that it is not weak to refuse to hit someone, it is strong to manage our anger and appeal to the proper channels of authority rather than solving a problem through violence.

When children are taught that parents are not interested in helping them with their problems, they find their own means for survival. They learn to only interact with their peers, and exclude the adult world, because adults are believed to be unavailable, unhelpful, unjust, and unconcerned. They don’t go to teachers when someone is picking on them, and this either results in them being severely abused by others or it results in built up anger which, as we have seen, can result in violence as gruesome as school shootings. 

recently I was taking a class and the school principal that was teaching the class said that when he sits down with jr. highers that got into fights at school and asks them why, they say “I just couldn’t take it anymore,” and when he asks why they didn’t tell anyone that they were being picked on, they say “I didn’t want to be a snitch”.
This is a letter sent recently from the superintendent of Bethel schools to all Bethel staff:
For the safety of our students, we need to foster and nurture a culture where students feel safe to come to an adult and talk about threats, or students that are having difficulty coping, etc. This is what a “caring culture” nurtures.  The old concept of seeing students that ask for help as “tattle-tales” or “snitches,” must be replaced by compassionate concern.  Developing a culture where it’s OK to ask for help is essential. We are all in this together, we are not an island onto ourselves.
…

And that’s a good word for all of us to remember! 

Parenting / Passionate Legacy

We Pass On What We Receive (Part 5)

jgolling
Freedom to Choose

God did not force us to love him or obey him.  God does not use anger, intimidation, or guilt.  He holds us with an open hand.  He pursues us with love, not authority. 
When our children are young we must train them to live according to God’s life-giving principles.  We must have control because we are responsible for their safety and training.  We must provide the moral storehouse and the discipline that they need to be able to follow through.  But as our children grow older we must trust that they have the tools, and accept the fact they have the choice of either adopting them as their own, or rejecting them.  When we understand that God allows us to make our own choice about whether or not to make God the source of our life, we understand that it is up to our teens to make the same choice for themselves.  Our goal is that our children would recognize that God truly is the source of Life, and decide for themselves to depend on Him.

We must respect our teen’s ability to have beliefs and opinions that are independent of ours.  We cannot control the thoughts or motivations of our teen’s hearts and minds.  When we try to exert power that we don’t have over our teens, we undermine our own goal of helping them know the love of God, and choose to look to Him as the source of life.  We must accept that we are not in control, and give our teens room to make their own autonomous choices.  We can best do this by allowing our life to speak for itself. As we build a relationship with our children that is based on respect, we will naturally gain an invitation of influence.
Parenting / Passionate Legacy

We Pass On What We Receive ( Part 4)

jgolling
Biblical Discipline

Confrontation and discipline should be done in love, to benefit someone who is making choices that are damaging to themselves or others.  God teaches us in His word that confrontation of sin is for the purpose of restoring, rescuing, redeeming, and reconciling, and should always be done in humility, gentleness, and love.  God does not want us to confront sin to get even, to vent anger, or to punish.  Sadly, not many people have experienced confrontation according to biblical principles.  Most people have experienced a corrupted version of biblical confrontation that was not life-giving at all.  This leads to many destructive parenting practices in discipline. 
God does not want us to confront someone to show them that they are “bad” or that we are mad.  He does not want us to confront for the purpose of controlling people through fear and intimidation. When we do, we demonstrate that we believe that it is our job to judge and punish people and make them be good.
Jesus did not die to make us be good people, he died to give us life. Confrontation should communicate a bigger picture than just to stop being bad and be good.  It should communicate the importance of coming back to the life that God created us for; life as God designed it to work. When we return to dependence on God as the source, we benefit from experiencing Life as God created it to be.  Turning from our sin is not just a means to escape condemnation, it is the way back to Life.

When confrontation is done for the right purpose and with the right attitude in relationships, families, and communities over a long period of time, trust is developed.  When people are able to trust that confrontation is for their benefit and not to point out their badness, they become more willing to humbly look at themselves and see the areas in which they need to grow. If we are using biblical discipline we don’t use the tools of anger, shame, or intimidation. When we understand God’s model for confrontation, we can give consequences to our children in a loving and positive way that is focused on rescuing, redeeming, and reconciling, rather than punishing. 
Parenting / Passionate Legacy

We Pass On What We Receive (Part 3)

jgolling
Humility

We are in the process of being perfected.  We all vacillate several times a day from one false God to another, to find our sense of worth and significance.  When it comes to sin, we are all on a level playing field.  We are never “good” or in a state of sinlessness.  Our only goodness comes from God.  On our own we have nothing to be proud of or take credit for.  Understanding this allows us to be humble with our children.  We can admit that we don’t always get things right.  We can sympathize with their struggle with sin.  We are not above it.  We struggle every day and we need to depend on God for his help.  We know God accepts us in our struggle and we accept ourselves.  This leads to humility.  And it leads to being able to accept our children when they fail.  Acceptance enables our children to humbly admit their sin and turn to God for help rather than deny their sin.  Children only feel safe to be humble when they know they will be treated with grace when they fail.  Spiritual growth happens when we face our sin humbly and honestly.  
Parenting / Passionate Legacy

We Pass On What We Receive (Part 2)

jgolling
Grace 

When we understand and experience God’s grace, love, and acceptance, we pass on grace, love and acceptance to our children.  God loves us in spite of our sin and shortcomings. God not only loves us by forgiving us, but He likes us, He accepts us, He is for us.  We don’t lose his affection each time we sin.  Jesus died for all of our sins, the sins in the past, present, and future.  He does not condemn us again and again; sin was condemned once and for all in Christ.  God sees our inability as a part of our reality, and he is not mad at our weakness. He does not hold back affection until we perform perfectly.  God is not surprised or upset by our behavior.  He is patient with us.  God loves us toward more life-giving choices.  His conviction comes in love, not in guilt.  We don’t have to be afraid of humbly owning our mistakes, because we know we are still accepted.  We can acknowledge all of the sin that is inside of us, and look to God in dependence for help.  In the same way we are not angered by our children’s behavior.  We do not withhold relationship. We are not surprised at bad behavior.  We have patience.  We can accept our children even when they do wrong.  
Parenting / Passionate Legacy

We Pass On What We Receive (Part 1)

jgolling
Everyone looks to some source to provide their sense of identity.  Identity is essentially how I view myself or who I am as a person.  It is how I define myself.  It is what I use to decide whether or not I have value.  It is also what I use to determine if I am acceptable to myself, God, and others.  One source that people look to define themselves, is the approval of certain people, like a father, boss, husband, wife, or children.  One example might be looking to a father for our worth.  When he approves of us we feel like we are worth something; we feel good and we accept ourselves.  But then we lose his approval.  We feel worthless.  But people are flawed, they do not accurately represent our value.  We don’t really gain and lose value based on what others think.  Other people are the wrong source; we should not give them the power to define our identity. 

Other sources people look to are physical appearance, intelligence, wealth, competence, abilities, grades, success, or moral achievements.  The problem of looking to these things, is that they lead to pride when I am doing well and insecurity when I am not.  These things do not define us; they are not really “who we are”.  They are things about us, and things that we do, but do not make us any more or less valuable.  The only true source of our identity is God’s love for us.  This truth should provide our worth and value. 

Our value is given by God as a gift.  It is unchanging.  We cannot gain it, and we cannot lose it.  We are only valuable because of God’s love.  This should be humbling.  We are also completely valuable because of God’s love.  God’s love actually makes us worthy of respect and high esteem.  And we cannot be more or less valuable than anyone else.  All people are given the same value by God Himself.  God’s love allows us to recognize our high value in spite of our flaws and shortcomings.   
So, regardless of our looks, talents, or anything that we do, we can always have a secure Identity.  In Christ we can always have the security and confidence that we are enough, we are acceptable, and we are valuable. We do not have to live in fear or anxiety about losing our value.  As people loved by God, we have the resource to have all of our personal needs for love, acceptance, and value met by God.  Finding our security in Christ allows us to be able to parent well, because when we are completely secure in God’s love for us, we have plenty of love to give to our children. 
Security/Fullness
We are made to be dependent on God’s love to be secure.  Being secure in God’s love can be illustrated by a container that is always full, because it is constantly being filled.  Looking to other things to fill our need for love is like a container that is always nearly empty, because nothing else can ever really satisfy us.  So, the first way that having a secure identity in Christ impacts our parenting, is that our need for love is met, leaving us with an overabundance to share.  We know who we are, and we are not looking for anything else to define us.  When we have received God’s love, and we are full and secure in that love, we have an overflow of love to give to others.  The love that we give to others does not come from us.  We are not the source of love, God is. 
As parents, our job is to meet the needs our children and love them, not the other way around.  When our needs are met in God, we are not looking to our children to meet our needs.  Parents can easily confuse the good feeling that they get from their children’s appreciation of them, for a source of value and identity for themselves.  We can easily slip into using our children to get what we need, rather than giving children what they need.


As secure people we are not needy for acceptance, approval, or praise.  We are free to put others first.  We can love sacrificially and not fear that our own needs will not be met.  We can discipline without having the primary concern be the loss of our children’s love for us.  We are not afraid of our children’s anger toward us, or losing their approval.  We are not threatened by our children’s mistakes.  Their mistakes don’t define us.  We are also not angered by their mistakes.  We don’t need them to behave well for our sake.  We don’t need them to be good to make us feel good about ourselves.   When we are secure we are not easily wounded by the things our children say and do.  
(See Next Post for Part 2)
Parenting / Passionate Legacy

Discipline for Teens (Part 2)

jgolling
One side note is that different phases of childhood require different methods of parenting.  Children in the first five years of life require discipline.  A parent has all of the responsibility for the child’s welfare and therefore all of the authority over him.  As children grow up they gain authority over their lives as they gain responsibility for their life decisions.  They are becoming responsible for their own choices and therefore need to be allowed to make those choices.  They are becoming their own person with their own thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, and they have a right to those thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.  They slowly gain autonomy over time rather than on any particular birthday.  This is not just a good principle; it is a reality.  Adults do not have the power to control how a teen thinks and behaves.  Teens know this and parents would do well to acknowledge this truth as well. Parents should relate to their teens as distinctly separate, autonomous, thinking individuals, who are worthy of respect, and come alongside their teenagers to help them to learn and grow rather than trying to control them. Anger, manipulation, and control are all things that cause teens to feel disrespected and therefore mistrust their parent’s intentions toward them.  If a parent has a child’s best interest in mind, then he will treat him with respect his entire life.  Children who are treated with respect grow to trust their parent’s benevolence toward them, and are willing to learn from them as teens.  Relational influence is earned through years and years of treating someone with respect.  In the teen years it is more effective and respectful to use relational influence rather than authority and discipline.  This looks more like a discipleship relationship than anything else.  This honors the autonomous person that the teen is becoming and acknowledges the reality that the days of authority and control are over. And that is a good thing because the teen needs to have the authority over his own life, if he is responsible for the consequences of the choices that he makes.  A teen who feels loved, supported, respected, and forgiven will be more likely to be interested in being taught and helped out of unwise situations. A teen who feels disrespected and intimidated will not feel safe to ask for advice or help. 
If you want your teen’s heart motivation to be the love of God, you will need to communicate through your discipline God’s love, grace, and desire to give us abundant life.  You will need to demonstrate, that to have life, we need to live in dependence on God as the source of everything. And you will need to show that when we do, we experience true Life as it was designed to work.
So, the fourth option would be to come alongside your teen in love and grace. Ask him what he or she needs from you to help them to experience the Life that God meant for them.  Talk with your teen like he is a friend that you care about rather than a child that you are mad at.  Think about how you would help a friend that you saw making poor life choices. You would lovingly confront him with a motive of wanting to help him find answers for his problems, not to condemn him or vent anger.  You would want to rescue him from the trap that he has been sucked into.  You would provide the accountability and support that he needed. God teaches us in His word that confrontation of sin is for the purpose of restoring, rescuing, redeeming and reconciling, and should always be done in humility, gentleness, and love.  
Ask your teen what he is struggling with and what he needs.  Is he struggling with depression?  Maybe he would benefit from counseling.  Does he need accountability for something that he is struggling with?  Is there a mentor that you could pair him with?  Does he need help saying “no” to friends?  Does he need to change schools and find a new peer group? Does he need addiction treatment?
If you have relational influence with your teen, share with him the moral reasons for why certain choices are damaging to him and others.  Such as, rules and authority are in place for the benefit of all people.  Help him look for the personal benefit of following rules and authority.  When we don’t follow rules and laws, we harm ourselves (our futures, our bodies).  People have value. When we deceive others we hurt people and relationships.  Emphasize that as a parent you want your teen to follow rules and laws because you love him and want the best for him.  Show your teen the life giving reasons to love what is good, rather than just teaching them to avoid being bad. 
If you give a consequence make sure it fits the “crime”.  Don’t make it too harsh or too long.  The teen must feel that it is a fair consequence for it to be effective.

Always point your teen to the gospel.  We all need to live in dependence on God every single day, regardless of how old we are.  God is a God of grace, He is for us, He is not angry when we fail, and He is there to give us strength when we depend on Him.  Teach your teen how to accept the forgiveness of God, learn from their mistakes, and turn back to God in dependence.