Upwards Church

Parenting is challenging.  As a parent I learned how to take an overflowing toilet apart because my son flushed one of his toys!  I also learned what 35 yards of dental floss looks like spread throughout my house by my daughter.  These and plenty of other stories are a part of my parenting experience.  A question I have wrestled with is what is the purpose of parenting from God’s perspective?  Is it to keep my sanity? Is it to keep my kids fed, educated and safe? Or is there more?

As I understand the Bible, there is more.   Deuteronomy 6 gives me a blueprint of my purpose as a godly parent.

My purpose as a parent is to gradually transfer my child’s dependence from me to God.  Our children especially when they were little depended on us for everything.  And over time, we will help transfer their dependence to where they will no longer depend on us, but instead, they depend on the only One who will ever be completely faithful and true to them in every single way.  We teach them to depend on God.

How do we do that?  Deuteronomy 6 gives 2 Vital Principles.

1.      Love  God Completely

⁵ Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

This is the phrase that a devout Jew would say three times a day, morning, noon and evening.  Notice, the scripture does not say with some, or with a little bit, or with a percentage, but we are told to love God with all of our heart.  Many people today love God with a little bit of their hearts. One of the most dangerous things that we can do spiritually as parents is expose our children to just a little bit of God.  Let me explain to you why.

If you ever get a flu shot, did they actually put into our body?  To keep us from getting the flu, we get a little bit of the flu.  Just a little bit, which makes us immune to the whole thing, and I would argue that as parents, so many parents unknowingly give their children just a little bit of the things of God, making them immune to all of His goodness and glory and power and majesty.  They find themselves knowing just a little bit about God, but not knowing God personally and intimately in a life-changing way.

For our family Sunday is priority to express our love (or worship) to God as a family.  We also love God weekly by serving others, Kaleb (13) helps with the preschool class, Noel (11) helps in the Toddlers, Niki is part of the worship group, part of our DNA as a family is to love God by serving others.  The Bible is God’s love letter.  I try to read some daily and encourage the family in reading and memorizing God’s word.  I love the new phone apps such as www.Joansoft.com and www.Youversion.com that deliver daily verses or reading plans to my phone.  The second vital way to transfer dependence to God is to …

2.      Lead My Family Intentionally

⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

The key to teaching my children to love God is stated simply and clearly in these verses. If I want my children to follow God, I have to make God a part of our everyday experiences.  I try to help them see God in all aspects of life.

For us we try to eat dinner together as a family at least five nights a week.  We pray at each meal and talk about life and what happened during their day.  As stories are told and as life experiences are shared, it’s easier to include aspects of truth from God’s word such as how to treat others as God would want us to, being thankful, respectful and responsible.  We will also review certain bible verses that are helpful later.  Such as in times of discipline and correction (which are more often than I care for) Niki and I try to include God’s perspective, “Do everything without arguing and complaining” Philippians 2:14 or “Do unto others as you would want them to do to you” Luke 6:31, “Children obey your parents…that it may go well for you.” Ephesians 6:1-2.   We don’t want to beat them over the head with the Bible but we do want them to understand what God says and how we choose to follow Him in every area of life.

As a parent, I don’t want my kids to have a little bit of God.  I want them to see all of His power and greatness.  That’s my purpose as a parent.

Darrell

For more about the series, Leave a Legacy go to www.ridgefellowship.com

Most people I meet, myself included want the best for our kids.  We desire them to be well, happy and fortunate; which is the definition of the word “bless.”

I want to share three principles we learn from Jesus on how to bless our kids.  I believe that if we do these three things, our kids will be fine.  Better than fine, they will be blessed.  These three principles we will learn from Jesus are timeless principles for kids.  They have not changed and will not change in the next 2000 years.   We’ll look at Jesus example in how to bless our kids in Mark 10:13-16.

Three Ways to Bless Our Kids:

1.       Loving Touch

¹³ People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them ….

Children refer to babies through pre-teens.   The word translated “touch” means to attach oneself or to embrace.  There is power in loving, appropriate touch.  Each time the word “touch” appears in reference to Jesus in the New Testament, it leads health or healing.

Loving touch is vital to children.  We have learned this the hard way in history.  For example, In the Thirteenth Century, Emperor Frederick, II was curious what language a would child speak if never spoken to from the time he or she was born?  He had fifty infants for his experiment. Nurses were not allowed to speak to these babies or to show them affection, but were to meet the only the most basic needs of feeding and changing diapers.  Within one year all fifty babies died.[i]  It turns out that a basic need is touch and affection.

In the past I have not been as affectionate as I should be.   I have said things like,  “I’m not a touchy type of person.”  God has changed me.  I now know this is vital need for wife and children.   It also helped that in my excuse of not being a touchy person,  I sensed the Holy Spirit say, “Get over it.”

Other research about loving touch indicates that during their pre-teen years, girls need for loving and appropriate touch increases.  Dads, it’s the most important thing you can do to deter sexual sin in your young girls.  Honestly, its awkward for me right now because my eleven year old daughter is going through puberty, but I am learning to push past my feelings because of its important.   When our girls learn to be touched appropriately by a loving and Godly person, they’ll be more prepared to say no to inappropriate touch from an ungodly person.  Also research shows that little girls are often touched in a loving and appropriate way five times as often as boys, and yet the boys’ have the same need for touch.  When boys are younger they are more affectionate but when they turn seven or eight, rather than a lot of hugs and kisses they may prefer a pat on the back or to wrestle, but the need is still there.

2.      Abundant Time

How do kids spell love?” “Kids spell love t-i-m-e.”

Look at what Jesus does, ¹³People are bringing little children to Jesus to have Him touch them, but the disciples rebuke them.  In other words,  “He is too busy.  He is too important.  He’s got sick people to heal, teaching to do, don’t bother Him with children.”  But Jesus was not happy about that.  “¹⁴When Jesus saw this, he was indignant.”  The Greek word translated indignant suggests very strong emotion. This is the only place in the Gospels where Jesus directed such strong anger at his disciples. [ii]

I’m not a big race car fan, but I have to admit I am very impressed with the pit stop. A good pit stop will last twelve to fifteen seconds.  They change the tires, put in gas, change the oil, check the car, clean off the windshields and eat a Happy Meal, all in twelve to fifteen seconds!  Today many parents are doing what could be called pit stop parenting.  Sure we as parents spend more than twelve to fifteen seconds engaged with our children.  But not much more, I read recently that the average dad in America spends thirty-seven seconds a day engaged in meaningful conversation with his children.  I know I have plenty of excuses why I cannot spend more time with my kids, but they are not good excuses. The fact is I need to and desire to give my kids the time they need.  Do kids need quality time or quantity time? Both!

Billy Graham, one of the all-time greats, when asked by a reporter, “If you had your life to do all over again, what would you do differently?”  He didn’t say, “I would have done more crusades and led tens of thousands of more people to Christ.”  He didn’t say, “I would have opened up another institute for pastors and Christian leaders and built more leaders to change the rest of the world.”  He didn’t say, “I would have written another bestselling book that would have sold millions of copies and impacted millions of people’s lives.”  What did he say?  “What would you do differently if you had your life to do over again?”  He said, “I would have spent more time with my kids.”

 3.      Encouraging Talk

We bless our kids with encouraging talk.  “¹⁶And he took the children in his arms, he put his hands on them and he blessed them.”  He lifted them up with His words.  He didn’t say as I often do, “Hey, stop that! Cut that out!  He didn’t say, “One, two, two and-a-half.”  He blessed them, encouraged them.  One of the most important things that we can do for our children is to speak words of life, rather than the words of death.  Watch the words that you speak.  If you are like me, I often can be characterized more by catching my kids doing something wrong, rather than catching them doing something right.  Here’s what I want to be known to say, “I’m so proud of you son”  “If I had to choose any girl in the world, I would choose you.”   Encouraging words that lift up my kids.

Here’s something profound.  In all of scripture, there is only one place that the audible voice of God is recorded in scripture speaking to Jesus.  He probably spoke audibly more than this, but here’s the only  place where its recorded.  Jesus had just been baptized and a voice from Heaven said, “This is my Son whom I love, and with him I am well pleased” Matthew 3:17.  The one time God speaks out loud for others to hear, he says, “I am so proud of my Son.” Heaven is breaking open for me to brag on Him.  You are on the right track, Son.  You have exceeded my greatest expectations.  I want everyone to know, “I love you so-o-o much.”

Will you decide to bless your kids with your touch, time and talk?  I have.

Darrell

For more about the series, Leave a Legacy go to www.ridgefellowship.com

A research project was conducted in which about 240 counseling agencies across the country were asked to identify the primary problem that their counselors encountered. It was reported that almost 80 percent of the problems brought to the agencies concerning marriage and family life had to do with communication… [1]

 So, if communication is a problem for families, let’s look at it briefly.  What family therapists have discovered is it’s not so much that communication is difficult in the family today, as that it’s LACKING. We don’t do enough of it.

Another common problem is that communication can shallow or superficial.  Communication among our families ideally should get to the feeling level.  The feeling level is where connection happens.

Here are the five levels of communication:

1. Facts — It’s 80 degrees and sunny today.”

2. Events — “The Spurs played a great game yesterday.” A little more stimulating, but nothing deep is really exchanged between us.

3. People — “Susie had a toothache.” John dislikes Aggies.” “Bill got a new job.” These are much more engaging, but be careful not to gossip.

4. Ideas — “I believe that Jesus Christ is God’s Son and Savior of the world.” Say that to someone, and suddenly you’re sharing some very stimulating material. The conversation can go deep or it can get heated, but ideas are exchanged and we share much more of ourselves in it.

5. Feelings — “I’m hurt today.” “I’m tired.” “I’m happy, bored, jealous, excited.”  This is where we live. This is where it gets deep.

As I read through the gospels about I see that Jesus was not only a good speaker; He was a great question-asker. In John 1, instead of focusing on Himself, the Bible says He turned to the men following Him and asked, “What do you want?” (John 1:37)

This might seem like an obvious question, but how often do we ask those we love, “What do you want?”

Think through some of the best conversations you’ve ever had, where you felt really connected to and known by the person you were talking with. I’m guessing the reason the conversation went well and went deep is because they asked good questions.   A good use of questions will get down to the feeling level.

Here are some good questions: 

1.   How are you (really)?

2.   What was your high point of the day? What was your low point?

3.   What was your strongest feeling today?

4.   What’s your favorite ___________? (color, place, memory, vacation, sport, hobby, movie, country, time of day, etc.)

5.   How did that feel?

6.   Tell me more about that.

7.   What would you like to do if time and money were no objects?

8.   Tell me about your life at ____ years old.

9.   List three people who have influenced you significantly.

10. What is God teaching you these days?

11. What are you reading in the Bible?

12. What are you reading, besides the Bible?

13. What would you like to talk about right now?

14. If I could do something to make you happy, what would it be?

15. Which means the most to you: when I do something nice for you, say something nice to you, give something nice to you, give you a nice experience, or touch you?

16. What skill or discipline would you like to master?

17. What’s on your “bucket list”?

18. Which of your ancestors would you like to meet?

19. What one fear would you like to conquer?

20. If God would grant you one wish, what would it be?

21. How can I pray for you?

22. What kind of business would you like to start?

23. What one thing would you like to change about yourself?

24. If you could give God one worry or concern, what would it be?

25. What’s the biggest challenge you’re facing?

Deep inside we all want to know and be known by those we love. With a little effort and creativity, we can achieve both.

Darrell

www.ridgefellowship.com