Concluding Love Powered Parenting I realize that when it comes to parenting, for some of you it’s going well. Others of you, you think it’s going well but it’s not, you’re going to find out pretty soon. Some of you you’re not sure what to do next. Some of you, you’re ready to pull your hair out. Some of you feel that way. You feel all different ways. So let’s do something about it right now. We’re going to pray our way through this.
In your mind pray this:
Lord, help us to work together.
As adults in this child’s life, as parents, parents and friends, parents and family, help us to work together for the best, for the good in their life.
If we’re going to work together it’s going to take what Romans 15:5 talks about. It’s going to take unity. That verse says “May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus.”
That’s what we’re working together for. “Lord help us to work together.” If we’re not working together it’s obviously not going to be for their best.
The truth of the matter is, we all know this, this is true with our kids from the moment they’re born. The goal of your child is to divide and conquer you as parents. They want to make sure they get you disagreeing because the minute you disagree they start to win. Their goal is to divide and conquer. Your goal as parents is to partner and prevail. That is what you want to see happen.
If you’re a single parent that means you’ve got to have other people in your life. Other family, other single parents. Whether you’re a single parent or not, you can’t do this alone. We need other people. If you try to do this alone, they will wear you down. No doubt about it. You may think “I’m smarter than they are.” But they have more energy and more time than you do. They’re going to wear you down! You’ve got to partner together as husband and wife. Or partner together with other friends, other family in raising this kid.
But also you’ve got to partner together with other people in our church. Being part of a church family is one of the most important things you could do for your family. We’re working together to raise our kids, with the same values, same hope, same faith, same love. In fact, it’s important for your children and it’s important for you. Being part of a church family is important for them and it’s important for you.
Then pray, Lord, give them the right friends.
The Bible clearly tells us what some of us already know from experience:
1 Corinthians 15:33 says ‘Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.”
The Bible says the people that we spend time with are going to influence our character for good or for bad. So it’s so important what friends our kids are hanging out with.
We all know this. I’ve heard parents talk about it over and over and over. I’ve heard parents fret about it and stew about it a lot. That’s the temptation for all of us. What we need to be doing is praying. We need to be praying that they will have the right friends.
1 Thessalonians 5:11 “So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing.”
We need to be praying that our kids will have friends that will encourage them and build them up and that they will BE a friend that will encourage and build up others.
One of the tough things that is hard to admit during the teen years is that we are no longer the number one influence of the daily decisions in our kids’ lives. For instance, how many of you have teenagers that say, that’s the way mom and dad dress – that’s the way I want to dress. Or, that’s the music and the movies that mom and dad listen to – that’s what I want to listen to.
No. It doesn’t work out that way. It drives us crazy. We want to be the number one influence in every decision of their life. But it doesn’t work that way in the teenage years.
The truth is you may not be the number one influence in their daily decisions, but you are still the number one influence in their life. You can still be.
One of the things you have to be intentional about is spending time with them and their friends; you try to be around them. Some of you are looking at me like, you don’t understand. This is the thing that they don’t want – for me to be around them and their friends.
I understand that. So we’ve got to be strategic about this. I’m not saying you interject yourself into every situation, but be available. Be available for:
rides,
to host a part - kids will come for free food,
go to their games,
chaperone their field trips,
go to orientation. - I know you’ve heard it all at the zillion orientations you went to before but go. It’s not about what you know it’s about them knowing that you came. They pay attention. In the love languages book we talked about last week it falls under the ‘gift of self’ category. You don’t have to do anything when you’re they, say anything, they probably won’t even sit with you but they’ll know you cared enough about them to come. Period. That will likely define much of your teenage years with your kiddo - just be there.
Lord, teach them your wisdom.
There are a number of ways God gets his wisdom into our lives. Deuteronomy 4:9 talks about one of the most powerful ways we learn God’s wisdom. It says “Be very careful never to forget what you have seen the Lord do for you. Do not let these things escape from your mind as long as you live! And be sure to pass them on to your children and your grandchildren.”
One of the ways we learn wisdom is through telling the stories of what God has done. What God’s done in our life. Telling the stories of the times when I’ve trusted him and telling the stories of the times when I haven’t trusted him, and I’ve found him still to be faithful. When you tell the stories of what God has done, people learn wisdom. Your kids have the opportunity to learn wisdom.
For us a couple of the major stories would be the story about how God brought us to Texas - we never saw this coming. Or the story of how God healed Cathleen of degenerative disc disease when she was 22... or the story of how God healed her heart after her miscarriage by gifting us with Allison. Just remembering those things.
So what is it for you? What are the stories for you? How has God worked in your life? Think about it. Sometimes we just let it go. We need to go back ourselves. Then tell your kids. Maybe you’ve told them before, but just keep telling them and telling them and telling them. Tell them till their eyes roll, and then you’ve accomplished your goal.
We learn wisdom through telling stories of what God’s done. Another way that we learn wisdom is through discipline. We learn wisdom through the discipline of the circumstances of life, through the discipline of our parents. We can’t talk about parenting without talking about discipline.
When we talk about discipline, you have to remember God disciplines us as well. He allows the circumstances of our life to teach us lessons about life. The Bible says in Proverbs 3:12 “The Lord corrects those he loves, as parents correct a child of whom they are proud.”
It would be awesome if I could learn wisdom just by reading a book. But you know in your own life much of the wisdom, the great wisdom that you have is through a mistake that you made and the lesson you learned through that mistake. If we could learn wisdom just by somebody sitting down and saying, let me tell you what I learned, none of us would ever make mistakes. But all of us make mistakes because we learn wisdom through experience. We learn wisdom through the discipline of life.
We actually learn wisdom through pain. That’s what the discipline is. When discipline brings some kind of pain in our lives and for our teenagers, the pain of a loss of something, the pain of circumstance not turning out the way they wanted it to, that pain creates wisdom.
How do you get that wisdom? Through pain.
So for your teenage student, they’re going to get wisdom sometimes as you take privileges away from them. They’re going to get wisdom sometimes as you have to have a long talk with them. The last thing they want is to have a long talk with you. It’s a great pain inducer in their lives.
But let us just talk about one particular area. As they get older, more and more of the wisdom, the discipline they get isn’t going to come through you. It’s going to come through the natural consequences in life of some mistake they’ve made, something they haven’t done and some other adult is going to be involved. Some teacher, some coach, someone else. This can be tough for us as parents. It can be tough to allow the natural consequences for their actions to occur in their lives.
The problem is we want to rescue. Now I know that sometimes our kids may have been severely wronged and they actually need rescuing. But most of the time it’s that we need to just step back and support them, encourage them, but let them face those natural consequences. If your kid is tardy for A period because he was just too slow getting out of the house and this is the tardy that will result in some kind of consequence like; detention or whatever and you get a call from the school office that says something like, ‘Hey, this is Carol in the attendance office and I just wanted to touch base with you. Your kiddo was late today and this is the “big one”. Without a note from you, we will end up issuing a detention so I just wanted to see if he was with you and you guys were just in a hurry and forgot the note or should I go ahead and set up the detention?’ - what’s your response? Or you see your daughter’s homework on the table after she’s left for the day. It’s gonna be a zero. She’s gonna loose a privilege in class. Do you take it to her or not? Don’t get me wrong. I know that there are times that we help. But there are more often times that what we think is helping is really hurting because they aren’t learning from their mistakes.
The truth is that none of us want our kids to get burned. But it’s better to have a little burn that heals and to have learned from that experience than to have long term damage from something. Make sense? In the midst of all of this be praying that they will learn wisdom sooner rather than later.
We certainly don’t know all the answers or all the reasons even for the hurt that you’re now facing with one of your kids. We do know how much it hurts.
But I do know that you don’t find the strength to parent in yourself. And God’s willing to give you a strength that’s above and beyond yourself. I do know that God’s grace and goodness will take you through this season like he’s taken you through every season. And I do know you don’t have to face this alone. You parent together with Jesus, you parent together with others.
That’s what God does for us. As you do it you ask him to give you rest when you’re weary. God, carry this burden that’s too great for me to bear. Help me to receive your encouraging strength. You pray, Lord, give them your wisdom, even in this mistake that they’re making. I’ve learned wisdom through mistakes, you’ve learned wisdom through mistakes. God, even in the mistakes that they’re making let the other end of this be that they learn wisdom through this.
Then there’s a fourth prayer that you and I can pray together,
Lord help me to let go.
Help me to let go. You have to especially pray this prayer during the teenage years but actually this starts from the moment they’re born. At the beginning, you hold them in your arms and they can’t go anywhere. But pretty soon you have to let go and they’re crawling around on the floor. Then you have to let go and they’re walking around outside. Then you have to let go and they’re walking down a hall on their first day of kindergarten. You have to let go and all of a sudden they’re in a car driving off to high school. You have to let go and they’re on a jet plane flying off to college.
This is the process of parenting, it’s this process of letting go. In one sense, it never ends. Let’s just be honest about that.
It’s hard. It’s just hard to let go. Sometimes it’s a matter of perspective. I have Jessica in my house for about 10-11 more months. That’s it. Then she’s off to college. Am I releasing my children to this big scary world? Or am I releasing her into God’s plan for her life?
That’s the difference. Who are we releasing them to? What if my child isn’t following God? They’re going toward the world.
God’s still in control. God knows them. They may not be pursuing God but he’s pursuing them. And he loves them even more than you do.
Psalm 139 “You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.”
What your child is going through right now is no surprise to God. What they’re going to face in the next five, ten, fifteen years of their lives, God already knows. God already knows exactly the choices they’re going to make, good and bad. And he’s going to be there for them. We can release our kids to his care.
So praying our way through this, just one more time in your mind, just pray through these things in your mind. For your kids, for some teenager that you know, some parents that you know. Lord, help us to work together; Lord, give them the right friends; Lord, give them your wisdom; and, Lord, help us to let go.
I want to end this by praying for our kids. Praying, if you’ve got a teenager in your home, pray this for your kids. If you don’t have a teenager in your home, you may not even be a parent, I want to encourage you to pray this for some teenager in your life. Somebody in your family, somebody who lives on your block.
One of the great ways to pray is to pray Scripture back to God. The Bible is God’s will. So when you’re praying Scripture you know you’re praying God’s will every single time.
Father, help my child to understand what you want them to do; make them wise about spiritual things; and let the way they live always please and honor you, so that they will always be doing good, kind things for others, while all the time they are learning to know you better and better. I am praying, too, that they will be filled with your mighty, glorious strength so that they can keep going no matter what happens—always full of the joy of the Lord, and always thankful to the Father who has made us fit to share all the wonderful things that belong to those who live in the Kingdom of light.
From Colossians 1:9-12 (TLB)
.png)