Shepherding Hearts: The Journey of Faithful Parenting

But if I focus on the heart and recognize that, as you alluded to, Proverbs 4:23 a moment ago, the heart is the wellspring of life, that my focus is on the heart. And that the problem of behavior, things we say and do flow out of the heart. And so if the heart is the focus, then I have no hope other than the gospel. [00:02:56]

And so having that focus, I think, just helps so much in parenting just to bring me back to, OK, what are the heart issues? Now obviously I've got a track behavior. I've got to say, you may not do that. But I want to give a focus on the heart all the time. And I think that is really what separates shepherding a child's heart from many books on parenting that have a lot of helpful ideas about how to manage kids. [00:04:11]

But for me, to stand alongside them and say, I get it. I understand selfishness. I know how it works in the human heart. And there's hope for people like you and daddy. It's found Christ, and His grace, His capacity to change us and transform us. And so I can stand in complete solidarity with them in their struggles, and I never have to be, like you were saying, hypocritically distancing myself from my kids, and saying things that shame them. [00:05:47]

I think the first five years-- the big picture idea, I think, in those first five years is teaching children to live under authority. And it's not just simply a mom and dad's authority and how can I get them to obey me, but it's a bigger picture of hierarchy that recognizes there's a God in heaven who's good. He's put you in the family. He's given you a mommy daddy who love you. [00:06:54]

Because no one has better resources for understanding motivation than a Christian. Because God's word describes motivation, things like the fear of man rather than the fear of the Lord, or revenge rather than entrusting ourself to God, or pride rather than humility, or hatred rather than love, or peacemaking rather than anger, rebellion rather than submission. I mean, there's so many descriptions of motivational things in the word of God. [00:08:41]

And I think with teens, I think about internalizing the gospel. Helping them in making that transference that has to happen for our kids, where they move from, I believe these things because it's what I've been taught, to the point where they have embraced it for themselves as their own living faith. And I think helping them to do that and walking them through that and walking through the inevitable doubts that come as our kids realize, boy, there's some clever people out there, smart people, interesting people, creative people that don't believe everything mom and dad have taught us. [00:10:07]

I think that sometimes seeking forgiveness and honestly facing our sin can be just as powerful in our children's lives as if we had gotten right to begin with. Because we're modeling for them the grace of seeking forgiveness and extending forgiveness. And the scripture says, if anyone says he has not said he's a liar, the truth isn't in him, and yet many children have never had their parents confess or acknowledge sin. [00:17:11]

And one of the things I will say to our kids and have over the years is just like you're not perfect and just like you're sinful, so am I. And I'm not perfect either. And I need Jesus just as much as you do. And I think sometimes parents, we can seem to set a different standard for our kids, as if they need Christ more than we do. [00:20:22]

And I think sometimes we, again, set a different standard for our children and make them feel extra guilty for doing the same things or sitting in the same ways or messing up in similar ways as they have before. And I think we need to really encourage them to know that they're going to sin and they're going to mess up and that they need to be aware of the abundant grace of God, and that there's no end to that grace, there's no limit to that grace. [00:26:12]

And so sometimes, I have found, that children who leave the home and then leave those sets of pharisaical legalistic standards, sometimes parents think, well, they've wandered from their faith. They've wandered from the church, they wanted from God. When in fact, all they've done has wandered from that legalistic pharisaical standard. And so we need to be very careful that we are acknowledging that if our children love Jesus and they're trusting Jesus and they're resting in Christ, they haven't actually wandered from the faith. [00:39:23]

And so people are always entertaining themselves. They're amusing themselves. Of course, amusement means no thinking. So our kids just have this incredible source of sometimes banal entertainment that is just in their pocket all the time. And I think that challenge-- the challenge of how to manage technology as my kids are growing up in the home, how to prepare them and equip them to live in this connected world is a layer of challenge that I never had to face as a parent of teenagers, because I didn't live-- my kids were young in the '80s, and so I didn't face that problem. [00:43:42]

And I think one of the things that we need more desperately than we really ever needed is a genuine and strong community of believers around us. That we need to work very, very hard to foster that community. For ourselves as parents, I think that's one of the greatest things that we can do. I mentioned a little while ago how, Chris, you and Jennifer have been such dear friends and such good examples to me and Amber. [00:46:49]