10 Ways To Have An Unshakable Faith With My Kids | Unshakable | Pastor Adam Bishop

The world says that if you discipline your kids, you'll ruin their lives. God's word says, no, it's the other way around. I see it all the time. Adults in their twenties, thirties, forties, and even their fifties who never had someone lovingly point out a behavior that needed to change and it's held them back. It's ended relationships. It's cost them in their career. And here's the challenge with an adult. As you move forward in life with each passing decade, you start to sync up those behaviors with your identity, and it becomes a little more difficult to separate the two. So stay engaged and listen, there's gonna be days that you're just done. You wanna throw in the towel, you wanna quit, you've had it. I've been there. Let me tell you what you need to do when you get to that point, take a nap. [00:42:07] (44 seconds)  #DisciplineSavesLives

Be fully present when you're present. Be fully present when you're present. This one's hard. It's hard to be fully present when you're present. Our phones rob us oftentimes with that opportunity. We also in our home have a mini Goldendoodle named Evergreen. She's six years old, we call her Evie for short, and she's the little girl in our family. And if Morgan or myself are sitting on the couch and she jumps up beside us, if we and we're looking at our phones, if we don't acknowledge her within ten seconds, she will knock our phone out of our hands with her paw. I'm like, what are you? You know? If my dog can recognize when I'm not present, I promise you my children can and yours can as well. [00:57:24] (46 seconds)  #BeFullyPresent

You gotta be present when you are present. When they're little, be present. I tell new dads all the time, hold your little baby every single day and talk to your little baby. When they're little, get on the floor and play with them. As they get older, figure out ways to connect with them. How do they talk? If you've got daughters, they probably talk differently than boys talk. You gotta figure all that out. You gotta be fully present when you're with them. The greatest gift, listen to me church, the greatest gift you can give your children is your undivided attention. It's your undivided attention. [00:58:10] (33 seconds)  #GiveUndividedAttention

We're not talking about their identity. We talked about that earlier. So we affirm their identity. Hey, you're a child of the king. You're a daughter of the king, but these behaviors are not very king like. Alright? You're not acting like it. We've got to address some things and you can do this in love. You can do this in a loving way. You can point out behaviors that actually need to change. And parents, you don't get to abdicate that role. And I know it's difficult, and I know it's hard, and I know it's not something we like to do, and I know it can be exhausting because it feels like sometimes you're addressing the same thing over and over and over without anything changing. If that's happening, here's my encouragement. Try a different method. [00:40:18] (39 seconds)  #CorrectWithLove

If your kids play sports, you celebrate their effort, not the results. You celebrate the effort, not the results. I love Morgan, every time one of our boys finishes an athletic game, she always says the same thing to him, I loved watching you compete today. I loved watching you compete today. Like, we're not gonna, you know, get upset whether passes are caught or whether they're dropped or all that kind of stuff, but like what we watch for is how do you greet your teammates on the sideline? Like, do you encourage someone? How do you respond to the coach? How do you conduct yourself? Are you aware that your actions have consequences with how you lead and influence others? Are you giving maximum effort? When your kids are doing their best at school, if they're doing their best and they're getting a c, you need to celebrate the maximum effort. [00:50:53] (44 seconds)  #CelebrateEffortNotResults

By the end of the day, they're just done. So we adjusted. We shifted. We'd have breakfast, we'd go to a park, we'd go for a walk, we'd go to a playground, it's great. Just paying attention. We're connecting with them in the season that they're at. When they were little, oftentimes at night when I put them to bed, I would point to my heart, I would get them to point to their heart and I would say, how's this doing? How are you feeling? What's going on in here? Most nights they'd say, I'm good. But every now and then they would tell me something and start talking. Little little guys start talking. Now I'm thinking you need to go to sleep, but but but I'm but I'm gonna hold up. No, they're connecting like this is good. As they get older, do they talk to you about their friends? When do they talk with you about their friends? One of the things that I recognized about our boys, [00:54:36] (42 seconds)  #CreateConnectionMoments

Giving your children your undivided attention and giving your children your time, I want you to think about it this way. It's like making deposits in a retirement account or making deposits in a mutual fund. You make the deposits along the way and then hopefully one day you start making the withdrawals. Every time that you spend intentional time with your children, you're making a deposit. You're making a deposit. And here's why that matters so much, because one day you're gonna have to start making withdrawals. See, when you're disciplining your children, you're making a withdrawal. When you sit down with your son or daughter one day to have the conversation, how you see some things that concern you about the person they're dating that's making a withdrawal. And if you have not made the deposits along the way with your time, those conversations won't go well when it's time to make the withdrawal and you never get another shot at time. It passes and then you never get it back. I want you to be intentional with the time that you have. Now, [00:58:44] (57 seconds)  #InvestTimeNow

for them. So children can give their lives to the Lord, and then we baptize them. We celebrate that. And once anyone has given their life to Jesus, his or her identity is primarily now in Christ. Your child becomes a son or a daughter of the king, and we wanna reinforce that identity in every season of their lives. But see, if we try to raise our kids to be independent, that's actually counter to what God's word says because I get up here most week and talk about how we should be dependent on God. Do you see it? [00:30:40] (29 seconds)  #IdentityInChrist