One of the frightening parts of raising children is to see them become adolescents, teenagers. As they move into adulthood, we parents become more and more panicky because we see our children dancing blithely through a mine field of moral and spiritual dangers without a thought to what dangers are all around them. We parents know that we can make better decisions for our children than our children can but our task is still to equip them to function as adults without the need for our constant input.
We must teach our children to live among the wolves; not to keep them forever safe in the sheepfold.
These are the real fears of parents of teenagers. For most Christian parents, the fears go beyond just keeping our kids safe from sexually transmitted diseases and drugs—we have concerns about their spiritual commitment to Jesus Christ and His church. Josh McDowell, in his book, The Last Christian Generation, claims that the beliefs and behavior of so-called Christian young people is inconsistent “with what the Bible identifies as a true follower of Christ.” 1
As we see the constant pull of worldly values and entertainments on our teens, we Christian parents have the tendency to become more restrictive as our teenagers come closer to becoming adults rather than less restrictive. As a result, we can abort their adolescence.
Other parents assume that teenagers will basically raise themselves so they just turn them loose and do not subject them to parental accountability. Some do this by default, being too busy with work and commuting in a two income household. This method constitutes real child abuse by the parents.
Mark Twain wrote that, when a child turned thirteen, he should be sealed in a barrel and fed through the bung hole. When he turned sixteen, the bung hole should be sealed. That’s one way of raising teenagers. There must be a more measured approach than Twain’s tongue-in-cheek solution.
What does it mean to be a teenager? Why are our children adolescents far longer than in most cultures?
When I use the term teenager, I include not just those who are 13 to 19, but eleven or twelve to 25, perhaps even longer. Adolescence is encroaching into childhood years as never before. On the other end, it is moving well into the 20’s.
There are plenty of clichéd definitions and few of them are completely wrong:
This comes the closest to the biblical description of an adolescent:
Nehemiah 8:1-3:
1 Now all the people gathered together as one man in the open square that was in front of the Water Gate; and they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses, which the LORD had commanded Israel.
2 So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly of men and women and all who could hear with understanding on the first day of the seventh month.
3 Then he read from it in the open square that was in front of the Water Gate from morning until midday, before the men and women and those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law.
At the reading of the Law of Moses, men, women, and those who could understand were gathered together. Small children were obviously the group left out, since they are not men or women, nor are the able to understand what would be read to them. What was the group considered neither men nor women but responsible to hear God’s word? Teenagers!
Our children, as they go through adolescence, are no longer children, but they are by the transitional nature of adolescence, inadequate adults. This produces the potential for self-esteem problems and poor decision- making skills.
Not only that, but they begin to show the world at large how we did as parents.
Proverbs 27:11: My son, be wise, and make my heart glad, that I may answer him who reproaches me.
This father is asking his son to act in such a way his good name will not be damaged by his son’s actions or lifestyle.
So, not only are the kids uptight and nervous about the transition to adulthood, but the parents are uptight and nervous because they are going through their midterm exams as parents.
Your name and reputation will be carried on in your children. We remember the great warrior of God, Joshua, whose father’s name was Nun. We also remember Judas Iscariot, whose father’s name was Simon. Which dad had reason to be pleased with his son?
Their body tells them they are adults but the mirror and their emotions tell them they are children, gawky children.
An adolescent feels awkward due to the physical changes going on in his body.
This makes the teenager extremely self-conscious. At a time when they are so self-conscious they find themselves least adept at functioning in society simply because they do not fit in the world of children and they have no place in the world of adults.
Because they reject much about themselves, they assume everyone else rejects them, too.
We must help them see the beauty of God’s creation in them, and that God created this growing up period in their lives as a time of great adventure as they learn about themselves as His creation.
Exodus 4:10-12:
10 Then Moses said to the LORD, "O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither before nor since You have spoken to Your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue."
11 So the LORD said to him, "Who has made man's mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the LORD? 12 "Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say."
For some who mature more slowly, their friends leave them behind and they no longer fit in with the
children with whom they grew up.
There is no guarantee that a child will mature physically at the same rate he matures emotionally or
psychologically.
They may mature more rapidly with others and feel that their old friends are too childish to be around; or the opposite may be true.
“Picture yourself in a situation where your bills are rapidly increasing while your income is decreasing. You are expected to make ends meet when the odds are against you. This is adolescence.
“Teenagers face similar situations of stress. At a time when they may feel increasingly inadequate, they must meet the challenges of schoolwork, extracurricular activities (such as sports), peer pressure to conform, and parent pressure to excel." (William L. Coleman, What Makes Your Teen Tick? (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1993), p. 33).
Our kids are in a social environment of increasing cost for being a functioning, relating human being, but they feel that they are on a fixed income. No wonder they feel insecure about themselves.
It was once believed that the adolescent brain had finished its development since its adult size was achieved. The various magnetic-resonance imaging procedures have demonstrated that the adolescent brain is exploding in growth and change throughout adolescence.
The brain is essentially an electrical system and communication center, but so much more complex than anything any man can develop. This complex headquarters that we know as the brain has three distinct structures (some consider these structures to be three separate brains).
Brainstem (handles the unconscious physiological functions such as breathing and heartbeat, as well as involuntary responses).
Limbic system (seat of the emotions; as it develops in adolescence, is the source of the teen impulsiveness and anger). The limbic system has four primary parts:
The amygdala: seat of anger or fear.
The hippocampus: encoding new memories. (This center can be damaged easily in adolescence
through alcohol and drugs.)
The hypothalamus: control center for endocrine or hormone system. (Center for raging hormones.) Controls sexual orientation, sex drive, and sexual behavior.
The Ventral Striatal Circuit: controls motivation. Under-active VS may be the reason that many
teens seem to lack drive or are lazy.
Cortex (the “grey matter”): The cortex is the seat of the higher brain functions (conscious thought and reason) and is the seat of such activities as calculating, planning, and language. Within the cortex is the pre- frontal cortex, the CEO of the brain, responsible for planning ahead, considering consequences, and managing emotional impulses. It is also the brain's conscience.
Brain cells, called neurons, are made up of a cell body with a myelin-coated axon leading to dendrites (or branches). The axon is sheathed with myelin which insulates the electrical charges within the axon from shorting across from one neuron to another). Disintegration of the myelin causes Multiple Sclerosis. In babies, the myelin sheath is either thin or not complete, causing the jerky muscular movements that are prevalent in babies—the neurons are short-circuiting.
A baby is born with 100 billion neurons, each having 10,000 dendrites. This gives a baby a possibility of one quadrillion connections. When the baby is born only 17 percent of neurons are linked. The brain weighs about 3/4's of a pound, tripling in size by the end of the first year. At puberty, a child's brain is the same size as an adult's; making early researchers assume that they were fully developed and only needed experiences for full maturation. The adolescent brain is a work in progress. The neurons are blossoming dendrites constantly, but in different areas of the brain (see above) and at different times. This helps us understand the sudden moodiness of an otherwise pleasant teenager—the brain is doing work, it’s growing.
There are five processes that constantly go on throughout life. Some of these processes may slow down as we age, but they never disappear entirely.
d. This window of opportunity phenomenon explains why one of the strongest predictors of a child's reading ability in school is the amount of one-to-one conversation between caregiver and child in the first three years of life. (David Walsh, Why Do They Act That Way?: A Survival Guide to the Adolescent Brain for You and Your Teen [ New York, NY: Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster. 2004], p. 35.)
Alfred Einstein was asked how to make children intelligent. His answer: read to them. He was then asked how to make them really brilliant. His answer: read to them a lot.
a. When there is a blossoming of neurons in a part of the brain, the window of sensitivity makes that part of development of the brain particularly sensitive to environment factors.
a. Myelination is the reason babies move their muscles so spastically: they do not have myelin sheaths on the axons of their neurons and, as a result, the axons short-circuit to other neurons.
Beneficial experiences enable the brain to wire the appropriate circuits during the blossoming and pruning periods of different brain modules. Experience determines which neural connections and which wither away. Adverse experiences during the blossoming and pruning periods have a greater negative impact than they might otherwise have, because when bad things happen, the brain is especially vulnerable to them and can be more easily hurt.
What does our culture expect of teenagers? We live in a post-Christian culture that will do nothing to give you a break so that you might raise Christian kids. It offers no mercy, it gives no quarter: the destruction of your faith and your child’s faith is its overreaching goal. Our popular culture really does not care about your child’s faith or his spiritual well-being.
This is not a time to be whining about how rough it is to raise children today!
“If you were preparing your child to go on a walk through some lush, shady field, you might send him off with a canteen of water and a sandwich. But if you had to prepare your child to walk through a barren, scorching desert, you would certainly send him on his way with all of the provisions for strength that you could think of and that he could carry. You would prepare him for the actual journey that he was to make. Parents, this age is not a shady field." (James R. Lucas, Proactive Parenting [Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1993], p. 15.)
God has always promised to be there for you and to help you.
As a parent of teens or near-teens, you may be thinking any or all of the following:
Your task, if you wish to succeed in raising godly men and women for the 21 st century, is to start with the fear of the Lord. Abraham feared the Lord and God blessed him. Isaac, his son, learned to fear the Lord and God blessed him. Jacob often referred to God as “the Fear of Isaac.” Somehow, Abraham’s fear of the Lord was passed down to his grandson, because Jacob learned to fear the Lord. This fear of the Lord then translates into confidence in Him.
Hebrews 4:16: Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Psalm 46:1-3:
1 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear, even though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
3 Though its waters roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with its swelling. Selah
What is an adolescence like? What evidences are there that adolescence is happening or that a person is an adolescent? Or is it just cultural guesswork?
Teenagers become very private in their personal lives, fearful that someone might find out a weakness (a peer) or a sin (a parent) and condemn them for it.
Every child has a right to privacy but no child has a right to secrecy from his parents. There is a clear difference and parents of teenagers must be aware of that difference and instruct their children
appropriately.
One reason that teenagers become secretive is the fear that their parents will disagree with their plans and veto their desires. A parent who wishes to keep his children from becoming secretive must be a willing and non-judgmental listener. That does not mean that the parent gives up his veto powers over the teenager’s actions, but there must be a commitment to hear our kids out and try to work out some mutually acceptable compromise if there is a disagreement.
Privacy means that I knock before I enter my child’s room. But that does not mean that I do not have the right to enter his room. It is one way I can demonstrate for him the respect I have for his privacy. If you confuse these two terms, privacy and secrecy, you will spend most of your time with your teens tripping over yourself.
We cannot protect our children’s innocence in our toxic culture, but we can help them preserve their purity. Their peers, classroom values, MTV, and the desire to fit in all conspire to strip our children of their innocence. This cannot be helped! If they do not watch MTV at your house they will during a sleepover at someone else’s. If they do not hear cursing in your home, they will be surrounded by it at school or the homes of their peers.
Their innocence will be lost, there is nothing you can do to stop that; their purity can be preserved. You must know the difference.
Teenagers want to be able to make their own important decisions and yet solid decision-making skills such as wisdom are incomplete in adolescents. This is the reason most sex-ed programs are doomed to failure: they’re given the mechanical skills without the wisdom to properly control or understand what they are being taught.
If that were not enough, we have social engineers who wish to change the entire values system of your teen. Note, for instance, the following “Teenager’s Bill of Rights”:
I have the right to think for myself.
I have the right to decide whether to have sex and who to have it with [sic].
I have the right to use protection when I have sex.
I have the right to buy and use condoms.
I have the right to express myself.
When moral issues and personal responsibility are couched in terms of “rights,” we get teens who may not as yet have a fully formed moral sense making life-changing choices that are often self-destructive. When cultural forces teach our adolescents about their rights, the discussion of right and wrong devolves to a struggle of justice against injustice.
Sexual decisions are the most obvious that parents face. Each teen is different in sexual maturation. We must know our kids well enough that we can tailor the weight they must carry to the strength they possess. Don’t make them lift baggage that is too heavy for them.
Our teens want to think independently and come to their own conclusions about truth and life, but lack the depth of wisdom to make those decisions safely. We parents can make their important decisions easier and better than they can, but we do so to the detriment of their being able to stand up for their own beliefs. We can cripple their adulthood by refusing to allow them to fail in decision making.
When they were young, we were the clearing house between them and their will. We had veto power over every decision.
Now that they are teens, we want them to exercise their will as adults without needing undo clearance from us. Thankfully, if they have learned to respect our wisdom and they are, therefore, themselves wise, they will ask our counsel, but they must never be put in the position that they cannot make a decision as an adult without our input.
Babies are completely self-focused: their world revolves around them and no one else. As a child grows, he realizes slowly that there are other people with power and rights in the world and it is not just their world. A teen’s world still revolves around herself but now her center is unstable—she must accommodate the existence of other people who have rights and who make decisions.
The teenager will ask himself four questions during his adolescence and all of them will have to do with his own insecurities about himself:
• Question one: Who am I?
Most of us look in the mirror hoping to see a reflection of Brad Pitt and come away having looked at SpongeBob SquarePants looking back at us. How do you think teenagers feel when they do not have the more stable base, which we as adults have, from which to evaluate themselves?
The big question here is “Who am I?” And, when they ask that question, it is relative to their peers. And if someone would ask if that young teen wanted to be like his parents, he would probably respond, “Definitely not!”
God is the one unchanging point in their lives as they go through adolescence; encourage your children to take their bearings from Him. The acceptance and encouragement of Christian parents is the way God reveals His acceptance to our kids.
• Question two: Does anyone or can anyone love me?
This question can break down into two other questions: Will anyone ever love me? Will I ever have anyone to love?
If you do not think that teenagers think of this two questions, then you have completely forgotten what it was like when you were a teenager.
Sometimes, young girls will give up their sexual purity in order to get some expression of love, even a false expression of love.
Teenage boys will assume that sexual conquests are the equivalent of love.
• Question three: Who is God (if he has any religious connection at all)?
Contrary to popular adult opinion, most teens have a very strong spiritual interest. They are asking all the right questions about life and God and existence in general, but they are not couching those questions that are readily understood by adults. We must listen carefully. How young people define church may be completely different than the way in which adults, their parents, find comfortable. The emergent church, popular among twenty-somethings, is a case in point.
They may not want to go to their parents’ church and do that thing, but they long for a spiritual connection. They search for truth through relationships while their parents may have found truth through propositional statements (i.e., biblical teachings and theology).
Three-fourths of all teenagers will make a commitment to Christ if given the facts in a manner that connects with their view of the world. 85% of all those who become Christians in America do so between the ages of 10 and 18.
• Question four: Where do I fit in with my friends?
As the teen starts to separate from his parents as part of the process of becoming an autonomous adult, he makes a lateral connection with his peers.
This often is what frightens parents to death. What kind of friends will they pick? What influence will these new friends have on them? “What will my kids have to do to be accepted by their peers?”
If it were not for puberty (the physical changes that turn a child into an adult) adolescence would be a walk in the park.
But we cannot leave everything to raging hormones, blaming glandular processes for all the decisions our children make. They are more than a collection of oftentimes competing chemicals surging through their bodies.
One of the great spiritual battles with Satan takes place during adolescence. At this point, he can stop a young man or woman from becoming a great man or woman of God.
Romans 7:23-25:
23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
25 I thank God--through Jesus Christ our Lord, So the, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.
“God calls it ‘the law of sin.’ The psychologists call it ‘hormones.’ Once you’ve fallen for the idea that your child is totally driven by physical forces outside of his or her or your control, you and your child are absolved of any real responsibility. And so the ‘logical’ advice given to parents of adolescents becomes: “‘Get them through it.'" (James R. Lucas, Proactive Parenting [Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1993], p.34.)
This “hunker in the bunker” method of living with adolescents is doomed to failure because the world is not looking for an escape from responsibility and Satan will not leave our kids alone just because we do.
Certainly, their bodies are going through considerable changes. But Satan will take any breakdown in equilibrium at any point in a person’s life to destabilize him and bring him to a fall. We cannot use raging hormones as an excuse for rebellion. Rebellion is always sin.
When they were small children, we could proclaim our truth or requirements to them and expect full compliance. Now that they are teenagers, we must affirm our truth to them by the way we live our lives. Proclaiming the truth is just one more sermon that our kids will turn off.
“Hang on and just try to survive,” is the advice we are most often given. “It’s me, the parent, against everything adolescent in my child. These teen years are going to be awful so I better hunker in the bunker until it is over.” This is the “Custer’s Last Stand” approach to parenting. And it is doomed to failure.
We are involved in a spiritual battle (a battle in which we are already victorious), what are we doing hunkering down in the bunkers?
“I just want to raise decent kids.” No, you don’t! You need to raise dynamic Christian men and women who will charge hell with a squirt gun. Decent kids wont make it any longer in our culture—the world is far too predatory to accommodate “nice kids.”
It is not sufficient to turn out decent kids if you are a Christian parent; you must turn out great men and women of God who will stand firm against the godless world they will face in the 21 st century.
Matthew 16:16-19:
16 Simon Peter answered and said,"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
17 Jesus answered and said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
19 And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."
Isn’t it much better to challenge our teenagers to be great, rather than merely help them cope and become “decent”?
Philippians 3:12-14:
12 Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.
13 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead,
14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Are our children being taught to press on toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus?
If such a commitment from the Apostle Paul good enough for older men and women, is it not good
enough for our teen men and women?
Reactive parenting usually shows itself to be negative in our relationships with our kids. Don’t be against everything your teens want to do, or to try, or to be.
Colossians 3:21: Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.
Our children will become discouraged if, instead of getting support and encouragement (“attaboy”) from the most significant adults in their lives, they get criticisms. Such criticisms most commonly come from fathers. We must stop responding to them and take the lead with them. That leadership means we will take the initiate to help them become autonomous, strong men and women of God who can stand firm even when we are not around to do bed checks.
Our assumption: There’s no guarantee that our children will be spiritually strong and prosperous. “You pays yer money and you takes yer chances!”
Success in child rearing is guaranteed! The weakness is not in God’s promises, the weakness is in those who claim God’s promises.
Psalm 112:1-2:
1 Praise the LORD! Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who delights greatly in His commandments.
2 His descendants will be mighty on earth; the generation of the upright will be blessed.
Realize that the key to having great children is not simply that they fear the Lord, necessarily, but that their father fears the Lord. They will learn to fear the Lord through our teaching and discipline, but mostly by our example. If our attitude about God is weak, we will not raise strong children.
The second part of that verse is, “who delights greatly [intensive form] in His commandments.” It does not say that you can merely obey the commands of God or even delight in the commands of God. It says you must delight greatly in the commands of God! If you are a rebel against God by not delighting greatly in the commands of God then do not expect your children to be anything other than rebels themselves. The fruit does not fall far from the tree.
The promise is this: you have God’s ironclad guarantee that, if you think and do certain things, your children will be mighty, not merely adequate. Not just decent, mighty! Not just able to stay out of trouble, but mighty.
Some of you might say, “I know of parents who were solid Christians and one of their kids turned out all wrong. My answer to that is, “No, you didn’t know solid Christians.” If your anecdotal evidence is correct, then God is a liar. There is hardly a soul who fears the Lord. People who fear the Lord are as rare as hen’s teeth.
The parents who come to church only occasionally, who read the Bible occasionally, who pray only during crunch time, do not fear the Lord! Their children will, at best, turn out to be mediocre Christians who cannot stand the heat of battle. You do not want to raise mere “churchians”!
But if you do not take God at His word and joyously and immediately submit to His commands, do not be surprised if your children grow up to fail: either to run like cowards from the spiritual battles that come their way, or to go over to the enemy.
There are many Christian fathers who do not fear the Lord and, as a result, their children will not be
mighty on earth nor will they be blessed by God in their day.
If we parents are not unrestrained in our commitment to the Lord, there is little we can do to raise
dedicated, committed men and women for the 21 st century.
Having said all that, I do admit that there will be times when our children wander away from the Lord. The key for us here is the end product: will they return?
The method of raising children was that we proclaimed our will to our children and expected them to acquiesce. Now that they are adolescents, we must affirm and hope for that acquiescence to our wisdom, rather than to our command.
Our failing as parents of teens is that we stick with proclamation: announcing what is true and false and how Christians must act. We fail to begin moving to affirmation. By our lifestyles and manner, we affirm the truth we proclaimed when our kids were children. When we continue to proclaim to our teenagers, we become nags and our great truths become unheard sermons that our teenagers rightly shut off.
Do parents preach at their peers, or do they affirm the truth of their lifestyle and beliefs by the way they live their lives? No adult enjoys being preached to. Why would our maturing children delight in it?
By continuing to preach at our teenagers, we tend to humiliate them in public. We used to correct them publicly when they got out of line when they were small, so what’s wrong with our publicly correcting them now? Everything! The Bible forbids you publicly embarrassing your teenager.
Matthew 18:15: "Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother.
What? Doesn’t that apply to our teenagers as well as to other brothers and sisters in Christ? Public
confrontation in that passage is the very last resort.
Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world [do not let the world force you into its mold], but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
What is it that is pressuring our teenagers to conform to this evil world? In a survey of 5,300 teenagers nationally, USA Today listed the five greatest concerns to teenagers today. (Robert Laurent, Bringing Your Teen Back to God [Elgin, IL: David C. Cook Publishing Co., 1991], pp. 41-45.)
“I just can’t tell my mother what I know about sex, because she feels that a girl my age shouldn’t know about these things. If I bring it up, she always manages to change the subject.” Edwina, age 16.
“The need to be liked by their peers reaches its peak in the seventh and eighth grades. Ages twelve through fourteen constitute that period when peer influence is operating at its highest level. Ordinarily, the adolescent experiences a very natural distancing from the parent and bonding with peers.
“Instead of resorting to some ill-advised power play for emotional control of a teen, the Christian parent should work with this God-ordained phenomenon. Needing intimacy with friends outside the home is an important step in the process of eventual emancipation and self-government. One tangible way for parents to expedite the process is to make room within the family circle for your teenagers' friends and begin praying now for God to draw at least one stable Christian peer into a close friendship with your teen." (Robert Laurent, Bringing Your Teen Back to God [Elgin, IL: David C. Cook Publishing Co., 1991], pp. 42, 43.)
Everyone has a need to be loved and to love; this is no different for our teens than it is for us.
Remember the two greatest questions of a teenager in our society: “Will I ever be able to love someone?” and “Will someone ever love me?” If you don’t think that teenagers think of these two questions, then you have completely forgotten what it was like when you were a teenager. To answer this question in the affirmative, many young girls turn to sex, thinking erroneously that the lust of their boyfriend is love.
“If ugly was a crime, I would have been born in jail.” Teenager.
“Dad, you’re not going to wear that shirt are you? What if my friends see you?”
How many of you dads were ever re-dressed by your kids as you were starting out the front door?
This drive to look acceptable to their peers while their bodies are changing so drastically turns most middle schools and high schools into highly competitive environments in which, if you do not have the right label on your clothing, you are an untouchable.
One of the most common triggers of suicide in teens is a humiliating experience, like getting caught stealing." (Robert Laurent, Bringing Your Teen Back to God [Elgin, IL: David C. Cook Publishing Co., 1991], pp. 443, 44.)
Realize that the humiliation is not from being a thief, but from being caught as a thief.
Psalm 125:2: As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds His people from this time forth and forever.
We parents must be like the mountains that surround Jerusalem: we must protect our children from undue public humiliation, particularly from ourselves; for we are usually more prone to humiliate them in public than anyone else. We used to correct them in public when they were little children, we must retrain ourselves to withhold correction until we get with them privately once they are teenagers.
This is particularly important if a significant person in their lives condemns them.
Proverbs 15:4: A wholesome tongue is a tree of life,
But perverseness in it breaks the spirit.
Proverbs 18:21: Death and life are in the power of the tongue,
And those who love it will eat its fruit.
1 Peter 3:10: For "He who would love life
And see good days,
Let him refrain his tongue from evil,
And his lips from speaking deceit.
We parents must resist the urge to recount our former successes. Usually time plays pleasant tricks with our memories anyway. Our children will never measure up to the defective memories of our youthful exploits. “When I was your age . . . yada, yada, yada.”
When we compare our memories of our adolescence with our children’s performance, we come off many times as condemnatory.
It would surprise many parents that most teenagers would list the death of a parent as one of the five most serious concerns.
Divorce can also be construed as a death of a parent, because that parent is usually not around enough to be there as the mountains surround Jerusalem.
Our teenagers do want us around, but they are not sure what role we are to fill as they become men and women. Certainly we are not to fulfill our historic roles as parents of little children.
Most of our teen children look in the mirror hoping to find Brad Pitt or Jennifer Anniston; instead, they find Bozo the Clown or Minnie Pearl.
Our children, as they go through adolescence, are not longer children, but they are by the transitional nature of adolescence, very inadequate adults. This produces the potential for serious self-esteem problems.
How do we help them with their self-esteem?
There is a reason that God brings us into His family when He saves us. He desires us to belong and one of our greatest joys is belonging to His family.
Belonging is an expression of love. Love them by giving them a place of honor in your life.
If your teens have the opinion that they are of little worth, they will soon be acting out, usually sexually, their low opinion of themselves.
Psalms 139:14: I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
Do your teens believe this about themselves?
They will learn it only from you; certainly not from their peers and not from school where they are taught that they are merely evolutionary freaks that just happened to survive.
Exodus 4:10-12:
10 Then Moses said to the LORD, "O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither before nor since You have spoken to Your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue."
11 So the LORD said to him, "Who has made man's mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the LORD?
12 Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say."
Picture yourself in a situation in which circumstances around you conspire to overwhelm you at every turn.
Teenagers face similar situations of stress. At a time when they may feel increasingly inadequate they must meet the challenge of schoolwork, extracurricular activities (such as sports or dating), peer pressure to conform, parental pressure to excel, and physical and sexual changes to their bodies.
46% of parents of unchurched teenagers fear negative peer pressure for their teens.
47% of parents of churched teenagers fear negative peer pressure for their teens.
Not much of a difference, is there?
Acceptance (inclusion) if you fit in. Rejection (exclusion) if you don’t fit the mold. Personal identity. Group identity. Faithfulness. Betrayal. Superficiality. Honesty. Confidence. Love. Sexual attraction. Self-worth. Compromise. Forgiveness. Companionship.
Proverbs 13:20: He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.
Proverbs 24:1-2:
1 Do not be envious of evil men, nor desire to be with them;
2 For their heart devises violence, and their lips talk of troublemaking. We must provide sufficient good environments for them.
Don’t expect them to commit to Christian friends if they are rarely in church or never in a youth group.
Our teens already have hormonal pressures towards active sexuality. We must understand this as normative (the way God designed us). That does not mean that we must give into it.
We live in a lust-saturated society and this produces a sense in our kids that being sexually active is
acceptable or needed.
Josh McDowell, in his Handbook on Counseling Youth (pp. 282-84), states that there nine basic causes of premarital sex.
The immediate preventive: parents must be willing to communicate with their adolescents. This means much more listening than talking.
In a recent survey of 1200 Christian teenagers, they were asked to finish the sentence: “If I could change one thing about my parents, it would be . . . “ The most frequent response was, “that my parents and I could really talk to each other.” In a similar study of 2000 teenagers, in completing the statement, “I wish . . . ,” they most oft-repeated response was, “I wish I could talk to my folks about some of my problems." (Robert Laurent, Bringing Your Teen Back to God [Elgin, IL: David C. Cook Publishing Co., 1991], p. 40.)
Communication requires a listener. If you want to communicate with and to your teenager, you must be quick to listen.
James 1:19 So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath;
Song of Solomon 8:8-9:
8 We have a little sister, and she has no breasts. What shall we do for our sister in the day when she is spoken for?
9 If she is a wall, we will build upon her a battlement of silver; and if she is a door, we will enclose her with boards of cedar.
The sister who is a wall is the one who has within herself the self-protections necessary to withstand the temptations of adolescence. The one who is a door needs the extra protection of the family to preserve her purity until she marries. This is not a moral issue, it is a personality issue. And it demonstrates that “one size fits all” does not apply to raising teenagers.
You could have two children and you raise them identically, using the same methods: one will buckle under and grow up to be just like you; the other will rebel against you and all that you stand for.
Proverbs 20:11: Even a child is known by his deeds, whether what he does is pure and right.
By evaluating your sons’ and daughters’ deeds or actions, you will be able to evaluate their resistance to the downward pull of this world system.
Remember the story of the Prodigal Son? Luke 15:11-32: the two sons responded differently to the father: the father was the one stable environment for both sons.
I told my children early on that they could come to me with anything, even something that would hurt me or grieve me. They must, however, give me five minutes to be stupid; after I settled down, I would listen without judging. Our children must be secure in the belief that they can come to us with anything and that, even if we cannot accept what they say or have done, we accept them and are committed to being
supportive, healing, and part of a solution.
This has become a growing concern of parents in the last 25 years.
Even marijuana, which is probably well on its way to being legalized and decriminalized, puts a halt to the emotional development of that young who uses it during the teenage years. At a time of maturation, the pot smoker cripples his emotional development by its impact on certain brain centers (e.g., the limbic system). This is one reason we have so many so-called grown-ups who act like children today—they never matured emotionally.
Part of the problem is the days in which we live, and it is only going to get worse unless God graciously gives us a temporary reprieve. Look at the conditions in the near future:
Revelation 9:20-21:
20 But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk.
21 And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
People in the last days were engaged in false religion (“all faith is good faith if you’re sincere”); they were murderers (society condoned this murder: abortion, euthanasia); sorcery (the Greek word is farmakeiva, pharmacy); sexual immorality (if you wonder about the future of sex education, here it is); and thefts.
For Christian parents, the values taught in most public schools, particularly Middle School and High School, are antithetical to the beliefs in the home and the church.
Teenagers invest a lot of time discussing dating: who is going out with whom, who wants to go out with whom, and who would never go out with whom. 12 One of the big questions of all parents is, “How old is old enough to start dating?” As stated earlier, early dating is an incentive to premarital sexual activity.
When it comes to dating, there is no magic age. Every child is different and must be treated differently. Your children are unique!
The answer depends on what you consider dating. Very few teenagers give any thought to the purpose of dating. Is dating courtship in preparation for marriage? Or is it merely going out with a friend for a good time? Is your teenager dating for romance or friendship? What is your understanding of dating’s purpose.
How susceptible is your teenager to peer pressure? In other words, how badly does your teen want to fit in with a certain group of peers?
Is your teenager’s self-image determined by whether or not he or she is dating? If so, your teen shouldn’t be dating, but you should be busy helping your teen build a good self-image, giving spiritual and emotion strength to remain victorious over worldly pressures to conform to a low standard of morality.
Learning how to get along with others. If this is a purpose for dating, then group dates or activities with larger groups of mixed ages will better serve to socialize.
In dating, there is little opportunity for real socialization, since there is not sufficient socialization. As a matter of fact, it is contrary to socializing, since neither person is comfortable nor natural, nor acting normally on a date.
Think of it: our children are age segregated throughout their school years and we think that they are
socialized because of it?
If selection of a mate is part of the dating process, then certain careful restrictions must be implemented.
You parents must meet the person who is dating your son or daughter; that young person’s parents must be supportive of their child dating; that other person must have a strong Christian testimony and commitment.
When our kids are wrong, they are wrong and must be corrected. When referring to judgmentalism, I am talking about the seemingly endless harping of a parent upon a child that “the child cannot ever follow through with any task, cannot ever get his room tidy, will probably not amount to much unless some things change.”
Luke 6:37: "Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
That does not say, “do not judge.” It says, if you are going to judge, be willing to be judged by the same standard.
If we correct our teenagers publicly for being disrespectful, are we willing to be rebuked publicly when we are disrespectful to them?
Our kids are too-easy targets of our criticisms because we see ourselves so clearly in them, and often we do not like what we see.
We are the most detached and alienated males history has ever produced. One of the great virtues of Promise Keepers is to get men to break down barriers that made them aloof from their wives, their children, and from other men.
Our teenagers desperately need us. Our sons are going to be like us and our daughters will probably marry men like us (we are their model for manhood). We must get close to them so they can see what we are like.
Galatians 6:9: And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.
Letter from a mother:
“When my son was a teenager, I found a note he had scrawled to himself in his bedroom, ‘God, please help me!’ I held the scrap of paper in my hand and felt hot wires of helplessness snap around my heart. I knew, because I was held back by his stiff resistance to my love, that I could not help him directly. I had completely run out of resources and could only pray, ‘God, please help me!’ God came to me in the form of a Christian police sergeant who befriended my son and asked him to go fishing." (Robert Laurent, Bringing Your Teen Back to God [Elgin, IL: DavidC. Cook PublishingCo., 1991], p. 47. 15.)
Proverbs 22:28: Do not remove the ancient landmark which your fathers have set. Is the Bible only talking about surveyor’s marks. With everything else shifting around them, our teenagers need to see their parents standing firm on the important issues of the faith.
“Loving parents, standing their ground, can be a compelling influence for teens to find their own Christian values. Even in the heat of battle, when parents are short on grace and long on stubbornness, all is not lost." (Robert Laurent, Bringing Your Teen Back to God [Elgin, IL: DavidC. Cook PublishingCo., 1991], p. 49.)
“The parent and teenager who can get mad at each other, who can level with their feelings and exchange hard words if need be, are often closer than the parent and teen whose relationship is one of carefully measured consideration." Roger Paine, We Never Had Any Trouble Before (New York:Stein & DayPublishers, 1975), p. 52.
Ecclesiastes 3:11: He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.
Today’s youth are highly spiritual, but not very religious. We must allow them some ability to “change the way we do Church,” if they are going to remain part of it.
Psalm 103:17: But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him, and His righteousness to children's children.
Psalm 112:1-2:
1 Praise the LORD! Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who delights greatly in His commandments.
2 His descendants will be mighty on earth; the generation of the upright will be blessed.
What is your goal in educating your children? Good job? Lots of money? Nice house? Jesus told his disciples about the inability to serve two masters.17 This is still true. If you promote education so that your child will be successful, you must first identify whose success you mean—God’s or Mammon’s.
Jeremiah 9:23-24:
23 Thus says the LORD: "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches;
24 But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight," says the LORD.
This does not mean that we are to be anti-intellectual. It simply means that education does not deliver on all that educators claim.
Your children are being systematically taught by our new culture that everything is negotiable.
“There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative. If this belief is put to the test, one can count on the students’ reaction: they will be uncomprehending.” (Allan Bloom, The closing of the American Mind [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987], p. 25.)
The Jewish scholar, Will Herberg wrote twenty-five years ago: “We are surrounded on all sides by the wreckage of our great intellectual tradition. In this kind of spiritual chaos, neither freedom nor order is possible. Instead of freedom, we have the all-engulfing whirl of pleasure and power; instead of order, we have the jungle wilderness of normlessness and self-indulgence.” (As quotedin Ronald H. Nash, The Closing of the American Heart [ProbeMinistries International, 1990], p. 61.)
Psalm 11:3: If the foundations are destroyed,
What can the righteous do?
“Many of our youth simply do not understand or accept absolute truth—that is, that which is true for all people, for all times, for all places. Absolute truth is truth that is objective, universal, and constant.” ( Josh McDowell &Bob Hostetler, Right from Wrong [Dallas,TX:Word Publishing, 1994],p.17.)
Speaking of the Old Testament prophets, David F. Wells writes:
“They had a certainty about the existence, character, and purposes of God—a certainty about his truth—that seems to have faded in the bright light of the modern world. They were convinced that God’s revelation, of which they were the vehicles and custodians, was true. True in an absolute sense. It was not merely true to them; it was not merely true in their time; it was not true approximately. What God had given was true universally, absolutely, and enduringly.” (Quoted in JoshMcDowell &Bob Hostetler, Right from Wrong [Dallas,TX:Word Publishing, 1994],p.29.)
The ancient world knew that a god, the gods, or God ruled the affairs of men. Even Nebuchadnezzar was aware of the involvement of spirit beings in the lives of ordinary, and not so ordinary, men." (Daniel 4:29-37.)
Proverbs 21:1: The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD, like the rivers of water; he turns it wherever He wishes.
Throughout the Middle Ages, men lived on the assumption that God controlled the destinies of men and nations and that all would someday answer to Him.
Then, something happened. In the 15 th and 16 th centuries, the Renaissance spread across Europe (first Italy, then France, then England, and finally Germany)— man thinking that he was the center of all things, and not God. The motto for the Renaissance was, “Man is the measure of all things.”
This gave rise to a new way of looking at the world—humanism. It didn’t start off badly, it was a way of learning more about God by learning more about His greatest creation, man. The Renaissance would not have been such a bad thing either had it not been immediately followed by the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment (17 th and 18th centuries) said that what could be known could be known by reason (and not by faith) and that man could determine his place in the universe by reason without relying upon faith.
Even the Enlightenment would not have been a problem except for two forces that occurred in the 19th century.
The first was the Industrial Revolution. Man, through many great and helpful inventions believed progress was unstoppable and that he was moving into an age of utopia, coming from man’s work, not God’s grace.
Then, in the middle of the century, Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species and gave an explanation of the world that didn’t require God. From then until now, we have been living with the trickle-down theory of the ruin of civilization and the belief in absolute standards of morality and truth upon which a culture must agree in order to prosper.
All of the followingadvantages anddisadvantages are extracted from James R. Lucas, Proactive Parenting (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1993), pp. 204-208:
There are many ways in which we can educate our children. The following is a short list of methods of education. Realize that some key words should be remembered in the following list of advantages and disadvantages are: “can,” “often,” and “sometimes.” Also, some of the advantages have a negative side to them and some disadvantages might have an advantageous side.
The public school is not the problem. The problem is that the philosophical underpinnings of the public- school system are antithetical to the values of the Kingdom of God.
One can get a good education in public school (elementary, secondary, and higher). Like education everywhere, you must go out and get an education, it will not be given to you. I have always taught young people not to get an education: they must take an education. I received a great education, not because I attended all the most prestigious schools, but because I took my education. Every professor, every teacher, was a person I resolved to suck dry of all he knew.
Low cost (if you don’t count taxes).
Usually close to home.
Provides chances to socialize with neighbors.
Often has good or excellent facilities.
Usually offers a wide range of classes and extracurricular activities.
Often provides a forum for immoral and pagan teaching and effectively “locks out” God. School environment works against the faith of children, with few kids being able to “witness” against it and most being “witnessed” to by it.
1 Corinthians 15:33: Do not be deceived: "Evil company corrupts good habits."
Discipline is minimal, nonexistent, or humanistic in orientation.
The perspective of course work can range from non-Christian to anti-Christian.
Government-run, with control of policy coming from many groups other than the parents of the students, public schools are not notably responsive to parents or their values.
Teaching staff can be judged by things other than merit or excellence in teaching, and personal morality (important in a mentor) is strictly hands off.
Creates opportunities for interaction with ungodly children in the neighborhood (this can be an advantage as well as a disadvantage, depending on your child).
Often has good or excellent facilities.
Usually offers a wide range of classes and extracurricular activities.
Teaching staff tends to be highly educated, dedicated, and skilled.
Administration and staff are often very attuned to parents’ desires.
Diploma can be an excellent credential to further education or careers.
Usually has high academic standards.
Children who are chronic disciplinary problems can be expelled.
God is usually locked out.
Environment can work effectively against the faith of children.
Discipline can be very humanistic in orientation.
Course work can range from non-Christian to anti-Christian.
Cost can be extremely high.
Schedules and transportation may be inconvenient.
Often fosters an elitist mentality in both parents and children.
Provides more opportunity for children to know and model themselves after the parent.
Can permit additional protection of children from bad influences.
Can shield children from peer pressure and allow parents to carefully screen friends.
Can help develop friendships within the family.
Assuming the parent is truly Spirit-controlled, can provide children with a loving, patient teacher who is concerned for the total well-being of the student.
Parents can select and customize curriculum.
Provides an opportunity to tie God’s truth relevantly into children’s lives and academic subjects.
Can provide opportunities for parents to pool their efforts and expertise through workshops and other activities.
Can be a joy to see children learn and make new discoveries.
Can be exciting to learn or relearn along with the children.
May cater to the self-centered nature of the child and create pride or arrogance.
Can easily isolate the family from help within the extended family of God.
May provide an unrealistic hothouse environment for the child.
Passes parental character weaknesses more emphatically along to children.
Parents can incorrectly use home schooling as a standard of spirituality, or even as a mark of “super” spirituality.
Can enhance the struggle of maintaining authority with the student-child (particularly mothers with their sons), since many more opportunities for conflict and challenge exist.
Filling the demanding parent-teacher role creates time challenges, with other domestic areas suffering, initiating potential conflict (especially if there is an unsupportive spouse).
Can be difficult to implement if the weight of the responsibility rests solely on the mother (which it often does).
Depending on the training, time, and energy of the parent-teacher, academics can be weak, especially in later grades (and workshops taught by untrained people may be no better).
Can expose children to a variety of godly mentors.
Can provide good academic training.
Places children in a situation where teachers and parents can have common spiritual goals for them.
Can have an atmosphere where God and His Word are honored.
Provides children with opportunities for spiritual leadership among their peers.
Teachers can provide insights about children where parents have blind spots, especially if parents develop relationships with teachers.
Faculty is often very knowledgeable about available Christian curricula and has the training to choose well.
Usually every child has the opportunity to participate in any extracurricular activities offered.
Disciplinary problems can be dealt with in biblical ways, including expulsion of children who are evil influences.
Often there is significant individual attention and training of children by teachers.
Positive peer pressure can often compel even weak children to conform to right behavior.
Cost can be high.
School can be far away and inconvenient to get to.
Facilities may be less than excellent.
May offer fewer electives and extracurricular activities than public or non-Christian private schools.
May be difficult to achieve a balance between parental and church influence on the school’s direction, and between parental and school influence on the child’s direction.
Children can be “inoculated” against Spirit-filled living by constant exposure to spiritual exercises, unless they are carefully mentored. In other words, children can learn to parrot right answers and behavior while hiding a hard heart.
The administration’s goals for the school can sometimes by constrained by financial hardships, which can also limit the quality and training of teachers.
If it is a church-run school, denominational preferences may be pushed or overemphasized.
If it is a parent-run school, spiritual goals and atmosphere can be watered down to the lowest common denominator.
Regardless where you place authority for the formal training of your children, education, the most important education will always be carried on in your home, and it is from here that the responsibility cannot depart, even if the authority does.
Deuteronomy 6:4-8:
4 "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one!
5 "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. 6 "And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.
7 "You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.
8 "You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.
The entire family environment is to be a learning experience about God and man’s place in God’s creation.
Protagoras (Greek sophist): homo mensura: man is the measure of all things.
Man is the center.
God is irrelevant and, therefore, unwanted.
Absolute values and morality are rejected for the quick fix, the pragmatic.
Either it applies in all situations, in all times, in all places, to all people; or it can be discarded by anyone, anytime, anyplace, for any convenient reason.
I Kings 18:21 And Elijah came to all the people, and said, "How long will you falter between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him." But the people answered him not a word.
Where do you stand? Realize there is no ground in the middle.
There is a God.
He is the Creator.
The sentient and moral creation is answerable to Him.
He will judge all men.
Remember: the Christian worldview understands that the world rejects that very worldview. A child attending public school can thrive in such an environment if he understands the tension between the two competing worldviews.
Psalm 111:10: The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; a good understanding have all those who do His commandments. His praise endures forever.
This is primarily a reference to the law of God.
John 14:6: Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. Malachi 3:6 "For I am the LORD, I do not change; therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob.
James 1:17: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
1 Corinthians 4:1: Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.
1 Peter 4:10: As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Are our children learning that their lives are a stewardship held in trust for God?
1 Corinthians 11:1 Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ. If your teens cannot see enthusiastic Christianity in you, don’t expect it to show up in them.
They will never hear it from their peers. School, especially high school (and probably by now middle school), is perhaps the most toxic social and moral environment for your children.
Teenage girls will hear expressions of love from boys who merely want sex, but they need to experience the
real expression of love so they can identify the counterfeit.
If they share personal things with you, treat the confidence as sacred. Do not dismiss their fears or
concerns.
Puppy love may be a small thing to you, but it is not to a young boy or girl who thinks the world will end if the “love affair” does not come to fruition.
Note the difference between secrecy and privacy. I always allowed my children privacy (since they began school in kindergarten): for instance, I knock before I enter their rooms. They are not allowed secrecy. They are not allowed a secret life outside of the home. Your children must understand that you have the right and responsibility to know what is going on in their lives.
And believe me, you will often be wrong.
5 Never embarrass your teenager. Don’t tell stories about him to others. Don’t pry into his personal life in public. Remember, he has a right to privacy, but not to secrecy.
6 Forgive and forget.
If you keep dredging up your child’s past mistakes or failures, you will drain from him all hope of ever
pleasing you. He will soon quit trying.
Your teens are already hyper-critical about themselves. They don’t need help from you.
7 Give your child time. Some teenage characteristics resolve themselves in time, especially if you pray earnestly about them.
The purpose of parenting is to produce men and women who will successfully carry on the cultural values taught to them by their parents. For Christian parents, this includes the propositional truths of the Bible.
Succeeding with your adolescents, as earlier, is merely your midterm. Seeing your grandchildren walking in this world as men and women of God is your final exam as parents.
Exodus 34:7: “keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation.”
Psalm 128:1-6:
| 1 | Blessed is every one who fears the LORD, who walks in His ways. |
| 2 | When you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy, and it shall be well |
| with you. | |
| 3 | Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house, your |
| children like olive plants all around your table. | |
| 4 | Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the LORD. |
| 5 | The LORD bless you out of Zion, and may you see the good of Jerusalem all |
| the days of your life. | |
| 6 | Yes, may you see your children's children. Peace be upon Israel! |
Proverbs 13:22 A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, but the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous.
What is that inheritance? Can a poor man leave a rich inheritance? The inheritance of the man of God is a godly life, blessed by God.
Proverbs 17:6: Children's children are the crown of old men, and the glory of children is their father.
Parents must equip their children to be fully functioning in a secular, and godless society without being
compromised in their beliefs or finding themselves nonfunctional in an alien environment.
Note 2 Corinthians 6. What does it mean to socialize? Or to be socialized? God has made us creatures who relate. First of all, we were made to relate to Him as worshipers and friends. Secondly, we are to relate to each other. God gave us speech so that we could communicate our thoughts and feelings to others. He gave us ears so that we might hear what others say.
We parents must teach ourselves to get out of our children’s way as we teach them how to chart their own way. To adapt what John the Baptist stated of Jesus, “we must decrease but they must increase.”