February 2008
Dad's Email Network - Encouraging men in their role as husband and father.
Dads, this e-mail is the first point from a message Pastor Ray Cortese preached in January. Enjoy! Listen to the entire message.
Don’t forget to sign-up for the Father/Son Breakfast which is part of the Global Outreach Conference, February 22-24. The breakfast is on Saturday, February 23 at 8:00 am in the Florida Room. Details and sign up
(Ephesians 6:4) Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (James 4:6) “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
There is no greater challenge than that of parenting. Like a roller coaster, parenting can take you to the peak and then drop you to the depths with stunning suddenness. Parenting is a monumental challenge complicated by exhaustion, hectic pace of life, financial shortfalls, ear infections, academic pressure, science projects, ADD, endless carpooling, birthday parties, Saturday morning soccer, vocabulary words, births and did I say exhaustion (average American meal went from 90 minutes to 12 minutes in just 10 years). Consider the cultural challenges ganging up on the family: materialism, relativism that’s left the notion of right and wrong as archaic—cheating is widespread, sexual obsession, the fascination with violence—more TV shows on murder than anything else, depression and suicide rates are up 300% in 10 years, and loss of respect for authority.
Now throw in our own sin, struggling marriages, blended families and dysfunctional backgrounds as additional challenges. Parenting is more perilous than ever—most of us didn’t go to school wondering if we’d be gunned down by a classmate, or go to the movies in 8th grade for group oral sex, or turn on the radio and listen to songs advocating the rape and murder of women. Parenting is a colossal challenge—who can teach us how to do it? We have a Father—full of grace and truth. If our children desperately need us to be parents and we are clearly inadequate for the task—what hope is there?
The lure of any teaching on parenting is to get some methodology, to get practices and principles that will properly shape and mold your children. Nothing could be worse than the notion that you could parent better if you’d only try harder.
The #1 challenge of parenting is not to fix your children, it’s you! The fundamental need of your child is not a parent with a head full of parenting rules about feeding schedules, wooden spoons, consequences for disobedience—but a parent who is being transformed themselves by the gospel. A parent needs to understand that parenting is God’s plan to bring you to the end of yourself and enable you to see your need for Jesus. You are not God’s tool to change the little sinners in your house so much as they are God’s tool to change the big sinner in the house—you!
So, what does God want of you? Humble yourself, admit your deep failure to love your children. Begin to believe that if your children are a mess, it’s because you are a bigger one. Understand that they act foolish because they’re related to you. Believe that you are more selfish, your heart is harder, and rebellion is far more embedded in your heart than in theirs. God says, “Don’t provoke your children to anger.” It provokes them to be disciplined by parents who don’t see their own sin, to be treated harshly and labeled as undisciplined, lazy, self-indulgent and ungrateful by parents who are unaware that they are undisciplined, lazy self indulgent and ungrateful. What provokes children is to have parents who try to pass on a faith that appears to make so little difference in their own lives? Give your children what almost no child has—a deeply repentant parent. Stop getting furious over their sin—and make your sin the primary focus. If you are shocked and disappointed by their sin—it only means you are blind to your own. Speak to them less of what they should to do and tell them how you are weak, afraid, insecure and in need of Jesus.
Another way you humble yourself is to realize your child has needs you cannot meet. Therefore, you must look to the means that God has provided: the church, Christian school, and student ministry. My children have spiritual DNA they didn’t get from their parents. I don’t trust myself to supply what my children need.
We provoke our children to anger when we use them to get life from their successes. We stunt our children’s growth when we don’t let them struggle or fail or be rejected—even though their maturity requires it. Not every child gets invited to the prom, gets put in the school play, or gets to start on the volleyball team. When we object, it’s not their good we’re after, it’s our comfort.
We provoke our children to anger when we overindulge them because we get them things as a means to indulge our hearts. We want to be able to show off to the world how well our kids are doing and how they have the latest and greatest stuff. It makes us feel better. Never has there been an era when parents have spent so much time and energy and money on pleasing their children. We give them IPods, cell phones, computers, cars, clothes, and big homes, because we want them to like us, and it pleases us to please our children even if it rots their souls.
We provoke our children to anger when we nag them, scold them, are angry and frustrated with them when their performance makes us feel unworthy and filled with self-contempt. Don’t they know it’s their job to make us feel good?
We provoke our children to anger when we demand they be thankful for all we are doing for them. This means we did not do it for them but we did it for ourselves. We did not give to them or serve them out of love but to get their love and praise. Once again, don’t they realize it’s their job to make us feel good?
“I don’t want to get my value and worth from my children. It is so exhausting when I do. I have found myself indulging my worth with a large bowl of my child’s success and talents. I have eaten in secret the choice treats of how good they are in certain areas. And I have caught myself being mad at them for not doing well in sports or getting awards at school. My kids need a dad who is safe enough in the Father’s love to be repentant and secure. Secure enough to walk with them in disappointment and a dad who knows that success can be a thief and sorrow can gently lead my children and me to know His Love.” – Adam Jones
So, what does God want from us as parents? He wants us to find our security in being His children and not in our children’s success and happiness.
Application:
Invite your children (depending on age) to tell you where you have discouraged them?
Invite them to tell you what they wish was different in your family’s life? (Even if they say a 64” flat screen TV, let them say it without negative pushback).
Ask them if they have seen you repent to your spouse, to them or noticed God humbling you?
Even our resistance to ask these hard questions is some indication of our insecurity (I am) and are finding life outside of Christ. Ask God to make you secure enough to face your failures. You do not forfeit your leadership by showing weakness instead, you show the reality of your need to be parented by God.