Yesterday, I posted “Are You Planning on Yelling at Your Children Today?” and a whole bunch of people read it. I am thinking that the overwhelming majority of you are struggling with the same sour-puss attitudes in your home that my wife and I have been for many years. Not our children’s attitudes. Ours. They are picking those attitudes up from us and honing them into weapons of mass destruction.
If you read and shared the article yesterday because the Lord used me as “Nathan” in your life and you played the role of “the man,” then I would like to ask, “What are you going to do about it?” What does repentance look like? An ex-drunkard can stay away from bars, and an ex-porn participator can stay away from the pictures, but if we’re stuck with our kids, and we most gloriously are, then what are we to do? And as whiskey and nudity are not the problems in those aforementioned cases, the wicked heart of the sinner is the problem, so also it is in the case of your fits of anger with your kids. You need to be changed in order to affect any change in your routine at home, i.e. if you’ve been yelling at you kids every day for years, don’t expect one internet article to “make all the difference in the world.”
As sinners, we have a wrong view of God, a wrong view of ourselves, a wrong view of our neighbor, and a wrong view of the world around us. As Christians, it doesn’t have to stay this way; we don’t have to be the way we were, because Jesus came to shine light into darkness. He has been doing this since He originally said, “Let there be light,” (Gen 1:3); afterward He was conceived by the Holy Spirit (Mt. 1:18), born of the Virgin Mary to be that light of the world (John 8:12); one day there will be no need of a sun when the world is put to rights, because His presence, His kingdom, will have come in its fullness (Rev 21:23). If we are serious about changing the way we are behaving around our children while we are trying to get them to behave, we need His Word to be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.” (Ps 119:105)
As a remedy to your enraged berating of your children, you need to hear the Word of God. You are dark on the inside and need light shined in that darkness. As I said yesterday, the Lord has been using Pastor Douglas Wilson, as he preaches the Word of God, as a “Nathan” in my life for years. I referenced his sermon series, Loving Little Ones. Here’s a great quote from the first sermon:
Parents should always desire to be like God in their relationship to their children. But when we think this, we gravitate to what we think or assume God is like instead of gravitating to what God reveals Himself to be like. Here is the fundamental attitude. “The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing” (Zep. 3:17). “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (Luke 11:13). Parents who are “evil” frequently are better to their kids than parents who think they are being good by imitating a Cosmic Slavedriver. Delight in your children. Be crazy about them. Don’t hold back. They are cuter than everybody else’s.
In order to stop yelling and start delighting, you don’t need another internet article, per se. You need to dig in to the Word of God and be cut deeply by the working of the Holy Spirit. I highly recommend ordering the sermon series, Loving Little Ones, actively listening to them with your spouse, and then start inviting other families in your church and community over to your house to listen with you. It’s not a formula or a method. It’s four hours of principles to help you restructure the way you think about childrearing. If you don’t restructure the current model, don’t expect any sort of change. However, if you humble yourself before the Lord, He will lift you up. He will forgive you your trespasses and give you a soft heart in place of the stony one you currently have toward your kids. Then you can stop yelling and start delighting for today. For tomorrow. For ever.
Here’s the link to the sermon series. It’ll be the best spent $8 that you’ve forked over in a long time.
http://www.canonpress.org/store/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=473&idcategory=158
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Hey Marc! Sam Hubbard here. Just found the KC blog by following Uri Brito. Its nice to see you here. I love the stuff your posting. This article was a needed reminder.
Hey Sam. It’s good to hear from you. I hope all is going well with the Hubbards. Thanks for reading and for the encouraging words.
Once we revel in the way God delights in us, it is so much easier to pass on what we have received. I believe that parents who don’t delight in their children, do not understand how God delights in them, at least not experientially. We tend to treat other people in ways that reflect our own internal experience. I have found that healing is needed for these parents. Many have the conviction to desire delight, but don’t know what that means or how to accomplish it. Cognitive knowing needs to be paired with experiential knowing. Fortunately, relationship with our Father provides both.
Good stuff, Melissa. Thank you for your comments. May the Lord bless your efforts to help others “revel in the way God delights in us.”