As the ministry of The Trinity Church increases and moves temporarily online, Pastor Mark, Grace, and family will be releasing a special series of “Ask Pastor Mark” videos each week to help answer pertinent questions during this time! This question is about the importance of family dinners and how to make them great.
Proverbs 17:6 [NLT] – Grandchildren are the crowning glory of the aged; parents are the pride of their children.
My wife Grace and I recently celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary. We are blessed with five kids all walking with Jesus and serving at the church we planted as a family ministry. Our youngest child is headed toward their 14th birthday and our oldest is 22 and on the brink of finishing her master’s degree and getting married.
Life is full and wonderful.
On walks holding hands, Grace and I have started discussing what life will be like when we are grandparents. We are now closer to holding our kids’ babies than holding our kids as babies. Grandparenting seems amazing. The grandparents we know cannot stop talking about what a fun season it is.
According to Proverbs, it is possible for a child to be as proud of their parents as grandparents are proud of their grandchildren. This does not happen automatically, or quickly. But, if we will pay attention to the seasons of life our children and grandchildren are in, we increase the odds of mutual joy and warmth.
Sadly, every family has seasons of struggle and strife. But sometimes, the struggle and strife is for a simple reason – the parent and child do not both agree on what season they are in and agree to move forward with changes so that their relationship is altered from the previous season. For example, when a kid is six years old, you might need to wake them up for school, but when they are 26 years old, they need to get themselves up for work. How we parent in one season is not bad, but it can be bad if we continue to parent in the new season of life according to the pattern of the previous season. When parents don’t accept this, they frustrate their kids. When kids don’t accept this, they frustrate their parents.
What does this look like ideally?
There is someone we respect highly and see as wise. They have a great relationship with their child and grandchildren. So, I asked their son how it was to work with and live a few doors down from his parents. With a smile, he said that he loved his parents, they were his favorite people, and that they were great at lifting burdens and giving wise counsel. The grandparents decided that their home was always open to the kids and grandkids, but they would not go to the home of their kids or grandkids unless invited. This allowed healthy boundaries and brought harmony. I then met with the grandfather/father to ask how they got to such a healthy adult parenting relationship. He said that when his son was a teen, he asked if there was anything he needed to apologize for or change as a father. The son told him that his dad was too tough on him. This was a kid who was very responsible and put a lot of pressure on themselves, and when dad added his pressure, it was crushing. In wisdom, the father apologized, asked forgiveness, and began a new season by parenting in a new way of grace. Had this not occurred, it is doubtful that this would be a holy, happy, and healthy family of multiple generations. As parents, we never get it right but, by God’s grace, we can make it right.
How’s your heart toward your parents?
Proverbs 31:28 [ESV] – Her children rise up and call her blessed.
No one plants a seed in the morning and eats the fruit in the evening. Parenting is a lot like gardening, and what we sow today will be reached in a future season. For example, most moms of a two-year-old throwing a fit do not get to see that same child rise up and call her blessed for a few decades.
Like gardening, parenting is seasonal. The key is to know what we are sowing in each season. Here are the eight seasons of life for parents, grandparents, teachers, and other caregivers to consider:
1. Conception to birth is about preparing your inner and outer environment. You are a parent before your baby is born and you are eating healthy, getting the house ready, and gathering the small mountain of new accessories (changing table, crib, car seat, clothes, diapers, bottles etc.)
2. Baby (from birth to 18 months) is about feeding and nurturing so that the child develops. Emotional bonds are built with the child through comforting touch. Physical health and growth are made possible through feeding. Spiritual life is sown as you pray over the baby and invite God’s presence into their life. In this season, they also become more mobile and tactile, which is why parenting can feel like you are on suicide watch as the kid keeps trying to put everything in their mouth.
3. Toddler (from 18 months to 3 years) is about informal training and starting to engage the reasoning of the young child. Around this age kids learn their new favorite word, which is usually “no”. In this season, children need to learn to regulate their emotions, abide by rules, be part of a group, play with others, and take on some responsibility with basic chores. In this season, kids also start to form their own preferences and style in areas like what they want to eat and how they want to dress.
4. Preschooler (from 3-6 years) is about more formal training during very busy years. Boys in this season are particularly active and wear you out. In this season, kids need more formal training, they ask “why” a lot as they seek to figure life out, they are ready for playing and socializing with other kids under less supervised environments, and they tend to like crafts and creativity.
5. School age (from 6-12 years) is about character and identity formation. The child has a growing independence as their parents are not always present. Their interests tend to cement (e.g. music, sports, art, etc.). In this season, the child also forms their style and friend group.
6. Teenagers (from 13-18) is a tough time, especially amidst the cultural gravity pulling teens toward folly and rebellion. Most kids have some sort of identity crisis, trying to figure out who they are, and struggle with the awkwardness of puberty, which can include moodiness.
7. Young adults (from 19 onward) is about cultivating responsible independence. You start earning money, paying bills, and governing your own life so that your parents are not as needed as they once were in the daily stuff of life.
8. Parenting adults is about lifting burdens and being wise counsel so that they can start their own family and repeat the seasonal cycle of parenting themselves.
Which season has been the best in your life thus far? Which season has been worst in your life thus far?
Proverbs 3:11-12 [NIV] – My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.
Proverbs 29:17 [ESV] – Discipline your son, and he will give you rest; he will give delight to your heart.
Over the years, I have taken literally a hundred thousand photos and videos of life with our five kids. Once in a while, I pull them so that we can all remember the fun we’ve had and memories we’ve made.
One goal for every parent should be to enjoy life with their child, make memories, and have fun. This is how God parents us. Did you know that God delights in you? He does not just love you; He also likes you, likes being your Father, and likes doing life with you. This is because God is a grace-based parent who puts love and relationship at the starting line instead of the finish line for us.
Because God loves us and seeks our best, he continually delights in us to encourage us and grow our trust in His care for us. And, our Father occasionally corrects us. Importantly, God does not continually discipline you and occasionally delight in you. The opposite is fact – God continually delights in you and occasionally disciplines you.
We are to parent our kids the way that our Father parents us. Discipline is course correction to get back to having fun and making memories as sin and folly push us off course. The purpose of discipline is not to punish since Jesus already paid that price, but rather to associate sin and folly with grief and pain so that we learn to avoid it going forward. The ultimate goal of corrective discipline is not for us to control our child, but instead help them grow in practicing self-control. At some point, our kids grow up and get to decide if they want a relationship with God or us and start making their own life decisions. If we delight in them as God delights in us, the odds increase that they will invite us into their life seasons and decisions because we know we care and have their best interest at heart.
Growing up as a child, was your home mainly one of delight or discipline?
Proverbs 22:6 [ESV] – Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.
Here are nine tips for training kids:
1. Parents are primary. Coaches, youth pastors, teachers, and other people are secondary in God’s line of priority for the raising of a child.
2. Every parent homeschools. Even if your child goes to a school, they learn more in your home than they do anywhere else.
3. The question is not if a child will be trained, but how a child will be trained. For example, ignoring a child trains them that they do not have value but is still a form of training.
4. Parenting is about sowing and reaping. Like gardening, in one season of the child’s development, you are constantly sowing lessons that will not blossom until a future day. Faith keeps sowing even if the reaping is not yet happening.
5. Repetition is required. As you read Proverbs, you will find some things repeated multiple times, and the same things stated in multiple ways. Why? Training includes repeating because we are often forgetting what we are learning.
6. Mom and dad must have a unified vision they present to the child. You cannot train a child to obey their mother and father unless the parents agree on what they are asking of the child. As Jesus said, a house that is divided will fall down, which is why unity is primary.
7. Training can be exhausting because class is always in session. Your kids will need to learn the most important lessons at the least convenient and most exhausting times because God is using them to also teach you.
8. We taught our kids the difference between 1) View 2) Voice 3) Vote. As much as was reasonable for their age and maturity level, we let our kids have a view into what we were doing as a family. Often, we welcomed our kids’ voice into the conversation so that as we made decisions they were heard and considered. Sometimes, we let the kids vote and decide what we would do as a family. This was our way of training our kids to respect authority but also learn to dialogue issues and make decisions.
9. Teach the kids what is happening and why. As parents, we often simply wish that our children would obey what we tell them to do. But they also need to learn to make their own decisions and so by telling them not just what to do, but how and why, is part of training. For example, I once boarded a flight with a family and the kids were freaking out because there was a line, they had to sit in a seat, and wear a seatbelt – things they did not know about because their parents had not trained them what it means to fly on a plane.
Which of these things did your parents succeed at? Which of these things did your parents struggle with?
Proverbs 20:5 [NIV] – The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out.
Parents, along with other caregivers, commonly focus on behavior for the simple reason that it is visible. Under the behavior is the heart we cannot see guiding the decision-making process. When a parent focuses only on behavior, they miss the problem and misdiagnose the solution. There are, in fact, four kinds of kids:
1. Bad heart bad behavior. This is the kid who walks up to another kid, assaults them, and steals their toy for the simple reason that they are a tiny terrorist.
2. Bad heart good behavior. This is the kid who pretends to be obedient and compliant not because they love God, but because it benefits them and is therefore a form of manipulation to get what they want.
3. Good heart bad behavior. This is the kid who meant well but messed up. These kids get really discouraged when they are disciplined for something that was a mistake without malice, like spilling a drink they were trying to retain hold of.
4. Good heart good behavior. Only Mary and Joseph had this kind of kid continually, but it is possible for little people to be godly people some of the time. This includes the kid who, when they do wrong, is sensitive to the Holy Spirit and confesses their bad behavior, which reveals their good heart.
Which of these four best explains you as a kid?
Proverbs 4:23 [NIV] – Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
Many years ago, I took a missions trip to India. Upon landing in the city, we began the long drive out to a more remote village for a pastors’ conference. The road we traveled upon for part of the journey winded along the dirtiest, foulest, and nastiest river I had ever seen. The river was polluted upstream, and human excrement, animal feces, and industrial chemicals flowed downstream causing sickness and stench for everyone and everything downstream.
According to the Bible, your heart is upstream and your life is downstream.
How’s your heart today?
Often, we are more aware of our outer life (weight, appearance, clothing) than we are our inner life. Some roughly nine-hundred times the Bible refers to the heart. The heart includes the emotions we feel, desires we have, and decisions we make.
Perhaps nothing more forcefully reveals our hearts more than parenting. As a parent, one of the great diagnostic tools of the heart according to the Lord Jesus is our communication (Matthew 12:34, 15:18). If a parent or other caregiver is cursing, yelling, name calling, or bending ongoing conflicts into an argument of how the child is making them look bad to other adults, then you know that the heart needs some Holy Spirit heart surgery. Our kids expose and even enrage our hearts, and when they do, we need to bring our heart to our Father so that He can parent us before we parent our child. Parenting is sanctifying if you surrender to this fact. We are God’s child before we are the parent to our child.
Once our heart is right, we can then engage the heart of our child. And, for starters every child needs a new heart. As a Christian with a new nature we can forget that our kids need Jesus too, and that apart from being born again of the Spirit, all they have is a fallen heart. Therefore, the first priority is for the parent to bring their heart to God. And, the second priority is for the parent to teach their child to also bring their heart to God.
If you had to pick one word to describe your heart today, what would that be?
Proverbs 1:2-7 [NLT] – Their purpose [Proverbs] is to teach people wisdom and discipline, to help them understand the insights of the wise. Their purpose is to teach people to live disciplined and successful lives, to help them do what is right, just, and fair. These proverbs will give insight to the simple, knowledge and discernment to the young. Let the wise listen to these proverbs and become even wiser. Let those with understanding receive guidance by exploring the meaning in these proverbs and parables, the words of the wise and their riddles. Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.
Just like our planet orbits around the sun, every family system has a center that determines what is priority for the family. If the center is school, then the priority becomes grades. If the center is sports, then the priority becomes winning at all costs. If the center is making money, then working becomes the priority. If the center is fear, then control is the priority. If comfort is the center, then being left alone is the priority.
For the believing family, the center should be God, and the priority of the family should be to see each family member grow in wisdom. No matter how a child is educated, they should be homeschooled – learning wisdom at home.
Our culture values knowledge, whereas the Bible sees knowledge as the means to wisdom which is the higher priority. Here are some distinctions between knowledge and wisdom:
1. Knowledge is knowing the truth; wisdom is knowing that to do with it.
2. Knowledge it theoretical; wisdom is practical.
3. Knowledge fills your mind; wisdom guides your life.
4. Knowledge is truthful; wisdom is useful.
5. Knowledge provides information; wisdom provides transformation.
6. Knowledge tells you what to believe; wisdom tells you how to behave.
In summary, you can have knowledge without wisdom, but you cannot have wisdom without knowledge. Knowledge will get you good grades, but wisdom will get you a good life. So, where do you find wisdom? Here are some areas where you can find wisdom:
1. Scripture
2. Prayer
3. The Holy Spirit
4. General revelation
5. Wise counsel
6. Your experience
7. Their experience (or what a friend calls “letting other people pay your dumb tax so that you learn by learning from their mistakes”)
Where do you go to get wisdom?
In this super practical sermon on parenting from the book of Proverbs, Pastor Mark talks about how to raise kids you don’t simply just endure but actually enjoy, delighting in them instead of focusing only on discipline.
When our five kids were little, the first day of school was always traumatic…for their mom and me. We would walk the kids into their classroom, get them all set up, and then go sit in the car and weep. Meanwhile, the kids were fine.
I was recently out running errands and overheard a curious conversation regarding the starting of school this week. One parent said, “I’m so glad summer is over. I hate having the kids around all the time”. In response, another parent said, “Really, I love having the kids around all the time and get sad when school starts”
Some parents endure their kids. Some parents enjoy their kids.
Making matters worse, the parents were having this conversation in front of their children. Some of the kids heard that they were a blessing, while the other kids heard that they were a burden.
God wants His people to enjoy their kids. Psalm 127:3 [NASB] says, “Behold, children are a gift of the Lord”. In an age where birth control and abortion are considered preferable to boys and girls, we need to remind ourselves that life, especially little life, is a blessed gift from God. And, the point of any gift is that the giver of the gift wants the recipient of the gift to enjoy the gift. If you are a parent, this means that your child is a gift from God for you to enjoy.
Did you feel like your parents enjoyed you as a kid?
God cares both about our vertical relationship with Him as well as our horizontal relationship with others and as Galatians nears to a close, Paul writes about four ways to cultivate spirit-filled community.
There are basically two kinds of relationships Christians have. One is law-based. Someone has fears that compel them to control other people and circumstances through making demands. The other is grace-based. The two people trust the Holy Spirit to work in and through each of them, focus on their unity around Jesus Christ, and give grace in secondary matters where they disagree.