Written Blogs

Peace is best defined as assurance. It is the only priceless thing we can possess. It would be worth everything we possess to be able to live in peace despite anything the world could throw at us. Is there anything you would not be willing to give up for absolute unassailable peace? This is foundationally what God offers us and we hunger for it from our first pangs of need. This assurance is only possible through trusting God.

Parents have the opportunity to give their children this priceless gift by simply fulfilling their calling as a representative of God to their children. Parents are charged by God to represent Him as the reliable solution to their children’s spiritual needs and life challenges as they arise. Responding to that calling makes parenting the most satisfying experience possible as their children come to know and trust God for assurance about life. While this includes the question of salvation it’s actually about assurance for all aspects of life.

Parents rarely recognize the first signs of their children’s growing spiritual consciousness that manifest as a need for answers. When presented with an eternal question, it’s just too easy to pass it off as one of many inconsequential questions in a parenting day already filled with more immediate questions that demand answers. Parents are the gods of their children’s youth. They are the all-powerful big people who run the planet, so children’s perception of adults is god-like. Parents are the primary source of everything that sustains children and the source of assurance when uncertainty arises. Naturally children will bring any unsettling concern to the “gods” in their daily life, including feelings that are stirred by their budding spirituality. Sometimes these concerns are voiced as questions, but more often are expressed in behaviors that reveal the discontent in their heart.

An example of the first eternal question would be, ‘Daddy do you love me?’ Keep in mind that they are addressing a “god” of their youth. While the answer may seem obvious and the question a little uncomfortable, the true interpretation of the question might be something like, “Daddy are you the one I can trust to love me perfectly and love me forever?” At that moment the child has expressed the need to resolve the discomforting sensation that he needs something deeper than anything or anyone in his world has ever provided. It is the first indication that an internal force is pulling that child toward God.

In each hurried day of competing priorities, parents do their best to reassure their children. Compassionate confirmation may be mixed in with incredulity that their child is unable to interpret all they do for him as love. The quick answer would probably be something like, “Absolutely. I will always love you.” Yet, a child will never be satisfied until they have the assurance that they are divinely, unconditionally, perfectly loved and accepted forever. That is something parents can never provide because we are imperfect, broken people.

So how should parents respond to this question and avoid the apparent double jeopardy it presents? It is as simple as bringing forth truth. Here is one way to express it, “I will always love you as much as I can as an imperfect person, and I will love you as long as I am here to love you. But it is time for you to know God who loves you perfectly and loves you forever. Let me tell you about Him.” Then the parent proceeds to represent God to the child by sharing the truth about Him.

Introducing God to a young child as His representative can be a very special season in a parent’s life.  At this stage in the relationship, parents have a tremendous amount of credibility because their children still view them as gods. This is the tender and receptive season when a parent can establish foundational truth about God’s trustworthiness to provide their divine needs. Ideally, parents establish themselves as imperfect people doing their best, while representing God as the One Who can be trusted for an eternity of assurance. This framework enables children to respect and value their parents even as they are being handed off into a growing, trusting relationship with God.

Children obey your parents in the Lord [as His representatives], for this is just and right.

Ephesians 6:1

The scripture above gives clear understanding as to the role of parents in their children’s lives. They are representatives. Think of it like being an ambassador to a foreign country. But also remember that at the young ages when children are beginning to have these types of questions stir within them is when parents have immense creditability with their children. My favorite line with my clients is that if you tell your child it’s starting to rain cats and dogs outside, their first response will be to go get pet food. In the daily life of parenting that includes good times mixed with difficulty, parents have the power to paint lasting pictures in the hearts of their children.

I think God has designed the hearts of all children to accept the words of their parents as indisputable truth to provide the opportunity for parents to build a “landing pad” for God in their child’s heart. This fits with the call of parents to be representatives of God to their children. This positions the parents in the key role of establishing a pathway to trusting God which is the foundation of peace that will bless them throughout their lives. The great gift we can give our children is the truth about God so that they can rely on Him ultimately for assurance about all of life.

Look for the signs that your child is discontent, inconsolable, or insistent beyond your most finely crafted response to their challenging life question. Ask God if it is time to assure them that you are doing your imperfect best but that there is an eternal perfect love that can be trusted. Limit your assurance to only what you can truly assure your child and refer them to the eternally loving and trustworthy Father God for all the inquiries that are bigger than you. In this place you can rest in the assurance that He is enough for them and that you have been the “good and faithful parent”.

In the middle of a counseling session my client switched subjects on me with a question. He asked, “How do I parent my children?” At that point in the development of our counseling approach based on Biblical truth I had not thought much about helping people with parenting. I didn’t have a ready answer. But I got one that day.

The question was so big I really didn’t expect to have a response for my client. I reached out to God anyway with a quick query. with not much anticipation of getting an answer that could fully address the complexity of my client’s parenting situation. I was wrong. Instantly a thought came that has been the basis of our very successful parenting program. The thought was, “Parent your children the way God parents you”. Yes! that was it. As I shared this thought with my client he eyes began to light up as the foundation truth hit his heart and he began to experience hope for his difficult situation. For a moment I thought that answer would move us on to the next issue in the original conversation. No. We were on a track for a parenting session that required understanding this big idea enough to apply it in real life.

My client, let’s call him Jeff, was very excited by the simple and compelling truth of the idea to parent your child the way God parents you. I was momentarily satisfied with the hopeful look on his face but was also seeing expectation in his eyes. There needed to be more to this big idea to solve the problem he faced. I was curious too. So, I went back to the well, very obviously this time as I stared at the wall trying to open myself up tor any additional understanding. Thoughts of God’s character and the way He relates to his children began to paint a solution.

Unconditional love and acceptance! There it is. Another simple phrase with big implications. God loves us perfectly and for eternity. That is just the way it is. All of mankind needs to campout on that reality and let the truth of that fill every person’s heart with all the value and worth it implies.

In every parenting case we have seen since this first ad hoc parenting session, the child that the parents are struggling with has very low self-worth. The child has taken control of their life in a futile effort to feel worth in their own strength. The problem is that it’s not actually possible to do that. While it may seem valid at first, just ask yourself how satisfying it would be for you to throw yourself a surprise birthday party? See what I mean. It is an empty feeling that reflects a key aspect of our pyche. We only feel value when we are valued. Unconditional love and acceptance is fundamentally a declaration of value.

Parents cannot love or value their children perfectly. Only the perfect heavenly Father can do that. Even so, parents in their imperfect best have an important role to play in the work of building self-worth in their child. By communicating the message that the parents love is not dependent on their behavior or anything about them. This needs to include their successes and failures. Some my think that they are getting this message across when they praise their child for successes. That of course is appropriate and so is punishment when warranted. However, if the child experiences acceptance with success and rejection in punishment they internalize the message of conditional, performance-based love and acceptance. They will conclude they are valued based on how they behave and what they accomplish.

The tendency we see in parents with struggling children is to be relationally close to their child in success and isolate from them in discipline. The child takes this approach to parenting as the declaration of needing to earn love and worth. Children go in two directions from here. They become your most performance-based child trying to earn your love, or they decided it can’t ultimately be earned and they move into rebellion. Or they do both. They show you a performance side but pursue a private life that is born out rebellion

Value is most powerfully experienced by the child in parenting relationships in which there is the assurance that transparency will never lead to rejection. When parents can return any failing or success of a child with consistent love we are reflecting the how God parents us. Certainly, success calls for praise and failure may require consequences, but parents’ love and relational availability are best not wavering.

With this parenting strategy in mind Jeff and I applied it to actual situations in his parenting challenges and he saw a new productive and healing way to relate to his children. To this day Jeff is grateful to the insights and hope he received that day. I too am so grateful because that big idea God gave us that day has morphed into a parenting strategy that has unlocked a lot of healing and released a lot of burdens.