Don’t Buy Into Unbiblical Parenting

Don’t Buy Into Unbiblical Parenting

Raising children is more like riding a horse than riding a motorcycle. Compliance to your wishes (instruction or commands) is up to them. These kids may obey you or they may defy you…tossing you—or your spouse—onto the street below.

Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Four Unbiblical Approaches to Parenting:

1. If I discipline my kids, they’ll rebel.

-Whether good or bad, children grow out of the swaddling phase.

-One of the ways our Heavenly Father (our perfect parenting model) expresses His love for us is by disciplining us.

• My son, despise not thou the chastening of the LORD, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the LORD loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. (Heb. 12:5b-6)

-As we learn obedience to God through His Word, we then have an opportunity to show biblical discipline and obedience to our children.

• For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. (vv.10-11)

-We must understand that loving discipline is for our child(ren)’s own good.

• For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth. (Proverbs 3:12)

*Always remember to couple tenderness with discipline!

-3 Practical Principles:

1. Choose actions that are age-appropriate and memorable.
2. Match consequences the infraction.
3. Always discipline correctively, not punitively vengefully.

• And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the LORD. (Eph. 6:4)

Prayer?

We can’t do anything about __(child)__’s heart, but You can. Please visit her by way of your Holy Spirit. Speak to her in terms she understands. Help her to fall in love with You and choose to obey your [Word].

*We must discipline, encourage, and instruct our children, but only God can direct and change their hearts. So that is what we pray for.

2. Children need to be exposed to the “real world” so they can learn to function in it.

–Satan uses the same tactics with parents that he used with Eve. He convinced her that by eating the forbidden fruit, she would learn something she needed to know—when you eat of it your eyes will be opened…(Gen. 3:5).

-God never intended that you and I should know evil by experiencing it ourselves.

• I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple (without a mixture of evil, innocent) concerning evil. (Rom. 16:19)

-Satan: Your children need to taste for themselves. If you shelter them from the ‘real world,’ they will never be able to fit in and survive it.

-Truth: Our task is not to rear children who can ‘fit in’ or merely ‘survive’ in this world. The challenge of every Christian parent is to bring up children who love God with all their hearts, souls, minds, and strength; who have a vibrant, personal relationship with the Lord Jesus; and whose lives will be bright and shining lights, penetrating the darkness around them.

-We’re not looking for conformed-to-this-world kids, we’re looking for kids who grow to embrace the Truth, love righteousness, and hate evil.

-Instead of sending your children into the world to be devoured, take practical steps to protect them from the values and influence of the world.

*Children will cultivate an appetite for whatever they are fed in their earliest, formative years.

• And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…(Rom. 12:2)

-Let’s train up transformers, not conformers!

3. I know my child is a Christian because he/she prayed to receive Christ at an early age.

-The parents who are most vulnerable to this lie are those who have raised children in the church, who have taught them right from wrong, and whose children have made some sort of profession of faith as a child or young person—they may have had great interest in spiritual matters at one time. These parents frequently assume that because all of the above is true, their son or daughter must be a genuine Christian.

-God has given us in 1 John some objective standards by which we may measure a profession of faith:

• 1 John 2:3-4 And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
• 1 John 2:6 He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.
• 1 John 2:9 He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.
• 1 John 2:15b …If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
• 1 John 1:19b …for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.
• 1 John 3:10 In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.

-Transformation is the evidence—2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

-Dangerous results of a wrong assumption:

• Children can have a false sense of security about eternal destiny
• Parents may neglect praying/waging a spiritual battle for kids
• The Gospel can be treated as a form of cheap grace.
• Church pews may be filled with people who think they are OK.

4. We are not responsible for how our children turn out.

1. Parents feel they have no control/influence in how their children turn out.
2. Parents feel they are 100% responsible for how their children turn out.

-Biblical examples:

• Lot—He did not guard his heart; he had an appetite for the things of this world. He tried to live with one foot in the world and one foot in God’s kingdom. By his example, he led his family to have a love affair with the world.
  • What parents tolerate in moderation, their children will excuse in excess.
• Eli & family—Eli was a devoted servant of the Lord, whose sons (Hophni & Phinehas) were sons of Belial; they knew not the LORD (1 Sam. 2:12).
  • 1 Samuel 2:29 “Wherefore kick ye at my sacrifice and at mine offering, which I have commanded in my habitation; and honourest thy sons above me, to make yourselves fat with the chiefest of all the offerings of Israel my people?”
  • 1 Samuel 3:13 For I have told him that I will judge his house for ever for the iniquity which he knoweth; because his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not.

-Truth: Parents have enormous influence and are responsible to mold the hearts and lives of their children.

• Each generation is responsible to pass on to the next a heritage of godliness.

-Deut. 6:5-7a And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. 6And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: 7And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children…

• Each generation is responsible for its own walk and obedience.

-Deut. 24:16 Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin. Parents are not to be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their parents; each will die for their own sin.

*Study from Lies Men Believe & Lies Women Believe by Robert & Nancy D. Wolgemuth