Category Archives: Parenting

Reblog: Boys Need Their Moms

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by Tim Challies

Thinking back, I wonder if people thought I was a bit of a mama’s boy. I grew up in a stable home and loved and respected both of my parents. I regularly spent time with each of them. But I was always closer to my mother. If this was true when I was young, it was even more pronounced when I was a teenager. In those years I was a boy, a young man, who needed his mom.

Boys need their dads, we know that. Boys need their dads to model masculinity, to model the love and affection they ought to have for a woman, to teach them the kind of life skills they will need. Girls need their dads too. They need their dads to protect them, to be affectionate with them and in that way to display healthy physical boundaries. They need their dads to hold the boys at bay and, eventually, to give their blessing to that special one. Girls need their moms. They need their moms to model femininity, to teach and train them to be women, to model patience and wisdom. Books, blogs, and sermon illustrations abound for each of these relationships. But what about boys and their moms?

Boys need their moms—I am convinced of it. Even teenaged boys, boys who are nearly men. I see this when I look back at my own life. It wouldn’t be overstating it to say that my mother was my primary counselor and most trusted companion through those turbulent teenage years. It’s not that I didn’t have peer friendships, but that none of those friends influenced me as much as she did. I would often spend that time between school and dinner chatting with her while she prepared our meal. I would come along with her on errands just so we could talk. I confided in her and depended on her wisdom and her interpretation of my thoughts and feelings. We talked about girls and God and pretty well everything else I was thinking and experiencing. I relied on her for physical affection. In so many ways I wanted to be like her, to model much of my life and character after hers. It was really only when Aileen entered my life that this friendship, this dependency, began to diminish. The relationship I enjoyed with the most important woman in my childhood slowly declined as the relationship with the most important woman in my adulthood increased. The first had in some way prepared me for the second.

The relationship between a boy and his mother is a unique and precious one. Sadly, it is one we often look upon with suspicion, as if closeness between a boy and his mother is a warning sign, as if it may indicate a latent femininity or perhaps even homosexuality. We have names for boys who are close or too close to their moms—they are mama’s boys or sissies or pansies. A boy who is close to his mom is a boy we believe to be weak, not strong.

Yet James Dobson, in his book Bringing Up Boys, dedicates a whole chapter to mothers and sons and says this: “The quality of early relationships between boys and their mothers is a powerful predictor of lifelong psychological and physical health.” Writing to mothers, Kevin Leman says, “Although it might be natural to think that the man in your son’s life … would have the most influence on him since they’re both males, the opposite is true. You influence your son directly and have a much greater impact on the man he will become.” In the Bible we see Timothy mentored and discipled by his mother and grandmother (2 Timothy 1:5), we see Solomon warning his son not to depart from his mother’s teaching (Proverbs 1:8), we see Jacob’s closeness to Rebekah (Genesis 27). In history and church history we encounter many great men who were shaped by their mothers as much as by their fathers, many great men who ascribe who they became to the influence of their mothers.

And yet even in Christian circles there is little attention given to the relationship of boys and their mothers, at least once they pass the toddler stage. It is rarely mentioned and rarely celebrated. We still look askance at a boy who spends a lot of time with his mom or a mom who is close to her boy. There is still that suspicion—that irrational and unfair suspicion. There is still that fear that a boy necessarily ought to be closer to his father than his mother.

Today I have a teenaged boy of my own. He and I are close, but I suspect that he and Aileen are closer. I see and celebrate the unique relationship between them. He shares with her, he confides in her, he depends upon her, he receives affection from her. And this is good, this brings me joy. He is a boy who needs his mom, just like I was. I trust that she will help guide him through these formative years with a perspective I simply do not have. I trust that in some way the relationship he enjoys with his mother is in some way preparing him for the relationship he will someday enjoy with his wife. Perhaps, like me, he will be able to echo John Wesley and say, “I learned more about Christianity [and life] from my mother than from all the theologians of England.”

Find the original post here.

Reblog: 9 Parenting Truths from John Piper

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John Piper addressed the question, Does Proverbs Promise My Child Will Not Stray? in a recent episode of Ask Pastor John. As you might have guessed, the question was based on Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Piper ended the episode by sharing these 9 truths for parents to remember and follow:

1) In general, bringing up children God’s way will lead them to eternal life. In general, that is true.

2) This reality would include putting our hope in God and praying earnestly for our wisdom and for their salvation all the way to the grave. Don’t just pray until they get converted at age 6. Pray all the way to the grave for your children’s conversions and for the perseverance of their apparent conversions.

3) Saturate them with the Word of God. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10:17).

4) Be radically consistent and authentic in your own faith — not just in behavior, but in affections. Kids need to see how precious Jesus is to mom and dad, not just how he is obeyed or how they get to church or how they read devotions or how they do duty, duty, duty. They need to see the joy and the satisfaction in mom and dad’s heart that Jesus is the greatest friend in the world.

5) Model the preciousness of the gospel. As we parents confess our own sins and depend on grace, our kids will say, “Oh, you don’t have to be perfect. Mom and dad aren’t perfect. They love grace. They love the gospel because Jesus forgives their sins. And I will know then he can forgive my sins.”

6) Be part of a Bible-saturated, loving church. Kids need to be surrounded by other believers and not just mom and dad.

7) Require obedience. Do not be lazy. There are so many young parents today that appear so lazy. They are not willing to get up and do what needs to be done to bring this kid into line. So we should follow through on our punishments and follow through especially on all of our promises of good things that we say we are going to do for them.

8) God saves children out of failed and unbelieving parenting. God is sovereign. We aren’t the ones, finally, who save our kids. God saves kids and there would hardly be any Christians in the world if he didn’t save them out of failed families.

9) Rest in the sovereignty of God over your children. We cannot bear the weight of their eternity. That is God’s business and we must roll all of that onto him.

Find an audio here.

Reblog: How the Spirit Draws a Child

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Five Things Parents Can Do

by Desiring God written by Bud Burk

A child’s young life is filled with new experiences. There are those firsts, like the first taste of ice cream or the first sight of an ocean. There are special memories, like a fifth birthday or skating on a frozen lake. There are many new discoveries, like visiting the zoo or learning how to read.

This fleeting season is like a passing breeze in the evening compared to the rest of a child’s life, but it is precious to form their young spirits. These weeks and months are rich with the potential for spiritual formation.

As a pastor for family discipleship and children’s ministries, I see how open children’s hearts often are, with a kind of eagerness to learn that is distinct to childhood. Our part as parents is to nurture their hearts toward Christ through prayer, God’s word, and patient love, while trusting the Spirit to minister to them as only he can. We cannot change our children’s hearts. But we can welcome the Spirit’s work as we join him in exalting the name of Jesus Christ in our homes.

How God Moves Before Conversion

Picture five draft horses harnessed together, steadily pulling a plow. Those five strong horses represent five graces that I have seen the Spirit often use to draw souls to Jesus. When applied to children, these graces can patiently nurture and till the soil of a child’s heart, even before regeneration. I have given these five graces names: drawing grace, leading grace, understanding grace, displaying grace, and paying-attention grace. Each grace has a distinct theme, with some overlap, and each is filled with extraordinary potential.

Drawing Grace

Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. . . . It is the Spirit who gives life” (John 6:44, 63). The theme of drawing grace is life in Jesus. What are the various ways the Spirit may draw, one step at a time, a young soul closer to Christ?

Every moment of a child’s life, every situation and relationship, can become a place where the Spirit is moving. He does not wait to tend to a heart at the point of regeneration. Consider the following as examples of the countless ways he uses “the normal” in our children’s lives:

  • A mother’s song overheard by a child in the womb
  • A warm embrace by dad as he prays a blessing on a second birthday
  • Overheard confession and forgiveness between a mom and a dad
  • The winsome heralding of a preacher on Sunday morning
  • Simple prayers offered by grandparents over their grandchildren
  • A kind word from a Sunday school teacher

The Spirit is often on the move in the normal routines of a child’s life, even before regeneration. We have the privilege of being alert to this daily Spirit-wrought work, which will lead us to join Paul in learning to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Drawing grace calls us to live and pray by the Spirit in the familiar and mundane.

Leading Grace

Paul says, “Do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4).

The theme of leading grace is the kindness of God — kindness that is intended to bring the gift of repentance (2 Timothy 2:25). Let us ask the Father in Jesus’s name for such a gift, and then with his help guide our children in a way that is in step with his leading.

As we lead our children with kindness, especially during moments of merciful correction, we can cultivate the spiritual formation of our children before regeneration. May we see discipline through this lens and foster a home environment of kindness, patience, and love.

Understanding Grace

Again, Paul writes,

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. . . . The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:12, 14)

The theme of understanding grace is teaching our children the Bible and praying for the Spirit to press down God’s word into their hearts and minds — especially the great truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We can get children to speak and repeat truth, which is good, but only the Spirit can transform our children to trust truth and love truth — to trust and love Truth himself. So, we teach children the Bible patiently and prayerfully.

Displaying Grace

Displaying grace revels in beholding the patience of Christ toward sinners. Paul writes, “I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life” (1 Timothy 1:16).

Paul’s use of the word were emphasizes the pre-regenerating work of the Spirit. Paul received mercy so that future believers would see that mercy and then go on to receive mercy. How we as parents, grandparents, and fruit-bearing servants among children should love this special grace!

As Paul personally recounts God’s mercy upon him in Christ, his heart overflows: “To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen” (1 Timothy 1:17). Displaying grace especially works through parents who are being recaptured by the wonder of this good news by rehearsing it and calling it to mind. As they do, they will sing not only with their voices but with the countenance of their hearts while young ears listen in and young eyes watch. As our children see God’s mercy displayed in us, the Spirit can stir up in them a yearning to receive the same mercy.

Paying-Attention Grace

Luke writes, “One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul” (Acts 16:14).

This is the climactic grace, the grace which all the previous heart-cultivating graces have been striving for. In a moment, the Spirit finally opens the hearts of our children to pay attention to the gospel in a different way than they have previously — and there is life.

Some moments create a special opportunity for God to give this paying-attention grace. We don’t put all of our hope in these specific moments, and with God’s help we will not despair when these do not turn out as we hoped, but it seems fitting to consider them from time to time. Times that may stir up this kind of conversation include:

  • A Good Friday or Resurrection Sunday service
  • A funeral or memorial service
  • Christmas morning
  • An unexpected moment of fear or suffering, such as an accident or the diagnosis of cancer
  • A memorable sermon on a normal Sunday
  • A family worship time that is particularly moving

Consider how to make the most of whatever special markers God by his providence has provided you. They truly are gifts.

Show Them Christ

We can ask God for help to be alert to what the Spirit is doing in our children’s lives, and be on the lookout for those five horses tilling the soil of the hearts of our children and grandchildren.

Maybe you’re thinking, “I haven’t seen any of these graces in my son or daughter,” and your heart is heavy. Perhaps you have a child who is already 10, or 25. What would I say to you?

First, I would remind you that Jesus is moved by your hurting heart, and your Father knows your cries even before you pray them (Matthew 6:8). Consider Psalm 94:19: “When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul.”

Second, remember that the best of parents cannot make one soul live. This is not a responsibility designed for us. It is easier for parents of the 10-year-old to fall into this trap, so let us learn from the parents of the 25-year-old. It is likely that these parents have learned their inability to give spiritual life. We will find freedom when we yield to the Spirit the work that he alone can do.

Third, keep praying to the Father in Jesus’s name, and hope through tears. Whether it’s a 10-year-old or a 25-year-old, love them during this season in obvious ways, and patiently keep pointing them to Christ, who is supreme in love.

Point on, dear friends, with a loving tone in your parenting and a hopeful heart in your God.

Reblog: How (What) to Pray for Your Grandchildren (Answers In Genesis)

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Forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens. Your faithfulness endures to all generations. (Psalm 119:89–90)

Are you a grandparent or do you hope to be one someday? Are you an “empty nester” or do you still have children in your home? No matter where you are in life or who is currently living in your home, there are children who would be blessed by your prayers. I hope to encourage you in the joy and privilege of praying for and with your grandchildren, surrogate grandchildren or future grandchildren. In today’s culture the authority of God’s Word is eroding and our children are facing the consequences of turning to man’s word as the authority (evolutionary takeover of creation, disregard for authority, gender confusion, etc.), it is more important than ever to pray for our future generations.

Just a few years ago I remember praying that my husband and I would be grandparents one day. Within five years of that prayer we were blessed with five children that would call us grandpa and grandma. Each child is a unique and special gift from God and we not only have the joy of having them as part of our lives, we also have the privilege and responsibility of praying for them.

Find the rest of the article here.

 

Reblog: Why Kids Need Rules and Consequences

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But They’ll Be Mad at Me: Why Kids Need Rules and Consequences

by Katelyn Alcamo, LCMFT

It will come as no surprise that in my work as a middle school therapist, I come across kids who test boundaries, break rules, and make poor choices. It is also not uncommon to meet with parents at a loss for what to do and how to regain control.

Raising an adolescent is one of the most challenging jobs a parent will have. Suddenly you go from raising a sweet and affectionate child to managing a moody and rebellious teen. You might wonder what happened to the child you once knew. You also might find that the parentingstrategies you once relied on no longer work.

While it is not all bad, it is easy for parents to get overwhelmed by the social, emotional, and behavioral changes that happen during adolescence.

Many parents don’t reach out for help until things have gotten out of control. When I meet a family for the first time, I am often meeting desperate parents who have tried everything in their bag of tricks to improve things, to little or no avail. By that point, the family has become quite entrenched in negative patterns.

During the first session or so, I explore with the parents the strategies they have used to address any concerns. Often parents report that they yell, lecture, threaten consequences, or try to rationalize with their teen. I follow up by asking which strategies have worked and which have not. No surprise, yelling often leads to escalation; lecturing doesn’t garner the desired response, and how can one rationalize with an irrational teenage brain?

Despite their desperation to change things, many parents tell me that they don’t often follow through with any threatened consequences. And why not? “Because they’ll be mad at me,” I’m inevitably told.

I am often incredulous. Of course teens will be mad when there is a consequence, especially a meaningful one. Trying to prevent a teen from being mad at you is like trying to prevent a baby from crying. Good luck.

So why this avoidance of angering a teenager? I believe the reason is both selfish and selfless. First, what parent wants to deal with a sulking, bitter, angry teenager? No parent I know, including me. And it is understandable for parents to want to be loved by their children. We sacrifice so much and work so hard to love and care for our kids. It is validating to get that love in return.

We are programmed to want to make our children happy. This desire often translates to avoidance of anything that makes our child upset, including enforcing consequences for negative behaviors.

Why would we want to make our child upset when there is enough adversity in the world? Let me tell you.

Rules and consequences are important for every child. Despite how they may act, teens need rules and boundaries so they can both test them and feel protected by them. Creating structure and having predictable responses helps teens learn to self-regulate. It also helps them learn from their mistakes.

Raising a teen is like bowling with bumpers. Sometimes the bumpers take the form of support and validation and sometimes they’re in the form of rules and consequences. Regardless, they serve to gently guide teens down a healthy and successful path. Not having rules and consequences is like removing the bumpers before your teen has developed the skills to function in the world.

Allowing your child to express anger in a safe environment also helps them to develop emotional intelligence. If you are constantly shielding them from frustration, anger, or sadness, they may not learn how to regulate these emotions or how to express them in socially appropriate ways. It is important to remember that parenting isn’t about being liked. Giving in on rules and consequences makes it harder for teens to engage in a world where there are rules and consequences.

Read the rest here.

Reblog: The Thing About Sex

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by Tim Challies

One of the significant difficulties many husbands and wives encounter is the place of sexual desire and pleasure in marriage. I want to speak to this today by answering a representative question, one of many I’ve received. “You speak of sex like it is a pure and holy thing. Yet when my husband wants to have sex with me, I feel like he is just responding to bodily urges and wants to use me as a way to relieve those urges. It’s all about the release. What is holy about this?”

False Messages

I believe that the heart of the issue here is that very few Christians have developed a Bible-based theology of sex. Fewer still live out that theology of sex. Instead, much of what we believe has been imported from outside the Bible and carries messages antithetical to God’s desire for the sexual relationship.

From an evolutionary perspective sex is little more than a means of spreading genes, of ensuring survival from one generation to the next. From a pornographic perspective, the meaning of sex is physical gratification so that a person’s worth extends no farther than her (or his) ability to satisfy another person’s cravings. From a romantic comedy perspective, sex is a component of an exploratory phase of a relationship and one that precedes expressions of love and loyalty. These are ubiquitous, powerful messages that compete with truth.

A Christian perspective on sex could hardly stand in sharper contrast. There we see that sex belongs to marriage and that marriage has been created by God for a very specific purpose. Before it is anything else, marriage is a picture, a metaphor, of the relationship of Christ and his church.  Within that picture, that representation of Christ and his church, we have sex. Sex is a necessary component of marriage so that a couple desiring to live in obedience to the Bible will regularly have sex together (see 1 Corinthians 7:1-5). And here is where we come to your concern.

While it is always difficult to speak in generalities, it is probably fair to say that more often than not, it is the husband’s physical desire that motivates the sexual relationship. And I think the heart of what you are noting is an apparent contrast between a husband’s physical desires and this picture of Christ and the church. It is a contrast between what we believe sex is meant to be and what sex actually is. Aren’t these things at odds with one another?

Physical, Emotional, Spiritual

Here is what I want you to consider: What if the physical, “the release,” as you call it, isn’t the thing? What if it’s not the point of sex? What if the deepest purpose and meaning of sex is not physical but emotional and spiritual? And what if the physical desire is a God-given gift to compel us to take advantage of all the other benefits that sex brings?

This is where a Christian understanding of sex is so much better and greater than the alternatives. It heightens the purpose and importance of sex by celebrating all that sex is and all that it is meant to be, for it is here that the physical, the emotional and the spiritual come together in the most powerful way. Literally: the most powerful way. There is nothing in the human experience that brings these three together in such dramatic fashion and this is exactly why sex is reserved for the marriage bed. God wants marriage to be a unique kind of relationship and nothing marks marriage’s uniqueness more than sex.

Yet so few people think of sex in such terms. Even sex that is holy before God–sex between a husband and wife–can be marked by sin and ignorance. Few husbands have the words to express to their wives that the physical pleasure and relief that may come through sex are bound up in the much better and greater unity they find in making love to their wives. And yet somewhere they know it, they know that the greatest joy in sex is not orgasmic but in the joy of being body-to-body, soul-to-soul, and completely exposed before another person. The intimacy comes by way of vulnerability. There is no other place where a person is so exposed, so bare, so vulnerable. Sex is a declaration: This is who I am. Sex is a question: Do you accept me as I am? Sex is an answer: I accept you as you are. There is no other place where a person can be so loved and accepted.

This is the point of sex! This is its purpose. And the physical desire is a trigger, a reminder, that motivates us to pursue this kind of intimacy that is so integral to marriage. Not only that, but the physical desire allows this all to be a source of great fun and pleasure. It truly is one of God’s gifts to us.

The Call

I believe there is a call here for husbands to think about sex from a biblical perspective and to learn to express this to their wives. A husband should be able to explain to himself first, and then his wife, that the joy of sex goes far beyond the physical. It is not less than physical, but it is certainly so much more. And the husband needs to live as if this is true. Satan’s greatest victory in the area of sex is making it all about chasing that physical relief while ignoring the much deeper unity. A man can make hate to his wife instead of making love. He can have sex with his wife in such a way that he pursues nothing more than relief for his urges and when he does this he cheapens sex rather than elevates it. Husband, learn to understand and express to your wife what it really means to make love to her.

And there is a call here for wives not to resent the physical component of sex, but to see it as a God-given gift that motivates a husband and wife to pursue sex’s greatest gifts. She needs to understand that a man who is following the leading of his body toward that physical and emotional and spiritual unity, is a man who is looking to his wife for that thing that she and she alone can provide–this one expression of their deepest unity.

The fact is that as Christians we are good at teaching what sex is not, but not nearly as skilled at teaching what sex actually is and what it is meant to be and to display. The reality is far better, far more satisfying, than so many of us believe.

Find the original article here.