Discover even more places to enjoy Truth.Love.Parent.TranscriptIntroduction
I’m your host Aaron Michael Brewster, and I’m very happy to be getting back behind the mic for this — Season 23 of the Truth.Love.Parent. podcast.
I pray the special guest episodes from last season were a challenge and encouragement for you, and I pray that the topics and discussions that we have lined up for this season will help you better worship God with your parenting. Topic
For those of you who have been with the show for a while, you recognize that we’ve changed our introduction a couple of times.
Our newest intro reflects the maturing heartbeat of Truth.Love.Family. You see, it’s too easy to pursue selfish self-help and all the tips, tricks, and life hacks that are guaranteed to make our family life run more smoothly. But the reality is that such an approach is more often than not a mere act of self-worship. If I want something because I want it more than I want something because God wants it, I’m worshipping self. Did you know that Jesus didn’t heal every sick person he encountered? At the pool of Bethesda, He only healed one person out of the many that were there. When Jesus was in His own home town, Mark tells us that “He could do no mighty work there.” And Jesus told His disciples to leave a city if the people there didn’t receive their words. My point is that many people would have wanted to be healed, but if that’s all they wanted, often times they didn’t receive healing. The same thing happens in our parenting. I know that I’ve done this, and I know that I’ve met many people who have done this as well. We want our kids to change, we want our spouse to change, we want some kind of change in our family, and we pray and pray, and nothing happens. Now, there are many reasons for this, but I know — for me — often times my fervent prayers and my passionate work to rectify the issue was for my own personal desire with no thought to God. I wanted this good thing, but I wanted it — ultimately — for my own best interest. Yes, I acknowledged that the change would be beneficial for my child or spouse, and, yes, I recognized that the thing I wanted for my family was biblical, but the most important part of the equation — though I would have never admitted it — was that I just wanted the bad stuff to stop. I was annoyed, I was frustrated, I was angry, I was afraid, and I wanted the wrong behavior to go away. And God never promises to bless those who don’t draw near to Him. God never blesses sin, and whatever is not of faith in God is sin. And I meet families all the time the are either trying to achieve a better home life for the glory of themselves, or I see people who have no interest in a biblical home life because it’s not what they like, and God is not pleased with either of them. On the other hand, as I read through the Gospels I find it interesting to see who and how Jesus did heal people. Just recently I was reading about how Jesus encountered a blind man named Bartimaeus. He so badly wanted to get Jesus’ attention that he was making quite a racket and annoying the people around him. Well, Jesus finally approached him, He asked, “What do you want me to do for you?” Of course, Christ knew the answer, but this was Bartimaeus’ chance, and what did he say? He said, “Lord, to regain my sight.” And Luke 18:42-43 relates, “And Jesus said to him, ‘Receive your sight; your faith has made you well.’ 43 Immediately he regained his sight and began following Him, glorifying God; and when all the people saw it, they gave praise to God.” I’m going to argue that there was something that Bartimaeus had in common with the majority of people Jesus healed. They weren’t focused solely on the benefit they would receive, they had faith in Christ. Whether that faith was as superficial as, “I believe this man is capable of making me better,” or it was faith that identified Jesus as the Messiah, it wasn’t merely a self-focused desire. Bartimaeus called Jesus “master.” After he had been healed he glorified God to such degree that everyone who witnessed it started praising God too. Bartimaeus’ focus was clear. Yes, he wanted to regain his sight, but more than that, he wanted to regain his sight to the glory of God. And that’s how we need to approach our family change. “Yes, Lord, I desire for my family to do right, but I desire it because it’s what You deserve. I want my family to be to the praise of Your name. I want You to receive the worship that You deserve.” And that’s why our newest intro says, “Parenting is just one way Christian dads and moms are to worship God.” And that’s why we exist, we’re here to glorify God by training dads and moms to give God the preeminence in their parenting. So, this Season we’re going to have 13 total episodes — one of which will be our 500th episode — all about how you can worship God better in your parenting ministry. We’re going to discuss “The Best Way to Set Up Your Kids for Failure.” I know, that doesn’t sound at all like what we want to do, but — you know me — I believe that it’s too easy to compare ourselves with the positive commands in Scripture and conveniently see all the ways we’re supposedly fulfilling them in our lives. However, when we stop to look at the sinful habits and the bad parenting styles and the destructive family choices, we often don’t even have to try to see how often we fall into them. So, yes, that episode is going to discuss various ways we set our kids up for failure so that we can root out those behaviors in our own parenting, but we’ll also talk about how to — instead — set our kids up for spiritual success. Then we plan to have a two part episode that seeks to answer the question whether it’s a good idea for older children to be in charge of younger children. It happens all the time in our houses, but if it’s not done the right way, it’s absolutely disastrous. Then it’s my plan to have a four part series which will answer questions that many of your have sent to us — questions about punishments and consequences. Yeah, as a biblical family counselor, I encounter those questions a lot, and I’m glad I do because we need to worship God in how we give consequences just like we need to worship Him in everything else we do. After that, we’re going to discuss “The Best Version of Your Kids.” You know, it’s really easy for us to imagine who are kids will be or should be. In fact, we start doing that before our kids are born, and sometimes we have those day-dreams before we’re out of high school. But what really is the best version of our kids? Thankfully, the Bible provides principles that will help us lead our kids into God’s best for them — whether or not that aligns with our hopes and dreams for them. And then we hope to close this season with a four part series about Parenting a Lying Child. This too is a topic that many of you have been asking us to cover, and I look forward to doing so. We plan to deal with a ton of biblical data on the subject, but I also want to provide you with some extra-biblical tools that might help you better identify lies and truth. Conclusion
Once again, thank you for joining us for this 23rd Season, our upcoming 500th episode, and a ton of free content designed to help you better worship God in your parenting.
Please be sure to subscribe to the show so you don’t miss a moment, and head over to TruthLoveParent.com to get your hands on even more parenting resources. And — as always — please share this episode on your favorite social media outlets so that other dads and moms can be introduced to TLP. And I look forward to meeting with you next time as we once again open God’s Word to discover how to best worship God with our parenting. To that end, we’ll be discussing “The Best Way to Set Up Your Kids for Failure.”
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