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Episode Notes
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TranscriptIntroduction
Welcome to the tail end of Season 35. We’re quickly winding down and preparing for Season 36, and let me tell you, I just outlined the content for it, and I’m so excited. I don’t know why I didn’t have this idea for a season of content before.
Anyway, we’re not there yet; we’re here, and isn’t that just like our parenting. We’re frequently tempted to always be looking ahead to some perceived “better days” in the future, but what we need to be doing is focusing on where we are now and how God would have us worship Him by parenting our kids for His glory. So, that’s why we’re going to talk about how to convince your kids. That’s what parenting is. If it’s not convincing our kids to eat their vegetables and finish their homework, it must include convincing our kids that God is amazing and that He deserves our submission. So, to that end, we have free episode notes, a transcript, and related resources linked for you in the description of this episode to help you become a more convincing parent. Topic
“I need to ‘convince’ my kid better?” Okay, fine, I know it doesn’t sound very touch-feely or even spiritual. Use whatever word you want—persuade, influence, assure, prompt, urge. The key is, if we’re only ever providing information, but we’re not doing it in a convincing way, why would our kids need or want to take our advice?
Too much parenting is presented as a negotiable. “It’s what I do, but it may not be what you do.” And that’s fair. There are a lot of things I do and wear and eat that my kids don’t have to do and wear and eat in order to glorify God. Christian liberty is a thing. But there many more non-negotiables God expects us to present to our kids as the only option for life and godliness. So, if were going to rear them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, if we’re going to talk about the things of God when we’re rising and walking and sitting and lying down, then shouldn’t we do so in a way that convinces our kids they actually need this information? I think so, and so does God. That’s why the writers of the Scripture weren’t just providing us information. They were urging and explaining all with the hopes that we would believe and act on what they were teaching us. One of the best examples of this is John 20:30-31, “Many other signs Jesus also did in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.” John absolutely wanted to convince us the things of which he testified were true and worthy of life-altering change. But before we dive any deeper into this process, it’s really important that I remind you of our current initiative. We’re trying to raise more annual support by September of 2026. That will be our 10th anniversary of podcasting, and we’re praying that our non-profit can finally become financially sustainable. You can visit truthloveparent.com/donate to learn more, but we’re hoping that you’ll partner with us to equip families all over the globe to better worship and glorify God. It may be $10 or $20 or even $100 dollars a month. We’re not really asking much. But when a bunch of God’s people come together and give, we’ll be able to teach more people, create more content, and counsel more families in more persuasive ways. So please visit TruthLoveParent.com/donate to learn more. Alright, why do your kids do what they do? They do what they do and say what they say and feel what they feel because they want what they want. And they want what they want because they believe what they believe about God, His Word, and themselves. God boils this truth down and illustrates the negative reality of it in Proverbs 16:2 and 25. Proverbs 16:2 says, “All the ways of a man are pure in his own sight, But Yahweh weighs the motives.” And Proverbs 16:25 tells us, “There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.” We did an episode all about what happens when your family does what’s right in its own eyes because when we’re truly convinced of something (for the good or for the bad) it will direct the course of our lives. The point I’m making is that your kids are absolutely convinced they’re right. They believe their way is pure. It seems totally right to them. But here we are trying to convince them that something else is better. They’re convinced they’re right, but we’re telling them something that looks wrong to them is better than what they think is best. Faced with this extremely difficult task, there are two not-so-great ways most parents approach their calling, and one we all need to start using more. 1. Leave your child to figure it out on their own. These parents will say things like “Since there’s no way I’m going to convince them, I’ll just trust they’ll come to the truth in their own time and way.” I have family members who take this approach to talking to their kids about God. They don’t want to “force God on them,” so they’re just sitting back and hoping their kids somehow get it by osmosis. Of course, if I’m being honest, those family members don’t have a very good understanding of Who God is to begin with. But this is not the way. In Proverbs 29:15 the Lord teaches "The rod and reproof give wisdom, But a child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother.” Whether it’s by your help or the assistance of someone else, no one comes to God on their own. We all need to be persuaded by someone. The Holy Spirit is pleased to use God’s people to be salt and light in the world to bring people to God . . . to convince them through His truth and His power that they need Him. Left to themselves, children will only bring shame to a godly mother and father. This is why Proverbs 22:6 commands, "Train up a child according to his way, Even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Episode 94 is an oft-overlooked stand alone episode, but it’s so important. It’s called “How to Train Your Child to Stay with God” and it picks apart this verse to help us better understand God’s plan for how we train our kids. The point is, they need to be convinced. They need to be persuaded so that they’ll participate in the Christ-honoring training. Biblical parenting is never passive. It’s an active endeavor. Therefore, we should never leave our kids to just figure these important truths out on their own. They need to be shown from the pages of Scripture Who God is and how He would have us worship Him with our lives. Because of this reality, other parents will . . . 2. Tell your kids how to live. Even though I don’t agree with him on all of his biblical takes, Nick Freitas is a man I respect. I recently saw a video in which he discussed how a lot of Christian parents think their parenting style is teaching their kids biblical truth when—in actuality—it’s just creating an authority structure in which the kids are to live. And it’s when that authority structure changes when the child goes to college or on the job or in marriage that the parents realize their kids were never convinced by all the telling and legislating and authority structures they created. How do the parents figure that out? Well, the kids end up following the new authority in their lives even though it contradicted the authority structure the had growing up. Since the child had no real foundation of truth they believed, if the next authority sounds convincing, why wouldn’t they just go along with them? The New Testament illustrates many individuals who are easily swayed by falsehood. They’re described as having no foundation, being blind, and being like a leaf on the wind. They go wherever the wind blows. But a person has to be convinced in order to stand against the raging tide and go against the current. They have to be so persuaded that they will sprint hard against the crowd when the entire world is running the opposite direction. They have to firmly believe the truth for them to want to fight the daily spiritual warfare raging right now in your home. If they’re not convinced, if they simply exist within the current authority context because they want to avoid consequences or conflict, then they’re going to continue living just like that when they get out into the world. They’re going to continue to want to avoid consequences and conflict, only now they’ll have to go along with worldly belief systems. This is exactly what happened with the children of Israel. They had a theocratic government, but the influence of the nations around them pulled them away from God. The same thing happened to Judas. So, don’t leave your child to figure it out on their own, but also don’t just tell them what to do. Telling isn’t convincing. Teaching isn’t inherently persuasive. I’ve been a professional educator since 2007, and I’ve studied education since the 80’s. We’re fools if we think that just because I have a nice personalty and stand up in a room and speak truth that people will be absolutely convinced of that truth. Some will. The soft hearts will. But the hard hearts can’t even understand what they’re hearing, the rocky hearts will accept the authoritative construct until they don’t have to any more, and the thorny hearts will embrace it until they don’t want to anymore. Listen, there’s a place for lecturing, haranguing, soap-boxing, teaching, and other forms of knowledge-impartation. But it’s not good enough. As we learned in the Biblical Parenting Essentials, it’s not until our kids actually participate in our teaching that we can move from the teaching and reproof stages of parenting into the correction and training stages. But our kids are absolutely not going to participate in those stages unless they are convinced it’s best. They’re only going to do what’s right in their own eyes. Now, even though that phrase is most often used to describe destructive thinking, what if your children were convinced that God’s way was best? What if following Him was right in their eyes? And that’s what we need to do. We need to . . . 3. Help your children choose truth for themselves. Now, please notice that despite my call to be convincing, this third point wasn’t, “We need to convince our kids.” I didn’t say that for a couple reasons. The first is that we don’t have any ultimate control over whether or not they choose to believe what we present them . . . even if we’re the most convincing person on the planet. Jesus was perfect. He performed miracles. There was no human more convincing than Jesus, but so many weren’t convinced. The second reason is that we need to understand how to be more convincing. We don’t simply need an inspirational call to be more convincing, we need steps. So—generally speaking—we need to focus our parenting toward helping our kids choose truth for themselves. Imagine if Proverbs 16:2 said, “All the ways of your child are pure in his sight because Yahweh is his motivation.” And imagine if Proverbs 16:25 read, “There is a way which seems right to your child, because its end is the way of life.” Instead of waiting for your spiritually dead or immature child to wander into the truth of God and hopefully embrace it for their own, instead of constraining your child to outwardly walk God’s path even though they don’t truly believe it, how about we help our children to know, understand, embrace, and choose to for themselves? And—listen—before I go on, I know that many Christian parents believe that’s what they’re already doing. We believe that by teaching and reproving our kids, we’re helping them choose God for themselves, but—as was said before—far too often our kids are simply going along with what we told them because they want to avoid consequences or they’re Rocky-Hearted and merely mentally assent to the lifestyle. And I know this kind of convincing parenting is daunting. It requires more of us. It’ll take more time. It will sometimes feel like we have less control (which is fine because we never really had any control at all in the first place). So, let’s consider one Old Testament and one New Testament version of this kind of parenting and end our time with a four step formula for being more convincing by the grace of God. In I Samuel 3:8-10, we learn about young Samuel hearing the voice of the Lord at night. Samuel went to Eli thinking that Eli had called him. Eli sent him back to bed because Eli had no idea about what Samuel was talking. After the third time, Eli—likely more awake now than he was the first two times—finally discerned that God was calling Samuel and said, “Go lie down, and it shall be if He calls you, that you shall say, ‘Speak, Yahweh, for Your slave is listening.’” Eli didn’t choose to handle the situation himself. He didn’t even have to be there with Samuel. He simply instructed Samuel and went back to sleep. In the short letter to Philemon, we read how Paul was encouraging Philemon to forgive and restore his former slave, Onesimus. In verse 8 we read, “Therefore, though I have much boldness in Christ to command you to do what is proper, 9 yet for love’s sake I rather plead with you.” In verses 12-14 we read, “I have sent him back to you in person, that is, my very heart, 13 whom I intended to keep with me, so that on your behalf he might minister to me in my chains for the gospel, 14 but without your consent I did not want to do anything, so that your goodness would not be, in effect, by compulsion but voluntary.” And in verse 21 we read, “Having confidence in your obedience, I write to you, since I know that you will do even more than what I say.” At least three times in this letter we hear Paul saying, “You know what’s right. I don’t need to tell you what to do—though I could. I trust you’ll please the Lord.” Now, again, it’s easy to think that our usual teaching and reproof is setting our child up for success, and—I want to be fair—sometimes it is. By God’s grace and the prompting of the Holy Spirit, our children truly submit to the teaching and reproof with a genuine love for God. But even in those cases, they will mature faster and become stronger as we follow these steps. A. We need to know the truth. We can’t convince our children of God’s truth if we don’t know it or understand it correctly. And I need to say this clearly--none of us know and understand as much as we think. All of us need to continue learning and understanding and believing and growing. Too many parents think they’re okay or they know enough. But none of us do. We absolutely must continue learning so we can teach better and be more convincing. B. We need to teach how children what is right and wrong and reprove them when they do wrong. We need to teach accurately. We need to teach passionately. We need to teach consistently, and we need to teach persuasively. In addition, we absolutely need to model the teaching of our mouths in our daily lives because “Do as I say, not as I do,” is wicked and dangerous. Of course, we have so many episodes about teaching and reproving including The Biblical Parenting Essentials Series. It’s going to involve teaching their knowledge, teaching their understanding, and teaching their application. Now, don’t be confused, I’ve never suggested that we stop teaching and reproving. We simply need to do it differently. And those different steps are next. C. Ask your child to connect the current situation to God’s will. This can be as simple as, “So, we’ve decided that we’re going to take our family vacation to the grandparents’ house in Indiana. Can you give me some reasons this may or may not glorify God?” The child isn’t making the decision, but they will have to give at least one biblical example of how the Lord might be pleased or displeased by this course of action or facets of it. Another example may be, “Can you think of some biblical principles or commands or character traits of God that support your current bedtime?” Before I go on, you might be thinking, “Aaron, I can’t even begin to imagine anything the Bible says that would affect my child’s bedtime!” If you’re feeling that way, trust me, I understand. However, since the Bible gives us everything we need for life and godliness, our being ill-prepared to connect God’s Word to our lives is evidence that there’s more learning we need to do. By the way, how can we teach our kids to make Christ-honoring choices for Christ-honoring reasons when we’re making our decisions for any and every reason other than God? You can also ask your children to connect God’s truth to the family’s media. You can pause the movie to ask your kids what God’s Word has to say about the scene you just watched. This is the spiritual equivalent of word problems in math. It invites the child to step away from mere verse memorization and see how the truths of Scripture have to connect and impact our daily lives. If your child presents a biblically accurate observation, you know they’re growing wiser. If, however, they’re off on their theology or application, you know they still need more teaching in this area—or the spiritual life necessary to discern the Scriptures. Normally, these are the things we’d want to simply tell our kids. We might stop a movie to tell the kids that what is being portrayed is wrong. Your kids may hear your admonishment (or not) and register it (or not) waiting for the movie to be back on, but they weren’t exercising their own spiritual muscles. It’s like watching someone else lift weights—boring and unproductive for me. And you can parent like this in literally any area. It can revolve around future choices, good choices, money choices, past choices, bad choices, relationship choices, hypothetical choices, and so many more. And when your kids have shown a pattern of knowing, understanding, trusting, and applying God’s Word accurately and consistently to life . . . D. Give your child practice making their own Christ-honoring choices. Now, listen carefully. Yes, I am suggesting that you stop making every single decision for your kids. I’m not saying that you won’t make any of them, I’m simply saying you need to stop making all of them. Your kids absolutely need to make more and more decisions as soon as possible. They have to exercise this muscle before they’re out from under your authority. Remember we’re trying to help them internalize God’s will so that they’ll pursue it—it’ll be right in their eyes—regardless of who their authority is or what their influences expect of them. You cannot wait until their 18 to say, “Well, okay I’m not going to make any of your decisions for you anymore. You have to do it all yourself.” That is so hateful and dangerous! If they haven’t had copious teaching and reproving and correcting and training and testing and practice making the right choices their whole life . . . they’re absolutely going to fail because they don’t know what they’re doing! Sure, by God’s grace, some will flourish, but most won’t. And I know. I counsel the ones who don’t and rarely hear about the ones who do. So, what does this kind of parenting sound like? Here’s just one example: “I know you had a bad dream, but how does God want you to respond to it? Does He say you can’t sleep unless you’re in my bed? Does He give you any guidance for this decision? What do you think?” “Listen, Aaron, I think you’ve finally gone too far. Do you really expect a child who’s young enough to still want to sleep in my bed if they had a bad dream to know what God has to say on the subject?” Well, if you don’t know and you haven’t taught them and you haven’t given them opportunities to connect God’s Word to real life, then absolutely not. They won’t be able to do this. However, I know for certain that children who’ve been taught and reproved and tested absolutely can make the mature decision when we relinquish it to them. I’ve seen it happen over and over. Now, you might wonder what we need to do if they make the wrong or foolish decision. Well, it depends on the situation. It may be something that we can safely let them fail in order for them to recognize the consequences of their bad choice. Consequences are a very important part of the convincing process. But this will depend completely on the child, the decision, and the consequences of their actions. It’s one thing to teach, it’s another to be negligent. But let’s consider some examples for older children before we finish. “Does God want you to eat all the food on your plate? How do you know? What does His Word say?” “You’re going to need to make a decision about how much time to allot for playing video games. What would the Lord have you do, and can you support it from the Scripture?” “Would God be glorified by you starting this book series? How might you know for sure?” “What are the biblical commands and principles you have to consider before accepting or declining that job offer? “Do you believe it will please the Lord for you to be romantically involved with that person? What does the Bible say about such relationships?” When was the last time you asked your child a question like this? I’m guessing, if you’re anything like I am, you’ve either never done it, or it’s been a while. It’s so much easier and faster to just tell our kids what to do. But though we might be setting up an appropriate expectation for behavior or creating a sound authoritative framework for their lives, we’re not teaching our kids to understand the truth and apply it for themselves because they believe it to be right. Eli could trust Samuel to make the right choice because he’d been teaching and observing and assessing Samuel his whole life. Paul could confidently trust Philemon to make the right decision in regard to Onesimus because—I guarantee you—this was not the first time Paul lead Philemon to make the Christ-honoring decision or watched him choose to glorify God all on his own. Now, before we conclude, let me be clear. There are still going to be so many decisions you need to make for your kids. Which ones are they? You need to make the ones that failing to make correctly will irreparably hurt them physically or spiritually. All the rest, you need to be turning over to them as soon as possible. Conclusion
In conclusion, if you want to convince your kids to follow the Lord, you need to do four things.
First, you need to know what it is to follow the Lord. Second, you need to teach your kids how to follow the Lord. But don’t stop there. Third, give them opportunities to connect the truth of God to actual life. And fourth, relinquish appropriate decision making to them as soon as they’ve consistency shown they’re able to connect God’s Word biblically to life. We need to know, teach, connect, and relinquish. This process will be far more convincing than merely telling them what to do. And—Lord willing—what seems right to our kids will be the truth they’ve seen and understood and put to use in their lives. Please share this episode with your friends, and email us at [email protected] or leave a voicemail at (828) 423-0894 if we can assist you in the amazing task that is your parenting. And then join us next time as we discuss How to Be a Courageous Parent. I’ll see you then.
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