In This Episode We Discuss:

• You don’t want your kids to be living double lives when they are in their teenage years
• Allow your kids to experience sowing and reaping
• Symptoms of a control drive parent
• It’s vital to reflect
• We must practice long-suffering with our kids

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet SUBSCRIBE HERE

Joshua 24:15 – “And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Galatians 5:15-17 – “But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”

2 Timothy 2:24-28 – “And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.”

Colossians 3:21 – “Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.”

Ephesians 6:4 – “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

2 Peter 3:9 – “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

Ephesians 4:1-2 – “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,”

Full Transcript:

Welcome to Courageous Parenting Podcast, a weekly show with parents with biblical truth on raising confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

Hi, I’m Angie from Courageous Mom, and I’m Isaac from Resolute Man. We’ve been married for 21 years and have seen the fruit from raising our eight kids biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the Bible, we can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children.

Too many children from Christian families are walking away from their faith by age 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting and.

Hey, welcome back to the podcast, everyone. Hey, guys, it is late at night, you can’t see us unless you’re on Rumble.

That’s where we are now on the video version. But it is late at night, almost 11. There’s a lot going on our lives.

You know, the remodel, the move, the ministry, the reparenting, the all the things looking for churches.

Also, I have been doing some business consulting lately, so I’m flying here and there around the country.

And that’s been great in a lot of respects.

But it’s to, you know, help pay for the ministry and protecting the ministry and different things.

So and and part of the removal and part of the remodel.

So we have it. So we have a podcast studio. So we’re so excited. You’ve seen some of the inside stories and so forth. It’s coming along really well. We’re doing the labor ourselves. Some friends helped us and it’s coming along. So we’re excited to have a place for a podcast outside of our bedroom.

It’ll be exciting. We’ll also be a place where I mean, you guys know the Austin, our son does our podcast editing. So he’s excited to have a little workspace out there where he can focus outside of the home and get things done, too. So that’s going to be a huge blessing to the ministry.

Yeah, you know, a lot of regards, but we just thought we don’t always do a personal update. And I and we were sitting here late at night shooting a second podcast. And you’re super pregnant, aren’t you? Yes, I’m I am tired.

And I think a lot of times the reason why we wanted to share this, I think a lot of times people can see things on Instagram or on social media or they think they know, but they really you know, we want to be really transparent that we basically wake up.

When did we wake up first? It varies some time between five and six in the morning usually, and then between doing ministry stuff and working hard all day long.

And I home schooling. You’re working on ministry staff or taxes or whatever right now, and we get to bed late. And so yes, it can be praying for us.

This is actually a bit like how we do life and adventure.

So it’s definitely adventure. This is part two, by the way, of is your parenting relationship or control driven? And if you haven’t, listen to part one, definitely do that. But this you know, you’ll get a lot out of this. Even if you haven’t listened to part one, you could do an opposite order if you’d like. No problem. But also also notes are at CourageousParenting.com And video of this episode, too. And any resources we mention. Also Courageous Mom is a great site for information. And you guys know we’ve all kinds of different products to help support our family in the ministry, which is a home schooling blueprint. It’s incredible. Tons of people have gotten a lot out of the parent mentor program. Lots of free resources like Healthy Home Mom Hack’s workshop you can sign up for with Angie or the Courageous Parenting Workshop, Free workshops. About thirty five minutes or so. People are raving about it. Thousands of people have gone through that. That’s free. Completely free.

Of course, it, you know, gives you an insight into the parent mentor program at the end, but stands alone as a great resource and also the Christian postpartum course and pregnancy and postpartum bundle that comes with a book, a workbook, a bunch of scripture cards, and then reading childbirth, which has been a longstanding best selling book and changed so many people’s lives and frankly, is influenced. A lot more people have kids, too.

I would say so, yes. It’s interesting, although that’s not actually what the book’s about purpose.

That’s not what the book’s about, that when people feel empowered and they deal with all of the heart issues that hold them back in just life and in motherhood in general, they grow to a place where they they are more welcoming of more.

So, hey, we’re dedicated and committed to full time ministry. We have been for two years now together. And just because I’m doing some consulting work doesn’t mean we’re not completely focused. In fact, it was just needed, frankly.

Sometimes when you’re praying for God to provide provision, he will gift you with blessings, which we have been gifted. This house with me was a huge blessing. Yeah, at a time in need.

And we were praying for that specifically for a year and a half. That’s a fun story we’ll share someday. But then sometimes he provides opportunities where you still have to put in the effort in the work. He provides the work, right? Yeah. And so that’s kind of what I’ve been doing.

Business consulting, super fun, having fun with it, by the way. It’s super, super interesting. And working with leaders. It’s great. OK, let’s dive in. So the first thing, by the way, you definitely want to listen is because you don’t want your kids to end up living double lives. We’ll talk more about that.

You know, you guys the first at. So we covered some really important things just yet in part one, if you’re just now getting on, I really want to encourage you to go listen to part one. First, this is part two of this series. And I’m going to I’m going to open with a scripture in John Chapter 17 17, because it is about the truth, which is an important aspect to what we ended on in the first podcast, which was making sure that you have your world view soaked in the truth, but also that you are soaking your children in the truth so that their world view is a biblical worldview, not a worldly, secularized world view. It says in Chapter 17, verse 17 of John, sanctify them by your truth, capital y for your mean Jesus. Your word is truth as you sent me into the world. I also have sent them into the world and for their sakes, I sanctify myself that they also may be sanctified by the truth. That is what God wants for all of us as believers. That’s what He wants for our kids.

He wants them to be sanctified by the truth. And he sent us out just like he sent out his disciples to make disciples. That’s what parenting is. You are disciple making. And part of that is that you would sanctify them by God’s truth.

So we just wanted to reiterate that last point from the previous podcast before we dive in to the first point, which is sowing and reaping so important that we understand the power of sowing, reaping in your kids lives, meaning that when you’re a control driven parent, you may be preventing the learning experiences of what you sow. You reap happening in your kids. And while we don’t want to just let our kids make all mistakes, we do want to give them enough freedom to make some mistakes that aren’t life altering, of course, and and to learn from them. And so we don’t want to be those helicopter parents that are controlling every aspect of our lives. We say we say so much that they don’t actually ever get into a position where you have to talk to them about their saying, yeah, we absolutely believe that while they’re in our homes, they should be given freedom. And when they make the mistakes that you build, the kind of relationship with them, where they want to come with you, there’s the relation driven parenting and talked to you openly about it and get your advice and so forth. That’s part of the reason why we allow our teenagers to be on social media with parameters and so forth and with all of them have smartphones at a certain point and different things like that, because we would rather them experience those things while they’re in our homes versus for the first time when you know we’re right, not right next to them, maybe they moved out or something.

Yeah, we talk more about that in depth, actually, than the last video and the parent mentor program.

Originally, we talk about all these hard issues, topics that you need to discuss with your kids as well.

But I think that there’s another element to this, too, about making good choices. Where I was just thinking about this.

We’ve talked to parents about this many times. When your kids are younger, when you spend more time, when they’re really little, helping them to memorize the word of God. So that’s written on their heart, right. Because this is where the commandments of God are in this word.

And then you’re holding them accountable and you’re spending a lot of time teaching, teaching, teaching. It’s kind of like when you’re teaching someone how to bake biscuits or you’re teaching them how to make Christmas cookies. You’re teaching you don’t just give your kids the the freedom to do it all. You don’t just give them paint and a paint brush and paper and hope that your kid knows what to do with it. You teach them when they’re little. Right, because they don’t know what they’re doing. It’s just like playing Plato.

All the things that we do with our kids. We actually sit down and we go, this is how you make a ball. This is how you make a little thing. This is right.

Right. So we’re teaching, teaching, teaching.

If you do more teaching, teaching, teaching and training and you are soaking them in the word of God so that they know the difference between the truth and God’s morality, God’s right and wrong.

Then as they get older, you can go like this. You don’t have to be so hands on with all the teaching, teaching, teaching, teaching.

You can be more hands off as they get older because you did the hard work when they were younger. Yeah. And a lot of times parents don’t want to do that because it can take I mean, let’s just give you an example. Teaching your kids how to read.

I love being the person that gets to celebrate and rejoice when my kids learn how to read.

Right. If I get to be a part of it. Totally.

And I think a lot of parents miss out on how exciting those first milestones, like losing your first tooth, all these like fun first milestones when you’re a parent and you get to do that with them, it’s a big, big deal. But teaching a kid how to read can be hard. Especially certain personalities, and if your persona is different than theirs, their learning styles can be difficult, stretching patience, it stretches your patience, it sanctifies you as a parent, right.

And so a lot of parents choose not to do that because it’s just too hard for them, actually.

And I’m bringing this up because sometimes when it comes to actually training your kids up, a lot of parents don’t do the hard work in teaching them and in training them when they’re younger because it’s defined as a parent.

But we have to realize that that’s part of the beautiful aspect of the dynamics of families, that God wants us to be sanctified in the truth, as we’re also helping our kids to understand the truth. And it can be a beautiful process where you’re actually growing up in the Lord together if you have a humble heart.

And there that’s the relationship part, understanding that you’re a child of God and that this is your child, which is also a child of God. Yeah. And being open to still having a teachable heart and not knowing at all. Right.

And so making good choices starts with you actually starts with you being willing to make the hard choice to do the hard work when they’re little. And maybe you have some teenagers and you’re like, oh, I missed it. Well, let me just tell you, it’s never too late to chase after your kids heart, it’s never too late to have a good cup of coffee with your kid and apologize across the table and say, I didn’t know what I was doing and I did the best I could. But I just need to say I’m sorry because I was not involved as much as I feel like God was. God’s word tells us to. And I hope you do things differently, like that’s what God wants of us.

Yeah, but that’s a hard thing. So you make good choices. They’ll start making good choices. And sometimes we can be too quick to answer their questions, too. I’ve talked about this before, but it’s a good reminder if you already heard it, which is, you know, if they come and ask you a question, sometimes you’re just going to answer it for sure.

But discern when those opportunities are to challenge them a little bit to give you an answer first. And the reason that is, is because people who come up with their own solution are more likely to implement it. People are smart, your kids are smart. And taking the coach approach sometimes is really powerful, which is they come and ask you a question and then maybe you ask another follow up question before you say something else. And then and then you ask them, well, what have you thought about so far in regards to the solution? And then they go, well, I haven’t really well, what would you do, what comes to your mind? And now you’re teaching them how to be strong thinkers and then you can work on their solution. Maybe you should add something to it. Maybe they are wrong and you go, you know, that is a good thought, but have you thought about this? And they go, Oh, I haven’t thought about that. I go, well, that, you know, might be a good way to think about that and so forth. But you want to create strong independent thinkers. In fact, we did a whole podcast on that so you can go look for it. But super important control driven parenting is more quick to answer. Give them all the answers, create the least resistance for your kids, belive you get rid of any obstacles in their path no matter what they are. And that’s not really the case. When have you learned the most? When if you gained the most, when have you relied on God the most? It is when things are challenging sometimes and we don’t want to be so controlled driven that we eliminate challenges from our kids lives. I think the most loving, the most loving thing to do sometimes is to allow them to experiences the repercussions of what they.

So, you know, it’s interesting, too, because there’s this find it’s a very fine balance because there is a jurisdiction and a responsibility for parents at the same time while letting your kids experience the consequences.

So, for example, there are parents who they think that the most loving thing that they can do for their kids is bail them out of every potential disaster that they get into versus letting them actually experience the consequences. I would say that that’s actually the most hurtful because then that kid doesn’t learn the lesson actually.

Right. They don’t they don’t reap what they saw, which is a spiritual law that none of us are able to hide from. Right.

But there is also this element of some people would call it controlling, but it’s actually most loving is to have vision and leadership. So one example that I think of as parents who want to say, well, I want my kids to choose so I’m not going to like I’m not going to read the Bible too much or I’m not. I want them to be exposed.

I’ve heard this from Eden surprisingly before a lot.

And and where they’re like I want it to be their heart is I want it to be genuine. I want them to choose Jesus, not because of me.

And I just think to myself, where does it say that in the Bible, like in Deuteronomy reread and didn’t want me to teach them Deuteronomy 11 in every room, in your house, in your doorpost, when you stand, when you walk, when you lie down, you’re going to teach your children God’s commandments.

You’re going to teach them this that the historical recalling of the testimonies that are in this word of what God has done over and over again. And then you read verses in Joshua like Joshua twenty four that says, But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, which I mean, how many of us have sang that song about me in my house? We will serve. We all have the plaques in our home. But are we serving the Lord? Are we teaching our kids to serve the Lord? This is a leadership role where a leader in a family is saying, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

You know what else could cause someone to let up as if they have the doctrine where they believe that only only so many are called. And, you know, if my kids are chosen, then there’s going to be and they’ll be chosen anyways. There’s nothing that can intercede on that. And, you know, you have to let go of some serious scripture. And she’s talking about we are actually to equip our kids were to teach our kids. Now, the beginning thing you said is we all want our kids to have a genuine relationship with God. But that is not that doesn’t happen because of a lack of you pouring into them. Oftentimes it’s you pouring into them that has a major influence.

Yes. But it’s we can never save our kids. So they just let’s go there for a second.

Only God can save the act of someone being saved from being a sinful person is only through Jesus in their heart.

And it’s a miraculous thing. I mean, soft enough to confess their sins and repent to Jesus Christ is a work that’s happening in them because of the Holy Spirit moving upon them. That’s not something any parent can do. And so the genuineness of that no parent can take credit or boast in. That is God gets all the glory. Amen. And so regardless of what you’re doing over here or not, when that happens, that’s God’s work anyway.

But you are responsible for obeying what God has told you to do as a parent, which is not being reckless and in not being involved.

I think sometimes some of the doctrinal stance. His people take are a tyranny of awe versus the genius of the and as I read in a business book, and I think that, you know, we just said many things that sometimes you think aren’t together, but they actually are all together.

They might sound contradictory to one another, but there actually are altogether no pour into your kids.

You make a huge difference. No, you’re not the one that saves your kids. Jesus does that. But, hey, but you make a big contribution towards them getting to that point. But, hey, you know, you can’t save your kids.

Yeah. So this is the thing the Christian walk is in. This was beautiful.

Our our finite minds not and comprehend what the infinite God can write. And that’s the beautiful part. But this is where the faith and the trust in him comes into play.

And that is what will inspire your kids to go, well, what am I paying? My parents have this. Wow. Yeah, right.

That’s what he says. Have faith like a child. Yeah, I, I’m always encouraged and challenged by that because here we think about all these different theological things and we try to think so deeply on things. And then I am reminded by my own kids over and over again.

Faith like a child. Yeah. And and but that’s the thing though. Kids do have this.

They are very easily to believe things, which is why you can’t just expose your kids to everything because they’re so impressionable and it says God’s word proclaims that it is the literal only truth and the only way to God the father. Yeah. So if you’re exposing your kids to all these other things, guess what? Those are all false gods, potentially idols, that you’re a young child that’s not been equipped and not had the salt poured into them, then they’ve got to discern that.

Yeah. We recently we recently interviewed Ken Ham from answers in Genesis and the Ark Encounter, CEO founder. And you’ve got to go listen to that to talk more about this, the salt and pouring salt in your kids so they can be salty.

And and it was you’ve got to go listen to that super good, powerful interview and I help you.

I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already is the date night one. It is a beautiful document you can download that Will has some key questions on it for your date night. Just get in alignment about what’s most important for your family. No matter what time of year, it’s always important to recalibrate. You can get that by going to CourageousParenting.com and subscribing to our mailing list. Also, you can get all of our show notes and everything, at CourageousParenting.com. And I also just want to share real quick about the Parenting Mentor program. So many families are being transformed by going through this. It’s the six week self-paced program with live engagement for us and even direct interaction. So if you want to join us, here’s a little bit more about it and you can find out more at CourageousParenting.com.

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We now have a game plan to how we want to raise our children. We have so many answers to the questions that have been in our mind.

It’s not just these hypothetical situations or it’s not just this. Here’s what I think you should do. It’s let me show you where in scripture this is.

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One of the best things that we’ve done this year, one of the best investments we’ve made this year, and I could not recommend it more.

We’re no longer fearing dark days ahead, but we’re so excited to raise lights to be leaders for the next generation.

So let’s go into our next point, which is what are the symptoms of a control driven parent?

Ok, so there’s a whole lot. We were when we first started doing this in the last podcast, we mentioned to you a challenge. And I hope that you remember what that challenge was, which is when we go over this, you can think of this in two ways. What are the symptoms or the what you see in control driven parents?

But guys, also, you want to think about the children. Do you observe kids when you go to churches? Do you do you observe your kids friends? Do you observe things and then go, hmmm.

That’s a that’s a symptom of this, that’s a symptom of that, like, do you think that way?

Because that is a type of discernment that God actually calls us to and it gives us insight, compassion, ability to relate, empathy, compassion, all of these things, long suffering, patients, kindness, gentleness. If we living with one another and understanding those things can’t happen unless you start doing some discerning right.

And we need to teach our kids how to do discerning so that they’re then making good choices in their peers. Right? Yeah, but the reality. Is that there are a lot of symptoms of kids that have been controlled by their parents and one of them would be living a double life.

Yeah, lots of kids are living double lives out there. And what a tumultuous thing to have to be someone you’re not you aren’t fully in front of the people you love the most because of the pressure to conform to be a certain way. But their heart is far from it. And you might have little kids right now, but you don’t want that to happen to your kids. A lot of things reteaching when you have young kids, you do them when you have young kids so that when they’re in their teenage years, you love the teenagers. By the way, we absolutely love the teenagers. We have almost five teenagers. And I mean, our 12 year old is mature enough to be a teenager.

People would consider and and it is it is awesome. It is really cool. We do all kinds of things where the teenagers are doing all kinds of interesting things independently and together as a team to and they have their own friends. And it’s cool.

You know, there’s so when we’re going through this list, think about these things. Sometimes controlling parents also have double lives. It’s not just the kids through.

There we go. Because the reality is, is maybe they act a different way at work than they do at church. Yeah. And maybe they’re not just double maybe they got triple lives right where there’s their buddies, their home life, their church life work. Oh, that’s like four different lives. And this is the thing. Kids are more receptive and discerning than you think they are and they see it all and they would call that a hypocrite.

You know, some of these kids is evidence of the real life of the parents, actually.

So one thing that I’ve always said is the human nature. Human nature is interesting when you when you study psychology, study human nature, don’t most people actually have this thing inside them that cares what other people think to a certain degree? I would say so, yeah.

So when you get into places where you see kids purposefully being disrespectful or disobedient or things like that, what I think to myself is if they’re OK doing this in front of other people, then it must be much worse at home in reality. Yeah. This is the reality of life, and it same goes for how parents reactor act, do you set them sane? And so that’s what like for me, it breaks my heart when I see an adult being harsh with their kids, like in the grocery store, and they’re like down and they’re like they’re seen them.

Imagine how much worse it is at home for that child or a kid’s disrespectful to their parents in public, which was so much worse.

Yeah, unless, I mean, there are some situations where kids think it’s cool to be disrespectful. So then they’re like peer pressured into I want those kids to see me doing this to my mom.

Like, there is some of that, like I’ve seen it in the public school, like with sports and stuff potentially. But the reality is that there’s double lives. Yeah. On both sides.

And so control based parents will oftentimes have double lives because what they’re doing in the home, they wouldn’t want anybody else to see or what they’re doing.

They wouldn’t want church people to see what they’re doing at work or when if it’s a lack of relationship driven parenting, then there’s, you know, potentially a challenge with other relationships, too. So let’s talk about symptoms of control driven parenting. So they may not your kids may not tell you the truth, right. That’s a repercussion.

The symptoms that there’s a problem and the kids may be scared of their parents. It’s I’ve also noticed this before. Just it’s interesting how you as you get older.

I remember when I was a young parent, I was more concerned with what other people were seeing in me and my kids, little too much as people pleaser and know if you can relate to that. But then as I as I’ve gotten older and more confident as a Christian mom and walking in the ways of the Lord, I’ve cared less what other people think. And it’s more about just doing what’s right. And I just do in life. But I but I also find that I’m more observant to people around me.

And and when people are caring too much and when people are not and when they’re walking confidently and when they’re not and all these things and one of the things that I’ve noticed sometimes is when a mom will. Look at our kids a certain way or move a certain way and the kid flinches, and that just breaks my heart because I actually see it more with, like dads and the kids, like in sports events and things like that where like a kid and it’s over dumb stuff. I’ve noticed it like you missed that goal.

And the dads, the coach, and he looks at the kid like they’re in a huddle and the kid, like, kind of shudders when he shouldn’t have a reason to shutter. So control based parenting or harsh parenting, you will see kids be fearful and they’ll have different physiological symptoms, body language symptoms. But then there’s that part of the parents where they’re actually so controlling because they’re fear based parents.

Yeah, they’re fearful. Yeah. Because of a lack of trust in God and a lack of trust in their kids. And sometimes it could be warranted if they haven’t parented them all. But you’re exasperating the problem by continuing down a highly control driven approach.

So I just want to share from Second Timothy now. This is obviously we’ve read from Second Timothy a lot about all kinds of things regarding the church meeting, elders, all kinds of things. But you guys, chapter two, verse twenty for this. I believe that this is also for parents because I have been encouraged by this.

And I hope your two sons and a servant of the Lord must. Are you a servant of the Lord? I would say that we all, as parents would say, I want to be a servant of the Lord and a servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle to all.

Is does it say gentle to all except your children now says gentle to all, able to teach patience in humility, correcting those who are in opposition.

And then it goes on, if God perhaps will grant them repentance so that they may know the truth and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil having been taken captive by him to do his will. Some parents need to hear that right now because some parents need their praying for their kids to come to their senses. They’re praying for their kids to be repentant. They’re praying for them to know the truth. What does it say? First, it says that the servant of the Lord must not quarrel, quarrel, but be gentle, able to teach patience and humility, correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps.

And then he’s in control. Yeah. Like you do your part and you give the rest to God because it’s him. Mm hmm. If God, if God perhaps will grant them repentance. Yeah. Because that’s the work that he does in their heart. You can’t transform your kid’s heart, but you can do what you’re called to do first.

Amen. So other symptoms are the Y is missing. So they’re asking their kids to do things. They’re telling them they’re directing them, but they’re not being spending the time to tell them the why behind things. And kids are inquisitive. They’re fresh in the world, you know, depending on how old they are, of course, but fresher than you. And they have less experiences than you.

And so I’ve learned.

They’re trying to understand. They’re wanting to know why. And don’t you want your kids to do things because they know why it’s good for them or why it’s dangerous if they don’t do it, why it’s best, why it has wisdom, why the Bible backs it up, these different things, you know, don’t you want that from them?

I think that’s super important. Colossians three twenty one says fathers do not provoke your children unless they become discouraged.

Such an important thing. Do we exasperate our kids? Do we provoke our kids? And I think, you know, just directing, if there’s too much of that, I do think that’s provoking your kids so we don’t have them.

Or I mean, we’ve gone over this in other podcasts, more in depth on all the different ways that parents can potentially provoke their children.

Yeah, but the reality is, is a controlling parent is. Provoking their child, I mean, the two just kind of go hand in hand when you really think about it, deep down it’s an authority for authorities sake.

It’s like, do what I said. Why? Because I’m your parent. Because I said so.

These things is, you know, by the way, if you if you make a mistake and you see that and you’re impatient, that happens to parents. I don’t want people listening. And leaving with guilt is if this is a consistent way of being, then you should correct something.

There’s something there. Perhaps maybe that conviction is good. We all make mistakes. I just want to say that nobody’s perfect. There’s no perfect parents allowed and courageous parenting because it’s not possible. Yeah, that’s true. You can go listen to that podcast. Guess part of being a courageous parent is being honest about your mistakes because we know we have them. You know, your kids. Another symptom is they don’t want to be together. They don’t want to be around their siblings as they get older. They don’t want to come back for holidays. They don’t they don’t want to be they don’t have a vision of being part of because they have a little bit of disgust for being so controlled.

Another verse that often goes along with the Colossians three. Twenty one is Ephesians six four that says and you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.

And so, again, this is just another reminder that you as a parent have to do what God has called you to do. But that goes in. Can God also cause you to be that loving, patient, long suffering, gentle, kind parent that’s correcting, not provoking your children to wrath? Wrath would be anger, right. And so in all your ways, you’re bringing them up. You’re training them. In the admonition of the Lord.

But you don’t provoke them in what how you do it now, if you haven’t listened to the part one yet, again, we’re not saying be weak parents. We’re not saying just be friends with your kids. You were the parent and you were the authority, God given authority in their lives. They should respect and listen to you.

But we’re more talking about the intent behind and a relational approach to your discipline, a relational approach to your correction, relational approach to the positive times in your life and to when you want them to do something or something like that. What is the relational approach versus a control approach?

Also is relationship with Christ, trust in your kids, trusting God and not being too micromanaging of everything?

I would say that you don’t want to think about micromanaging or helicopter parents. We’ve talked about this before as well. A lot of what we need to do if we are that way as a parent is we need to go. Why? Why do I have such a strong desire for control?

It could just be that you just love your kids. Yeah, I get it. You don’t want them to get hurt. But then there’s also this aspect of have I made an idol out of control? And is this a reflection of me not fully trusting God right now, that doesn’t mean that no rules means that you really trust God.

That’s not what we’re saying. We are not saying, hey, I’m putting my kids in public school. I trust God more than you. Right. Like, that’s not that’s not what I’m talking about here. What I’m saying is, if you have an obsession with control because there are some parents that struggle with OCD, there is a need for you to be introspective and honest and go, is this because I’m not trusting God and I think I have control because control is actually a facade in a lot of regards. And I need a real good reality check in the word of God, because that’s something that we all need to reflect on.

Yeah, so and that is the next point, which is to reflect reflect on your childhood is part of how you were treated or that maybe, you know, things that happen to you coming forward and I don’t know about you, but is good or bad or whatever your childhood was, I wanted to lead an even better experience for my kids.

And and I just think that we should all desire that. I hope our kids desire that that they want to lead an even better experience for their kids because we’re learning they’re learning from us. Shouldn’t they stand on our shoulders? Shouldn’t we stand on our parents shoulders or even in some of your cases, a lack of any shoulders to stand on? That can be true for you, too. So and then reflect on a date night and ask each other some hard questions and some fun questions, too, about this second, Peter three, verse nine says the Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some count slackness.

Ok. But is long suffering, he is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

And we need to to read that first for ourselves as parents. But then secondly, we need to teach it to our kids. And we need to remember that we are called to be longsuffering just as God, our father is long suffering with us.

I think that there is an aspect of relationship driven parenting that I would I would characterize longsuffering as more, well, relationship driven because you’re you’re sticking to your guns.

He’s not being slack. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise. OK, so you’re not being slack as a parent. Yeah. As someone count slackness. That’s what you know. But you are long suffering, your patient, your kind, your gentle in the way that you’re correcting your kids. And and I we actually looked up the definition of long suffering that says having our showing.

Having her showing. Patients in spite of troubles, especially those caused by other people, and how many times have we felt like, you know, maybe our kids do something that throws off our agenda? Right. We take that a little too personally and we correct. Or we have we have them go corner. We put them in timeout or whatever you’re doing.

And maybe you lose your temper. And it’s because you took that offense to personally.

Yeah, and the reality is that real love, relational driven parenting is going to show patience in spite of those troubles. And oftentimes, you know, as your kids get older, there may be really long periods of trial and, you know, there’s a lot of parents that we talked to that have that and we went on a model long suffering for our kids.

So when we’re super old and they’re taking care of us, they have long suffering for us.

We have a couple other verses that we want to just encourage you guys with. The first one is Galatians, Chapter five, 16 and 17.

Awesome. I say then walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the last of the flesh for the flesh, less against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh.

And these are contrary to one another so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you were led by the spirit, you were not under the law.

If we’re not walking in the spirit of flesh again and all of us, we’re going to do what we want to do. We’re going to be more controlling, more controlling. And and so, you know, are you walking in spirit as a parent and do you do that? And you know what? If you’re like me, I have to remind myself I have to or be allow the spirit to prompt me, meaning pay attention and pray in the beginning of the day multiple times to stay walking in the spirit.

Some days, I mean, my flesh gets hold of me. I get frustrated. I think the wrong things in my head sometimes is that happened to you. So we’ve got to rely on the Holy Spirit to convict us to, you know, in terms of relationships, not be so controlling, but be loving.

And you know what? Guys were in the trenches with you. And there are times where we have to have conversations with our kids and we have to say, hey, I was wrong and I shouldn’t have talked to you like that or I shouldn’t have assumed that of you. I wasn’t there for the whole situation or whatever. I mean, I know that I’ve mediated disagreements, if you will, between siblings in our family. And I have had to. And I’ve made wrong assumptions based upon reputations that my kids have in my mind from years of just how they’ve handled conflict. Right. And I’ll make an assumption.

And then I’ve been wrong and I’ve had to say I’m really sorry that I assumed that of you.

Good job, and I’ve had to turn it around, and so I’m sharing that with you right now because longsuffering, there’s an aspect of longsuffering that I believe has to do with this element of letting your kids grow up and change also where you’re being patient with them enough that they can actually be transformed by the word of God like we’re teaching them they can. Yeah. And if we’re teaching them that they can be a new creation and then we’re just assuming that they’re the old them or warwas viewing them as the little kid and not letting them grow up, there’s going to be a big problem in our relationship with them when they’re older. Yeah.

And we have a skewed view and they’re actually more mature and older inside than we might be allowing them to be.

So we have to have our eyes open. We have to constantly be checking in with our spouse and giving each other the intel and the observations and and be willing. Even when another kid in your family says, hey, mom, he didn’t do that. That’s that was my case where I had to do that.

But we’re and on this verse, which is Ephesians, chapter four, verse one and two, it says, I therefore, as a prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called you when you were called to be a parent. You’re a parent walk worthy of that calling, which you were called with loneliness and gentleness, with long suffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

Now, remembering what we talked about, about peace in the first episode and the other podcast where true peace, peace and righteousness kiss, you never are going to sacrifice one in hopes of getting the other.

The two go together. So you have to be willing to correct and you have to be willing to speak truth and love to help your kids to come to reconciliation in Christ because otherwise they can’t have peace.

So go back and listen to Standing for truth. And Blessed Be the peacemakers with Dr. Steve Crane, the interview. We did so, so good. Hey, thanks for joining us. We hope this two part series was helpful to you. And please share.

See you next time.

Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to CourageousParenting.com and CourageousMom.com for free online workshops, blog posts and best selling courses. Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program, Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week we release a video with a downloadable parenting package to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

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