In my last blog, I talked about the need and urgency of helping your child interpret life with a biblical perspective. This week, I hope to offer some helpful things to consider.

First and foremost, God does not ask you to do this alone. Start by praying for wisdom and strength. No matter your struggle, there is hope outside of your intellectual power and strength. You will need the wisdom to know how to speak into your child’s world as seen and experienced through their eyes. And you will need strength to hear your child tell you about their fears, expose their selfishness, and express good and bad desires without shutting them down with hard reactions before you can understand the root of their struggle.

Tell a child that they should not be afraid, and some children will live silently in fear. Tell your child not to be angry, and you will never help them learn how to understand and handle anger in the right way. You will face many challenges and you will not always get it right, but remember that prayer is always a most practical FIRST step.

The heart is always the target of God’s work. Each child is created in the image of God (this is true even on days when they act more like a child of the netherworld). They are born with strengths (places where image-bearing is more visible) and weaknesses. We are all embodied souls made up of a body (which can instigate a person’s behavior) and a soul (a moral responder that lives before God).

All parents will do well to understand this vital truth: the struggles between you and your child are as much about your heart as they are about theirs. The reality of that truth believed will provide you with temperance in your response to your child, especially when struggles are intense. God will use your child to bring you to the end of yourself, and He waits for you to turn to Him in trust for the strength and wisdom to love your child well. When you pray that Jesus will be the rescuer of your child’s heart, keep in mind that He is also transforming yours. Along with your child’s heart, keep the struggles of your heart in view as you seek to love your child well—wisely and faithfully.

Avoid Formulas

Formulas are tempting because they seem to offer us good things like success and comfort. Success: If you consider an assembly line, it is easy to recognize the benefits to a manufacturer that stamps out the same product with the same materials. Still, you can begin to see how the successful formula of an assembly line breaks down when you acknowledge the complexity of your child’s heart along with your own.

Comfort: Just do this, and you will get this. Wow, that seems great! If you can find the right formula for how to raise your child or get them to behave the way they should, problem solved. Mom and Dad could get the hard responsibilities of their jobs done (whether in the home or outside the home) and rest in the successful formula they use to achieve the desired results.

It all sounds pretty good. But God, in His work of restoring His image in us, will always lovingly instigate us to live in more profound, more satisfying connection with our children and others that no formula can ever produce. We find the strength and hope to love and raise our children well when we seek Him for the preparation of our hearts for this complex, wondrous, and challenging task.

The differences in your children do not mean that the routines in the life of your family have to be different for each child, but it does mean that family routines that are reasonable and necessary could be harder for one child and not another.

Understanding and acknowledging the differences in your children will help you respond to those differences. Some children will need and do better with a tighter structure, while others can benefit and grow with less structure. Consider being dropped into a job that you had neither the personality, desire, or training for and consider how you would struggle. Are there ways we might do that to our children if we use a more formulaic way of raising them? Trying to find a good fit never precludes the need to teach your child to bear down and persist through hard and difficult circumstances. Beware, they will take many cues from watching how you handle adversity.

Societal Norms and Temptations

Societal norms can and often do create tremendous pressures on families. Saying this may sound overwhelming and even a bit dramatic, but when you are the parent of a child (of any age), you will need wise love filled with tremendous strength rooted in courageous faith that God has not left you alone in the task of raising your child.

Standing firm in your faith will offer your children a view of convictions lived out. One of the more significant challenges you will or currently face will not be deciding between what is right and wrong or good and bad for your child, but how to keep them engaged and connected when your saying no to them is wise and loving. For those with very young children, decide on wise strategies for addressing the societal temptations that will come at your child. As necessary as thoughtful reactions will be, reacting to societal pressures will be less effective than planning ahead.

Being a student of your child’s heart will help you understand what attractions the world holds for your child’s heart. Social platforms of all kinds will offer them what amounts to imaginary connection with others and a place of disappointment, compromise, and even physical danger. The convictions you hold that rest in the faith of God and that inform your child-rearing will come under attack. But the assault on your defenses won’t come from a menacing-looking world that is easily and impersonally rejected. No, the pressure to compromise will come through the soft (sometimes relentless) pleading voice of your child, along with their threats and tears. Loving well here with firm compassion will take great faith in God’s care for your child and you!

Where the world is speaking to your child’s heart, you must wisely speak back to him or her with gospel language that offers something better, just as God is always offering something better to you—this is the battleground of many parent vs. child wars. They want what they want, and they know what is best. Acting harshly or passively in response will bring different dangers, and they both fail to convey the care and rescue of a Savior they need to know.

Summary

Since this a blog and not a book, I had to make huge decisions about what volumes of things I would leave out and what minuscule amount I would include, and this is where I must end. Be stirred to action with a gospel attitude, both prompted and encouraged to seek the Lord with all your heart for the hope He offers you. The gospel makes it clear: the challenges of raising your child or children are as much about your heart as they are about their hearts.

Start with prayer and diligently pray for your child’s heart.

Bring your own heart humbly before God’s throne of grace. The Savior you talk to and know is the Savior you will convey to your child. Is He harsh or kind? Is He patient in His training of you? Does He set clear boundaries for your protection that speak of His love and care for you…or is He a punishing God who cares less about correcting your walk with Him and more about inflicting deserved punishment? Does He allow consequences that would turn you from foolishness?

Avoid advice that offers a formula for success in training children. Your child’s heart is unlike any other. Know it and speak to your child with understanding and with the wisdom of God’s good and steadfast love in view.

Your family will be the training ground for how your child does relationships. Being thoughtful about the needs of your child instead of living life reacting to them will be challenging because life is rushing by at a blazing pace, but taking the time to do that will pay off for them and you.

Each child will have places of weakness and strength. Even strengths need training to keep from pride and self-righteousness. The world, the flesh, and the devil are battling for your child’s heart! Consider how, with each year, their changing world will bring pressures and old and new lies that seem to offer something good, but only bring darkness. There is a battle for your child’s heart.

Because God is near, you don’t have to be fainthearted.