More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The purpose for your authority in the lives of your children is not to hold them under your power, but to empower them to be self-controlled people living freely under the authority of God.
is our task to faithfully teach our children the ways of God. It is the Holy Spirit’s task to work through the Word of God to change their hearts.
Teaching your children to live for the glory of God must be your overarching objective. You must teach your children that for them, as for all of mankind, life is found in knowing and serving the true and living God. The only worthy goal for life is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
Biblical discipline addresses behavior through addressing the heart. Remember, the heart determines behavior. If you address the heart biblically, the behavior will be impacted.
Your first objective in correction must not be to tell your children how you feel about what they have done or said. You must try to understand what is going on inside them.
What you must do is peel away the behavior and discern the inner world of your child’s motivation in this situation.
There are four issues you must walk him through: 1) the nature of temptation, 2) the possible responses to this temptation, 3) the motives for those responses, and 4) the sinful response he chose.
This God-given conscience is your ally in discipline and correction. Your most powerful appeals will be those that smite the conscience.
This is your task in shepherding your children. You must make a point of appealing to the conscience. To see them deal with the issues of their Godward orientation, you must take correction beyond behavior to addressing the issues of the heart. You address the heart by exposing sin and appealing to the conscience as the God-given adjudicator of right and wrong.
You must address the heart as the fountain of behavior, and the conscience as the God-given judge of right and wrong.
Jesus’ redemptive work entails forgiveness, internal transformation, and empowerment to live new lives.
Proverbs 1:7–19 furnishes you with such direction. There are three foundations of life in this passage: The fear of the Lord (verse 7), adherence to parental instruction (verses 8–9), and disassociation from the wicked (verses 10–19).
The teen who understands the fear of God will be delivered from danger. He will possess wisdom. He will grow in the knowledge of God.
The most powerful way to keep your children from being attracted by the offers of camaraderie from the wicked is to make home an attractive place to be.
Home should be the shelter where the teen is understood and loved, where he is encouraged and shown the paths of life.
