A person who wants to learn better parenting practices should not begin with the children. A person who wants to learn better parenting practices should not begin with the parents.

The best place to learn about better parenting practices is by observing, understanding, and emulating the perfect Parent. And who is the perfect Parent? His name is Jehovah.

In light of our May webinar series on parenting, I have been reflecting a lot about God and how He relates to His children. The following questions were excerpted from my webinar. I encourage you to use them as you think about your marriage and family.

• God models what he wants me to be. What I model before my kids will have a lifetime impact on my kids. What are you modeling before your kids? Is your religion exportable? Here is a wild recommendation: have your children make copious notes of your life. Encourage them to scrutinize you. Then show them how to replicate what they learn. (I Corinthians 11:1)
• God is very honest and open with me. When is the last time you confessed your sin to your child? When is the last time you asked your child to forgive you? Is all the sin in your home handled equally as far as transparency, vulnerability, forgiveness, confession, and reconciliation?
• God encourages me as I think about his great love for me through the Gospel. What was the last specific way you encouraged your child? Is your child more aware of your pleasure in him/her or your displeasure in him/her? How often did you encourage your child today? …this week? If you have not encouraged your child lately, you have something special to look forward to.
• God came to earth to serve, rather than be served. (Mark 10:45) How do you serve your child? Be specific in your answer. Do not include your normal, daily chores, e.g. cooking, cleaning, your job, etc. I am not talking so much about physical acts of service as “acts of sanctification.” E.g. confession, honesty, forgiveness, kindness, encouragement, motivation, and humility. A child who sees and receives these things from his/her parent will be greatly served.
• God is not distant or aloof from His children. Are you characterized as a toucher, hugger, hand-holder, kisser, and embracer? Why or why not?

“Oh, Aslan!” cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad. “Aren’t you dead then, dear Aslan?” said Lucy.

“Not now,” said Aslan.

“You’re not—not a—?” asked Susan in a shaky voice. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word ghost.

Aslan stooped his golden head and licked her forehead. The warmth of his breath and a rich sort of smell that seemed to hang about his hair came all over her. “Do I look it?” he said.

“Oh, you’re real, you’re real! Oh, Aslan!” cried Lucy and both girls flung themselves upon him and covered him with kisses. -C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

• God loves by example and His affection for His Son was inspiring. How often and what specific ways do you show real, warm, physical, affection to your spouse? Are your children very aware of your affection for your spouse? Do you relate to your spouse the way you want your kids to inter-relate with their siblings? Are you satisfied that your love for your spouse is something you want your kids to model for their spouses?
• God is proactive in planning. (Galatians 4:4) Do you take time off to meaningfully engage your children? Husbands, do you proactively plan your time off with your spouse and kids in mind? Do they not only see you away from your work, but are able to meaningfully engage you on your day off?

See other related articles

1. Parenting Tips: Stick to the basics – 1.0
2. Parenting Tips: Good application questions – 2.0
3. Parenting Tips: Parenting books are overrated – 3.0

Checkout some of our training videos on our YouTube Channel

Free Counseling Advice via Twitter

Free Counseling Advice via Weekly eBlast

Checkout Counseling Solution’s Membership Training Site

This month we will be providing our very popular parenting webinar to our worldwide network. I thought it would serve our blogging community to write a few posts on parenting. While most of us come to realize that our overall parenting wisdom comes to fruition after the process is nearly over, we also know it is good to have a few tips along the way.

The best parenting advice I have ever received was the exhortation to pray more. Paul Miller said this in his book, The Praying Life. There seems to come a time with most parents, after we exhaust our ideas, that we see the need and urgency of prayer. Some parents are clued into the power of prayer long before they exhaust their ideas. If you are not praying, I’d recommend you make prayer your number one parenting tip. For that matter, I’d recommend prayer as your number one “life-tip.”

When serving new parents or parents with kids under ten years of age, one of the common questions that I am asked is along the lines of what should the parents focus on. These parents feel a sense of being overwhelmed with all the areas they need to work on with their children. It can be paralyzing as you survey your parenting needs while realizing all the things you’d like to adjust in your child.

Here is a tip: stick to the basics!

Sticking to the basics helps to keep it simple. Rather than getting caught up in all the possibilities and desires of parenting you can focus on the one essential thing. And, as you know if you have spent any time on this website, the one essential thing is the Gospel. Our parenting model is a Gospel-centered parenting model. Conceptually we place the Gospel (read: Christ) in the center of the room and think through what He looks like and how we have experienced Him. In short, how has God parented me as portrayed through the Gospel?

As you can surmise, a major piece of the Father’s parenting model is His own modeling of what He wants me to be. Here are a few ways in which my Father has modeled the Gospel:

God Models Kindness

1. How do you model kindness before your children?
2. How do your kids experience your kindness?
3. As you model kindness before them, you can now guide them to follow you as you follow Christ as it pertains to kindness.

God Models Respect

1. Are your children aware how much you respect them?
2. Are your children vividly aware of the respect you have for your spouse?
3. As you model respect before them, you can now guide them to follow you as you follow Christ as it pertains to respect.

God Models Self-Control

1. Proportionally, what are your children more aware of: (1) your self-control or (2) your lack of self-control, e.g. anger or impatience?
2. Using your spouse as an example, point out to your kids three ways in which the husband/wife models self-control.
3. As you model self-control before them, you can now guide them to follow you as you follow Christ as it pertains to self-control.

God Models Serving

1. Jesus did not come to this earth to be served, but to serve. (Mark 10:45)
2. On a day-to-day basis, are you more concerned with being served by others or serving others?
3. As you model serving before them, you can now guide them to follow you as you follow Christ as it pertains to serving.

Parenting is about teaching and teaching, in part, is about modeling. Therefore, your parenting must be instruction modeled and taught, rather than just taught. You be what you want your child to become. Christ modeled for us what he wanted us to be like. Carefully read 1 Peter 2:18-25 and see how Peter shows us the example of Christ and then exhorts us to follow his steps. Carefully teach your kids to follow your example as you follow Christ’s example. (1 Corinthians 11:1; Philippians 2:5)

Do not get caught up in the principle-driven life. That is too cumbersome. Spend some real time in prayer thinking through how God has parented you through the Gospel and then you go and do likewise.

Checkout some of our training videos on our YouTube Channel

Free Counseling Advice via Twitter

Free Counseling Advice via Weekly eBlast

Checkout Counseling Solution’s Membership Training Site

Watch this short video to glean a lifetime’s worth of advice on how to Biblically parent your children. Rick Thomas helps you to balance the “nurture and admonition” dynamic. Any parent will benefit from the practical wisdom in this video.

Checkout some of our training videos on our YouTube Channel

Free Counseling Advice via Twitter

Free Counseling Advice via Weekly eBlast

Checkout Counseling Solution’s Membership Training Site

Buckle up for this fast paced seminar on parenting kids. This training video is an abbreviated version of our larger workshop on parenting. Rick explains a good concept idea from Paul’s model given in Ephesians 6:4 as well as four poor parenting models and how they adversely impact our kids.

Rick originally learned this teaching concept on parenting during his MA program at The Master’s College in Santa Clarita, CA.

Checkout some of our training videos on our YouTube Channel

Free Counseling Advice via Twitter

Free Counseling Advice via Weekly eBlast

Checkout Counseling Solution’s Membership Training Site

In the last post I discussed one of several reasons why a Child May Rebel Against Their Parents and God. Kids, like us, are made in the image of God and parents have a responsibility to shape the child for God, with the hope and prayer that when the kid is old enough to understand, he/she will ask God to regenerate them. (See John 3:7)

I mentioned in the earlier post that sometimes we parents can hinder the child from getting to God. We can do this in several ways. Here is a sampling, that is meant to be in no way an exhaustive list: parents can be distant, angry, abusive, critical, divorced and impatient with their children.

Someone may ask that if the weight of the kid’s salvation lies to such a degree on the parent, how can any kid be saved? Truly, this is not only an excellent question, but it is a humble acknowledgement that we all are flawed. At our best, we are broken images of God’s original design. But this is where we can find wonderful encouragement in the power of the Gospel. There is no kid so messed up that he/she cannot be saved, whether his/her parents got it right for the most part or royally botched things up.

I was reminded of this recently when I read a brief excerpt about the childhood of Ravi Zacharias…

I came to know Christ on a bed of suicide when I was seventeen–desolate, desperate. My father just finished telling me I’d be a total failure in life. I was born a failure, he said. Somebody brought a Bible to my bedside. I’m so thankful to my heavenly Father that my dad lived long enough to write a letter to me–my dad died fairly early–and said, “Will you ever forgive me for the things I said?” And yet, in the dark of the soul, I found the heavenly Father to be closer than I’d ever realized.

In Paul Miller’s book, A Praying Life, where I found the quote, Miller followed up by saying,

Because we live in a fallen world, God has to use broken images of himself, such as a father. In fact, all the images God gives us of himself in Scripture are flawed…The fact that we know our king or father is flawed means we know what a good father should do. Because we are created in the image of the triune God, we have the instinctive knowledge of how a father should love. If we didn’t know what a good father was, we couldn’t critique our own. Modern psychology can unwittingly trapped us in our pasts. It is just another form of fatalism that kills our ability to see the story God is weaving in our lives. pp. 177-178, A Praying Life, by Paul Miller

The Gospel is the hope for any parent who may be struggling with the guilt of what they have done to their children. God is greater than our biggest failures. And the Gospel is also the hope for any kid, who thinks there is no salvation for him, because of what he has done. The Gospel is bigger than our most abominable sins.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. -Romans 1:16 (ESV)

Related Articles

• A Reason Kid’s Rebel Against Their Parents and God
• The Focus of Your Marriage

Checkout some of our training videos on our YouTube Channel

Free Counseling Advice via Twitter

Free Counseling Advice via Weekly eBlast

Checkout Counseling Solution’s Membership Training Site

Kids are one of God’s many gifts to parents. As parents we have the responsibility and privilege to guide them into a desire to know and love God. Though our children are born with a limited God-awareness (Romans 1:20), it is the parent’s job to connect their innate awareness of God in real, practical and mature ways that ultimately lead to their salvation.

We can either hinder or facilitate the kid’s path to God. Our children want to know what we know and as time goes by they begin to either imitate us or they start a process of rejecting us. If we are not modeling our parenting style after God (Ephesians 5:1), the process of rejection typically comes to full fruition when the kid is in his/her teenage years.

The First Negative Fruit

Fear is typically the first evidence that we see in a child who is in the process of rejecting their parent’s parenting model. Let’s suppose that a parent has a pattern of any one of the following traits:

• Distant parent
• Angry parent
• Abusive parent
• Critical parent
• Divorced parent
• Preoccupied parent
• Impatient parent

If any of these patterns are consistently found in either or both of the parents, it would not be unusual for their kids to begin searching for other means of security. Security or trust or faith is what Adam did not have when he decided to walk away from God in the Garden of Eden. Every person in our world is looking for security, trust or faith in something. And if God is not part of their solution then they will seek security through things that can never allay their fears.

Parenting at the Crossroads

I have the responsibility, through my words and behavior, to direct my children to God or turn them toward the things of this world. Please read my post titled Have You Ever Considered Modeling for a Career. The more I model the love, mercy, justice, kindness, long-suffering and other characteristics of God, the more likely my children will be drawn to God. However, if I’m self-centered and generally practice the list above, it would not be a surprise for my kids to begin the process of rejecting me, while gravitating to the things of the world.

Three Major Caveats

1. God’s grace is greater than all our sin. Many of us came from parents who did not love God, but we do love God. Though there is no excuse for parenting negligence, it is true that God can overcome any of our blunders.
2. Good parenting does not necessarily lead to godly children. At the end of the day, it is all of grace. Though godliness in parents is the goal, it does not assure that our godly efforts will lead to our expectations.
3. Read my extended 10-part series on Rebellious Teens & How They Got There

Checkout some of our training videos on our YouTube Channel

Free Counseling Advice via Twitter

Free Counseling Advice via Weekly eBlast

Checkout Counseling Solution’s Membership Training Site

Mailbag: Rick, my husband left me four years ago and is now living with another woman. I don’t want my kids spending time with him until he straightens out his life. Both he and his girlfriend are a bad influence on my children. How should I respond to him and my kids?

I’m sure your kids are struggling a great deal because of the split of their family and there are a lot of emotions going on inside of them. Honestly, there is no “right way” to answer your question. Each situation is different and you have to understand the dynamics of the situation, pray to God, seek sound advice and do what you understand to be right.

It is very humble and transparent of you that you would seek my counsel. Based on your limited description, here are a few bullet thoughts. Please remember, email correspondence is not the best medium to interact with questions of this nature. So much can be missed.

• The bottom line is that your kids need to see and spend time with their daddy. No matter what he has done or what he is doing, he is there daddy. No parent is perfect and it will serve the children if you make the best effort to have them with their dad, or at least make sure you’re not the one hindering a potential relationship.
• Never speak negatively of their dad. Besides it being gossip and slander, it will also create an unnecessary tension in the hearts of the children.
• I would seek to “re-train” your children’s consciences to the place where they can have a relationship with their dad, while not condoning his sin. This not only applies to their relationship with their dad, but with any human.
• I’d take the Savior’s approach with the woman in adultery, as it pertains to those living in sin: “He who is without sin, cast the first stone.”
• Your children can make it clear they do not approve, but they can still have a relationship. Don’t we do this with all our relationships at some level?
• I have a relationship with a lot of people living in all kinds of sin, e.g. gay lifestyle, adultery, drunkenness, you name it. I don’t practice or condone any of these sin patterns, but I do not alienate myself from them. To alienate is the mindset of those who hold to the contrived doctrine of “separation” rather than a Christian mindset. It is anti-Gospel.
• The essence of the Gospel is Christ coming to the unworthy, useless sinner. Christ had relationships with these kinds of people, though it is clearly understood he did not imbibe or condone their sinfulness.
• I would remind your kids of the Gospel. We were all like this lady friend of your ex-husband, in that none of us were righteous, but yet God pursued us. I do not want to treat others in a way God did not treat me. If God looked on me the way some people look on other sinners, he would never have regenerated me.
• If your children draw a “relational line” in the sand, which says we will see you if you get rid of her, he may (and probably will) choose her and the kids will be the big losers. It will take them years, as adults, to wrestle through their dad’s “rejection”. It is hard enough already, as you know, but this will make it worse.
• It can come across as manipulation and/or conditional love: we will spend time with you if you conform to our standard of righteousness. You would be asking an unbeliever to act like a believer, or at least to act like a believer in this way. He is selfish, blind, ignorant, self-deceived, lustful, proud and immature. To separate will probably backfire on you.
• I would model Romans 2:4: it is the “kindness of God that leads to repentance“. I would give him what he would not expect, i.e. I love you, but don’t condone. It is easy to not condone and reject, but counter-intuitive to not condone and love at the same time.
• Find a trusted friend to help you walk through this. And, by all means, talk with your pastor, the one who is charged to care for your soul.
• Guard your heart from the temptations of bitterness & revenge. I do not read this into anything you have said, but thinking that if I went through what you went through, certainly I would be tempted to act in an anti-Gospel way, either through bitterness or revenge.

I trust my words have not been a hard blow to you or a burden for you to carry through. I’m certainly not judging you or thinking negative of you. I feel for your situation. You are a mom. You are trying to figure out what to do. You love your kids. And you are humble to ask me for advice. I respect that.

I’m a parent. I understand. One of the things I want to do is protect my kids from the sinfulness of the world. I realize the sinfulness of this world is right before them. And they will have to interact with it. But I don’t want them to have to interact with it at such a young age.

Budget some sin into their lives

However, it would be unwise to totally shelter them from the world. I’ve seen parents do this and when their kids become older they are drawn to the world. It’s a bad idea. The best time to budget some sin into your kid’s life is while they are with you so you can bring interpretation and clarity to their world.

Disappointment at a young age takes more prayer, parenting skill and God’s grace than any other parenting situation. And your kids are in an unending season of inevitable disappointment.

Divorce will be part of their life, all their life. It seems unfair, but God’s grace is still bigger. I would work very hard in teaching your kids about how to live out the Gospel in a mean, unkind and uncaring world. And the first place to start is with their dad.

Go back to the Gospel

The Gospel is God loving us and pursuing us while not condoning our sin. He did not reject us. It was his kindness that led you and me to repentance. Your kids have an incredible opportunity before them. And if their consciences are weak because of the situation, I would work to retrain their consciences.

The truth is, dealing with unsavory people, will be repeated throughout their lives and if they learn this lesson now, it will serve them very well in the future.

To live in a sinful world, not be overcome by the sinful world while being able to impact the sinful world is Christian maturity, which is the goal for not only you, but for your kids.

Read these related articles:

• How Should My Kids Respond to My Ex-Husband?
• Marriage, Divorce & Me
• Divorced Kids Blame Themselves for Parent’s Blunder
• Facts Get Lost in Our Interpretation

Checkout some of our training videos on our YouTube Channel

Free Counseling Advice via Twitter

Free Counseling Advice via Weekly eBlast

Checkout Counseling Solution’s Membership Training Site

My blog post Weak Men! Strong Women! gets hits nearly everyday. Though posted almost two months ago this particular post has shelf life. On my admin page for the blog, readers are “googling” various combinations of the terms weak men and strong women. It is curious, but encouraging search criteria.

You can click on the link above to read the original post as well as download three excellent sermons and get some very good book references that I trust will serve you as you think through the Egalitarian v. Complementarian argument. In this post I want to give you some tips that Lucia and I have implemented in our home, with the hope that we can train our kids, by the grace of God, to become biblical complementarians.

But first, here are three major caveats for you

Caveat #1 – What I’m about to say is not the Bible. Therefore, it is not authoritative. It is not a list for you to mimic with the expectation that your kids will turn out okay. Please don’t do this for that reason. However, I do hope you will think about the argument and seek God to contextualize a Complementarian worldview into your home. Don’t necessarily do what we do; but do something.

Caveat #2 – This is nowhere near all we do. This is merely a sampling to give you a snapshot of our approach. But with any snapshot, you can miss much. There is always a context surrounding a snapshot. There is a before and after that a freeze frame cannot communicate. Therefore, with these “tips” I’m aware there will be more unsaid than said.

Caveat #3 – These tips are not in any particular order and I would not want to communicate in any way that we have figured anything out. I’m the biggest knucklehead I know and my friends can vouch for this as they tend to agree there are few people who they know who has more faults. All I can say is that we are trying, but nowhere near perfect.

Our children as of this post are Girl (7), Boy (5) and Girl (3).

Tip #1 – The girls stay in one room that has three pink walls and the fourth wall with a mural of Belle, a white horse, castle and a big green tree with white birds flying around. My son’s room is camouflage on two walls and a two-wall mural of tanks, gunfire, soldiers, sandbags, helicopters and more. We’re trying to communicate a biblical distinction between male and female. Both genders are stoked with their rooms!

Tip #2 – My girls eat their cereal out of pink bowls. My son would not touch those bowls with a ten-foot pole. His is blue. They have dolls. He has tools. They wear pretty dresses. He wears camouflage or cargo pants. They are different by God’s design.

Tip #3 – We have tried to teach our kids to say, “We’re going to Grandpa and Grandma’s house” instead of saying “Grandma” first. Our desire is to teach them “order” in the family regarding headship, to honor the man as the head of the home. God made Adam first and then Eve.

Tip #4 – My girls typically come to me to show me what they are wearing to get my opinion prior to going out, e.g. to the church meeting. Our goal here is to teach them humility, submission, respect and a desire to seek counsel from the head of the home. We hope there will be a desire in them to honor their husbands similarly.

Tip #5 – I try to do the voice recording on the answering machine so that people who call hear a man’s voice. This is a leadership issue for us. We try to establish the home in a biblical order, which would look like (1) God; (2) Husband; (3) Wife; (4) Kids.

Tip #6 – Our email addresses point more to our marriage than our kids. Our addresses are “rickandlucia” rather than “momsthree” or “luciaplusthree” or something about the kids. We want our kids to know we love them, but we are not child-centered. Again, there is a biblical orientation in the home.

Tip #7 – My son knows he has “three wives” in that we are developing his marital-leadership gifting as a five-year old, thinking that how he treats his two sisters and his mother is a clue as to how he will treat his future wife. Therefore, he is taught to honor the girls in our home by serving them. For example, he holds the door for his “wives” when we go shopping.

Tip #8 – My son is never allowed to hit his sisters regardless of what they do to him. There has to be another way to respond to their sin than hitting them back or responding in anger. The wife is a delicate vase (1 Peter 3:7) to be cherished and nourished (Eph. 5:25ff). There is no place for harshness from the male to the female in the home.

Tip #9 – There is no negotiation (Read: no grace) when any of the kids sin in anger toward their mother. At that point they know they are not sinning against their mother anymore; but they are sinning against my wife. When their mother is no longer their mother, but my wife, then they know they have crossed a line. She is my wife before she is their mother. Being a mother is a secondary issue in our home. Eve was made for the man and then they had kids secondarily.

Tip #10 – Modeling must precede any teaching that I do. None of the above really matters if I am not setting the tone in the home by my example. It would be mostly useless to try to teach my kids anything if I am not living it. Biblically this is called hypocrisy. Therefore, I must be the leader in the home. If I am a lazy, weak, passive and non-communicative leader, then I’m wasting my time to try to get my kids to know their God-given, biblically defined roles. They must follow me as I follow Christ.

ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES

• Leadership is Verbal
• Co-Co Dependent: Biblical Role for the Wives
• The Manly Man Test
• True Leadership is Balanced Leadership
• Married Sinners Talking to One Another
• The Focus of Your Marriage
• Marriage Book Recommendations

Checkout some of our training videos on our YouTube Channel

Free Counseling Advice via Twitter

Free Counseling Advice via Weekly eBlast

Checkout Counseling Solution’s Membership Training Site

The number one all-time marriage counseling issue that I have dealt with is passive husbands and non-complementing wives. It is so far ahead of number two in counseling issues that I’m not sure what number two would be.

All marriages are suspect and should be dealing with this issue at some level of their marriage. For the singles looking to get married they need to know there will be complementing struggles no matter who they marry.

It takes a lot of work for a man to lead and a woman to follow. The reason for this is because they both have core sin issues that they have to deal with. The man and woman’s issues are different and polarizing. Unfortunately when two people marry the pushing against each other is pretty common.

Lucia and I have dealt with this throughout our marriage and fortunately God has given much grace to motivate both of us to model the truths taught in the Bible. Daily we have to remind ourselves of our roles as the leader and complementor of our home. At times it is more of a struggle than at other times and the struggle has nothing to do with a lack of love for each other.

I think my wife is incredibly hot! And I’m aware that I “married up.” No doubt I got the best deal from our covenant relationship. Furthermore, I’m convinced that when rewards are given out in heaven she will receive far more than me. I could go into great detail to prove my point here, but won’t. It is true.

In short, we really like each other. We are best friends. The issues aren’t so much about love. Our issues are that my desires toward passivity and her desires toward leading are “native” within us.

Read also: Weak Men & Strong Women Can Grow Weak Boys and Strong Girls

Three of the better sermons I’ve heard on this subject can be found HERE.

Click on the LINK and look for these messages from 1 Peter:

1. Marriage: The Beginning: Jan 11, 2009: Matt Williams
2. The Perfect Woman: Jan 18, 2009: Matt Williams
3. A Man: Strong and Gentle: Jan 25, 2009: Matt Williams

As the Olympics pour into our living spaces for the next two weeks it’s not too late for us dads to equip our families in gospel-centered TV viewing. The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood has given us some helpful insight in training our hearts and minds toward God-centered viewing. 

Here is an excerpt: Even if there are supposed benefits to minimal clothing during events, God has still established parameters for modesty. As Christian women, we should care more about pleasing God than speed and winning. Christian men should care more about pleasing God with their eyes than watching a favorite event (not to say that women are not immune to the pitfalls of viewing immodesty).

Read More