discipled living

Ephesians 6:1-4 offer extends wisdom to the parents as it instructs us in the following ways:.” This is the first of the Ten Commandments that ends with a promise. And this is the promise: If you honor your father and mother, you will live a long life, full of blessing.” And now a word to you fathers. Don’t make your children angry by the way you treat them. Rather bring them up with the discipline and instruction approved by the Lord.

The scripture is clear to both the child and the parent that there are requirements for each of us. We must both recognize the demands that the Bible places upon our children and us as parents. The Commandment offers us a path to follow once we understand the word honor. The word “honor” indicates the presence of a commitment that we are being called upon to fulfill. What the scripture is calling the children to do is to remain faithful to the commitment to care for your parents as they age and need your assistance, and by so doing that your children will witness you acts and learn from your example. Then when they are old they will not depart from what you have shown them and they will honor you by caring for you.

The scripture continues in Ephesians to instruct us as parents, that we ought not provoke our children to anger just because we have power over them. We must remember that they will become adults and may have the authority and responsibility of caring for us as we age. They will likely honor us in the same way that we reared them.

Empowering Parents, Empower Their Children

As a parent of twins soon to be 18, the age of majority, I have learned a few things that have empowered us in the parent-child relationship. 

Leadership and parenting are so closely related to one another that it is only natural to address them together. The truth is that parenting like leadership is rooted in nurture. Nurture is the process of caring for someone or something with purpose and intent to see the one being nurtured develop into self-sufficiency and independence.

Teach children to choose the right path, and when they are older, they will remain upon it. Proverbs 22:6 NLT

There are a couple of important ideas that are submerged in this often quoted passage of scripture.

The first idea is: There is (a) right path.
The challenge with much of the parenting that we do today is we allow our children to make to many important decisions too early in their life: about their friends, how they spend their time, how they gather information and what that source of the information will be. The power of the “path” is found in the simple reality; not all paths lead to the same destination.

It has been suggested that if you liked the way that you were raised (after and honest evaluation) then get your children around your parents. The secret to parenting is to know where it is that you want your children to end up, in other words have a destination in mind. What do you want for you children? The path we choose for them has a destination.

The second idea is: Prepare them for independence
The reality of parenting is that it is a life sentence, a life of joy or some mixture of the two. We must remember as the scripture instructs us that we are preparing our children for the multitude of difficult decisions that they will have to make after as they explore their independence and after they have left our primary care.

In actuality, our children will be under our direct and primary care for some 18-25 years. We hope and pray that they will live to at least 70 years of age, meaning that our children will live more years independent of our care than they did under our care, some 52-45 years. Our primary challenge as parents is to help our children, by training them to make right path choices now in preparation for the time when we will no longer shoulder primary responsibility for them.

Knowing that our challenge is to get them ready to assume the weight of responsibility for their own lives, rather than make them into perfect little people, helps us to discipline our behavior toward them.  Ask yourself, in what ways will my style of parenting prepare my child to make healthy and life-enriching decisions when I am no longer their primary decision maker. 

One essential to remember is that children should serve the interests of larger family, rather than become liabilities. We empower our children by teaching them that they have a key role to play in helping the family be successful.  I remember asking my mother once, "Moma, do you have some money, I want to go to the corner store and get some candy?"  She said, "No!"  I replied, "But, I saw some money on your dresser."  To which she said, "I do have money for groceries, but not for candy."  Her response did not make me happy as a child of 9 or 10 but it made sense to me, because she was teaching me that we have to prioritize how we spend our resources: Time, Talent, Relationships and our Money.

Next Week: Rearing The Adults You Want!