This is biblical parenting. And I found this online. I love the way it laid it out. Love with authority. Gentleness with firmness. Compassion with correction. Relationship with discipline. And grace with truth. That's a balance. It's both and how does this happen? Franz. So I'm in my son Danny's room. I think it was yesterday. And we're getting ready for his wedding, is getting married, coming up here.
SPEAKER_00To his fiancee.
SPEAKER_01And they had uh they got this full-length mirror that they put a decal on that says, Welcome to Danny and Lexi's wedding, you know, just whatever thing. So I walk in there and I see, I go, wow, I say to Rachel, I want so wow, that's that's such a cool mirror. I said, you know what, Danny, you know, he's getting married, he's gonna move out of his room. We're gonna have the room, we're gonna use it for other things. I said, we should get a full-length mirror in here. So, you know, when we want to see and she looks at me and she points, and she I look and I realize his whole closet door are two large full-length mirrors that I've looked at, as you guys know, trillions of times. Nobody here is surprised. And and and I just paused, I thought, how in the world does this happen? Stupidity. Thousands of times. I've walked into his room specifically to look at the full length. I'm like, oh, we should get a full length being honest. Ow. I'm so adorable. I'm starting with the man in the mirror. Oh, and I'm asking him to change his way.
SPEAKER_04If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make the change!
SPEAKER_01Mark, we are the best team in the world. We need to give up this podcast. Abbott and Costello.
SPEAKER_04Please. Peanut butter and jelly. Give it up. Laurel and Hardy.
SPEAKER_01Like Spaghetti and Nicolan Jekyll.
SPEAKER_00Who's on first? Yeah. Like mac and cheese.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Today, friends. We have in the studio with us. By the way, mirrors are biblical, just so you guys know. You guys always rag on me for looking at mirrors. It's not looking at mirrors, it's looking at yourself. It's biblical. I would die without the full-length mirror in my office. Please do. On my closet. Promise. Last words, Ray Comfort. Um yeah, we have with us today
in the studio some guests. We have Richard the righteous, our brother Gary, and Anita. Or as Ray would say, Anita. What's wrong with that? And Wis, all the way from the UK. Whoop-wop. Welcome, guys. Good to have you all. Wiss has Anita the Prodigal has returned.
SPEAKER_00Wis has a wonderful accent.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, my eyes. No, that's new. Oh, yeah, get on you, my dunk like that. Start a war. And Anita worked for our ministry here for many, many years. We miss her very much. Now, was it Anita we have a picture of sleeping? That's right. Oh, it was Anita.
SPEAKER_00It was.
SPEAKER_01And was it Anita who said when she answered the point? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us in our evangelistic outreach.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for being part of Evangelistic.
SPEAKER_01Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00Do we have a guest goat here too?
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, yeah. Dog on Anita as much as you like. She is the world's greatest goat or sheep, whatever, one of those animals. Sheep. Come on. Use my microphone. Anita, please. Our guests need to hear. Anita, please, we plead with you. Anita, here we go. Anita. I love it. I can hear it a trillion times.
SPEAKER_00God's given certain gifts to the church. And that was one of them.
SPEAKER_01Always like sheep have gone astray. You're famous now, Anita. You guys listen to the podcast, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's how Anita actually talks.
SPEAKER_01Why? That's all Anita says. So why? Why? All right, friends, enough of that.
Time for a cool, classy comment. This is uh from uh well, let's see if we know who it's from. Hey guys, my name is Emily Collins. There we go. I'm 19 years old and based out of Richmond, Virginia. I remember growing up and hearing about Living Waters through my dad, and I actually met a couple of you guys in DC when I was a little girl. You may remember my dad, Neil Collins, who has been to a couple of your trainings and is actually going to be a full-time evangelist in the coming years. Amen. Shout out to our brother Neil. I know you guys have inspired him so much, and I'm so grateful for the impact you've had on his life, which by the grace of God has also impacted mine. About a year ago, I randomly started listening to your podcast on my way to work, and it has completely transformed my life. The ministry you guys are doing is truly inspiring, and I know so many people are encouraged every day by the podcast and the ministry as a whole. I can now look back on that random day when I chose to click on the Living Waters podcast. You heard him cry here first on the Living Waters Podcast. And know that it was no accident, but something the Lord knew I needed. I recently received news that I was accepted into the Site and South Conservatory, which is a two-year program in Pennsylvania. I'll be making lots of trips back and forth to Virginia, and I'm relying on your podcast and a whole lot of coffee to keep me awake during the long drives. Haha. Continue the good work and God bless Emily Collins. Thank you so much. This podcast is sponsored by CleanX. Yeah, it should be. Emily, thank you so much. You have no idea how much that touches us. Um, and let me just say, Emily, God is witness to this, but Rachel and I, we were recently in DC, and then we were talking about where would we want to go next? And she goes, We should go to Pennsylvania uh because of the sight and sound theater. Uh, I've been to the one in Branson, but uh and I watched a Joseph production, it was unbelievable. And so maybe we'll see you there. And if there are any good plays coming out, uh, write and they'll get the email to me. Tell me which ones and when, and we'll try to go out there.
SPEAKER_04You know, I have to say that her father is one of my favorite open-air preachers in the world. Neil Collins. The amount of scripture he's got memorized uh encouraged me and challenged me to go on that same path to break down if I were to uh write a book, which I'm attempting to do, on how to preach the gospel and what scriptures go where and what points to be able to use. He he puts on a masterclass when he preaches using the word.
SPEAKER_03I love it. And his brother Phil is an incredible drummer.
SPEAKER_04Well, he used to be.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, he's a singer now.
SPEAKER_01That's right. Anyway, I was trying to remember Phil Collins' song. Mark, you gotta know Phil Collins' song. Oh, yeah. In the air tonight? I can feel it coming in the end tonight. I'll pull the microphone away, but that can't be it.
SPEAKER_03Amazing. It's that drum piece in that song. Oh man.
SPEAKER_01All right, friends, you've just entered the quality question section. This is from Isaiah ZW. I don't know if that stands for Z-W-A-Y-N-E, but nonetheless. Hey, Living Waters podcast. My name is Isaiah, and I'm 18 years old from South Australia. I love the Living Waters Ministry and is such a big supporter of Ray Comfort's evangelism style. And I now go into the streets myself. Praise the Lord. I was wondering if you guys would ever come to Adelaide and South Australia. That's the question. Ray? That's the apologetics question. Would you go to Adelaide? Well, I was just thinking while you're talking.
SPEAKER_00Whenever you sing, I think to myself, it will pass.
SPEAKER_01I can't I can keep going. It's just a matter of time.
SPEAKER_00It's it'll go. Yeah. It'd be great to go to South Australia. True. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Ray's going. He just committed. You heard him. No, no, no, no, no. Thank you for joining us, France.
SPEAKER_00I didn't finish the sentence via Zoom.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, via Zoom. Please come. But if not, please let me know when you come to Australia next because I'd love to meet you all one day. God bless you guys for what you do. We were just there, actually, Isaiah. And um uh I wasn't I was actually asked to go back, but it's not gonna work for me now. But I'm sure Mark and Oscar will go back sometime. I love Australia and the kangaroo's pouch.
SPEAKER_04It's a great place to leave.
SPEAKER_01The coffee there is. We love Australia.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, meat paising, just coffee. Okay, I will say that.
SPEAKER_01It's superior. I have to say. I have it almost every morning.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03Melbourne is the like epicenter of uh fourth wave coffee. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Get ready for a shout out from the Sheikh of Shawarma, the number seven top Christian podcast in Mongolia, number 13 in religion and spirituality. Shout out to our Mongolian friends. Come visit us here. Let's bring the barbecue. Uh it's in Asia. And I said to myself, look it up where it attacked because Ray's gonna ask.
SPEAKER_00I did, and I totally to the bottom of Russia above Tibet, Mongolia. Okay, you're right. You can stone throw away. I can't help it. Pride.
SPEAKER_01And now a radically revolutionary resource is caught. What just happened? Once in a while. This podcast is brought to you by the tract sample.
SPEAKER_00It sounds cheesy. Sounds good. 50 tracts in there. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01Let's see if I can open it up here.
SPEAKER_00It's foolproof.
SPEAKER_01I can't open it up. Oh, it's taped. That's fine. Anyway, friends, you have Rain, his little Duke back there. Um Sam. Yeah, Sam. Dug. And uh bunch of the cards. Sam's gone. So check it out. It's got samples of all of our tracts. And don't forget the Living Waters mug and the Evan Study Bible and Living Waters TV, all that. We got nothing on Anita. We got nothing on Anita. LivingWaters.com. And don't forget the podcast YouTube channels, tens of thousands of subscribers, make it trillions, please. All right, friends.
Today we're talking about the errors of gentle parenting. Okay, first of all, I think it's important to highlight that um we're not saying that every aspect of gentle parenting uh is negative, right? Oh there are no there are there are good aspects. I mean basically in a nutshell, gentle parenting it's the parenting philosophy that that's empathize or emphasizing uh empathy, uh emotional connection, respectful communication, understanding a child's development limitations, uh, as I found here listed, and uh guiding behavior rather than relying on threats, authoritarian control. Okay? So um those are good. Building strong relationships with your children, um, helping your children to control their emotions, avoiding harsh discipline, yelling, intimidating your kids, um, using instruction, redirecting, talking about natural consequences with them. Uh, and then of course, as we always talk about, seeking to shepherd their heart, not just trying to control behavior. All that is good. All that that that's wonderful. But there are problems with gentle parenting. And I'll just highlight them and and we can touch on them here and there. The problems are it can minimize the reality of the sinful nature. That's probably the the major thing at its core, and we see that as a crossover into a lot of things that the world promotes. Um, it often rejects biblical discipline, the model that God has given us for how you should discipline kids. Uh, it can elevate a child's feelings above parental authority. That's a huge one. It can blur the distinction between understanding and excusing. Uh, it can undervalue obedience, it can promote parent-centered guilt uh and and you know other things in that vein. So it's kind of taking the world by storm now. There's one in particular, Dr. Becky is her name.
SPEAKER_00Dr.
SPEAKER_01Spock.
unknownDr.
SPEAKER_01Spock. That was during Ray's day. Yeah, my day.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. He he came out and said, never spank you. Did that keep your parents from spanking you, Ray? What? No, my my dad, my dad loved me enough to chase me down the driveway once holding the strap. There was a strap, and just say the middle middle drawer to me, and I break into a sweat. Because that's where the strap was a tram strap. You'd go and passengers would hold onto a tram strap, it was leather, and somehow it got into the middle drawer. And if dad ever opened the middle drawer, we would freak out. Yeah, and we we would get it for lying or stealing or anything like that, or just respect, and it made me respect my dad, and it gave me boundaries.
SPEAKER_01Are you grateful for it, Ray? Seriously.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely grateful, and I'm grateful I got the cane in school. When because they had corporal punishment in school.
SPEAKER_01The cane came when the cane came cane. What is that?
SPEAKER_00The the pain of the cane was just about the pain of waiting for the cane was just about as bad as the pain from the cane when it came. That's crazy. Was that the audience? I just heard a Was that an Anita noise? Or was that who was that?
SPEAKER_04I received the cane as well when I was in third grade. Doesn't it hurt? Oh, yeah, it was it was so bad. But uh we had the knowledge, my older brother had the knowledge and the wisdom to hide the cord that we used to get spanking. So my grandma used to come at us just swinging it like this. And then she would just start, we'd have welts all over our legs.
SPEAKER_00Really? And my brother said That was when it was a gentle parenting.
SPEAKER_04She used to get mad. He goes, Why are we putting the cord back in the drawer? Light bulb moment. He hid the cord, and she got so upset one time. She went for the cord and she couldn't find it. My brother just started laughing, and I just realized we're done being spanked.
SPEAKER_00Ah, that was it. Couldn't you have just shortened the cord every now and then so it was smaller and smaller so she wouldn't have known it was hidden.
SPEAKER_01Mark, did your college friends ever talk about your welts from your grandma or anything?
SPEAKER_04My mom had the fastest sandal in the West, right? Because she would just start slapping. Fastest what? Sandal. Taking that sandal off her body. So was that done out of college? Was it done out of angle? Was it discipline? I mean, well, I mean, I want to honor her, you know, but uh I don't know. So that that's she didn't set us down. That's it at all. I didn't grow up in a Christian household.
SPEAKER_03That's that's a great question in these brands. It really is, though. Because we, I mean, we're we're talking about gentle parenting, but then we're we're switching to uh discipline, but we have to be careful because we're also talking about what could be categorized as abuse.
Right. Like if you're disciplining your children out of anger or frustration, if you raise your voice because you lack uh um, because you lack God-given gentleness, that is also an issue, right? Like I got hit as a kid, but it was always out of anger. Um I spanked, we spanked, we're spankers, but uh, we always did it without anger. So what we would do is like if if they did something, one, we would always make it clear what what things would cause a spank. For me, the biggest thing is if you if I hear you disrespect my wife. Right. And I was very intentional. I didn't call it your mom, it was my wife. I wanted to make sure that was super clear.
SPEAKER_00If you chose your wife, you didn't choose your kids.
SPEAKER_03That's right, yeah. And so if there was a necessary spanking from a from a rule that was broken that was expressed beforehand, um, then we would tell, we would sit them down on timeout, we would tell them a spanking is coming, we would sit down with them and explain why um that we don't want to do, you know, I don't want to do this. This is not the joyful part of me being a dad. I'd spank them, then I'd hug them, and I'd pray for them. So we were trying to separate the feeling of being spanked out of anger, frustration, a lack of grace and understanding to like an actual consequence that that was hopefully able to shepherd and grow them in a proper direction. And I think those it's just super important to recognize there's gentle parenting, which we're gonna talk about, and then there's something else, right? That's abuse. Uh the the Bible, I think, cuts the thread between those two things.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And man, you know, there was a time when they were even disciplining kids in in school where they would even here in the United States, and it wasn't like ages ago, maybe 30, 40 years ago, maybe a little more, but um, and I'm not I'm not justifying that. I'm I'm just saying that there's been a major shift in society today to where even if you do what Oscar just talked about, which is I is absolutely beautiful and we'll get more into it, you're called abusive. To use any kind of any kind of physical consequences, you're called abusive. It's interesting though, because if the police come to your house and they say you're you're being abusive because you spanked your child and you said no and you rebel against them, you try to fight them, what are they gonna do? They're gonna spank you in a big boy way. They're gonna tase you, they're gonna hit you with their billy club, they're gonna they're gonna handcuff you, they're gonna haul you off. It's it's so weird that contradiction, right? But you can't use gentle and and and consistent, proper corporal discipline with your children. It it's maddening, you know, to me.
SPEAKER_04I have a friend who used to take off the headrest instead of his car, and he would and he'd just spank all the kids behind him the headrest. When he was uh driving. The headrest.
SPEAKER_00I think you you brought it up a stick. Oh, is that what it was? And he's a headrest. I had three kids in the back of the car, if they were fighting. I didn't know because I was driving, I didn't know who was at fault, so I'd just get and hit them all. Yeah, back and forth.
SPEAKER_01I I specifically asked Rachel a question about that the other day, this few days ago. Because she said this, she said, I never once, never once in my whole life remember my parents getting angry with us or yelling at us, raising their voice at us. And and that, I mean, Ray, that that's just amazing. Pride. I I can feel it.
SPEAKER_03I will say I I heard that com that I heard that story from Daniel Comfort, and he said he was always sitting in the middle, so he got hit more than everyone else.
SPEAKER_01But no, because that was my questioner. I said, but you've also said your dad would take a stick and just start hitting all your legs in the back of the car. And she goes, Yeah, but he didn't, like he wasn't he wasn't yellow. It's like, okay. I'm like, how's he doing?
SPEAKER_00If you're guilty today, guilty, innocent, you're gonna it's leaving it out. Uh I used to do drug talks. Well, I wasn't on drugs when I did them, but I had a drug prevention center, and I was invited to a lot of secular stations, and I forgot that the world doesn't appreciate what the scriptures say. The Bible's the instruction book for humanity. It says foolishness is bound on the heart of a child, a rod of correction will drive it far from the phone.
SPEAKER_01Proverbs 22, 15.
SPEAKER_00That's it. So I was doing this talk as a national radio station, and I didn't I forgot it was secular, and I said, Well, when my my son does this, I I I spank him with a stick. And he said, You hit your kid with a stick. And I said, He said, Where'd you get that from? This is I I thought, yeah, because it's normal Christians still like that. Because the you don't use your hand. That's the loving part of you that you use a stick, something that's in between. And uh and then he said, Where'd you get that from? And I said, The Bible. He said, blinkly blank, the Bible. And then it was just really hot in the studio for a few minutes. But then a lady called up and says, Excuse me, you are incredibly rude to your guest. My parents disciplined me, and my dad had a small stick, and if we did something wrong, he would discipline us and show us right from wrong. So uh we forget that the world thinks it knows best. Forget the instruction book. Why is the world in such a mess? Why do we have a generation that's given it drugs and alcohol and pornography and fornication, suicide, because they've left what the instruction book says to do. They know better.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, and and look, we're seeing a shift in society. I mean, I I the stat says 73% of American parents say they primarily use what's called positive reinforcement instead of discipline. Yeah. Um and uh and there was a survey done, it said three quarters of parents reported feeling burned out, uh, with a lot of them citing you know the pressures of of parenting and stuff. So you have this reality of this shift, and then you also have, on the other hand, parents that are frustrated because I think at the end of the day, that's where it leads. Because when you apply that kind of philosophy, in most cases, you always have exceptions, but when you apply that philosophy and and you you partake of some of the errors that that I already highlighted that want to get into, you end up with kids that that don't understand boundaries, that don't understand authority. It's amazing because you know, when you stop spanking your children at a certain age, hopefully at a young age, that it gets to a place where now they're not even remembering that anymore per se. They're just now they've been brought into submission. But that was necessary at the front end.
SPEAKER_00I remember once I did a drug talk when I first started doing them to a secular audience, and people came up afterwards, and the question that someone asked blew me away because it was nothing to do with what I'd said. The person said, Your three kids sat beside you for an hour and they didn't move. How did you do that? Drugs was it when you pass around the joint break? No, no, no. Yeah, no, sedation. And it was they liked the fruit, but they wouldn't like how I got there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's a really good point. A lot of people will say that, and then you tell them, well, here we did this, and it's like, oh. Right.
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, when I see a parent in public with a brat kid, my first thought is that parent needs to be spanked.
SPEAKER_01We should do that spanking for parents.
SPEAKER_03You you I have uh an example that I was reminded of when you said what you said earlier, which is you don't even want him to remember it. I remember when one of my kids was just starting to crawl, and we were on the second floor of a of a home, and there was like the guardrails that leaned down into the first floor, right? And this little baby, my child, is crawls up to the guardrails and goes to put his hand through it. And I remember going, No, and the not a hesitation just kept going. And in that moment, you realize, Oh yeah. He has no idea what no means. No clue whatsoever. So I gave a little gentle slap on the hand, no, and like he pulls his hand back and looks at me and then has this like moment. You can see it in his eyes. He's like, okay, if I do this again, and I hit his hand again, no. And he pulled back and he goes, and he just crawled away. In that moment, my son learned no. And he was 29. And he was 29 years old, still learning to walk. Okay. But that's the point that you're making.
SPEAKER_01Because let me let me say this is this is what um well this is one of the things that bothers me most about the whole general parenting philosophy. And I know some of you are listening like, you guys are talking about spanking. Oh no, how could you do that? No, we are because we we love our listeners. And this, we I read a letter earlier of someone who said their life has been changed by the podcast. My hope is that some of you will have a paradigm shift in your parenting today that will change the trajectory of your children's lives and maybe their generations. Now, we're not about behavioralism, it's about the heart, but but God uses us as a tool. So here's what bothers me one of the things that bothers me most is it when you when you approach it that way, and I'll give an example, you're deceiving your children. When you have a little kid whose parent comes up to them and and like takes their hand and says, no, don't do that, and they push your hand away, and you just go back like this, and and or they're they're arching and fighting you, and you just kind of relax and you just kind of let put them down. You're deceiving your child into believing that they're actually stronger than you. Now, in and of itself, who cares? But the problem is that what they think they're able to do as that applies is continue to fight your authority because they're more powerful than you. It translates to not just the physical, but but even the the behavioral and the social. So you have to fight against that, and your children need to know they are not stronger than you. God has put you as an agent in their life to guide them, lead them, direct them. So, as an example, I remember one day we were driving over to your house, Ray, with the kids. Julia was just, you know, a little girl. And she might have been a year and a half, two years. I can't remember, she was really young. I reached back my hand and I just wanted to just pat her leg in an affectionate way. Oh, hey, sweetheart. And she pushed my hand away. Did it hurt physically? It broke my wrist. She used her lighter.
SPEAKER_00And her shotgun.
SPEAKER_01She used to carry a shotgun. So I take my hand, and so I took my hand and I put it back on her leg and I said, No. And the whole way there, 30 minutes from our house to your house, I kept my hand on her leg. She never did that again. And it was, I wasn't hurting her, squeezing her, I wasn't yelling, I wasn't, but it was just like, no, because she had to realize, you know, that this isn't how it works. When my kids were young, they would start with the back arching. That's always where it starts, the back arching.
SPEAKER_00Gotta just say something. There's Arab blood on your family.
SPEAKER_01Wild man. No, but when it when they would start with the back arching, I would gently reverse it, right? Because that's again, that's deception. Back arching, uh, and parent act like they're helpless. What are we gonna do? You know, it's not good for your kid. So I would gently reverse it and I would say no. And they would and they would keep screaming and doing it, and I wouldn't let go until they relaxed. I'm not crushing them, I'm not hurting them, but until they relaxed, I would not let them once they relax, I let it go. Back arching only happened
maybe two or three times with the kids. You can't deceive them in that way. Okay, so let's start with the first thing. It can minimize the reality of the sinful nature.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, Proverbs 19, 18.
SPEAKER_01That's a great passage.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Chasing your son while there is hope. And I think that that tells us that there's only a certain amount of time that you've got with your children. I remember when I used to do drug prevention counseling when I was still in that stuff, and parents would come in and say, My son is rebellious, he's 17, he does this, he da-da, what can I do? And I felt like saying, You're trying to stop the horse when it's bolted already. You've left it too late. That's right. Start when they're toddlers. Seriously, like like um Oscar was saying, when that kid wanted to go over that balcony, you've got to spank the hand. Just get a little hit, then a little harder, and then get the hammer out.
SPEAKER_01No, no, do not do that.
SPEAKER_00The only thing that we did. Yeah, they're plastic, those little plastic hammers that go beep beep.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Mark, before you say that, can I say something important? Because I don't want to sing it. Finally, 26 minutes in, 412 episodes. Because what Mark's gonna say is not important. No, uh no. I I want to I want to just say this now before we get too far down the road. Because I know some of you are listening right now and you're feeling condemned. You're saying, Oh, my kids are rebellious or disobedient, but we tried. We you have to understand, bring up a child on the way he shall go, and when she's when he's old, he won't depart from it. Is a truism, it's not a promise. So don't be condemned. You could have done everything right and your children rebelled. Like uh uh Ted Tripp talks about in his book Shepherd and Child's a Heart, which we'll refer to. Um, there's there's there are shaping influences, but there's God word orientation. You could have done everything right, but your child still has to decide to yield to the Lord. So just keep that in mind. Don't be condemned.
SPEAKER_04And uh and I think that a like my parents did everything wrong. You know, and we can tell. Yes, we know the way we are now. When and I don't know, I think I learned this from you, Easy. So I adopted it with my kids, and that was when kids get older and they get out of control and they become teenagers, and then the parents are thinking, I don't have a relationship with my kids, I I don't know how to rein things in. What do I do? And I remember sharing with my my brother, I said, Well, you and I we kind of have two different ways of thinking on how to raise the kids. When what's happening now is your your child is beginning to to rum away from you, and now you're trying to lasso him and pull him in. And what we did was we tied a lasso around them when they were real little, and then we held them just close to us. And then they begin to make the right decisions, and then we kind of loosen it a little bit. And then we loosen it until it gets to the place where we just kind of we let it go. But they don't go off and out because they're used to being close by us. They were used to us when they were real little, um, helping them make every decision for them. And now they come back to us for wisdom and counsel. But if we didn't start off that way, yeah, it would be uh them doing whatever they want to do, and now you're trying to grab a hold of them and pull them in, and and it's not gonna work because it didn't start off that way. That's right. Let me give you an example here, and I know both of you guys want to talk because all you do is want to talk. My son uh Nathaniel, who works here at the Ministry Tanny, he had done something uh wrong that warranted a uh a spanking.
SPEAKER_00Well, it wasn't.
SPEAKER_04And we had a paddle and it was made out of leather, and we called it Rodney. So when we were in public, we would say, Do you I go, Is that Rodney over there? As if it was a person, but it referred to the paddle, right? Have a talk with Rodney. And so we went inside of the room, I took Tanney inside the room, and we always sat down because we don't spank out of anger. And you know, you got the Rodney right there, and I'm talking to him, what went right, what went wrong, what did you do? And then when it was all done, then I would spank him. So I did that to Tanny. Tanny went off and he began to play. And then Noah did something really bad to Tany. So I took Noah into the room.
SPEAKER_01Where's the trapdoor under AC, man?
SPEAKER_04And I started to talk to Noah, and he he's in agreement. Yeah, what he did was wrong. And right before I spanked Noah, I got a knock at the door. And it was Tany. And Tany said, Dad, I have to talk to you right now. Can't I wait? So Tanney comes in, and Tany says, Dad, what Noah did was wrong. And he deserves to be spanked. But I want to receive his punishment for him. And it was against Tany. So Noah, like, yeah, he like high tailed it out of there. And Noah, and so Noah left, and Tany was there, and I go, Tanny, do you realize what is happening here? He's all yes, Tanya Noah did me wrong, and I'm gonna receive his punishment. And he shared with me that this was a picture of the gospel. So I spanked Tany as if it was Noah, and we both wept inside of that room. It was a big walk-in closet. But it was it was it was a better picture of what happened with Christ. You know, we did him wrong, and yet he received the punishment in our stead. And Proverbs 13 whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. So that that is the picture, right? Tying a leash around the kids when they're younger, and you mentioned the book, Shepherding a Child's Heart.
SPEAKER_01That's where I got it from. A study guide tricking like that that illustrates so good.
SPEAKER_04Such a great book. If if your kids are young, it is the number one book outside of the Bible that I would recommend help raise your kids.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and if they're they're in the teenage years uh by his brother, uh Paul Tripp, Age of Opportunity. Yeah. Uh and he wrote another one called Parenting that's really good as well.
SPEAKER_03Uh I think going back to something you said earlier, there are some there are some helpful things that are out there in modern-day understanding of parenting. You know, one thing that I saw that I thought was great is instead of yelling at your kids time to leave the playground, they go, hey, you know, we're leaving in two minutes, giving them that heads up. I think that little little tidbits of advice are great, but you also alluded to something super important, which I think is the core issue of gentle parenting. And you mentioned Dr. Becky. She says, this is her quote, I truly do believe we're all good inside. And that inherently is the problem. As R. C. Sproul once said, he believes the biggest hindrance to the gospel is people's lack of belief in total depravity. And Dr. Becky is essentially telling us to raise children with a lack of understanding of our depravity, to say that we're totally good inside. Uh Marilyn Simon points out that it actually reduces, it's almost cruel to teach kids this. Uh, she says, in neglecting the dark corners of a child's soul, gentle parenting does children a disservice. For the fact is that most children already know that they're sometimes bad and that they sometimes do things out of malice, spite, or greed. Augustine, on the other hand, has said, uh, it is not the will of the infant that is harmless, but the weakness of his little limbs. I myself have seen and observed a little baby rife with jealousy. He could not yet speak, but he went pale and cast a bitter glare at the child nursing at the breast beside him, pointing out just like we are depraved from the beginning. And I think that's key. You know, we're talking about spanking, but spanking isn't the only form of discipline. To shepherd your children in understanding and in the ability to be able to ask for forgiveness. I remember we're at church and this kid was just acting like a monster. I think I've told this story before. We did it in a QA. Acting like a little monster. And the the mom was just like, oh, you know, he's just, he's just tired or hungry. And I'm like, your kid's a jerk? Like he's kicking people in the shin, man. Like, this isn't just tired or hungry. He's a sinner. He needs to be sat down and had a conversation with or physically disciplined. But bottom line is like, he lacks discipline. What are, easy, what are other ways other than other than speaking that you found helpful in disciplining your children?
SPEAKER_01Well, I wanted to say, first of all, you know, that that's another example of disservice, right? Making excuses for your children rather than remembering uh what it tells us in Psalm 51, 5, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. I mean, you have to you have to start with the foundation because all of this is worldview stuff. If you start with a with a humanistic, man-centered perspective on life, of course you're gonna say man is essentially good. But when you start with the right worldview and you understand this is why my child is doing that, right? He's he's not a sinner because he's doing that. He's doing that because he's a sinner. That's his nature, his fallen, broken, sinful, adamic nature, right? Through one man, right, sin spread to all. And so you have to know that that's key. Ray.
SPEAKER_00This is such an important issue because it translates right into our penal system, where if we say man is basically good, then someone who commits multiple murders doesn't do it because he's evil, but he said influences in his youth, like a dominant father, a failure to have a mother that takes care of him or hold him in his arms. So he shouldn't be punished by our penal system, he should be a re rehabilitated. And consequently, prisons aren't places of punishment, they're places of rehabilitation because the guy isn't evil. Right, yeah. He just murdered people because he wasn't brought up correctly. And we see this translated, something I saw yesterday on television. You may have seen a few months ago a girl in New York was sitting minding her own business, a guy stood up behind her and just repeatedly stabbed her to death in a train. He was just yesterday deemed not fit to stand trial because he's not mentally correct. So he's given four months of uh medication. That's that's his punishment. Four months of free medication. And he stabbed her to death. It's just as crazy. And why it comes back to the whole thing, denying the depravity of man. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And oh please. Okay, well, I was gonna say um, you know, that yeah, in terms of of different forms of discipline. And look, I there's been debate among this between Christians, but I I we've always preferred not to use the term punishment, but rather discipline. And the reason for that is because punishment, and again, maybe you can get into semantics and say, well, it is technically, but whatever. Uh look, people, it's what people walk away with and what they associate in their minds with that word. Punishment is usually indicative of retribution, you know, of of uh dealing out something to get back at someone. But we don't go through that. As God's children, we're no longer under judgment, right? We're we're we've passed out of judgment into life. We're not punished, but we're disciplined. Discipline carries it with it, the idea of doing this for your good and your growth and your transformation. So there's so many different things, you know, um, from consequences to things that they enjoy to participate in, to um, you know, when they're young, we did a lot of sentences for our kids. And I loved sentences because you give them something to write and they're doing it multiple times, but it's instilling in their heart and mind what is right and true. And so that's that's getting in there, you know. Um, you know, privileges that that they participate in, you could pair those back. But the key is again, your heart and your attitude. That's that's that's primary.
SPEAKER_00And I think what you're saying is so important, not like Mart said. Um that is to realize it's for the good of the child. I was joking, Mark. You're wonderful. It's for the good of the child, and you hear a parent say, I don't want to spank him because it makes me feel bad. I don't want to hear him cry. Um, I don't like the I don't want him to dislike me. So it's not all about the kid, it's all about me and my emotions that I feel when he gets punished. Not punished, when he gets corrected.
SPEAKER_01That's right. Yeah, and and then let let's uh well I want to get into the second thing, which is um that gentle parenting rejects biblical discipline, but you had something to say.
SPEAKER_03Um yeah, I just think it's important to recognize that when we hold back our kids from the reality that they are sinners, we also hold them back from the gospel. That's right. Because in order for them to see their desperate need of grace, they need to see exactly that, that they are in need of grace. So to frame sin as anything else but sin is to ultimately hold them back from grace. Another book that was absolutely life-shaping for us is Give Them Grace by Elise Fitzpatrick. She does such a great job of teaching you how to speak grace into moments of sin. Uh, and you know, some someone I think it's important to recognize like gentleness is an aspect to our parenting, but I love the way Trevor Wax points out. He says, Jesus' response to sinners is not to unquestionably, unquestionably affirm their weakest tendencies, their knee-jerk reactions to stress, their yearning for power, influence, attention, their proclivities for self aggrad I can't even say that word, aggrandizement. That's what I was saying earlier. But to show them in himself the love that is stronger than those tendencies and that delivers, that's key, that delivers them from their never-ending maze of human longing. Essentially, your gentleness in your parenting should deliver them from sinner to saint. Oh, it's so good.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and look, we've we've talked about parenting a couple times on the podcast. But this, you know, in particular, we wanted to hone in on this because
it's such a big issue that's sweeping the world by storm. And and Mark, people, again, social media, you mentioned it on the last podcast. Like, that's been a big part of that, right? In terms of what people are seeing out there. But but how do we use discernment? Like, what is what is the measuring rod for our discernment when we're coming across all this stuff bombarding us?
SPEAKER_04Well, we spend more time in the word than we do in the world, right? As we are in the world, we want to make sure that the word is continually washing over us. We do things like what Oscar does with us kids. You're watching a movie, you play spot the lie. You know, I logical fallacies. We taught the kids logical fallacies when they were growing up so that they can recognize through communication what is right, what is wrong. Deal with the argumentation at hand. Uh I think that the the most important thing is to get inside the word, you know, and when you're sharing with the kids, be be quick to share a scripture, you know, with them where you went right, where things went wrong. Uh, I think many parents uh they believe that their primary responsibility is to make their kids happy. And how many times have we seen this at restaurants where kids are sitting there and they are on an iPad? It's crazy to me. Or they're scrolling away on their phone. And the amount of time that is spent on there, and there is no interaction, right? Kids should be seen and not heard. I kind of grew up in that environment with with my with my family that I should I should be seen and not heard and continually sent away for different things. But the Christian isn't like that. The the Christian is in engulfed inside of their kids' lives and they're studying their kids. So what may work for one of my kids may not work for another child, yeah, unless there's blanketly covered inside of scripture. So I want to study my kids, I want to be a student of my kids, and I want to see what works for them. So it may be that if I'm gonna discipline my one son, I'm gonna discipline my other son maybe a whole lot less. Remember, the idea is not just to spank them, right? I do you realize what you did wrong? And there's been plenty of times where I've taken them inside the room and I've got the Rodney ready, I'm ready to discipline. And then I didn't end up disciplining them with the Rodney. They got it. The light turned on. And believe me, if it didn't turn on and then they repeated that inside the future, then we had a deeper conversation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and that's studying the kids. That's a good point, Mark, because it's you're not, it's it's not there's not a command to always spank, right? Um, there are times where you can, even in the stages when you are spanking them, you can use other means. But but I think in and issues of rebellion, especially outright rebellion, it's extremely important, you know. And so so biblically speaking, Ray, were you gonna say something?
SPEAKER_00Probably it was.
SPEAKER_01Oh, forget it. What do you want?
SPEAKER_00Um setting boundaries is so important because it gives a kid a sense of, I don't know, being loved. And I I think I've used this before, but it's so so powerful, and I'm so humble on sharing it with you. Um we've got a uh a bird avary at home. It's um I put reflect refractive reflective glass on the outside, and so we see wild birds come. But we used to have it, uh we've stopped now, but we I built a cage on the outside of that reflection so that we had tame birds, maybe about 15 of them on the inside, and then wild birds come on the outside, so we had the double. It was just great to see. And I often had the thought, I wonder if these tame birds that are in a cage often look at the wild birds that fly up into the trees and fly into the heavens and think to themselves, whoa, I wish I could do that. Why am I held in this cage? And then one day something came that just absolutely answered that whole thought, and that was I saw a wild bird stand on the outside eating, and suddenly a hawk came, grabbed it, and just bit with its sharp beak into its head. And I heard that little bird scream to a point where I ran outside, ran around, but it had gone, I just said the hawk in the distance having lunch. And I thought to myself, I wonder how those little cage birds are feeling now. They're not in a prison.
SPEAKER_01Boundaries and safety.
SPEAKER_00They're not in a prison. They're in a place of safety.
SPEAKER_01Wow, that's good, right? Yeah. So again, we go back to scripture. What does scripture say? And and first on on spanking, Proverbs 13, 24, he that spares his rod hates his son. You cited it, but he that loves him will discipline him promptly. Proverbs 22, 15, foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him. Proverbs 29, 15, the rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings his mother shame. Proverbs 29, 17, correct your son, and he'll give you rest, and he shall give delight unto your soul.
SPEAKER_00Sorry, how consistent scripture is. You wouldn't find any of those saying, just let a kid do naughty things, that's fine. Right. It's always the opposite.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And and then you think of the allusion given in in uh Hebrews 12, 6. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. Right. It's it's it there's that parallel tide that a father who disciplines his child loves him. And um, and then it goes on verse 11, Hebrews 12, now no chastening for the present seems to be joyous but grievous. Nevertheless, afterwards it yields a peaceable fruit of righteousness unto those who are exercised by it. Like, of course, and that's again, it's not pleasant, it doesn't feel good, but we look back now, and even if our parents didn't discipline us, maybe in the way that we discussed, not that they abused us, but maybe there were times where they didn't do it in that pattern of tenderness and talking to us and praying with us. We still look back with gratitude and say, man, because I think of how bad I was. Had there not been discipline, yeah, I would have been so much better.
SPEAKER_00I often think of that. Yeah, how bad you were.
SPEAKER_01I was a bad, bad person. Yeah, so um, oh, you breathed, Mark. Were you gonna say something? I was laughing at Ray.
SPEAKER_00So um no, you're laughing with me. Um, Eli.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I was just I was just listening to that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um I say no more. Yeah. Case given. That's massive. I mean, think about Eli, right? He he talked to his children, he told them that this sought not to be, you know, because they were sleeping with the women at the door temple, they were stealing from the sacrifices. And but but God then rebukes Eli and and and ends up, you know, chastising him because he allowed his sons to to run that way. He didn't take the proper steps to shut them down.
SPEAKER_00Yes, it's because the sons made themselves vile and he did not restrain them. Wow, he didn't care enough.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's heavy. Um, okay, the other thing about general parenting, it it can elevate a child's feelings above parental authority. Oscar, speak to that. Like the whole issue of, but this is what they feel. And there's a term they use, big feelings.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's it's again, it feelings become ultimately the ultimate authority, the god, right? And I think that leads into what we see later on in life too, which is that your feelings dictate facts. Um, but the reality is that feelings aren't facts, and that what we, even as adults, like let's think about it practically. As adults, your feelings cannot dictate your life. If I came into work and I had a bad night of sleep and I acted unkind and disrespectfully in the workplace, ultimately I didn't get disciplined and fired. I wouldn't be able to be like, well, I'm just having big feelings here, guys. You're raising your kids to not understand adulthood and reality. Like your feelings cannot dictate the world around you. They need to be restrained. Feelings are gifts from the Lord, but they're also something that we need to have discipline over. They cannot have discipline over us.
SPEAKER_00You know, if you want to be pulled emotionally into a video on YouTube, just watch one of those police videos where the police come and say something to someone. Open up your car door. We want to see your driver's license. Why? I say, open it up or we're gonna smash the window. What have I done? All they've got to do is give the driver's license over, and they don't, and you see the thing escalate to a point of insanity where they actually have to peppery the person, drag him off in a car, all because they didn't have any respect for any form of authority. And if it's not learned in home, it won't be learned on the street.
SPEAKER_01So true. I mean, you see that. How many of those videos we've seen when someone's getting arrested? But they it's an adult throwing a tantrum. And and in my mind, I'm thinking, and again, there are exceptions. We said it's not always a parent's fault, but but it's most likely that they were they were never taught to be under authority and and just given their way. And so and they think that's how the world world works.
SPEAKER_03And I think another thing that you'll see in gentle parenting is the idea of distraction. So it's like, you know, you're sitting there and your kid's like, well, I want to play with that toy, but he has it. And so what we do in gentle parenting is, oh, well, here's a screen, here's some food, here's a snack. And ultimately, what we're teaching our kids is to busy their lives up to avoid the friction, the frustrating aspects of reality rather than sitting down and walking them through what's causing their frustration, if that's a sin issue, if it's idolatry, if it's learning to share. Like you can teach your kids to walk through that moment of friction rather than to raise them up to be distracted adults, which is going to be a problem.
SPEAKER_00Another way to handle that favorite toy, um, it's a Solomon um wisdom. You get the chainsaw out and just saw it in half.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, on that point, let me just say like I can't count how many of our kids' toys we've given away. There are a few that we had them throw away because it would the selfishness was so egregious. And I know some here like, oh no, what do you mean? No, absolutely. You give, see, there has to be clarity with kids, and they need to know what the outcome will be. You give them instruction on it, and you you you're certain they know and understand. And it's like, look, if if you're going to be selfish with this sweetheart, then then you're gonna lose it. Then they do it, and then you follow through. Yeah, that's important. One of my kids talked about the memory of a toy that they absolutely treasured, and I took it away and said, We're giving this away. We're gonna we'll take it to Savers or Goodwill, where someone else is gonna get this. And it he never forgot it, but he didn't do that again. That the lesson was learned. So be willing to throw some away, give them away.
SPEAKER_04So I told my boys to clean their room or I'll clean it, right? That's the idea. And I said, I don't mind cleaning, I'll clean your room. Whenever you don't clean it, I'll clean your room. But my idea of cleaning the room is grabbing a garbage bag and anything that is out of place, at my discretion, I throw it inside the trash bag and then I go and put it inside the trash can, and you're not allowed to open up that trash can. So I remember when we lived uh local by the ministry here. I I grabbed a hold of the PlayStation, I grabbed a hold of the games, I grabbed a hold of everything that was there, went and threw it inside the trash can. And then the trash man came and then the lid was up, and the trash man went down, he got out of the truck, and he starts going and he starts taking things out, put inside of the vehicle. But that that's a good lesson to learn, right? Now they keep their room clean. I read an article several years ago, uh, which from a guy whose theology I don't agree with, probably half of what he believes. Um a guy named uh Michael Perlman, and he wrote an article called The Folly of Fairness. And this article is about raising your kids so that they don't think that the world is fair because the world is not fair. So, what do we do? We we go to the store, we pick up a toy, we have two kids, we want to give both kids a toy. So we buy two gifts, two toys for the kids. But that that's not the reality of the way the world works. So it is okay to go to the store and pick up a toy for one of your kids and to teach the kids hey, rejoice with him because he got a toy. And then next time, you could do the same thing for the same child where one child does not receive a toy two times in a row, or you're away on a trip, you don't have to come back and give a gift to everybody inside the house. I'll go to Singapore, I got gifts for everybody. No, it's not the way it works. The folly of fairness, when you begin to grow up and you realize I don't have a car, but then your next door neighbor has two cars. Is he gonna give you one of the cars that he's got? No, because that's not the way the world works. This is not a socialistic way of raising the kids. And the kids need to be able to see this from the beginning. Yeah, and so I might my son did this uh with with our family. He went away, he went on a trip, and he came back with gifts for everybody, except for me. And I'm upset at him to this day for not getting.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Dad. That's funny.
SPEAKER_03I just want to real quickly go back to something Ray said, uh, the the Solomon principle cutting toys in half half. I'm now realizing why all your kids know how to ride a unicycle.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, you know, it's um the it man, this stuff is so key to and and Mark, I'm glad you you qualified Michael Perlman. I just want to say I I deem some of the things he talks about concerning. So for any of you listening, we're not we're not making an endorsement there. Um, but again, you chew the meat, spit out the bones, like everything in life. Um yeah, I'll I'll take this one. It can blur the distinction between understanding and excusing. This is huge because you know, you want to be understanding
toward your kids. Of course there are emotions going on in them, of course they're they're grappling, they're young, they're but but you don't excuse their behavior. Again, that's a disservice to them. You highlight it, call it what it is, and then guide them through it. It may not need to be a discipline, a disciplinary area at that issue at that moment. It may be an explanatory one and a guiding one. But in any case, don't be understanding abundantly, but don't make excuses for them. It's not gonna help them in life.
SPEAKER_00It's great when your kids grow up and they understand what you're doing for them and they thank you for it. Oh yeah. This isn't that instance, but I remember Daniel, who works for the ministries, 40, 50 or something like that. But I remember the day he says, I'm not buying Nikes anymore. He just had ordinary sneakers on. I thought, ah, he's just grown up. Yeah, yeah. And I thought it was great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You know, I I I remember this is one of my most treasured memories with the kids in terms of discipline. And and let me say, friends, we're talking right now, and it can sound like we've never messed up, we've never made mistakes, but absolutely not. We have. We've had to apologize to our children. We have, at least in my home, I I I envy that, Ray, because I have raised my voice, I have gotten frustrated. Um, and so we're far from perfect. But um, but there is a difference between acknowledging that and then and then just saying, oh well, and just doing it the world's way or or being angry. There is a way to honor God, even though you're not perfect and to be biblically inclined. So, anyway, one time um I had disciplined Julia, whom we've had on the podcast here, wonderful, godly young woman. What did she do?
SPEAKER_00Um that's a terrible thing to private.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, she said something bad about didn't she write a book? She did. What's it called? All things broken and beautiful by Julia Zwain, wherever good books are sold, and Amazon.com. Okay, so um I had disciplined her. And with our kids, you know, this is something that Tetrip talks about too. Like when you discipline your children, once it's over, right? First of all, gentleness and love and all that throughout it, but even when it's over, it's done. It's it's not performance-based acceptance. And now you have you still upset with them and you give them the cold shoulder for a while. No, no, no, it's done. So oftentimes, you know, we'd walk out with our kids from after discipline, them tickling them, they're laughing. Ah, it's like because oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, tickle them, Mark, tickle and mark. Get him. Um anyway, finished the discipline. And but Julia was still sad. She was crying and it was uncharacteristic. I go, sweetheart, I go, what's what's wrong? Why are you why are you crying? We're done. The discipline's over. She said, No, daddy, she said, Um, I'm just crying because I'm so thankful to God that he's given me a father who loves me so much so much. Clean that he will discipline me. Wow. And I thought, Lord, thank you for blinding her eyes all the other times. But no, it's it so touched me. I remember one time when she was a little girl, uh, she had done something somewhere, and I said, When we get home, honey, you know, I'm gonna have to discipline you. And I forgot. And she comes into our room after she had gone into bed and she goes, Daddy, I just wanted to remind you, you forgot to discipline me. And it blessed me because in a way it conveyed that it's not this dreadful thing of you know intensity and harshness. And that blessed me.
SPEAKER_00That was great. But I walked on the moon. Remember when Jacob Jacob was uh I won't say his name because I don't want to embarrass him. Um begins with J. Anyway, he was about six, and I remember he was um he said something to mom, that's my wife, so his mum, that was really bad. So I said, get your room, and I'll be in in a minute. And I went in and I said, Bend over your bed. And I spanked him a couple of times on the rear end. He burst into tears. We prayed together, um, and I gave him a Kleenex and came out, and then about five minutes later, he was sitting at the kitchen table, uh, just drawing something and writing something. What's going on? Next thing he tapped me on the back. I turned around, he passed me this little note that just said, I love my dad. Oh man. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh I love that. And and that's what proper biblical discipline does. Um another thing, it may undervalue obedience. Ray, real just quickly, we don't have a lot of time left, but but that's a massive thing. Like obedience, that that's the call of the Christian life, and people look at it like it's a dirty word.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, though he was son, speaking of Jesus, learned he obedience by the things that he suffered, and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation to all that obey him. And so our love for God is shown in our obedience to him, not to earn heaven, but out of gratitude to the cross. And that's what should happen within the Christian family. They should, our kids should obey us, because the Bible says, honor your father and mother, that all may be well with you and your days may be long upon the earth. So if you want a long, happy, healthy life, make sure you honor your parents.
SPEAKER_01Amen. Yeah, Ephesians 6, 1 to 4. Children, obey your parents and Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, and it may be well with you, and you may live long on the earth. And then it says, And you fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. And the training and admonition of the Lord for children is that they obey their parents for his glory and their good, you know, and were the agents. So often parents are mystified. Well, I don't understand why my kids are in those cases where it was as a result of lack of discipline, they're shocked. But no, you you you were called to bring them up in the training and admonition, and that training and admonition is obedience and submission for their good.
SPEAKER_00One way to provoke your children to wrath is to leave them without discipline. And we often see this in the world where young kids grow up hating their father. Why? Because he didn't spend time with me. Yeah. Didn't didn't bother to discipline me, give me boundaries, he just gave me a brand new car, and that's it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And and sometimes, you know, kids will grow up, they'll look back at that lack of discipline or the things their parents let them do. Like, you guys let me watch this, you let me go here without anyone, you know, supervising me or whatever. And so we gotta think ahead. It's not about being the cool parent, it's not about being your children's buddy, it's about being the agent in their life, but yet infusing the whole of your relationship with love. Laugh with your kids, play with your kids, do fun things with your kids, have adventures. Like so when you discipline them, they understand it, you know, in that context. And um, and then just the last thing is it can produce parent-centered guilt, um, where it's again, you're just blaming yourself. Anything they do, oh, it was because I didn't do this, that, or the other, uh, versus you know, having the biblical perspective on that. So Ray's anxious, he wants to eat lunch. It's 12 minutes. It's 12. I say, I'm yeah, friends here. Okay, let me just say this. Here is here's the contrast, love, right? So this is biblical parenting. And I found this online, I love the way it laid it out. Love with authority, gentleness with firmness, compassion with correction, relationship with discipline, and grace with truth. That's a balance. That all of that together, it's not either or, it's both and. Amen. Okay, 15 more minutes. Is that okay, right? No, it's not. Anita will start bleeding if I go one more.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
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