3 Parenting Hacks

We have a time of silent confession during our Sunday services. Parents of children have told me that most of what they confess each wee has to do with how they’ve interacted with their children! Those little sinners typically reveal to each of us that we are just big versions of them; big sinners. So, just to be clear, no one in our church has this parenting thing figured out. So we come to Jesus. We come to God’s Word for guidance and wisdom for how to love and raise our children well. As God gives us his word on parenting, we see his heart for children and his beautiful design for parenting in the church.

Actually Discipline Your Children
Your children are a guest in your home that God gave you; they aren’t possessions. These guests in your life have real needs. They need to be taught how to love what is right. They need to be taught to submit to authority. They need to be taught how beautiful truth is and how ugly lies are. So our children will need to be disciplined. Sadly, many of us grew up in homes where discipline only came in the form of correction. We did something “wrong” or “bad” and one or both of our parents let us know about it. Whether they yelled or lectured, whether they spanked or grounded or put in time out, they attempted to correct our behavior through discipline. But God doesn’t want us simply to correct our kids, because that’s not how he treats us. He wants us to direct our kids; to give them direction on how to live beautiful lives. This means that we are responsible to shape what our children love, not just shape what they should stay away from. As parents we’ll be tempted to put up load of fences in our child’s life: don’t do this, that’s not allowed, not while you’re under this roof! That’s correction. We also need to be laying down roads, good paths that they should be walking down, and then walking down those paths with them. That’s direction. And it’s incredibly time consuming. It’d forward thinking; not reactionary. In what ways are you showing your children what is good and beautiful in this world?

Bring Your Children to Church
Children should regularly be worshipping God with their parents, and seeing their parents worship God. They should be seeing their parents taking communion, submitting to church leadership, and being overwhelmed with how great God is. What’s beautiful about kids coming to church is that part of the mission of the church is to make disciples of Jesus. That means that kids are vitally important to any church that’s following Jesus. They are at a prime time in life to learn what it means to follow Jesus and give their life to him. By bringing your kids to church, you’re placing them in a context where other aunties and uncles want those kids to learn about Jesus, to see how beautiful Jesus is, and who are partnering with you to show Jesus to these kids. The church is your support for laying down that road to see how great and amazing Jesus really is. That means that single people are involved in this and married couples without kids are involved in this. The whole church is a place where kids are valued and invested in; not a place where they are seen as a burden or annoyance. How are you investing in the children of your church?

Shepherd Your Children
In Ephesians 6 Paul says, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger.” The drive for leadership in the home is placed on the father. As the dad goes, the families typically goes. And usually men are given to anger. We want to protect the things that we love, and we tend to get angry when they things we love are attacked. And in one sense that’s a good thing, unless we love ourselves more than anything else. We love our stuff, our schedule, our job, our careers, more than we love our family. Men, fathers, you are going to protect something and sacrifice something. Either you’re going to protect yourself and your interests and sacrifice your family, or you’re going to protect your family and sacrifice yourself. Which did Jesus do? Jesus gave up himself, gave up his life, for his kids. That’s the call on every father. Give up your life for the interest of your children. Jesus didn’t kind of, just a little bit, die for us. He didn’t spend a little time with us and then get back to his career. Fathers, how important is your family to you? How are you showing them that they are more important than your stuff, your career, and your schedule?

Parents and church family, we need to turn our eyes to Jesus, who laid down his life for his kids and lead our kids in kindness and grace that points them to Jesus. At Harbor West Oahu, we have aunties and uncles who serve in the nursery every Sunday, who serve in the preschool ministry every Sunday, and who spend time with our kids at our community groups (you can check out our Keiki Ministry page here). We have aunties and uncles who’ve opened up their homes to broken and hurting kids who need a safe home. We have aunties and uncles who’ve been transformed by Jesus, and who are looking to show the beauty of Jesus to our keiki. How are you going to be a part of it? Email us if you’d like to partner with us in serving our keiki.