This week we have been looking at the dynamic, or
sometimes just the dynamite, that describes the relationships that occur
between parents and children in families. To do that, we have been looking at a
section of a letter that is recorded for us in the New Testament of the Bible,
called the book of Ephesians. In Ephesians 6:1-3, we discovered a timeless and
powerful principle when it comes to how children respond to their roles and
responsibilities within a family in that a child's willingness
to follow the leadership of their parents will influence how they will follow
leadership in the future.
Children and students, here’s the thing; no matter how
old you become, no matter how smart or strong you become, no matter how much
money you make, there will always be someone who is in leadership and authority
over you. If you do not think that is the case, just look at the lives and
listen to the conversations of the adults who exercise leadership within your
family, whether it is your parents, your grandparents, or other relatives.
There is always someone in our lives that we are responsible to report to and
answer to when it comes to our attitude and actions. And your willingness to
place yourselves under the leadership of your parents will influence and impact
your willingness to willingly place yourself under the leadership of others in
the future.
Your willingness to willingly place yourselves under the
leadership and authority of your parents in a way that regards and respects
them will influence and impact how you will respond to the leadership and
authority of teachers, employers, and other authority figures in the future. Today,
we will see Paul turn his attention to the roles and responsibilities that
parents have when it comes to their relationship with their children in
Ephesians 6:4:
Fathers, do
not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and
instruction of the Lord.
Now when Paul uses the word fathers, he is not excluding
mothers from what he is to say next. As we talked about earlier in this series,
fathers are the first among equals in the marriage relationship and are
expected to lead and model proper family relationships as an example to be
followed by mothers. Paul then commands parents to not provoke their children
to anger. If you are reading from another translation of the Bible this command
might read “do not exasperate your children.”
If Paul was writing this letter to us today in the
language that we use in our culture, this command probably would sound
something like this: Do not place your children in a position where they cannot
win. Do not put your children in a no-win situation." Parents, we all have
the temptation to do this, don’t we? As parents we have all the power and we
can pull almost all the strings. We have the strings to the checkbook; the car;
the TV; to privileges; and to the freedom that children desire. We have a great
deal of control over our children; we are bigger, stronger, and control all the
levers.
And because we have all the power and control it is very
easy to abuse our power and control in a way that our children feel like they
are in a no-win situation. And as children feel like they are in a no-win
situation, there is nothing that they can do to be right. And just like us
adults, when children feel that they are in a no-win situation where nothing
they do is right, they will lash out in a way that creates conflict, stress and
strain in our family relationships.
But parents, here’s the thing; parenting, by very
definition is the God-ordained loss of control. I mean, do we not want our
children to grow up so that they would be able to navigate and function in
society as a healthy functioning member of society. That is the point and goal
of parenting, isn’t it? And as our children get older we gradually begin to
lose the power and control over our children that we once had.
When our children are infants and small children, we have
almost total control of their lives; we control what and when they eat and
sleep. We control what they wear and watch. However, as children grow and
mature physically, emotionally and spiritually, we gradually begin to lose
control, don’t we? Children begin to have their own thoughts and desires.
Children begin to question decisions with perspectives that show increasing
maturity.
And as we sense that we are beginning to lose the control
that we once had, parents are faced with a decision: do I attempt to parent and
lead my children by means of control or by means of influence. And our tendency
and temptation is to attempt to keep and maintain the same level of control
that we have always had. But as we attempt to cling to that control, we begin
to experience conflict with our children that strain our relationships. And it
is those very conflicts that result in us as parents losing the very influence
to speak into the lives of our children at the very time that they need our
influence the most.
Instead of provoking our children to anger; instead of
putting our children in no win situations, Paul commands parents to bring them
up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. What is so interesting here
is that the phrase “bring them up” is the same phrase that we looked at last
week in Ephesians 5:29 that described how husbands were to provide for the care
and the comfort of their wives.
Paul’s point is that in a similar way, parents are to
create a family environment where children are able to grow and mature into all
that God has created and called them to be. How parents are to create a family
environment that promotes the growth and good of children is through the
discipline and instruction of the Lord. In the language that this letter was
originally written in, discipline refers to the act of providing guidance for
responsible living. By contrast, when Paul uses the word instruction here, he
is referring to a parent’s need to counsel their children about avoiding or
stopping behavior that is improper or inappropriate.
In other words, parents are to guide and influence our
children so that they would live in the relationship with God and in
relationship with others that God designed them to live. Parents have been
given the role and responsibility to guide and influence their children in a
manner that they would live a life in the relationship with God and one another
that they were created for. In addition, parents have been given the role and
responsibility to guide and influence their children to avoid the landmines
that selfishness, sin, and the devil place in their path.
And it is in this verse that we see Paul reveal a
timeless and powerful principle when it comes to how parents fulfill their
roles and responsibilities within a family. And that timeless principle is
this: Parents our ability to influence our children is based on the depth of
our relationship with our children. And this is why the issue of control and
influence is so, so, so important when it comes to our role and responsibility
as parents.
You see parents, here is the thing; we will be unable to be
able to guide and influence our children as they grow and mature if we choose
to cling to the concept of parenting by control. Now the reason why parenting
by control results in a loss of influence is twofold. First, while parenting by
control can produce external obedience, it does not result in heart
transformation. While parenting by control addresses the “what” of a child’s
behavior, it fails to address the “why” of a child’s behavior. And it is the “why”
of a child’s behavior that reveals the heart attitudes and motivations.
Second, as your child grows, you no longer are able to
exercise control because you are bigger and smarter. And because of that
reality, we can find ourselves attempting to exercise control through
manipulation, which children see right through and resent. And soon, children
find themselves in the place of being in a no-win situation that produces,
conflict stress, and strife. And the result is a gradual destruction of the
depth and quality of our relationship with our children.
At some point, as parents, we need to recognize that are
children have come to place in their lives in terms of their physical,
emotional, and spiritual maturity that requires a shift from parenting by
control to parenting by influence. What makes this so difficult, however, is
that no two children are the same. Children mature at different rates, so the
decision as to when to shift from control to influence will be different for
each and every child.
And parents just as God will not hold you responsible or
accountable for how your children respond to the role and responsibility of
leadership that you have been given, God will totally hold you 100% accountable
for how you lead and influence your children. And our decision when it comes to
choosing to parent by control or influence will impact the amount of influence
we have with our children.
When we choose to parent strictly by control, we can find
ourselves in a place where we gradually begin to erode the relationship we have
with our children. A place where we so erode the relationship that we have with
our children that we end up losing our ability to guide and lead our children
at the very time in their lives when they need our guidance and influence the
most.
You see, the time in our children’s lives where they will
be making the biggest decisions in their lives; decisions about colleges;
decisions about careers; decisions about marriage and family; these are the
times where we have the least control. And these are the very times when we
need to have the most influence in their lives. Yet when we fail to move from parenting
by control to parenting by influence as our children grow we can so erode our
relationship with our children that we end up having the least amount of
influence when our children need it the most. Because parents our ability to
influence our children is based on the depth of our relationship with our
children.
So parents, how well are you
dealing with the tension that comes from parenting by control or influence? Are
you provoking your children to anger? Are you placing your children in no win
situations that result in conflict that is gradually eroding your relationship
with them?
Because parents our ability to
influence our children is based on the depth of our relationship with our
children...
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