Peter Witkowski Discipleship, Parenting

Dealing With Disobedience: How Discipline Gets Kids To Jesus

             Dealing With Disobedience “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

As an unregenerate kid with a reputation for fighting, I thought the best use of an oxymoron was my parents’ comment that they disciplined me out of “love.” Before I would head off to serve my next sentence, I nodded in disbelieving agreement to my parents’ statement. But I didn’t particularly find long timeouts, T.V. restrictions, or summer school to be all that loving. I much preferred ice cream, video games, and full summer baseball schedule.

All About Love

The Shema, or Deuteronomy 6:4-9, is perhaps one of the most well-known parenting passages in the Bible, popping up in almost every Christian book on parenting. And as you read the passage, you notice that it is all about love. Moses commands his listeners sitting the banks of the Jordan to love the Lord, their God. Moses states that one the truest expressions of a person’s love for God is to tell their offspring about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It would appear that on face value this passage is all about the positives. Love God and things will go well for you! The sentiment of “All I need is love” appears to be the key to Biblical parenting. Perhaps, my parents would have been better served to combat my sin with a trip to Baskin Robins centered on a brief talk about how much God loves me.

And it’s true; we and (our children) should find God attractive because he is a loving and good God whose character is where, “Steadfast love and faithfulness meet” (Ps 85:10a). Indeed those who dwell with the Lord are never disappointed and have everything they need. But for our children to appreciate the goodness of God, they must first understand how bad their sin is. If they have done nothing wrong, they don’t need a savior or to exclusively follow God.

Why Talk About Sin

Though all about the positives, Moses does reminds his listeners of their need for God. Before he tells them to love the Lord their God in chapter 6, he spends large portions of the first five chapters reminding the nation of Israel of its depravity, of God’s law, and of God’s judgment upon those who break his law. In Deuteronomy 1:26-32, Moses tells the people not to follow in the footsteps of their parents and grandparents. This older generation saw the fortified cities and the giants dotting the Promise Land and immediately doubted the integrity of God’s promises. They did not believe the word of the Lord. And God punished them with death. Some died when they attempted to fulfill God’s promises by launching an unauthorized attack into the Promise Land. The others died a slow death wandering around the wilderness (2:16). All those who disbelieved God died. And Moses warns that in the future, all those who try live without God, “will be utterly destroyed” (4:26b).

From Sin to Love

Friends, we and our families are just like the people of Israel. We need to be reminded of our sin and of our need to constantly trust Christ. When my parents disciplined me, it was an act of faithfulness. They helped me understand as Matt Chandler helpfully notes, “The bad news of the gospel still applies to everyone” (p. 25).The hours spent in summer school or in timeouts reinforced the truth that my life was separated from God. And, the constant drum of punishments also helped me to see that I could never be good on my own. I tried, I tried every so hard to be good. But like the Israelites, I always failed. As the apostle Paul says in I Timothy the law was given, “for the lawless and disobedient” so that they would believe (1:8-11).

The cure for kids who feel burdened by sin is not to ignore the topic (they feel the burden anyway, even if they aren’t talking about it) but to administer large doses of the good news so that their trust in Jesus grows (Klumpenhower, 2014, p. 39).

My parents’ discipline of me was not an oxymoron. They truly did love me! As Tedd Tripp writes,

The rod is an act of faithfulness toward a child. Recognizing that in discipline there is hope, and refusing to be a willing party to his child’s death, the parent undertakes this task (p. 105).

My parents punished my little unsaved soul because they hoped God would use the reality of the law to draw me to Christ. Let’s point our children to the love Christ by showing them they need a Redeemer.

Works Cited

Chandler, M., & Snetzer, M. (2014). Recovering Redemption: A Gospel-Saturated Perspective on How to Change. Nashville: B&H Publishing .

Klumpenhower, J. (2014). Show Them Jesus: Teaching The Gospel to Kids. Greensboro: New Growth Press.

Tripp, T. (2005). Shepherding A Child’s Heart. Wapwallopen : Shepard Press .

Peter Witkowski Children's Ministry, Discipleship, Parenting

Should Kids Go To Big Church

Do We Really Want Kids In Church?

Do kids belong in church? It’s a simple, straight forward question that has existed even before the first church was launched at Pentecost.   Remember back to Mathew 19. Jesus had to tell his disciples to, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (vs. 14).  Speed forward a couple of thousand years and we find the evangelical church once again asking, “do children belong in church today?” Do they belong in our sanctuaries and services? Sadly, many evangelicals say, “No.”

should kids go to churchNow there are some pockets of old fogies who all but recite the disciples’ mantra. They diligently strive to keep those “darn” kids in the colorfully painted rooms in the basement through ugly looks and cruel comments. Most  of these people have no clue about what the four gospels teach. They happily go on church sponsored sightseeing trips, unaware that Christ welcomed children and rejected the self-righteous who boasted in their fat wallets and moralistic programs (Mathew 19:13-23).

 But the majority of Bible believing Christians who devalue kids are actually well meaning adults found swirling around the children’s department. Their catchphrases go something like this, “I can’t come to church if I have to watch my child; children’s ministry should be about giving parents a well-deserved break; children really need activities they can handle; big church is well, big church.” Once these phrases become a church’s ministry philosophy, the congregation will most likely cease to be a place where families come together to experience the community of Christ through worship and fellowship. Although we may have given the kids their own snazzy wing of the church, we have restricted their access to community of Christ.

Being smart, our children quickly pickup on the messages we are sending. They understand that big church is not for them. If anything, they know that they are a bother or hindrance to the rest of the church community.  Most of our kids will reconcile themselves to the idea the church consists of nothing more than eating crackers, drinking apple juice, and playing a few cool games. The glories of communing with the people of God is just not reality. Not surprisingly, the children who regularly attended all these cool kid based programs are the most likely to leave the church when grown (Ham, Beemer, & Hillard, p. 38).

To reach the next generation for Christ, we as parents need to once again embrace a church paradigm that welcomes children into the body of Christ. Regardless of how gifted a Sunday school teacher is or how loving a nursery worker is, parents are called by God to connect their children to the church. So how do we do this?

Five Ways To Get Ready Kids For Church

 

1. We worship at home.

I suspect that many children stress their parents out at church because they’ve never encountered formal Bible teaching at home.  We cannot and should not expect our children to calmly sit through a sermon if they have never learned how to handle a five minute devotion. Such expectations are unfair. Naturally, parents often try to compensate by handing off their child to church volunteers. At the very least, parents think they’ve kept their child from disrupting the service and they hopeful junior even learn a thing or two about the Bible. Let’s not abdicate our calling. Its hard, but discipling our children at home is essential to our kids spiritual well being. Let’s help them see that God is hugely important and worthy of respect and attention (Duet. 6)

2. Pray with our children.

Ask God to give them us patience. Ask God to give our kids a love for his word and his people. Ask God to give you wisdom to reach your children with the gospel.

3. Be in involved with your kids at church.

Find opportunities to serve with and around your child. Teach a Sunday school class, be a substitute, or sit in and see what they are learning. Be excited when you drop them off and be excited to pick them up. Ask them about what they learned in Sunday school.

4. Bring church home.

Before you go into the service tell your kids that you expect them to tell you two things that they have learned. Have realistic expectations. Do not expect your 5-year-old to be able to list all of the pastor’s five points. But your child should be able to tell you if the sermon was about Jesus or Moses. And then talk about the sermon after church. Help your children find ways to apply the sermon to their hearts. Pray through your pastor’s application points, asking God to make your family more like Christ. 

5. Be loving.

Children will make mistakes and will at times be a distraction. Instead of giving the mother with a crying baby a dirty look and pointing them to the nursery, lovingly smile and offer to help the young mother. And remember when we see children squirming in the seats, it’s possible they find our church services boring because we have made them boring. As the Charles Spurgeon noticed, “when children are not quiet in a meeting, it is often as much as our fault as theirs” (2011, p. 132). Let’s be sure to get the log out of our own eye before we make a big deal about the speck in the eye of the child sitting next to us. Let’s make sure our services represent that awesome glory of Christ. God is not lame and our services should not be lame.  Let’s resolve to be like Christ and welcome children into the churches!

Don’t Give Up!

The best place for children to learn about God is at the feet of their parents. As parents, we alone have the ability to connect church life into the home, reinforcing the lessons learned through discipline, prayer, and conversations all week long. We alone have the power to create a family culture with God at the center. If we punt our responsibility to connect children to Christ, we will teach our children to value personal comfort more than the commands of God. Raising a family is hard work. My four siblings and I definitely put my parents through the ringer at times. My son often causes me to wonder, “What am I doing?” And, I’ve seen the tired looks on the faces of moms as the walk into our church. But, we can do it! Another generation for Christ can be reached. Your sowing will not be in vain! “The one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Gal 6:8b-9).

Works Cited

Ham, K., Beemer, B., & Hillard, T. (2012). Already Gone: Why Your Kids Will Quit Church and What you can do to Stop it. Green Forest: Master Books .

Spurgeon, C. (2011). Lectures To My Students. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers.

 

Peter Witkowski Discipleship, Pain & Suffering, Parenting

When Things Go Bad

SalvationSeries_WhenThingsGoBad_7With sincerity deeply set inside his eyes, Alex bubbled with excitement as he described God calling him to minister to the internationals our youth group had been serving the past ten days. As we reflected upon our time spent in VBS and building projects, Alex seemed to be only a brief four year stint in college away from becoming a sold out missionary. As we all came down from our spiritual high, Alex took off for college. He never returned to church. Instead of missions, he embraced a life of sexual exploits and familial chaos.

Up to this moment, our discussion of salvation, baptism, and parental responsibility has assumed a positive outcome. Namely, all of our discussions assume that our children will get saved. And though salvation is the goal of godly parenting, it’s not the guaranteed outcome. We don’t simply push ABC and get S. Regardless of how hard we try, we cannot manipulate God into saving our children or friends via our good works. God must save.

And often God does not. Study after study has shown that Alex’s story is increasingly representative of the Millennial Generation. More than half of the children born during the 1980’s and early 1990’s to Christian parents have left the church (Ham, Beemer, & Hillard, p. 25). Now, we are asking, “What do we do when things go wrong?”

 Admittedly, I have only recently been granted full access into the parenting club. I cannot speak to this issue as a parent. Rather, I address the topic as a fellow believer who has been given several opportunities to minister to those who have rejected the gospel for sin. If you are looking for wisdom from those who have ministered to a rebellious child, I highly recommend the book, When Good Kids Make Bad Choices, by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jim Newheiser. Without further ado, let’s look at how to handle the realities of unbelief.

Don’t Ignore Reality  

Perhaps the hardest thing for families and friends of unbelievers to do is to admit these lost souls are lost. Perhaps to avoid this heavy burden of misplaced shame or to excuse our need to loving confront sin, many of us walk around saying that the marijuana crazed son, or the daughter with the live-in boyfriend are still good, God loving people. After all, they used to go to church and they did get baptized. We don’t know what happened. Most likely, they are just a little confused.

Friends, the Bible does not say these souls are confused. It declares them to be unregenerate; they are lost. The apostle John clearly lets us know that “they went out from us, because they were not of us” (I John 2:19) Our children and friends did not leave the church and embrace sin because they are confused Christians. They had a form of religion for a time.  But they left because they never experienced the power of salvation. They may know the Bible but they do not know Christ. The clearest sign of unbelief is open abandonment of the church and the doctrines of grace. The apostle James writes, “Friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God (4:4). If your loved one cherishes the sins and philosophies of this  world, they are not saved. There is no faith without obedience.

If we want to see our children and friends embrace Christ, we must clearly, compassionately, and consistently call them sinners. If we do not call them to repentance, we may avoid conflicts and blunt their rejection. But, we will blind them the hope and mercy of God.

Although I know there are many contributing factors to the numbers listed below, I believe Christians who excuse and/or ignore their loved ones sins have unwittingly destroyed the integrity of the Christian faith. Today, 65% of young adults identify themselves Christians. But only 6% of them actually believe in the God of the Bible (Rainer, pp. 232-33). Let’s not excuse a person’s lack of faith and make them a son of hell twice over. Let’s remind our sons, daughters, and friends that they are sinners in need of real, life transformational repentance.

Cling To The Hope of Christ

               I also understand calling your children or friends “sinners” is a heart wrenching task. And watching a loved one reject the faith is discouraging. Yet, we all have hope. Our suffering at the hands of disrespectful teens is not the end of the story. The harsh conversations, the sleepless nights spent questioning our ministry strategies, and the unanswered texts are being used by God to make us into a stronger Christian. I know that no Christian longs for suffering, but the pain caused by our children or friends is for our good. Paul says that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:4-5). If our children or friends have or are in the process of walking away from the faith, take heart.

Hopefully the situation will be for the benefit of our loved one. God often bring us low so that we can see our need to embrace Christ as savior. Think of the parable of the prodigal son. But the family drama is ultimately for our benefit. We will come out a stronger and more complete believer. And yes, it will be difficult, and yes, you may feel like you’ve been pushed to the breaking point. A few pencils may snap and a cell phone maybe thrown against the couch before it’s all said and done. But we will achieve victory through the power of Christ. You and I will survive this hardship because God does not fail! He upholds us; he is the basis of our hope. God has done all of the hard work. Believe on the Lord Jesus. God the Father will be glorified as you daily become more like Christ.

 Get Inspired By God

Remember to love. When God saved us, we were his enemies, destined to be judged forever and condemned to hell. We were completely unlovable. Nothing made us seem attractive to God. Truthfully, we really don’t find each other all that attractive. I doubt any of you would sacrifice your son or daughter so that I could life. And I’m not offended. I would never think of letting either of my two sons die to save you.  Yet, God in his mercy saved us by covering our sins with the blood of his son. This is a radical life altering love that is so huge that it cannot be grasped by our human minds (Eph. 3:19). Oh what love we have felt!  

When we feel tempted to write off our children and friends with a puff of self-righteousness, we need to remember how our heavenly Father loved us. Since God loved us while when we despised him, how can we not show this love to our unrepentant children and friends. I know it’s not an easy task. But we can do it. We must do it. As Christians, we are called to forgive as we have been forgiven (Col 3:13). Even though our biblical advice is rejected, we continue to love these lost souls by encouraging them when they excel at work, by supporting them financially when appropriate, and by always being willing to offer them a kind hug or a soft shoulder. Although we should never directly fund a drug addiction or other sinful habits, we must always be seeking ways to love our children and friends. We are to love them with the love with which Christ has loved us.   

Nothing is Impossible

Often when our family devotion fails or our discipleship program has disappointing results, we tend to think God has failed. Nothing is further from the truth. We may have failed if we inaccurately presented the gospel or if we blunted the power of the gospel by living sinful lives. But God is still at work. Salvation via you and me is impossible, but with God nothing is impossible.

This is not to say that we have a guarantee that God will save every child raised in the church. People often think Proverbs 22:6 is a promise. The verse reads: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Simply teach a kid Jesus and he will get saved. But this cannot be right. If we claim a good discipleship program saves, then we save people through human effort. God said salvation by through human effort was,” impossible” (Mat 19:26).  The verse must mean something else.

The Proverbs are not promises to be claimed. Rather, they are short statements that reflect general Biblical truth about life. Generally speaking those who have been trained in godliness will not depart the faith. And, we do often see God saved children who have believing parents. However, there are exceptions to these general rules. Think of Jehoshaphat’s family. The ancient King brought revival to his kingdom. But, his son did “What was evil in the sight of the Lord” (2 Chron. 20-21). Not every child who grows up in a Christian home will become a Christian.

But with God nothing is impossible. Jesus can and does save the lost and dying. Just think of Paul he was actively arresting and having Christians killed. Yet, God saved him. If God can save Paul, he can most certainly save our children and friends. Even in the darkest of hours, hope in God! Plead with him to save your loved one!   

Going Forward

Today the youngest Millennials are finishing junior high.  The window of opportunity to reach this generation through family worship is on the verge of disappearing. But the ability of parents to evangelize and disciple this generation is not coming to an end. Almost 90% of America’s largest generation looks to their parents for guidance and advice (Rainer, p. 55). And 88% of these young adults think their parents are a positive influence (Rainer, p. 245). In other words, adult children value parental guidance. Parents, reaching the next generation for Christ is only a cellphone call, a Skype conversation, or Facebook message away.

The End

As we wrap up the Baptism Class For Parents, I want to return to where I began. Parents, God has given us an unprecedented ability to reach our kids. Whether your child is a wiggly infant or sitting calmly in a cubicle, God wants you to reach them for Christ. Admittedly how we go about reaching our kids depends a great deal on their age and the nature of their heart. But the fundamental principles that underlie our interactions with the next generation remain the same. We pursue Christ with our heart, soul, and mind. Then we share our passion for God with our children via prayer time at the dining room table or a quick text message (Duet. 6:4-9). Certainly, we will make mistakes, misdiagnose our child’s heart, and will struggle at times. But ultimately the salvation of our children doesn’t begin or end with us. God saves. Regardless of where we and our children are, nothing is impossible with God!    

Works Cited

Ham, K., Beemer, B., & Hillard, T. (2012). Already Gone: Why Your Kids Will Quit Church and What you can do to Stop it. Green Forest: Master Books .

Rainer, T. S. (211). The Millennials: Connecting To America’s Largest Generation . Nashville: B&H Publishing Group .