Shepherding a Child's Heart

You exercise authority as God’s agent. You may not direct your children for your own agenda or convenience. You must direct your children on God’s behalf for their good. (Location 143)

God calls you to exercise authority, not in making your children do what you want, but in being true servants—authorities who lay down your lives. (Location 146)

The purpose for your authority in the lives of your children is not to hold them under your power, but to empower them to be self-controlled people living freely under the authority of God. (Location 147)

Children rarely run from a home where their needs are met. (Location 156)

What child would run from someone who understands him, understands God and his ways, understands the world and how it works, and is committed to helping him be successful? (Location 157)

children generally do not resist authority that is truly kind and selfless. (Location 159)

The parent shepherds a child to assess himself and his responses. He shepherds the child to understand not just the “what” of the child’s actions, but also the “why.” (Location 162)

It involves investing your life in your child in open and honest communication that unfolds the meaning and purpose of life. It is not simply direction, but direction in which there is self-disclosure and sharing. (Location 167)

the gospel is powerful and attractive. It uniquely meets the needs of fallen humanity. (Location 173)

God works from the inside out. (Location 178)

To do good to oppressors, however, to pray for those who mistreat you, to entrust yourself to the just Judge, requires a child to come face-to-face with the poverty of his own spirit and his need of the transforming power of the gospel. (Location 192)

When you fail to hold out God’s standard, you rob your children of the mercy of the gospel. (Location 195)

The Word of God is robust; Christian faith can withstand close, honest scrutiny. (Location 200)

The behavior a person exhibits is an expression of the overflow of the heart. (Location 218)

What your children say and do is a reflection of what is in their hearts. (Location 223)

Your child’s needs are far more profound than his aberrant behavior. Remember, his behavior does not just spring forth uncaused. His behavior—the things he says and does—reflects his heart. If you are to really help him, you must be concerned with the attitudes of heart that drive his behavior. (Location 232)

A change in behavior that does not stem from a change in heart is not commendable; it is condemnable. (Location 234)

What must you do in correction and discipline? You must require proper behavior. God’s law demands that. You cannot, however, be satisfied to leave the matter there. (Location 240)

You must help your child ask the questions that will expose that attitude of the heart that has resulted in wrong behavior. (Location 241)

the heart issue is the same—“I want my happiness, even at your expense.” (Location 252)

Your concern is to unmask your child’s sin, helping him to understand how it reflects a heart that has strayed. (Location 257)

You must learn to work from the behavior you see, back to the heart, exposing heart issues for your children. In short, you must learn to engage them, not just reprove them. Help them see the ways that they are trying to slake their souls’ thirst with that which cannot satisfy. (Location 260)

Help them see the ways that they are trying to slake their souls’ thirst with that which cannot satisfy. (Location 261)

These are things worth striving for. This is a vision worthy of sacrifice. (Location 276)

Shaping influences are those events and circumstances in a child’s developmental years that prove to be catalysts for making him the person he is. But the shaping is not automatic; the ways he responds to these events and circumstances determine the effect they have upon him. (Location 307)

The person your child becomes is a product of two things. The first is his life experience. The second is how he interacts with that experience. (Location 312)

The question you must ask is this: Are the values of your home based on human tradition and the basic principles of this world or on Christ? (Location 334)

Are the values of your home based on human tradition and the basic principles of this world or on Christ? (Location 334)

A related shaping issue is how the parents deal with their children’s failures. Childhood is filled with awkward attempts and failed efforts. (Location 359)

The important issue for our purposes is how those failures are treated. (Location 362)

Some parents show a marvelous ability to see failed attempts as praiseworthy efforts. (Location 363)

Many Christian parents adopt this “Christian determinism.” They figure that if they can protect and shelter him well enough, if they can always be positive with him, if they can send him to Christian schools or if they can home school, if they can provide the best possible childhood experience, then their child will turn out okay. (Location 387)

You must be concerned with providing the most stable shaping influences, but you may never suppose that you are merely molding passive clay. The clay responds to shaping; it either accepts or rejects molding. (Location 394)

You must do all that God has called you to do but the outcome is more complex than whether you have done the right things in the right way. Your children are responsible for the way they respond to your parenting. (Location 400)

Your children are responsible for the way they respond to your parenting. (Location 401)

All people have God’s clear revelation of truth, but wicked people suppress that truth. (Location 445)

the young child may not be conscious of his religious commitment, but he is never neutral. Made in the image of God, he is designed with a worship orientation. Even as a young child, he is either worshiping and serving God or idols. (Location 458)

Made in the image of God, he is designed with a worship orientation. (Location 459)

Your children are never morally neutral, not even from the womb. (Location 463)

Either they respond to life as children of faith who know, love, and serve Jehovah, or they respond as children of foolishness, and unbelief, who neither know him nor serve him. (Location 473)

Parenting is not just providing good input. It is not just creating a constructive home atmosphere and positive interaction between a child and his parent. There is another dimension. The child is interacting with the living God. He is either worshiping and serving and growing in understanding of the implications of who God is, or he is seeking to make sense of life without a relationship with God. (Location 478)

3.      How can you design winsome and attractive ways of challenging the idolatry you may see within your child? 4.      How can you make your focus in correction the deeper issues of Godward orientation? How can you help your child see how he is investing himself in things (Location 544)

Our culture has no notion of intelligent, thinking persons willingly placing themselves under authority. (Location 573)

Parenting goals are often no more noble than immediate comfort and convenience. (Location 576)

Christian parents must clearly understand the nature of godly parenting and children must be trained that God calls them to obey always. (Location 578)

As a parent, you have authority because God calls you to be an authority in your child’s life. You have the authority to act on behalf of God. (Location 580)

You may not try to shape the lives of your children as pleases you, but as pleases him. (Location 582)

If you are God’s agent in this task of providing essential training and instruction in the Lord, then you, too, are a person under authority. You and your child are in the same boat. You are both under God’s authority. You have differing roles, but the same Master. (Location 594)

Unholy anger—anger over the fact that you are not getting what you want from your child—will muddy the waters of discipline.  Anger that your child is not doing what you want frames discipline as a problem between parent and child, not as a problem between the child and God. (Location 598)

I must spank you. If I don’t, then I would be disobeying God. You and I would both be wrong. That would not be good for you or for me, would it?” (Location 614)

You are acting under God’s rule. You are requiring obedience because God says you must. (Location 619)

the fact that you are called by God to be an authority in the training of your children not only gives you the right, but also the responsibility, to train. (Location 629)

Children will be good decision makers as they observe faithful parents modeling and instructing wise direction and decision making on their behalf. (Location 641)

Children learn to be wise decision makers by learning from you. (Location 644)

You shepherd your child in God’s behalf. The task God has given you is not one that can be conveniently scheduled. It is a pervasive task. Training and shepherding are going on whenever you are with your children. Whether waking, walking, talking or resting, you must be involved in helping your child to understand life, himself, and his needs from a biblical perspective (Location 650)

what concrete training objectives they have for their children. (Location 656)

discussed their short-term and long-term goals for their children. (Location 658)

strategies for parenting. (Location 659)

methods and approaches that would focus correction upon attitudes of heart rather than merely on behavior. (Location 660)

Fun together is not a bad idea, but it is light years away from directing your child in the ways of God. (Location 663)

you correct your child by God’s command. (Location 669)

the parent must be aware of the fact that he is God’s representative to the child. I know of no realization that will sober and humble the parent like this one. (Location 671)

discipline is not you working on your agenda, venting your wrath toward your children; it is you coming as God’s representative, bringing the reproofs of life to your son or your daughter. (Location 675)

The child learns to receive correction, not because parents are always right, but because God says the rod of correction imparts wisdom, and whoever heeds correction shows prudence (Location 696)

If, however, correction orbits around God as the one offended, then the focus is restoration. The function is remedial. (Location 712)

Balance discipline and love? I thought of Proverbs 3:12: “ … the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.” Proverbs 13:24 rushed to mind: “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.” Revelation 3:19: “Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline.” How can you balance discipline and love? Discipline is an expression of love. (Location 720)

discipline is not punitive, but corrective. (Location 725)

discipline is a sign of God’s identification with us as our Father. God disciplines us for our good that we might share in his holiness. (Location 726)

Rather than being something to balance love, it is the deepest expression of love. (Location 728)

The discipline of a child is a parent refusing to be a willing party to his child’s death (Location 730)

While it is true that disciplined children are a joy to their parents (Proverbs 23:15–16, 24), as God’s agents you cannot discipline for mere matters of self-interest or personal convenience. (Location 741)

Your objective in discipline is to move toward your children, not against them. You move toward them with the reproofs and entreaties of life. Discipline has a corrective objective. It is therapeutic, not penal. It is designed to produce growth, not pain. (Location 745)

Parents want children to be successful so they can “do well” and live  happy, comfortable lives. (Location 781)

How can you teach your children to function in God’s kingdom, where it is the servant who leads, if you teach them how to make the people in their world serve them? (Location 801)

You can never know with absolute certainty whether your child is saved. Many passages such as the “Lord, Lord” passage at the end of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:21–23) indicate that false faith can carry someone a long way. The heart can even deceive itself. (Location 814)

test yourself to see whether you are in the faith. (Location 816)

He requires the same training he required before. (Location 818)

I know a family that never missed family worship. They read the Bible and prayed each day. But in family living and family values there was no connection between the family worship routine and life. (Location 824)

having well behaved children is not a worthy goal. It is a great secondary benefit of biblical childrearing, but an unworthy goal in itself. (Location 832)

It is possible to be well-educated and still not understand life. (Location 848)

From their earliest days, they must be taught that they are creatures made in the image of God—made for God. They must learn that they will only “find themselves” as they find him. (Location 878)

8.      True spiritual shepherding is a matter of nurture, not just energy spent getting your children saved. How will this affect what you do with them? 9.      Are the spoken and unspoken rules of your family life consistent with true spirituality—living for the glory of God? (Location 913)

Many of these activities teach your children to trust in themselves, when the Scripture says that those who trust in themselves are fools (Location 935)

A biblical worldview dictates that you should teach your children to exercise and care for their bodies as an expression of stewardship for God’s gifts. Abilities should be developed because God has given the stewardship of talents and special capacities. (Location 940)

you should instruct your children to entrust themselves to God in the face of unfair treatment. (Location 957)

You should encourage your children to see the needs of those around them. You should help them learn to make peace. You should teach that a soft answer turns away wrath. Train your children to use occasions when hurt to learn how to love God and deepen their trust and confidence in him. (Location 961)

It is our task to faithfully teach our children the ways of God. It is the Holy Spirit’s task to work through the Word of God to change their hearts. (Location 966)

What your children need is spiritual nurture. They need to be taught the ways of God. They need to be instructed in the character of God so that they can learn a proper fear of God. They need to understand that all of life rushes toward the day when we shall stand before God and give account. They need to learn about the pervasive effects of the fall on the human condition. (Location 968)

The name of the game is not daily family worship per se; it is knowing God. The end is knowing God. A means to employ in reaching that end is family worship. (Location 987)

Always remember that the goal of family worship is knowing God. When you lose sight of that goal, family worship becomes an empty ritual. (Location 999)

You cannot use Miss Manners’ approach because it is simply an elaborate means of pleasant social manipulation. In a biblical vision, manners are an expression and application of the duty of loving my neighbor as myself. (Location 1002)

“If you work hard, you will be able to get a good job and earn lots of money when you grow up.” A biblical objective? Hardly! Proverbs 23:4 says the opposite: “Do not wear yourself out to get rich.” (Location 1012)

What is important is that your child learn to do his work diligently for God. (Location 1017)

Teaching your children to live for the glory of God must be your overarching objective. You must teach your children that for them, as for all of mankind, life is found in knowing and serving the true and living God. The only worthy goal for life is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. (Location 1034)

When the experts tell you that you must find what works with each child, they are saying you must find the idols of the heart that will move each child. (Location 1206)

They are learning how to jump through your hoops and avoid your displeasure. (Location 1230)

They learn to make choices based on expediency rather than principle. (Location 1231)

They learn to play the cat-and-mouse game with you, but depth of relationship and communication is lost. (Location 1234)

communication as the ability to express ourselves. Accordingly, we think of ourselves as talking to our children. Instead, you should seek to talk with your children. (Location 1315)

The finest art of communication is not learning how to express your thoughts. It is learning how to draw out the thoughts of another. (Location 1320)

They never discover how to help their children articulate their thoughts and feelings. (Location 1322)

Your first objective in correction must not be to tell your children how you feel about what they have done or said. You must try to understand what is going on inside them. (Location 1332)

Your question in correction is this: What is the specific content of the abundance of the heart in this circumstance? What was the temptation? What was his response to that temptation? What was he trying to accomplish? If you can understand and help your child understand these things, you will be on your way to understanding the “why” of what has transpired. (Location 1338)

You want to understand your child’s inner struggles. You need to look at the world through his or her eyes. (Location 1377)

I would have to confess, to my shame, that often my children had a father who was unable to sympathize with their weaknesses.  I was too focused on correcting external behavior and not focused enough on understanding my kids. (Location 1397)

You can also encourage your children that the unending grace and mercy that you have found in Jesus Christ is offered to them as well. (Location 1401)

your role is to help him understand himself and speak with clarity and honesty about his internal struggles with sin. (Location 1428)

four issues you must walk him through: 1) the nature of temptation, 2) the possible responses to this temptation, 3) the motives for those responses, and 4) the sinful response he chose. (Location 1429)

It must include encouragement, correction, rebuke, entreaty, instruction, warning, teaching, and prayer. (Location 1465)

Children need communication designed to inspire and fill with hope and courage. (Location 1475)

What he needed was encouragement that Christ came because we are sinful people who cannot change ourselves. (Location 1479)

Correction gives your children insight into what is wrong and what may be done to correct the problem. Correction helps your children to understand God’s standard and teaches them to assess their behavior against that standard. (Location 1485)

A rebuke censures behavior. (Location 1494)

This is communication that is earnest and intense. It involves pleading, soliciting, urging, and even begging. (Location 1500)

periodic entreaty about such important issues bears good fruit. (Location 1510)

King Solomon’s Proverbs are a rich source of information about life. The child who begins to understand the Proverbs’ characterization of the fool, the sluggard, the wise man, the mocker, and so (Location 1515)

A warning is merciful speech, for it is the equivalent of posting a sign informing motorists about a bridge that is out. (Location 1530)

he who builds a high gate invites destruction.” (Location 1538)

warning is an application of the sowing and reaping principle that we find operative throughout Scripture. (Location 1543)

spending time helping them understand the many A-leads-to-B statements of Scripture. (Location 1545)

Sometimes, teaching takes place before it is needed. It is often most powerfully done after a failure or problem. (Location 1567)

Our most penetrating insights into our children will often come as they pray. Understanding what they pray and how they pray is often a window into their souls. (Location 1572)

Building our house has become more than an event in our life as a family—it has become a lifestyle! (Location 1601)

A regular habit of talking together prepares the way for talking in strained situations. You will never have the hearts of your children if you talk with them only when something has gone wrong. (Location 1605)

It means helping them understand themselves, God’s works, the ways of God, how sin works in the human heart, and how the gospel comes to them at the most profound levels of human need. Shepherding the hearts of children also involves helping them understand their motivations, goals, wants, wishes, and desires. (Location 1608)

The best way you can train your children to be active listeners is by actively listening to them. (Location 1618)

Stopping and listening provides time to pray silently, to refocus and be creative in your conversation. (Location 1623)

Proper communication requires mental stamina. You must keep your thoughts focused. You must avoid the temptations to chase unimportant matters. Questions that have not been answered must be posed in new and fresh ways. (Location 1629)

Live a shared life of repentance and thankfulness. Acknowledge your own sin and weakness. Admit when you are wrong. Be prepared to seek forgiveness for sinning against your children. (Location 1633)

Children know when they have a relationship with people who are wise and discerning, who know and understand them, who love and are committed to them. (Location 1644)

influence represents the willingness of a child to place himself under authority because of trust. (Location 1668)

When a child knows that all his life you have sought to see the world through his eyes, he will trust you. (Location 1671)

Each day you live with your children, your influence grows. As children learn about life, they learn to trust their father and mother more. (Location 1675)

Communication is the art of expressing in godly ways what is in my heart and of hearing completely and understanding what another thinks and feels. (Location 1687)

You must regard parenting as one of your most important tasks while you have children at home. (Location 1718)

There is nothing more important. You have only a brief season of life to invest yourself in this task. You have only one opportunity to do it. You cannot go back and do it over. (Location 1720)

This kind of communication is not just beneficial, it is mandated! It is the path of blessing because it is the path of obedience. (Location 1733)

3.      Is confession of your sins, where appropriate, a regular part of your communication with your children? (Location 1740)

Fearing God and acquiring wisdom come through the instrumentality of the rod. (Location 1825)

The rod is a parent, in faith toward God and faithfulness toward his or her children, undertaking the responsibility of careful, timely, measured, and controlled use of physical punishment to underscore the importance of obeying God, thus rescuing the child from continuing in his foolishness until death. (Location 1841)

The use of the rod is an act of faith. God has mandated its use. The parent obeys, not because he perfectly understands how it works, but because God has commanded it. (Location 1852)

The rod is a responsibility. It is not the parent determining to punish. It is the parent determining to obey. (Location 1861)

The child knows how many swats are to come. (Location 1867)

Failure to obey Mom or Dad is, therefore, failure to obey God. This is the issue. The child has failed to obey God. (Location 1872)

Rather than correction having the positive goal of restoration, it has the negative goal of payment. (Location 1892)

The rod teaches outcomes to behavior. Consistent use of the rod teaches your children to develop a harvest mentality; they learn that they will reap what they sow. (Location 1958)

The rod shows God’s authority over Mom and Dad. (Location 1960)

The rod trains a child to be under authority. (Location 1963)

The rod demonstrates parental love and commitment. (Location 1965)

You must make a point of appealing to the conscience. (Location 2073)

The central focus of childrearing is to bring children to a sober assessment of themselves as sinners. (Location 2091)

The focal point of your discipline and correction must be your children seeing their utter inability to do the things that God requires unless they know the help and strength of God. (Location 2095)

God’s standard is correct behavior flowing from a heart that loves God and has God’s glory as the sole purpose of life. This is not native to your children (nor to their parents). (Location 2097)

The alternative is a lesser standard that does not require grace and does not cast them on Christ, but rather on their own resources. (Location 2103)

Hypocrisy and self-righteousness is the result of giving children a keepable law and telling them to be good. To the extent they are successful, they become like the Pharisees, people whose exterior is clean, while inside they are full of dirt and filth. (Location 2109)

The most important lesson for the child to learn in this period is that HE IS AN INDIVIDUAL UNDER AUTHORITY. (Location 2188)

Even though the child will not be able to fully appreciate the importance of submission, training him to do what he ought, regardless of how he feels, prepares him to be a person who lives by principle rather than mood or impulse. (Location 2368)

Disobedience coupled with failure to discipline sends mixed messages. (Location 2417)

When you have given a directive that he has heard and is within his capacity to understand, and he has not obeyed without challenge, without excuse or without delay, he needs a spanking. (Location 2430)

Inconsistency means that correction revolves around your convenience rather than around objective biblical principle. (Location 2437)

You must not warn. You must not ask if they want to be spanked. (Location 2441)

discipline is a rescue mission. (Location 2453)

spankings must always be issue-oriented. (Location 2460)

If he will not be restored to you, if he is mad at you, if he refuses to receive your affection, then something is wrong. (Location 2490)

With young children you must keep the focus very crisp; spank only for defiance. (Location 2540)

Rebellion can be something as simple as a small child struggling against a diaper change or stiffening his body when you want him to sit on your lap. (Location 2547)

If you are too mad to discipline properly, instruct your child to take a seat or go to his room. Then you must seek the face of God. (Location 2600)

What If I’m Not Sure What Happened? If you are not sure and your child won’t tell you, then there is nothing to do. There will be other times when you will be sure of what happened. (Location 2633)

There is more to it than applying some principles. Pray; seek God’s help. Wait on God. Study the Scriptures with your children. Try to take them along with you on your spiritual pilgrimage. Share with them what you’re learning and why changes in your family life are important. (Location 2661)

we are never painted into a corner from which there is no path of obedience. (Location 2677)

Your child’s character must be developed in several areas. You want your child to learn dependability, honesty, kindness, consideration, helpfulness, diligence, loyalty, humility, self-control, moral purity, and a host of other character qualities. (Location 2716)

I have seen some parents try to solve this problem by making more rules. It is a poor solution. (Location 2733)

The problem with this approach, of course, is that it is impossible to make rules comprehensive enough to anticipate every need for direction. (Location 2739)

In a word, you want them to be content with themselves. (Location 2794)

Whatever motivates behavior trains the heart. (Location 2859)

Many of us as adults can see character weaknesses in ourselves that are tied to the motivations offered to us as children. (Location 2861)

The “why” describes the internal heart issues that pushed or pulled the specific behavior. You must explore with your children not just the “when” or the “what” of their behavior, but the “why.” (Location 2869)

Your children need heart change. Change in the heart begins with conviction of sin. Conviction of sin comes through the conscience. Your children need to be convicted that they have defected from God and are covenant-breakers. (Location 2883)

Character could be defined as living consistently with who God is and who I am. (Location 2922)

You cannot try to build good qualities of character within him without reference to God. (Location 2934)

If you don’t call him to be what God has called him to be, you end up giving him a standard of performance that is within the realm of his native abilities apart from grace. (Location 2936)

David learned to trust God in the thick of things as a boy with the lion and the bear, (Location 2953)

What is worse, we set a life before our children that doesn’t even require faith. (Location 2954)

We give a keepable standard that casts them on their own resources and native abilities and endowments—turning them away from Christ and his cross to themselves and their own resources. (Location 2954)

this? A teen falls in with rebellious company because he is a rebel. He does not become a rebel because of the company he keeps. (Location 3078)

The first foundation of life is walking in the fear of the Lord. (Location 3093)

Your teenager must be motivated by a sense of awe and reverence for God. (Location 3098)

Living in fear of God means living in the realization of accountability to him. It is living in light of the fact that he is God and we are creatures. (Location 3100)

Make it a point to read through the (Location 3103)

Like any area of theological truth, the key to growth is not the cognitive identification of truth. (Location 3107)

You must make the fear of God functional in regular living. (Location 3110)

you must help them understand the bondage that is produced by living for the approval of others. (Location 3115)

Proverbs holds out a vision of children seeing in their parents a source of wisdom and instruction. (Location 3155)

We would simply help him examine all the important data. (Location 3172)

A child furnished with biblical instruction has a firm footing in an academic climate where even the teacher is lost in a sea of no principles or absolutes (Location 3182)

Young people generally do not run from places where they are loved and know unconditional acceptance. (Location 3223)

The children told their friends about our plans. They felt like they belonged to a special family that was doing unusual things. (Location 3228)