TLP 58: The Four Children, Part 4 | Parenting a Thorny-Hearted Child

Truth.Love.Parent.

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:02

Remember, your child may cycle back and forth through the different heart responses multiple times.

00:07

But as long as you stay aware, you can provide them just the right seed and water and cultivation necessary to slowly soften them.

00:15

Welcome to Truth. Love. Parents. Where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents.

00:24

Here's your host, AM Brewster. We've received a number of responses from you guys about this series.

00:30

Many of you have shared that you now know you have a hard or rocky hearted child living in your home. I pray that today's discussion will be just as helpful for those of you who are still uncertain about how your child responds to truth.

00:41

Today is all about the thorny hearted child, and I'm excited to jump right in, but first, we would be honored and overjoyed if you would leave us a review on iTunes.

00:50

You may be able to rate and review us on other apps as well, but since iTunes is still the largest podcast directory in the world, when you rate and review us there, you enable us to connect with a larger audience.

00:59

So thank you in advance for that. Okay, so we have the same three questions to answer today as we did the other days.

01:05

Who is the thorny hearted child? Do you have a thorny hearted child in your home? And if so, how do you cultivate your child's thorny heart like Jesus did?

01:13

And stick around until the end because we're going to conclude with how your kids can move back and forth among the three bad soils and how we need to parent them through those transitions.

01:22

But let's start with the first question. Who is the thorny hearted child? Well, the parable of the soils that I've been reading is a synchronized version of the three times this parable is mentioned across Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

01:33

Remember, no one account will have all the details I'm going to read. This is basically the amplified version.

01:39

So here we go. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them, and they yielded no grain.

01:46

As for what was sown among the thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but as he goes on his way, the cares of the world and the seatfulness of riches and pleasures of life and the desire for other things enter in and choke the word, and his fruit does not mature, and it proves unfruitful.

02:04

Unlike the hard heart that doesn't accept the seeds of truth, the rocky heart and the thorny heart both receive the seed, potentially with joy and gladness, and both produce what appear to be spiritual life.

02:15

But we know already that neither are truly born again because neither produce the fruit of repentance. However, the tale of the thorny heart is very different than its rocky counterpart.

02:25

I see two big differences. The first difference is the object that God uses to reveal the true heart. Across the three

02:31

Gospels, Jesus uses four phrases to explain what these untended weeds are. One passage refers to them as the cares of the world.

02:40

The word translated cares can refer to distractions or that which causes anxiety. Interestingly, this heart revealer isn't as significant or life -changing as persecution or trials are for the rocky heart.

02:52

The same passage also calls these weeds the deceitfulness of riches. This is pretty straightforward, and as I noted before, it really isn't nearly as dramatic as tribulation or persecution or testing because of the word.

03:03

This is one reason I believe the rocky heart is still the most dangerous heart to have. The rocky heart isn't distracted by the same simple cares and base desires as the thorny heart.

03:13

It takes a lot more to reveal their hearts. But as we're going to see from Mark and Luke's description of these weeds, the thorny heart is much more capricious.

03:23

Mark refers to the weeds as no more than, quote, the pleasures of life, and Luke gives them the smallest consideration when he calls them simply a desire for other things.

03:33

Again, whereas though the rocky and thorny hearts start their journey in a very similar way, the thorny heart's easier to sway, and that leads me to my second observation.

03:42

First, the difference between the rocky and thorny is what God uses to reveal the heart. And though neither the parable nor Christ's explanation specifically mention it,

03:50

I believe the second difference is how quickly the heart is revealed. I love to garden.

03:56

I enjoy planting flowers, but I take far more pleasure raising fruit -bearing plants. And though I don't live in the

04:02

Middle East, I can safely say that most years there are more months of consistent precipitation than there are drought.

04:08

However, unless I'm vigilant, every year and all year, the weeds threaten the vitality of my plants.

04:15

It doesn't take long at all for weeds to grow up and choke out what I've cultivated. Last year I planted broccoli in perfectly weeded beds, and though I'm rather fastidious about mulching and weeding, after returning from a two -week vacation

04:26

I couldn't see the broccoli in the shadow of the towering weeds, and unfortunately I lost most of them. What I'm trying to say is that this is yet another reason the rocky heart is the most dangerous heart.

04:37

A child can close by for years and years believing they have a relationship with God, but practically worshiping their own desires and feelings.

04:45

And they likely won't realize that deep inside their entire faith is founded on a lifestyle, not a relationship, until they've been exposed to enough testing or tribulation to realize their fantasy faith isn't worth it.

04:56

Does all this mean the rocky heart desires the things of God more than the thorny heart? I don't think so.

05:02

Since both are not truly regenerated, it doesn't even help to compare. But since we're talking about how to parent a thorny child,

05:08

I do say the thorny heart desires the things of God to a degree because, in the moment, it feels like the right thing to do.

05:17

The rocky heart has likely given a lot of thought to embracing the Christian religion, whereas the thorny heart is potentially swayed by the glitter and the glamour and the emotional responses of it.

05:27

The thought of heaven and the future and the supernatural gifting and the family of God here on earth is quite romantic, when you think about it.

05:33

But because this thorny -hearted child is distracted by the pleasures and comforts of life, it's very easy to become disenfranchised with a religion that promises more service, sacrifice, work, and persecution than it promises streets of gold.

05:47

Once the luster has worn off the new toy and the child sees the world dangling the shiny offerings of self -worship, his feelings once again can plead loyalty to another master.

05:58

Or because this child's faith was grounded in the idea of comfort, when life gets even a little hard and the anxious cares creep in and the prayers don't bring immediate comfort, it's all too easy to go searching for a warmer security blanket someplace else.

06:11

And finally, the word is choked out and the child's life continues to be unfruitful. So we all want to know, do you have a thorny -hearted child in your home?

06:20

Again, it's hard to tell for certain and we're not God, but here are some things to keep in mind. Has your son or daughter seemed to respond well to spiritual things in the past, but recently seems distracted by trite experiences and materialistic pleasures?

06:33

These distractions can include money, philosophies that are more morally comfortable, and instant gratification.

06:40

Basically, if your child who previously seemed very passionate about spiritual things has jettisoned it all and appears to have returned to his old passions, you may have a thorny child.

06:49

Also, your child might be a thorny child if they seem enthralled with any of the following.

06:54

First is emotional experiences. Now, emotional experiences are wonderful and we discussed in good detail over episodes 32 -34 why

07:02

God created emotions, but if we start worshiping and living for the emotion, we're serving an idol, just as if we were bowing down to a wooden or stone statue.

07:12

Why do your children love church? Is it because they can serve God by actively one -anothering the body of Christ and learning more about Him, or do they only like the way the music makes them feel?

07:23

Also, watch out for spiritual materialism. Spiritual materialism doesn't really make sense when you look at the words, but it's a kind of a spiritual gift collector mentality.

07:33

Some people are just preoccupied with keeping track of whether or not they've had all the right religious experiences, acquired all the right religious spiritual gifts, and participated in all the right church ministries.

07:44

Again, what makes the rocky and thorny hearts so deceptively dangerous is that they really do seem to embrace the good things in life.

07:52

But remember, behavior is nothing without motivation. And again,

07:57

I'm not saying that you can categorically know for certain if your child is born again, but I am telling you that you need to parent your kids through these experiences.

08:05

In a moment, we're going to look at two biblical characters who were, in fact, thorny. They were preoccupied with all the wrong things, and as far as we know, they're both in hell today.

08:14

So, even though you can't know their hearts, that doesn't mean you don't try. You cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the weeds growing in your child's life.

08:23

So, the third question is, how do you cultivate your child's thorny heart like Jesus did?

08:28

I mentioned that we're going to look at two individuals from the Bible. Jesus interacted with one of them, and Peter interacted with the other.

08:35

The first is the rich young ruler in Matthew 19, Mark 10, and Luke 18. I'm going to kind of give you a synchronized version.

08:42

It's a little long, but I really want you to pay close attention to it. And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him,

08:51

Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life? And he said to him, Why do you call me good?

08:58

No one is good except God alone. Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good.

09:05

If you would enter life, keep the commandments. He said to him, Which ones? And Jesus said,

09:11

You know the commandments. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness.

09:17

Do not defraud. Honor your father and mother. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The young man said to him,

09:24

Teacher, all these I have kept. What do I still lack? And Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him,

09:32

You lack one thing. If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.

09:41

And come and follow me. When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

09:48

Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, How difficult is it for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God?

09:55

And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them, Children, how difficult is it to enter into the kingdom of God?

10:02

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. When the disciples heard this, they were greatly, exceedingly astonished, saying,

10:11

Who then can be saved? But Jesus looked at them and said, With man, it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God.

10:21

First we see that this man is excited, okay? This young rich, young ruler, he runs up to Christ, he kneels before him and asks with a bunch of people watching on what he needs to do to have eternal life.

10:31

Please notice that he didn't ask how to follow God, how to have a relationship with God, or how to serve

10:37

God. He was primarily focused on the reward, which as a side note here, something really important we need to consider as we're evangelizing our kids.

10:45

What are you focusing on? Are you calling your kids into a relationship with God because of an eternity in heaven, because of all the blessings that we're going to receive?

10:53

Those are fantastic, but if we encourage our children to try to base their relationships on all of the blessings, then we're potentially setting our kids up to be thorny.

11:03

You know, think about your relationship with your spouse. If your spouse just married you simply because of your money or because of everything they could get from you, that relationship wouldn't be very good, and rightfully so.

11:14

So be careful as you're evangelizing your kids. Listen to what you're telling them are the reasons they should accept

11:20

Christ as their Savior. All right, so anyway, this guy, he's excited, okay, but he's focused on the reward. Jesus then lovingly, because he sees this man, he loves him, he pulls his mind back to God.

11:30

He reminds a young man that only God is good. This is important because the young man figured that since God was good, all he needed to do in order to be blessed by him was to be good.

11:39

You know, he's focusing on the blessing, and that's true to a point, but Jesus is going to show him that there's so much more.

11:45

So Jesus tells him to keep the commandments. Now is Jesus preaching a work salvation? No, obviously not.

11:51

Our problem is that we don't understand that we can't really keep the commandments without true faith in and love for God, and that's such a huge point.

11:59

The Jews struggle with this all of the time, and I think modern day Christians do too. You can't genuinely keep the commandments without doing it for the right reasons.

12:09

So after listing out the commandments and hearing the young man proclaim his worthiness, Jesus adds one more item to the list.

12:15

It's another action, but it's the one action that betrayed the young man's heart, and that's the key.

12:21

All the other things on the list, honoring your father and mother, and not murdering and not stealing, you know, the young man was able to do that for the wrong reasons, but when

12:28

Christ suggested doing this particular action, the young man couldn't do it for the right reasons.

12:33

He couldn't do it for the wrong reasons either. Jesus went on to say that salvation is impossible when left up to a man, just like true obedience is.

12:42

You can do the right thing in the right way for the wrong reasons, and you're not really obeying. We can't do it at all, and we can't do any of it for the right reason, but with God, when we're focused on him, when he's the one providing the power that we can't have in ourselves, it's all about our faith and trust in him that yields genuine fruit of repentance.

13:03

There's so much more to say here. This passage is so rich with truth, and we really need to move on, but I want to point out just one more fact that even though Jesus knew exactly what this man needed to hear, the rich young ruler still rejected

13:15

Christ at this point in his life. Remember that, and I'll comment more on it in a minute. And after I'm done talking about this next individual,

13:22

I'm going to summarize our premeditated plan for parenting the thorny child, so stick with me. The second gentleman is

13:29

Simon the Sorcerer. I actually mentioned him the last time as an example of the fact that there is in fact a faith that doesn't lead to repentance.

13:35

His account, again, is in Acts 8. I won't read it, but I encourage you to. The most important point is this.

13:41

Like the rocky -hearted child, the thorny heart accepts elements of the truth to the degree that they could say they believe many of the things.

13:49

The rocky heart likely dwells a lot on the intellectual side of the Christian faith, and the thorny heart more so on the shiny pleasures and emotional highs of the

13:57

Christian faith. So as we look at Simon here, we see that, you know, in Acts 8, that he accepted what they said, that he believed it, but then

14:06

Simon sees the other saints receiving the Holy Spirit, and then he goes to Peter and he tries to buy the

14:14

Holy Spirit from him. And this is what Peter says to him. May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money.

14:21

You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. Repent therefore of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the

14:29

Lord that if possible the intent of your heart may be forgiven you, for I see that you are in the gull of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.

14:36

And Simon said, Pray for me to the Lord that nothing of what you have said may come upon me.

14:42

I do think it's interesting. Instead of begging God for forgiveness because he had dared to turn

14:48

God's precious gift into a petty commodity, Simon asked Peter to pray that nothing bad would happen to him.

14:55

All right, so here's what we learned from these two examples about parenting a thorny heart. This is why we need to watch out for signs of emotionalism and spiritual materialism.

15:04

Keep the focus on the truth of God's person. It's okay to talk about the blessings of being a child of the

15:10

King, but don't ever overemphasize it or neglect the fact that we've been called to sacrifice everything in this life.

15:16

Later in the account of the rich young ruler, something we didn't read, Peter arrogantly points out that he and his buddies had forsaken everything for Jesus, and Jesus did validate his claim.

15:26

He even told them that those who sacrifice family and home and land will receive one hundredfold more in the future and here on earth.

15:33

But he also mentioned that part of that one hundredfold would include persecution. And then lastly, continue having high biblical expectations for your child, specifically things that allow him to experience the harder realities of being a

15:46

Christian. Service, sacrifice, study, and sanctification are a nice alliterated start.

15:54

So again, we need to love our kids. We need to be on the watch for those signs of those weeds, those things that show us that our kids are really more interested in the pleasurable things of life and religion, like emotionalism and spiritual materialism.

16:09

And then number three, we need to keep the focus on the truth of God's person and the reality of the relationship we have with him.

16:16

And we need to continue having high biblical expectations for our children. I mentioned service, sacrifice, study, and sanctification.

16:23

It's not a huge big deal, but service allows our kids, especially our thorny hearted kids, to see that we need, it's not about us and our comfort.

16:30

It's about putting others' needs first. Sacrifice is very similar to that, but we don't only just serve people when it makes us feel good or serve people when we benefit from it.

16:40

We are willing to sacrifice everything for others, to love even when they don't love us back, to give even when they're not going to give it back.

16:48

Studying is another important thing. We know that knowledge puffs up, but truly studying God's word in a way that we realize that this isn't just something simple and comfortable, that we can go to church and attend a few youth services and we know everything we know about God.

17:02

No, a real relationship with him requires us to dig into his word. And then sanctification. If they truly are born again, they need to be growing in every area of their life.

17:12

So in conclusion, I want to take a moment to discuss the unique ability that we all have to switch back and forth between the soils.

17:20

I'm going to use the rich young ruler as an example, and just keep in mind that I'm using a little sanctified imagination here as well.

17:27

So this ruler makes the claim that he had kept all the commandments up until his conversation with Jesus. Likely, this well -educated, independently wealthy young man who lived in a culture that paraded righteousness probably didn't have too much tribulation due to his lifestyle.

17:40

He embraced the Jewish law and the traditions and likely enjoyed keeping the commandments as many of them did. These are the signs of a rocky heart.

17:49

Now perhaps he was a thorny heart all along, but he had his money and his prestige and his power.

17:54

I can't really know for sure, but when Jesus put the pressure on, pressure specifically related to his pleasures, he showed his hand and revealed the fact that he had no genuine spiritual fruit, even though his actions were good.

18:07

So what happened then? Did he go away as a thorny hearted person? Maybe he did. I've experienced one of two reactions from rocky and thorny hearts when they finally realize they're not born again.

18:18

One response is the response we want. It's the Matthew 5 response. They realize they're spiritually destitute.

18:24

They mourn over their state. They humble themselves before God and soften the soil of their hearts.

18:30

They truly become a follower of Christ and then they hunger and thirst after righteousness. And it doesn't matter what persecutions and testings and tribulations come their way, they can rejoice and be glad in it, unlike an unsaved person.

18:43

Unfortunately, the other response is to become a hard heart. Many times I've been used by God to show a rocky or thorny heart their need for Christ, and they get angry or bitter because they feel like God somehow let them down.

18:55

They feel like they crossed all their T's and dotted all their I's and God didn't keep his end of the bargain. It's similar to what many people will feel who hear

19:03

Jesus say, depart from me, I never knew you. And they become hard and they don't want anything to do with the truth.

19:11

But that's okay. See, rocky, thorny, or hard, they're all unsaved.

19:18

The huge blessing of having a hard -hearted child is that you and she both know she's unsaved. It's not a question or a maybe.

19:25

The cards are on the table. And then we can revolve our priorities and start parenting their hard heart.

19:32

And don't lose hope if your child's thorny heart is revealed and they respond incorrectly. God's called you to be an ambassador parent.

19:39

If you don't know what that is, please check out our episode 26. That is the only parenting style that glorifies

19:45

God. And remember, your child may cycle back and forth through them multiple times, but as long as you stay aware and intentional and premeditated, you can provide them just the right seed and water and cultivation necessary to slowly soften their heart so that one day they'll be in the perfect Matthew 5 position to really, truly, wholeheartedly embrace the truth of God and bear fruit.

20:09

And that's what we're going to talk about next time. Believe it or not, you have to know how to parent a soft -hearted child too.

20:15

Having a soft -hearted kid is only the beginning, and often our parenting has a huge effect on how fruitful they are.

20:21

And since next time will be the conclusion of our study in The Four Children, we're going to discuss how a soft -hearted child can still exhibit hard and rocky and thorny responses to truth and what we need to do about it.

20:33

I want to give a special thanks to two of our patrons, Ray and Carolyn. Their contribution to TLP enables us to continue unpacking the

20:41

Bible and applying it to all of our parenting. I'm so thankful for them, and I hope you are too. And if you're curious how you can become a patron, just click the

20:49

Support TLP link in the description. And as always, you can also find our episode notes linked in the description.

20:56

And feel free to drop us a line at TeamTLP at TruthLoveParent .com if you'd like to tell us what we're doing well or where we need to do better.

21:03

And if you have a question you'd like answered on the show or simply in your inbox, you can also reach us at Counselor at TruthLoveParent .com.

21:10

I don't know about you, but this study has been so revolutionary for me. I've known about this passage and I've used it a bunch of times in my counseling, my parenting, but this particular study has opened my eyes to new ways of seeing my kids, the other people

21:23

God brings into my life and myself. I hope you've been encouraged, and I hope that you'll share this study with a friend so that they can know their children better too.

21:32

See you next time. Truth Love Parents is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional premeditated parent.

21:44

Join us next time as we search God's Word for the truth your family needs today.