September 18, 2020 Show with Aaron Brewster on “The Challenges of Christian Parenting Today”

Introduction to Iron Sharpens Iron and the Day’s Theme

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. And now here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 18th day of September 2020.

And I'm so delighted that I have, for the very first time ever, on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Aaron M. Brewster, who for over 10 years has served God and his people in various capacities, including husband, father, homeschooling parent, preacher, biblical counselor, president of a non-profit that serves Christian families, conference speaker, camp director, Christian school administrator, director of a boarding home for at-risk teens, podcaster, author, and host of Truth Love Parent.

And today we are going to be addressing the challenges of Christian parenting today. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Aaron Brewster.

Thank you very much, Chris. Yeah, that's a really long list. That's right. That's fantastic. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Well, it's a lot longer list than my own credentials. I'll tell you that much. So tell us about Truth Love Parent before we go into any more details about our theme today and also about your personal salvation testimony.

Sure. Yeah, my pleasure. So Truth Love Parent started out of the work I was doing at Victory Academy for Boys, which is a boarding school as a podcast. Put it out there not just for the families we were serving, biblical answers to their parenting needs.

And the Lord blessed and it's connected me with a World Victory Academy countering trajectory being a 501c.

Praise God. Well, if anybody wants to know more about Truth Love Parent, you can go to Truth Love Parent dot com. Truth Love Parent dot com. And I'm sure we'll be announcing that throughout the broadcast.

Aaron Brewster’s Salvation Testimony

Well, as I hinted at just a moment ago, we have a tradition here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Whenever we have a first time guest, at least when that first time guest is a Christian, there are rare occasions I interview somebody who is not a Christian for one reason or another.

Perhaps they still have something of value to say to the body of Christ and allow them to have a an interview on this program. But as you are among the 99 .999 of my guests who are Christian, I would like for you now to give a summary of your salvation testimony, including the religious atmosphere, if any, you were raised in and what providential circumstances our Sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you.

Well, that's one of my favorite things to talk about, so I appreciate the opportunity and it's a great tradition you guys have. Yeah, I grew up in a home that was really, for all intents and purposes, a first, potentially second generation Christian family.

Both of my parents, as they grew up, their family, their parents and their brothers and sisters were unsaved. My mom's family all came to the Lord. Basically, all at the same time when she was, I believe, in high school.

Growing up there, my parents loved the Lord, brought Christian home, and so when they didn't grow up, prepared them to be parents. So they were doing their dead level best. I think my mom in particular did for me was, I had made a profession of faith when I was five.

And as I look back, most likely to escape the realities of hell. You know, at the age of nine, so four years later, my mom confronted me. It seemed that everything, and she went on to describe and explain to me that Christians, what their driving motivation is.

And I had just shown over and over again in my life that that was not something I was trying to do. And I remember the nine-year-old being offended by my salvation, but the reality was, I used my mom to remember my life, not as how we lived, but at our church, and I basically, honestly, was double-minded.

Followed the advice there and cleansed my hands. Used a number of, well, not through salvation, but drawing me back to him. I praise God that that has been an ongoing since 2007, when my wife and I got married.

We kind of, uh, long and short of how the Lord...

Well, praise God.

You, at the age of 12, recognized that you were a sinner in need of a Savior, and placed your trust in Christ and His finished work on Calvary. I, at the age of 12, was perfecting, spitting watermelon seeds out of my mouth like a machine gun in my friend's faces.

So you were a lot more advanced as a child than I was. Um, so, our theme today is the challenges of Christian parenting today. And, uh, I am not a parent, but I know full well, knowing plenty of parents and having parents, that being a parent has always been challenging.

And even when we read the scriptures, it's obviously been a challenge from the get-go, right out of the Garden of Eden. But, um, there is, I think, a unique emphasis of our theme today on the word today, because this is a truly bizarre world we're living in.

But, um, first of all, let me start off by asking you a question. Lest any of our Christian parents be discouraged right now. Uh, I mean, there may be many that are warmed and encouraged hearing your testimony when they have little tiny children, and they may, uh, have greater confidence and hope and enthusiasm that their children will come to embrace Christ as their Savior, as you did, as you did as a very young child.

There are others who have teenagers or children, adult children in their 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s, who are rebels against God, who are living wicked lives, perhaps bordering on suicidal in their behavior, who are discouraged because their hearts are broken, that they don't have children such as you were, who are serving Christ, and where they can rest their heads on their pillow with peace, and tranquility, and confidence, that should anything happen to their children unexpectedly, if their children or any one of them should depart this earth before they as parents do, they could at the very least know that those children will be in eternity with Christ, and there are many parents who have no such peace.

So, please, uh, perhaps give, start off with a word of encouragement to those parents, those latter, that latter group, who may be discouraged right now.

Encouragement for Parents of Unsaved Children

Yeah, there definitely are a lot of people in that category that describe many of the families with which I worked at Victory Academy for Boys. I guess my mind goes in a couple different directions. One of them is the fact, unless the Bible reveals, is going to work out exactly encouragement, because how, why, where, when we want to be in the middle of it, we want to make it happen, and that reminds me of the second thing, that God has not called any of us to change anybody.

Do that. Changing us. You're alive at the age of nine. He is about giving new life to dead people, and he's about, even after he gives life, changing us, sanctifying us, purifying us, taking us from one degree of glory to another.

So we serve a God of change, holy, sovereign, and that right there, with our eyes, be the encouraged, kept his eyes fixed on Christ as he was walking on the Sea of Galilee, he would not have slipped below the waves, but he took his eyes off of Christ, and then he was scared by the waves around him.

Of ours going to hell, and of rejecting the Lord, is a terrible burden. God keeps us in perfect peace when our mind is staying with him. So that's where I would start, when it comes to my mind, specifically from 1 Corinthians chapter 7.

And in this passage, he is married to someone who is unsaved, or has children. Big passage, long time to really unpack it, but I want to read it, and just, "...for the unbelieving husband through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband, for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy.

For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife? Or we could add to that, and how will you, how do you know, O parent, whether you will save your child?".

And obviously, this is not talking about us being the nation, but this, this, that, doesn't matter how desperate it may seem. We need to continue to celebrate God, and worship him in our current, the life of those around us.

That includes our children. Who knows if your, God's work through you. So we can be encouraged, um, and I tell parents all the time, we can be encouraged because God is who he is. If, if I'm discouraged because my son is putting more in his ability to mess things, and then secondly, I can look at scripture, and I can see the fact that God doesn't give me the responsibility to change anybody, but he does want to use me in the permit to God, and I'm used in that process.

Who knows what the Lord is going to accomplish when we do the way he wants us to. And I guess lastly, I do have to acknowledge the fact that God forbid, but it is going to happen that, you know, every single one of us is a child, somebody's child.

And there are people today who are dying and go, that our children, again, God forbid.

Praise God.

Well, I'm going to give our email address out right now, in the event that we have listeners who would like to join us on the air with their own questions. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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Call 1 -800 -669 -4878. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnson, and hopefully we have Aaron Brewster, our guest on the line. And before the break, Al Yerkes, who is on staff at Wretched Radio and Wretched Television, the media ministry of Todd Friel, who's been a guest on this program a number of times.

Al says, at what age should you start spanking, if at all? And he has a couple of other follow-up questions. And I think that that's also a very appropriate question for the emphasis on the word today, the challenges of Christian parenting today, because doing that in the wrong place at the wrong time could get you possibly thrown in jail.

Commenting on the fact that that is the question that everyone wants to ask and the one question that no one wants to answer. But I will, what I have to do, because there are lots of different ways, and so in this question about whether or not, what age that we should start spanking, as I believe it was written, I have to establish first that I don't like really using that last one very much.

But it is something that we see in Scripture. We see that it is consistent with God's character. We see that it's consistent with how He disciplines us. We see that from Genesis and the fall of man all the way through the fire, we see that there are consequences for our sin.

And really, in this discussion of consequences, we have to understand what they're for. And we're going to answer the question, but if we don't understand what discipline, what consequences are for, we're going to miss the big picture.

We can get stuck in the weeds so easily. So first and foremost, this is why consequences exist. The consequences that we humans deliver to each other are what I call secondary consequences. They're not the primary ones.

The primary consequences are things that happen every single time. I can put it this way. There are three primary consequences. Every single time I sin, these three things happen. Number one, I displease the Lord.

In order to be consistent, sometimes I like to use the word hurt, not because we're actually hurting God, causing Him pain, but we're hurting Him in our relationship. We hurt God. Number ten, those are the three things that happen every single time, but those are also the three things that we don't think about.

We don't care about. If we were thinking about those three things, we wouldn't be sinning. The secondary consequences are designed to do one thing, and it's designed to remind us that sin hurts, regardless of what the consequence is.

And they have learned that the answer is, I know the secondary consequences are not the end goal. The end goal is to remind them that sin hurts, and then to remind them, more importantly, about why it is we strive to not sin.

It's not behavior management. It's us desiring to glorify God, to be wise in this sin. You know, God didn't say, but He does use some interesting terminology, and I believe one of the, the boy was crying to look at, I have no knowledge of good or evil, and I will give it to them, and they shall possess it.

And we see something similar in Isaiah 7. Actually, this one is referring to the sign. Behold, a virgin shall be with child. If anybody will know enough to refuse evil and choose good, the land of these two kings you dread will be forsaken.

So you see these two instances where apparently there's this, there's this age of children where they don't know the difference between evil and good. And I've heard a lot of people say, well, okay, whatever that age is, we don't want to give them consequences before they reach that age.

Some people equate this to the age of accountability and different things. But again, the Bible doesn't give any ages specifically. So this is the one thing I like to tell parents. In Genesis chapter 3, we have two people who, according to the scriptures, were innocent.

They did not have a knowledge of good and evil. They didn't know what those two ideas were. They were innocent. And yet, they made a choice. And that choice brought consequences into their lives. If we're going to argue that somebody doesn't have a knowledge of good and evil, and so therefore we cannot give them consequences, we're actually doing the exact opposite that God did in Genesis chapter 3, where Adam and Eve ate of the fruit.

Even though, and it was that sin that actually gave them the knowledge of good and evil. And the Lord gave them consequences for what they did, even in their innocence. So here's what I like to tell parents.

And this is unfortunately not, you know, again, I can't give an age. But I can say this. Every parent, everyone who's ever had a child who spends the right amount of time with them and loves their child and knows their child, they have an experience where they realize that their child has made a decision, a conscious decision, no matter how immature it may be, no matter how childish or infantile it may be, they've made a conscious decision to do something they know they shouldn't.

And when it happens, the parents, if they're paying attention, they can recognize it. And I have a beautiful story for this. It's hilarious. You're going to love it. I'm three years older than my sister.

And shortly after my sister was born, she and I were sharing a room. And she would stand up in her crib and she would gab, gab, gab all night long. And my dad wanted to give her the harsh consequence of a pat on the butt.

And my mom did not want to do that. She believed that that was completely unnecessary and not a good idea. She's just a baby. And so my mom would do lots of things trying to coddle my sister and trying to convince her to go back to sleep.

Well, one night, about six months, she was about six months old, she was doing the same thing. She was standing up in her crib and she had a lot of experiences with mom and dad up until that point because of this exact same behavior.

And my mom, hoping to get to her before my dad did, she rushed into the room and she jumped into her coddling, trying to get my sister. Well, my sister just kept gabbing and talking and smiling and laughing until she heard down the hallway, she heard my dad's feet hit the floor.

The moment my sister, my six-month-old sister, heard my dad's feet hit the floor, she immediately prostrated herself in her bed, closed her eyes and didn't make a sound. And my mom looked at her and she said, you six-month-old child.

She had put two and two together. So here's the thing. We don't know, all right? We don't know at what point your child is going to be able to make a conscious decision to do something that they shouldn't do.

But here's the key. When they make that decision, you as a parent need to be there to help them realize the desperately important lesson that sin hurts. It has consequences. That God's consequences need to be focused on God's truth and done out of God's love, but it needs to be done.

And Ecclesiastes tells us that when we are not consistent and we are not immediate in our consequences, that actually encourages the child to continue into a sinful path that actually builds the habit of, at what age should we start spanking?

I encourage parents to start spanking when they believe, as well as they can tell, that the child is doing something deliberately. And oftentimes, you can tell. Most parents I've talked to are like, yeah, no, we had an experience like that.

So I think that's pretty much a good place to start on that particular question.

Well, Al may be interested to know that when I was in attendance at a parenting conference being led by my friend Ted Tripp, author of Shepherding a Child's Heart, during a Q &A session, I asked Ted if something that I did was appropriate of family gathering during a holiday.

I said my nephew was acting like a terror in the living room during the holiday gathering, and nobody was doing anything to discipline him or stop him. Neither my sister, who is his mother, obviously, or my own mother, his grandmother, were doing anything.

And finally, when he took a Bic lighter and started to set fire to the curtains, I yelled at him at the top of my lungs and smacked him on the side of the head. And I said, is this appropriate behavior on my part?

And Ted said, well, how old was he when you did this? And I said, 37. Anyway, we have another listener. And I was just, oh, let me ask a couple of other questions that Ted, I'm sorry, that Al asked before I move on to another listener.

He said, or he asked, what methods of spanking are acceptable? Hand, switch, etc.

Another good question. This particular one, again, we need to go back to the script. We know that the Bible frequently uses the term rod, but again, the Bible doesn't specifically say why. And we are left to use our logic, our theological logic, to try to understand why it is the Lord has prescribed that we do a certain thing a certain way.

So again, it doesn't say why. We could conjecture about the reasons all day long, but I believe it's safe to say that if we're going to use something, whatever else you're going to—I think that has value and that has benefit.

I think the key, though, to remember is that regardless of what we're using, we're not trying—we definitely are not trying to harm our child. We are not trying to break them. We're not trying to cause them to be bruised and broken.

That would be completely, 100 inappropriate. Remember, sin hurts. Sin is going to destroy our lives. This is a neon light pointing to that reality, and all it has to do is get our attention and get us to think, and that hurts us too.

We're not trying to do that whatsoever. Having been offended that way to do this, this needs to be done. Regardless of what you choose to be done in a way—.

Okay, his last question is, what do you think of time out?

Yeah, I mentioned earlier that I don't think that spankings are the only necessary way to discipline. I think the Lord gives us that as an example. I think it works, and I think it works well on multiple ages, but obviously that's not the only consequence.

The Bible discusses other consequences of, you know, people had come upon them all throughout the Scriptures. Different things happen to different people, and rarely do we actually hear of somebody being spanked in Scripture.

So, no, I don't think it's the only legitimate consequence for disobedience. I think the key for this one, though, is to know your child. Okay? The Bible says that a wise man is able to draw out of somebody the purposes of their heart like it's deep water.

Imagine putting a bucket down into a well and to draw it out. We need to know our kids, and we need to be able to determine which course of action has the best chances of communicating the one truth. In this particular instance, I'll use my children as an example.

One of the things that hurts more than a spanking does is a monetary consequence. Having to, you know, pay—and like this has never actually happened—a lamp that was broken. My kids, anyway. I think, yes, different things are appropriate, but here's the key.

Regardless of whether it's a timeout, whatever it is you choose to use, this is the big thing I think a lot of times parents miss. Your children need an interpreter in their life. To do her best, uh, you get a little flustered and whatnot.

She says, Ouch, what are you doing? I've told you a hundred times not to do that. Generally speaking, 99 .9 of the time the child is not walking to their room thinking to themselves, Oh, praise God for my mother who loves me so dearly that in my foolishness she is going to give me a consequence to drive me to God and remind me of the fact that's been hurt.

No, no, no. A child is going to go off to his room thinking something like this. My mommy hates me. She never wants me to have any fun. So one of the problems that I find a lot of parents get into when it comes to consequences of any kind is the fact that they expect their child to respond maturely and understand the purpose behind all of that.

And that's just patently ridiculous. Adults don't do that, let alone children. So what I explain is to parents is we need to, in that moment, take the opportunity to share with them, to help them to see the truth of why it is you need to go to your room and have a time out.

Why it is you're going to have to have this spanking. And when you sit down with your child and you explain who God is and how much he loves us and how he desperately wants to have a relationship, our sin is an attack against him.

And our sin has consequences and it hurts. And I'm doing this. I'm bringing this consequence into your life because that right there is probably the single most important part of the consequence, regardless of what the consequence may be.

Give me your keys. Give me your phone. You're grounded. Go to your room. Expect a child to draw the correct conclusions when they've been proving to us by their previous...

Well, thank you, Al. And please send my greetings to your boss, Todd Friel. Tell him that I've been very annoyed with him lately for being too busy to return as my guest. So nudge him and nag him and harass him until he finally agrees to come back on the program.

Well, actually, we do have time for one more question before we go to our midway break. Let's see. We have Kara in Salem, Ohio. I'm an avid listener of Truth, Love, Parent podcast and have already learned so many valuable and practical ways to parent for the glory of God by listening to Aaron's podcast.

I've tried to implement many of the principles for Christian parenting in my family, though it is still a struggle as my husband and three children are unsaved. My question is to ask if there is a specific verse that Aaron can direct me to that would provide me... that would provide strength and encouragement in my situation.

Thank you so much.

Strength for Parents with Unsaved Family Members

Wow. Thank you, Kara, for being so transparent and for being willing to ask that question. You know, I praise God. I think it's awesome that some of the opening comments that Chris and I were sharing back and forth about just kind of encouraging people in a situation like yours whose children are unsaved.

Praise God that those speak directly to your situation as well. And like I said before, yes, 1 Corinthians 7 is such a huge verse. Encouragement for us that God wants to actively use us in the life of our children.