TLP S00-E3: Five Steps to Becoming a Premeditated Parent | Christian parenting with purpose

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The area of premeditated parenting is a dynamic place to see real, quality change take place.

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But it's going to involve a good amount of work on your part, but isn't being a good parent and glorifying your

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Savior worth it? Welcome to Truth. Love.

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Parent. Where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents.

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Here's your host, A .M. Brewster. This is Truth. Love. Parent. And we are dedicated to helping you become an intentional, premeditated parent.

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I asked my wife what she thought of that tagline and she said, the only thing that comes to my mind when

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I hear premeditated is murder. Well, no doubt there are a couple people out there who might feel that way about their parenting, but that's not what we mean.

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Merriam -Webster defines premeditated as characterized by fully conscious, willful intent and a measure of forethought and planning.

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I love that definition. Imagine your parenting being characterized by fully conscious, willful intent and a measure of forethought and planning.

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I would love that kind of planning, that type of parenting. Well, that is our topic for today.

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Five steps to being a premeditated parent. And remember, if this podcast benefits you in any way, we'd love for you to share it with your friends.

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We'd love for you to subscribe to future podcasts. But here we go. Let's jump in.

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Five steps to being a premeditated parent. Think about your greatest skill.

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Isn't it awesome that you can fix that transmission, balance that checkbook, grow that pumpkin and shoot that basketball without even thinking about it?

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Have you noticed though that no one seems to be an expert in parenting? Open any

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Christ honoring parenting manual and you will read somewhere in the first chapter that the author acknowledges he isn't the perfect parent.

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Well, I'm here to say that I'm not the perfect parent either. In fact, when it comes to your son, you're the best parent he can have because you're the parent

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God chose for him. Not me, not somebody else, not another counselor or youth pastor.

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You're the best parent, but that doesn't mean you're the perfect parent. Our sin keeps us from being the best parent we can be, even with our own children.

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And this is why in one way or another, it's always about me. Just like the last episode, because we need to defeat our own sin if we want to successfully help our children defeat theirs.

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That's why I always start with me. So part of that process is learning some things

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God calls wisdom, discernment, and self -control. We like to call it premeditated parenting.

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Now before we get to the five steps, there's one quick observation we need to make. If you want to be a premeditated parent, you must absolutely stop following your heart.

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Every time a boy breaks the rules at Victory Academy for Boys, where I work, they have to fill out a think sheet.

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One of the questions on that think sheet is, was your decision based off fact or feeling?

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Now keep in mind that they're discussing on this sheet their poor choices. And every single time, without exception, the boys eventually acknowledge that in the moment of their sinful behavior, that it was motivated predominantly by their feelings, not their brains.

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And that's not completely surprising. The world's doing a great job teaching them that that's the only way to make choices.

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If it feels good, do it. Follow your heart. Be true to yourself. Do what makes you happy.

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And other Disney -isms. But the reality is that God tells us our hearts are deceptive and wicked,

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Jeremiah 17 .9. In Mark 7 .21, we see that evil finds its root in the heart.

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Proverbs 28 .26 says that only a fool follows his heart, because we'll all be judged for the times that we followed our hearts,

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Ecclesiastes 11 .9 tells us. In all fairness, though, our children aren't the only ones giving in to their emotions.

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How many times have we reacted in the moment based solely off how they made us feel instead of God's truth about the situation?

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This is why before we go any further, we need to acknowledge that our emotions have no place in parenting.

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Now, that may sound insane, that I would even suggest that we need to be emotionless parents.

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And I just want to make it clear that I'm not suggesting that. When it comes to decision -making, when it comes to discipline, when it comes to dealing with our children in such a way that we want them to grow in the

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Lord, yes, by all means, we can be joyful and we should have that peace that passes all understanding.

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But if we are giving in to the capricious emotions of anger and fear and hopelessness and depression that so often plague us in those moments when our children are not making

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Christ -honoring choices, then we are totally parenting the wrong way. We need our parenting to be grounded in truth.

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Christ -honoring emotion definitely is welcome to the party, but we can't allow our decisions about how we parent to be dictated by how we feel because of the situation that I'm in.

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Instead, like I said before, instead of following our emotions, we need to follow truth.

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The essence of premeditated parenting is to set yourself up for success by creating and practicing a prepared response to conflict.

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Think about Merriam -Webster's definition again, characterized by fully conscious, willful intent and a measure of forethought and planning.

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Before an issue ever arises, I need to consciously plan out my responses.

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See, Proverbs 10 .14 tells us that God wants us to be wise, storing up knowledge.

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He also wants us to be discerning and base our life choices off of knowledge. That comes from Philippians 1 .9.

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And then 2 Peter 1 .6 says He also wants us to base our self -control off knowledge.

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But what is this knowledge God keeps referring to? This is the knowledge of God that comes through His word.

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We can never hope to parent well if we don't ground everything we do in God's truth.

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And that's why we call our show Truth, Love, Parenting. Without the foundation of God's perfect word and without the power of God's perfect love, it's impossible to parent successfully.

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So, in order to be a premeditated parent, I suggest the following five steps. Number one, study your past reactions.

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Take a good amount of time to think through the conflicts you and your children have had. Dissect what was said on both sides.

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Be critical of yourself. Be honest enough to acknowledge where your communication was motivated by how you felt and not how

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God commanded us to respond. To keep us honest, I highly suggest you be prepared to get an unbiased opinion.

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Or 10, a spiritually minded spouse, pastor, or counselor should be able to accomplish this, even with just your side of the story.

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Remember what Proverbs 11 .14 says, Where there is no guidance, the people fall.

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But in abundance of counselors, there's victory. I believe you want victory for your parenting.

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That's why you're tuning in. And I don't think that you want your parenting to fall. So, there is a lot of wisdom in a multitude of counselors.

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Number one, study your past reactions. Number two, prepare a Christ -honoring response.

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Feel free to lean on those counselors pretty hard for this one. Up until now, you likely responded one way or the other because you really believed it was best.

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But what if during your introspection you realize it wasn't best? What should you do now?

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That's one of the reasons we're here. We would love to walk you through the scriptures to help you formulate a righteous response to your children's hateful words or their rebellious actions.

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Psalm 119 says that we can only find that help in the scriptures.

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Now, you can always study the scriptures yourself, and I always encourage people to do that, whether it's your own personal time with the

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Lord every day or a dedicated study because you want to find out what God says on a topic. That's fantastic.

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But again, there's wisdom in a multitude of counselors. You can always feel free to reach out to us at counselor at evermindministries .com.

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That's counselor at evermindministries .com.

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Of course, we would love if you went to your pastor or if there were a local counseling center that you could talk to those people because having someone face -to -face is so incredibly helpful.

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But sometimes you don't have that opportunity. Sometimes you need to reach out to somebody else because there's just no one else around you who is going to be able to point you to God's truth.

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In those cases, we would love for you to reach out to us. So, first of all, study your past reactions.

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Second, prepare a Christ -honoring response. Three, though, you need to practice that response. Practice doesn't make perfect.

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Only perfect practice does. And if you want to be a perfect parent, which of course we can't be, but if you want to be really good at parenting, you need to practice it.

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You'll have ample opportunities to put your premeditated parenting to the test with your children. But you can also use these steps to become a premeditated spouse or premeditated employee and friend.

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Try it out. Get comfortable with it. Especially feel free to use it in situations that are low intensity.

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You know, you realize I haven't been really responding correctly in this particular situation. So, get a plan and start putting it into practice.

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Dealing with the smaller conflicts and issues will be a lot easier up front than dealing with the big ones.

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And if you find that you're still struggling with responding emotionally or you don't think your approach is having the right effect, contact your accountability partner or your counselor.

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Talk with your spouse or, again, give us a call at Victory Family Ministries. Proverbs 15 .22

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says, Without consultation, plans are frustrated. But with many counselors, they succeed.

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You're trying to create a plan for your parenting and you're going to need consultation. Really, we weren't created by God to do it on our own.

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That's why we need counselors to succeed. And there are plenty of people in this world ready and willing to help you be the best mom and dad that you can be through the power of the

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Holy Spirit. Find them. Reach out to them. So, first of all, you need to study your past reactions so that, two, you can prepare a

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Christ -honoring response. Three, practice that response. And then number four, I don't know if it's counterintuitive, but it's something that we just forget about.

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And when we're reminded, we go, oh, yeah, yeah, I know I should do that. But we still forget about it in the moment.

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Number four is bathe your interactions in prayer. Really, Aaron? You want me to pray before interacting with my kid?

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Yeah, I do. Especially if you're entering a situation you know has tempted you in the past to respond incorrectly.

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You've told your daughter to clean her room. You know she frequently fails to put her toys in the right spot. Pray before entering the room.

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Prepare yourself to work the plan you know will glorify God. We all need to remember that true self -control is really spirit control.

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We see that in Ephesians 5 .18. We need to be filled with the Spirit, controlled by the

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Spirit. You need God's strength to be gracious in the face of anger, loving in the face of hate, and peaceful in the face of angst.

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You can't do it by yourself. Now, know that if you email us, we're praying for you.

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Your spouse is praying for you. Other accountability partners likely are praying for you. But don't rely on just that.

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You need to run to Christ. Philippians 4 .13 says, He is the one who will strengthen us.

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So, after you've seen the struggle you've had in the past, and you've prepared a good response, and you've practiced that, and then you bathe yourself in prayer before entering the response, obviously you're going to have the moment, and you're either going to work your plan or not.

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So, number five, you need to be critical of your performance. It's very easy to see your children's flaws, but noticing those won't help you grow and become a better parent.

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So, after the conversation or the interaction, talk with your spouse about how it went. Talk with your counselor.

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Be honest about where you threw your premeditated parenting plan away in exchange for emotional reactions.

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Reaffirm the power of God's truth and the victory inherent in His plan, and then rededicate yourself to parenting

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His way. Practice some more, and try it again. Now, I realize all this talk of counselors and accountability partners and all this stuff can really seem daunting.

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Sometimes there are those of us who really know that we need help, and we have no problem reaching out to others, and there are other people, kind of like me, who struggle having to admit that I need someone's help doing something simple like parenting.

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I mean, really? But, ladies and gentlemen, that's how God created us. That's what we need in order to stay on track and make certain that our responses are

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Christ honoring. The area of premeditated parenting is a dynamic place to see real quality change take place, but it's going to involve a good amount of work on your part.

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But isn't being a good parent and glorifying your Savior worth it? Most people don't get into parenting because they think it's going to be easy.

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But unfortunately, sometimes we look at the task in front of us, and it's so daunting, we just say, ugh, and we start shooting from the hip and responding and reacting instead of having a plan.

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You need to take driver's tests and get certified to drive a car. You need to have all these classes in place in order to own a handgun, but kids, you can have those without any classes.

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And I think we've created a society where we take parenting for granted. No, ladies and gentlemen, it takes work, and the more help we have, the better.

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So, if you have personal questions and no one to turn to, please reach out to us at counselor at evermindadministries .com.

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We don't currently have a phone line dedicated to working through questions, but you may always feel free to reach out to me or Mark Massey.

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Mark is the executive director of Victory Family Ministries, where I work, and I'm one of the family counselors.

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We'd love to point you to the truth you need to parent today. And it doesn't have to be in a critical moment. Yes, Victory Family Ministries, we help families who are struggling with teens who are just rebelling and throwing off all authority, but that's not the only parents we're working with.

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We'd love to work with you. We'd love to help you step through these difficulties you're having, or maybe help answer questions to difficulties you don't have yet.

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Maybe everything's going fine, everything's going great, but you'd like to be prepared. Well, we'd love to help.

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As always, you can connect with Evermind Ministries on social media, including Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, and I'm pretty sure

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Pinterest too. And you can follow me as well on Twitter at ambooster. I hope you have a fantastic day, and I hope that you are able to put your premeditated plan into action.

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

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