TLP 436: The Curse of Obedient Children

We all wish our kids were more obedient, but most parents aren't aware of the pitfalls of cherubic children. Today, we're going to talk about the dangers that come from having obedient kids and discover how to approach those challenges biblically.

Welcome to Truth Love Parents, where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents. Here's your host, A .M. Brewster.

Thank you again for taking the time to hang out with me, and if this is your first time with us, thanks for giving Truth Love Parent a chance. There are so many podcasts to which you could be listening.

I really, really appreciate the opportunity to serve you by talking about how God's Word can be applied to your parenting. But whether you're new to the show or not, I invite you to come hang out with me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

I'd love to interact with you there as I try to be profound, or just merely share how I caught yet one more swarm of honeybees in my backyard.

Awesome!

It may not always be profound, but it'll always be me, and I pray it's always Christ honoring. Also, don't forget to check out TakingBackTheFamily .com, our blog, for today's free episode notes and transcript.

What Biblical Obedience Requires

And now we talk about something you may have never dreamed possible. How could having obedient children be a curse? Well, today we're going to look at four groups of children who look like really good kids, and we're going to discuss what's really going on with them, how we can figure out if our kids fall into any of these categories, and how we can help our kids if they do.

But before we introduce those four groups, we need to quickly remind ourselves what the Bible says about obedience so that we're all on the same page. By the way, if this information is new to you and you'd like to study it more, I'll link additional resources in the description of today's episode.

The resources will provide the biblical argumentation for the truths I'm about to share. First, biblical obedience requires doing the right things. And of course, by right, we're talking about God's definition of right, not ours or our.

Kids.

Second, biblical obedience requires that we do the right things in the right way. And again, neither we nor our kids get to contradict God's expectations for the way we obey. Third, we must do those right things in those right ways for those right reasons.

This one is huge, and we'll talk a lot more about it later today. And fourth, if you are doing the right thing in the right way for the right reasons, you will also be doing it in the right power, which is the power of the Holy Spirit that God promises to those who submit to Him.

However, the Holy Spirit will not empower obedience that isn't even trying to submit in the three previously mentioned areas. Now, just by looking at that list alone, you can already imagine how a child may look to everyone who knows them like an obedient child, and yet still not be truly obeying.

So let me say two more really important things before we start trying to figure out if our kids are genuinely being obedient or not. First, you are human. You're finite. You are mortal. You can't read people's minds.

Yes, I'm going to suggest that you carefully observe and interpret your children's behavior, and I'm going to share a lot of my experience with children from each of these categories, but your kids may be different.

That's why we also need to, second, approach this discussion with a lot of prayer, a genuine desire for our kids' good, divine love, and lots of good questions and thoughtful discussions. If after listening to this episode, you lay into your kids about their superficial obedience, I can promise you that you are sinning, and you're potentially sinning more than your kids are, so let's be careful.

And lastly, for those of you who don't know me, I'm a biblical family counselor. I've been counseling families full-time since 2007, and in that time, I did so within the context of a Christian school, a boarding home for at-risk teen boys, and as part of Truth Love Parent.

And during that time, my wife and I have had over 50 different children live in our home and under our parenting for an extended period of time. I share that with you so that you understand that I'm not merely throwing out my observations and experiences from raising my two biological kids, though they have definitely played a big part in teaching me what I hope to teach you today.

I've had the privilege of parenting many boys and girls of various ages and for various spans of time. In addition to that, I've been able to work with many more parents who've had disobedient children of their own.

And all that experience gives me a unique perspective on the conversation because I can see things that happen all of the time that other people may have thought was unique to them. When you think you're the only person who's ever had car trouble, it's easy to think that no one can help.

But when you realize that everyone and their cousin's great aunt has had car trouble, and often that car trouble was rectified, you start to have more hope. Now, allow me to use a different example to put this into perspective.

And this one's kind of dark, but you know me. You know how when you hear about a murderer on the news, there's always at least one person who says, he seemed like such a nice guy. He was always so quiet and friendly.

Yeah, well, when you see that enough, you stop allowing niceness, quietness, and friendliness to be your criteria for concluding that your neighbor isn't a serial killer. And that's some of the unique experience I have.

I've sat with so many weeping parents whose kids are denying God and being abusive and engaging in all kinds of horrible sins, where just a year or so ago, earlier, these same parents thought their kids were so obedient and godly and loving and faithful to the Lord.

How does that happen? Well, that's the goal for today's discussion. And with that long introduction, here we go. There are some kids who seem to be very well-behaved, but number one, they're not really obedient.

They're just good pretenders. Boy, oh boy, did this describe a whole chunk of my life. Sure, I openly disobeyed, I got into many arguments with my parents and the like, but for the most part, the vast majority of the adults in my life thought I was a very good individual.

This was my reality through a big part of high school, but it was a stronger reality in college.

Why?

Because I was a better actor then. Come on, my undergrad minor was actually acting. I knew what it took to give the right impression to the right people, all the while being a completely different person behind everyone's back.

I'm not proud of this fact, and truth, what I'm about to say, still weighs heavily on my heart, but I probably should have been kicked out of my Christian university multiple times over. I've sinned against more people than I care to admit, and my heart breaks because of it.

And yet, most people considered me to be a good kid. And here's the thing, I've worked with so many parents whose kids were really good pretenders. Now, this episode cannot be as in-depth as I'd like it to be, so let me just say now that we're going to have to move quickly through each of these categories.

So if you'd like to learn more about determining if your child fits into any of these descriptions, don't hesitate to contact us at counselor at truthloveparent .com. Now it may also help for you to listen to the 4 Children series.

Those episodes will give you a bunch of more information about understanding how your kids really respond to truth. But if your kids are pretenders, how are you going to know they're pretending? For starters, A, we all need to pay better attention.

It really amazes me the stuff kids get away with right in front of their parents' eyes. Sometimes this is a result of the parents not paying a lick of attention, and sometimes it's due to the fact that the parents don't see anything wrong with their behavior.

But man, I've seen some crazy stuff. Let me give you a personal example of my own debauchery growing up. I used to take two or three CD jewel cases, you guys remember those? Yeah, well, these jewel cases were filled with very inappropriate music, and stick them in the front of my pants.

I'd walk around my house, give my parents full-on frontal hugs goodbye, and when asked what I'd be doing while I was gone, I'd say with a jocular smile, oh, I'm going to go listen to a bunch of music you hate.

We'd all laugh at the joke, then I'd leave and totally rock out as I drove down the road. And they were never the wiser. Now please understand I'm not throwing my parents under the bus, they will easily admit that they missed a lot back then, and they also found a lot too, if I'm being honest.

But my point is we need to pay more attention. This makes me think about Eli. His sons were both priests, but they were known to the people of Israel as being worthless.

Men.

They lied and cheated and committed adultery with the women who served at the doorway of the Tent of Meeting, but apparently Eli wasn't paying enough attention because he didn't know about it until he was told by the people in 1 Samuel 2 .22.

Dad, Mom, don't take your children's obedience for granted. Inspect what you expect. Pay attention. Also, if we think we may have pretenders, letter B, we need to start asking better questions. Like I said, stop taking things for granted.

What is my child doing? How are they doing it? What's their motivation? Pretenders are liars, and liars always let something slip or can't keep their lies straight after a while. If we're paying attention and asking good questions, eventually something will come.

Out.

We have the Lord's promise that our sin will find us out, but I've actually watched children slip up in their lies and betray the truth, but their parents weren't really focusing on what was going on, and the kid almost got away with the lie.

I say almost because I was there to point it out to the parents. Even God asks questions. Sure, He knew the answers, but He asked them because the individual answering always reveals His own heart to Himself as He answers.

God asked Cain questions after Cain presented the wrong offering. Jesus asked the woman at the well questions. Quality questions are a powerful parenting tool. And C. We need to hold our kids to high biblical standards.

This point is specifically for the parents who tolerate disobedience in their children or whose standards are unbiblically low. It's much easier for a child with those parents to pretend to obey than it would be if the parent had the same expectations for their child as God does.

Holding kids to higher biblical standards may also take the form of increased accountability. For example, I personally should never have been allowed to go wherever I wanted to go all by myself, and some of your kids shouldn't either.

Many of your kids shouldn't have access to technology, and definitely not in their bedrooms. And it's not just about the tech they have, it's more about how and why they use it. You can learn a lot more about keeping high biblical expectations in your home in our Fifth Way to Parents series, and I really hope that you'll check that out.

Partial Obedience and the Need for Better Parenting

Now this next category of quote-unquote obedient children is similar but unique. Number two, they do the right things, but they don't do them the right way. The pretenders fake obedience. That's what generally makes them easier to discover.

They're not completely genuine. However, the partial obeyers are often very genuine about doing the right things. The problem is that they're not doing the right things in the right ways. Most young children fit into this category at some point in their lives.

They're told to clean up their rooms, but they don't do it in a timely manner. They do it with a bad attitude, or they don't follow all the rules you've given them about white gloving their bedroom. And it's often the same parents who don't pay attention, or who don't ask good questions, or who don't have high biblical expectations for their kids that allow partial obedience from their children.

Now, as you can probably tell, it's very easy for these parents to cruise through life thinking their kids are sweet, wonderful, normal kids. Parents ask their kids to clean the dishes, and though the dishes get cleaned, the child didn't obey in how they did it.

Well, the parent just wants their kids to stop yelling at each other. So long as the kids are quiet, mom and dad don't really care that they're still harboring bitterness and hatred in their hearts. They got the clean dishes.

They got the quiet kids. Mom and dad are happy. But eventually something goes wrong. For whatever reason, eventually the child's true self is revealed. It either comes out that they've been pretending the whole time, or their continual superficial obedience wears thin, and then I have moms and dads coming to me acting like their kids practically changed overnight.

That's never actually what happened, but it's how it seemed to the parents because they thought their kids were more obedient than they actually were. In these situations, there's change that needs to happen on both sides.

In the same way that children need to confess and repent of their lies or partial obedience which, by the way, is full disobedience the parents also need to take responsibility for not being careful, watchful, and loving enough to keep their kids genuinely accountable.

All of us parents need to rededicate to Deuteronomy 6, Psalm 78, and Ephesians 6 Parenting. I love how Psalm 78 puts it. Allow me to paraphrase part of the chapter. Listen, O my people, to my instruction.

I will open my mouth in a parable. We will not conceal them from their children, but to tell the generation to come the praises of the Lord and His strength and His wondrous work that He has done. For He established a testimony and appointed a law, which He commanded our fathers that they should teach them to their children.

That the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, that they may arise and tell them to their children, that they should put their confidence in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments.

But these two categories of apparently obedient kids, the pretender and the partial obeyer, are not the scariest ones we're going to face today. Most parents who pay attention, ask good questions, and maintain high biblical standards in their homes usually discover the deception or the partial obedience before it goes too far.

However, the next two categories are much scarier because they're more difficult to root out. 3. These children do the right things in the right ways, but they're not born again. Now no one listening to the sound of my voice can know 100 for certain if their children are born again, but we can and should be observing their fruit and keeping them accountable to.

The scriptures.

I'm constantly amazed when I meet people who are open and honest about the fact they're unbelievers, yet who live far more polite, kind, and moral lives than some professing believers I know. So you know what that tells me?

That tells me that doing the right thing in the right way doesn't require a person to be born again. You can be unsaved and still quote-unquote do right. And there are many, many children out there who do the right things in the right way and who may even have made a profession of faith, but they don't truly have a saving relationship.

With God.

So what's a parent to do? First, don't assume you know your kids are saved and then try to convince them of it at every turn. I've known way too many parents who did this whose kids later turned out to be hardcore atheists.

They should have been leading the children to God, but instead they tried to convince their child that they had a relationship with God they never had. Second, participate in evangelism parenting. We have many resources on this topic.

You can click the link in the description or search evangelism parenting at truthloveparent .com. However, to sum it up, evangelism parenting is bringing the gospel to bear on each of our parenting opportunities.

Of course, that doesn't mean we quote the Romans' road or talk about salvation every time we parent. What it does mean is that we understand the impact the gospel should have on every decision we make, and we help our children to see it as well.

In the event a child is not born again, it won't take long for them to either finally admit that they don't believe what you're teaching them, or they'll continue in their behavior unchanged and over time reveal that they don't have the Holy Spirit conforming them to the image of God.

And third, make sure your kids actually understand what it means to have a relationship with.

God.

Too many of us sell our kids a bill of goods when it comes to being born again. We misrepresent it, and it ends up basically coming across like they can live however they want and still get to heaven.

We must do our best to clearly represent the truth concerning how one is born again and how that new life affects them. Fourth, pray for your kids. Both of my kids have made a profession of faith, but I still regularly pray that God would draw my kids to Him and that they would see how badly they need Him in all things.

And fifth, when it starts to become more biblically obvious that your kids aren't born again, make a habit of calling them to repentance. Lord willing, God will use you and your kids' lives to show them their need of a Savior and King as my mom was used in my life to help me see that I wasn't truly a follower of Christ.

Okay, so the first category of apparently obedient kids were the pretenders. The second category was the partial obedience kids. Most parents who look at those kids and think they're obedient generally aren't paying enough attention or aren't using God's criteria.

Usually when dad and mom start putting on their Bible glasses and really looking at their kids, the issue becomes quite obvious. The third category, though, is harder because the child does the right things in the right ways, but they're not born again.

Parents need to approach this child with an evangelistical mindset and trust God that His Word won't return void. But the final category is the most difficult group. This category involves born-again kids who regularly do the right things in the right.

Ways.

Wrong Reasons for Right Behavior

Now, you may be wondering how that could possibly be bad. Well, remember that true Christ-owning obedience is doing the right thing in the right way for the right reasons, and there are generally four subgroups in this category because there are generally four really bad reasons for obeying.

So here we go.

Number four. They do the right things in the right ways, but they do them for the wrong reasons. That's the main category, and then we'll have subcategories. But again, maybe you're thinking, what bad reasons could a person have for keeping the rules?

Okay, well, in no particular order, A, they obey out of ignorance. If my obedience is nothing more than blind actions done for the sake of doing them, my obedience is incomplete. But what kind of knowledge is necessary to biblically obey?

Do I need to explain to my child all the ins and outs and until they completely understand why I'm telling them to do what I'm telling them to do, they don't have to obey? Of course not. But Aaron, isn't obeying out of blind faith good?

Sure, you could say that, but doing right because I have faith in God is not ignorance. I know God, I know what He expects, and I know that I must trust Him even if I don't like or understand what He wants me to do.

Proverbs 19, 2 says, it is not good for a person to be without knowledge, and he who hurries his footsteps errs. Romans 10, 3 observes, for not knowing about God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.

Ignorant obedience isn't obedience because it's ignoring the fact that God requires obedience motivated by faith in Him. That obedience isn't ignorant because it's focusing on the most important aspect of obedience.

That's faithful obedience. One of the best ways to determine if your child obeys out of ignorance is to ask probing questions. If you ask something like this, you did a good job cleaning your room, but I'm curious, why did you do such a great job?

And the best answer they have to the question is, I don't know, or maybe because you told me to. It's very possible they don't really know why they did what they did. Ignorance of their motivation is inherently dangerous because none of us accidentally glorifies God.

That means that the ignorance of their motivation is actually a fruit of one of the other categories we're about to describe. So how do we parent a child who obeys ignorantly? Well, we need to teach them how to obey with the right motivation, and there's only one Christ-honoring motivation for everything we believe, think, desire, feel, say, and.

Do.

And I'll outline that when we're done discussing the other three subcategories of children who obey for the wrong reasons. So letter B, they obey simply to please you. Some children like their parents so much that they really, really just want to please them all the time.

Now I know, this doesn't sound all that bad, but we must remember that there are only two choices on the shelf, worshiping God or worshiping self. We've done many episodes on how our kids worship. You should check those out.

But suffice it to say, I'm either going to obey for the one reason God wants me to obey, or I'm going to obey for the milieu of reasons I choose to obey. And it's that whole reasons I choose to obey that makes my obedience an act of idolatry.

We parents actually encourage this in our kids when we demand the impossible obedience of doing what I say for my reasons. When we make ourselves the reason our kids do right, we're teaching our kids how to commit idolatry.

Even if they do the right thing in the right way, for my reasons, they're not actually obeying God. Now, some kids, often very young kids, naturally obey for these reasons. Their immaturity results and they're seeking their own satisfaction in the ways that they prescribe, and they just so happen to like making mommy and daddy happy.

By the way, if you have a kid who thought the world of you and obeyed all the time, and they grow up into a kid who no longer thinks the world of you and they no longer obey, then you can bet on the fact that your child's obedience in their younger years was not motivated by a Christ-honoring purpose, but was simply them fulfilling their own desires by pleasing you.

But now that they no longer desire to please you, they satisfy themselves in their disobedience instead of their obedience. Either way, it's all about their own self-satisfaction. And again, the single best way to discover if your child obeys simply because they want to make you happy is to ask.

Listen to what they say when they reveal their deeper purposes for their obedience. Proverbs 25 tells us, a plan in the heart of a man is like deep water, but a man of understanding draws it out. Be that man or woman of understanding.

So again, how do we parent such a child? I'll answer that after we talk about this next kid who has a lot in common with the one who obeys to please you. Letter C, these children obey out of fear. This is the child who does right simply because they don't want to get into trouble.

Now this may be the opposite side of the coin from the kid we just described, whereas the one in their pursuit of satisfaction finds joy in pleasing mom and dad, this child in their pursuit of satisfaction finds joy in not getting in trouble.

Either way, though it's motivated by their own pleasure and desires, it's idolatry. However, like I mentioned before, we parents often encourage our children's idolatry. Overly harsh parents, angry parents, abusive parents, and manipulative parents all push their kids toward idolatry.

We threaten and punish and convince our kids that they better obey or else. Okay, so how do we figure out if our child is obeying simply because they're afraid of the consequences? Well, I've mentioned on nearly every other child that the best way to discover why your kid does what he does is to talk with him, ask good questions, and draw out his heart.

Unfortunately, this category is much more difficult. Let's be honest. As uncomfortable as it may be, your kid may actually be frightened of you. And by the way, I have to say this, if that's what you want, you want your kid to be frightened of you, you don't understand God, yourself, or biblical obedience at all.

You have serious problems and I would highly recommend you meet regularly with a biblical counselor in order to root out the wickedness in your own heart. I say with Peter in Acts 8 .22, repent of this wickedness of yours and pray the Lord that if possible the intention of your heart may be forgiven you.

But here's the thing. Your child may be obeying simply to avoid consequences. That means that they're probably afraid to admit to you that they're afraid of you. Of course, in Christ, there is hope for this kind of situation, but this one is deep and needs to be addressed biblically and carefully, but we don't have the time to unpack it here.

Therefore, I recommend you to reach out to us at counselor at truthloveparent .com and set up a time to talk. But how might we start addressing this problem? Well, for now, let's remove the element of their being afraid of you.

Obviously, you need to confess and repent of how you've been motivating your kids, and we need to stop trying to manipulate them with fear if that's what you've been doing. But even if they are just afraid of legitimate consequences, you can help them the same way you parent the kids who are ignorant and the kids who obey just to please you.

The issue is that they are serving self and likely don't know why God wants them to obey. So we need to teach our kids how to biblically obey. I know, it's crazy. We have to teach them to obey, but we do.

From the earliest ages, we need to motivate our kids' obedience by actually telling them why they should do what they do. And guess what? Their obedience has nothing to do with the fact that you've told them a hundred times, or that they're getting on your last nerve, or that they're going to make you look bad, or that no one will want to play with them if they act that way, or any of the other pragmatic, selfish, and sinful motivations we place in front of our kids.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, I'll get to the right motivation momentarily. Okay, so some kids pretend to obey, some kids only obey partially, and some kids do right on the outside without a relationship with God on the inside.

But there are also a lot of kids who follow the rules out of ignorance. Then there are others who do what they're told because they want to please you. But others still are petrified of what may happen if they disobey.

And then there's this last category. Letter D, they obey because they like to obey. Now again, I'm sure that at first glance, this sounds great. My child actually likes obeying, but I'm also sure you can recognize the problem here.

This child is no different than the kid who simply wants to please you or the kid who wants to avoid consequences. This child is doing what he or she wants to do with no thought to what God wants them to do.

They just so happen to like following the rules. They do it really well, and it makes them feel good. But that's nothing more than Pharisaism. That's idolatry too. And to complicate matters more, when they're actually truly born again, it's these kids who can be the hardest to spot.

Being genuine Christians, they're filled with the Spirit, and that means that no doubt, some of their obedience is truly motivated by the right reasons. But that doesn't mean we should assume all of their obedience is.

You see, in college, I was born again. It's true that I pretended a lot, but being a child of God, I frequently experienced genuine shame and conviction over my sin, and there were plenty of times I was motivated to obey because I loved God and it was right.

But there were also many other times I did right simply because I liked doing what was.

Right.

For example, I never drank alcohol or did drugs in college, and though I'd like to think that some of my motivation was that I wanted to please the Lord, I can honestly say that I knew enough alcoholics and drug addicts to know I didn't want to be anything like them.

I had no desire to mess around with substance abuse because I saw what it did to those guys. And though that may sound wise and noble, I can promise you that one of my big motivations was that I thought addicts were stupid and pathetic and I thought I was better than them.

And that is 100 the wrong motivation for my behavior. Now, I appreciate your patience with this longer-than-usual episode, so allow me to recap and then wrap up by describing the only motivation for our obedience that glorifies.

God.

Obedience That Glorifies God

First, some parents think their kids are obedient when they're only pretending. Other kids believe their kids are obedient when they only do the bare minimum. However, high biblical expectations coupled with close attention and heart-revealing questions is often all it takes to unveil this faux obedience.

Still, others are content with their children's obedience even though their child doesn't know God and is heading toward a Christless eternity. But what does it profit a man if he keeps earthly rules if he loses his own soul?

If you're a parent of these kinds of kids—and if we're being honest, all parents start off with kids in this category—those parents need to make the gospel their highest parenting.

Goal.

We need to make sure our kids understand what it is, we need to weave it into our practical parenting, and we need to call our kids to repentance. But it's this last category that throws some of us for a loop.

Our kids have clearly shown that they're bearing fruit of genuine repentance, at least at times in their life, and they frequently do the right things in the right ways. But the problem lies in the fact that our kids are obeying out of ignorance, as men-pleasers, out of fear of consequences, or simply because they get satisfaction from doing right.

So, just like the other children we discussed, parents should be diligent to draw out the intention of their kids' hearts. We need to help our kids understand why they do what they do. They won't naturally figure it out on their own, but it's too dangerous to leave it uncovered.

Therefore, we need to pay close attention, hold them to high biblical expectations, and we need to engage in quality, thought-provoking conversations where we engage with the heart-level purposes. And, when we find that our kids are doing the right things in the right ways for the wrong reasons, and therefore are displeasing the Lord, we need to teach them what true obedience is.

And this is where we turn to Romans 14, 23b. Whatever is not from faith is sin. Now, I know we've gone longer than usual today, so we don't have time to unpack this very important concept, so allow me to point you to some very helpful resources, and then summarize the concept for us.

In addition to the Teach Your Kids to Obey series, I highly, highly recommend you listen to the Mearest Christianity series. I believe this is the most seminal truth all Christians must understand. There is no biblical concept more important than understanding the nature of faith in a Christian's life.

And I can say, as a biblical counselor, that most believers' understanding of faith is informed more by the world than it is by the Scriptures. But if I had to sum this concept up, if I had to explain this to a child, this is how I might approach it.

Would you like your best friend to buy you a present? Of course, the child will answer yes, but what if your best friend bought you the present simply because they wanted you to buy them a present too?

What if they bought you the present because they wanted to get something from you? What if they bought you the present not because they like you, but simply because it makes them feel good? Any thinking child will realize the quality of that relationship is poor indeed, and even though they'd be getting a present out of it, they wouldn't look favorably on the relationship.

So then I may ask, do you think God wants us obeying Him simply because we're trying to get something from Him? Do you think He's pleased knowing that we obeyed simply because it makes us feel good? Does it glorify God when we do right because we are afraid of getting in trouble?

And I may ask all of you who are married, do you really want your spouse treating you well solely for selfish reasons? Of course not. Every human being on this planet wants people to be kind to them, but they also, deep down inside, understand that true kindness isn't self-focused, it's others-focused.

So, how does obedience glorify God by being others-focused? Didn't I just say that obeying simply to please mom and dad wasn't pleasing to the Lord? Well, when it comes to God, He's the only other that matters.

We must love Him more than we love anyone else. We must obey our parents because we're obeying God. He must have the preeminence in our lives and in our obedience. We should teach our kids that the grandest motivation for our obedience is that we want to make God happy.

We want to please Him. We want to glorify Him. We want to worship Him.

That's it.

That's why your son should take out the garbage in a timely manner and with a good attitude, because he loves his Lord. That's why your daughter should desire to stay pure before marriage, because her God is just that important to her.