July 13, 2016 Show with Eric Redmond on “One Black Christian’s Response to the Recent National Shooting Incidents” PLUS “Ephesians: An Apostle’s Love Letter of Encouragement to the Church”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 12th day of July 2016 and we have another first -time guest here on Iron Sharpens Iron.

Although I have interviewed her husband Dr. Ted Tripp on several occasions, today we have for the very first time ever

Margie Tripp, wife of Dr. Ted Tripp and co -author of the book Instructing a

Child's Heart and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time Margie Tripp.

Thank you so much, it's my privilege to be here. And it's a privilege to have you on the program and let me introduce to you on air my co -host the

Reverend Buzz Taylor. Welcome Margie, good to have you on. Thanks so much. And I'd like to give our listeners our email address right off the bat here if you have any questions on raising children no matter what their age because Margie has experience in all the age groups, all of her children are adults right now, so any question that you have at all even if your kids are grown up, married and out of the house she still has some wisdom behind her here on this issue.

And our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Before we even go into the subject at hand

Margie, tell us something about your ministry that you and Ted have launched. Shepherding the

Heart Ministries is an opportunity for us to take the message of shepherding a child's heart and instructing a child's heart to the churches in the

United States and really Christian groups around the world. And our purpose in doing that is to encourage parents, to encourage families, to encourage children that there is help from God's Word so that we can live in His way, so that we can know

His grace at work in our hearts, so that we can heal broken relationships, so that we can go about the shaping influences for parents in their child's lives in the best way possible, but always to hold out the fact that we don't save our children.

Nothing we do saves our children, nothing our children can do saves them.

It's the mercy and grace of the gospel that brings salvation. But we want to do the best job we can do as God's agent of instruction and discipline and correction and nurturing in the lives of our children.

So we have the great joy of bringing that message. And for those of you interested in doing some further follow -up on this ministry later on, the website is shepherdingtheheart .org,

shepherdingtheheart .org, and also I would love for you to look up shepherdpress .com,

shepherdpress .com, the publisher of Instructing a Child's Heart, written by both

Ted and Margie Tripp. And of course, Ted Tripp, many of you already know that Ted Tripp's book,

Shepherding a Child's Heart, became an enormous seller. What did, did he write that back in the 90s?

Yes, it actually, between the late 80s and the early 90s he was writing, and I was published in 1995.

Yes, I can remember that. I remember Ted coming out to the congregation where I was a member and conducting a conference, and I can remember there being pastors there from across the denominational spectrum.

There were, I remember specifically there was a local Pentecostal pastor there that even invited

Ted out to conduct a conference for him later on. And it's a remarkable book, and it really is what was the genesis behind this new book, well not new book, but newer book,

Instructing a Child's Heart, that you two have collaborated on. Why don't you let our listeners know what the difference is between Ted's book,

Shepherding a Child's Heart, and the book that you two co -authored, Instructing a Child's Heart. Okay, Shepherding a

Child's Heart is really a paradigm for nurturing our children.

It is designed to help parents see that the behaviorism that is so popular in our culture as a means of constraining and controlling and directing our children's behavior is not biblical.

That God looks at the heart, and we need to have a bigger vision than just changing our children's behavior.

And we want to encourage our children to understand their hearts. What motivates that external behavior?

And that's where we want to spend our time. Over the course of years now, doing training in Shepherding a

Child's Heart, as a result of scores of conversations with parents, we've realized that parents have got the model.

They say, I want to shepherd my child's heart, but they have difficulty knowing how do

I go about doing that. And Instructing a Child's Heart is a how -to book for the shepherding book.

It really gives both the biblical philosophy behind the paradigm, and then very practical application for instructing the child's heart.

We believe that formative instruction is an absolutely necessary foundation for corrective discipline.

And what we learned from many of these conversations, really another way of saying the same thing, is that parents were getting the paradigm,

I want to deal with my child's heart, rather than just their external behavior. But the only time that they were addressing those issues were in times of discipline and correction.

And they were missing the fact that the formative instruction, the instruction that is before the problem instruction, is the most powerful time to teach the heart model, so that in times of discipline and correction, we can simply appeal to what the already heard and agreed to in our daily instruction of them.

I want to read a couple of commendations for this book, Instructing a Child's Heart, because they're well -known folks who have written these commendations.

I want our listeners to take what we're discussing very seriously, and this book very seriously.

So I want them to know who has been enjoying it other than me and the ones who wrote it.

We have John MacArthur, who is certainly no stranger to the vast majority of Iron Sharpens Iron listeners.

In fact, we had the privilege of interviewing Dr. MacArthur several years ago on the original

Iron Sharpens Iron, and he wrote, Biblical Practical Pastoral. This insightful book on godly child -rearing is everything we would expect from the author who brought us

Shepherding a Child's Heart. Its tremendous value comes from the fact that it centers on the essential but oft -neglected heart of biblical parenting, the gospel of grace.

I am glad to recommend it. Also, those of you who may remember

Kirk Cameron, who was a child star in the 70s or 80s, and now is not only an adult and a parent, he is a bible -believing

Christian and leads the ministry known as the Way of the Master.

In fact, they have their own television program and, I believe, a radio program as well. Kirk and Chelsea Cameron wrote of this book,

As parents of six spunky children, we found Ted and Margie Tripp's parenting advice to be simply the best.

In a sea of child -raising materials flooding the market today, instructing a child's heart is a solid rock on which we can stand.

Picking up where Shepherding a Child's Heart left off, this new book is clear, biblical, and very practical.

If you have children, you need to know Ted and Margie Tripp. Wow, that's a really powerful endorsement as well.

And, you know, we already have some listeners waiting to have their questions asked and answered.

Let's see here. We have Emily in Deltona, Florida, and Emily writes,

Hey there, my name is Emily. My husband and I have one son who is one and a half, so we definitely are facing some behavior challenges.

We strongly believe in discipline and instruction, but also want our son to experience grace.

There are times when he will disobey several times in a row after being disciplined for doing wrong and instructed to obey.

When is it ever appropriate to use a distraction as a way to help him when he is not listening to the instruction given?

Example, Amanda is one and a half, able to talk, say yes, no, able to obey instruction when given.

Amanda is playing in the living room with her mother. She throws a toy at her mother.

Her mother tells Amanda to not throw at her, and if she does it again, she will get punished.

Amanda says sorry, but throws the toy again. The mom punishes her.

Amanda apologizes and then goes on to throw more toys.

When does the mother take Amanda to a different room to distract her from throwing the toy?

Does the mother continue to sit there and continue disciplining as many times as Amanda will throw, even if it's 15 times in a row?

Wow, well I don't know if you could absorb all that Margie. Yes, well I would like to answer that question.

A very important thing for parents to do, particularly with very young children in the one, two, three, four, five age, is to recognize that there is a difference between childishness and disobedience.

I think often parents discipline their children because they're childish.

The fact is, the young children are very impulsive. They don't think things through before they do them.

They just do them. Our perspective is that if your child is defying you, then you need to bring corrective discipline.

I would use that term rather than punishment, because I think punishment carries a connotation that is more than what

God calls us to in biblical discipline. But at any rate, let me go back.

Children are impulsive, and they do childish things. They need to be reminded of the house rules over and over and over again, and we want to be careful that we're not bringing discipline to small children for being childish and foolish, because that's what young children do.

So in this instance, the illustration that was given, I do believe that if the child is throwing things, very often children also do things very playfully.

They think it's great that they're throwing something, or that they're playing with their food, or splashing in the water.

And they often think that it's playful, or running away from mommy is another illustration.

And they'll giggle and run away, but mommy is serious. And so I think we've got to first make that caveat, that we've got to distinguish between childish behavior that just needs to be corrected.

If the child is sorry, if they stop doing what they're doing, at least for the moment, then you go on.

But I do think it's wise, as this parent has indicated, I think Emily, that if the child is struggling, and you have brought correction, you've sought to help them understand that this is not appropriate behavior, and it continues, rather than bringing discipline over and over and over again,

I would try to distract the child. I'd do some other activity. But first, before distracting them,

I would make every effort to talk to them, certainly in very simple ways, for a one -and -a -half -year -old.

I pray for them, try in every way to have them understand that this is inappropriate.

Mommy doesn't want to continue. If the child is defiant, then I think discipline is called for.

If the child is not defiant, is not saying, no, I will do what I want to do, and you won't stop me, or there's a temper fit, that always indicates that discipline is called for.

But I think short of that, we need to remember that children need reminders over and over and over again, because they don't hold information for long periods of time.

Well Emily, guess what? You have won a free copy of Instructing a

Child's Heart by our guest Margie Tripp today. We'll need your full address, and we'll get that out to you,

God willing, within a week or so, and we hope that you are blessed by that. And we got another surprise for you,

Emily, because you're a first -time questioner. I don't know how long you've been listening to our program, but we've never received a question from you before.

You're also getting a brand new New American Standard Bible compliments of the publishers of the

NASB, who have been supporting Iron Sharpens Iron since we very first launched in 2006.

So thank you very much, Emily, for listening to Iron Sharpens Iron, and keep your eye open for the book and the

Bible. What she described reminds me of something. Now, there's a couple of things that actually reminded me of.

Number one, if I was in that room with Emily and that baby, I would probably start laughing, which would only encourage the child to continue doing what the child was doing.

I guess in a situation like that, when people are observing something like this, and they're finding it funny, they should probably hold back a laugh and leave the room or something, shouldn't they?

Absolutely. And I think that would be an occasion when it would be wise for the mom to take the one -and -a -half -year -old to another place to talk with them, to interact with them about the behavior and so forth, rather than encouraging that kind of banter that I think really confuses the child.

And another thing it reminded me of is that, especially with a very, very tiny child like this, a year -and -a -half, how are you supposed to differentiate between the fact that I have seen and have done it myself, where parents, to have fun with the child, will chase the child around, and they'll be both laughing and giggling, and,

I'm gonna get you, I'm gonna get you, and then, of course, the children equates that with fun and laughter.

So when a child is that young, isn't it going to be kind of difficult to differentiate with that child?

I think you help the child by even your tone of voice, and obviously I'm not speaking of anger, but a serious or firm tone of voice that helps the child begin to discern, and even talking to the child in very simple terms, and saying, now we're playing, this is play, but when mommy speaks to you and says,

I want you to come now, and use that tone of voice that is a firm tone of voice, help the child understand that that means that this is not a playtime, mommy needs for you to obey.

And I think even very, I know that even very young children can follow that direction.

You know, children are able to understand far before they can articulate the senses they're thinking and feeling, and parents often make the mistake of thinking, my child can't express themselves, therefore they do not understand, and that's simply not the case.

Right, and of course, believing in total depravity, as we do, these children, even before they can speak, know very often when they are disobeying, and they're purposely doing it.

That's right, that's right. You know, a good way to discern that is if you're giving the child direction and instruction, and even correction, and they are becoming increasingly hostile, that's a red flag, that this child is, they've transgressed the circle, they've moved outside the circle, they do not want to be under my direction, and that is an excellent indicator.

And parents know their own children. Children express those things sometimes at different points, some children take more than others, but the parent knows.

The parent knows their child, and they very, very early on begin to discern the difference between just the childishness that I've tried to describe and an attitude of disobedience.

Yeah, speaking of our own children, you raised six, I understand, is that correct? Three. Three?

Three adult children, yes. Three adults, okay, and what were they, as far as boys, girls?

Oh, our oldest was a boy who is now 47, and we have a daughter who is 42, and our youngest son is 41.

Oh, they're very grown. Yes, they are very grown. Yeah, I think that what you're thinking... Very mature.

You're thinking of the Kirk Cameron endorsements of such children. Oh, okay, okay, maybe that's, okay, all right.

Yes, and I've met all of Kirk and Chelsea's children, and they are delightful. Well, now, you brought up, well, in John MacArthur's commendation of your book, he mentioned the gospel of grace.

How does that make a difference compared to, let me say, other evangelical works written on the subject of rearing children?

Tell us the difference. Well, I believe that, typically, and this happens,

I'm afraid, in the body of Christ across the whole spectrum of evangelicals, is that we are very, very good at bringing the law, but we forget that we need to bring the gospel as often, no, more often than we bring the law.

And somehow, we have the expectation that the law is going to change people, and, of course, we know in our own hearts that is not true, but we forget the grace that we have experienced, and we bring the law to our children, somehow expecting that you can do better than you're doing.

This is what I expect of you. You know what is right. You know what is wrong. Therefore, I expect you to obey.

And, of course, that is not possible for any of us, but in our child -rearing, that's often what we do.

And so I often say, if you're going to hang the law of God on the walls of your home and on the walls of your children's hearts, you need to have even more of passages that expound the grace of the gospel, the power of the gospel, the enablement of the gospel on the walls of your home and on the walls of your children's hearts, because we are not able to keep the law.

And what the effect that it has to bring the law without the gospel is, of course, discouragement and,

I think, resistance and rebellion. Yeah, I would think that being heavy -handed with the law and not sufficient grace in the way you raise a child would make them too terrified to be honest with you, and they may be more prone to hide things from you, and there may be some very, very dangerous and serious things they're hiding from you as a result.

Yeah, and I guess it would make a major difference, too. If I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, if I can just try to put it in other words, you know,

I think of, this is ancient history. When I was growing up, yes, you know, so many times

I was punished for misbehavior, and I had no idea why I misbehaved.

It's like I couldn't, you know, I remember— You mean you didn't know what was the—you didn't know that the circumstances were being disobedient, or you don't know why you were being disobedient?

I didn't know why. Why you were rebellious. Yes, it's like R .C. Sproul said when he stole the melon when he was young, that he didn't even like melon.

You know, I did all kinds of, you know, little sinister acts, and you know, I could not understand why there was such a joy in doing that.

You know, I— But we're still praying for your salvation, though. Thanks a lot, Chris. You know, we want to please our parents, and on the other hand, we realize for some reason

I can't. You know, I can't live up to it. So that's basically what you're saying, is they need to understand, well, we do have this problem.

It's called sin, and we need to overcome it. Mom and Dad need to overcome it. You need to overcome it, and we're going to help you in any way we can, understanding that you're not going to be perfect, because you can't.

That's right, and see, I think one of the huge problems for having the law without the gospel is that the parent has to behave as if they are above.

Yes. Because the requirement—if I'm saying to my child, this is the law, you must obey it, and I will not accept anything else, we can't maintain that ourselves, and so our mouths are shut.

We cannot acknowledge our own sin. The problem with that is our children watch us all day every day.

They know we're sinners, and so this creates in the child a real resistance to relationship, to authority, to Christianity, to everything that we want so desperately to be true for them.

But there's a huge difference if I can come alongside my child, and if I can say to them, the reason why you're struggling in this way is because you have a heart that is straight from God, because you're just like Mom.

You're just like Dad. And I have the same struggles, and it's the grace of the gospel that answers our struggle with sin.

That changes everything. But in our Christian culture often, we want to have the

Bible be the quick fix, the law to be the quick fix. We want to hold the standard up, and we should.

It's God's standard, it's not ours. We can't lower it in order for our children to be able to accomplish the goal.

We need to keep the standard high because it's God's law, and it's not ours.

But if we hold the standard high, and we have that biblical expectation of our children, and there is no grace, we will destroy our children, we'll destroy our relationship, and we will send them packing away from God and the gospel as quickly as they can run.

You know, Chris, I don't suggest we do this, but I almost feel like we could almost end the program right here.

What you just said is such a mouthful, and what a difference that makes. Well, you can leave,

Buzz. But I mean, of course, I was raised in fundamentalist circles, and there was a lot of law, okay?

That's basically the way it was, was talk about everybody who sins, and don't you dare. And I have seen in so many of my friends even, and other family members, where they've been raised in the church, they've gone through the youth groups, they've been there every

Sunday. Some even go to Christian school, and yet they get to a certain age when they get out of the home, or slightly before they get out of the home, there's that backlash of rebellion, and they fall away, and many of them never return.

Yeah, and the fact you could see that, and Margie, I'm sure that you have witnessed this, with adults who are members of either a cult, or they are in some kind of a really legalistic, strict, fundamentalist faith of some kind, and then they, after realizing they're on a treadmill going nowhere for years, when they leave, they don't wind up in a more balanced church very often, a more grace -centered church with the true gospel and so on, they wind up just abandoning the faith, or at least connection to a church altogether.

And I've seen that a number of times in my 54 years of life, where that happens, where there's a pendulum that goes all the way from the

Pelagian works righteousness, strict dictatorial kind of church that they're in, or cult, and then they just swing right out of it, and then never return to a church at all.

Yeah, I think there is a, we've observed this in Christian education, in the body of Christ, we've talked with just hundreds and hundreds of parents about this.

It's an amazing thing that when children or young people come to faith out of an unbelieving background, they are so moved with the gospel, and they are transformed in the most amazing ways.

But often, children who are raised in Christian homes where there is a form of godliness that denies its power, where the law has ruled and the gospel has been absent, there is resistance, there's hostility, there's disinterest, and generally abandoning

Christian faith altogether. And I believe that's the reason. When a person comes to faith out of an unbelieving background, they've had the gospel shared with them, they've seen the power of the inside out.

They are transformed by that because this is new and beautiful and exciting. That's very different than a child who's been raised in a place where the law has been predominant, and where they have not seen that kind of transformation, that living not out of the law, but out of the grace of the gospel, exists.

That is just incredible stuff. Amen. And we have to go to a break right now.

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

We already have several people waiting, and I hope that you can be patient. We'll get to you as soon as we can when we return from the break.

But if any of you would like to join them on the air with a question as well, that's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And I understand if you're asking a question that is really a sensitive, private, personal question, especially perhaps it even involves another parent, and you don't want to reveal yourself because they'll know exactly who you're talking about.

In fact, we would insist that you not reveal who you are or especially who they are, but you may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable.

And again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in for the last half hour, we have been interviewing

Margie Tripp, and we are going to continue for the following 90 minutes, and we are discussing her book, co -authored with her husband

Ted Tripp, Instructing a Child's Heart. If you would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Before I return to the interview, I just have a couple of very important and brief announcements.

Christ Presbyterian Church, a congregation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination in Salt Lake City, Utah, is having their conference coming up this weekend, featuring my dear friend of nearly 30 years,

Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, and the theme is,

Who is Jesus? This is going to be held from this Friday through the following Monday, and during this four -day conference,

Dr. White is going to be having a dialogue with a Mormon, Mr. Alma Alred, an instructor at the

LDS Institute of Religion at the University of Utah, and the dialogue will take place in the

Social and Behavioral Sciences Auditorium at the University of Utah.

That is going to be on the theme, Is the Jesus of Mormonism the Jesus of the Bible?

The following day, Saturday the 16th at 7 p .m., the theme will be, Who is

Jesus? And that is going to be a dialogue that Dr. White is having with an

Islamic imam at the Utah Islamic Center in Sandy, Utah, and there are other subjects that Dr.

White will be teaching on during this conference, including the theme, The Forgotten Trinity, a theme near and dear to my heart because the book of that same title that Dr.

White wrote is dedicated to me, and I will never forget and never be thankful enough to him for doing that, and he is also going to be, on the last day of the conference, teaching on Proclaiming Jesus Christ in a

Hostile Culture. For more details, you can call 801 -969 -7948, 801 -969 -7948, or you could go to the website gospelutah .org,

that's gospelutah .org, and you can email Pastor Jason Wallace of Christ Presbyterian Church at jasonopc at aol .com,

that's jasonopc for Orthodox Presbyterian Church, jasonopc at aol .com.

And last but not least, the Fellowship Conference New England is having their conference at the

Deering Center Community Church in Portland, Maine, this August 4th through the 6th.

Pastor Mack Tomlinson, who has become one of my favorite guests here on Iron, Sharp, and Zion, is one of the speakers.

Other speakers include Charles Leiter, Jesse Barrington, and Michael Durham, and if you'd like more details on this conference, you can go to fellowshipconferencenewengland .com,

that's fellowshipconferencenewengland .com, and we want to thank them for sponsoring

Iron, Sharp, and Zion Radio, and we thank you for helping to keep us on the air as we seek to give praise, honor, and glory to God for all good things, especially our salvation.

And we're back to the interview now, and we do have some listeners still waiting, but before I go to Tom in West Islip, Long Island, I do want to have you follow up on something that I said earlier that I never heard a response about specifically,

Margie, in regard to is one of the dangers of being overly strict is that children will naturally be too afraid to admit things to you that may wind up being very dangerous for them.

Oh, absolutely. If you think about our relationship with God, you see that illustrated.

If we think of God as a harsh judge, and certainly

He is a judge, but if as His children we consider Him the harsh judge rather than the loving

Father, the forgiving and gentle Father, then we are not going to come to Him with our deepest needs, with our besetting sins.

We're going to hide our faces from Him, and our children respond to us in the same kind of way.

If they see us as someone who will come alongside them, understand their plight as sinners, and bring them to the cross, they're going to be open to bringing their struggles with sin to us.

If they see us as someone who is unrelenting in our demands that they obey the law, unforgiving of their weaknesses and shortcomings, then they will flee from us.

It's interesting that you are consistently comparing the relationship between we who are mortal, sinful humans, and our

Heavenly Father, and that relationship which exists between a parent and child, even though the parents are certainly not

God, there is a connection in the parallel, just as there is with Jesus Christ being the groom in the marital analogy that He Himself has established in regard to the relationship between Christ and the

Church. Yes. I think it's very important for us to see that. You know, as parents, we give

God a reputation. Our children can't see God, but we're always talking about Him from the time they're small children.

They hear us referencing this God, and so since they cannot see

Him, the things that we say and do represent Him. We are

His agents. We know that from Scripture. We are His agents, and so our children get an impression about who

God is and what He is like, what His parenting of us is like spiritually, by virtue of their experience of life in our home.

I think Hebrews 12 speaks so powerfully to that connection, because it talks about the

Father disciplining His Son just as God disciplines those He delights in, and so there is no question in my mind that God has given parents, in His Word, both the call and the resources to parent our children through grace, and certainly with His enablement as He parents us.

Not perfectly, but always in a way that represents Him accurately.

Now, have I answered your question? Oh yes, definitely, and Tom in West Islip, Long Island, New York says,

I've always had issues with being dictatorial versus collaborative in dealing with consequences when a child either does something wrong or is not meeting my expectations.

Example would be schoolwork and not performing at an acceptable level. Do you have words of advice for Tom in regard to his prone to being a dictator?

Well yes, I think even the things that we just spoke of certainly would apply there.

God is not dictatorial. We have His law, but His law, of course, exists not only to show us our need of salvation and the fact that we cannot measure up apart from grace, but it also,

His law is the pathway to freedom for us, because the God who created us has told us how to live successfully in the world that He's created for us in ways that bring

Him glory and truly serve those around us and give us the best possible atmosphere in which to live.

So God is not dictatorial. His law is not dictatorial. It's a mercy to us, and so we need to see our instruction and direction and nurturing of our children in that light, and when we become dictatorial, we are moving them away from a picture of what

God's law is in His word, because God's law, His call to His people to obey, is for His glory and for their good, and God's purpose always, not only in His instruction, but even in His chastisement of His children, is not to punish us.

The only time there is punishment is in that great day when God separates the sheep from the goats.

Now, we suffer consequences, but even the chastisement and consequences that God brings into the lives of His people are not to punish them.

They're always to make them holy. That's always God's goal, and we see that, of course, everywhere in His word.

So I think that this dear brother needs to look into God's word to see, and I would recommend certainly that Hebrews 12 passage, because there we see that God disciplines those

He loves, just as the Father disciplines the Son in whom He finds delight, and I think that we've got to consider, what is our goal?

What are we trying to accomplish? There are two chapters in Instructing a Child's Heart.

One is called the Sowing and Reaping Principle of Scripture, and the other one is called

Corrective Discipline, Applying the Sowing and Reaping Principle of Scripture, and some of the things

I've said, I've been very general in my comments, but are laid out very specifically there.

What are we trying to accomplish when we bring consequences for our children?

We want to show them, by virtue of the consequences that we shape for them, that God's law is given to us for our protection and direction.

It is to bring glory to God and to cause us to live in His world. In wholesome ways, and so our goal as parents in our response to our children's failures, and even as we shape consequences for them, must always be not just to change their behavior and get them to stop doing what they're doing, or to do what we want them to do, but to speak to their character, to speak to their heart, to speak in the same way that God is always striving to point us to holiness, to make us holy.

We want to be drawing our children, as a result of our discipline and correction, and even our consequences, to see the beauty and symmetry of living in His world, in His ways.

So, dictatorial parenting doesn't give God an accurate representation, and it drives our children away from us, and we lose the opportunity to bring influence, godly influence, into their lives.

Yes, and it's also, when a parent is behaving that way, they are treating someone they love in a way that they themselves do not ever want to be treated, and it's almost like the ungrateful person in debt who is released, and then is found beating the person who owes them money.

Yes, yes. You know, I think Christ is such an excellent example for us, because He could have stayed off in heaven and just, you know, shouted down, get your act together down there.

I'm sick and tired of you doing that, I don't want to see this anymore, and you're going to pay for it.

You know, Christ could have done that, but He didn't, and He models for us what it means to bring correction and discipline, chastisement, and consequences, because He came and He existed in flesh like our flesh.

He experienced all of the mortality, fallen mortality, that is about us in our world.

Not that He was fallen, but that He experienced the life in a fallen world in flesh like ours.

Why did He do that? Hebrews 2 tells us He was made like His brothers in every way, so He could be faithful and merciful high priest in service to God.

That's our calling, isn't it? In Philippians 2, let this mind be in you that was in Christ.

He made Himself nothing. As parents, if we're going to represent God and our

Savior and the power of redemption and the beauty of enablement that we have in the

Lord Jesus Christ accurately, then we need to behave like He did.

We need to know His grace at work in us to behave in those ways, and when we fail, which we will, it is just as powerful then for us to come to our children and say,

I'm so sorry. I was harsh when I spoke to you. You needed to be corrected.

What you did was wrong, and that's dangerous for you, but I went about it in a way that didn't represent our

Heavenly Father or our brother Christ in accurate ways, and so we're going to start this over again.

And that is so important, because whatever kind of responses we bring to our children's failures and sin and limitations, we're saying to them, this is what

God is like to His children. It seems like this process also is something that can be very well applied after children are grown, because I'm sure there's many listeners right now who are saying, oh thanks, now

I hear this. My kids are grown, but yet you can always go back and say, hey, you know, this is how the gospel works, and you know,

I didn't understand back then, you know, kind of, you know, can you speak to that issue, like back -paddling, because so many people are.

Yes, we have that question so often, and the the question is, what if it's too late?

Yes. Or parents just say, it's too late for me, and we say, it's never too late, because we have a merciful and gracious Heavenly Father, it's never too late.

And what we recommend in those situations is for parents to, it takes a lot of humility, but when parents have had the conviction that washes over the heart in those moments when you realize, oh,

I was harsh and unkind, I didn't represent my Heavenly Father or my brother

Christ well in my parenting, is to have the humility to pray, and if there's a spouse available to do this with, to talk with them, to think through, where were the things, what, identify the things that were not accurate, and then to find a time when they can go to their teenager or even adult children, and say, you know,

I've been thinking about something, and God has brought something to my attention through His Word, and I just want to share this with you.

And really ask their children to forgive them for not representing

Him accurately, and say, you know, I don't want this to be in the way of your relationship with God.

Now, we've been doing this for a number of years, and we've had occasion through counseling a number of families through this kind of process, this what -if -it's -too -late process, to see incredible healing in relationships between parents and children.

Sometimes it results in the child coming to faith very rapidly. Other times we say the relationship is healing, now we can continue to pray.

Here's what we have to do. When we are harsh and unkind and don't represent

God well, we give our children a sense of justification, not only against us, but against God.

Well, thank you for that. That's excellent. And you brought up something very, very important.

Actually, you repeated it. The importance of a parent asking forgiveness to the child.

That's something especially, I think, is difficult with fathers. Perhaps you have more experience to know whether it's more of an equal problem amongst mothers and fathers, but I know people who have told me that their fathers never have apologized for anything, even when they have done great wicked things.

One thing that I am very thankful for with my own father is that he was far from perfect and made a lot of mistakes, but my father was always humble enough to admit when he believed he was wrong or when he realized he was wrong, and he would apologize fairly often.

I can remember him coming to me as a child and apologizing to me for losing his temper or doing something that was just worthy of evoking a request for forgiveness.

That's a very important aspect of being a parent, isn't it? Because I understand that there probably is a struggle going on in the mind of, if I apologize, especially if I apologize too often, it's going to be a sign of weakness.

It's going to be a sign that I am giving up control of this household, that kind of a thing.

I don't believe that's true. It's one of those conundrums of,

I think, our culture to think that it is a weakness to ask forgiveness.

If you think about it, in any relationships that you have, people who have the strength of character and humility, because those go together, to, in accurate and forthright ways, say, this is what

I did. It was wrong. Please forgive me. They are people who take on stature in our eyes.

Isn't that true? Now, that is different than the person who's always, because of neediness of their personality, is just always asking forgiveness for everything from the fact that it's raining outside.

That's a different issue. We're reflecting on the issues of parenting and our parenting style.

When we have the humility and strength of character, which I always speak of together because I think go together, to come to our children and identify for them ways that we know we have failed, that does two powerful things.

It removes a terrible stumbling block for them in our relationship with them, because whether they have the courage to say it or not, particularly when they're younger, obviously when they get older they get more courageous about telling us we're crazy, but when they're younger, we're removing a stumbling block in relationship.

And the other thing that we're doing is demonstrating to them what it means to be a repentant person.

And we live in a culture where repentance is not a popular theme.

No one says they're sorry for anything, because everyone's, I've got my own space,

I do what I want to do, no one tells me what to do, and if you don't like it, too bad. It's not my fault.

That moves us away from the exact model of humility that we need before God, who is our authority, our

Heavenly Father, but He's also our authority. And so we want to take every opportunity to model appropriately for our children having the strength of character and humility to acknowledge our failures, because that's what they're going to need.

It's what we need to stay close to our Heavenly Father, and it's what they're going to need in order not only to come to faith, but of course repentance is not only an initiation right into the

Christian life, it is the state in which we must live daily. Amen. In fact,

I instinctively look upon my past and see that my father's humility to ask me for forgiveness was something very admirable and honorable, and something that I obviously

I treasure as a memory. Whereas the people that I know who don't recall ever hearing their parent asking for forgiveness, they look at their fathers who behaved that way as cowards in reality because they couldn't face, they were too frightened to face up to the fact that they were wrong.

Yes, and the fact that their fathers have never said that they were sorry has put a chokehold on their relationship, too, because these people do not feel close to their father or their mother.

Well, we have to go to another break right now, and if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

By the way, Tom in West Islet, Long Island, thanks for the question, and you are also getting a free copy of Instructing a

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But we look forward to hearing from you and your questions after we return from the break at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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This is Chris Arnson. If you just tuned us in for the last hour and the next hour to come, our guest has been and will be

Margie Tripp, co -author of Instructing a Child's Heart. If you'd like to join us on the air, the question for Margie, our email address is

ChrisArnson at gmail .com. ChrisArnson at gmail .com. We have Tyler in Mastic Beach, New York, asking, why do you think that many professing

Christian parents send their children off to public schools to be brainwashed into moral relativism?

Is it a lack of discernment, or is it ignorance? It also might be, Tyler, a lack of money, because not all

Christian schools, in fact very few of them, have free scholarship programs.

But if you could, Margie? Yes, this is a question that is asked of us often, what do you recommend, homeschooling,

Christian school, or public school? And our answer always is, there is not one size fits all answer, because the dynamics and circumstances of people's lives are very, very different, and often require of them, perhaps even not their preference, but what they must do.

The big issue, as far as we're concerned, regarding our children's education, is that parents must see themselves as the primary agent of education, instruction, nurturing, discipline, and correction in the lives of their children.

Our experience in our children's youth was we homeschooled, then we started a

Christian school, and in the high school years, our children went to a public high school where we live.

It was a very conservative high school, for which we were thankful. In fact, they had several

Christian teachers, which you can't always expect to find. But during those years of high school, and I will focus on that since the question has to do with public school, we made our presence known to every teacher that our children had for their high school years.

We determined, we did not allow the counselor to choose their courses for their high school years.

We chose them, and we talked with our children about that, and then we discussed with the guidance counselor why we had chosen some courses, not chosen other courses, and particularly those courses that were very humanistic, or where there were values clarification issues.

We kept very close tabs with our children. When they came home at night, whether it was a

Christian school classroom or a public school classroom, we wanted to know what they were learning.

We were familiar with their textbooks. We did their lessons with them, particularly in their earlier years, but even in their high school years, we kept very close connection with what they were doing.

We often read the materials they were reading so that we could bring a biblical critique of anything that we felt, wherever we felt that was necessary.

I think the danger is not in our children being exposed, especially in those high school years.

I think it's much more dangerous in their early years. The danger is not in them hearing what the world is saying.

The danger is in us not bringing a biblical critique of things they're hearing and saying.

In fact, it is a very dangerous thing if our children leave our homes and we have sheltered them in an inappropriate way to the extent that they don't know what the world is saying, because here's what will happen.

They will go out into the world one day and they will see that there are intelligent people, even nice people out there, who do not believe what we believe.

And if they have gotten the impression that the things that we believe are the only intelligent things, are the only things that are worth hearing, then they're going to get thrown for a loop.

Now, we know that our truth, our biblical truth, is the only truth, but for a child or a young person going into their high school years or into their college years, who realize all of a sudden there are reasonable, intelligent, thinking, considerate, philanthropic people out there who believe something different, if they've never been exposed to that and had their parents or the people around them in their church or Christian community interact with those non -biblical ideas, they are going to be sitting ducks.

Yes, that's why the classical Christian school model typically introduces children to secular forms of literature and even will not teach evolution as something true, but they will teach children what non -Christians and those who have a non -biblical worldview believe about the origins of life in the world and so on.

Yes, so I believe that if people are in a situation where because of their circumstances of life they are not able to do homeschooling or perhaps cannot afford a

Christian school, then I think that there are ways that they can have their children receive an education but be so heavily invested in that education that the school where their children attend, the teachers their children have, and the children recognize that my mom and dad are the primary agent of my education here.

Yeah, I can still remember being a little kid and my older sister coming home from college and we were raised in a

Catholic home and I can still remember my sister coming home from a

Loy College and saying to my mother, hey mom, you know what I found out? I found out all that stuff about Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark, that was all just lies, they're fairy tales, these things didn't happen.

And of course I went to grammar school at a later time than my older sister, so by the time

I was in grammar school in the late 60s early 70s I was being taught that as a little kid in the

Catholic parochial school. So it's obviously that we weren't even safe in a parochial private school but of course being a

Catholic school they weren't functioning in the same way a truly bible -believing

Christian school should be functioning in regard to the word of God and in the inerrancy of the scriptures and You made a comment quite a while ago about we do not save our children.

I think sometimes we, largely because of the gospel that's preached today in most of evangelical churches, we kind of get the impression that if we don't say it right they're not going to get saved and we've got to get them to do certain things or we think that our goal in life is to get them to pray a prayer of salvation.

Could you address this issue of evangelism in our children and how we really cannot save them?

Could you enlarge on that? Yeah I think it would give me no hope if I thought if I got everything right that my children would be

Christians, because I never get everything right, you know, that would be no encouragement to me at all.

I think often too, you know, we, and this is kind of two sides of the coin,

I'll just mention it quickly, the parents often, if their children are struggling, they're in their teenage years or young adult years and they've chosen the wrong path, the parents feel dejected and they ask themselves, where have we gone wrong?

And they blame themselves and they, you know, and there may be some fault that falls to them, but we can no more take credit for our children's decision to walk away from God than we can take credit for our children's decision to walk with God, because our children's decision to choose

God is their own decision. We are not a part of that decision.

The person always stands one -on -one with God and there's no one else in the room.

So as parents, we've got to be careful that we don't either have the expectation or strive to be the saving factor in our children's lives, because it's simply not possible.

We will become overbearing because, of course, our great desires, our children know the

Lord, and so we will become overbearing in our manner toward them, and always trying to press them in that direction, rather than doing what the

Scripture calls us to do, to be ambassadors, to see our home as a mission field.

You know, we often treat our children differently than we would treat, say, an unbelieving neighbor.

If people move in next door and we're striving to be Christians and missionaries in our neighborhood, we're going to approach them in ways that show the gospel to be beautiful, to show the law of God to have its appropriate place as the schoolmaster that leads to salvation.

We're going to strive to be winsome and show them the beauties of Christ, but then often in our homes we're spiritual tyrants, and that,

I think, creates a situation where our children flee the gospel.

And I don't know if I've gotten...I think I may have gotten away from the question somewhat, but I think that we need to recognize that it is the

Spirit of God at work with the truth that we bring to our children day in and day out, the ways that we not only bring them the truth of God's Word, but the ways in which we live before our children with a vitality that demonstrates to them that the things that I say to you and read to you from God's Word are true.

I've experienced them. You know where it says, taste and see that the

Lord is good. You remember those beautiful words there. It's amazing to me, because right after those words that say, taste and see that the

Lord is good, blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing.

The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.

After we have that very, very tactile picture painted for us, you know, it's like a saying, put the

Lord on your tongue. Let him be on your palate and see how precious and delicious he is.

The next words in that psalm are, come, my children, listen to me.

I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Isn't that amazing? It is our personal experience of knowing and loving

God that preaches the gospel most powerfully to our children.

We could have devotions every day. We could be unflinching in our use of the catechisms, but if our children don't see it in our lives, then the gospel is not going to get through.

So I think that the way we evangelize our home is to certainly bring the truth of the word of God and bring the law of God, but then demonstrate to our children, to our lives, our dependence on that grace.

We strive to live in God's ways. You know, that's definitely much better than, well, the word that comes to my mind in the over -strict environments and where there's a lack of grace is devotion time turns more into a

Bible bashing time. Yeah, yeah. And the way we live either, the way we live either breathes life into our devotional time or it makes a lie of it.

You understand what I'm saying? Yes. Yeah, I think we, and we don't think about that because we, you know, we'll have devotions and then 10 minutes later, you know, mom is complaining against dad or, you know, or dad is using harsh words towards mom or the children or, you know, and what we're doing is we're saying all that stuff that we just did around the supper table is meaningless or it only has to do with this little portion of your life.

It has nothing to do with the stuff of life. We were speaking about schools before and it sounded like you were about to make a statement, but perhaps got sidetracked, but I don't know if you could remember what you were going to say, but in the meantime, what

I was going to bring up also is that do you think that parents sometimes have an unrealistic confidence in not only their child's salvation, but their ability to be serving as a junior missionary out there?

I mean, like, I've heard parents say, I want to send my kids to the public schools because I want them to evangelize their lost classmates, and I've even heard headmasters of Christian schools that have a different philosophy.

There are Christian schools that will, some will insist that both parents are

Christian and perhaps even members of the church or denomination running the school. Some will insist one parent is a bible -believing

Christian at least, and some will say we don't really care whether or not the parents are saved because we want their children to hear the gospel and the parents have to give permission to us to allow us to do that.

But then you have that whole concept of the children who are the students being in the midst of children who don't even have the benefit of being raised in a

Christian home, saying and doing and teaching their fellow classmates all kinds of ungodly things, and the view is that these kids are supposed to be capable of being missionaries and evangelists when they might not even really be regenerate.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a real mistake for parents to put their children under that pressure, and I know there are a lot of schools that have that perspective.

There was one that's no longer in existence in our area that had that perspective, and they encouraged the children to evangelize one another to the point where they would have the children have other students pray the sinner's prayer with them and so forth.

And I think that's a real mistake. I think when our children are young, we need to be, in appropriate ways, indoctrinating them, helping them to understand, bringing the gospel to them, seeing their character developed as we bring training to them, and encouraging that kind of spiritual development and encouraging them to know

God and trust God, remembering all the time that it is God's work and not ours, but in appropriate ways, encouraging that development.

And of course, we've got to recognize that children have different personalities. I mean, I know high school students who are very bold and very articulate and confident in their faith in Christ, and just by virtue of who they are in their personality, they are missionaries to those around them.

There are others who are very fine Christian young people, but it is not their way to evangelize everyone in sight all day, every day.

They're just a different personality, and so I think, you know, we've got to be wise not to be pushing our children to be who they are not.

While we're all called to be missionaries, we're going to be doing that in different ways.

But I don't think that the school context is a place where that should be the call of the children or the pressure put on children.

It often will happen just naturally, because children who are

Christians will both live and speak of their Christian faith, and I think that's a very good thing.

What I was going to mention earlier was, I think it was Tyler who had called. I wanted to encourage

Tyler, if he's still listening, that a very good thing, if he knows folks who are in that category, that obviously is troubling to him, where they're sending their children to Christian school.

It might be a very good thing for him to talk with them and try to understand the circumstances of life that have left them in that situation, and maybe in Christlike ways he could encourage them with some alternative.

At least it would give him the opportunity to know how he could pray for them, because they might be in a circumstance where they wish they could do something else, but they cannot, and I think that might be a good perspective for him.

We do have Bob in White Plains, New York, who asks, what do you think of James Dobson's book,

The Strong -Willed Child, and how is your philosophy different from Dr. Dobson's?

What age do we start? And that's kind of the second question. I'm not sure what exactly he means by that, but what age do we start, but you could fill in the blank with a lot of things.

But if you could, Margie, at least let us know about the Dr. Dobson question.

Dr. Dobson's The Strong -Willed Child. I don't know that I'm familiar with exactly what you're speaking of, but I think that certainly there are strong -willed children, and what you might be speaking of is,

I think, Dr. Dobson deals with an age of accountability and, you know, how you deal with children before they have reached that age of accountability.

So feel free to clarify for me if I've misunderstood your question. Well, obviously, Bob will have to email me another clarification.

Well, are you more familiar, perhaps, with Dr. Dobson's book Dare to Discipline? Yes, I'm somewhat familiar with Dare to Discipline.

Because I think The Strong -Willed Child is sort of like Dare to Discipline on steroids.

Oh, so you know about this book. Actually, believe it or not, The Strong -Willed

Child was one of the first books I read as a Christian long before I was married, and I have no idea why

I read it. Well, we can make it more of a general question because, and you don't have to be fearful of being critical of somebody as famous as Dr.

Dobson, Dr. Dobson, although I think he has contributed many wonderful things to the church at large and to the world, he seems to have had an improper emphasis on the self -esteem of a child or even an adult, and there are other things that have followed through with that.

And of course, since he is not theologically reformed, there are other ramifications that follow with that philosophy.

But if you could, if you care to comment further. Okay, I think that the idea that we have to walk on eggs around our children is,

I think, a complete misunderstanding of loving nurture.

We don't need a good self -concept, we need an accurate self -concept.

And I think that too often we fear having our children have an accurate understanding of their fallen condition, and when we do that, we move them away from an understanding of their need of the gospel.

We can't appreciate what Christ has done for us until we realize how damaged we are by sin.

And so I think that that whole idea of self -esteem and that we have to build our children's self -esteem, and of course that is, as you said, on steroids in our culture.

There can be no losers, every once a winner in some way. And that really moves us away from understanding our fallenness and the fact that we are needy people, we need a

Savior. And I know my experience as a young person growing up, and I grew up in a

Christian home, wonderful Christian parents, but I never understood until I was an adult the wretchedness of my condition.

In fact, it was a sermon that I heard after my husband and I were married from Romans 3, and the sermon made me very angry.

In fact, I let the pastor know as I left that I would never be returning to his church, and I said, you know,

I know good from evil, I was raised in a Christian home, in fact a pastor's home, but you know, God's Spirit worked through that sermon, and I had to acknowledge that even my tirade at the pastor at the end of the sermon was disclosing the fact that my mouth was an open grave, and the boys' diapers were on my lips, and God used that truth to show me just how spoiled

I am by sin, how utterly hopeless I am in my sin, how wretched, how depraved

I am. That was, and I grew up hearing the gospel every day, but until I saw my wretchedness,

I didn't appreciate Christ. Yes, out of curiosity, is that pastor aware that you've seen the light since then?

Oh my, you know what happened is my husband and I had been married a very short time, and both really, even though we had been raised in Christian homes for the first time, we believe, really came to faith in Christ at that same period.

The next week, because God had worked in my heart that week, we went back to that church, and I asked that dear pastor,

Pastor Bob, to please forgive me, and he and his dear wife took us home to lunch, and that ended up being not only the first church where my husband preached his first sermon, but also the church from which we left for my husband to go to seminary.

Is that right? That's wonderful. Now, speaking of... Well, I've actually picked that up when we return from the break, because we have to go.

Okay. This is our final break right now, so just maybe make a note, Buzz, so you don't forget what you got to ask.

Oh, I got it. And if you'd like to join us on the air, this is going to be your last opportunity.

Well, the next half hour will be your last opportunity, because believe it or not, we're almost out of time.

This two hours is flying by like a bullet, but if you'd like to join us on the air, again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and I thank those of you who are waiting to have your questions asked and answered, are still there waiting patiently, so we will be getting to you and your questions as soon as we can after the break, so don't go away.

We'll be right back after these messages. I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. The New American Standard Bible is perfect for daily reading or in -depth study.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. And if you just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes, we have been interviewing

Margie Tripp on her book, Instructing a Child's Heart. And if you have a question of your own, you better send it to us as quickly as you can, because we're running out of time.

We only got about 23 minutes or so left. And our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. And Reverend Buzz, you had a question. Yes, I can hear coming through from other listeners too, so I'm sure that I'm asking this on behalf of many people.

But we were talking about when children have a strong will, and one of the places where that seems to come out the most is in public.

You're in a restaurant. Your children know you're not going to spank them or whatever there. They know that that's where they can get away with the most, and they start misbehaving in public.

What do you suggest in such a situation as that? Well, a number of things. If it's a rule of Donnie Brook, you might want to get your bill and leave.

But I think that taking that child, perhaps, to a quiet place, to a restroom, to the out of doors, to the car, and striving to, in the best way you can, talk to the child and say, you know,

I want you to calm down or this is not appropriate, and praying for them, praying with them, you know, and striving in every way to quiet the situation and tell them, you know, when we get home.

Now, obviously, this depends on the age of the child. If it's a one -year -old, that's very different than if it's a nine -year -old.

But if it's appropriate saying, you know, we'll talk more about this when we get home.

Our parents often say, well, if I say that to my children, then they'll know, you know, when we're out in public, you can't do anything, and I'll do anything we want.

We say, well, if they're that smart, then they'll remember when you get home, and you can say, we've got something to deal with here.

And so, I think that trying to quiet the situation to the best of your ability, trying to deal with the issue, if it can be dealt with in that context, but recognizing that the majority of your life is not spent in a restaurant.

The majority of your life, or, you know, at Aunt Susie's house, or whatever those public venues are, the majority of your life is spent in your home.

And you may choose to overlook some issues or just deal with them in a more superficial way in order to get through whatever you're trying to accomplish.

And then recognizing we've got an issue here, especially if it's a pattern of behavior.

We have an issue here that we need to be doing some proactive work with at home, rather than waiting until the thing rears its ugly head.

These are some things we need to be talking about, going to God's Word about, praying over.

These are things we need to be doing at home. One of the things we often recommend to parents is they'll say, what do

I do when my child does, and they identify the issue.

We say, well, one of the things you do is, rather than being reactive, you want to be proactive.

If you observe that your children has a pattern of behavior, then what you want to do is, before your child goes to bed at night, when they get up in the morning, you want to say, you know,

I've noticed that you're having some difficulty with this area. You're struggling in this area, or you're sitting in this area.

And say, you know, do you know what I mean? If they say no, you can say, well, just today we had an illustration of that.

You always want to use the overall observation first, and then illustrate it.

Otherwise, the child wants to wiggle out of the specific illustration. Then you say, you know, it's very interesting,

God's Word speaks to that. Then take them to a passage of Scripture that describes either

God's prohibition or His encouragement, and of course, always the gospel, and talk to them about it.

Say, you know, I think this is something we need to pray about. And so we're going to pray tonight before you go to bed, and when you get up tomorrow morning, we're going to pray for this issue, because probably sometime tomorrow, this struggle is going to present itself.

This temptation is going to come to you, and we want to prepare our minds for action, in the words of 1

Peter. With children, you can use this wonderful illustration. God calls us to put on His armor.

He calls us to go into battle well -prepared, and He tells us that life in this world is like a battle, it's like a race, and that we should be well -prepared.

But you can say to your children, and they love this illustration, you can say, honey, if we don't pray about this this morning and prepare ourselves with God's, not only

God's Word and His Law, but also with His encouragement, like 1

Corinthians 10, 13, I won't tempt you beyond what you're able to bear, but with the temptation, I provide a way of escape so that you can bear up under it.

And the promise of Hebrews chapter 4, since Christ was tempted in every way like we are, yet was without sin, therefore boldly approach the throne of grace, you might find mercy and grace to help you in your time of need.

So honey, we don't want to be like soldiers who go into battle in our spiritual underwear.

We want to have the armor on! And so... That wasn't a bash against Mormons, was it?

Oh boy, sorry. So at any rate,

I think, you know, we want to be proactive people. And so rather than focusing on what do

I do when my child went to a restaurant and this happened, certainly you have to address that. But take that as an opportunity to identify struggles that your child has and have that be the occasion for you beginning to talk to them and pray with them.

And for little children or even older children, say, when you see this coming on, when you see the enemy a long ways off, you know, the enemy is running toward me and he's got all his armament arrayed against me, come to me.

I will pray with you. There's a reason for that. It's because we want as a physical representation of God, we want to have them see there's someone

I can go to who will pray with me, who will help me. Because we want to increasingly, as our children grow older, say,

I'm happy to pray with you, but I want to encourage you to go to your Heavenly Father. Because he has said that he will help you in your time of need.

Chris, I like her answers. That's good. And we have

Aaron from Indianapolis, Indiana asking, as a non -parent or a non -Sunday school teacher, how can

I, as a church member or an aunt or even in the world, what are some ways

I can speak best to encourage a child in brief settings, perhaps to cause them to focus on building or to value godly character?

Well, it certainly depends. The degree to which you can do this depends on your relationship to a particular child, but I think of all the one -anothering passages that we have in Scripture.

They're so powerful and wonderful. It's everything on this spectrum from compassion and kindness and gentleness and encouragement to admonishment and even rebuke.

And I think we may do better on the gentle end of that continuum than we do on what we consider to be the harsh and intrusive end of that continuum.

But I think as believers, we need to, regardless of our station in life or our relationship with other people, we need to trust

God to help us to bring those ministries to the body of Christ or to the communities that we're in.

So I would encourage someone who is not a parent or perhaps, well,

I can't remember all the illustrations you gave, but who's not the overseer of this child, if they see a child struggling or needing help, to be very positive and gentle and kind and to strive to practice passages of Scripture.

For instance, the 1 Corinthians 10 .13 passage, if you see a child who's struggling with a temptation, do you say to them, you know, honey, there's a wonderful passage in Scripture.

I know you're tempted to be angry right now, but there's a wonderful passage of Scripture that says,

I won't tempt you beyond what you're able to bear, but with the temptation, I provide a way of escape so that you can bear up under it.

Could I just pray with you right now that you would trust God to help you not be angry at this other child?

We need to be people who practice. With our kids, we always role -play.

We said, you know, if you're in a situation where someone's asking you to do something that is wrong, what are you going to say to them?

I don't know. Well, let's practice. And so, because it's very unlikely that you will speak things audibly that you have not practiced.

That's hard to even do with something where you think, I know the next time I will say, but if you don't first say it out loud, it's hard to say.

So I think as Christians, we need to think, what are the circumstances of life that I'm in where I could speak into the lives of children, and what are the typical things that I observe happening?

What are the passages of Scripture that I should be ready with? How could

I, in positive and gracious and kind and compassionate ways, speak to the that I see in my experience of life?

And we need to be prepared to do that. That's the only way it will ever happen.

Otherwise, our mouths are stopped, the opportunity flees, and it's lost once again.

We do have an anonymous listener who asks, I have been divorced for approximately 20 years.

My husband had abandoned me and the children for quite a number of those years, and has been reunited with them.

And my question is, how do I be a good grandmother by not trying to, on the one hand, dissuade any contact or communication between my ex -husband and my grandchildren, and on the other hand, knowing that he is spiritually a great danger to them since he despises

Christianity, how can I meet the two circumstances midway where I can at least urge for limited communication and under supervision?

I do not believe my grandchildren are in physical danger, only spiritual, emotional, and mental danger.

Well, whatever this sister's relationship is with her child or children who are allowing the grandchildren to spend time with their father, you know, she may...

Their grandfather. Pardon me? Allowing the children to spend time with the grandfather. Yes, grandfather, that's what

I mean. So if she has a relationship where she could interact in appropriate ways, remembering she's not the parent, but where she could try to influence caution and care on the part of her children towards the time and context in which her grandchildren are influenced by the grandfather, that would be certainly a good thing for her to do.

She can't insist on it or demand it, but she certainly, if the relationship allows, could try to speak wisely into that context.

But I think beyond that, what she can do most powerfully is to have her love for Christ and her life before her grandchildren be one that is always gracious and loving and kind, reflecting again, reflecting accurately who

God is and who Christ is. We have seen this happen time and time and time again, where parents have said, oh,

I'm so fearful for my children and my grandchildren because they are under the influence of other family members.

And we have encouraged them, be like Christ, love them, spend time with them, seek to be a

Christ -like influence in their lives. And we've seen it happen time and again, that as those children grow, they gravitate toward the people who have shown them love and kindness and understanding and have been a nurturing influence in their life, who have shown them that living as God's children in our world is the most precious and fulfilling and genuinely happy, not happy as the world sees it, but genuinely content and peaceful influences in their lives.

And they gravitate toward those people because we live in a fallen, broken experience of life and we all need a shelter.

And children, and children even growing into their teenage years and adulthood, will always gravitate toward the shelter.

Amen. We do have another anonymous listener who says, in a world gone mad, when even children are being encouraged to take upon the identity of the opposite gender, are there any things that we should be very fearful of when we see in our own children tendencies that contradict what is typical of boy versus girl behavior?

Should we be overly concerned with boys who like to play with girls dolls and girls that like to play with trucks and do very boyish things like climbing trees and building things?

And this is an interesting question because I can remember, it wasn't that long ago, when liberals used to say, you shouldn't jump to the conclusion that your children are homosexual or lesbian because the boy is playing with dolls or the girl is building tree forts.

Now they're saying they are transgender if they're doing those things. They're doing, the liberals are doing the opposite of what they used to do.

Yeah, this is a very, very difficult situation and I actually was just talking to someone about this earlier today.

The degree to which our culture has, in very subversive ways, used entertainment and particularly the social media, which is of course in the hands of one -year -olds, where parents and grandparents are putting iPads in their hands and they're being entertained by cartoons and all kinds of very, very creative things that have created this amorphous experience of life where people are gender neutral.

And the parents and grandparents don't even realize it. They think it's harmless. And so that's one thing that I say, parents have got to understand what they're putting in the children's hands.

Of course, it's questionable whether that's even the way children should be spending hours every day.

Actually, I could state it more strongly. It's not questionable. It's wrong.

But I think we don't realize the degree to which a very sophisticated culture that is on a trajectory away from God has used entertainment and social media to indoctrinate our little ones in ways that we have not even caught on to as adults.

So we need to be very, very cautious about that. I think we need to recognize that God has created enormous diversity.

And so I'm not alarmed if I have a little boy who's very creative and likes colors and things of that nature.

That doesn't mean that there's a gender problem with him. Right. I mean, the greatest artists in the world were predominantly male.

Exactly, exactly. What we need to recognize is that it is not people's taste and style that is the problem.

It can become a problem if, internally, we don't really work toward having our children understand the role identification that God has given them, the roles that God has called them to, the beautiful ways in which

God has created people, male and female, to fulfill the roles that he has for them.

I think parents have to be very wise. I think it would be very good for parents to spend time, in God's Word, seeking out truth regarding all of these issues, maleness and femaleness.

There are increasingly materials being written about this area by Christian people.

I wish they were all on the market, and I trust they will be soon. But we've talked to enough people to know that there are

Christians who are very, very concerned about these areas, and we should be. But here's the thing.

We never lose hope because our children are not in our hands or the culture's hands.

They're in God's hands, and we need to pray for them. We need to be faithful to them. We need to hold out for them the beauties of what

God has created us for in our maleness and femaleness and in our roles, and we need our homes to be such a place of beauty, our relationships to be such a place of beauty, that our children are more moved and influenced by our view of life than they are by the world.

Amen. And I would assume it would be dangerous or wrong for a parent to project upon his child their own particular tastes and habits and presume that those are the only male or female types of activities.

Like, for instance, there are many women who excel in sports and so on. That doesn't mean that there are any less women and that kind of a thing.

Don't parents have to be careful about projecting their own image of what is supposed to be male and female that goes beyond a biblical boundary?

Absolutely. There are expectations. I think of those as expectations. We need to have our expectations only be those that are bounded by Scripture and not by our personal preferences or our own experience of life.

Well, I want to make sure that I give the websites out, and then I want you to conclude with what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners before they leave the program today.

But I just want to make sure before we run out of time that Shepherding the Heart Ministries can be found at shepherdingtheheart .org,

shepherdingtheheart .org, and Shepherd Press can be found at shepherdpress .com.

That's shepherdpress .com. And if you could, Margie, close us out with a summary of what you most want our listeners to remember today.

Well, I alluded to it a few moments ago, and I would say that it is this. We are so busy in our 21st century lives that we often end up being reactive to our children in our home and their experience of life, rather than proactively watching them, talking with our spouse about them, identifying their struggles, and then in proactive ways, not during times of discipline, but in proactive ways, drawing our children out, using

Scripture and prayer to interact with them about their struggles in their young lives, and then to be accessible to them, and to let them learn to come to us as a model for coming to Christ.

That takes time, and we need to reevaluate.

We need to reprioritize our lives as parents, and even as grandparents, because we can become so busy with good things that we miss the best things, and the best things are using these few short years as our children are growing up, or as our grandchildren are growing up, to bring the

I eagerly look forward to having you back, and hope one day that perhaps

I could arrange some kind of a local conference with you and your husband, teaching on these things in a public forum, and just pray that the

Lord brings those types of things to fruition. I'm so thankful that right here in my new hometown of Carlisle, there is an old historic 900 -seat theater whose manager seems to be eager for me to use the space for Christian activities, so I hope that that does come to fruition, and I look forward to keeping in touch with you about things like that.

Well, thank you, Chris, and thank you both, Chris and Buzz, for being so easy to talk with.

And just remember that it's shepherdingtheheart .org, shepherdingtheheart .org,

and also shepherdpress .com, shepherdpress .com. Tomorrow, we have

Eric C. Redman, an old friend of mine who is now on the faculty at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.

He is a Reformed Baptist, and he is going to be speaking about his new commentary on the book of Ephesians, which is hot off the press from Crossway Books, and it just recently came out within a couple of days, and we are going to be discussing this very important book of the scriptures, especially for those of us who believe in the doctrines of sovereign grace, and it was the very first book of the

Bible that I had the privilege to study at a weekly Bible study when I became a born -again believer in the 1980s, the book of Ephesians I'm speaking of, the book that Eric has written his commentary on, so spread the word about that.

I am very excited to have Eric back on, and we are going to be giving away copies of books to those who ask questions good enough to be read on air, so start gathering your questions together for Eric C.

Redman, who is on the faculty at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. And I just want all of you to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. I want to thank all of you for listening.

I want to thank all of you who have been writing to me and encouraging me and helping me financially to keep

Iron Sharpens Iron on the air, and I thank you more than words can possibly convey.

Well, God bless all of you, and we look forward to hearing from you and your questions tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.