TLP 561: Parenting Your Kids to Adulthood, Part 1 | The Mindset

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We're going to be adults for all eternity. That makes childhood a very interesting stage of life.

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It's the only phase we all experience that is both necessary and limited. Parenting isn't about us.

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In fact, parenting isn't even about our kids. Parenting is just one way Christian dads and moms are to worship

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God. So welcome to the Truth Love Parent podcast, where we train dads and moms to give

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God the preeminence in their parenting. Welcome one and all to our Parenting Your Kids to Adulthood series.

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I am your host, A .M. Bruchner, and I praise the Lord that at this stage in my life, my wife and I have parented both of our kids out of childhood into adulthood.

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That's not to say that they're spiritually mature adults, and it doesn't mean we're done parenting.

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It just means that we entered an important new season of parenting. The final episode of this series is going to be about practically transitioning our kids from childhood to adulthood, and then from young adulthood to older adulthood.

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And I'm still very much in that second phase, and Lord willing, we'll be in that stage for a good long time. But whether your oldest is a newborn, or all of your children are older than 18, this series is going to help you identify biblical expectations

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God has for us and our parenting. And as I mentioned on our last episode, the earlier you get started in this, the better.

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Please know that regardless of the age of your children, there is always hope. We can always glorify

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God tomorrow in our parenting, and God can always work a miracle in our kids. But, practically speaking, the better foundation we lay early on, the easier it is to build on that foundation later.

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As with every episode in this series, you can check out the description to access the free episode notes, transcripts, and related resources.

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The related resources are a collection of standalone episodes and full series that will help you build out and dig deeper into the truths we'll be studying.

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And please keep in mind, especially if you're new to the show, this parenting podcast is very different from so many others.

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This is a teaching and counseling and discipleship time. This content is evergreen, and it's designed to be personal and practical and in -depth.

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These aren't flyby encouragements or detached chiding sessions. We want to take the time to deal with the scriptural truths in meaningful and applicable ways.

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That means that if you haven't previously heard the suggested episodes and series that I've linked for you in the description, you really should take some time to work through them because there's so much value for you in the content.

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And they're all free. And speaking of free, in addition to subscribing to and reviewing this show, will you also please consider donating to this ministry?

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As a 501c3 nonprofit, all of your donations are tax -deductible, and we could really use your help during this trying season.

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The economy is so overheated. Inflation is at its bursting point. Bank accounts are dry, and my own family has recently suffered the ravages of Hurricane Helene.

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So we completely understand how challenging it can be to consider another expense. But please pray about it.

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Even $5 a month will be a huge blessing to this ministry and my family. If giving monthly won't work for you, you can also give a one -time gift, and you can easily set up either a one -time or monthly gift at truthloveparent .com

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forward slash donate. Thank you so much for seriously considering how you can come to our significant financial aid.

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And now let's begin this exciting series. Every parent experiences the blessing of welcoming new life into their families.

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Sometimes that little person isn't in our lives for very long. Sometimes they end their time on this earth in the womb, and sometimes they pass away as a child or a young adult.

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Thankfully, the majority of our children will likely outlive us, and we all hope and pray that the time we will be spent with us setting a godly example in which our kids will follow, and we pray they will continue that process with their own children.

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But what does that process actually look like, specifically from the newborn through young adult years? Lord willing, our kids will spend more time as adults than they will children.

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If we're assuming that a person becomes an adult at the age of 18, which I, by the way, do not, then at this moment in my life,

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I was a child for less than half of my life, and that fraction continues getting smaller and smaller as I age.

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For example, by my reckoning, my father's childhood only constituted about 25 % of his life.

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But when you pull back and look at the full extent of a person's existence on this earth, childhood is actually an infinitesimal blip, because all humans were created to live forever.

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Even children who pass away in the womb, they will continue living for all eternity, and their short time in utero won't even be practically measurable in light of infinity.

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Have you ever thought about that? We're going to be adults for all eternity. That makes childhood a very interesting stage of life.

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It's the only phase of physical maturation which we all experience that is both necessary and limited.

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That means we parents desperately need to understand our responsibility to our children if we hope to glorify

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God in our parenting. So in order to parent our children in a way that prepares them for the rest of their lives, we need to have the right mindset.

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Let me tell you here and now that the most of the parenting philosophies out there are very wrong when they consider the person and purpose of their children.

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Many philosophies see childhood as something to be elongated and protected and deepened as far as possible.

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They view it as the really only beautiful and enjoyable facet of a person's life, after which life is practically not really worth living.

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Therefore, they try to make it last as long as possible. Other parenting models view the trajectory from child to adult as being from innocence to culpability.

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In a similar way, their goal is to elongate that precious and pure innocence, quote -unquote, as long as possible.

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Hence the motivation of those parents who try to shelter their kids from things from which they should be preparing them.

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By the way, we have an episode entitled, Prepare Your Kids, Don't Protect Them, Fighting the

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Urge to Shelter Your Children. But when we have a biblical mindset concerning the person and purpose of childhood, it will inform how we walk with our kids through this process called childhood.

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So let's start with the first foundation stone of our parenting mindset, if we really want to mature and parent our kids to adulthood and not just keep them in childhood.

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Number one, your children are not your own. Yes, God gives us children.

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Yes, we are entrusted with their care. Yes, they are more ours than they are anyone else's.

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But just like everything in our lives, we must acknowledge that God is the creator, king, and owner of it all.

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That means our kids ultimately belong to Him. Our stewardship is a limited one because we're not stewarding them for us.

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We're stewarding them for their real master. Let's start by considering the following passages. In Psalm 139 .13,

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we learn that God actively forms all children in their mother's wombs. Genesis 4 .1

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reveals Eve's reaction to bearing the first human to ever be born in conventional ways.

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And in the second half of the verse, Eve proclaims, I have gotten a man with the help of Yahweh.

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God superintends all natural processes and there's never been a child born outside of His direct act.

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Four different biblical passages quote from Genesis 2 .24, which reads, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother.

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This teaches us that our time as their parents is limited in duration. Sure, biological parents don't stop being the people whom

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God used to give our kids life. And a child becoming an adult doesn't erase all the years that biological adopted parents spent rearing their kids.

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But there is an element of our parenting that will come to a definitive end. And we'll talk more about this element in a later episode in the series.

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Practically speaking, every command and expectation in scripture directed at adults will one day apply to your kids.

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God has expectations for them that stand even if you disagree with those expectations. All of these passages and more help us to recognize the fact that we don't own our kids.

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They only belong to us, quote unquote, to the degree that God has entrusted us with their stewardship.

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So no, for those of you wondering, your kids don't belong to the government or to the community or to the village.

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They definitely, quote unquote, belong to you more than they belong to those institutions. But we

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Christians have to be careful that the terminology we use to give shape to our understanding doesn't miscommunicate the reality.

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We do not own our kids any more than Joseph and Mary owned Jesus. We are their parents.

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We are their stewards. They belong to God. Since our kids belong to him, it's important for us to realize that the expectations he has for them are far more important and vital than the expectations we have for them.

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So, letter A, God has a plan for your children. We have a short series entitled

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God's Will for Your Child. In that series we identify what God's will is and then set forth to describe some of the specifics of that will.

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I've linked that series for you in the description, and if you've never listened to it before, I hope you will consume it and share it with your friends.

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As stewards, as biblical parents, it's our responsibility to rear our kids to their true owner's specifications.

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Our plans for our kids don't get to overshadow God's. And what is that plan? Well, part of it is

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B, God wants your children to submit to him. This submission is a two -fold submission.

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First, he wants them to submit to his kingship. He wants them to submit to the good news that they were created to worship him, but they can only do that through the crosswork of Jesus Christ.

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We could read John 3, 16 this way, And I could add that God wants your children to submit to him while they're still children.

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2 Corinthians 6, 2 tells us that now is the day of salvation, and in Matthew 19, 14

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Jesus said, The word translated children refers specifically to a young child, not just someone's descendant.

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This is why evangelism parenting is so important regardless of the age of our kids. We should desire for them to submit to Christ at the earliest age possible.

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But justification is not the end of his will for their lives. Beyond the momentary justification of their souls, the

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Lord wants them to continue submitting to him as they are sanctified to be conformed to his image. So letter

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C, God wants your children to grow in him. Salvation is not a one -and -done contractual agreement whereby

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God promises to keep your kid from hell and then they go about their merry way living like he doesn't exist. Salvation occurs within a relationship between God's creation and their creator.

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Christians are born again into God's family. They learn to love him and grow in their desire to please him.

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No one can lose their salvation, but a person can think they're saved and not be. I encourage you to listen to an episode entitled,

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The Second Most Important Question You Need to Ask Your Kids. That episode identifies how a person can know for sure they're born again into the family of God.

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And this point is a big part of that answer. Are your children who profess salvation growing?

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Are they maturing? Are they following the trajectory for their spiritual life God lays out in his word?

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To this point, I would encourage you to listen to a series I did for the Celebration of God called The Evidence of Spiritual Life.

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That series is very helpful for identifying spiritual life but also maturing in it. And that's why your kids are here.

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God created them to worship him and in so doing, submit to him. But let's put a finer point on this submission.

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Letter D, God wants your children to shine and sharpen. In Matthew 5, 13 through 16, during the

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Sermon on the Mount, Jesus proclaims, You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has become tasteless, how will it be made salty again?

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It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out, to be trampled underfoot by men.

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You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.

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Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your

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Father who is in heaven. The people who submit to God are his disciples, and God wants all of his disciples to be salt and light, to shine the truth of the gospel into the lives of those who

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God brings to them. Proverbs 27, 17 tells us that iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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And the New Testament builds out that process by giving us the one another's. The theme verse for this podcast comes from Ephesians 4, 11 through 16, which describes the process of sharpening each other.

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Verse 15 reads, Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head that is

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Christ. It is through our speaking the truth in love that others are to be equipped to be built up into the image of Jesus Christ.

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So, this is God's plan for our kids. They are his, and his plan for them is that they will submit to him in justification and sanctification and guide others to the same through salvation and discipleship.

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By extension, we now come to our next main point for today, the next building block for a biblical parenting mindset.

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Number two, childhood is a time for learning. Regardless of how long childhood is, we can know for certain that it is a time of discipleship.

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Ephesians 6, 4 commands parents to bring their children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Proverbs 22, 6 commands that we train up a child according to his way.

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In Deuteronomy 6, 6 through 7 says, These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart.

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You shall teach them diligently to your sons, and shall speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.

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And the very definition of what it is to be a disciple is to be a student. We talk about that in the

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Teach Your Children to Learn series, and the Celebration of God companion to that, the Discipleship Spiral series.

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Our children's education is absolutely mandated by God. In fact, rearing our kids in the truth and love of God is more biblically important than English and math and science and history.

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Yes, I'm a huge advocate of educating our kids to be affluent adults. My own children are a testament to that.

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But that doesn't change the fact that the importance of spiritual training far outshines other education.

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I mention this because so many professing Christian parents prioritize secular academics over their children's spiritual learning.

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I know this because their kids attend secular schools. I know this because they spend far more time learning secular subjects than they do biblical truth.

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I know this because they invest more money in the kids learning secular endeavors, including sports, dance, and receiving extracurricular tutoring.

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I know this because they will skip church to perform their music and play their sports. And I know this because too many parents relegate their children's biblical instruction to the church.

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But it's our responsibility to teach them biblical truth in the home, and this education needs to happen in two key ways.

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A. Formal Education Formal education encompasses the times we are sitting our kids down to open the word to them.

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This may happen in the form of family devotions, but it can also include the first time we teach our kids a new truth and its application, and it happens when we're approving and correcting our children.

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Each of these truths are expounded in our Parents 5 job series. Any time that calls for a lecture or monologue should be considered formal teaching times.

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And this absolutely needs to be happening in the home by the parents. This must not be delegated to others. That doesn't mean that others can't participate, but you, the parent, should be doing the bulk of it.

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But don't be fooled by the world's idea that good parenting is always listening and dialoguing. Yes, there is a very important place for listening, and dialogue and debate are also powerful, but that doesn't mean that teaching has no value.

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The importance of teaching and the fact that a parent should be doing the bulk of it goes back to Deuteronomy 6 and Ephesians 6 passages we considered earlier.

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But the Deuteronomy 6 passage also discusses our next sub -point. B, informal education.

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The informal education of spiritual truth happens as we do life together. We, the parents, should be exhibiting what it looks like to practically apply the truth we formally taught them earlier.

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We need to be at peace, joyful, content, and thankful. We need to not be sinfully angry.

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We need to confess and ask for forgiveness and repent when we sin. But we also still need to be speaking truth and love as we live our lives.

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If we only ever talk about God from a formal perspective, we're missing the mark. That is a result of us compartmentalizing our lives and not understanding how our relationship with Him needs to impact every facet of our existence.

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It teaches our kids to view God -time as a separate thing that happens over here at that time and doesn't impact the now.

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Instead, we need to talk easily about God when we're making breakfast and doing homework and playing. We need to guide our kids to prayer.

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We need to stop and praise the Lord for His beautiful creation. We need to go back to those touchstones as we apply the truths we learned earlier.

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This is the dialogue time. And yes, play is a wonderful time for this.

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Our children learn so much by playing. But cooking with our kids and cleaning up the house and working in the yard and watching a movie and listening to music and reading a book are also times that our kids are learning.

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This is what Deuteronomy 6 meant when it talked about speaking the truths of God when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.

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I could go on and on about the absolutely dangerous mindset plaguing modern parenting that says that we need to allow our kids to be kids, which according to them means that kids don't have any real responsibilities.

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They do what they want when they want. Their only purpose is to play and enjoy life. Even their schooling is all about what's fun and interesting for the kids.

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And I wish I had time to biblically unpack all the reasons this philosophy is so dangerous. Yes, I believe kids need to play, but God has specifically designed these years to be learning years.

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That's why He created them to learn so easily at early ages. God has created them to learn, commanded them to learn, and capacitated them to learn, and we would be fools to dissuade them from doing just that.

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Okay, so those are two of our necessary foundation stones for rearing kids to adulthood. The first is that our kids are not our own, and the second is that childhood is a time of learning.

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But before we get to our final two points, I want to let you know that this series is being sponsored by MyPillow.

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If you visit MyPillow .com and use the code EVERMIND, E -V -E -R -M -I -N -D at checkout, you will receive some amazing discounts.

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I absolutely love my MyPillow. My MyPillow has completely changed my sleep, and I think you too should get yourself a

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MyPillow. But this series is also being brought to you by Quit! How to Stop Family Strife for Good.

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Quit! is my newest book where I walk you through the book of Proverbs and some key New Testament books to help you understand the creators, consequences, causes, and cure for strife in your home.

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It's a short book at just over 100 pages, but it is absolutely jam -packed with biblical truth and love to help you reduce the amount of strife that you are creating and help your kids do the same for themselves.

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And you can get the digital version on the Evermind app, and you can purchase a hard copy of Quit! using the links in the description of this episode.

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Please, buy this book, read it, implement God's cure for family strife, and share it with others. Now, let's talk about the final pillars of our parenting mindset for helping our kids become the adults that God wants them to be.

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If our kids belong to God and He wants them learning about Him, then the natural assumption is, number three, biblical adulthood is the goal.

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As was mentioned earlier, as the Lord wills, your children will be adults longer than they will be children. Though the vast majority of the scriptures applies to young children, absolutely all of it is for adults.

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In fact, it can be easily argued that, though the Bible is clearly for children, it targets adults.

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I'm not going to reference any passage here because it's such an obvious point from the first to last verses of the Bible.

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Every passage is designed to reveal who God is, who we are, and what needs to happen in light of those facts.

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It was written to men, women, and children, but it is only adults who can actually keep all of the commands in the

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Bible. Kids can keep most of them, but they have to be adults to be able to keep all of them. For example, all of the commands about marriage and parenting cannot be kept by children.

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I would argue the commands that target employers will, most of the time, not apply to kids. Unless, of course, your precocious seven -year -old employs her siblings at her lemonade stand.

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Now, the fact that biblical adulthood is the goal is a pretty straightforward point. In fact, all of the points

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I've made today so far are pretty simple. So, let me tell you why I'm making them. They're all leading to our fourth and final point.

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It's this one reality, this final point we have to believe if we're going to successfully parent our kids to adulthood.

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And here it is. Number four, childhood is limited. Now, that might sound obvious, especially in light of what we said earlier, but the implications of this point are so important.

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People mess this point up in the following ways. Number one, some parents allow their kids to lengthen childhood.

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There is an epidemic of adult children in this country. It used to be a joke that a 20 -year -old would still be living in his parents' basement, jobless and always playing video games.

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Then the joke was only made about 30 -year -olds, and now it's mostly being made about 40 -year -olds. And not only is the acceptable age limit for this behavior rising, it's being normalized.

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People aren't looking down on it like they used to. They're actually arguing for it. Articles are being written about how hours of video game playing a week is actually healthy for our well -being.

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People are getting married later and later if they get married at all. And more and more adults are acting like children on the job.

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In fact, a large percentage of adults are actually taking their parents with them to job interviews. Sure, I'm all for child labor laws, but childhood is limited, and it doesn't exist simply so that people can play all the time.

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Children have important things to learn and skills to develop in this very limited season of their lives. But parents also show they don't understand the implications of a limited childhood and that, too, they do not transition their children out of childhood into adulthood the right way.

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The kid turns 18, and the very next day, the parents are treating them differently. I remember turning 18, and the next

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Sunday, I greeted a man in my church as Mr. So -and -so, and he said, you can call me whatever his first name was. Apparently, last

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Sunday and all the Sundays before, I was too young to call him by his first name, but now that I was 18, apparently all of that changed.

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It was not only jarring so much as it was ridiculous to me. I knew I wasn't any different than the 17 -year -old version of me.

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In fact, I knew better than anyone that I was definitely not functioning any more as a Christ -honoring adult than I was years before.

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Some could argue I was in a stage of rebellion and backsliding. My point is that even I realized that arbitrary difference in how people treated me from 17 to 18 was ridiculous and wasn't rooted in anything other than a number.

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In addition to that, there was no preparation for being treated like an adult. It all just happened one day.

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Everyone started treating me differently. And why is that? Well, because you don't treat a 17 -year -old like an adult because they're not one yet, or something.

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So, some parents aren't transitioning their kids until way too late, and other parents aren't transitioning their kids into adulthood the right way.

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They do it overnight, or it's not encompassing the most important realities of being a biblical adult. But here's the big one.

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3. Most start transitioning their children to adulthood too late. Now, this is not a restatement of our first point.

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There are many, many Christ -honoring parents who would never let their 20 -year -old act like a child. They wouldn't even tolerate that behavior from an upcoming 18 -year -old, but for some reason, they tolerate childish behavior from their 16, 15, 14, and 13 -year -olds.

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And they're not preparing their kids for the next season of their lives until it's really too late. In order to set up our kids for success, we need to recognize that God created childhood to be a limited span of time—here we go—from birth to 12 years old.

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Biblically and historically, children transitioned out of childhood into a young adulthood around the age of 13.

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We touched on this a bit in our Expectational Education series, so if you didn't listen to that one, be sure to do that.

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I provide a number of biblical and historical evidences for the fact that since the early 1900s, our

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American society has continued to extend childhood. We've extended it into the teenage years.

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We extended it into the 20s. We've extended it into the 30s, and now we're extending it into the 40s. But I would argue that we're doing our kids just as much of a disservice to start transitioning them out of childhood in their teens as if we waited until they were older.

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Sure, being older further habituates the childish living and will make it harder to adapt or adopt a more biblical mindset, but that doesn't make it any less dangerous when we teach them this unbiblical mindset at younger ages.

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Here's the thing. It doesn't matter what the world says about developmental stages. We just did an episode all about the truth and lies of the modern ideas around developmental stages.

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What matters is what the Bible reveals about God. Now, I wish I had more time to talk about this, but let's consider puberty just for a moment.

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According to the scriptures, sex is for enjoyment and procreation in marriage. It's a physical picture of a beautiful spiritual reality, and it's a forerunner of our eternal state.

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We also know that it's a sin to participate in sex outside of that framework. In addition to that, Paul makes the argument that it is good and necessary for a person burning in their sexual desire to get married so as to remove themselves from that temptation.

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So, with that in mind, your children either already have or soon will physically develop the ability for sexual relations, and they do so around the age of 12 or 13.

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Yes, some kids develop earlier and some later, but generally speaking, that's when it's happening. Doctors say that females in particular reach reproductive maturity about four years after their first signs of puberty, which, in the case of my daughter, was 13.

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That means she reached reproductive maturity at the age of 13 because she started when she was 9.

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However, it doesn't matter that we have all of these young people whose bodies are ready and able and desperately wanting to be used, but we're also telling them that they're not allowed to get married until when?

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Until they're… Are they marrying at 18? No. Are they marrying out of college? Fewer and fewer are.

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Our society is pushing marriage further and further back as they extend their childhood. This is why it's so fashionable to get married in your 30s and 40s these days.

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But the world doesn't care about God's expectations for sexuality, so they're having sex with whomever they want, whenever they want.

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Not being married definitely isn't stopping them. In fact, that's the only way that they survive. If it were physically impossible to have sex before marriage,

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I believe the vast majority of adults in America today would have gotten married as early as possible because of the burning temptation of all the chemicals surging through their bodies.

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But while all the unsaved kids are postponing marriage and having sex as much as they want, it's the Christian kids who are abstaining from sex, but also who are postponing marriage.

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We've made it even harder on the kids who are trying to please the Lord, and I'm assuming you know how hard it is.

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If you're anything like I was, you've failed in this regard, or you by the grace of God succeeded, not because of your own self -control.

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And please don't think that masturbation is an appropriate Christ -honoring release of those urges. It's not.

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So if that was part of your experience growing up, then you may have avoided intercourse with someone, but you weren't technically biblically sexually pure.

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So here's my point. One of the clearest indicators that God expects your kids to start living like the adults they are is that He chose in His perfect sovereignty and wisdom that they would be physically functioning as young adults at the age of 13.

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Now, we need to conclude. This is our longest episode in a while, but let me say this. As I mentioned earlier, transitioning your child from young adulthood to older adulthood, or immature adulthood to mature adulthood, is exceptionally important.

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Our kids don't reach 13 and we say, well, you're an adult now, good luck. No, they're still our responsibility.

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We're still their authority until we give them their blessing to no longer be under our parental authority, and we'll talk more about this process later as well.

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And I'm not arguing that since our kids are sexually mature at the age of 13, they should get married at 13. We'll talk about all of this as well.

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Regardless, they need to be preparing for adulthood. They need to be transitioning to it over time. They need to be practicing and failing and succeeding in being taught, reproved, corrected, and trained.

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We shouldn't allow them to continue acting like kids when God's plan is for them to start acting like adults. They need to start putting away childish things, foolish things.

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So, we mustn't wait too long and therefore need to be preparing them for maturity by slowly working them into it.

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My friends, God gives us about 12 years—a biblically significant number, by the way—to transition our kids out of childhood into adulthood.

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And then He gives us another chunk of time—this one is a little more subjective—to prepare our kids to be full -fledged adults out from under our authority.

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And this is not just semantics. This is the mindset we must have. It is important that we parent our kids in this vein, and we'll dig deeper into the why's in future episodes.

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I pray this episode is an important part of developing a mindset that will help you parent your kids to adulthood.

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I pray you'll also share this episode with your friends. Wouldn't it be amazing if you had a community of like -minded biblical parents?

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We'll talk more about the importance of this community later. For now, allow me to answer my own question. Yes, it would be amazing!

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And this series might be the beginning of that for you. But I also pray you'll email us at counselor at truthloveparent .com

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or leave a voicemail at 828 -423 -0894 if you'd like some practical coaching for how to parent your specific children into the adulthood

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God has planned for them. Childhood is a limited time, and God has some very important things

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He wants you doing for your kids while they're kids to prepare to glorify Him as an adult.

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The question is, are you doing those things? On our next episode, we're going to define what it means to be a biblical parent so we have a goal for our parenting.

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And don't forget to take advantage of the plethora of resources I've linked for you in the description. I will see you later.

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Truth Love Parent is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you worship

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God through your parenting. So join us next time as we study God's Word to learn how to parent our children for life and godliness.

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And remember that TLP is a listener -supported ministry. You can visit truthloveparent .com forward slash donate to learn more.