TLP 564: Parenting Your Kids to Adulthood, Part 4 | The Process

I cannot be more emphatic in this position. Spiritual maturity needs to systemically permeate absolutely everything we do.

Parenting isn't about us. In fact, parenting isn't even about our kids. Parenting is just one way

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

God the preeminence in their parenting. I am so glad you are back with us for another installment of our Parenting Your Kids to Adulthood series.

On today's show, we're going to talk about the process of parenting your kids to adulthood, and we're going to zoom in on some practical facets of that process.

As always, today's episode includes free show notes, a transcript, and related resources to help you better understand and apply what you're learning.

As an example, one of our first points today will be fleshed out in far greater detail in our Biblical Parenting Essentials conference and podcast episodes.

Those will both be linked for you in the description of today's show. By the way, if you use the link for the

Biblical Parenting Essentials conference, you can access that for free just because you tuned in today.

And it really will be important because unless you've worked through that material, some of the points I make today may be difficult to apply because the information is new.

That's okay, because though we won't be able to unpack it in this episode, all those other resources dig deeper into the material.

Also, I want you to know that today's show is being brought to you in part by the Thrive North Carolina Homeschooling Convention that will be held this

May in Winston -Salem. I will be one of the speakers and I'll be exhibiting there as well. If you stop by the booth,

I'd love to sign your copy of my new book, Quit! How to Stop Family Strife for Good. Also, one of my friends

Renton Rathbun will be speaking and you don't want to miss his sessions. You can learn more about this conference and register for it at the link provided in the description.

And now, let's jump into our content for today. The first introductory point I want to make is that this process of parenting our kids to adulthood can start at any age.

Now, there is something for all of us to learn in that one little statement. The first is that unless you have an infant, your children are not too young to start moving through this process.

The second is that if you have waited too long to begin this process, it's not too late. Don't surrender to despair and tell yourself there's no use starting now.

Get to it. It's always the right time to help your children mature spiritually. But the idea that this process can start at any age doesn't just refer to your kids.

If you want to rear your kids to maturity, then the first step in this process is number one, pursue your own maturity.

Now, when I say first step, that doesn't mean that you have to be as mature as you can be before you can help your kids mature.

If that were the case, then we would never parent our kids. What I mean by first step is how you prioritize your maturity over your children's maturity.

Now, it might sound strange to hear me put it that way, but you'll soon understand why. Letter A, the only maturity over which you have any control is your own.

You can't make your kids mature. You can't control their heart responses, but you absolutely must cooperate with the

Holy Spirit to grow in your own Christlikeness. B, the more mature you are, the better you can help your kids mature.

I don't want what I'm about to say to sound cruel. That's not the intention. What I'm about to say is just an accurate observation of the state of the professing

Christian home in America overall. There are too many parents pretending to be holier than they are, expecting their kids to actually be holier than the parents practically are.

It's a very real epidemic of do as I say, not as I do. And what makes it really dangerous is that it's not as overt as the vaping dad telling his kids they shouldn't vape.

It's moms who lecture their kids about their motivations whose own motivations are self -serving.

It's dads who make sure their kids have their devotions while coming up with a bunch of personal excuses for why he doesn't have time for his own.

And neither of these are overt because it's hard to see mom's motivations or know if dad is spending time with the

Lord. Our second episode of this podcast, way back in 2016, was called,

Why Is It Always About Me? If you've never heard that show, I recommend you listen to it because it's just as true now as it was way back then.

Our content here is evergreen because God's word is evergreen and we do our best to submit to God's word in our teaching.

The reason it's always about us is that we Christian parents need to prioritize our conformity to the will of God because he demands it and because our kids will benefit from it.

When we're growing in our relationship with God, we will also be growing in our parenting. As we better understand who

God is, who we are, and why he has us here, then the biblical parenting essentials will become that much more natural to us.

And speaking of the essentials, let's review them here. If you want to parent your kids to adulthood, then you need to daily teach, reprove, correct, and train them.

Now if you view those four words the way most of the parents in America would, then you probably think you do all of those things every day.

But when you study those concepts in scripture, you'll find, like I did, that I often didn't do any and at most only did two and not even that well.

And by God's grace, I'm still growing in all four areas. Please listen to the Biblical Parenting Essentials podcast and definitely watch the free conference.

Those will get you on the way to understanding God's expectations for the kind of parenting that will help your kids actually mature in their faith.

Our shorter series entitled A Parent's Five Jobs is also a great place to start if you're short on time and want to work into it.

If you think carefully about our first few topics in this series, then you'll see how we've already been focusing on maturing our own thinking.

Hopefully, you're working on your mindset for parenting your kids to adulthood. We're maturing our understanding by learning the

Biblical definition of adulthood, and we're developing our own parenting expectations for our kids. And this episode, too, really is about the process that we ourselves need to put into place if we're going to parent our kids to adulthood.

The whole point is, my friends, your biggest responsibility in your family is your own Christlikeness.

Prioritize that above everything else because when you do, you will prioritize everything else correctly. Now I want to transition to our second and final main point.

But before I do, allow me to remind you about the second sponsor of our show. Quit! How to Stop Family Strife for Good is available in softcover for only $10 on Amazon, and a digital copy can be accessed on the

Evermind app for only $8. I really hope you'll get your eyes on this book. It's been a labor of love for me to help families worship

God better by addressing the strife in their homes. The Amazon link is there for you in the description. You can check it out.

Quit in the Evermind app when you get your free access to the Biblical Parenting Essentials Conference. So, what is the process for parenting our kids to adulthood?

First, we have to prioritize our own spiritual maturity. And then number two, pursue your kids' maturity.

A number of years ago, if you were on social media, watched the news, or worked a secular job, you likely heard the word systemic multiple times a day.

Most of the uses, though, were referring to perceived racism. The argument was that racism permeates every fiber of America.

It's systemic. Now, those individuals' observations on systemic racism were largely, if not completely, false.

I should have put air quotes around systemic racism. But I mention it because when it comes to parenting, spiritual maturity needs to systemically permeate absolutely everything we do.

I cannot be more emphatic in this position. Spiritual maturity needs to systemically permeate absolutely everything we do.

Now, again, this takes real spiritual maturity on the part of the parent. Most of us are absolutely not equipped to make

God, His Word, and our family's spiritual maturity the very atomic structure of our home life. Of course, that's why

Truth Love Parent exists. We're here to equip dads and moms to better worship God in their parenting. That means that as you listen to these episodes and grow in your

Christ -likeness, you're being equipped to make God, His Word, and your family's spiritual maturity the very atomic structure of your home life.

So let's look at an overview of what systemic biblical parenting looks like. Let's start with the most important portion of our day, our time communing with God.

Honestly, this is the part that's kind of easier for everyone. A, prioritize your family members' time with the

Lord. This can be as simple as reading a page in your Bible story board book with your toddler or teaching your 10 -year -old how to do their own devotions or asking your 16 -year -old to share with you what

God is teaching them from their time in the Word. By the way, we have made some devotional suggestions over the years.

They're not all in one place on the website, but I will share with you an interview I did with Natasha Crane on the subject of children's devotionals.

Near the end of that episode, I do give some examples of ones that I find valuable. I think she makes them as well.

But personal devotions aren't the only important time the family has with God. There's also the formal times of family worship.

These are times when your family sits down with God's Word, reads it, and talks about it. It doesn't have to take long, but it should involve everyone.

We have a family devotional called A Family United in God. It usually costs $50, but you can get it today for only $25.

And again, the link will be in the description. This devotional is a little more involved and geared for families with children, probably,

I don't know, around 10, but it comes complete with a Bible reading, a lesson taught by me, and life work the family can discuss together.

You can access it on the Evermind app. But let's get more specific. When it comes to our devotional times with God, the two words we need to have in mind when parenting and teach to our kids to do are learn and use.

Use is simply a more accessible word for apply. I love the word apply. I use that a lot. You can use that too.

But depending on the age of your kids, use might be easier. The key is that we want to teach our kids that devotional times are not merely about reading.

We need to be learning. But learning is no good in and of itself if we never put into practice what we're learning, therefore we need to use what we've learned.

But individual devotions and family devotions are not the only time with the Lord you should prioritize. We have a five -part series called

Your Family Needs to Go to Church. It walks through the biblical purpose and motivation for going to church, as well as the kind of church a biblical family should attend, and then ends with two episodes about the consequences of participating in church and neglecting the church.

When it comes to teaching your kids to benefit from the corporate gathering of God's people, you can use the same two words we taught them for their devotions.

You can definitely encourage your kids to learn and use the lessons taught in the message. But there's more to church attendance than simply learning and using in one's personal life.

Assembling with God's people is about ministering to each other. Therefore, I like to use the words participate and serve as our maturity goals.

Participate not only covers actively listening and learning from the message, but it also refers to singing and praying, the

Lord's Supper, and any other parts of the service in which we can participate. The serve part then motivates us to find at least one person in whom we can invest while at church.

I would encourage your kids to adopt a grandparent in the church. Love on them, ask about their week, and even pray with them.

The older and more mature your kid gets, the more they'll be able to do more of the one another's while assembling with God's people.

If you want to parent your kids to adulthood, you absolutely need to prioritize and pursue the family's time with God and His people.

Personal devotions, family devotions, and assembling with the local church for corporate worship are absolute non -negotiables for a maturing family.

And as you do those things, teach your kids how to learn, use, participate, and serve. But too many parents think that as long as their kids have a good devotional habit and the family goes to church, all will be well.

Unfortunately, that ignores the ever -important informal family worship. In the Mears Christianity series, we talk about what worship really is.

We have a sister series on the celebration of God called simply, What is Worship? In those series, we learn that worship is absolutely everything we say and do.

It's not a question of if we're worshiping, it's a question of whom we are worshiping and how we are worshiping.

Absolutely every word, deed, decision, and thought in your home is an act of worship either to God or to oneself.

When we forget this and neglect to teach it to our kids, we end up inadvertently communicating to them that worshiping

God is praying and reading the Bible and going to church and listening to worship music. But that creates a false compartmentalization in our thinking that we're not to worship

God in absolutely everything else we do all week. That's why parenting our kids to maturity needs to extend systemically into everything our family does and discusses in a day.

So let's consider some of those moments in our average day. Letter B, teach your kids how to worship

God during family life. I'm going to limit this category to the general times we're doing life together.

This includes fun times and work times. When I talk about fun times, I am not talking about watching a movie.

We'll discuss entertainment later. If we're really going to be having family time, we need to be able to relate with each other while doing it.

Playing board and card games, playing outside, taking a walk, or going on an outing are all good examples of valuable family time.

During these times, we need to be teaching, reproving, correcting, and training our kids in how they are to worship

God in those moments. This includes how we talk to each other, how we physically interact, and how we approach our expectations for the time.

We need to be joyful and content and at peace and thankful. We need to be kind and prefer others above ourselves.

We need to serve each other and love each other and encourage each other, but we also need to keep each other accountable. And we talk about all of these things and so many more in nearly every one of our over 560 episodes.

We at Truth Love Parent desire to equip you to see your child's most important momentary needs and speak truth into them.

The other side of family life is housework. We need to teach our kids not merely how to do their chores, but why.

We have a number of episodes about chores. You can easily search for them by typing chores into the search bar at truthloveparent .com.

But if we want to parent our kids to adulthood, it can't just be about completing the chore in the right way without annoying mom.

We have to teach our kids how to worship God in the process of doing the chore.

This absolutely necessary lesson is expanded upon in our Teach Your Children to Obey series. I think the best word to mold your children's understanding of family life should be service.

Whether we're recreating together or working together, a mature child of God should be serving those around him.

All of your family times are opportunities to teach your kids how to serve like Christ served. Alright, letter

A, prioritize your family member's time with the Lord and B, teach your kids how to worship God during family life. But you also need to C, teach your kids how to worship

God at school. We could also throw work in here. And that's work outside of the house, not work inside the house.

I did a series on the celebration of God called Celebrating God at Work and School. That series teaches us and by extension will help us to teach our kids to worship the

Lord in some of the most challenging aspects of our lives. Too much of the average

American Christian school experience is all about subjects and grades and relationships and achievements, but far too little time is dedicated to considering how we need to be worshiping

God as we move through those activities. I think the two words we use for spending time with God can help our kids here as well.

They need to learn and to use. But too often, especially if your child doesn't attend a Christian school, they can learn and use what they're taught at school, but never once give any thought to God.

That's why I think it's important to get your family used to talking about worshiping God at school. Did you glorify

God today at school? How can you best worship the Lord as you prepare for that test? This kind of communication keeps the goal ever in front of us and keeps us working in that direction.

It's an example of how this idea of systemically bringing the spiritual maturity of our kids into every facet of their lives works.

Do we talk about glorifying God within the school process, or do we only talk about God when we have our

Bibles open? But in addition to teaching our kids to mature through their time with the

Lord, as well as become more godly in your family time and growing in their spiritual maturity as they go to school and work, their jobs, we absolutely need to D, teach your kids how to worship

God with their entertainment. We have so many fantastic resources for teaching your kids how to glorify

God and grow spiritually as they interact with technology and movies and books and apps and music. I'll put the link to those resources in the description, but I really want us to stop and think very hard about this for a moment.

If you want your children to mature out of foolishness into wisdom, if you want them to be more like Christ, then you absolutely have to daily keep them accountable to glorifying

God with their entertainment choices, to worship God with their entertainment choices.

Therefore, we need to be consistent and comfortable asking them whether or not God is being glorified in their entertainment choices.

We need to talk about what it practically looks like to worship the Lord with our music and movies and games and technology.

If you want to parent your kids to adulthood, this absolutely has to be part of the process. So I hope you're seeing how guiding our kids to mature

Christ -likeness must be a systemic focus. It can't just be something we talk about on Sunday.

It has to permeate our family life, otherwise it's not going to happen. I encourage you to listen to our short series entitled

God's Will for Your Child. That series will give you even more direction in understanding the reason

God gave you children in the first place. Now before we consider our final point in the process of parenting our kids to adulthood,

I do want to remind you that in the same way this show is being brought to you by The Thrive Homeschooling Conference and Quit!

How to Stop Family Strife for Good, MyPillow is also one of our sponsors. And right now the discounts are so amazing.

The classic MyPillow normally costs around $50. But for a limited time, when you use the code EVERMIND at checkout, you can purchase the standard

MyPillow for only $14 .98. The queen version of the pillow only costs $18 .98

and the king costs only $1 more than that. You can get a king -size MyPillow for under $20.

Please visit mypillow .com forward slash evermind to get these amazing deals. Alright, so we're learning that the process of parenting our kids to adulthood requires that we prioritize our own spiritual maturity, our own adulthood if you will.

We need to do this because God deserves it and because you can't lead someone somewhere where you yourself aren't going.

Second, we need to prioritize our children's spiritual maturity. And the single best way to do this is to make it the most important facet of your life.

Whether it's during personal devotions, family worship, church, family time, chores, school, work, or entertainment, we need to teach our kids who

God is, who they are, and what that means for them. We need to reprove them when they fail to correctly worship the

Lord in everyday life. We need to correct them when they desire to start worshiping God the way they should. And we need to train them in pursuing

Christ -likeness and maturity throughout their day. But there are two more special categories to add if you want to parent your kids to adulthood.

If yours and your child's goal is for them to put off foolishness and transition into young adulthood as soon as possible, then you should

E. Initiate Adulthood Training. Yes, we need to work in adulthood training into every facet of our children's lives, but we should neglect to give it special attention as well.

We're running out of time today and I hope to collect a more robust selection of resources for this, but our kids should be reading books that will help them mature.

For example, both of my kids read the book Do Hard Things. I also get them new books every year from the ACBC conferences

I attend that will help them mature into Christ -honoring adults. With the wealth of podcasts and online resources available, we can also have our kids listen to audio or watch videos that are made by mature

Christians and will help them become mature Christians. For example, a simple idea would be to have your kids walk through the

James Bible study I did with my family during the lockdowns. Those videos are available on Truth Love Parents' Facebook page, and I'll link the first video for you in the description.

Reading books and watching material like this puts a spotlight on the goal that is moving from childhood into adulthood.

By the way, just as an observation, this material should be designed for adults or should be designed specifically to help younger children mature into adulthood.

It shouldn't just be stuff made for kids. Stuff made for kids oftentimes reinforces childlike thinking and doesn't push them into that next stage.

So, the things that we want them reading and watching and listening to as part of this adulthood training needs to be stuff that's moving them toward adulthood, out of their current stage of thinking into a deeper one.

But like some of the other topics we discussed today, adulthood training shouldn't stop with learning. It's so great to have service times to put this into practice.

This can involve activities that are usually considered, quote -unquote, adult activities like volunteering at a shelter or clearing the yard for an elderly member of the church.

Call your kids to mature living by giving them the opportunities to stretch their new maturity into serving others.

And the final category is, letter F, discipline with adulthood in mind. We've touched on this throughout the episode as we've talked about reproving our kids.

If you don't know how discipline and reproof interact, please listen to the Parents 5 Job series or watch the free

Biblical Parenting Essentials Conference. Too often, our goal in reproof is to simply get our kids to stop doing whatever they're doing.

But that falls so short of God's desire for them. We need to show them the primary consequences of their foolish choices and then help them reinterpret the situation through a biblical framework so that they can better understand how

God would have had them respond. From there, the goal is to start implementing that mature response and behavior.

Alright, I appreciate your attention today as we walked through the monumental process that is rearing your kids to adulthood.

It's monumental because parenting our kids to maturity needs to be systemic. It needs to touch every facet of our lives.

That is the only way we can set our kids up for success, that they will be functioning like young adults when they hit 13 and continue to mature as adults as they age.

If you would like some personalized assistance with this process, if it would help you to sit down with a biblical counselor and map out what this looks like in your family, please email us at counselor at truthloveparent .com

or leave a voicemail at 828 -423 -0894. We would love to help.

Also, don't forget about the amazing offers available to you today, including the free Biblical Parenting Essentials Conference on the

Evermind app, the insane deal on a MyPillow, my new book, Quit, How to Stop Family Strife for Good, and the upcoming homeschool conferences.

And on top of that, all of the great resources linked for you in the description of today's episode. And please share this series on social media with your pastor and with your friends so that they can start building a community of like -minded

Christians who are on the same journey you are to help guide your kids to Christ -honoring adulthood.

To that end, join us next time as we talk about that very thing, creating a community of believers to help you in your goal of rearing godly adults.

I'll see you then. Truth. Love. Parent. is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you worship

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.

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