TLP S00-E5: Removing the Mask | 4 Ways to Better Understand Your Child

Understanding that my daughter is stealing money from kids at school is not merely an indication that she wants more money. In the end, what she did betrays that she thinks God's way of living clearly doesn't work.

ACBC Conference Reflections and the Sufficiency of Scripture

To truth, love, parents. Where we use God's Word to become intentional premeditated parents. Here's your host, A .M. Brewster. Welcome to episode 5. I am very excited.

To be meeting with you today. First, I want to tell you a little bit about where I've been the past few days. It has been an amazing experience for me and I want to share that with you. And second, we have some great content I want to get into your ears as soon as we can so that today, right now, as soon as we're done, you can use this information to help you be a premeditated parent.

Alright, so where was I the past couple days? Well, I went to the ACBC conference near Indianapolis. ACBC stands for the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. The executive director is Heath Lambert and it was amazing.

We were exhibiting Victory Academy for Boys and Victory Family Ministries while we were there, but we also attended the conference and went to the workshops and there was just such an encouragement to be there interacting with people, to be talking about our struggles, to be talking about how we can be better biblical counselors.

There was laughing there. There were some tears. I tell you there was one conversation I had that really broke my heart, but when it was all said and done, there was hope. There was hope in the fact that Jesus Christ is God.

There was hope in the fact that His Word is alive. It is powerful. It is the only thing that can change us and it can give us everything that we need for life and godliness. And I think that was really one of the major themes of the conference.

The conference was celebrating the 40th year, 40th anniversary of ACBC, formerly known as NANC. NANC stands for the National Association of New Thetic Counselors and in the past, I don't remember exactly when, but they changed it to ACBC.

It was an amazing conference because of three main reasons. One, they were celebrating their 40th year. Two, they were dealing with truth and love and that is, those are two words that show up everywhere.

It's the name of our podcast, but in addition to that, we have that in the slogan for Victory Family Ministries and so many other of the exhibitors there had the words truth and love in all of their material because that is what we need.

Without truth, without sharing it in love, there can be no change. And that was the third main focus of this conference was the sufficiency of Scripture. We need nothing more than God's Word to help us become the people that we need to be.

Everything we need for life and godliness is there and the power to accomplish it is there in Christ and that was just prevalent throughout the entire conference, all the workshops, the reminder about God's truth, going back to God's truth.

And so being there this past three days was really refreshing for me. I kept coming back to the fact that there is healing and there is joy and there is hope in God and in His Word and I want you to walk away with that today as well, especially for your parenting.

There is victory. There is hope for your parenting and we're gonna look a little bit about some of the things that you can do, some truths from God's words today that's going to help you with that. One last thing I'm excited about from the conference is the fact I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Heath Lambert, who is the executive director of ACBC, an amazing man.

I'm so thankful for what God is doing through him and I'm hoping to set up an interview with him in the very near future where he can share with us some of his thoughts on what it looks like to have counseling in our parenting, how that should work out, and how we can be better at it.

So stay tuned for that in the future. I hope to get that out to you very soon. Okay, now for today's topic. Today our episode is called Removing the Mask, Four Ways to Better Understand Your Child. This is a huge deal with a lot of people that I interact with because they come to the place where they say, I don't know who my kid is anymore.

Oftentimes that happens as the child has gotten older, that happens as the child has gotten involved in activities and behaviors that are not glorifying to God, things that they weren't previously doing, and mom and dad are going, whoa, who are you?

But this information is equally as important for children who are younger or for children who have not yet started acting out on their sinful behaviors because oftentimes I think we make assumptions about who our kids are and that's terrible.

It's terrible because an assumption is not reality. I used to tell my camp counselors that you need to be paying attention to everybody. Yes, those rowdy boys in the corner, you need to give your attention to them, but the little girls sitting quietly in the other corner being quote-unquote sweet, you need to pay attention to them too.

What are they talking about? What ideas are they sharing? What worldly Christless philosophies are they espousing? Because I'll tell you what, when I got a phone call from a parent, very seldom was someone complaining that their boys got roughed up in a game that got a little bit out of hand.

More often than not, it was a comment about the type of conversation that was going on with that little group of girls or that little group of guys who seemingly were being quiet and good, and I think that happens in the Christian school as well.

You know, the excelling students get a lot of focus because they're doing well. The students who are struggling get a lot of focus because they're not doing well. And those kids in the middle, the quiet ones who plot along and get decent grades, they oftentimes are overlooked.

Do we really know who they are? Do we really know how we can best help them? Or are they okay because everything looks fine on the outside? Think about it, we drive them to school, we sleep under the same roof with them, we watch every one of their games, their concerts, and their meltdowns.

We may even have the regular opportunity to share meals with them, yet we often have no idea who they really are, why they do what they do, what they want in life. Sometimes, for those of us, we used to think we knew our children, but we don't anymore.

Perhaps you felt what many parents have verbalized to me about their teenagers. Something happened, they changed, they're not the kid I used to know, or what happened to my baby? And in my line of work, this is an all-too-common parental conundrum.

It happens in many ways for many reasons, but right now, you're likely less concerned about how it happened than you are about fixing it. Or for those of you who think you have a good idea who your kids are, you want to make certain that you actually have that knowledge.

And for some reason, especially if you've lost an understanding of who your child is, sitting down and asking them, how's school? Or is something bothering you? Or what are you thinking about? It just doesn't seem to work anymore.

They don't seem to give you the real answers. Well, the encouraging reality is that our children communicate to us who they are in everything they do. They even scream their deepest heart issues to us with their silence.

So with this thought in mind, I'd like to share four vital ways to remove your child's mask and start the glorious process of knowing your child and helping them become the person God wants them to be.

Each concept we're gonna go over is phrased as a question, but you're not gonna be asking your child these questions. It's possible that if you did ask them, they wouldn't even know the answers. The questions are for you to answer, for you to figure out, and so in the process, be able to actually understand your child.

They're designed, these questions are designed to get you thinking about your daughter's nonverbal communication and help you pull back the curtain to your son's world. Of course, you can watch and observe all you want, but please note that the best way to know your child is to talk with them.

This is a vital part of any relationship, including our relationship with God. The people we like the most are the people we talk to the most. However, it's likely your son or daughter may be hiding something very dear to them, and as I mentioned earlier, they might not even know why they act and talk and feel the way they do.

So discovering the answers to these questions may seem a little impossible, especially if you are in a situation where your child has locked down on you. It may come across as a Sherlockian task, but our great God described the process for us in Proverbs 25.

He said, "...the purpose in a man's heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.". Let's change a couple words here. "...the purpose in a child's heart is like deep water, but a parent of understanding will draw it out.".

So, are you ready to draw out your child's heart? Here we go. First question, what do my child's speaking and spending habits reveal about their passions? I want you to log on to Facebook. I want you to take a look at what your friends are writing about.

When you really stop to listen to what people say, you can readily figure out what's important to them. Where I used to work, the lunch table resonated with sports jargon, tales of student woes, and the like.

Occasionally, God's goodness and his all-sustaining grace came up, but not often, and not for long. I want you to listen to your kids talk, especially when they're talking with their friends. This includes social media and texting.

In fact, they're often far more honest with their fingers than they are with their mouths. You say, but I'm not friends with my kid on Facebook. Well, you need to change that right away. You need to be friends with them.

You need to be able to see what they're saying. You need to have access to their text messages, and if your kid is not in that age group, if he's he or she is younger than that, you need to listen carefully when it just seems like they have mindless babble, when they're just playing with their dolls or talking to their little friends, because what they're saying is revealing something important about them.

Now, while you're on Facebook, maybe you have an opportunity to see what your friends are buying. They're telling you, they're putting it on pictures, or maybe you have an opportunity to look at your co-workers bank statement.

Likely, your business peers talk often of their new purchases, whether it's as simple as new shoes or a dynamic as a vacation home. What people spend their hard-earned money on reveals their priorities.

How can some people buy canned corn for their children while they wear designer sneakers? Why do addicts often live in squalor while paying obscene amounts of money on drugs? It's what's important to them.

If your children have money and have the ability to spend it, your son may not tell you with his mouth that he loves himself more than anyone else, but if all of his petty cash is spent on him without a thought for the other people in his life, you know what's important to him.

You often don't have to ask someone what they think about God. The fact that they never talk about Him or invest their most precious resources in His cause tells you everything you need to know about their relationship with Him.

This is the first step to learning to remove your child's mask, looking at things in a different light, looking at what they say, looking at what they spend their money on, and seeing it for what it truly is, a revelation of their heart.

A child who only ever talks about himself and takes his most precious resources and pours them back into himself is an idolater. So this question helps to lead us to a deeper reality. Question number two, what do my children's words and actions say about their thoughts on God?

The Wilds Christian Camp and Conference Center coined this phrase, you do what you do and say what you say because you want what you want, and you want what you want because you believe what you believe about God, His Word, and yourself.

And I believe no truer words were ever spoken. However, understanding that my daughter is stealing money from kids at school is not merely an indication that she wants more money, but it also reveals that she believes her desire for money is more important than her peers right to keep their money.

And furthermore, exposes the fact that she doesn't believe that dad and the school's rules about stealing are important enough to follow. And in the end, what she did betrays that she thinks God's way of living clearly doesn't work.

It's not a natural conclusion to her. So this becomes important because as I look at what my child is doing, I can see what they think about God. But we need to be very careful, and I want to give you four vital caveats when it comes to accurately interpreting a person's motives.

Because sometimes we get ourselves in trouble. We're way too good at this. We look at what a person did, and we subscribe motives to it, and we think we know what's going on, and we just look foolish because the person's sitting there thinking, well, you have no idea about me.

So here are some important caveats when it comes to truly understanding why a person does what they do. Number one, you are not automatically right just because you think you are. It's tremendously easy to miss important details, not know what the Bible has to say on a certain topic, or simply assign wrong motives.

So for this reason, you must always bear in mind the following. Two, only God knows a person's heart. All we can do is observe and make informed assumptions, but that's all they are, assumptions. And we should all know how dangerous assumptions can be when they're wrong.

You don't really know why she did what she did until she or God tells you. So number three, therefore, any and all assumptions must be biblically informed. Too many parents make statements like, you did that because you want to hurt us.

Maybe, maybe not. I guarantee there's no better way to shut down your child than by telling them they did something for a reason they didn't. However, when people sin, it's a biblical fact that they don't love God as much as they love themselves.

They don't love others the way they should. So stick with the biblical facts when it comes to trying to dig down to a person's root motivations. And that leads us to the fourth caveat here when it comes to trying to correctly interpret someone's motives.

When it comes time to confront your child, be careful with your words. Don't pretend to be God's mouthpiece by telling him why he argues unless you're actually going to quote him James chapter 4. Even then, it's still better to ask questions.

Guiding them to God's truth so they can better understand themselves as God sees them is the whole point. Lastly, it's always wiser to say something like, it seems like the issue is, or it appears you said that because, than just to straight-up tell them you did this because.

Our words and our children's words flow from our hearts and their hearts and our actions grow out of our beliefs. But weak-eyed mortals need divine help to truly understand motives, theirs and those of others.

So for this reason, the Bible needs to be your interpretive guide. Now keep in mind, we're talking about how to better know our child. And the first observation we made is, what are they talking about?

What are they spending their money on? Because those are two things that people do only for things that are important to them. They don't talk about things that aren't important. It's like when the English teacher asked people to raise their hand to give the correct answer.

You just don't have a lot of people jumping on that. But if the English teacher were to ask a question about someone's favorite show from the night before, almost everyone in the class would have to say something about it because that's important to them.

Secondly, as we try to remove our child's mask, we need to see that every single one of their actions says something about their thoughts on God. Now again, we have to be careful with this and that's why we need to make sure that we're biblically informed.

I made the observation about James chapter 4. The Bible tells us that there is conflict and there's arguing because I want something and I'm not getting it. I can say every single time there's an Every single time there is a heated debate, I can sit down, look at the two people and say with all confidence, whether they realize it or not, their deepest motivation is to have something they don't have.

In the case of a debate, perhaps, it's for you to agree with me. Now maybe it's not that and that's why I need to be careful. I can say, you know, this whole problem, this argument going on right now is because you want something and you want something and it's not the same thing and you're both upset about that.

That's Bible. But now I need to step back and ask and try to figure out, okay, what are you upset about? What is it that you want that you're not getting? Why do you think you deserve this thing? Those are the questions that my observations might not be able to accurately describe and so therefore I need to start asking questions.

Entertainment, Temptation, and the Heart

The third way that I can remove my child's mask is to ask this question, what is my child's entertainment teaching them? In the same way I need to understand what my child's words and actions reveal about his views on God, I also need to be aware of the pressures my child encounters from the outside.

1 Peter 5 8 tells us that Satan wants to destroy our children. Let me say that again. 1 Peter 5 8 tells us that Satan wants to destroy our children. He's not content to let your daughter ruin herself.

He wants to be an active participant in her demise. I believe the second greatest destructive influence on the life of your child is what they use to entertain themselves. This doesn't merely encompass movies, music, the internet, and books, though each of those is huge.

It includes other pastimes such as sports and malls and projects and things like that. The world is voraciously preaching its philosophies, shouting its opinions, and cramming its agenda down your child's throat.

Do you know what the culture is teaching your children? What are the themes of the songs they listen to? What worldview does that movie promote? What is your son being exposed to in the locker room at basketball practice?

What motives are your daughters having hung above them as the main reason for winning? What does the world want your kids to believe about the way they dress? Your children are being attacked on every front.

Understanding the specific attacks will help you prepare your child to overcome them, that is if they're unavoidable, or you can even help them to see where certain forms of entertainment need to be radically amputated from your child's life in order to do what Proverbs says and see temptation afar off and go around it so that it's completely avoided.

But keep in mind that the most subtle dangers are the ones that slip silently under our radars. As long as a movie doesn't have gratuitous violence and nudity, is that enough? Errant philosophy is frequently more damaging than flagrant sin because most people realize that murder is wrong, but quote-unquote following your heart sounds so right, even though it's tragically unbiblical.

My child is more prone to buying the life-destroying lie that following her heart brings happiness than she is to murder someone, and the same goes for your child. So as you remove the mask of sinful entertainment, it will become much easier to understand why your child is desiring what they desire, talking how they talk or going where they go.

It's gonna be easier to understand why they believe what they believe about God because they're watching these movies where people are able to go through their entire life and overcome the aliens and bring peace to the country without God.

This is because the heart issue is an issue of the heart. All of these external things, everything is coming from who they are on the inside. It's not just that they're a good kid who made a bad choice.

If they're making bad choices, that says something about who they are. All right, so the first question we have to ask ourselves in order to try to remove our child's mask is, what do my child's speaking and spending habits reveal about their passions?

And this goes for older children as well as younger children. The second question is, what do my child's words and actions say about their thoughts on God? Everything we do, everything we say is a reflection of our belief in who God is.

Number three, what is my child's entertainment teaching them? This is extremely important in order to understand our child. We need to know what entertainment they have and we need to know what that entertainment was designed to impress upon their moldable minds.

And number four, here's the fourth question, what idols are your child and their peers being tempted to worship? And I think if you're paying attention, you've seen that we've now come full circle. Everything about my child's life is a veritable tome of the heart.

Your daughter sends nasty texts to her friends about the odd girl in class because she's bought countless lies fed to her every day by the master deceiver himself in his world system. But why did she buy those lies in the first place?

Who would be tempted to hurt people they love simply to benefit themselves? And here's the answer, someone who loves themselves the most. When your son clicks on that porn site, he's not being asked to worship the feminine form.

He's being tempted to abuse the feminine form in a hedonistic ritual of self-worship. When your daughter cheats on that test, she's not being tempted to worship good grades. She's giving into her own selfish desires to be the best or to make people think something of her that isn't true or to simply have something she doesn't think she can have on her own.

In the end, she's worshiping self. So like you, your child is an all-out, every day, in every way worshiper. He's worshiping God or he's worshiping himself. Everything your child does, says, feels, and wants shows you who she serves.

If the actions are sinful, it's because the thoughts and intentions of the heart are sinful. If she doesn't want to talk to you, there's a problem. If he's unkind to his younger siblings, that's a problem.

Thankfully, there's this really great book that has the ability to reveal those thoughts and intents. Hebrews 4 .12 tells us that the Word of God is living and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Everything we do is motivated by what comes out of our hearts. But we need to know that even though we can use the Bible to help to remove our child's mask, it will remove other masks as well. Your daughter may not like to talk to you because you may be unapproachable, and perhaps your kid's younger sister is painfully annoying, which is why he's picking on her.

But when you take the steps to really understand what makes your child tick by removing the masks using God's truth, you will find, by the grace of God, areas where you, your child, and probably the rest of your family can grow.

And isn't that exciting? Isn't that why we're here? Isn't that, in a way, why we signed up for parenting? Not just that we can have little versions of ourselves running around, but so that we can help those people become who God wants them to be.

And as I've said before, it's all about me. And I don't mean that in a selfish way. I mean that in the fact that if I'm going to be trying to help somebody else become who God wants them to be, I've got to acknowledge the fact that I need to be who God wants me to be.

So as I'm trying to remove their mask by using God's Word to see who they really are so that I can help them better, I'm by nature going to be seeing areas in my heart where I need to change. Logs I need to be taking out of my eye before I'm dealing with their splinters.

And if you didn't get a chance to hear that podcast, you can go back to previous episodes. I believe it was episode number two. And you can see why it's always about me and how addressing your own relationship with God first is going to help you to be better at removing your children's masks now.

If you couldn't tell, I am super fired up. I mean, my time at ACBC was amazing. And this truth that we looked at today is so incredibly powerful. I can take it and I can go out to my son Micah and my daughter Ivy and I can watch the way they play and I can listen to what they talk about and I can see the types of books they like to read and I can use all of that to understand who my child is.

It's not just a game they played. It's not just a book they read. It is something intimate about who they are and being in tune to that can help me to be their better parent. So what I want you to do is I want you to take this information, I want you to go out today right now, the next opportunity you have, and look at your children in a new way.

See them for who they really are and that way I really hope that you'll never be surprised, that you never have to come to me and say, Aaron, I don't know who my child is anymore. I want you to know who they are.

I want you to know who God sees them to be and I want you to be able to help them to become the person that God wants them to be. If this episode has been a blessing to you and if you'd like to share it with others, please by all means subscribe and you can share these episodes with other people.

And if you'd like to have a visual copy of this you can go to evermindministries .com and you can search removing the mask. You can also follow the link that is in the description if you'd like that. Please check us out on Facebook and you can follow me on Twitter at AM Brewster and I hope you have a fantastic day learning.

Who your child really is. Truth, Love, Parents is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional premeditated parent. Join us next time as we search God's Word for the truth your family needs today.