TLP 314: Understand Your Children’s Actions and Words

And this is so important to acknowledge because it strips us of the ability to say things like, I'm a good person who just makes mistakes. Or, he's a good kid, he's just in a phase. Or, he has a good heart.

My friends, none of that is true.

Show Introduction and the Need to Understand Children’s Actions

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

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Their faithful giving helped this episode be heard in over 70 countries. So thank you so much guys. Okay, so today's rebroadcast is all about understanding why your kids say what they say and do what they do.

I don't think any of us would have imagined you would have to tell your children not to play in the toilet or not to announce to the entire shoe department that the gentleman helping you was quote, a waste of skin, unquote.

But we find ourselves in those situations all the time. In fact, if I'm being honest, my mother was the one who had to run interference when the elementary iteration of myself made the casual observation about the guy who was a waste of skin.

What makes it even more difficult is that God has created us, the parents, to help our kids change. Well, if we can't figure out why they do what they do, how on earth are we going to help them stop doing it?

Well, that's what today's episode is all about. However, if you didn't listen to the last episode, you are at a disadvantage because that one lays the foundation for today's inductive study. So either go back and listen to that or continue on today.

Either way, enjoy. Last time, we were reminded that real, genuine change can happen in our families. But as I said, we always need to start with us. So as we learn and grow in these areas, we'll be that much more equipped to teach it to our children.

The Tree and Its Fruit as a Picture of Human Behavior

So this time, we need to figure out why we do what we do and say what we say. There's so much biblical data to answer this question, so I just want to reduce our study to it. It's this beautiful metaphor found all throughout the scriptures.

It's the picture of a tree and its fruit. Now, fruit is repeatedly used to represent those things we say and do. It's also used to picture our accomplishments, character, souls we've won to Christ, and it occasionally represents our children, as in Psalm 127 .3 and Luke 1 .42.

But let me share just a sampling of the more familiar scriptures that deal with fruit. Psalm 1 .3 says, he is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither, and all that he does he prospers.

I think about the parable of the soils in Matthew 13 .8 that we studied in our four children series. At the end, Christ explains how the soft-hearted child produces fruit, some a hundredfold, some 60, and some 30.

Matthew 3 .8 and 10 says, bear fruit in keeping with repentance, and then verse 10 says, even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

Matthew 7 .16, you will recognize them by their fruits. Matthew 12 .33, either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. John 15 .8 says, by this my father has glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

Romans 7 .5, for while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. Second Corinthians 9 .10 says, he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest or the fruit of your righteousness.

Of course, Galatians 5 .22 talks about the fruit of the Spirit. Hebrews 12 .11, for the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Hebrews 13 .15, through him who let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God that is the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. And James 3 .17, but the wisdom from above is full of good fruits.

And there are many more passages that detail where fruit comes from, the difference between good and bad fruit, how to purge the bad fruit, and so on. And then we'll consider some of these questions later on.

For now, let's just focus in on one evidence of love, two kinds of people, and end our time by answering the question, why do we and our family members do what we do? Number one, let's consider one very important evidence of love.

Love for Christ Shows Itself in Obedience

In John 14 .15, Jesus himself says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. James discusses in great detail the necessity of living out what we say we believe. And though it's true that people can fake righteousness for a while, true love for God will always evidence itself in the way we and our kids live.

I love using John 14 .15 with my whole family. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Keeping God's commands in what we say and do is directly tied to our love for God. This isn't surprising since Jesus also told us that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord, our God.

Therefore, we know that love is at least part of the equation for why we do what we do. But moving on, number two, let's use Psalm 1 in Matthew 7 to understand that there are only two types of people in the world.

Two Kinds of Trees: The Righteous and the Wicked

First, let me go ahead and read the passages. Psalm 1 says, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

He's like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit and it sees him, and its leaf does not wither, and all that he does he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous, for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. In Matthew 7, 17 through 20 says, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.

A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire, thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

These two passages separate the entire human race into those who have a good relationship with God and those who don't. Psalm 1 refers to an individual who has a good relationship with God as a righteous person, and they're described as a healthy, productive tree.

Matthew 7 also refers to them as a healthy tree and tells us they bear good fruit. On the other side, we have those who do not have a relationship with God or are not a good one. Psalm 1 calls them ungodly and compares them to dead chaff, and Matthew 7 calls them a diseased tree that bears bad fruit.

Most of you should know what chaff is. I like to compare it to that papery husk you find on a peanut after taking it out of its shell. It's completely worthless to us from every aspect. It doesn't taste good.

It doesn't feel good in our mouths like that outer shell of our popcorn that kind of gets stuck in our teeth. It also doesn't provide any health benefits. It's just completely worthless to us. That's why in Bible times they would throw their grain in the air during a strong wind, and the weighty grain would fall back to the earth, and the papery, worthless chaff would be blown away.

That's how God, through the pen of David, describes those who do not have a relationship or a good relationship with God. Okay, so we've seen that our fruit is related to our love for God and that the strength of our relationship with Him also has a lot to do with our fruit, and I think we all agree that makes sense, but I do believe there's more.

The Roots of Fruit: Desire and the Will

Let's go ahead and fill out this tree metaphor a bit more. We all know that trees nourish themselves in a few ways. They utilize photosynthesis, and they also soak up nutrients and water through their roots.

For right now, I don't want to overcomplicate the metaphor, so we're going to just kind of ignore the photosynthesis part and focus in on the roots. Without a good root system, the tree can't even really grow leaves in the first place, let alone fruit.

So, anyway, the fruit grows, but how does it grow? Well, again, to be simplistic, it grows in part because of the nutrients that come through the roots up the trunk and into the branches. So, the fruit doesn't just magically appear.

We know that. There's a cause. So, we want to figure out what feeds the fruit in our lives. Where does it come from? Again, please understand that there's no Bible passage that says you do what you do and say what you say because you fill in the blank, but not only can we see from multiple passages a spiritual and logical flow, but there's at least one passage in particular that gets really specific.

So, please consider the following questions, though, before we move on as we try to work through this for ourselves. Why do you eat chocolate ice cream? Why do you like rollercoasters? Why do you cheat?

Why do you love your kids? Why do you speak unkindly to your spouse? Why do you play the sports you do? Why did you sign up for that class? Why do you even eat food? Why do you watch movies? Why do you take things that don't belong to you?

Choose any one of those and think about it, good or bad, doesn't matter. Why do you like or dislike rollercoasters? Why do you eat ice cream? Have you figured it out? I know this format is really hard to interact with, so let's discuss one of the best passages that I believe illustrates this concept beautifully.

We're going to look at Genesis chapter 3. Okay, so Eve has just been tempted by Satan to eat the forbidden fruit, and in verse 6 it says,. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

So, let's move backward through the passage. What was Eve's fruit? Well, not the fruit she ate, but her actions. Well, she took the fruit, she ate it, and she gave some to her husband. Why did she do that?

Well, the verse gives us three reasons. First, she saw that the tree was good for food. Second, it was a delight to the eyes. And third, it could make her wise. Now, some of you may be thinking, she did it because of what she could get out of it, or maybe you think she did it because of how it would make her feel.

And I think those play into it, but I believe the most seminal answer is this. She did it because she wanted to. Look at what it says. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took the fruit because she desired it.

It was pretty, it looked yummy, and it would make her wise, and she wanted it. Now, my dad says all the time, everything you do, you do because you want to. That goes for you, your spouse, your kids, the neighbors, the president, me, and everybody else.

In fact, this is so true, I can categorically say that you've never done anything you didn't want to do. I know, and all of a sudden, everyone driving their cars nearly drove off the road, and if you were cutting vegetables, you may have just lost a finger.

What are you talking about, Aaron? Are you crazy? I do things I don't want to do all the time. In fact, I'm doing something I don't want to do right now. Well, hold on a minute, take a breath, engage your mind, and follow through with this illustration.

Let's say I did something really terrible. I put a gun to your head, and I said, kick your dog, or you're going to die. So, what do we do? We, obviously, we weigh it out in our minds. I believe most of us would kick our dogs.

I mean, we understand that what we have to sacrifice to stay alive isn't worth as much as what we gain by staying alive, and plus, you know, we're not killing the dogs, we're just kicking the dogs. It's going to hurt the dog, but hopefully they'll heal, and you know, we have all these justifications.

Now, again, I know this is a ridiculous illustration, but bear with me. All of us could say, I didn't want to kick my dog, but I had to, but unfortunately, that wouldn't be true. You didn't have to kick your dog.

You kicked your dog because you wanted to kick your dog more than you wanted to die. In situations like that, it's a question of degrees. You may be driving to that job you despise because you want to work more than you want to be homeless.

None of us really like disciplining our children, but we really do want to discipline them because we know what'll happen if we don't. You do what you do because you want to. You say what you say because you want to, and this is so important to acknowledge because it strips us of the ability to say things like, I'm a good person who just makes mistakes, or he's a good kid, he's just in a phase, or he has a good heart.

My friends, none of that is true. We overeat because we want to. We lie because we want to. We worry because we want to. We yell at our kids because we want to. We even flirt with people who aren't our spouse because we want to.

And we also turn down our spouse's advances because we want to. We get aggravated when our home doesn't run the way we want it to because we want to. We can't say the devil made me do it. We made ourselves do it because we are not good people.

Seriously, no one who actually desires to be unkind can be called a good person. No one who desires to do something wicked can be considered good. We're sinners. Sin is not a disease. It's not an accident.

It's not something that controls us against our will. Sin is a willful act against God that is deserving of death. Listen, there was only one good person who ever lived, and his name is Jesus. And that one good person came to this earth to bear the penalty of our sin.

Any goodness we have, we have through him because even our best attempts are selfish and vile. Now, I know it's not too hard to agree that our children do what they do and say what they say because they want what they want, but we have to start with us if we hope to be able to help our children see this.

And our children need to see this, but so do we. Consider again Matthew 7, 17 through 20. Every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. If there is a bad fruit in my life, it's because there's something wrong with my tree.

When you have bad fruit in your life, it's because you're a bad tree at that moment. My tree is bad because it wants to bear bad fruit, and the same is true for you and your kids. The very first sin occurred because Eve wanted to do it, and every sin that has come after it was born from the same thing, our desires.

Now, if you're still unconvinced because this is really hard truth to swallow, this is this is gross, this is nasty, this makes us feel bad about ourselves, I need you to consider James 4. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

Think about quarreling and fighting, okay? That's what we say, it's what we do, right? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. According to James, we desire, covet, and have passions that bear the fruit in our lives.

So, is that it? Have we found the root of why we and our kids do what we do? That's a good question. For now, we can say this though, we do what we do and say what we say because we want what we want every single time, but it is true and it's fair to ask the next question, well, why do we want what we want?

Why do we desire what we desire? And we need to ask this in order to see if there's another more basic reason that we do what we do, but for right now, we're just going to stop here by making full circle.

Jesus said that we don't obey because we don't love him and that is true, but why don't we love him? Well, because we don't want to. We'd rather love ourselves and the same goes for all our other family members.

Looking Ahead to the Next Question: Why We Feel What We Feel

Now, if this is difficult and you'd like to review these passages and ideas, please check out our episode notes at truthloveparent .com. They are always free for you to look at and they're linked in the description.

And also, join us next time as we consider why your kids feel what they feel. We still have to answer the why do we want what we want question. We're not trying to avoid that, but first, we need to figure out where our emotions play into this whole doing, saying, desiring spectrum.

On another note, have you reviewed us yet? We'd be so thankful if you give us a review on iTunes. You can find the instructions on how to do that at truthloveparent .com on our reviews tab. Listen, I know it's uncomfortable being faced with the reality that I do bad parent behavior because I want to, but we need to be honest with ourselves and with the scripture.

But remember that truth sets us free. I believe when this study is over, your understanding of your relationship with God can deepen further than you know, and then you can take that understanding and wisely help your children learn it too.

And I'm excited about that. So I'll see you next time.

Truth. Love. Parent 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.