Family Experience

Taking a Step
By Sarah Anderson

Spiritual leader—two words people use a lot at church, and ones that they often direct right at you as a parent. Those words can be pretty intimidating. Leading our kids spiritually is one of those things we know we should do, maybe even want to do, but we’re just not sure how.

But when it comes to the influence you have on your kids spiritually, it is something we rarely learn how to do until we simply make the decision to do it. We can read books. We can listen to guidance. We can observe the pros. But we can’t really make any strides until we simply take the plunge and make the first move.

For a lot of us, there is nothing more scary than endeavoring to navigate our own spirituality, let alone talk with our kids about their spirituality. But we can’t be non-participants in this. We can’t watch from the sidelines and allow the youth pastor, the small group leader or the church as a whole take over a role designed and purposed for you as parents—as tempting, appealing and easy as that might be.

Your kids need you—more than they need a coolly dressed youth pastor. Your kids need you—more than they need a culturally relevant small group leader. Your kids need you—more than they need a spiritually impressive church. All of those can play an important role, but they don’t lessen your role. Your kids need you, because your kids are watching you, observing you, taking note of you and the value you place on what is going on with them spiritually. So fading into the background isn’t really an option.

So how do you even begin to engage your kids when it comes to their spiritual well being? For one, you start by asking questions. I remember hearing years ago that people can easily determine what I value and what matters to me by the questions I ask them. When I first got married, my dad would ask me if my new husband and I were “doing okay financially.” He asked this one question often enough that I knew, to him, it mattered that we were managing our money wisely. In the same way, the questions we ask our kids reveal what means the most to us. Are we only concerned with their grades, their whereabouts and their messy rooms? Or do we take the time to ask about their time at church? What did they most enjoy about their time there? Was there something that stuck out that they heard or talked about? Was there anything that challenged them or confused them? Begin a conversation, a dialogue, an ongoing connection that happens because you made the effort to care about what is happening at church.

Make yourself available. Don’t allow yourself to become invisible in your own teenager’s life. Kids notice your willingness to simply be there —whether they acknowledge it now or years later. Your presence alone is communicating a valuable message: “I care about you. You matter to me. So, I am going to make sure you have my attention. You have my time. You have me.” This could mean you make the effort to drop off or pick up your student from the student program or it could mean you are simply tuned into what is happening in the student ministry. Doing this communicates to both the youth pastor and to your student that what they are doing has validity, is important and matters enough to you for you to know what is going on.

Sometimes, leading your child spiritually takes time. Sometimes it is more comfortable to stay uninvolved in something that doesn’t come so easily and feels so odd. But even though it’s easier, if you don’t make the effort, you’ll miss out on some incredible experiences. With most things, when you give it time, things start to improve. The outlook isn’t so bad. It doesn’t feel so foreign. In fact, it may actually start to feel right.

No, it doesn’t happen overnight. And no, it doesn’t mean that it’s always going to go well. There will be some awkward silences. There will be times when you’ll wish you would have said something differently. But continued effort, renewed care and concern can go a long way. And the glimpses of payoff—though maybe brief—are enough to look past the awkward foibles that come with the learning process to see the potential.

When it comes to the spiritual lives of your kids, there is potential. So much potential. Nurture it in them, not by becoming a super parent, but by becoming their parent—a parent who cares too much to fade into the background and let someone else steer the reigns of their spiritual lives.

© 2009 The reThink Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Session One: Can You See Me?

Sometimes you can stand in a room or walk down a hallway or sit in a chair and no one notices you. It’s not that you have some type of special ability that makes you invisible—people just don’t see you. They know nothing about you—nor do they seem to want to know anything about you. It’s like you’re not even there, even when you are physically in the room. You’re invisible. The good news is Jesus sees invisible people—even those who never realized they were invisible.

BOTTOM LINE: At some point in your life, you were invisible—but Jesus saw you.

TRUTH
“Do you want to get well?” (John 5:6 NIV).

“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” Then Jesus said to him: “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked (John 5:7-9 NIV).

Series Overview
We are surrounded by the invisibles. These are people who simply want to know someone cares, someone notices—people who want to know God cares. Some of us would even say we feel that way—invisible to an entire world, daily passing us by. Whether that feeling is a familiar one or not, the reality is that each one of us has felt invisible at one point or another. But we didn’t stay that way. God saw us. He sees the invisibles. And because God took notice of us, we are able to open our eyes to see those around us.

Family Experience: Imagine the End
The Galatians lost their focus and started emphasizing the wrong things. That’s easy to do, isn’t it? In the sometimes chaotic world of raising a family, sometimes we can lose sight of who and what we are ultimately pointing children towards.

I’m Not God
By Reggie Joiner

As a father of almost-grown children, I have lived through several stages of parenting. I remember walking into my office one day and looking at the rows of books I had collected on family issues. One of my daughters had been through an extremely difficult situation, and I was panicked and frustrated. As I grabbed books off the shelf, I recall saying out loud, “The problem I’m dealing with right now is not in any of these books!”

Sometimes I don’t have an explicit revelation from God that tells me immediately what I’m supposed to do. Sometimes there are no simple solutions, no clear paths of action, no quick fixes; there is just God. Somewhere along the way I have learned to lean on a principle I refer to as “imagine the end.”

The fog usually begins to lift when I mentally fast-forward to the final chapter of my children’s lives and ask a pointed question: Who do I really want them to become? I know that in the middle of that answer is an understanding of who God is. Then I imagine the end and remember that God is writing His narrative. When it comes to my children, the most difficult thing I have ever done is to trust God to show up and do what only He can do. (Did I mention that I have control issues?) Some days I just need to be reminded that my family is part of a bigger picture and that God desires to demonstrate His redemptive power through us. He even leverages the most frustrating conflicts in my family life to remind me that He is God. That day in my office, it was if He seemed to say,

I am not trying to make them happy;
I want them to really live.

In the middle of their pain,
I can be a better friend than anyone, even you.

I am the only one who can really love them unconditionally, forgive them forever, and be a perfect Father.

So maybe you just need to trust Me enough so they can see Me.

Besides . . .
With all your issues, I think it’s probably better for them to trust Me more than they trust you.
Isn’t it more important for them to love Me more than they love you?
I can heal their hearts; you can’t.
I can give them eternal life; you can’t.
I am God; you’re not.

YOU CAN’T COMPETE WITH GOD

As strange as it sounds, I think I have made the mistake of sometimes trying to compete with God. Instead of pointing to Him, I tried to be the hero. There is a critical difference between being an influence or leader in my kids’ live and trying to be everything to them. I have always believed wise leaders in the church work hard to keep God in the spotlight, and the same principle applies to parents. Smart parents will strive to make sure they are not trying to become a substitute for God.

I am learning how important it is to fast-forward to who I want them to become. When I imagine the end, it enables me to distinguish more clearly between what matters and what matters most. And as much as I want my relationship with my children to be everything it should be, it’s much more important that they are pursuing a right relationship with God.

(Excerpted from Think Orange © 2009 by Reggie Joiner, published by David C. Cook)

Session Two: The Checklist

What does a Christian look like? Stop for a minute and think about that, because aside from the basic belief that Jesus was the Son of God, He died for our sins and rose from the dead, there are some things that most of us would add to that. Maybe our response would be someone who reads the Bible or helps people in need. Maybe it’s someone who prays every day and attends church regularly. Maybe it’s someone who has memorized a bunch of Bible verses and knows a lot about the Bible. But we also have some responses we probably wouldn’t feel very comfortable saying aloud—things like the kind of music someone listens to, what someone wears or what someone says. So what does a Christian look like? The answer is probably a lot more simple than we make it out to be.
(Galatians 6:15 NIV)
(Galatians 3:26-28 NIV)