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020: Godly Parents ALWAYS Initiate

INTRO AUDIO:

What is your relationship with your kids going to be like when they are adults? Have you ever thought that far down the line? Have you ever thought about what things you can be doing right now at the age your kids are presently, to ensure that when you get to that age you have a great relationship with your kids. This is God fearing kids and the parents who raise them. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about today.

MINDI:

Welcome back friends, This is Mindi.

CAREY:

And I’m Carey. Very good to have you with us. We are excited. We’re on episode number 20. Can you believe that?

MINDI:

Wow.

CAREY:

20 episodes down the road and we actually had a episode before that. So we’re

MINDI:

Thank the Lord for his work.

CAREY:

That’s right. That’s how we do it. Well, today we want to ask you to start out thinking about how you feel when someone takes initiative toward you. So maybe they invite you to coffee, maybe they invite you to a Bible study or something in your community and just come directly to you and invite you taking initiative. How does that make you feel? How about you Mindi?

MINDI:

It always makes me feel very loved.

CAREY:

Yeah, it really is an expression of love, isn’t it? It’s a sign of interest and a sign of care and it fosters healthier relationships. I mean, when you take interest in someone to the point that you initiate, you’re starting a relationship if you don’t know them. And if you do know them, you’re continuing that relationship and  growing it. And over the long term, it’s going to build unity, build trust between those two people if you keep initiating with each other. Now, when we consider initiation in the realm of parenting, we kind of have a mantra that we believe and that is that parents should always initiate always. If you’re a parent, that’s your job is to initiate.

MINDI:

I think a good thing to think about is God who is our heavenly Father. Does he always initiate with us?

CAREY:

Absolutely he does.

MINDI:

And he is our example as far as being a parent to our children.

CAREY:

Yeah. And when we think about famous versus John three 16, God so loved the world he gave, He took initiative because he loved the world so much. And that really is the heart of a parent also, isn’t it?

MINDI:

Exactly. And it doesn’t mean that our children will not initiate with us

CAREY:

Or should not, right.

MINDI:

But it does mean that we always need to be in that mindset that I’m the initiator.

CAREY:

All right, well let’s look at a Bible example that we have read before on the podcast. But it’s always good to revisit these things because as Peter says, and first and second Peter, he wants to stir us up by way of reminder. So we always need these reminders. And Deuteronomy six versus six through nine are directed specifically at parents. And we want to get ourselves in this mindset about initiating and how we’re to do that. So mind, would you like to read that for us?

MINDI:

Yes. It says, And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house. And when you walk by the way. And when you lie down and when you rise, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand. And they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates.

CAREY:

Now that’s really a great passage for this concept because you notice God has taken the initiative to give his word to his people here in Deuteronomy six. And he’s saying, All these commands I’m giving you should be on your heart. So we’ve got to take initiative first of all, in our own life to get God’s word into us. But then he says, you take initiative in other ways. You teach them diligently to your children. You talk of them when you’re sitting in your house. You talk of them when you’re walking in our day driving. You know, anytime you’re going somewhere and your kids are, you know, alongside, you should be doing something. I, I spoke with a woman this week who emailed me and told me she loves a morning mindset. She was trying to look for something that could be a six minute thing for them to do while they were on the way to school, taking the kids to school. And so she listens to the morning mindset with her kids way to go. That is initiative, she’s doing the right thing. And you notice this also. He says, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand. You shall write them on the door post of your house. I mean the whole thing is just full of initiative.

MINDI:

And what are we hearing initiative sounds like, it sounds like being purposeful and planning. That’s right. So we need to be purposeful parents. That’s another way to think of it.

CAREY:

That’s right. Now one concern that we hear sometimes when people hear us talk about initiative is, well I don’t want to be a controlling parent. So mind, how would you respond to that if someone were to say to you, Well it sounds like that’s going to turn into being controlling and I don’t want my kids to feel that way about me.

MINDI:

Well I’d say it’s not controlling because when we take initiative as a Christian parent, a godly parent, we are depending wholly on our heavenly Father to lead us in how to guide our children. So it’s our job to train them. It’s our job to teach them. So we’re asking the heavenly Father, how do I do this? And how do I do it in this specific situation and how do I do it today? And so when he guides us through his wisdom in our heart and through his word, then we plan out how we’re going to accomplish that training for our child. So it’s, it’s a dependent attitude but it’s also a loving, purposeful attitude because we care where our children are going on the path of

CAREY:

Life. Yeah. Amen. So when you are describing what it means to be an initiating parent opposed to being a controlling parent, it sounds like you’re saying we’re always on our knees seeking the Lord’s wisdom. Wisdom. We’re always seeking his practical daily help the Holy Spirit’s guiding us in the way that we initiate with our kids. That requires a lot of humility, doesn’t it?

MINDI:

Yes, absolutely. And being controlling, there’s not humility there. There’s actually pride there.

CAREY:

Yeah. So that’s a good morning light on your dashboard. Maybe if your attitude in what you’re doing is proud or pushy or demanding, you’re airing in the controlling side. But if your attitude is, is saturated with humility, you can be assured you’re probably on the initiating side in the proper way. So let’s think for a moment about a controlling parent. Maybe two of the typical manifestations of control that we see. One is where the parent has the attitude, I’m going to make my kid this way. I’m going to guarantee they turn out right. By having strict rules that they’d better obey, there’s going to be harsh discipline. If they don’t, you know, maybe the drill sergeant kind of a parent that you think of, that’s one manifestation. Can you think of another

MINDI:

With older kids, you’re try to hint to them what they should do without clearly giving them instruction, which would come across many times as condemning to them. You’re badgering them, maybe nitpicking, not leaving the room for the Holy Spirit to guide you to be kind and gentle and loving. A controlling parent would tend to be more critical, more condemning, not encouraging and uplifting.

CAREY:

Okay. So I think it’s good for us to have that contrast in our minds as we begin talking about what a proper kind of initiative should look like in the various stages of our children’s development. Let’s start out talking just from the beginning. We’ll go forward and talk about infants. Okay. When you have an infant in your house, it’s pretty obvious parents have to initiate every bit of their care from feeding them to changing diapers, to giving them baths, to putting them on a schedule where they’re awake and sleeping at certain times. Having playtime. All that parents are initiating, parents are the initiator. The only way the kid initiates is to cry, to let you know something’s wrong.

MINDI:

Right. And how does that child flourish? They flourish because of the parent’s initiative, the parent’s purpose in caring for them.

CAREY:

Yeah. And so I think it’s good for us to keep that in mind. That’s who our children are. Now of course they’re going to grow and they’re going to develop and they’re going to develop skill and independence and the ability to do things on their own. But all the while we are the parent just like we were when they were an infant. Now again, we’re not being controlling. We’re just want to have that mindset of taking initiative when we see a reason to do so. So let’s move forward to the toddler stage. So when kids are, you know, walking around all stumbly because they’re learning how to walk, they’re getting into things, the word no becomes part of your vocabulary as a parent because you’re trying to keep them safe and protected and in the right environment. Now it’s a little less obvious here how you should initiate all the time because you do want to allow your kids some freedom. But there’s still that initiative in in training them. You have to be in charge in so many ways. What are your thoughts on this?

MINDI:

I think parents need to be really focused and very purposeful in how they’re going to train their children to learn all sorts of things. And I think this is the time when parents start developing the mindset that they’re going to leave their child to figure things out on their own. For example, maybe I’m going to let my two sons fight it out to figure out how to, you know, the bigger one’s going to wall up the younger one. So the younger one’s going to learn how to quit picking on him and, and that that can just be really dangerous because there’s so many things in the child’s heart that will start developing that is negative if we don’t train them in every way. So taking the initiative to help your child learn every aspect of life is crucial. Don’t leave them to figure it out.

CAREY:

Yeah. That scenario that you talked about where the two boys are fighting, there’s so much going on under the surface in the hearts of each of those kids. One is developing this bully prideful attitude. The other is developing perhaps an insecure cowering fear of sorts. And you as a parent should take the initiative to step in and train each of them in the place that they’re at in that interaction. Not only how to handle what they’re feeling, but also how to resolve the conflict. How to get along in a way that’s honoring to God and loving toward their sibling.

MINDI:

Right. And we need to remember, not only are we teaching them correct behavior or teaching them the heart of God, you know, like the little say the two year old who’s nagging on his four year old brother and bothering him and the four year old’s son keeps saying, Mommy, mommy, you know, make my younger brother stop. There’s so much there we could teach the four year old and how he could think like God thinks towards his two year old brother. And how are we going to do that if we’re not initiating and we’re just letting it happen. Like, you know, just telling your two year old son, you know, no more stop, put them in time out. You know, tell the other, the four year old to leave the room. I mean there’s no help in growing them in the fear of the Lord if you do that that way.

CAREY:

Yeah. And I think in this toddler stage, it’s good for parents to realize your child is, is like an almost new blank canvas. I mean there’s nothing on the page and they’re going to grow and develop and learn based on what they experience in life. And based on your instruction and your instruction helps to paint a beautiful picture much more than just random events splashing paint on the canvas. I mean there may be a certain kind of beauty to that kind of art, but most of us look at that artwork and go, my two year old could have done that <laugh>. Well that’s exactly right. They could have done that. And that’s the point you as a parent want to guide them so that their life looks better than that. Their life is a, is a beautiful masterpiece.

MINDI:

Right? This is a very important stage to be intentional about teaching your children about Jesus as their savior. That Jesus came and died on the cross for their sins. They’re already learning about what sin is because they’re disobeying and you’re having to correct them. And it is so, it is so very important to start shaping their little minds to know about Jesus and to have a little kid’s bible to show them. And it’s so important to them to learn about Jesus, loving them by you showing love. And when you put your arms around your child, you say Jesus is putting his arms around you because he loves you and things like that. And so we as parents need to be intentional to tell our children the gospel in their toddler stage. And again, don’t leave it to them to figure it out. Don’t talk about Jesus and hope they’ll figure it out. Help them to know how to ask Jesus into their heart. Help them to ask for forgiveness. Tell them the words to say be intentional this, do you want Jesus to help you not to disobey mommy? Okay let me show you how to do that.

CAREY:

That’s really good. And I can just hear people saying, Yeah, but they’re, they’re so young. Do they really understand what they’re doing and all that. And folks that really doesn’t matter if they understand at that moment, you’re teaching them the truth and you’re guiding them in the truth. And they may become five or six or eight and realize, oh I really do need Jesus as my savior. And all this mom’s been saying is true that what they, what you think they decided when they were two didn’t really stick because they were only two. But that’s okay. They’ve got this fertile soil that you’ve cultivated all these years where the seeds of God’s word have been planted and they’re growing now at eight years old and they’re able to respond in true faith. So don’t be afraid of leading your child to the Savior through the gospel.

MINDI:

It’s a beautiful thing and a blessing as a parent to have the opportunity to tell your children about Jesus. And the more you talk about Jesus, the greater possibility that your children are going to be asking questions and use those opportunities. One time our oldest son was in the bathtub and he was two years old and he started asking us about what it meant to be baptized and we used the opportunity and we brought him to the, the gospel right there. And he became a Christian in the bathtub at age two and a half. But so we, we built on that and he, he never doubted his faith because we, we taught him at two years old this is what happened. You remember that. And he, he would remember at age three and he’d remember at age four. So we just helped him along to know what he did at two and a half, even though it wasn’t 100% understood.

CAREY:

Yeah, absolutely. Well let’s move forward into the elementary age and talk more about what initiative might look like in this realm. Now your kids are obviously becoming more independent at elementary school age. They may be going to school by themselves, they may be choosing their clothing, you know, all kinds of things you may decide you want to let your kids be independent in, but your initiation as a parent is still needed. I mean there are some ways we typically initiate that are obvious. We make sure they’re doing their chores at night, we make sure they’re doing their homework. We uh, help them with projects. We teach them in sports and in hobbies and things like that. Those are things every parent of an elementary school kid is engaged in. And you realize you have to take initiative to see that those things happen. But what about other areas of their life? What about, let me just throw one out there and you gimme some thoughts maybe what about social settings? How should we be taking initiative with our kids in social environments?

MINDI:

Part of having an attitude where I need to be purposeful, I need to take initiative with my children is I need to take the time to, to think about what is my child going through at six years old when they go off to school or six years old when they’re at home doing homeschooling with their brothers and sisters, whatever their scenario is. Or Sunday school class… Yeah. So we need to think about what kinds of questions to ask. You know, maybe at bedtime to talk about the day, talk about their friends, help our children to start learning how to express what’s going on in their life and then when a conflict comes up that they might have had with their little friend, we have a great opportunity there to help them to know how to think about it and how to act in that scenario from God’s perspective.

CAREY:

Yeah. And all we have to do to figure this out is to think what are the things we struggle with in our relationships with people? You know, we have people who say things to us and it rubs us the wrong way or we have something that happens where we wonder what that person thought of us. Our children are going to have those exact same examples, those exact same situations, but on a younger scale. So their friend in the Sunday school may have said something that made them feel bad, may have, may have made a comment that caused your kid to wonder what are they thinking about me? You know, address those things. Talk about those things as a parent, you’re the mature one. Take initiative to help your kids learn at a young age how to process the social environments that they’re in.

MINDI:

Yeah. We need to ask those questions that they might not have even brought up in terms of do you feel included with your friends? Do you feel loved by your friends? I mean ask questions that would fit their age but bring up things that you think they possibly will be dealing with but they’re not talking to you about it yet. Help them to communicate. Yeah,

CAREY:

A lot of times they don’t talk about it because they don’t know to talk about it. Right. They don’t even recognize it in their own heart. And some parents may say, Well I don’t want to stir the pot, I don’t want to give them insecurities that they don’t have already just by bringing it up. That’s not going to happen as you are taking initiative and as you’re instructing because you’re going to be guiding them in how to think and how to respond.

MINDI:

It’s just like any kind of a trainer who knows that. Like let’s say if you’re training a running team and you do trail running in the mountains and you’re going to talk to them when you go down this trail and you go to the right and then you go up a hill and you go to the left, you’re going to come across all these rocks. So make sure you’re aware of it so that you don’t trip and fall on those rocks. It’s the same kind of thing what we’re telling our children, when you go to school, you’re going to feel uncomfortable and shy. So that’s how you’re being purposeful, that’s how you’re initiating when you go to school today, Susie, you, you might feel shy, but what I want you to do is I want you to smile and be loving to your friends. That’s how you’re guiding them and preparing them in how to think.

CAREY:

Yeah. And we’re helping them to deal with their emotions. We’re helping them to deal with their thoughts to know how to manage those things. I mean look around you in the world we live in. That’s really kind of a clown show in many ways. How many people are struggling with their emotion as grown adults? How many people are struggling with their thoughts as grown adults? How much better would those things have been if your parents had been able and known how to come alongside you and instruct you in those things as a small little child, How much better would those circumstances be right now in your life? You want to set that up for your kids? One other thing that we should talk about here in the elementary age is the evil that’s in the world around us as parents. We should take initiative in talking to our kids about those things.

CAREY:

We don’t want our kids coming home from story time at school and they just heard about a transgendered person through a story they read. We want to be the ones to introduce that to them and talk to them about that kind of thing. Because we want them to think as God thinks about those issues and not come back from school thinking, oh this person’s normal and natural and it’s okay if people are like that. No, God has views on those things. And so we need to be teaching our kids. And a lot of people think, well that’s not age appropriate to tell a six year old about, you know, transgender and, and people who want sex change operations and things like that. They want to understand well the elementary school teachers aren’t shy about telling them about it. You as a parent definitely should not be

MINDI:

Right because it’s in some of the curriculum of schools and I’m sure it will spread. So we need to be wise in what evil is in this world. And whatever God leads you to as far as the schooling for your children, whether you homeschool or in public school or Christian school, you need to be wise. You and your husband or a wife need to be thinking and praying about what kinds of conversations do we need to be initiating with our children so they can be prepared in the world that they’re growing up in. And a very important thing about this is that it’s a great opportunity to teach your children the love and compassion that Jesus has for the world, for the lost. We need to be careful as parents and take the initiative to teach our children to not be proud, you know, to have the attitude that they’re better than the world because you’re teaching them what’s right, right on the heels of teaching them what is right and wrong. Teach them what a humble loving attitude should be towards those who practice the sin that they’re seeing them

CAREY:

Do. Yeah. And also the wisdom that comes from realizing by the grace of God, I am not in that situation. It’s none am I doing, it’s all that God has bestowed his grace on me and I want to have grace toward them and extend toward them the same love and the same care that God has extended toward me.

MINDI:

So now let’s move into the teen years. Junior high and high school years are very important because you need to help your children in this stage of their life to apply what you’ve been teaching them all along. So if you are a Christian parent who is raising their children from infant on to know the Lord, it’s not time to check out and think that they can figure things out on their own. It’s not time to go and get your degree and be gone from their lives much of the time because they can handle things, they can drive to school, they could drive to the store, you know, whatever. This is a very important time of initiating conversation to help your teen, um, know how to apply what they’ve been learning.

CAREY:

That’s right. Because if any of us think about our own teenage years, those are the times that are just fraught with temptations, fraught with questions, fraught with that growing intellect that wants to know the why of everything. And you as a parent need to be available and need to be initiating those conversations. Don’t be afraid of them. I mean, if you need to educate yourself, by all means, educate yourself on issues and answers and things like that from a biblical perspective. But you need to not be afraid to talk to your kids about the issues that are inevitably going to come to their mind.

MINDI:

Initiate good communication and regular communication and initiate regular encouragement in building up of your child, especially young teen girls. You’re going to see a lot of emotion. So regular communication with your teen girls is huge. They need to communicate, they need to be able to flesh out what they’re feeling and they need to talk it out and cry it out. So moms, that’s so good for you to be able to do that on a regular basis with your daughters and dads. It’s so good for you to date your daughters, take them on special dates and have a list of questions to ask them. Maybe your wife will help you with that. She might have good ideas of things for you to ask your daughter, but initiate pursue them.

CAREY:

And there’s nothing about that that says we can’t date our sons as well. I mean, we set up a routine of of taking our kids on dates regularly and we would go out for dinner or go bowling or pu put golf and in the car and, and over the table we’re having these conversations and we’re asking about their life and the things they’re feeling. And it’s all for the intention of helping them learn how to process this new stage of life and the things that they’re going through. That is a a time where you really are training your kids to be adults. They have the mental capacity in many ways of an adult. They have the physical capacity sometimes of an adult, but they’re not quite mature enough to be an adult. And so we’re, we’re in a training ground, it’s kind of like the bootcamp, so to speak for adulthood and parents. We need to be taking initiative in this area. I think there’s also just some specific practical life training things that we should have on our radar. Things like how to handle finances, things like sexuality, things like how to deal with temptation and evil in the world. I mean, parents, we’ve got to be thinking ahead of our kids a step or two rather than playing catch up because we realize the, the world and the culture spun out of control much more than we thought. We’ve got to be on our guard and ready

MINDI:

Here at this stage. There will be things that you will want to allow your child to make decisions on. You know, we say don’t leave your child to, to decide things on their own. That’s true. But here it’s kind of a testing, a training to let them go off and do things on their own to show that they have the maturity and they’ve learned from you or to show that they’ve messed up and then they can learn from that from your correction, your loving correction.

CAREY:

So we’re not continuing in a high level of control over our teenagers like we would with our toddlers, but we are continuing to initiate, we’re continuing to initiate the conversations, the questions, the debriefs of the experiences that they have and how did they do, what did they learn? Those kinds of things,

MINDI:

Right. And our hearts are still very much for them and concerned for them. And many times we will be finding ourselves praying a lot more as we watch to see how our, our children apply what we’ve taught them.

CAREY:

Very good. And I know many parents will approach this from a standpoint of the kid has an experience and then they’ll, they’ll have a debrief session and I’ll ask them, how did it go? What did you think? How did you feel about that? And then guiding the kids through the conversation to see where they made missteps or where they could have done something differently or where they did something great and can be encouraged. All of this is part of the training in the teen years that we’ve got to be intentional about. Okay, let’s move on to the next stage, which is when you have grown kids, that’s where we are. All of our kids are 19 or older at this point. And you know, they’re entirely independent so to speak. I mean, they still come home and live with us sometimes when they’re in a transitory phase or, or they have questions. Our daughters especially have called us a lot with questions at various points. How does this look when it comes to initiative? Mindi?

MINDI:

We still very much care for our children and where they’re at in life and their growth and their relationship with the Lord. So my initiative comes out first of all in prayer. I am in such a habit of praying for my children every day, even more passionately now that they’re all out of the house and they’re grown and some of them have their own families because it matters to me. How they live their lives now is so very important because I desire for them to glorify the Lord with their lives.

CAREY:

That’s right. And if you draw the contrast in your own mind, when your kids are in your home, you’re more aware of everything they’re doing and what they’re doing and how they’re growing immaturity and all that. But when they’re out of your house, you’re unaware unless you take initiative. And it’s not about consoling yourself by taking initiative. It’s about showing concern for them and seeing if there’s places where you need to step in or you could step in to be an encouragement or help to spur them on in the direction that they’re headed in following the Lord.

MINDI:

And God is so faithful as we initiate prayer with him, independence on him, regarding our grown children to bring to mind. Call your child, text them, encourage them in this way or that way. He’s just so faithful. That has happened so many times to us. But then practically, pursue your children in a relationship, in a friendship, staying in contact with them, whether they’re in the same town that you’re in or not, and have it be a healthy balance. Contact in a healthy, healthy balance. Communication. We really need to seek the Lord in wisdom and how to love them well without smothering them. Especially when they’re in their twenties and they’re just out of the house or they’re dating or they’re newly married. I mean, I know for me that I, I want to have connection and communication with my kids all the time.

CAREY:

And your kids in-law.

MINDI:

Yes. And my daughter is in-law and my son’s in-law and my grandchildren, but I know that they need to live their lives. And the good feelings, I feel if I were to express them all the time, it would not be good feelings for my children. It would <laugh>, it would be some othering, it would be, you know, too much mom. You know, I have things to do. I’m busy with my job. I’m busy loving on my new wife or you know, whatever. So we really need to be purposeful and depending on the Lord greatly for wisdom and how to do that because it’s really sad. I’m sure you have heard it and maybe you even experienced it with your appearance that many times people say it’s just, I love my mom, but it’s just not good to be in the same town as her. It’s great when they come visit, but I’m so glad they don’t live in our same town. I mean, you hear things like that and you don’t want that with your children. You don’t want them to feel that way about you. So you want to initiate with them, but you need to depend on God and how much and how little to do that. You need to be wise. You need to be discerning, you need to be balanced,

CAREY:

Which requires the fruit of the spirit of self-control. Many times because we do feel very deeply toward our children, even as adults. And we feel like we may know better, we may have the answer for their situation, but how did we learn those things with the Lord’s help walking through it, making mistakes at times, learning from those mistakes to be wiser people. And our kids have to walk that same road many times. And so, and like you’re saying, we have to be very discerning. And what I think is very interesting here is we started in Deuteronomy six, in the beginning of it is the Lord’s giving you his instruction. And you need to have these on your heart. Well, when your children get into their adult years, that same principle of God’s word being on your heart has to be the thing that sustains you. You have to fall back on your relationship with the Lord. Your strength is in him, your stability is in him, not in your kids, not in your connection with them, not in whether they’re doing well or not. Your stability has to be with the Lord so that you don’t overburden your kids with your neediness and your desire. We we’re going to do an episode about that eventually. But

MINDI:

Yeah, and I just wanted to say a practical way that the Lord has helped us and we’re still learning and want to continue to learn with our adult children, is to keep short accounts or so to speak, keep inventory on the hearts of our children and how we’re relating. When our, our oldest son got married to our first daughter-in-law, that was a new experience for us. And we tried to have communication on a regular basis with how are they feeling about our interaction with them. Um, how is our new daughter-in-law feeling towards, you know, how I relate to her as the mother-in-law? I would ask her individually, I would ask my son privately, we would have talks, the four of us. Is there anything that we’ve done that’s offended you? I mean, we’re taking initiative in those kinds of conversations. And sometimes it’s because the Lord laid on my heart that what we did or said might have bothered our children who are adults and we don’t want it to build up in their hearts because they might not necessarily know how to bring it to us.

MINDI:

And so if the Lord brings it to our mind, we’ll go to them and say, what I did the other day, or what I said the other day, did that bother you? And many times it did. And our children, because we’ve had an open relationship and communication their whole growing up years, it’s just a normal thing. And they’re able to say, Yeah, it did. Or when you do that, that’s hard for my spouse to handle. They’re not used to that kind of thing. And so we have learned so much and we have been so thankful for those kinds of conversations. And that’s because we took initiative first of all in our prayers and then we took initiative with our children. We didn’t just leave it to happen and we didn’t just say to ourselves, Our kids will bring it up if they have a problem, because most of the time they don’t. Most of the time they’re going to, it’s going to build and they’re going to tell their friends, friends how they have a hard time when, when mom comes into town. <laugh>.

CAREY:

Yeah. Yeah. And you think about why that is, it’s because all of us don’t want to be a bother to people. We don’t want to be overly picky. We don’t want to be bothered by minor things. And so we’re not sure sometimes if it is a minor thing or an important thing. And so we just set aside and then the next thing happens and it piles on top and the next thing happens and it piles on top. And we don’t realize for a long time that actually these things do bother me. I’m seeing a pattern. And so if a parent is taking initiative and asking insightful questions, they can get that thing identified and dealt with between them before it’s a big pile of things that are going to explode because it’s just been too much.

MINDI:

I think a key thing to remember is we need to be led by the spirit. That’s right. Even asking those good questions could be too much. Even trying to have open communication with your adult kids and your new son-in-law or daughter-in-law, that could be too much. We really need God’s discernment of the right balance. And we also need to remember that we can’t expect our kids to initiate with us at any given time. They will learn to initiate and they will learn to be purposeful towards us because we have taught them, and we’ve been a good example in that. But as we get older, we can’t say, Okay, now it’s, I’m done, I’m done with my job as a parent, it’s my kid’s job to take the initiative and keep the relationship going. We can never do that. I mean, God never does that <laugh>. We need to always be prayerfully asking the Lord, how can I encourage and build up my child today, even when you’re 70 and they’re 50?

CAREY:

Yeah. I love how you wrapped all that up because it really does rely on the Holy Spirit’s guidance and our prayers to know how we can best encourage and, and move our kids forward in their faith, in their life, in, in everything God’s doing in their lives. Well, this has been a great conversation and I’m sure there’s a lot of questions people may have as they think through this. Don’t forget on the website, there is a place where you can leave questions. We would love to answer specific questions. So go to God fearing kids.com and you can find that. Mindi, let’s wrap up with prayer. Lord Jesus, we’re thankful that you took initiative toward us by coming to die for us, coming to give your life in an act of ultimate service. And we as parents are called to do the same. So help us to do that with all of your energy and with an overwhelming amount of your love that our kids will know that our actions toward them are motivated by love. And that we were, we are always seeking you for wisdom and discernment of how to express that love in the proper way is given their life circumstances and their age and their time of life towards. So lead us all, lead us all in wisdom and then the power of your spirit in Jesus name and

CAREY:

Friends, you can be an integral part of helping us spread the message of God-fearing kids and the parents who raise them by becoming a financial partner. Your monthly gift for as little as $5 a month can help us spread the word. And as our thank you gift to you will subscribe you to our partners only podcast called Digging Deeper to help you dig further into the Word of God. All right, so, um, airplane mode on your phone

MINDI:

And on vibrate or silent or something.

CAREY:

Yeah. And silent. I guess mine, mine doesn’t do anything when I’m on airplane mode.

MINDI:

Last time, I, I think I noticed that mine did or yours did or something. Not last time, but one of the times

CAREY:

She’s going to go get toys now and she’s going into my office with it. So funny. Joy, what are you doing?

MINDI:

It’s just fine.

CAREY:

No, she had a Kleenex.

MINDI:

No, no Kleenex

CAREY:

Must have missed trash.

MINDI:

Good girl, baby. Go get you twice

Speaker 3:

Bed. <affirmative>. So

CAREY:

You have to lay

Speaker 3:

Down and be quiet. Good girl. Lay down.

CAREY:

Okay. Are you ready?

MINDI:

Let’s pray.

CAREY:

Okay. Once again, we want to submit every word and every thought that we have to you ask you to guide us to be controlled by your spirit and representing you well, making you the focus of honor, that we would not come across in proud or arrogant ways, but rather very grateful and humble people, blessed by you and eager for others to be blessed as well. Lord, please show us how to be that way in this recording. In Jesus’ name, Amen.