Effective Parenting in a Defective World...

John and I lead the Sonseekers Sunday school class at church. They're a wonderful group of young marrieds...a few newlyweds and some with children from newborns up to age 13. They are such an encouragement to us and we learn so much from them. We started a DVD series today titled "Effective Parenting in a Defective World" by Chip Ingram. The first lesson challenged us to parent with clear-cut objectives instead of fear. We all fear the things of this world that can lead our children into sin and poor choices. But parenting with the focus on godly objectives can help us to direct our children without the fear. Our goal should be to lead our children not to success as the world sees it but to a Christ-centered holiness. We should desire to help them become like Jesus--kind, disciplined, holy, pure, Christ-centered. It's a struggle between God's dream vs. the world's dream for your child. The world has false goals of success, money, materialism but God's goal is for them "to be conformed to the likeness of His Son." (Romans 8:29b) The first key to that is to practice what we preach...to teach our children by modeling that holiness and Christ-centeredness in our own lives. They're going to imitate us whether we like it or not so it's incumbent on us to be models that we'd want them to imitate! "A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher." (Luke 6:40) I'm very excited about the precepts we're learning in this class and it encourages me to model Christ to all the children in my life...grandchildren, kids at the library, church...and anywhere else I encounter them. They ARE the future...either in Christ or completely in the fallen world. John and I can see a lot of the mistakes we made in our parenting...fortunately the Lord still honored our efforts and both of our children are serving Him. But it's exciting that we're going to get another chance by being a godly influence in the life of our precious Granddaughter, Betsy!