The Art of Parenting: Aiming Your Child's Heart toward God

Christ.

Section One

A Parakeet Teaches God’s Love

Whatever else may be said about the home, it is the single most influential force in our earthly existence. No price tag can adequately reflect its value, no gauge can measure its ultimate influence, for good or ill.

Charles Swindoll

When our daughter Deborah, aka Peanut, was sixteen, we had one of those father-daughter kitchen conversations. Amid the mealtime mess and clamor came this declaration: Dad, I want to be able to do what I want to do . . . with whoever I want to do it with . . . whenever I want . . . for as long as I want.

I wasn’t sure I had heard correctly. What did you say?

When she repeated her statement, I smiled and said, Peanut, what if your parakeet came to you and said, ‘Deborah, I’d like to go do what I want to do, with whoever I want to do it with, whenever I want to do it, for as long as I want to do it. And right now, I’d like to go on the porch and play with the cats!’

Deborah loved her parakeet, affectionately named Sweet Pea. Would you let Sweet Pea go play outside, Peanut?

She quickly dismissed my fatherly attempt to reach her. That’s a silly illustration, Dad.

I said, No, it’s not. There’s a cat on the porch right now. Sweet Pea is in the cage right now. The cage is actually a protection for Sweet Pea, don’t you agree?

Feeling uncomfortable, Deborah attempted to change the subject . . . and I let her. I knew she had heard.

Not long after that conversation, we went on a trip as a family and asked a friend to take care of Sweet Pea in our absence. After our dawn departure, she and her son drove to our house to take Deborah’s parakeet home for the week. As twelve-year-old Tate was carrying Sweet Pea in her cage to their car, the bottom tray dropped open and Sweet Pea, being the free spirit she was, fluttered to freedom. Before flying the coop, unfortunately, Sweet Pea somehow failed to consider it was January in Arkansas.

Horrified, both mother and son tried for hours to coax the parakeet from the branches high above. Eventually they gave up.

A couple days later we got the message that Sweet Pea had escaped and was forever lost. The news of her feathered friend’s defection ruined the rest of the trip for Deborah.

Like all parents do, we attempted to soothe, to understand, to provide possible solutions. We’ll go buy another parakeet when we get home, we said, hoping a replacement would eventually calm her heart. She remained unconvinced.

When we arrived at the airport, our friends messaged us to say they’d bought Deborah a new parakeet. But the new bird was no Sweet Pea. Deborah chased that wild and untrained bird around her room for hours. More disappointed than ever, she rejected the replacement and we returned the foul fowl for a refund.

Our home is in a very wooded neighborhood with only one neighbor in view amid hundreds of square miles of a greenbelt forest. Two days after we arrived home and bought and returned the new bird, our next-door neighbor, Bob, called to tell a beyond-belief story.

About a week ago, he said, "I was watching TV in the living room and something kept hitting the window. Thump, thump, thump. . . . So I asked my wife to go see what it was."

Joann dutifully got up and went outside. When she didn’t return after a few minutes, Bob made his way to the deck and found her watching a green parakeet flit from tree branch to window and back again. Bob stuck his finger out, and immediately the bird flew to his finger, which Sweet Pea was trained to do. Bob just happened to have an old empty bird cage in his basement, and that became Sweet Pea’s new home.

Later that day Bob went to town for canary food, and then stopped to get a frozen yogurt. Standing in line, our ever-talkative neighbor started a conversation with the guy next to him. Small talk first. Then Bob said, Strangest thing happened. We found a parakeet in the woods, so I came to town to buy feed.

The stranger asked, Where do you live? Bob named our neighborhood west of town, and the stranger said, Is that near the Raineys?

Bob said, They live next door.

I’m their kids’ youth pastor. I think they have a parakeet.

The mystery appeared to be solved, so Bob was calling to ask if we were missing a parakeet!

Barbara and I marveled at how God cared about this bird and set in motion the circumstances to bring it back. It was so improbable that it seemed a divine declaration of love for our daughter. We wanted to make sure she heard loud and clear how much God loved her.

We kept the news to ourselves for the big reveal at dinner. We were seated at the table with our two girls who were still living at home (the other four kids were off to college or married). We asked about their days, and then I started talking about how much God loves us. I looked at Deborah and said, I’m sorry about Sweet Pea, but I want you to know three things: First, it’s not wrong to be sad over the loss of something you loved. Second, it’s okay to question God—He can handle it. Third, God loves you, Peanut.

Deborah was unmoved by my words, so I repeated them: Peanut, you don’t understand . . . God really, really loves you.

Her younger sister, Laura, was bored to death and asked, Do I have to listen to this? We said yes. Disgustedly, she rolled her eyes, leaned her head back on her chair, and pulled her napkin over her face! She couldn’t leave physically, so she escaped the conversation behind a mask.

For a third time I said, "Peanut, look at me. God really loves you!"

I paused, waited for eye contact, and then said, Sweet Pea is alive. Mr. Nagle found her, and she’s at his house!

For just a moment Deborah’s face was stoic—not a glimmer of a change. But not Laura! She jerked the napkin off her face, sat bolt upright, and yelled, WHAT? MR. NAGLE HAS SWEET PEA?! YOU FOUND SWEET PEA?

Slowly Deborah thawed, let it soak in; a sweet grin emerged. Minutes later all four of us walked up the hill to get Sweet Pea and brought him home.

That night before bed we reminded Deborah, and Laura, too, how God longs for us to know and experience His limitless love. Circling back to how this drama all began, I reminded them both that what kept Sweet Pea safe, his cage, was also what kept danger out. God knows what He is doing.

No one will ever convince us that the circumstances surrounding a sixteen-year-old girl’s pet parakeet were orchestrated by anyone other than the God of the universe. He reached out to our daughter, who really needed to see His love for her at that moment in her life.

God wants to use the hard moments in your child’s life to demonstrate His love, which is far greater for your child than yours. Paying attention to God, praying constantly or often, will open your eyes to His wonder-working involvement in the details of your family.

Good Years and Challenging Years

Of all the stories about raising six children we’ve told over the years, that is probably our favorite. It reveals so much about parenting—the difficulty, the heartbreak, the effort to point our children to Christ, and the joy of watching God work in His own mysterious ways to help the helpless parent.

Parenting is bursting with good, rewarding days, seasons, and years, but it also overflows with challenges most of us didn’t anticipate, at least not like this!

We suspect you feel the same about your experience as a parent today. For everything you do right, you feel the anxiety of parents through the ages:

How can I get my child to obey me?

How do I discipline my kids?

Am I overprotective?

Am I too lenient?

Am I pushing them too hard in their education?

Are they too busy?

Why can’t my kids get along with each other?

Do I correct and criticize them too much?

How do I control my anger?

How can I help my children face all the changes they’ll experience as they approach adolescence?

Are my kids making good friends?

How do I teach my children about right and wrong?

But you also face some unique challenges in today’s world:

How much screen time should I let my children have each day?

When should we get them a mobile phone?

Does too much technology hurt my child?

How can I keep my child safe from bullying . . . or from sexual predators?

How do I teach my child how to be a man or woman when the culture is changing the definition?

In a 2017 survey by the Barna Research Group, nearly eight out of ten parents indicated they thought parenting was more difficult for them than it was for their parents. When asked what factors make it difficult, 65 percent said technology and social media, 52 percent said the world is more dangerous, and 40 percent pointed to a lack of common morality.1

Parents today have more information available to them than any previous generation. Type how to be a better parent into Google, and you can find millions of blogs, websites, and articles offering help. But how do you decide what advice to follow and what to ignore? Many parents today can relate to the lament of actor Ewan McGregor, who said, The thing about parenting rules is there aren’t any. That’s what makes it so difficult.2

A Biblical Foundation

But there is a book that offers timeless advice to parents. The Bible is as relevant to today’s parents as it has been for thousands of years.

Psalm 127:1 tells us, Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.

Our hope is that this book will help restore confidence in God’s Word as the foundation for your lives and for your family relationships. In the Bible we find timeless words that apply to this generation just as it has to previous parents for over two thousand years.

Jesus says more about what it means for God to build your home on the solid foundation of His Word in Matthew 7:24–27:

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.

Jesus tutors parents in Homebuilding 101: You will build your house in the midst of storms. Count on it. And because these storms keep assaulting our homes, we need the very best foundation available—we need to teach His Word to our children and follow His Word in our homes.

Though we are no longer raising our children, and though we did not face all the challenges you confront today, there are two truths that unite all parents across all generations.

The first truth is that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. His Word is enduring, and He will help you parent the children He gives you, working through you and with you for their good and for His glory.

Second, while each new generation is different, most of the issues you face today are no different from those faced by past generations because the root is always about our hearts. The Bible speaks to issues of the heart, and as we will share throughout this book, it will equip and transform the hearts of both parent and child.

Parenting Is an Art

Have you ever watched a sculptor at work? She works the clay with her hands, molding it, shaping it with thumbs that scoop, dig, and push the wet pliable earth into an image no one sees but the artist. Finally one day the work is finished. Though beautiful on its own, a clay sculpture is often only a model of what will eventually be chiseled out of marble.

God made Adam similarly, we imagine. Wet, clay-like earth, not loamy or sandy, filled God’s hands as He worked to shape the design He envisioned. Full of texture and movement, with planes that rounded into curves or bent at angles, His handiwork was created to house His Spirit and reflect His image.

Can you picture those heavenly hands covered in mud?

Parenting is a messy art. To become an artist means getting clay under your fingernails, paint on your clothes, marble dust in your nostrils.

It means your hand cramps from hours of holding the paintbrush just so, and your knees will hurt and your heart will break for the passionate, protective love only a father and mother can feel for their little works of art. And it means only an artist who has been willing to try and fail and try again a thousand times can know the eventual satisfaction of a child who has grown up to become pliable clay in the Master’s hand.

The handiwork is worth it all in the end.

Seeing God Work

So what do we, who are finished with parenting, offer you who are shaping the clay of your child’s heart today?

As parents of six married kids who are all walking with Jesus today, we can show you how we followed God and His Word in every stage of raising our children. We can vividly illustrate what worked and what didn’t. We are not afraid to share our failures. Several are epic!

So far, five of our children have birthed or adopted twenty-three little ones—who today range in age from eighteen months to nineteen years. And the additions are not yet complete; number twenty-four is on the way. We’ve interviewed all six of our children for this book. Some share what they learned from us that they are passing on, and others share about raising their own children today. Watch for their words of wisdom and stories throughout these pages.

We’ve also studied parenting for several decades. And while there are experiences we thankfully don’t know firsthand, over twenty-five years of interviews on FamilyLife Today radio—with over a thousand subject-matter experts in marriage and parenting—have given us a library of information that can offer help and hope in just about any situation.

Many of those radio guests and other parenting veterans participated in the creation of FamilyLife’s The Art of Parenting Video Series. These seasoned veterans provided more valuable insight than we could fit in the videos, so we’re sharing it here, as well. Throughout this book you’ll find nuggets of wisdom from Alistair Begg, Kevin DeYoung, Karen Fitzpatrick, Jim Keller, Alex Kendrick, Stephen Kendrick, Tim and Darcy Kimmel, Bryan Loritts, Meg Meeker, Judy Mok, Eric and Erikah Rivera, Phil Vischer, Dave and Ann Wilson, and Susan Yates. We’ve also included guidance from our FamilyLife colleague Ron Deal, an expert and author on the topic of blended families.

Finally, our history of seeing God work in challenging circumstances gives us great confidence in saying to you, God will provide, guide, and deliver for you as you raise your children. When it feels impossible is when God loves to show up and transform.

Whether you are cradling a newborn child in your arms, or you are trying to get your arms around an adolescent who is trying desperately to escape and break free of your love and limits, we hope this book gives help and hope to these and a host of other questions and perplexities.

The pages that follow unpack the essence of what we’ve learned from raising six children. We continually asked this question: Since God created marriage and family, what is His counsel and instruction for raising children to become what He has in mind for them?

We hope you will discover answers to questions about God, marriage, and children . . . and we’ll weave in some lessons on faith.

Six Benefits for Parents as You Work through This Book

We want to encourage you in the process of child-rearing. Feelings of failure and discouragement are frequent visitors in every home. Your children aren’t perfect. Ours weren’t (and still aren’t). Raising children in any generation demands courage, and we want to bolster your courage.

We want to exalt the high calling and privilege of parenting. Children are a gift from God, and He has a plan for each child, no matter how challenging. We want to give you a vision for what God can do in your kids’ hearts.

We want to help you develop a biblical game plan for parenting. Whether you are married or a single parent, you can craft an individualized biblical plan for your kids and learn how to be intentional in your parenting.

We want to challenge you to determine what your convictions are about God and life. We want to state the obvious on the front end of this book: You won’t agree with everything we did or didn’t do in raising our children. You will think some of our standards were too high or too low. We’re good with that. But if you don’t know what you believe, you’ll have a difficult time passing biblical standards on to your children.

If you are married, we want to help you strengthen your teamwork as a couple. Two-parent families, nuclear or blended, need a unified plan that will create stability in your children.

We want to equip you to experience God and His guidance as you raise your children. As parents, we don’t always know what to do or say. But God can work in you and through you to accomplish His plan. And by the way, He loves the prayers of the helpless parent!

1

Like Arrows

Whenever I held my newborn baby in my arms, I used to think that what I said and did to him could have an influence not only on him but on all whom he met, not only for a day or a month or a year, but for all eternity—a very challenging and exciting thought for a mother.

Rose Kennedy, mother of President John F. Kennedy

When our son Benjamin was entering his teenage years, both Barbara and I knew that it would be a challenge for us to stay connected with him relationally. From our years of working with teenagers before we had kids of our own, we knew teens look for ways to assert their independence and push their parents away. We didn’t want to be like many parents we had observed, who seemed intimidated by their teenagers and stepped back from their involvement at the very time they should have stayed connected.

So Barbara and I talked about finding something Benjamin and I could do together to grow a man-to-man relationship. He and I had enjoyed hunting together since he was about ten, but neither of us knew anything about bowhunting. We thought learning together would be fun and give us a common experience to share. And it did.

But learning to shoot arrows from a compound bow—both in practice at paper targets and in the woods as we stalked wild game—gave me some unexpected new insights into one of my favorite verses in the Bible. Psalm 127:4–5 tells us, Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!

What an amazing statement. Think about those words. The psalmist refers to your child, both boys and girls, as an arrow—a weapon! And that is no mistake.

Did you know that God has great plans for your child, targets He has designed for them to reach and to redeem? Arrows are not meant to be kept safe in the quiver. God wants you, a warrior, to eventually release your arrows, your children, to make an impact on our world with the love of Christ.

Educator and cultural critic Neil Postman wrote that children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.1 This long-term view of children should revolutionize the way you look at your responsibility as a parent. We raise children so that we can release them. They may make a greater impact on their world than we ever will in ours.

Interestingly, today our son Ben is doing archery with his fourteen-year-old daughter, Savannah, as a way for them to have father-daughter time together. Savannah has discovered she enjoys the skill of archery just as her dad did when he was her age, and we’ve enjoyed watching their adventures on Instagram.

Arrow Making 101

Parenting, as the title of this book states, is an art. Crafting your child to be an arrow in the hand of God is a design skill like painting or songwriting or hundreds of other hands-on creative endeavors that require individual attention to detail and nuances. Your child’s life is in your hands to shape and direct for approximately eighteen years.

What sets arrow crafting apart from any other creative skill are the distinctives desired in the final result. To be useful, any arrow must have a shaft, a nock (the groove at the end of the arrow into which the bow string fits), a point, and fletching (feathers). In addition, arrow makers add cresting to differentiate one from another and to identify the arrow’s creator.

If all of these elements are constructed well, always taking into account the uniqueness of the varying raw materials, the result is an effective arrow, handcrafted for flight and impact.

A Dad to All Girls

While I like to play sports and hunt and fish, most of my girls have not followed my passions in those areas. This is going to sound like the biggest no-brainer, but it’s been difficult for me to learn to meet my daughters on their level and do what they like to do. I don’t want to play with their dolls or watch Barbie movies. I hate that stuff! But I’ve come to love it over time because my kids love it.

Throughout a typical week, I find myself doing things I never ever envisioned—cooking, baking, designing websites, building computers, attending dance recitals, watching gymnastics practices. Each is important to my daughters and requires that I like who they are, not who I want them to be.

Each of our four girls is so very different. My wife, Marsha Kay, and I often joke that we somehow got four opposites. The point is, each daughter is unique and wonderful and deserving of being loved for who she is, not who I want her to be. So I put down my desire to sit and watch football and instead join them in their stuff, because not too long from now there will come a day when there are no little girls asking me to play or dance or bake or talk. And that day is going to be really sad.

Ben and Marsha Kay Rainey

These elements of an arrow also provide a glimpse into several crucial raw materials necessary for forming and shaping our children. Nearly every issue your children will encounter can be linked to the strength you build in these four areas.

1. The arrow’s shaft: your child’s character

The making of a fine arrow always begins with the shaft. If it is warped—not straight and strong—that child’s flight in life will be wobbly. But know this: Perfection is not the goal in parenting or in arrow crafting, because there is no such thing as a perfectly straight arrow. Even with highly mechanized engineering techniques today, carbon fiber and composite metal arrows still fall short of perfection. Make your goal strong and straight, not perfect.

Barbara and I compare the shaft of an arrow to a child’s character. From Genesis to Revelation, character development is a major theme of God’s work, the purpose of His parenting of His people, you and me. From the first page to the last, God is calling our hearts to His. He invites us to let Him make our fallible broken character like His.

Character development is therefore one of the major assignments God gives earthly parents. When you think of building character into a child—in areas such as honesty, kindness, patience, and faithfulness—ultimately it’s tied to teaching them God’s ways as opposed to their own selfish ways.

Parenting becomes a training center to teach children to wait, to share, to trust Mom and Dad, and eventually to choose God and His Word as the best way to live life—with the goal eighteen years in the future of choosing God as their ultimate authority when they fly from