Colossians: Parenting in Freeing Love

So we've been going through the book of Colossians.

Last week we talked about marriage, and this week we're talking about parenting.

So maybe you are a parent, or maybe you wanted to be a parent, and that's been a difficult journey for you.

Maybe you will be a parent.

Maybe you have parents, right?

We are all included this morning.

We all come from somewhere, and we can all agree that we want to be around great families, and we would love to be in a great family.

So Paul in Colossians 3, when he begins to give us practical implications of what it means to walk in the grace of God, he talks about how we should love each other at the beginning of Colossians 3, and then he hits on marriage.

We talked about last week, and now he hits on parenting.

Colossians 3, 20 and 21.

Let me reread those two verses.

Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.

Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.

Point number one is this we are beloved sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father before we are our other roles.

So Paul's structure is teaching this that in Colossians 1 and 2, we have all the promises of God to us in Jesus, the indicatives, what's been indicated to us.

Lavish full forgiveness in Jesus, full righteousness in Jesus, full worth in Jesus, and all of this we purely and simply receive.

And then in Colossians 3, we have that shift we've been talking about, that because of all those indicatives, those promises, what does that mean?

What should we live like?

This order is very important because if you show up into Colossians 3, without Colossians 1 and 2, you're actually too needy to love other people.

You're too needy to have a healthy marriage, and you're too needy to parent well.

But if we live in Colossians 1 and 2, our full forgiveness, full righteousness, full worth in Jesus, so we are secure and we are whole apart from other people, we can show up into relationships, we can show up into parenting to parent out of love and truth, not out of insecurity and neediness.

My wife and I, we have three kiddos, we have three girls.

For years we were drowning in cute little girls.

Here's cute little girl stage for us.

Car seat stage, lots of equipment.

Is anybody else in the equipment stage of parenting?

We're out of equipment stage.

We made it through.

There is another side, and you get rid of all the equipment.

So, yes, we were exhausted, but we survived.

Now we're parenting pre-teen and teen girls.

So lots of conversations and clothes and E Newton bracelets.

And Outer Bank season four.

It's very important to us.

Three main seasons of parenting.

Season number one is training.

This is roughly ages zero through twelve.

And this is where you are lovingly establishing authority, boundaries, training, and consequences.

You're bonding and you're building this loving relationship, but you're establishing authority.

They joined your world.

You did not join their world.

They should be revolving around you, not you revolving around them.

Season two is coaching.

This is roughly ages 12 through 18.

Lovingly guiding through conversations, giving freedom, and still giving consequences.

So we could say this right: we're giving our children enough rope to hang themselves, and then we reel them back in, and we care for them and correct them, and then we let them back out again.

Season three, consulting.

This is roughly ages 18 and beyond.

And the goal, the goal of parenting here is a friendship and shared wisdom with adult children.

Now, Colossians 3 gives us principles that extend through all these seasons of parenting.

First, we have verse 20: Children, obey your parents.

When our girls were little, we said all the time for obedience, fast, happy, and all the way.

We said it so much it turned into a song.

It's all we've said over and over again in our house.

Fast, happy, and all the way.

I mean, it was just all the time.

Now we're out of training, we're in coaching, and we're learning how to do that, imperfectly, but we're learning.

And all that obedience still we expect, but it's a little slower.

It's like a little more nuanced, there's some conversations because we're coaching.

We're not just training.

And then we have verse 21, this parenting principle.

Fathers do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.

Now in Ephesians, Paul expounds on this idea just a bit more.

Ephesians 6, 4.

Fathers do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

So this is directly to fathers, but also to mamas.

And point number two is this we are called to teach and guide our children.

So we are to teach them about this world that they were born into.

What is this world?

How does it work?

How do these relationships work?

What is true about them as created in the image of God, beautiful and yet sinners?

What's true about their hearts, about how their hearts work?

What's true about God, what how God relates to them, what's true about Jesus for them?

We're to teach them these things, guide them.

My favorite guide story is when I was a college freshman, a group of us on fall break, we went and rafted the Gali River in West Virginia.

Huge, huge river, class five.

You know, we were young and invincible, nothing could hurt us.

Here's a picture of us getting ready to get on the river.

That's not a perm.

I'm on the far right.

Those are real curls.

Thank you very much.

Just it was a hair season, big hair season of life.

Our guide's name was Turtle.

And Turtle, before we even loaded the raft, turtle got us together.

Hey guys, today is gonna be one of the most fun days of your entire life.

And today, you could die.

Just the truth.

This is how today works.

He's our guide.

He's gotta teach us.

He said if we didn't listen to him, all the fun would disappear, we could get hurt or die.

And then he taught us how to paddle as a group.

And before each rapid, he'd pull the raft over, he'd explain the rapid coming up.

I mean, think about this for parenting.

This is how we should be guiding our children.

He pulled the raft over.

Hey, here's how this is gonna work.

I've been through this thing a million times with other people.

Like, here's how it works, and here's what we're gonna do, and here's how, and if you fall out, this is where you need to swim, this is how you need to react if you fall out or something goes wrong.

He guided us.

See, that's what we are for our children.

We're turtle for our kids, is what we are.

We're training, we're patiently explaining things, we're guiding them.

The word instruction in Ephesians 6:4 means to train and teach.

Ephesians 6:4

When our girls were little, like in the car seat picture, maybe go back to that car seat picture real quick.

When we they they were so cute, created an image of God.

I mean, look how cute, sweet, little, precious in the image of God, babies.

And they were so manipulative.

Those, those precious, I mean, look at them.

They were just the most manipulative.

If you don't think your children are manipulative, you are being manipulated.

As you think they're not doing it.

They are savvy, they are smart, they are manipulative.

We would put those precious little babies that we had cared for all day.

We've been feeding them and clothing them, wiping their little bottoms, we've been doing all this, and we would go to put them in their car seat, and you know what they would do?

They'd some of you are in this stage right now, you go to, and they are, I mean, fighting you, fighting you.

And we would just real gently press that bottom to the back of the car seat, hold it there.

They're trying.

We'd look them right in the eye, and we would say, You are not the boss.

I am the boss.

And then we'd buckle them in, and they could cry or whatever.

It's fine.

Because we have to establish authority and boundaries, but we do that in a loving kindness within the bonds of a loving relationship.

And as they age, we give them more freedom while still trying to be the authority.

Dysfunction is letting a child be the boss when they're not designed to be.

Stop negotiating with your toddlers.

Stop letting a 10-year-old act like a 16-year-old.

Stop letting a 16-year-old act like a 25-year-old.

Don't let children act an age they're not.

They don't have the wisdom to be that yet.

When parents take on the role of being the boss and the teacher, the child is relieved to just be a kid, to be the age they are.

My parenting used to be a lot of hide and seek and Jesus Storybook Bible.

Who's in the hide and seek and Jesus Storybook Bible stage, right?

And now it's shifted, and we are in a different season where we go for walks.

Um, you know, like an ice cream date.

We watch The Office, right?

The office, you know the office?

Michael and Dwight and Jim.

I love Creed.

See, kids love it.

I love Creed.

Amazingly, most of the big issues of life and anything inappropriate can be found in the office.

So we watch it.

And I press pause, and I'll say, what do you think about that?

How would you have done that?

Do you know what that word means?

There's a lot of, do you know what that word me?

I won't tell you the word this week I had to explain, which led into a whole nother explanation about a whole series of how things in the human body work.

That's what she said.

Like, do you know what that means?

Do you know why that's a joke?

Right?

This is my way of hearing.

Christy has a whole different method.

You can ask her.

This is just my point is is like you you use what you can to teach your children.

Use whatever you can.

Like, use it all.

Whatever season they are in, use whatever you can to teach your child.

Use church.

What did you hear this morning?

What do you think about that?

What'd you learn?

What do you think about that?

Keep building that relationship.

How's your heart feel today?

What's going on in there today?

Why do you think you're feeling that way?

Send them a podcast.

Let's talk about this later.

Send them what you read this morning, right?

Like, and just keep, you're just like keep telling them, hey, in Jesus, you are chosen, you're loved, you're forgiven, you're never alone, you're not perfect, it's okay.

Jesus was perfect for you.

And we just keep doing it in all of these seasons.

Point number three is this you are called to correctively discipline your children.

The word training in Ephesians 6.4 means corrective discipline.

Now we get judgy here.

You know they spank, you know they don't spank, and you can tell, right?

Like, I'm not sure, I'm not sure how you're gonna do it.

I don't, I'm not even gonna begin to prescribe that to you.

I don't know how you'll do it.

I just know you have to do it.

I know you should probably find the most painful thing in their life that they think they can't live without, and you should take it away from them.

That's probably what you should do.

We have to lovingly discipline them for the sake of correction.

We have to protect our children from unhealthy ways of behaving.

And we have to do this when they're two, and we have to do it when they're 12, we might even have to do it when they're 22.

I parenting mentor of ours, Connie, she would say, they cry now or you cry later.

If you're secure in Colossians 1 and 2, you're okay with your kids crying.

You're okay with your kids not liking you, you're okay with your kids being disappointed.

It's all in the context of a loving relationship.

You're just correcting them along the way.

And you'd rather them cry when they're five than when they're 15.

You'd rather them cry when they're 15 than when they're 25.

You'd rather them cry when they're 25 than when they're 35.

You would always rather try to correct it earlier.

They cry now or you cry later.

And your children should know that having toys or having a phone or having a room or having a car or going to college, it is all a privilege.

It is not a right in any of it.

It can be taken away as loving correction.

Right?

This is loving correction for the sake of correcting the child.

Another parent mentor of ours, Linda, she raised two boys, and right when they got out of high school, I asked her, I said, hey, what would you have done differently, like in the high school years?

What would you have changed?

What would you do?

And she said, as they moved into high school, I kept talking.

They had already heard all my mini sermons, but I just kept talking, and so they shut me out.

She said, I needed to stop talking and just begin to ask questions.

Right?

What she was saying is that she needed to move from training to coaching.

And that's what I'm learning.

And that's hard.

I'm a preacher, right?

I like talk.

I have an opinion about everything.

I can give you an opinion about a paper clip if you want one, and I could tell it to you for 10 minutes and why it is right and how you should use it and the implications of.

I mean, so I could talk forever about anything, and what I'm having to learn in the training stage, the coaching stage, mind you, is to say, what do you think?

What do you think about that?

Uh, what's God saying to you?

I'm learning to say, well, tell tell me more about that.

Wow, that what that wow, that's amazing.

Tell me more about that.

It's almost like, and then I get like one sentence, right?

Like I get one, it's like playing Uno and you have the draw four card, and you're just holding it because you want to play at the second to last card.

Like you don't want to play it too early because you want to dictate what color, right?

You want to hit the draw four, and you want to say red, and you want them to draw four, and then you're gonna play your red card.

Like, and that's what parenting in the coaching stages is like you have your draw four, you only get to like say like one sentence for them to listen to you in this like 15-minute conversation, and you're just playing these boring little cards, and you're like, Well, what do you think?

What do you think?

What's God saying?

Tell me more, tell me more, tell me, and then you're like, boom, draw four.

Hits you with, I just hit you with the insight, the parent insight, and then you're like back to just like, okay, what do you think?

What do you think?

That's what it feels like.

That's what I'm learning.

Point number four.

We are called to raise our kids without exasperating them.

The word provoke in Colossians 3.21, also in Ephesians 6.4, it means do not wear the mount with a critical spirit.

Our role is to stir up our children toward Jesus and goodness and character and bravery.

Two main ways we tend to exasperate our children.

We exasperate by demanding too much.

I'm not talking about high standards.

I'm talking about a critical spirit of demanding too much.

Be more, be faster, be stronger, be successful.

The 92 wasn't good, why didn't you make a 94?

The 94 wasn't good, why didn't you make a 96?

Demanding a five-year-old to behave like a 12-year-old or a 12-year-old to behave like a 25-year-old.

All of our children will not be A students.

All of our children will not be void of detours or rebellion.

All of our children will not be CEOs.

It's not even the goal.

The goal is to stir up our children, to not discourage them, to not wear them out, and to stir them up toward Jesus and goodness and character and bravery so that they can become competent, capable adults in the world.

So you can free them into the world.

The second way we tend to exasperate is we exasperate by protective love rather than freeing love.

And man, I want to keep my babies safe, right?

I mean, they're my babies.

They were babies and they're babies, they're still babies to me.

And I want to keep them safe.

But that's not that's not really my job.

My job is to keep them safe, to train them and teach them to free them into the world.

That's tough if you are a high control, keep them safe person.

But protective love over time is suffocating.

This week I've been thinking about the image of skiing.

I think this was getting colder.

Now imagine uh you fly to Denver and you drive to Vale and you are dreaming of skiing the back bowl of Vale.

This is China Bowl on the back bowl.

Imagine that's you.

It's a beautiful winter day.

It's a blue sky, China bowl, the back of Vale.

I mean, your cell phone doesn't even have reception.

You are free.

So let's imagine you show up into Vale, and then you wake up that morning and it has snowed fresh powder the night before, but the skies are blue, and it's the morning, and you show up, you get on the gondola, you have all your ski equipment, you get on the gondola first, and then five 13-year-old snowboarders get on after you, and you think, I'll survive, I'll make it.

You know, it's a seven-minute ride, we'll be okay, we'll make it.

And so you are getting the gondola's getting up, you can see the top.

You are almost at three, the doors are about to open, and then the gondola stops.

And you're safe, but you are trapped, and you know it smells bad because those 13-year-olds haven't showered in five days of snowboarding that stinks.

That's protective love, that gondola.

That stopped gondola because you're safe, but you're trapped, it doesn't set you free.

Now, your love is the gondola, and it's designed to keep children safe as to free them in time.

That's the goal of parenting.

And you know what's gonna happen because it happens as we let that rope out, is you free them at the top of the mountain, and then they ski out of bounds because they're morons, because they're children.

Their prefrontal cortex has not formed yet.

It doesn't form till they're 25.

So our children, all of our children, are gonna do dumb stuff, and we pull them back in and we care for them and we correct them.

Or something, they just break their leg and they're gonna limp home and you care for them and you correct them and you set them free again.

That's the goal of parenting, as imperfect as it will be for all of us, is to free our children over time, and that they know, they know they can always come home to be cared for and corrected and sent back out.

Paul's making a powerful connection for all of us.

Just think about this book that we were studying.

Our beloved identity in Jesus in Colossians 1 and 2, which leads us, it fuels, it empowers a character of honesty and love.

Colossians 3, 1 through 17.

Now don't try to do that without the first part.

They all feed to the next.

And then let's talk about healthy marriage, Colossians 3, 18, 19.

And now let's talk about healthy parenting, training, instructing our children.

See, Paul is giving us a roadmap for a soul fulfilled in Jesus, whole, so that we can build loving relationships with people.

We can have a healthy marriage, and we can parent well.

Now it'd be easy to hear all of that and say, yeah, but you don't know my family.

Like you don't know our story, you don't know my kid, you don't know what I've done, you don't know my parenting.

And you're right, I don't.

I don't.

Like, I mean, this room is filled with parenting failures.

It just is.

We've all had parenting failures.

But the gospel's still true.

Colossians 1 and 2 are true for you before you even begin to parent, which is Colossians 3.

And that tells you that you are fully forgiven of all your parent failures.

Chapters 1 and 2 are those indicatives.

God's promises indicated to us in Christ.

All your parenting failures are forgiven.

Then, then we get three and four, and imperative is because of those promises, how should we live?

And when we're when we realize such a parent failure, well, Colossians 1 and 2 are true about me.

Jesus is enough.

All my sins are forgiven, I'm fully righteous in him.

Meaning how we should live is fueled by what is already true about us.

And what we've been saying is that who we are in Jesus fuels how we live after Jesus.

God is still at work, he can redeem any relational situation as we go to him and we rest in him and we live out of the promises of Jesus.

Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, thank you that you are the perfect parent while we are the imperfect parents.

We pray that our parenting would only be a mirror of how good you are, that you are the perfect Father.

We are a mere reflection of your perfection.

And thank you that you know all of us and you love all of us as your children, that you know our children.

As wonderful as they are in this moment, or as horrible as they are in this morning, you know them and you love them.

And God's story is still at work in their hearts and lives.

Would you help us to parent well?

Help us to rest, and that Jesus is enough for us and help us to live out of that empowerment.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.