photo by KB35
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been supplementing our morning devotions with reading articles to the children from the blog The Rebelution. The site, written by 19-year olds Alex and Brett Harris, touts a “teenage rebellion against the low expectations of an ungodly culture.” It’s motivating teens across the country to rebel against rebellion and to claim 1 Timothy 4:12 as their battle cry.
What I find most interesting about their site is their promotion of the concept Do Hard Things. In a world where culture defines adolescence as a time of carefree and socially acceptable irresponsibility, these young men are fighting to reach youth with just the opposite message: do the things that make you step outside your comfort zone so you can build godly character and competence.
It’s a timely and much needed message for today’s teens. It also has a lot of application for us parents. As our children march toward their teen years, more and more is required of us. Yet oftentimes, parents take less and less of a role in their children’s lives. We allow our children’s peer group, after-school activities and the all-important driver’s license to dictate our interaction with them. The cry among many parents is, “What can we do, they’re gone all the time.”
We need to do the hard thing, also. We need to step up to the plate and be what we are: parents. Anyone can be a dad or a mom, but we need to choose to engage ourselves in the process of parenting. That means making hard, and sometimes unpopular, decisions for the benefit of our children. That means making deliberate effort to spend specific time connecting with them. That means not just saying, “I’m there for them”, but actually being there, body, mind and spirit.
Doing the hard thing means we may set ourselves apart from the way other parents do things. Even parents within our church, and I’m not talking about the worldly moms and dads that we find ourselves rolling our eyes at behind their back. I’m talking about parents who may have leadership roles, who teach Sunday school or who are otherwise active in church ministry.
As missionaries in our own homes, our primary focus needs to be reaching our children with the message of the gospel. Our ministry to others will be so much more effective if we have the testimony of godly children to back up what we’re saying and doing.
We need to choose to Do the Hard Thing, too.
What I find most interesting about their site is their promotion of the concept Do Hard Things. In a world where culture defines adolescence as a time of carefree and socially acceptable irresponsibility, these young men are fighting to reach youth with just the opposite message: do the things that make you step outside your comfort zone so you can build godly character and competence.
It’s a timely and much needed message for today’s teens. It also has a lot of application for us parents. As our children march toward their teen years, more and more is required of us. Yet oftentimes, parents take less and less of a role in their children’s lives. We allow our children’s peer group, after-school activities and the all-important driver’s license to dictate our interaction with them. The cry among many parents is, “What can we do, they’re gone all the time.”
We need to do the hard thing, also. We need to step up to the plate and be what we are: parents. Anyone can be a dad or a mom, but we need to choose to engage ourselves in the process of parenting. That means making hard, and sometimes unpopular, decisions for the benefit of our children. That means making deliberate effort to spend specific time connecting with them. That means not just saying, “I’m there for them”, but actually being there, body, mind and spirit.
Doing the hard thing means we may set ourselves apart from the way other parents do things. Even parents within our church, and I’m not talking about the worldly moms and dads that we find ourselves rolling our eyes at behind their back. I’m talking about parents who may have leadership roles, who teach Sunday school or who are otherwise active in church ministry.
As missionaries in our own homes, our primary focus needs to be reaching our children with the message of the gospel. Our ministry to others will be so much more effective if we have the testimony of godly children to back up what we’re saying and doing.
We need to choose to Do the Hard Thing, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment