Before I’m accused of bait and switch by all the moms who have little boys crawling through their hair, I’ll answer the question of what we’re doing with Judah.  I’m really hesitant to do this for two reasons:

1)  We don’t exactly know what we’re doing.  We’re stepping out totally in faith that the Lord will meet us.

2)  The breakthrough for others will be the same as it is for us:  a breakthrough of the heart that leads to obedience to the Lord’s ultra-specific instructions for our family.  I am slow to share because I know that if anyone reads with a thought of forms or methodology (”How do we do this…how are you doing it?”), our story will just discourage and weigh them down, because of all the ways it won’t work for their family.  But God has perfect leadership for each family!  It may involve radical change, or it may be small to the eye but have incredible eternal impact.  He will show you, if in your hearts you breakthrough into purpose out of passivity.

We took Judah out of kindergarten at a wonderful Christian school.  Which reminds me, I need to take flowers to his outstanding teacher.  We really love her, and she loves Judah and Ariel.

We enrolled him in “Daddy school.”  So (this will bless those of you who know how trepidatious I have been about homeschooling) I am not fundamentally bearing the weight of his schooling.  OJ is.

So far, this has not involved any academics (insert sharp gasp of astonishment and fear here).

It has involved:

-first thing morning workout.  Immediate result:  instead of having to drag JD crying out of bed for school, he drags OJ out of bed.  ”It’s time for our workout!”

-tools and actual household needs and projects.  Repainted kitchen table, fixed chair, repaired baby gate, etc.  Immediate result:  a VERY happy mommy.  Oh, and Judah’s mind focused instead of frenetic.  He returns to being frenetic after a lot of video games or media.  He was always frenetic after school.

-joining Dad in his work, whatever it may be, whenever possible.  Judah does the garbage trip with Dad, the yard work, cleaning out the car.  He’s at a car dealership with him this morning.  Immediate result:  Many, but one is Judah is learning to approach things thinking “I can,” rather than the constant “I caaaaaaaaannnnnn’t, Mama, you do it for me…”  He’s becoming a help, rather than a drain.  We continue to be shocked at how much he can actually do, and how fast.  It’s like he was spending his energy before in a complicated ruse to convince us that he was inept.  He didn’t mean to, but that’s how a spirit of passivity works, y’all!  I’ll come back to that later in the blog series.

-acting as if Jesus, the Devil, and we as sons and daughters of God are REAL.  One thing that concerned us is the potential toxicity to authentic faith that can be posed by a Christian school, where our kids were pledging to flags with Bibles on them and scary things like that, rather than experiencing the power of the gospel.  That is not meant to criticize or condemn.  I don’t mind my kids going on a trip to a nursing home to cheer up the residents, but don’t tell them it a sharing of the GOSPEL, the most powerful message on earth.  It wasn’t; it was cute kids singing songs.  That mixture is poisonous, and it breeds a particular sort of unbelief.  Jesus is not the tooth fairy.

-discipline blitz.  This may be the biggest deal of all.  The little issues that were tolerable when he was out of the home every day and the rest of his day was kind of “filler” no longer could be back-burner.  They are forefront, and his innate battle with Dad for who’s in charge has come into sharp focus.  I have fought to maintain authority over my little leader of leaders successfully for years.  But in the last six months I felt a shift.  I was no longer very effective.  My “disciplines” were a joke to his tough little behind.  (You know how they tell us we “throw like a girl”?  Turns out I “spank like a girl,” too.  Judah was not so foolish as to tell me these things out right, but one time he actually laughed, then tried to cover it up.)   My voice no longer carried the weight it used to.  My control was rising up (totally ineffective attempts at authority that were out of desperation and anger), producing many moments in which I didn’t like him or me.

OJ is taking Prov. 29:17 very seriously:  ”Correct your son, and he will give you rest;

Yes, he will give delight to your soul. ”

Contrasted with Prov. 17: 21 and 25, which tells us that the father of a fool has no joy, that his son will be his grief and his ruin. OJ is being bold to let go of so much of what is considered “normal,” not for the sake of being weird, but because he knows we must be urgent about what the Lord calls urgent.  That is my husband:  least passive man I know.  I could write poetry about him for the rest of the blog, but that would just make him mad.  :)

Last thing:  on that shift in which my voice ceased to be enough to really move my son.  I don’t know for sure if that was an age and development deal, or just God’s timing for our family, but I know it’s real.  I remember a prayer time for a family with a ton of boys, older than ours.  The Lord showed a picture of the Mom with a steel-toed boot on.  He was speaking to her husband, saying that his passivity in disciplining and leading his sons was costing his beautiful wife her femininity.  You could see it on her lovely face:  the exhaustion, the anger, the hopelessness.  It is real.  It does take Dad.

Ok, back to the series.

No, actually, one more last thing.  I admit, I was pretty anxious deep down about this whole thing, especially Judah’s academics.  Then I received this message from a beloved someone who will remain nameless, and I was DEEPLY encouraged.

“We had this super, super awesome christian couple over tonight for coffee after the kids were in bed. They are in their 50’s and raised (and are still raising) 8 kids. Their youngest is now 12. Anyway, they had 4 of each gender. Several really awesome things were said during the conversation, but I will be brief with a point I hope will encourage you. I was peppering Sherri with all kinds of questions about how she runs her home and her life. She gave me some great insights.

“Sherri has homeschooled her kids with a hodgepodge of different curriculums, etc.  She was telling me that one of her sons who is now going to MEDICAL SCHOOL didn’t read until he was 9. No joke. She did the bare minimum with him when he was younger…a little phonics, a little math, etc., but then the rest of the time just let him loose in their huge backyard/woods area. He was so obsessed with moving and exploring and finding things. Then, when he got older her was SUPER engrossed in reading/etc., and she knew all along he was fine and obviously now he is doing really well and will hopefully be a doctor if med school goes well. Her other son helped her husband build their house and put in roofing when he was 6. He’s now 24 and can fix anything on a car you ask him to. He was not interested in school until about age 12, so she just did the bare minimum with him, too. Crazy.”

I am becoming convinced that we only have our own passivity to fear, and whatever we do for our sons (and daughter) on purpose (the Lord’s purpose) will bear fruit.  We are so IN PROCESS OVER HERE, THOUGH, SO WATCH FOR MANY CHANGES, MISTAKES, AND LESSONS LEARNED!!!

Bless you!

-

When OJ and I were dating, I moved to Tacoma, WA, to be near him.  I couldn’t find a job I liked, so I started a mobile paint touch-up business with the help of some old acquaintances of my dad’s.  They had just discovered their potential as a franchise, and were offering to get me off the ground for $2800.  I had no concept how incredible this opportunity was, but at least I had (barely) enough sense to take it.  Little did we know this small step would support our family for more than ten years, and generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.

When OJ got out of the army shortly after our marriage, we again faced the job question.  “For lack of anything better,” he took over my business.  I was pregnant with our first child.  We had no idea, in the context of history, what it meant that a couple of twenty-somethings could just DO something like that, generate a comfortable lifestyle, buy their own home, acquire way too many vehicles, employ others, and own their own company free from the interference of government or corporate control…we were CLUELESS, despite our expensive college degrees.

We were SO clueless, that we actually despised our little business.  It sort of embarrassed us, and we perceived it always as a sort of “stop-gap” before we got to something REAL.  Why?  Because we were highly-educated Americans, a sort of “cream of the American crop,” if you will.  I had been a philosophy major and OJ had a computer science degree he had used as a Captain in the US Army.  Running around in paint-spotted clothes, working with used car managers who may or may not have gotten their GED’s, operating out of our car (NOW I realize:  ohmygoodness, the LOW overhead!), smelling fumes, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, WORKING WITH YOUR HANDS were not VALUES to us.  They were anti-values.  They were offensive and embarrassing.  I currently want to knock my head against the wall for how clueless we were.

It’s not like we were alone in our cluelessness.  We were part of a system.  I think of all the times that OJ tried to employ a young man who desperately needed a job, and he wouldn’t think of taking it, looking instead for that corporate opportunity.  Or he headed back to community college in search of whoknowswhat?  Or when we were trying to sell it and offered it below market value to friends who had families to support, only to have them be totally blind to the opportunity.  Again, tempted to knock my head against the wall.

But God was graciously opening our eyes to the values and paradigms that had completely deceived us, puffing us up with knowledge but leaving us, when it came to real life, somewhat stupid and useless.  How the system would take our gifting and capacity and ensure that we adhered to values which would squander them.  A value system that elevates knowledge and the mind, unaccountable to questions of usefulness or production; a value system run on passivity.

Note:  I am using story after story to highlight these issues in the natural world, particularly with men and boys.  I am always going to point to how these things are just pictures of what happens in the spiritual (REAL AND ETERNAL) world.

A while ago, we were seeking the Lord for how He would lead the men OJ was discipling, and He gave us a picture that turned out to be a template for what He would do with the men for the following year (or maybe years?).  In the picture the men were seated in a classroom.  At the front of the classroom was an instructor with a huge chalkboard on which he was writing notes on every aspect of gardening and farming.  Out the window, the men could see their plots of land:  fallow, scattered with rocks and stumps, and untended.  Every day, they would come take notes about farming and learn from books about farming, with no attention being given to their land.  The instructor couldn’t see the land outside.  He was a fountain of information, and was satisfied that he, at least, was active.  He was blind to the men’s turmoil and futility.

The picture was from El Roi, the God who Sees.  The God who sees His men and understands why they are in turmoil.  The God who would restore, would Father, would train His men to farm unto beautiful, abundant fruit, but who first had to address what was completely normal to them.  Religious systems in which information and revelation is confused for fruit, and the God’s purpose (the men themselves) is lost in the pleasant certainty of religious instruction.

Remember yesterday’s story of the Mr. Fix-it’s who never taught their sons to use a hammer?  “A worker’s appetite works for him; his mouth urges him on,” says Prov. 16:26.  For most of human history, the need to survive and acquire food would ensure that a) a man could not be totally passive, as the proverb implies, and b) he’d have to pass on at least those productive skills to his sons, or he’d have to feed them and theirs, too.  History has never seen the widespread wealth and indolence of this American moment in history, where when we talk about struggling to put food on the table, we mean because the flat-screen takes up so much room.  Our generation (about 30) perhaps was one of the first in which fathers could have genuinely felt that their skills were not useful to their sons.  Hopeful that they would be bankers and brokers instead of farmers and builders, they could have even meant well handing their sons’ development over to the education system.

This is a profound picture of the state of the church.  At some point, being a farmer or a soldier (analogies of the Christian life Paul uses in his epistles) became passé, and being a speaker to conferences, a missionary to the foreign, a bishop over the dioceses, a writer of books, a worship leader and numerous other positions that were more easily acquired and seemed more significant, became the thing.  A church historian could tell us when the strange idea called seminary was formed, after the fashion of the University.  Or when the word church ceased to refer to the the elect, and came to mean a ritual weekly gathering organized around a lecture.  There were better opportunities for those so inclined than the doggone dirty work of discipleship, of fathering, in which one man trains another in how to (in keeping with the analogy) farm unto beautiful fruit.  Why not let somebody else train the churches sons?  Oh, how very easy it is to teach God’s people what, once you’ve released the burden of whether or not they know HOW!!!

Well, now I’ve gone and done it.  :)  Next:  Malachi 4:6

One night sitting around the living room with our church, discussing these things, some inane plumbing problem manifested itself (a pipe that floods with water and sounds something like Niagara Falls in the sleeping baby’s room every ten minutes or so) and was noted by the group with annoyance.  Nobody knew how to fix it.  Then one of the men busted out, “We don’t even know how fix our own stupid houses, that’s so stinking LAME!!!”  Or something to that effect.

Another man began to share, “My dad can do ANYTHING.  He’s known for it–the whole town, all our relatives know that he can fix anything or build anything.  And I don’t know how to do ANYTHING.  He didn’t teach me ANYTHING.”  Several others affirmed similar stories around the room, a painful revelation.  It’s no common moment, to have men alive in discussion, being that honest about their hearts.  I was riveted.  Why would fathers who were exceptionally capable ignore passing their skills on to their sons?   In that moment of verbalization, it was apparent that it was such an ugly thing, like a kind of hatred.

If it had been a group of women, we would have FOR SURE needed to do the tissue box run.  But these were men.  They were trying to figure out what it meant through the numbness.  Not because they wanted to, but because they have sons now, and it’s urgent.  What did it mean that their fathers left their training to their sons’ schools and mothers, assuming whatever needed to take shape just…would?  How low, how very low, how very useless and insignificant a boy must be, if it’s not even worth his fathers time to explain what it is that he’s doing.  That is one message that went deep into these men’s hearts, a hateful, deceiving message that left them aimless and angry.

But even though the fathers mentioned above were skilled, their skills lacked purpose. What was their skill for? They might as well let somebody else train their sons.  There was no eternal why to their activity, so why take the time to teach their sons how?  THIS is the essence of passivity.  It’s abandonment and abdication in slow motion, over time and even decades, because the main thing, the raison d’etre, the purpose for that day, week, or decade was forgotten.  In real time, it just feels like boredom or distraction or busyness, but it laughs in the end, having stolen the best of life.  A man who worked for decades to support the family he forgot to father.

Hammers and nails are not the point.  The point is that Christian men are suffering from a lack of purpose and a lack of fathering:  the why and the how.  When you finally get down to brass tacks, many who are zealous are confused… “I know what NOT to do, but how DO I set my wife free and how DO I disciple my kids and how DO I lead other men and what DO I DO with my life that will matter in eternity?”

Christ-life is not a list of “do nots.”  It’s actually being taken over from the inside out by a God-sized To-Do list, found in Luke 4 and Isaiah 61.  Remember how Jesus said, “Zeal for His house consumes me,” and “My food is to do the will of my Father,” and then passed it on to us, saying that we would do greater works than the ones He had done?  Have you noticed that this Christ LIFE does not flow from a great list of what you DON’T do?  Just like no father ever taught his son to build a treehouse by telling him NOT to use the hammer on his own hands, NOT to throw the wood into the neighbor’s yard, or NOT to use the saw on the tree?  All those things may need to be said at some point if his son is young enough, but no treehouse would result from that instruction.  Nor would he stand there and describe the virtues of treehouses, how glorious they are or how ultimately desirable.  No one who had ever actually SEEN a treehouse would think the father was going to produce one that way.  Are you following me here?

But wait a minute…if the FATHER is chasing out demons, bringing light to the darkness, rescuing captives, opening the eyes of the blind, and planting transformed sinners as oaks of righteousness, if that’s our Father’s work, and the whole town and all the relatives know it, but He never taught us how to do it…If mainly what we can do is TALK about our Father’s work and hope it takes place at this Sunday’s service somehow, then how low, how very low and insignificant we must be to Him, if He’s not considered us fit to be trained in the family business?

And there, my friends, is the LIE that you will find at the root of passivity.

When you think “passivity,” don’t picture a couch potato.  That’s the most obvious form of it, but many extremely busy people are totally passive.  I know, because I was one of them.

Passivity is at it’s core a scheme to divorce people from purpose.  Yesterday I used the word “production;” the Bible uses the word “fruit.”  What we’re talking about is the effect that should follow a cause, the reward for the labor, the point to the speech, the closing of the sale.  Passivity is the vehicle that drives on the highway of our unbelief that God would be so good as to direct us to be fruitful, productive, purposeful, EFFECTIVE.  Or our unbelief that God would be so good as to create US in such a way that we could possibly be these things.  Passivity will let you be busy morning til night, as long as your activity is futile (especially in eternity).  If you suddenly get struck with a migraine and can’t read the rest of the blog, please meditate on that statement for a long time.  PASSIVITY WILL LET YOU DO ALL SORTS OF ACTIVITY, AS LONG AS IT IS FUTILE.

God didn’t create us this way, blind and numb to our purpose.  Remember that first command I mentioned in Gen. 1:28?  The command to be fruitful and multiply, subdue and take dominion?  Remember those millions of megawatts running through our sons?  Those megawatts are directly correlated to what they were created for, their purpose…they’re born wanting to subdue, take dominion, be fruitful (effective)…

Do you hear this all day, too, from your little guys?  ”MAMA!!!!!!!!!  LOOK AT THIS!!!!!!!!!!  I HAVE MY CAPE ON AND I CAN JUMP OFF YOUR BED ALL THE WAY TO CHAIR AND KNOCK THAT PILE OF BOOKS ON THE FLOOR!!!!!!!!!  MAMA, LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…”  Do you hear what he’s really saying about himself in his world?  Yes, my son!  You CAN!  You DO have power!  You ARE effective!  You DO have a place in the universe!  You CAN do what you set out to do!  You ARE a force!  These boys, they’re innately delighted by their own sense of purpose, and it fills them with joy.  They are not born passive.

But we’ve discovered that for most men (and women, but I’ll get to that later), this very sense of effectiveness, ability, strategy, and force is carefully trained OUT of them, rather than carefully developed as EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE CREATED FOR.  So by the time they’re men, they are marked by lack of confidence or misplaced confidence, anxiety, indecision, hesitation, confusion, and at an utter loss as to what they could do to be significant in their universe.  THIS IS PARTICULARLY TRUE OF CHRISTIAN, OR CHURCHED, MEN.  Where does that flying superhero go?

Picture this:  a man sits in his seat at church every Sunday for his whole life.  He files in, he hears sermons, he listens to announcements that give him some more attendance options, he sits with a few hundred other listeners and watches ONE person be active in front of a microphone.  Over the course of his life, he hears 200-300 sermons on how God made him for a purpose, that he has good works prepared before him, that he was made to rule and reign with Christ, and various other excellent purposeful topics.  His mind is packed with the what, but the how is completely left up to him to figure out.  He wants to obey God and is too devout to admit that he’s utterly bored, and mostly at a loss.  In spite of the great sermon topics, did this man learn to be effective or passive?

Picture this:  a boy starts with preschool, moves on to kindergarten, then to elementary school, then to high school.  If he did well, then he goes to college.  By this time, he knows that if he’s excelled then he will move on to:  tada!!!  The reward for excellence:  more school!  Every day his job is to sit still and intake, process assignments, and regurgitate information.  Opportunities to initiate or produce will be the rare exception.  The purpose of each year is not to be able to produce food, build houses, manage businesses, lead people, or steward land and resources.  The purpose of each year is to prepare him for the next year.  To begin to learn those productive specializations (an MBA, for instance), he first has to do 15 -20 years of generalized time, during which he has learned to respond and not initiate.  Did this boy learn to be bold and confident, or passive?  Did he learn that his days are a fleeting vapor, he is eternally significant, and EVERY DAY OF HIS LIFE IS CRUCIAL?  Or that it’s totally normal to be in an eternal cycle of preparing for someday and never hold your reward in your hands?

Picture this:  for his formative years, when he’s not at school, a boy is at home with his mom.  His father is at work.  Mom has a household to care for, kids  younger than him, and everybody’s survival depends on her ceaseless labor.  It’s her job to make sure their stuff doesn’t break (they need that coffee table…what are you DOING TO THE COFFEE TABLE, SON????), the house gets clean, meals are made again, again, and again, and that everyone is safe.  She cuddles and protects the baby, and does the same thing fifteen hundred times, be it diapers, or mac and cheese, or laundry.  Her role is not limited to the cyclical, but her nurturing nature inclines itself toward maintenance, safety, and beautifying.  She is a GREAT mom.  Most of her instruction to her son comes in the form of “Don’ts,” as his very nature, when confined, tends to conflict with what is core to her role.  She is often tired and her son pushes her right over the edge into exhaustion.  Was this son trained to subdue his world and take dominion, or that his manhood poses a subtle threat to everyone’s well-being?

Have you noticed what’s missing from my pictures?  It’s the one person who is actually equipped to bring a boy, a man, a SON into purpose.  IT’S HIS FATHER.

OJ and I are engaged in an all out battle in our home with passivity.  It began because of what I like to call The Energy Crisis. One cold garbly day I had had about as much as I could take of my little bumper cars and said (well, maybe “said” is the wrong word) to OJ:  ”Get these boys outside boys are not made to be inside boys are made to be outside IT’S JUST WRONG they have too much energy and I have NONE!!!!!!!”  It sounds funny, but it wasn’t at all.  It was profound.

Energy is for work, which is for production.  But my frustration was looming because of the astonishing futility I saw looming over my days…USING my energy to SUPPRESS their energy…all my work going to drain them of theirs.  The end product being negative production. Practically speaking, this meant five rooms messed for every one I manage to tidy, eight commands given for every one acted upon, twenty minutes to settle them in an activity that engages them for seven.  And endless cycle of sucking away my life, and theirs.  Why?  Because they’re bad?  Actually, our sons are carefully trained in obedience.  We’ve been playing that harp since they were born.  It wasn’t a behavioral crisis we were feeling.  It was the beginning of the earth shaking under our feet.

What are boys for? This question is one we’ve pondered carefully, as you can read here, but…how?

Judah was doing very well in school.  Very obedient, eager to learn, highly social, and a favorite of his excellent teacher.  But he was coming home STRESSED OUT.  His little body couldn’t stop.  Oral fixations developed and became out of control, and after carefully paying attention for five hours at school, he couldn’t look me in the eyes or hear five words in a row out of my mouth.  Every day I would have to devote a half hour or hour of my ENERGY to help him get control of his.  If I could not spare that half hour, he would run us all (including himself) ragged for the rest of the day.  Energy crisis.

He easily absorbed what he was learning at school.  Which is what school is for, right? But what was school teaching him that HE was FOR? Sure, in words he was being taught that his purpose was to obey and glorify God, etc.  But what was hours of sitting still and taking in information that he could not put his hands to really teaching our son that he was for?  Was it something like this?

“Good men waste their time in a well-behaved manner.  And then SOMEDAY they are SUDDENLY heroes and champions:  moving, shaking, leading, liberating, proclaiming, battling, defeating, shouting, rescuing, healing, freeing, etc.  But we’ll train you in that in your off-time.  Mainly, you need to learn how to use about 1/100th of your engine for most of your day, and disconnect your body from your mind (which we worship and serve, uh, I mean, which we use to worship and serve God).  We’ll give you some recess time to let off your (useless) energy.”

I am a mother of four, wife of a mighty man, discipler of women, writer, and trainer.  AND I get dressed every day and sometimes exercise.  Energy is no joke to me.  It’s a matter of life and death.  I have often cried in the night with a fussy little one, please let me sleep… Not just because I like sleep, but because if I have energy it means that kids will be loved, fed and trained, my husband will be encouraged, built up and sent from our home to do his mission in power, captives will be set free, the gospel will be preached, either at home or on the internet or SOMEWHERE, and on and on…  Energy is PRECIOUS to me.  So the revelation that our system (Judah was just in Kindergarten, so he was about to embark on 17-20 something academic years) was going to carefully train him to DUMP his energy so he could do what was REALLY valuable (tank on information) was like a dagger to the heart.

NO.  NO.  NO.

OJ and I looked at each other.  We disciple men.  We know how many are floundering under the most elementary bondages:  video games, pornography, sports addictions.  WE know how many families will suffer incredible loss because of these time/energy/passion toilets, if you will.  The attraction of the things themselves eventually fail to explain the addiction level.  What has convinced men to dump their lifeblood, their force, their manhood into utter waste, and be blind and numb to the incredible exploits they have within their reach through the gospel in their home, their marriage, their actual acquaintances?  How can they stand it?  How can they spend most of their lives in purposelessness  and then commit their force, strategic ability, energy, and masculine power to HOBBIES?

Could it be that men are FOR something?  For a god-like purpose (Gen. 1:28, the first command given to mankind)?  Could it be that my sons have million of megawatts flowing through their blood for something other than driving me to the end of my sanity?  Could it be that it’s NOT God’s plan that moms and teachers exhaust themselves suppressing masculine drive so that in twenty years wives can be begging those young man to rise back up?  Please talk to me, please help me, please take out the garbage, please be my champion, please lead me to the Cross, please train the children, please get off the computer…

“Could it be,” we said, “that the way we do things in our culture is a set up to destroy men?”

More to come.

Most people are unfamiliar with the state of their own heart.  That is why they are surprised and shocked by their children’s rebellion.  You’ve heard the term, “terrible twos”?  As a whole culture, we are appalled to discover what emerges from these small souls!  How silly.  We’re like a man who looks in a mirror, and walks away, forgetting what he looks like.

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.  James 1:22-24

“Dang!  I look good!”  This deception is the reward of disobedience.  Disobedience and self-deception are normal to the human heart.

Discipleship (what Jesus did and commanded us to do) is just like godly parenting, and vice versa. It holds up the mirror, and familiarizes us with ourselves in the context of unconditional love. It uncovers our rebellion, layer by layer, and lovingly turns us from it.  Discipleship is the easy way, the rich way, the wise way…it’s the way for those who want to see. When we don’t want to see, we turn to religion (religious activity, forms of godliness without power) which leaves us in a (far from blissful) ignorant state. Our rebellion remains unconfronted as we walk away from the mirror, reveling in our rightness (whatever form that takes).

Life will hold up the mirror in other ways, whether or not we’ve wanted it.  The best mirror that comes along is a man’s wife.  In her he can see the fruit of his Christ-life accurately displayed.  Is she filled with joy?  Safe in love?  Free to speak and free to be silent?  Secure in her loveliness?  Or is she sorrowful?  Angry?  Fearful?  Passive?  Next is their children.  This display will be even more precise.

It is astonishing how men and women will lash out at these mirrors, sure that they are playing tricks, angry at the image there, but refusing to address how much hearing there is without doing.  Those who are familiar with the state of their hearts will not be surprised by their children, but instead become tuned to the Spirit’s correction.  As they perceive their children’s need, they will often see that it is a perfect diagnosis of their own need.  Just this revelation embraced can bring a person into fruitful discipleship from the Lord Himself.

Religion will always offer something other than this gospel of turning away from sin into love.  Some forms of religion will offer exposure of rebellion without the context of love. Even if they are doctrinally correct, they bring striving, anxiety, and death to the heart.  The flip side will offer the promise of unconditional love without the confrontation of rebellion that is utterly inevitable as soon as AGAPE (GOD-LOVE) comes in contact with the human heart (as described in Jer. 17:9).  The two are like baking soda and vinegar.  There will never not be a reaction, in which the rebellion has to go for the love to stay.

People who hate authority tend to gravitate towards the latter forms of religion, while people more prone to  performance out of fear gravitate towards the former.  But Jesus is not afraid of either, or of our self-deception.  HE has demonstrated Himself perfectly able to love sinners, and has no fear of what we fear most:  to see the state of our heart in an accurate mirror.  His love is so rich, it actually makes the experience the most profound joy that life can offer…the joy of salvation...for those who want to see.

Matthew 13:15-17

¹⁵For this people’s heart has grown dull,
and with their ears^(A) they can barely hear,
and^(B) their eyes they have closed,
lest they should see with their eyes
and hear with their ears
and^(C) understand with their heart
and^(D) turn, and I would heal them.’

¹⁶But^(E) blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. ^17(F) For truly, I say to you,^(G) many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

If you’ve not listened to the freedom teaching before, its available in audio here on our site.

Warning:  I do not have time to do justice to the topic I will briefly introduce here.  Much grace, please.

An odd phenomenon keeps coming to my attention.  I thought I’d throw in my two cents, which is a very dangerous thing to do, given what I want to address.  Kind of like “dropping by” the lion’s den for a quick mane-brushing…  But I’m gonna try anyway, urged on by my husband.  I always take it seriously when he says, “Will you please blog about…?”

Because I’m so dang submissive.

That’s a joke, but not really.

See, I teach submission in marriage.  If you would like to know if I am a submitted wife, you can ask my husband.  I am confident that his honest answer would bless me.  I believe he would say, “Not perfectly, but extraordinarily.”  But you can ask him.

And that, my friends, is WHY I write/preach the gospel/teach women/counsel/pray authoritatively/prophecy and exhort publicly, etc.  Because I have a husband who exhorts me, who urges me, who encourages me, and who implores me to do so.  Because he is not cold-hearted, blind, chauvinistic, foolish, and just plain weird.  He didn’t marry a fireball to douse me with water.  He married a fireball:  being entrusted with my care, preservation, promotion, nourishment, beautification, elevation, and on, and on, by my FATHER, the LIVING GOD.  He has fear of the Lord over this.  As well He should.  I happen to be precious to God. The fire I carry in my heart is His Breath in my Spirit…oh, should a husband ever have fear of the Lord over this!  Or have you not read Eph 5?

Anyway, I keep running into this WEIRDNESS.  There are popular books about WEIRDNESS!  They take this  beautiful word “submission,” and turn it into something weird.  Something silent, stealthy, subservient, and, wouldn’t you know it…controlling. Or did you not know that when you take on a formula of behavior in order to achieve a result, it’s control?  Faith is submission is Christ-like is Spirit-led is powerful is done by a person who knows their worth.  Fear is insecure and asks for a sure-fire set of rules by which I can be assured that when I’ve done my part God will meet my demands.  Such an irony…control in sheep’s clothing.  They seem to offer Pearls of wisdom, but take a godly dial and turn it two degrees toward religious control and thus offer something constraining and weird.  (Sorry to use that word again, but I hope it sets somebody free.  This stuff is WEIRD.)

So, as I said, I can’t delve into the whole shebang here.  So for time purposes, I’m going to assume that “submitting to your husband” is Marriage 101 (entry level material).  That is not to diminish those who are not sure about this concept, struggle with it, or need help in this area.  I still need help in this area, I used to MASSIVELY “struggle with it,” and I actually WAS sure about this concept.  Sure that I hated it.  So anyway, I needed a good bit of time in Marriage 101, so I don’t call it that to diminish anyone.  At first I hated that class, but came to love it through the hard work of extraordinary instructors, and now I love to teach it because I found the secrets of trust, worth, and love in it.

So…I’m gonna skip to Marriage 201, assuming that you, the reader, have already agreed that yes, indeed, God’s design is for wives to be submitted to their husbands. And of course, you’ve taken the Pre-Req…which is that God’s design is that a man LOVE His wife as Christ loves the Church.  So back to the Pearls, allow me to use an analogy:

When a corporation is failing, do the shareholders replace the secretarial staff?  “That’s it!  These typo-ed memos and tardy faxes are KILLING our profit margins!!!”   No!  They replace the CEO.  Even the world knows that problems start with leadership, and the problems of the subordinates are exactly what good leadership exists to address.  So why these books that suggest that limiting a woman’s role to its most menial definition and then emphasizing relentless diligence and laboriousness to it will solve a marriage’s problems?  It’s like a book suggesting if you become a better and better secretary or maybe just a heck of ajanitor, the corporation will not fail!  It mostly misses the real problem (the home’s leadership) to address much less significant ones, like how great dinner is.  If you tell me you buy into God’s design, then you won’t fall for the trick, the trick being that “I believe the husband is the head of the home which is why I believe I can control everything in the home by being a better wife in the most menial and insignificant terms.”  WEIRD.

I bought into submission with joy when (I got free of LOADS of fear and…) I realized that God’s design meant that my husband was going to be called into account for every aspect of our home, including my joy level, my freedom, my hope, my peace, my contentment, and all that of our children, as well.  And I realized that was real.  And I thought about Him standing before the throne, answering for how he treated me (remember how I mentioned how precious I am to God).  And because I LOVE my husband and ADORE him and even though I get angry with him I would never, ever want him to fail in any way, especially before the throne of God…and I determined that I would make it as easy as possible for him to obey the Lord to lead our home in love at all times.

There is no pretending in this picture.  Because there is no pretending before the throne of God.  At the throne of God, every man who has blindly accepted the service of his wife without carefully attending to her,  will abruptly be brought into truth.  His chauvinism will shatter on the ground as God asks, “Why did you not consider how I love your wife?”  I would do whatever I can that this would not be my husband’s portion!

Do you see how a subservient, silent, menial role simply does not fit into God’s reality?  I serve and submit out of love, out of fear of God, and out an earnest desire that I could contribute to my husband standing before God’s throne and hearing, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” even in his loving leadership of me!  When there is failure, I don’t forgive mistreatment because it’s God’s design, I forgive it because it’s NOT God’s design!  Are you catching my drift?

There’s so much more to say, and to keep myself from just rambling on forever, I will make one more point, because it’s where I see so much weirdness.  Let’s look at 1 Pet 3:1-6, which urges a woman to win her husband over by her conduct, not her words.  What kind of husband?  Let’s look at the verse:  “…they [who] do not obey the Word…”  Disobedient ones!  What kind of husband can’t hear his wife, can’t be won by her faithful, respectful words?  DISOBEDIENT ONES!  Rebellious ones!  The funny thing is that women I see take this on as a “rule,” act as if they have a good marriage.  But the modern equivalent term for the Biblical description of this marriage is DYSFUNCTIONAL.  If you need to win your husband with silent submission, God bless you, sister.  I’ve been there, and I turn there, whenever there’s a tension NOT OVER OPINIONS BUT OVER OBEDIENCE TO GOD AND I PERCEIVE MY HUSBAND’S IN REBELLION. OJ has had to release me to God for correction, too, at times when I wouldn’t listen to him.

But don’t tell me that’s God’s design.  Because the verse is about a marriage that’s out of His design.  If you can’t speak truth and win your husband to truth, he’s rebellious to God.  Now, we need a power plan.  Bingo!  1 Peter 3!!!  But be honest about it.  I’ll hold your hand, pray for him earnestly with you, and help you implement your POWERFUL 1 Peter 3 plan to WIN your husband through FAITH and not terror because he (your husband) is in TROUBLE and doesn’t know that the judgment of God is coming.  And if he’s really blind, it will be on him for decades without him realizing why.  So out of love for him, we’d better use our 1 Peter 3 power plan.  And because it’s Scripture, I’ll promise you we’ll see fruit, and soon.

But don’t tell me you have a good marriage.  And don’t write a book as if this is how it’s supposed to be.

Now, if you’re shocked and a little offended and saying, “Well, I never!  My husband certainly isn’t REBELLIOUS to God!”  Then I’ll say, “OH PHEW…well, speak up, woman!”  Look at this passage…it’s long but fascinating…

¹⁵ Then they came and besieged him in Abel of Beth Maachah; and they cast up a siege mound against the city, and it stood by the rampart. And all the people who were with Joab battered the wall to throw it down.
¹⁶ Then a wise woman cried out from the city, “Hear, hear! Please say to Joab, ‘Come nearby, that I may speak with you.’” ¹⁷ When he had come near to her, the woman said, “Are you Joab?”
He answered, “I am.”
Then she said to him, “Hear the words of your maidservant.”
And he answered, “I am listening.”
¹⁸ So she spoke, saying, “They used to talk in former times, saying, ‘They shall surely seek guidance at Abel,’ and so they would end disputes. ¹⁹ I am among the peaceable and faithful in Israel. You seek to destroy a city and a mother in Israel. Why would you swallow up the inheritance of the LORD?”
²⁰ And Joab answered and said, “Far be it, far be it from me, that I should swallow up or destroy! ²¹ That is not so. But a man from the mountains of Ephraim, Sheba the son of Bichri by name, has raised his hand against the king, against David. Deliver him only, and I will depart from the city.”
So the woman said to Joab, “Watch, his head will be thrown to you over the wall.” ²² Then the woman in her wisdom went to all the people. And they cut off the head of Sheba the son of Bichri, and threw it out to Joab. Then he blew a trumpet, and they withdrew from the city, every man to his tent. So Joab returned to the king at Jerusalem.  2 Samuel 20

Come on, now!!  Wouldn’t you like to go down in Scriptural history as a WISE WOMAN???  If you equate that with silence, you have vastly misunderstood the heart of God.  OK, I could comment on this passage for ages…but I’ll contain myself to one point.  If your husband loves the Lord, if his heart is tender, if he cares for you, even if hard times have hardened that somewhat…sister, do you not see that your silence is more likely out of hopelessness, anger, and control than out of love and true submission?

Unless he is one out of 10,000,000, his father did not adequately prepare him to intricately understand a woman’s heart.  He does not know the way he is besieging and besetting and preparing to destroy a “mother in ________ (insert your town here).”  I’m talking about issues of the heart here.  He probably doesn’t know how worthless you feel when he _______ , or how much your heart aches for (fellowship, a break, a garden, his spiritual leadership in the home, his attention, etc.), or how when he does _________ it tears down the kids, or how it’s WRONG that he (has made an idol out of ministry or work and is never home, or watches filthy media, or speaks badly about others, or considers himself a failure, etc.).  You might even have to cry out, “Hear me, hear me, hear me, please!” a couple of times.  That would be normal.  The wise woman in the passage above is crying out, “Hear me!” but she’s not disrespectful or unsubmitted.  She calls herself Joab’s servant.  You know why?  Because she DID serve him.  By being honest to call sin sin, and alert him to the consequences of his actions.  Matthew 18 does not suddenly cease to function in the context of marriage!  Obviously, nothing is spoken out of selfishness or pride, but because he will be called to account for those things, because you and your family is the Lord’s inheritance.

Wisdom would remember that you partnered together to build up the city (home), not to tear it down, and he may not see what he’s doing…just like YOU so often don’t see what YOU’RE doing to tear it down.  This street OF COURSE goes both ways.

So don’t read a misguided book about submission and shut down your marriage, if indeed you partnered together to pursue the Living God!  If you partnered for some other purpose, then I would have a different conversation with you…but if your husband loves the Lord, he needs to hear your voice.  If you need to use a little 1 Peter 3 to WIN his ear, amen.  But WIN it and then speak into it so that you can throw the head of the infiltrator (the ENEMY) right out of your midst.

Godly women are warriors.  Godly women are wise.  Godly women love to follow Godly leadership, but Godly women do not pretend.  Godly women see consequences coming long before they arrive.  Godly women know when it’s time to shout and they do so, for the salvation and well-being of their husbands, themselves, and their city (home, family, children), the Lord’s inheritance.

This morning as I was pushing the double jogger up the hill, I called Samuel a “prince,” because I needed an explanation for why I wasn’t letting him get out and walk.  Then I thought how messed up that idea is, that the privileged place is the easy one.

“I don’t want to teach my kids that,” I thought.  So then, once I was pushing both of them (Ariel was back in the stroller, asking why I didn’t call her a princess, of course you’re a princess, yada yada yada…)  I said, “You two may get to be prince and princess while I do the hard work, but at the end of the day, guess who gets to be strong?”

Sometimes I oughtta listen to myself.

Have you ever noticed how “other people” just don’t realize how easy their lives are?  You know, “other people.”  I’m sure you know some.  They’re everywhere.  It’s mostly an illusion, of course.  When we get into others’ lives, we often find they are anything but easy.  This is the enemy’s great weapon against joy, convincing us that those who have it, have it because of how great their life is.  But it’s not all illusion.  Some people (this could be said of almost all Americans, on a materialistic level) just don’t know how easy their life is.  When things are truly HARD, it’s tough to not just want a quick swap.  ”Hey, how about YOU push the stroller for a while, and I’ll take a load off???”  I guess the illusion can go both ways.  We can think “other people’s” lives are easy when they’re not, and we can think our life is hard, when it’s not.

My lesson’s coming back to me, right now.  I’m thinking how I could be somebody’s “other people.”

“Well, Suzanna, you have a husband who loves you and seeks the Lord.”  That is true, but there was a day when I was a pitiful wife and he was a poor husband and the combo was pretty ugly.  But with the help of people who taught us how to fight our way to peace and joy, we did.  And now, instead of just having an awesome marriage, we have to tools to teach other people how to do it.  We couldn’t see the top of that hill when we pressed up it.  But now we get to be strong.

“Well, Suzanna, at least you have healthy children.”  That is true, but I had a baby who was dying, when somebody taught us how to fight for her life.  The lessons we learned wouldn’t save every suffering family from sickness and death, but they have and will help many.  We faced the possibility of the worst thing parents can face, but now we get to be strong.

“Well, Suzanna, your kids obey you.  Mine are driving me CRAZY!!!”  Well, that’s SOMEWHAT true that they often/sometimes/usually obey me (depending on the day).  But given my background in behavioral therapy, I can tell you with absolute certainty that we fought against “disorders” in our first son that had we ventured into any doctor’s office for help would have earned us multiple diagnoses, prescriptions, and therapies.  And through Jesus Christ we won.  Not everyone will want to hear about HOW those battles were won, but those who do will find hope.  And so we get to be strong.  And oh how very, very strong that little son of ours is going to be.  But I don’t have words to do justice to the excruciating pain of those battles, when we were only sleeping a couple of hours at a time, discipline was useless, and victory seemed uncertain.  But someday, God’s gonna let us be strong for the deliverance of many, many little boys.  I just know it.

So today, I’m trying, demanding, INSISTING on remembering that there IS a top to this hill, we will stand there, and I’m not gonna look at “other people” who seem to be coasting up without effort, because at the end of the day, we’ll get to be strong.

You are probably somebody’s “other people.”  They don’t need to know how hard it really is.  But press through unto overcoming by crying out to God…and at the end of the day, you might get to be so strong, you get to deliver them, too.

³ And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; ⁴ and perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵ Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.  Romans 5

I am sure most of you out there have sweet little lambs who respond instantly to your softest inflection, and so you won’t be able to relate to finding yourself exhausted at the end of the day with your toddler, wondering how someone who cannot even form sentences could effectively accomplish a coup d’etat, wrestling control from my college educated, doctrinally correct, upright citizen of a self.  I am probably the only one, but just in case anyone else out there can relate…this one’s for you.

You might remember the last two pieces of my mommy mantra were:  I am not afraid of you, and I am in charge.  That did not get formed in a vacuum, my friends.  The thing that is so funny to me is that OJ and I thought that our oldest, Ariel, had a strong will.  Little did we know that Judah David would come along and make it seem like parenting her had been equivalent to feeding a goldfish.  Our little lion cub, Judah, came out and ROARED.  We weren’t totally taken by surprise.  I still remember the prayer time before he was born where we asked for his original design.   Here are a few things we heard:

1. Forceful leader of leaders

2. Drawn to power so keep his way pure.

3. Extremely driven to achieve.

4. Man of authority with a hero’s heart, hatred of injustice.

5. Prankster

So, we were in love with him from the get-go.  Which is good, because we had no idea what we were in for.   Judah began to make his force known from a very early age.  So began our journey to learn how to train our son to bring his force into submission.

¹ Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. ² Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.  Rom. 13:1-2

I read an article today about the vacuum of authority in the devastated nation of Haiti.  It was filled with fear at the possibilities of what might arise to fill it.  It struck me that even secular journalists recognize this, that where the governing authorities cannot or do not take their role, something illegitimate will rise up to fill the void.  This is human nature.  It clamors for control.  The same is true in the home.  Our little ones, in their sinful natures, will clamor for control.  They will desire to be in charge, and for their wills to rule.  Granted, not all to the same degree, some are stronger than others.  But no one doesn’t have a will.

But authority is established by God.  He does not hate authority, consider it mean and bad, or apologize for it.  Rebellion and self-rule always bring death.  He tells us to be saved from this by confessing He is Lord, i.e. receiving His rulership and the authority of His voice in our lives.  His leadership in our lives actually sets us free from our slavery to sin and the ruler of this world (Eph. 2:1-2).

In regards to the home He says this.  It’s very simple:  Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Eph. 6:1  I like to refer to this seemingly simple revelation as: PEACE, THE NEW NORMAL.  We say to the kids all the time, “When we have obedient hearts, we have happy hearts.”  It’s true.  It’s Biblical.  It’s what God has ordained.  Our children, as long as they are in control, are in bondage to the dictates of their will (you’ve learned about the horrors of this from Proverbs), and are implacable, unthankful, and unhappy.  And mom and dad are exhausted and tense, and the home is burdensome.  This is not from God, but I have found that the deceptions the world lives in have crept so far into the church, that Christian parents think that this is normal life.  It is not.  Normal life in Christ is peaceful, obedient children.

I don’t say the above from a place of naivete, or thinking that this happens with a snap of the fingers.  Nothing about parenting Judah has been easy.  Maybe some folks don’t struggle too much to achieve this in their homes.  God bless them!  I have noticed that they often come from lines of many generations of faithful believers, and are themselves living set apart, holy lives.  They give the rest of us hope of what we can hand to our kids!  But for those of us who have to battle, FAITH is the first tool I want to urge parents to take hold of.

We must start with a simple, adamant belief that every word of scripture is true.  I know, we think we already do that.  But do we?  Do we BELIEVE that our children should obey us…that this is right? Mommies in particular are barraged all day with so much insecurity, guilt and failure, the truth is that often time we feel about as shaky as a reed out there in the wind of our children’s wills, until we finally well up in so much frustration that we exert our authority if a fit of rage.  Which, of course, heaps on a double helping of guilt and failure.  We try and try to stop getting angry, but are missing the root problem.

Have we really BELIEVED the Lord, who commands that it is RIGHT for our children to obey us.  We think we are supposed to be such saints and angels that as little Johnny screams at us that he doesn’t want to wear the third pair of pants either, he wants to wear his dino pj bottoms, that we lovingly keep our patient, loving expression and look for his pj bottoms.  Or maybe Johnny doesn’t scream, maybe he cries and cries because he’s so sad.  Or maybe he hides.  Whatever flavor his disobedience is, Momma, you might not be struggling with anger because you’re a freak.  It might be that you have not really BELIEVED that it is RIGHT for little Johnny to obey you the first time, with joy.  There are lies we can live in that cause our children live in bondage to their wills (and so will we):

Lie 1:  Authority is bad, and good people don’t need it.

Lie 2:  I am not a good enough person or parent to walk in my authority.  I have disqualified myself, or need to earn that right.

Lie 3:  Authority = control and domination.  It crushes those underneath it.

This is why faith is the first tool.  We must BELIEVE the Word and act on it.  What does the Word say?

1.  See Rom. 13:1,2 above.

2.  You have been appointed by God.  You can never earn your authority as a parent.  It does not come from you or anything you do.  It comes from God.  Your children don’t obey you because you’re good enough, but because “this is right.”  And it will deliver their souls from rebellion (which is death).

3. Control and domination = control and domination.  Authority is NOT control and domination.  True authority is strong like an oak of righteousness, providing security, strength, and structure for those it nourishes and protects.

Do I believe that God has appointed me as the authority in my child’s life?  If yes, then I can trust that the power of God will back me up as I bring our children into obedience.  We are not on our own, using the tools of our flesh.  This is where the Mommy mantra “I’m not afraid of you” came from.  When Judah made his force known, it shook me.  It was so much easier to bend to his will than to fight to retain my authority.  I had to face the scriptures, place my trust in God, and plant my feet in His word.  I got down close to my little buddy’s face, matched his intensity eyeball to eyeball, and using simple words without anger communicated this, “God put me in charge, not you.  I don’t know how long it will take for me to win this battle, but I will win it.  I have time for this.  I am not afraid of you.”  And then I stayed there, until he came into obedience.  I don’t mean down there on the floor, I mean in that stance of commitment:  taking the time to stay home, dedicate my time to consistent discipline, and be firm in my love and authority, until he got it.  But guess what?  Once it’s done, you move into maintenance mode!  Once they’re brought into obedience, you begin to harvest that “…peaceable fruit of righteousness.”  Life gets fun again!

Hebrews 12:11
Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

But the whole thing starts with Mom and Dad BELIEVING the Word of God and sending out the bulletin to the troops.  Announcement!!!  THIS is our new NORMAL:  You guys are going to obey cheerfully, the first time.  Mom and Dad live HEARING the Word of the Lord and OBEYING it, and you guys live HEARING our words, and obeying them!  WELCOME to our peaceful new home!   :)  Then…Heb. 12:11.  Watch God work when you believe His Word!

Tomorrow:  a little more faith, a lot more hope

BIG THANKS to my Dad, who taught me to believe the Word, every time, all the time.  We thank God for you!

1 John 4:18
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.

This post could also be called, “Why fear is a big jerk that we should kick out of our houses.”  Here’s the amplified version of 1 Jn. 4:18:

There is no fear in love [dread does not exist], but full-grown (complete, perfect) love turns fear out of doors and expels every trace of terror! For fear brings with it the thought of punishment, and [so] he who is afraid has not reached the full maturity of love [is not yet grown into love's complete perfection].

I have found a funny conundrum in talking about the things of God, particularly to Christian women.  I have found that when you talk straight about God’s righteousness and His standards, a few get offended, pretty sure that they know God from down the street, and He’s waaaaay more laid back than the Bible makes Him out to be.  But not most.  Many women want so much (with all their hearts) to please God, that when you start to talk about His righteousness, you can almost see the icy fingers gripping them…fear, with the thought of punishment. I am so familiar with those icy fingers myself.  “I was totally not super kind to the checkout lady.  Have I failed God?”  Add kiddos into the striving perfectionist’s mix and, whoa, things just get CRAAAZZZZZZZYYYYY!  It’s a wild rollercoaster of trying and failing and trying and failing, and no wonder we just weep at Hallmark commercials by the time we’re 45!!!  Basketcases!

Today was a basketcase kind of day.  For me, those are mostly internal, but, of course, my highly prophetic and sensitive five year old gives me the run down.  “Well, Momma, I don’t think you need to be so unhappy about that, because I was just trying to explain something and so you don’t need to be so angry!  I’m starting to cry because of your hard voice!”  This is after a scathing comment like, “Darling, Momma wants to you be quiet right now, okay?” But, of course, she’s right.  I was angry.  And she is crying.  Cannot wriggle out of it, totally called out, errghhhhhh…  And the fever pitch of failure just gets me wound tighter and tighter…

Until I remember that I serve God, who manifested Himself perfectly in Jesus Christ, who loved me to death when I was His enemy.  And He reminds me that He is the kind of Father who will give me as much as I want, rather than as much as I deserve.  “Mercy?  How much do you want, Suzanna?  Redemption for the last 54 failures with the kids?  Just the last 54?  How about we make that…beauty for ashes?  There, that’s about right!  Would you also like to exchange the spirit of heaviness you’re chilling with for the much more complimentary garment of praise, and the oil of joy for your mourning?  Good.  just ask.  You have not because you ask not!”

Wait a minute, Lord, where’s the punishment?

God is love.  This love revelation revolutionizes me and my parenting.  He IS love, He hates fear, and He has no desire to punish.  Me or anyone else.  Why does Jesus tell us to seek His righteousness?  Because we don’t already have it.  When we find out about God’s holiness and perfection, it is astonishing and blinding in its brightness.  Mere angels cause men to quiver on the floor, and God is far beyond that.  Our guilty hearts can only have one knee-jerk reaction:  He ought to punish me.  Whatever the pearl of wisdom and revelation God offers us (especially women), fear offers us this counterfeit to eating the truth and being full:  He ought to punish me. And He ought!  But our hearts are the ones that love the “oughts,” His heart LOVES MERCY.

Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion.  Is. 30:18a

So how does this apply to parenting?  The idea of punishment goes so deep in us, it’s an astonishing thought to try to understand the system without it.  How does Father God deal with my consistent, persistent failure and falling short?  This is what we must understand to parent our kids:  it’s training and correction, training and correction, training and correction.  No punishment.  He DOES NOT MIND CORRECTING  us!  All that punishment of which I am so worthy, all of it, paid by His perfect Son, the spotless lamb.

For the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.  Jas. 1:20.

I have noticed as a parent that anger and punishment produce fear-based striving and failure (or rebellion) in the kiddos, but not true breakthrough. So 1 Jn. 4 helps me to understand there is a completely different parenting system at work in Christ.  Remember yesterday’s foray into Proverbs?  One of the most marked things that marks the fool is his hatred of correction.  So it seems the wise man is not the one who does it all well, he’s the one who readily receives correction, again and again.  So…God’s not seeking perfection from me?  And He doesn’t want to punish me?  But these are the FOUNDATIONS of human parenting, apart from God!  Aren’t we trying to get them to do what’s right, after all?  No, God’s system for His kids is utterly OTHER, it is love-based, it is mercy-based, it assumes that the just requirements for punishment have been taken care of at the cross.

God’s parenting is always for good fruit.  Punishment, condemnation, and feeling like a failure are not good fruit.  These things are never the work of the Lord in our lives.  We can, as parents in Christ, replace the system of Setting the Standard, Pushing for Achievement, and Punishing Failure with a new system.  The mercy system:  Introducing Righteousness to a Sinner (Teaching), Training him or her in it (Demonstrating and Coaching), and Correcting resistance to it (Discipline).  So instead of being shocked and horrified that the little ones are programmed to steal from their siblings, yell for what they want, and demand the biggest, best, first, we understand (like the FAther) that this is how sinners are.  We expect sin from them, and consider it our job to train them in what is foreign to their self-oriented selves:  righteousness.

I make it sound so easy, I know.  But here’s what does get way, way simplified, especially in those early wet cement years.  What do I correct for (in other words, if everything’s training, at what point am I using discipline?).  For rebellion!  For that Proverb-ial foolishness:  the hatred of instruction, correction, and authority.  Here’s the deal, from God to us who are in Christ and from us as parents to our children:  “In my mercy, I will overlook your utter lack of righteousness and at total cost to myself, I will introduce you to it and patiently instruct you in it.  But in order for this to work, you must LISTEN AND OBEY.”  And so to save the young soul, and preserve the open ears so that righteousness can be taught, rebellion is THE zero tolerance issue, whether it be in the form of not listening or the form of not obeying.  This is what we discipline for, very, very firmly and unhesitatingly.  Here is one not to miss:

Proverbs 23:13
Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die.

So our parenting, like God’s, is out of love, not to form fear of punishment, but resting on Jesus’ payment for us as believers.  Training and correction unto fruitfulness.  What good news…there is no fear in love!!!  Hallelujah!!!

Tomorrow:  the tool of faith

Since I wrote this post, I have added another son, added more hatred for seduction, and re-upped my determination to raise mighty men unto the Lord.  Some days I’m tired as all get out, but as long as I’m breathing I’ll give out kisses, hugs, and spankings, and remind myself that I was made for WAR!

³¹ For who is God, except the LORD?
And who is a rock, except our God?
³² It is God who arms me with strength,
And makes my way perfect.
³³ He makes my feet like the feet of deer,
And sets me on my high places.
³⁴ He teaches my hands to make war,
So that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.  Psalm 33

People often ask for advice on good parenting books.  I love this.  Parenting books are a great idea, once you have read the ultimate parenting book, smack dab in the middle of your Bible.  Proverbs is absolutely THE parenting book.  In fact, almost every one of the first seven chapters begins the same, “My son…listen to my words…”  Sound familiar?  Hey, that’s what I say all day, too!  If you are trying to parent without deep intake from the book of Proverbs, then I have to tell you…I really do…don’t be mad…You are like a man who skipped all of his brain classes at med school and went straight into the operating room, wielding a scalpel.  “Hey, nurse, what’s this grey stuff called?”  Proverbs explains our two possible outcomes for post-parental production (I.E. what kind of people the little people will become):  the fool or the wise.  The word “fool” is mentioned about a hundred times, describing the fool’s patterns, pleasures, and destruction.  I will not try to break it down here, because every word of it is crucial, but I’ll set the stage with these two verses:

Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child… Prov.  22:15a

…fools die for lack of wisdom.  Prov. 10:21b

Just about all parents look a little war-torn at times, so it’s no great revelation that there’s a battle going on.  But I’ve noticed that Christians often aren’t clear about what the battle really is over.  Is it really over the veggie strike or the bedwetting or the grocery store fits or the booger-picking?  When those developmental hurdles are past, will the storm have blown over?  Are we just living from crisis to crisis, trying to react in a “Christlike” manner?  Is holding it together enough?  The Bible clearly says “NO.”  Another verse:

For the waywardness of the simple will kill them,
and the complacency of fools will destroy them.  Prov. 1:32

Christian parents cannot afford “the complacency of fools.”  As we get to know the Lord better, we find that the darkness is even darker than we ever realized, and the light even brighter.  They never cancel each other out into a dull, neutral gray.  Only religion does that.  Anyway, yesterday’s brightness of joy and delight is absolutely true and right.  But today’s message is about the backdrop, the darkness against which we must raise our little lights to shine…THE WAR.

Here are the three battle fronts for our little ones, as I see it.  We have to be sober and vigilant on all three.

1. The Enemy Eph. 6:12

2. The World 1 Jn. 2:15

3. The Will Deut. 30:9-11, Jn. 14:15, the whole Bible…etc.

Okay, there are volumes that could be and have been written on all these things.  I am going to skip all the eloquent philosophizing, and join this wise father of Proverbs, who teaches me to be so urgent, even from the very beginning, and pull him into a real life scenario that highlights the three battle fronts…

In the first nine chapters of Proverbs, this is wise and urgent father is dropping pearls of wisdom left and right, speaking to his son, but there’s one thing he comes back to over and again.  If I had a personal assistant I’d have an exact number of these passages for you, but it’s revisited at least in every chapter.  He is urgent to raise a son who never falls for the seduction of the immoral woman.  I’m picking this particular character issue because it so greatly highlights my three battle fronts.

Have you thought about this?  Do you have a son?  I have two: a three year old and a one year old.  You bet I have cried out to God for their purity.  Because HOW ON THIS EARTH can we raise our sons to be pure?  How?  This will require some severe wisdom.  But there hasn’t been much wisdom in the church, and it’s easy to see how foolish complacency has killed the church’s sons.  If we believe the time to consider this is prom night, we need to print Prov. 1:32 right up and paste it to the bathroom mirror.  The question is not, “At what point do I teach my son not to have premarital/extramarital sex?”  The question is, “How do I raise a man who fears the Lord and hates evil? (Prov. 1:7, 8:13).  The time to think about it is when the father in Proverbs is thinking about it:  at all times.

1. The enemy:  do you know at what age the average young man first sees a pornographic image?  Do you know how crafty the enemy is to present these to our sons and brothers?  Do you know how strong the hold of immorality and perversion is on our young people?  The father in Proverbs is very aware.  He describes accurately the schemes the seducer (which ultimately is a spirit) will lay out for his son, 2 Cor 2:11.

2. The world:  a prostitute/seductress is a woman who displays and uses her sexuality for gain.  By this definition, how many actresses prostitute themselves in a typical hour of prime-time television?  How many models prostituting themselves in a typical magazine?  The father in Proverbs begs his son over and over not to even go near her house.  Is your TV on?  How many seductresses did you invite into your home last week to meet your son?  Think he’ll survive?  Sorry to be blunt…oh, actually, I’m not sorry.  Jas. 4:4

3.  The will:  the wise father of Proverbs knows that he cannot hide his son from evil or give him enough rules to keep him out of trouble.  He knows this will not work, because the most difficult enemy his son will face is his own will.  The “fool” he describes what the New Testament refers to as the “flesh nature.”  It’s in his son’s self.  He knows that his son needs revelation, not rules.  He needs to LOVE RIGHTEOUSNESS and HATE EVIL.  He needs to have his will in subjection.  So the wise father uses his urgent teaching and discipline to bring his tender young son into subjection to his own voice, knowing that if his son learns to subject his will to his father’s and mother’s voice, when he is older, his will will be under his control.  Instead of his desires ruling him, he will rule over his desires.

My point is not the sexual sin; it is the battle fronts.  We must plant righteousness so deep, so deep, so deep in the hearts of our children, that the enemy, the world, and their own will cannot twist and pervert the path to wisdom that we have set their feet on.  Deuteronomy 6 describes such a vigilance of teaching, and Proverbs 4 tells us when to start:

³ When I was a boy in my father’s house,
still tender, and an only child of my mother,

⁴ he taught me and said,
“Lay hold of my words with all your heart;
keep my commands and you will live…”

Start now.  With your toddler.  He doesn’t know about the immoral woman, and he doesn’t need to.  But he does need to know that IF HE KEEPS YOUR COMMANDS, HE WILL LIVE. He (or she) needs to know that his will is subject to your voice.  That his desires are not in charge.  It truly is a matter of life or death.  Many Christians have revelation in their parenting of the battle with the enemy, but are compromised with the world, and unaware of the need to bring their children into obedience to save their souls…from themselves.

The end of the story is this:  If we win on battle front #3, #2 and #1 are done for.  They don’t stand a chance.  If we can bring our children’s will into subjection first to our voices then to the Lord’s voice, the world will hold no appeal, and the devil won’t hold a candle.  This, I believe, is what the wise father of Proverbs knew.

We’ve decided to repost the parenting blogs for the next few weeks from a year and a half ago.  Here’s the first one from the challenge OJ issued to me to write seven days in a row with 3 little people running around.  Now that there are four, and the youngest is 2 months old, regular reposting is just about the kind of challenge I’m up for.  :)  Here goes!

DAY ONE OF THE CHALLENGE