Grace And Truth: Helping Our Kids Embrace Their Identity in Jesus
For good or for bad, our words help frame the beliefs held by the people close to us. Especially the young ones: our children, preteens, and teenagers, who are naturally impressionable and/or already insecure and self-doubting.
It has been humorously suggested that much of the reason we carry baggage as adults is that we've had 20,000 meals with the wrong people—that is, critical or otherwise negative individuals.
Three meals a day for our first 18 or 19 years of life equals approximately 20,000 breakfasts, lunches, and dinners that the average young person has had with their parents or other guardians by the time they're old enough to leave the nest.
It's a cynical way to look at it, yes. Hopefully, for most of us, this does not describe our upbringing.
Even so, some of you are nodding in agreement right now. You know all too well what I'm talking about.
And if you and I are to break the cycle and not perpetuate the mistakes our parents made with us—which were likely passed down to them from their parents—we may want to be extra mindful of the vernacular and tone we use with our kids.
If you're familiar with my story, you know I'm the blessed bonus mom to three delightful young men currently aged 26, 23, and 15. All are on the autism spectrum, and all still live at home with my husband, Don, and me.
Of course, parenting can sometimes be frustrating, and I'll be the first to admit that in my communication with my stepsons, I don't always come across as encouraging or helpful as I would like.
However, one thing I try to do consistently, especially with Christopher, the one of the three boys who is by far the most severely affected by his diagnosis, is to remind him of his identity in the Lord.
I often talk to Christopher, in simple terms that he can grasp, about how God sees him: that he is loved and cherished by his heavenly Papa more than he'll ever know. That God is proud of him. That God has a good plan for his life. That he is so valuable that Jesus died for him.
And Christopher loves it when I talk to him about God.
For anyone else out there whose goal is to raise spiritually and emotionally healthy kids, let me give you something specific that you can try with your own non-developmentally challenged children. This takes the "identity principle" a step further, and it's powerful stuff:
Next time your son or daughter misbehaves, rather than saying, "You're always so disrespectful," try phrasing it something like this: "Right now, you're acting disrespectfully, and I know that's not who you truly are." Or, instead of, "Don't be a coward," say, "Remember how God tells us in the Bible (2 Timothy 1:7) that He has given us a spirit of fearlessness? I don't think you're acting in that spirit right now."
The latter statements reinforce a positive self-image; the former a negative one. And while positive reinforcement exponentially improves our children's chances of growth, negative reinforcement tends to do the opposite.
Think about how God deals with His people in the Bible. He never speaks to His own in a condemning way. Whenever God brought up the Israelites' sins in the Old Testament, warning them through His prophets that they were headed for disaster, He also, practically in the same breath, provided them with the solution: forgiveness, restoration, and lasting change through faith.
The Israelites had access to all this because of their identity in Him.
Also, look at Paul's letters in the New Testament, especially those to the Corinthian church. Whenever Paul calls attention to the faults and flaws of the Corinthians, he at the same time reminds them of who they are and what is theirs in the Lord.
He shows them that their actions don't line up with their identity. This is how he motivates them to get back on track with their lives.
Finally, there's Jesus Himself. In the Gospels, notice how Jesus relates to people. Yes, He always speaks truth, but every time He does, He wraps it in grace.
Interestingly, John 1:14 states that Jesus is "full of grace and truth," and verse 17 says, "grace and truth were realized through [Him]."
(The only times Jesus left out the grace part was when He spoke to the hypocritical, hard-hearted Pharisees who had exhausted God's grace and sadly were beyond remedy.)
Do you recall what Jesus told the woman caught in adultery in John chapter 8 before He ordered her to leave her life of sin—the woman who stood trembling in front of her would-be executioners?
He said, "I do not condemn you" (verse 11).
The grace came first. BEFORE the command to stop sinning.
Friend, the Bible is clear. God's strategy for motivating us, His chosen ones, to grow in spiritual maturity is to remind us of our identity in Him and to reassure us of His love for us.
You and I can do the same for one another. We can make it a point to build one another up, using grace and truth, and in that order. Maybe most importantly, we can do it for the special treasures God has entrusted us with in this life: our children.
L.B.
Do you try to speak grace and truth into the lives of others, especially those of your kids? What are some specific ways you go about it? I would love to hear from you in the comments section below!
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