Shepherding a Child's Heart: Getting to the Heart of Behavior

Theresa's Next Mom's Group Review will feature: 

VIDEO REVIEW

This month we began our new curriculum, Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp.  This is a 16 week series focusing on what the Bible says about childrearing.  The first week focused on the root of behavior – the heart.  To begin Tedd references Proverbs 4:23 which says “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”  He explains that if the heart is the wellspring of life, then it is the heart that is the source of our desires, our actions and our words.  Behavior flows from the heart. He also explains that God cares more about what is in our hearts than anything else.  While man might look on outward appearance, God looks at the heart.  This is made clear in 1 Samuel 16 when God sends Samuel to the house of Jesse to anoint one of his sons as the new King of Israel.  “When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and thought, “Surely the LORD’s anointed stands here before the LORD. ⁷ But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” (1Samuel 16:6-7)  Jesse presented seven of his sons to Samuel in order of whom he felt would best be king.  Finally he presented the youngest, David.  The rest is history. David may have been smaller and younger than his brothers, but it was his heart that God favored to lead his people.  Throughout David’s life he made many mistakes and sinned terribly, but through it all he always repented and sought God’s love and forgiveness first.  The bible says David was a man after God’s own heart.  It doesn’t say he was perfect, but his heart was in the right place. 
Tedd also mentions Proverbs 22:15 where it says “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child,
but the rod of discipline will drive it far away.” implying that children are human and therefore faltered.  No human aside from Jesus ever has and ever will be able to avoid sin completely.  Folly is bound up in our hearts, and the heart is where God looks.
How does God look at the heart?  It is made clear in Matthew 5:21-22; “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’  But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.”  What is being said here is that while we as humans may judge people solely by their actions, God scrutinizes even deeper by looking at what is going on in our hearts.  If we holding resentment and hate toward someone with whom we are angry, God sees it as grievous a sin as murder.  Jesus says the same about adultery.  Though we as a society may only blame those who actually fornicate as committing adultery, God blames anyone who looks at someone with lust besides his or her own spouse of committing adultery.  This may seem harsh, but if we as humans had the power to see the hearts of others as God does, we too would be grieved by these things.  The good news is that only God can see inside our souls and He is a much more gracious and just judge than we can even claim to be.  Before anyone gets discouraged, let me point out that David committed both of these acts – murder and adultery.  As much as God may judge us in a way we feel is not ‘fair’, he also forgives us in ways that certainly are not fair.  God forgave David because his heart’s desire was to be reconciled with God.

Jesus also taught in Matthew 6:19-21 that “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  He knows that we as humans treasure our heart’s greatest desires.  Our society puts so much emphasis on acquiring wealth and possessions; it is very hard to teach our children not to treasure those things, but to treasure the things of God.  Maybe the hardest thing for parents to do is to model this ideal standard.  As Tedd also points out, we as adults often deny the connection of our heart to our outward behavior.  We might push aside something we said or did by saying something like, “I didn’t mean what I said, I was just tired” pushing the blame on sleeplessness.  Many times we also miss opportunities to connect what is happening on the outside with what is on the inside of our children’s hearts by providing a quick fix; “Tell your sister you are sorry”… “SORRY!”  “Ok, now go play.”  It is not enough to only say you are sorry, God desires repentance from our hearts, not just our lips.   Jesus told his disciples that although the religious teachers of the time may have been filled with knowledge and spoke eloquently of God, their hearts were not right with Him.  They desired power and prestige and were proud to the core.  God saw into their hearts.  “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” (Matthew 15:8) In the same way, Jesus clarifies that although we may be overly concerned about what our children are eating, and if they have washed their hands so as not to put anything dirty in their mouths, it is what comes out of our mouths that makes us unclean in the sight of God rather than what goes in.  “What comes out of a person is what defiles them.  For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” (Mark 7:20-23).
Jesus also said “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thorn bushes, or grapes from briers. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. (Luke 6:43-46)  Regarding this verse, Tedd gives an anecdote about an apple tree in his backyard.  He describes the tree’s apples as being bitter, pulpy, tasteless and sapless.  His wife finally asked if there were anything he could do to get the tree to produce good fruit.  Pruning, aerating, etc did not work.  Finally he entertained the idea of taking all the ugly bad apples off the tree, going to the market and buying the best looking apples there were, taking fishing wire and hanging the good apples all around the tree.  Then the neighbors might think he was a great horticulturalist and would envy his tree.  He also realized how silly the idea was, but then thought of how we constantly do this sort of thing in regards to our children.   Instead of focusing on the root of the problem, we only focus on and deal with the product – behavior.  Some examples of ‘hanging apples on the tree” that Tedd provides are these : Emotional appeals: “It makes me so sad when I see you do things like that”; Rewards: “If you are good you will get a sticker on your chart and ten stickers get you a candy!”; The shame game: “God is looking down on this house right now and crying about what he sees going on” and manipulation.  One example of manipulation was is a family who started a “shut up” jar to try to get their children to stop telling each other to shut up.  Whoever said “shut-up” to someone else would have to put a dollar in the jar.  After a week the jar had $100 inside.  Apparently, the parents were contributing too.  The family was excited because after two weeks, the words “shut up” had virtually left the house.  After a couple more weeks of no more money going into the jar, the family decided to celebrate by going out to dinner, a movie and getting ice cream.  They blew the money in the “shut up” jar.  Much to the parent’s dismay, shortly after the celebration the words “shut up” started flying around the house again.  The problem was that they didn’t deal with the root of the problem.  They simply tried to manipulate their children’s actions with punishment and reward.  I think two key things to learn from this account is that the parents were also saying “shut up” – not setting an example of what they wanted to see from their children.  The children were also rewarded for their unkind words when the money collected was spent on a night out.  The parents jumped through a lot of hoops to get a temporary result when the core of the problem wasn’t dealt with.  One last thing Tedd did not mention, but I feel is a big ‘apple on the tree’ parenting tactic is appeasement.  Often we are so flustered and embarrassed by how our child might be behaving that we are willing to offer them whatever they want so they will stop, keeping them and us from looking bad to others.  I’m sure you can think of even more ways we as parents “Hang apples” on our little trees.
Next, Tedd focused on the fact that children will work with whatever we give them and the challenge is to give our kids God’s way to live from the heart.  Whichever way we train our children will go straight to their hearts.  If we use manipulation, they will learn to be manipulative, if we use threats, they will learn to threaten others, if we use emotional appeal, they too will offer guilt trips and resentment to get what they want from others. If we use rewards, their hearts will seek physical rewards for their behavior and work. If we offer appeasement they learn to cry and scream to get what they want. The problem with all these methods is that none of them acquaint our children with the gospel.  The gospel says we are all imperfect, and no one deserves anything they have or a ticket to heaven.  The gospel says God is gracious and forgiving.  He sent Christ down to Earth to teach us about Him and ultimately to die as a sacrifice for our sins so we could be reconciled with God.  The gospel says if our hearts do not desire reconciliation with God, we will not receive it, no matter what we do in an attempt to earn it.  The gospel says no matter how low you have sunk, how badly you have messed up, God, out of his love and goodness will forgive you if your heart truly desires reconciliation with Him.  The gospel does not point to the behavior we as parents focus on so intently – it points to the heart.  So how do we direct our children’s hearts toward God??  By using the gospel.  Our goal as parents is to have our children relate positively to the plea of Psalm 139 “You have searched me, LORD, and you know me… Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” We want our children to sincerely ask God to open their eyes to their sins and to help them be better followers of Him.  Just like David cried out to the Lord “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”  (Psalm 51:10)  How does this desire begin in our child’s heart?  If you are a believer that Christ is your savior, and have cried out in prayer for God to renew your heart and send you His holy spirit, you should know from experience how this happens.  Only God and His Holy Spirit living inside you can guide your heart in the purest way.  So it is with our children.  We can manipulate, reward, punish, guilt trip, and talk to them about behavior until our faces turns blue, but if the gospel is not on our lips and in our actions while we parent, we are going to have a difficult time leading our children to a renewed heart that desires God’s pleasure.

Discussion/ Questions

1.      Tedd pointed out that we look at outward appearance more than the heart.  How do we do this in our own lives? (Time in mirror vs. time in God’s word, etc.)

2.     What are some ways we might unintentionally teach our children to look at the outside rather than the inside?

3.     What are some ways we deny the connection of behavior to the heart? (“I was just tired”)

4.     What are some examples in our own child-rearing where we have “hung apples on the tree”? (emotional appeal, rewards, shame, manipulation)

5.     Looking at our parenting skills to this point, have we been focused on teaching unconditional love and God’s power to change a heart or have we been more focused on manipulating our child’s behavior?

6.     What might our choices and actions be showing your children to treasure?

Because the review itself is pretty long, I am not going to give a detailed account of our question and answer session; instead, I will let you answer the questions for yourself.
One thing we discussed after watching the video was the fact that our society is very hung up on reward and punishment and it is hard to find much in the way of advice that does not go along with manipulation.  Our society deals with behavior similar to the way we deal with illness – we focus on treating the symptoms instead of the source.  We talked about how the basis for ethics in our society is more focused on doing what one needs to do to get what one wants and avoiding what will give them undesirable results.  Our basis for ethics as Christians, however, needs to be the acknowledgment that there is a living God who made the World and has given us boundaries out of love.  If we are training our children to perform for emotional support, we are not teaching them about unconditional love.  If we are teaching them to perform for rewards, we are not teaching them about God’s grace and the undeserving gift of salvation He offers.  If we are shaming our children into submission, we are not teaching our children about God’s power to make them clean and if we are using manipulation to teach our children, they will never understand how much a gift God’s grace and salvation is and how little they can ever do to deserve it.  If we are appeasing our children by giving them everything they want just to keep them happy, they will never understand the price paid for their sin and the need for confession of those sins. I personally think that society’s emphasis on reward is part of why our children have such an “entitlement” mentality nowadays.  They have been taught that they will be rewarded for every little thing and that doing well and being good is just a means to acquire a reward.  They are learning to treasure the things of this world rather than the love and joy of God.

Homework

As I mentioned in the beginning of this review, there are 15 more sessions to this series.  Since this was just the base for what we can expect to learn about in the next few months, we may be left wondering, ok so what do I do now?  The Bible says, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”  (Proverbs 22:6) “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”  (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)  We need to start at the root by teaching our children about God, His goodness, His love, His power, His greatness all day, every day!  This is our homework.  To talk to our children about God when we rise up, when we go out, when we sit at home, when we go to sleep…  Some ideas the moms had on how to do this are these:

1.Pray with our children after a time-out.

2.Pray at each meal teaching our children to be thankful for the most basic of  God-given needs and thus making prayer a regular part of life.

3.Teach our children about those who have less and encourage them to donate some of their toys.

4. Point out the beauty of the world (the trees, the flowers, the animals, etc) and praise God for what they see “Look at that beautiful butterfly!  Can you believe that used to be a caterpillar?  God makes such amazing things!” 

5. When your child gets physically hurt reassure them that God will heal their boo boo.  When their wound is healed, point it out and remind them of God’s faithfulness by saying “Look, your boo boo is gone!  God healed it!  He is so good!” 

6. Turn up some Christian music and dance around the living room praising God. 

7.  Read God’s word with your child in a form they can understand (Children’s bible, etc).

8.  If it is raining/ snowing/ extreme weather, outwardly thank God for the house He gave you that keeps you safe from the elements.

9.  Remind them if they are scared at night that God is watching over them.

10.  Say a blessing over them each night before bed.

11.  Live out your faith.

12.  Pray for your children in every situation!!

13.  Start teaching them Bible verses by sticking them on the fridge (or somewhere highly visible) and saying it over and over throughout the week.

14.  Involve your family in ministry/ service to others.

15.  Start each day by praying with your child that the Holy Spirit will guide your words and actions.

These are just a few ideas we came up with.  If you have any ideas that are not listed, please pass them along!  It may seem awkward at first if talking about God on a regular basis is not part of your daily life, but I assure you, it will become a natural part of your family life if you do this on a regular basis and your children will surprise you with how quickly they pick up on it.