FamilyLife Today®

Ann Wilson: I think the biggest discipleship tool that we have is our lives. It’s not what we say as much as what we’re living. It’s so hard. It feels impossible, but cling to Jesus. Be desperate. Surrender your life and then your kids' lives, and I think you’ll be amazed what God can do.

Dave Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann Wilson: And I’m Ann Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today. Happy Mother’s Day. We have our panel back with us today, and it’s going to be fun to dive back into what it’s like to be a mom and some of the struggles and some of the wins. So let’s jump in.

Dave Wilson: Happy Mother’s Day.

Ann Wilson: Gwen, do you think it gets easier or harder as your kids get older, that kind of surrender?

Gwen Crawford: It depends on the kid because as kids get older, what we’ve experienced a lot of times is that as parents—and I’m assuming you wouldn’t know this—when you have young adults and they’re making decisions and you’re telling them you probably don’t want to do this, it’s not that you’re trying to control them. It is one, you’re trying to keep them from harming themselves because when you get in trouble, I get in trouble. Who are you going to call when you get in trouble?

It makes your life harder. Exactly. So it’s not I’m just trying to protect you, I’m trying to protect me. I know you think I’m trying to control you and all of that. But at the same time, they’ve got to try it for themselves. They think they know what they’re talking about, it’s them, not me, and they can get past this and it won’t happen to them.

Those times are hard because you know that there’s a ledge over there and they’re about to walk off this ledge. They really have to see if it is invisible ground that’s solid over there. It’s those types of things. So that is hard. It’s hard to see your older kids hurt because again you want to give advice and you try to give advice. What we’ve learned is they want help but they don’t want advice. It’s just give me your help, you don’t have to say anything.

Andrew has this saying, it’s that my help costs and it’s advice. You're not just going to get my help without it. Those are the times it gets hard because you're seeing them about to crash into a wall many times. But they don't want you to tell them that there is a wall there. Just help me once I crash, just come get me out of this. That's hard to do because once they crash, you're not going to leave them out there. But then they don't want to hear "I told you so" or any advice.

Ann Wilson: What are your prayers like then?

Gwen Crawford: My prayers for my kids are mostly that their desire and love for the Lord grows and that they have a closer walk with Him. I believe that all of my kids have professed the Lord and all of that, but none of us make all the right decisions. What they don't hear from me, maybe they'll hear from Him.

Ann Wilson: That’s good. And do you feel like you're in that constant surrender of your kids too?

Maria Goff: Totally.

Ann Wilson: Maria, do you think that's necessary for us to do, to surrender our kids? Because what happens if we don't?

Maria Goff: It’s all an illusion if we think we have any control over them anyway. So it’s just a matter of is our heart surrendered and submitted to God or is it not? To me, it’s an idol. If we're looking to our kids to bring us happiness, identity, security, usually some of those things are torn down.

I've seen parents put their hopes and dreams in their kids. It's such a fleeting kind of thing. If our kids feel the pressure of "I'm everything to my mom and my dad," we don't want that either.

Ann Wilson: What does that look like on a day-to-day basis spiritually? How do you bring Jesus into parenting? You talked about it a little bit, Maria. You're doing Bible study, but what other kind of things can we do?

Maria Goff: There's a lot for me during the day. One thing I used to do that Bruce was like, "That's a little flippant, so maybe you should find something else," is I would just start singing the song "Jesus Take the Wheel" in the moments when I was about to lose it. It would make me laugh. It would be funny, so it would release the tension in the moment and also put my focus back on Jesus.

Ann Wilson: I think that's beautiful. It's basically a surrender. "Jesus Take the Wheel" is a surrender moment. It doesn't matter where it came from. But you just don't want to use the Lord's name so flippantly all the time. Bruce, you're in here listening to Maria, your wife. What did you mean by that when you said that?

Bruce Goff: It came across to me as a little flippant, almost in jest. I'm usually very cautious. I love to make fun of ourselves, but I don't like to make light of God's name. But maybe it was a prayer.

Ann Wilson: It was. If it is, then go for it. Sing it as loud as you can.

Bruce Goff: Maybe I'm doing a little projection.

Ann Wilson: We’ve all been there.

Maria Goff: It’s just a lot of, in the moment, "Please help me right now because I'm this close to just losing it." I've definitely had times where I've been like, "I'll be right back," and I go to my room and shut the door and just take a minute and be like, "Help me, Lord."

Ann Wilson: I would say that to our kids because I can get hot quick. I would say, "Run to the other room and sit in a chair. You better run as fast as you can." They know. They can see me boiling, but I need a minute. Just as you said, I need a minute to gather myself because I get mad and things are crazy. Just to gather yourself, I need that second. They're little breathy prayers like, "Jesus, I need you right now." It is like "Jesus Take the Wheel."

Gwen Crawford: One part of the song is "I'm letting go." There it is. But the principle is there. We do try to hold on. Some things we can spiritualize, but that is really what He wants us to do is to let go and allow Him to do the driving.

Ann Wilson: One of the things that surprised me is how much worry I would have. The older our kids got, and I think for the younger generation with phones, with TV, with media, with platforms, it's crazy town. As a mom, I can remember even when they were in high school, finding myself wanting to control situations but needing to let go. Knowing what to do with that worry, I would find myself visually seeing myself handing Jesus all the things. I couldn’t sleep until I would do that at times.

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Ann Wilson: Let's turn it a little bit. Let's talk about discipling our kids. We hear that term all the time. "Are you discipling your kids? How is discipleship going?" What does that look like? How can we help our listeners get a grasp of this? Is this something that's important for us as moms?

Gwen Crawford: When we first came on staff at FamilyLife, we were introduced to Dennis Rainey and all his books about having Bible study with the kids. We'd sit down with our kids to get ready to have family Bible study and they're just not interested. Every time, it was a battle.

After a while, it was like this isn't working for us. It sounds good in the book. I don't know how they did it and made it work so perfectly, but for us, it just didn't happen. Again, we made sure we kept them in Sunday school and in places where they're being taught. At home, we were living out biblical principles and you teach as you go why you don't do certain things or say certain things. But just to be honest, sitting down with the Bible studies just did not happen. Especially as video games were becoming really popular, to tell them you've got to cut it off so that we can have a little devotional here, that's a tough sell.

Ann Wilson: I had a grandchild just tell me a couple days ago, "I like Pokémon way better than God." At least they're honest. But that's really hard.

Gwen Crawford: It may not look like what we thought it would look like. I would be depressed when I was around the Raineys and certain people. I'm like, "These kids probably say, 'Tell us more, mother and father. What else does Jesus say to us?'" We never had that one time, especially having three sons.

Families have to work out what works for them because if you try to make your family into what worked for somebody else, it just doesn't work like that. Barbara Rainey would say it was never like that.

Ann Wilson: You did say that you've always tried to have an open door, so I'm guessing you made yourself available to your kids to have conversations, to ask questions, and all of that. Kate, your kids are still pretty young. Your stepson is eight. Is he inclined to sit for anything at all?

Kate Crawford: Not inclined to sit ever for anything at all. Certainly not for, "Let's now have a structured time of prayer." That's very normal for boys. It's been another one of those categories of parenting books being hard for me. It feels like, "Here's all these great things you should do," and many of them are genuinely out of reach because of the circumstances in which our family functions. It's like, "I agree with you that that is a great idea. The problem is it's not an option. So now what else does it look like?"

Maria Goff: It sounds like you need to write a parenting book.

Kate Crawford: Maybe in 30 years. We’ll see how they turn out first. When we got married, when my husband and I would try to pray before a meal, my stepson would plug his ears. All right, well, let's just start with praying before our meals. That's where it began. Eventually, he kind of got used to it. Now occasionally he'll add his own little thing into whatever it is that he's excited about as we're praying over a meal.

It looks like a million little things. Just this past week or two, he's been having a really hard time on our transition night, the night that he knows is his last night at dad's house and I'm going to mom's house and vice versa. He really struggles that night. I said to my husband, "I wonder if it's time to start planting the seed that God goes with him between every house."

It's painful that he has to go from house to house and that he never gets to have both his mom and his dad at the same time. They're both a part of his life, but it's not the same. He always gets one or the other. I wonder if he's ready to receive some sense of comfort in the fact that God will go with him no matter where he goes.

I have often prayed that God's presence would be there with him in a way that looking back he can see it because right now, that's not where his headspace is and it won't be for a very long time. But if he could be able to look back and be able to identify God's presence, that's my prayer.

Ann Wilson: Could you ever say to him, "I'm so praying, that's got to be super hard for you sometimes. I'm praying because I know that God is always with you." Or you could even say it personally. "I know that God never leaves me and I know because of that and what the Bible says, He never leaves you." With a stepkid, you probably have to do these subtle little drops, little nuggets at a time. I love how your mindset is as you're thinking through your discipleship with him. Maria, what’s your approach?

Maria Goff: Mine's a little bit more traditional. We have four girls, so they'll sit, not a super long time, but we homeschool. We do a lot of sitting and reading aloud. Oftentimes, my solution is to have things for them to do with their hands while they're listening. That helps remove some of the nervous energy, like magnetic tiles and coloring.

Every morning, we have our morning time on the couch and we sing hymns together. We do our catechism together. We do scripture memory. The catechism goes along with what they're learning in their Sunday school class at church. We are reading through the Bible that overlaps with their history.

Ann Wilson: Maybe you and Bruce should write a book.

Maria Goff: Shout out to my husband Bruce because he has always been so faithful with family devotions. We do that in the morning, but then Bruce always does a family devotion at dinner time almost always.

Ann Wilson: What does that look like, Bruce, at the dinner table?

Bruce Goff: We have a book with Nancy Guthrie. Yes, we’ve gone through that. We read through Kevin DeYoung. He has a really long title like The Biggest Story Bible Storybook. We went through that and it was awesome. It’s got to be quick. It’s got to have one point. At Christmas we do the Advent blocks which you guys have had on the program.

Ann Wilson: Having boys, I had expectations of what Dave should do. When I hear Bruce, I would have heard somebody like that and thought, "That's what Dave should be doing." Then I'd have this bitterness in my heart. But one of the things we can do as parents is we can pray for them. Just even praying out loud, if a listener has never done that before, it's a great place to start.

I would put them in car seats and pray. We'd drive to school and I'd pray, and when they got out of the car, I'd pray. Bedtime was one of my favorite times that we would pray over our kids, each one of them. We'd read some scripture or a book that really pointed to God with scripture in it. Sometimes they didn't pay attention, but it was okay because we were just trying to put these deposits in them.

I think the biggest discipleship tool that we have is our lives. It’s not what we say as much as what we’re living. I would come home with these stories of, "Hey guys, you won't believe this, but I was going down this town and I saw this lady come out of a bar and she was so drunk she couldn't even walk. She had this big purse, so I stopped to pick her up."

They’re like, "You picked up some random lady and she's drunk?" I said, "I know, I wondered if she’s going to throw up in the car. I also thought, 'Can I fight her if she's feisty?'" I decided yes, I could. She was so inebriated that she probably didn't have a lot of control. I found out her name was Mary and I put my hand on her and I prayed for her and I said, "Mary, God loves you so much. There's not a moment in your life that He hasn't seen you and He loves you." She's so wasted and she says, "I love God."

She didn't know how to get home. Telling those kind of stories at our dinner table, of being in a grocery store and paying for someone's groceries or feeling like God spoke to me to do something and to be obedient to that, those are little pieces of discipleship. Kids love stories and they love to hear what God can do.

At bedtime, when our first son did get married, our three sons slept in the same room. He was in bed and we got on our knees and we laid our hands on him to pray for him because it would be his last night as a single man in our house. We prayed over him and we cried and we asked him, "What will be the thing that you missed about living under this roof as a man?" He said, "This. These nights where you and Dad prayed over us, loved us, listened to us."

Now to see him with his four kids, he’s way better than we ever were. He not only reads a scripture, he sings over them every night. Bruce, at bedtime, what do you sing?

Bruce Goff: A lot of times it’s Doxology. That’s the most popular, although when they make requests, it’s always This Little Light of Mine. Also Your Blood Has Washed Away My Sin.

Ann Wilson: We as parents should be sharing the gospel with our kids. It can start when they're so little. I used to start with Genesis 3, the fall, and how God loved Adam and Eve. He gave them a choice because love gives a choice. God gave them a choice to walk with them, but they chose to eat the fruit.

But then the greatest gift God did was He said, "I will send my Son to die for that sin." To give them a grasp of the gospel, I know that our days as moms can seem so long, so mundane, so boring, but then you have those moments of the miraculous in the midst of the mundane.

I can remember our five-year-old was in bed crying one night and his little three-year-old brother was in the twin bed next to him. I said, "Why are you crying?" He said, "Mom, what if Austin doesn't give his life to Jesus and he's not with us in heaven?" I just cried. He gets it. We prayed for him together that night.

If it's not in our hearts, it's not going to come off our tongues. So it starts with us moms. It's so hard, it feels impossible, but cling to Jesus. Be desperate. Surrender your life and then your kids' lives, and I think you'll be amazed what God can do. It's not going to be pretty and perfect, but God can do way more than we could ever ask or imagine.

Thanks for being with me today. Happy Mother's Day. We at FamilyLife are all about relationships, parenting, family. We want to equip you, we want to bless you, we want to give you tools and resources that will be a benefit to you and your family. You can go to familylife.com/parentinghelp to find out more.

Dave Wilson: FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Crew ministry, celebrating 50 years of God’s faithfulness as marriages grow stronger and families flourish in Him.