FamilyLife Today®

Speaker 1

Parenting is so important that we feel this incredible pressure to do it absolutely right. And so you want your kid to succeed partially because it would reflect well on you, and you know, that's in your heart.

If this other kid does well, then you don't have the chance to prove that you're okay, you know, because you're okay if your kid's okay.

Speaker 2

Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Dave Wilson.

Speaker 3

And I'm Ann Wilson. And you can find us@familylife today.com. this is Family Life Today. We've got Adam and Chelsea Griffin back with us today talking about parenting. And this is going to be good.

Speaker 2

Yeah, it's crazy that we're going to talk about the fruit of the spirit applied to parenting. And when I think of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, it's the patience part. It doesn't always apply to parenting. This is gonna be a good day.

Have you had to experience that? You know, when it's not social media, it's not somebody on Facebook that maybe you don't know, but it's literally personal. It's somebody gets the part that your son didn't get or gets a starting position or even in church, gets asked to give the testimony.

And you're like, my son's testimony's a lot better than theirs. Whatever it is, where it isn't out there, it's like, right in here. And it's like you feel that comparison and judgment when it's personal all the time.

Speaker 3

I can remember with our kids playing.

Speaker 2

I didn't know if she was gonna answer this. I was throwing.

Speaker 3

When our kids would play sports, if, let's say, our sons would get hurt. And so another guy's taking his place.

Speaker 1

Yeah. You want him to fail.

Speaker 3

I'm sitting in the sands thinking, oh, I hope he does bad, you guys. How sinful is that?

Speaker 1

Right.

Speaker 3

But as you're saying, it's revealing something.

Speaker 1

That's exactly right.

Speaker 3

It's revealing it. Okay, sorry. That's what came to my mind. Ask the question.

Speaker 1

No, That's a great example.

Speaker 2

That was it. How have you had to deal with that? Maybe it never had anything.

Speaker 3

Have you guys had to deal with any of that?

Speaker 1

A thousand times over.

Speaker 4

Yeah. For sure.

Speaker 1

The more important it is, the more pressure we feel to do it perfectly right.

Speaker 3

Right.

Speaker 1

And parenting is so important that we feel this incredible pressure to do it absolutely right. And so you want your kid to succeed partially because it would reflect well on you. And, you know, that's in your heart. If this other kid does well, then you don't have the chance to prove that you're okay, you know, because you're okay if your kid's okay.

I think it's similar. You guys talk so much about marriage, too. You know, one of the maybe unhealthiest things you can do in a marriage is compare where you feel like you're strong to where you know they're weak and see, like, hey, see, you're not good at this. I am good at this. And then we would take that outside ourselves and put that on our kids.

And you have multiple kids, and you go, well, this kid is strong here. Why isn't that kid here? Or you look at their peers and you go, well, why isn't this kid? Because this kid is different than that kid. And that's okay. Because the opposite also wouldn't be true. If your kid ends up being the greatest athlete of all time, does that mean that's the only way that I could feel okay about them? If they become the smartest kid of all time, is that the only way I could feel okay about them?

And that is not the way the kingdom of God works. God does not look at us and say, my love for you is so contingent on your perfection that if you do not outpace your neighbors, I will not love. That is not the gospel.

So when we see that in ourselves, Dave, it's kind of what you said. We see in ourselves something that can then drive us to, like, disgust and go, oh, what is wrong with me? Or it can drive, which would be a wedge between us and God saying, I couldn't possibly run towards him or something that instead would cause us, like a kid who runs to a loving parent to say, God, I really need your help. There's something ugly I've seen in myself. I know it's not of you. And so I want it. I want to be rid of it. I want to be done with it.

Speaker 2

Yeah, but I mean, as I'm hearing you say that, I'm thinking, man, for a parent to be secure in that, they have to be secure in Christ. Otherwise all of our insecurities are put on our children.

Speaker 1

That's exactly right.

Speaker 2

Almost. To fill up our insecurity, you have to be the best student, best musician, best athlete, whatever it is.

And like I mentioned earlier, I coached 12 years in public high school football, and, man, watching the pressure these kids felt from their parents. Not as much us. I mean, we gave pressure as well as coaches, and sometimes right and sometimes wrong, but I felt it for these kids as like, I'm letting my dad down. I just want to get.

And I did a couple times like, dad, this is not your deal anymore. I don't know what kind of athlete you were, but you're trying to be the athlete I think you weren't through your son. And he can't even enjoy it because he's like glancing.

I remember one time we took 12 year olds to, I don't know if you know this, in little league baseball, there's a tournament at Cooperstown.

Speaker 4

Yeah. Baseball hall of Fame.

Speaker 2

But the parents sit right, like third base.

Speaker 1

And they're just chirping, huh?

Speaker 2

And they're chirping. I have a kid on second base, you know, and I. And you know, I'm giving him the steal sign, and they're telling him what to do. And he's literally like the parents telling him, yeah, they're yelling like what to do.

And I literally turn around and go, "All you parents, shut up, shut up. I'm the coach." They don't even know what to do. They're looking at me, they're looking at their parents like.

And I thought that is a microcosm of their life. It's like all these insecurities that we have. We are putting our kids. What you just said was security as a parent. How does a parent get there where you're not doing it anymore because you don't have to?

Speaker 1

This is perfect because if you tied it to success, it will fail you, right? If you tied it to. If the kid stole and I was right and the coach was wrong, then do I feel okay? What if the coach was right and I was wrong? Then I don't feel okay. And if we only tie it to I have to be right, then there is no freedom in that because I will inevitably be wrong if I only tie it to like right now.

I think in our generation we maybe don't tie it as much to having the best student or the best athlete. But a lot of parents in the generation tie it to having the best relationship with their kids long term. Did my kid live close? Do they still call me every day? And they want to compare it to what other parents are getting from their kid. Are they open to your advice? Do they feel like you're criticizing them when you're talking to you?

So right now we want to be buddies with our kids in the hopes that they will make us feel okay about ourselves as they get older. And if we parent from a place of I just need you to love me, then we don't end up pressing and challenging some of the things that need to be pressed and challenged.

So, again, David, the solution. I know you know this. We're just going to keep turning back to Christ to say, I can't do this the way that I am called to do it. Unless I can give my kid Christ, and unless I can look towards Christ myself, it's the only place I'm going to find freedom. If I can only find freedom in my kid's success, I will be let down.

This is what we'll see, too. As siblings grow up, if there's a kid that's more attached to mom and dad, they go, oh, see, I did it right with this kid. The other kids must have been the problem. No, you parented them all. You're just looking for validation everywhere. And the validation you're looking for, you already found in the Father, if you would turn to Him.

If we could open our minds to the fact that the gospel of justification isn't going to be found in our children, it's not found in the quality of our parenting or the result of our parenting. It's found only in the gospel. And we're looking for justification everywhere, right?

Speaker 4

Everywhere. If you really are putting pressure on your kids, and you know, trying to kind of live through them or really needing their accomplishments to justify you, that's a tough place to be.

But for our parents out there who have very, very small children, I would just really press them to say, do not forget how you look at that child. My youngest is 10, but he's still my baby. And he just... he's beautiful to me. He's just... he's my baby.

When I think about how easy it is to just adore him, and always has been, he's, as the baby of our family, everyone has just adored him. He's so affectionate as a little one. When he was very little, he just... if he walked by and saw me or Adam on the couch, he didn't even ask. He didn't say anything. He just came and got in your lap. He just has this presuming understanding of how loved he is.

Speaker 2

I'm accepted here.

Speaker 4

Yes. He doesn't ask, would it be okay? There's a presumption there. He knows he's cherished. He knows someone would love to just wrap their arms around him. And so he just draws near.

And I try to really tattoo that into my brain of, like, what would it look like if I understood I was so loved? Someone will celebrate me coming near, that the father would celebrate. Oh, yes. Get over here. Get in my arms.

Of course, he used to want me to hold him in my arms on the sideline of his soccer games. And I'm like, I know this looks weird, but at what point am I going to let this child take a cleat to the hip? I'm never going to tell him no. I'm sure the coach is like, what are you doing? He asked me to hold him, so...

Speaker 2

I know he's 18. He's my baby.

Speaker 4

Yeah. At some point, someone will probably have to intervene, but that kind of what it really means to be beloved, right? The Lord says that we are beloved. He says, because you're precious and honored in my sight. I love you.

We feel that way about our babies and we just cannot forget that the father looks at us that way. He has to even more perfectly. Right? There's no way that he's given me a pure and better love. There's no way. Right? The father loves more. Purely. The father loves more. He loves more extravagantly.

But the way that we look at our babies. Think about the grandkids you guys have welcomed into your home. They can do no wrong.

Speaker 3

Right?

Speaker 4

When you get that. I'm a labor and delivery nurse, so I see the way grandmothers act about babies and they're totally nuts. You know, they're bananas and so.

Speaker 2

Well, this week they did mess up the casting reel on my fishing pole and.

Speaker 4

Are you over it?

Speaker 1

Did you stop loving them?

Speaker 2

I mean, it was like this close.

Speaker 4

This close.

Speaker 2

Like, don't hand a six year old a fishing rod. Not going to go well.

Speaker 3

I love this, Chelsea, because it really is. I'm not sure we all understand the father's love for us.

Speaker 2

Well, that's what I was thinking when you were saying that. I was thinking you are so grounded in that, that it's, you know, you know this as parents, and it's true. And as a pastor or anything, you cannot give away what you don't possess.

Speaker 1

That's right.

Speaker 2

You possess this identity.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I hope so.

Speaker 2

I mean, I can. It's an aroma, you know, it's aroma of Christ I can sense in you. How about the parent that doesn't have that? They just don't. I mean, they're not in the word. They don't even know it. How God thinks of them like you do.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Let me speak to that real quick because I think some part of so much of this book is written in Galatians 5. Right. It's the fruit of the Spirit. And we hear it described as, when you walk by the spirit, these are the fruit that come into your life. And I think parents hear that phrase "when you walk by the spirit" and think again about behavior. If I were just a better parent, if I would just walk like God called me to, then I would have joy and then I would have peace. Well, I struggle with that, or I can't do that, or there's some parents that must be good at that, but not me.

But I think the picture is kind of twisted. The picture of walking by the Spirit is not rooted initially in if you would just do what God asks you to do, you would have this. But rather the picture is saying, if your life is one where you're walking alongside God, then this is what comes from that. This is the fruit of that. Not if you could just fix your life, it would look more like this, but similar to any walk you might take with your maybe a grandson or a son.

Now think of it like John 21, where Jesus walks with Peter after Peter has had a terrible week. He's messed up in a thousand ways. Jesus cooks him breakfast and then takes him on a walk. And in that walk, he explains some tough things: hey, when you were little, you were able to do what you wanted to do. When you grow old, it's not going to be what you want, and it's going to be a pretty hard death. And I'm going to call you still to follow me.

If we could get in that picture of what would it look like for me to walk by Jesus? It may not all be good news. It may be, hey, here's the challenge that's going to come with that. Jesus is in that same conversation: "Do you love me? Then here's what we're going to do. If you love me, then there's what we're going to do. Do you love me? Here's what we're going to do. You follow me."

If we could think about if I'm struggling to walk by the Spirit and saying, I don't feel like I have the aroma of Christ, then I get myself around people who do. I say, my spiritual life needs to look like time with a Dave Wilson saying, can I please take you for breakfast? Because I'm struggling as a dad and I just want to talk about fatherhood. What did it look like in your home? Here's what my home looks like. I don't see joy. I don't see peace. I don't see patience.

You go, okay, what does a walk with God look like? It may start with walking with the people of God. It may start with walking next to His Word more closely than you have, saturating your life in the word of God until the loudest voice you hear is not your algorithm on social media. It's not the talk radio that you've been listening to. It's not the sports broadcast you have. The loudest voice in your life is the Lord's—not even your internal voice. And then in that, I think we find freedom.

Speaker 2

Okay, I bet you're thinking, I would love in 2026, to help other marriages.

Speaker 3

Do you think people are thinking that?

Speaker 2

Yeah, I think they're starting a year. Like, I want to help our marriage.

Speaker 3

But I'm telling you, that's what I was thinking. I want to help our marriage.

Speaker 2

Well, what people don't understand is the best way to help your marriage is to pour into others. Jesus said, if you want to find your life, lose it in serving him and serving others.

And we've discovered that as we brought people into our home and we pour into their marriages, our marriage gets better and so does theirs.

Speaker 3

And I think the myth is you have to have a perfect marriage to be able to lead a small. And that is not true at all. You can just say, you guys, we are struggling. Maybe you are, too, but we want to have a better marriage, and maybe you do, too.

Speaker 2

And we have tools for you to help you help other couples. There are small group workbooks or small group kits, and they're all on sale right now, 25% off through the end of the month.

You can pick anyone you want. It will help you and help the other couples. Just go to familylifetoday.com, get the one you want, and go change some lives.

Speaker 3

So find your study@familylife today.com. I remember. I forget where we were, but we did this talk, and I had. They used to have a thing called the Nerf brain ball. Do you remember that? It was a Nerf ball, but it was shaped like a brain. You could see it looked like a brain.

And the illustrator. I'm a visual person. And so I was pouring stuff into the brain. I said, whatever you put into your heart, your brain, your soul, and you squeeze it, and that's what comes out. And so that's the question for us as parents and even believers in Christ: what is your brain and your heart and your soul being saturated with? What are you saturating it with?

Cause I know that when I am walking close to Jesus, which means I'm just talking to him all day long, I have to be in the word. I don't, like, think, should I be in the word? I have to be because I'm desperate without him. I am not displaying any fruit, people. It's not pretty.

And so, am I walking with those that are encouraging me, or do they see something like, "Oh, Ann, I can see," like, they'll speak truth to me, which isn't easy to hear when I'm pouring into my brain those things. That's what's gonna automatically come out. It's that is exactly what you're talking about. It's the fruit.

Speaker 1

It's the attributes that God has that we get by walking with Him. Attributes He expects from us before His love is merited. Right.

And so one of my favorite chapters in the book, we talk about patience. So often as parents, we think of patience as, "Oh, yeah, just be quiet until Mommy's ready." What we mean by patience is, "My kids are a nuisance, and I want them to stop being a nuisance." That's what we communicate to our kids over and over again.

But the truth is, Ann, and you know this, that patience in the word of God is not just us silently waiting for whatever God wants us to do. Patience, in some translations in English, translates the Greek word as longsuffering or forbearance. It's the ability to keep putting up with things and keep going.

If we could see that patience is something the Lord has, that if I walked with Him, I would have, that applies to so much of parenting.

Speaker 3

That is parenting.

Speaker 1

Yes. To say I could be patient. And by that I don't mean timid. I mean tenacious. I mean, we could keep going.

The patience in the Greek is so much closer to the word grit than the way we would use it in English, that if you could just keep going, even in spite of the resistance you feel, even in spite of the judgment in your heart.

Is that the fruit of the spirit? What would come if we would walk with God is this tenacity to say, I can keep going and I'm not gonna give up because the Lord is the one who's walking with me.

Speaker 3

That's good.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 2

I mean, does that come from your daily encounter? Cause I was literally looking at one of the quotes under patience. Sometimes what you need more than rest is fuel.

Speaker 1

Yes. Amen.

Speaker 2

I thought that's so true. Because we think, I just need a break. I just need. And we do.

Speaker 1

Sure.

Speaker 2

But if you're not getting fueled out of that, you're going to be back where you were a day ago.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Similar to what we were talking about earlier, Dave, and being a man of the second shift, if we think about coming home.

Speaker 2

Second shift.

Speaker 1

Yeah. In this generation.

Speaker 2

Describe that, because I don't think we said that on air.

Speaker 1

The second shift is the man who maybe has tended to, in this generation, think of his work as separate from home. When he comes home, his home is a place of relaxation. In that context, we often demand patience from our kids and expect peace in the home because we've had a long day at work and a long week. The second shift is the idea that when I get home, I'm punching in for the real work that God has called me to. I do have a job, and my job is important, but this is my calling. I'm called to be a dad, and I'm coming home trying to do this faithfully.

When we think about rest and relaxation as the primary purpose of our home, then, yes, kids can seem like a nuisance. They may appear to have ruined something for us instead of realizing that home is a place of our most beautiful work. For that, it is indeed good to get sleep, to have relaxation, and to take occasional vacations or longer breaks to replenish. However, we must remember that our bodies don't just need sleep; they also need to eat. We don't eat merely for that moment of relaxation; we eat because we need fuel to keep going.

If we can look at our parenting as something that doesn't just require occasional breaks from the kids, but rather as something fueled by our walk with the Spirit, we can find strength in being with our kids. This perspective shifts our understanding of what fuels our fire. Some of that fuel will come from inspiration and reminders of what we are called to do. It's akin to the coach's talk at halftime of a game or the chaplain's guidance that often plays a role in any victory, such as those experienced by the Detroit teams.

Speaker 3

I'm the chaplain.

Speaker 2

You know, I'm the losing this chaplain in the history of the NFL.

Speaker 1

Right.

Speaker 2

That's who you're talking.

Speaker 1

Well, I wasn't keeping track of the ride.

Speaker 4

God's power is made perfect in our week now.

Speaker 2

They're winning it there, so.

Speaker 1

But it's the fruit of your labors for so many years that are now being dead.

Speaker 2

You know, you're planting those seeds, they're reaping.

Speaker 3

But that is so good. What you're talking about is, I don't think we even consider this because every parent is thinking, I just need a break.

What about the women who just heard this and think, my husband does not click into second shift. My husband comes in and he lays on the couch and he puts on ESPN or whatever.

Speaker 1

Why'd you point it, Dave, when you said that?

Speaker 2

She did, she did.

Speaker 3

But I think a lot of. See, and here's the comparison thing that just clicked in. So what do we do with that?

Speaker 4

We get this question all the time. Our prayer for raising boys and raising up different kind of men than a lot of generations are used to. But there are a lot of women that are leading their home spiritually and feeling alone in it.

Speaker 3

And single moms.

Speaker 4

Single moms, yeah. And what I would say, and with all the gentleness in the world, I hope that they could hear this with the gentleness of Christ. But they are not off the hook for discipleship. They are not off the hook for God's call on their life. And so I would encourage them to pray like crazy for their husband, to love him and encourage him and respect him and do this—the things that are called in Scripture for a wife to do.

Everywhere she feels maybe that bitterness, she should surrender that to the Lord and really recognize it more as grief. She should bring her grief to the Lord, for He says He is near to the brokenhearted, that He sees our tears, and really labor through the grief of that.

But when it comes to your own children, when the Great Commission doesn't go out and Jesus said, "Oh, but if you ever feel alone, then you don't have to do it," He says, "I'm always with you." Right? He doesn't relieve the Great Commission for anyone who's having a hard time or for anyone who feels lonely, but rather to say, the Lord will give you the strength for this and to still do your part.

A single mom doesn't have to try to be a mom and a dad, or a woman who's in a marriage but maybe is the only spiritual leader in her home. She doesn't have to try to be the Father as well, but she is called to be the woman that God's called her to be. And so where we can lay that grief down and ask the Lord for His help, we should say, "Keep going," with that kind of patience and grit that Adam's talking about. Keep going.

Speaker 3

And I love the picture that you painted, too, just a little while ago as we were talking about.

You have not, cause you ask, not go to the father, crawl in his lap and say, "Lord, I feel alone. I feel like I'm doing this by myself." To go to him and to pour out your heart of what you're feeling.

And he loves you, he's with you. He'll equip you, he'll give you guidance.

But I think that's true, that we can tend to look at our spouse and think he should be doing more.

Speaker 1

I mean, that's Elijah in his story. He has this moment where he had this literally mountaintop experience, and then his life is threatened and he runs off. And do you remember his complaint? God says, "What are you doing here?" And Elijah says, "I'm the only one. Yes, I'm the only one doing this."

And then God says, remember, he sends an angel to minister to him. The angel ministers to him, and the word he gives him is, "Hey, you need to sleep, you need to eat, and this journey is too much for you." He lets him sleep and eat, and he wakes up again, and he has him eat and sleep again. "Now you're going to eat, you're going to sleep again. This journey is too much for you."

And then Elijah keeps going, and God asks him the same question twice. Elijah gives the same exact answer. "Hey, Elijah, what are you doing here?" And he says, "I'm the only one. I'm the only one doing this."

And you remember what God's response is to Elijah. It's so good for the single mom, single dad, any parent or parents feeling like they're the only one in their community who are discipling their kids, that sense of aloneness. God actually affirms Elijah's answer in saying, "We are going to keep doing hard work." But he also corrects Elijah and says, "There's actually 7,000 people that I have preserved that are doing this."

So I get why, maybe in that moment where you go, "I'm the only one doing this," you would say, "Yes, this journey is too much for you." And sometimes we need to hear that. Sometimes the biblical response to sadness is lament. It's not cheering you up and saying, "Let's just fix this." It's saying, "Yes, this is a sad situation. It is hard to parent by yourself or disciple by yourself. That is hard. Let us lament with you."

And sometimes we need to be kind of roused out of our sleepiness or a self-pity that says also we are still going to do the hard work. Also, we are going to keep going. Also, if there is any idleness in our heart for the journey that is too much for us, the Lord is enough, and so we will turn to him in the midst of that.

Speaker 2

What a great conversation with Adam and Chelsea. You can get their book@familylifetoday.com just click on the link in the show notes and pick one up. Maybe pick three up up and they'll.

Speaker 3

Be back with us tomorrow.

Speaker 2

Yeah, we got one more day with them.

Speaker 3

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Speaker 2

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Speaker 3

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Speaker 2

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