FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete.

What Do You Want Your Kids to Be?

Guests:                      Dennis and Barbara Rainey

From the series:       Art of Parenting: What Every Parent Needs (Day 2 of 3)

Bob: Do you and your spouse have the same set of parenting priorities as you raise your children? Barbara Rainey remembers when she and her husband, Dennis, sat down and compared notes.

Barbara: What was surprising to me was how different our lists were. I shouldn’t have been surprised, because we had been flashing over this; but nonetheless, I think, when you get married, you think, “Oh, we have so much in common,”’ and then—after a few years or maybe after the kids come along—you realize, “Well, maybe we’re operating off of two different sets of instructions.”

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, October 30th. Our host is Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. What can you do, as parents, to make sure you’re on the same page and that your values are in sync together as you raise your children? We’ll spend time talking to Dennis and Barbara Rainey about that today. Stay with us.

1:00

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. We’re spending some time this week doing some pre-parenting counseling. We talked about the fact that a lot of couples get premarital counseling; and a lot of couples, when they’re expecting a baby, go to birthing classes; but nobody’s doing parenting classes. Well, we’re doing parenting classes now with the Art of Parenting™ video series and with your new book, The Art of Parenting, that is now available. Your goal with that book, and our goal with the series, is to equip moms and dads to have a big-picture perspective on what God’s calling them to do.

Dennis: Exactly. We’re joined again on FamilyLife Today with Barbara. Welcome back to the broadcast, Sweetheart.

Barbara: Thank you much! Glad to be here.

Dennis: Here’s the thing about children—I think most of us look at our children way too simplistically.

2:00

Let me depart from a conversation about children at this point and just talk about the Weekend to Remember® marriage getaway. One of the things we do at the getaway is—we cast marriage in the grand scheme of things—of what God is up to on planet earth. We say to couples: “Your marriage isn’t just about two people trying to get their needs met. Your marriage is supposed to demonstrate who God is to a fallen planet. There are angels looking onto the planet—they’re in the audience, watching how you two handle your conflict.”

Well, you know what? The same thing is true about children. It’s not just a little person—you’re talking about an eternal being. In the Art of Parenting video series, which we just launched, we’ve got a number of marriage and family experts in there, one of whom is Tim Kimmel. Tim and Darcy have been on the Weekend to Remember speaker team for a number of years.

3:00

One of the things that he said in this series on the art of parenting was—he said, “I know how long children live. They’re eternal! They last forever.” That means, Bob, that they are worth so much more than any of us ever imagine at a point in time.

I think it’s why we need to go back to the Book—back to the Bible—and just read and see how children are described. I’m going to go to, I think, a classic passage in the Old Testament—Psalm 127, verses 3-5, that describes children. It says: “Behold! Children are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward,”—not a curse, but a benefit/a reward—“Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them.”

The picture here—I want every parent to imagine this with me—

4:00

—God could have chosen any metaphor in existence to describe children, but he chose arrows. He pictures a warrior: “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior.” What’s the warrior doing? He’s engaged in battle. What are you, as a parent, doing? You are engaged in a battle over the soul—the moral condition and the development of your child—to be used by God in his generation.

So the question is: “Are you viewing your assignment as a sacred assignment?—children being a heritage—a reward/a blessing. I’m sorry to get so intense here, at the beginning of the broadcast here, Bob; but I just think there’s a lot of really lazy thinking about children. We forget—it’s so easy, in the midst of the battle—we aren’t raising rug rats. We’re raising image-bearers, who reflect who God is, and will carry on in the next generation.

5:00

Bob: If you were sitting down with a couple, who were about to begin that journey—Barbara, one of the things I know you would tell them is: “You need to begin your parenting journey with the end in mind. Rather than thinking about the first six months, think about a 20-year-old, who is ready to be launched. Start now, thinking: ‘What do we want that 20-year-old to be shaped by? What do we want the influences in that 20-year-old’s life to look like?” so that all the choices you’re making, along the way, are choices that support that vision.

Barbara: Exactly. I think a lot of parents don’t think about that. They are trying to survive today. [Laughter] They might be worried about what’s happening tomorrow, because they’ve got a to-do list longer than their arm; but they’re not thinking about what the outcome is for their kids, when they’re 18, 20, or 21. They’re thinking about surviving the immediate future.

We all know, if we can think ahead to what we want something to become, then we’re going to make decisions today that will help achieve that outcome.

6:00

Parenting is really no different: “What do you want your kids to be like when they leave your influence?—when they leave for college, or go into the military, or get married, or whatever?” “What characteristics—what qualities/what attributes—do you want to invest in your children to see grow and determine who your kids become?”

Bob: And I think, with us, we were pretty nebulous. We kind of knew, in a general way, what we wanted for our kids; but I don’t think we put words, or even values, to it.

Barbara: Yes.

Bob: So if you had said to me, when my child was two years old, “What’s your hope or dream?” Well, you know, I would have said: “I want them to love the Lord. I want them to have a good work...