FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

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Spiritual Identity

Guest:                         Dennis and Barbara Rainey

From the series:       The Art of Parenting: Identity (Day 2 of 3)

Bob: Your child is a complete person—body, soul, spirit. As parents, we need to be addressing every dimension of our child’s life including the spiritual dimension. Barbara Rainey says to help shape a child’s spiritual identity, we need to introduce them to the God who created them.

Barbara: Helping them understand that God is good, and that God has great plans and purposes for you, and that He loves you. I mean, what a privilege for a mom and a dad to be able to communicate those wonderful truths about God to your children. Because it helps them see Him as He really is—but it also helps them begin to feel good about who God made them to be—and that’s a part of developing a healthy identity.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, January 29th. Our host is Dennis Rainey. I'm Bob Lepine. Helping to shape and mold a child’s spiritual identity is one of the great responsibilities and one of the great privileges we have as parents.

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We’ll explore that today. Stay with us.

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us.

We’re talking this week about an aspect of parenting that—I think parents recognize as we’re in the process of raising our kids—we recognize that this is something that is important. I just don’t know that we—that I ever put a label on it. That I am helping to shape my child’s identity as they grow—helping them get a sense of self—a good understanding of who they are.

Although I have to tell you—and there’s some parents who are just going to be mortified by this—but when our daughter Amy was born—when she was still a little baby before she could speak,

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I would take her up in my lap and I would talk to her. I would bounce her on my lap and I would say “You’re so cute. You know you’re so cute.” And then I’d say “You’re also depraved. You are totally depraved.” [Laughter] “You’re a wicked sinner.” I’d do that as I bounced her, and she’d smile and giggle and laugh while I’d talk about it.

Dennis: We should call Amy and find out how that—

Barbara: —damaged her.

Bob: —scarred her for life? Well there’s—I have to tell you another story real quick. She likes telling the story. We were driving home from summer camp and she was asking a question about her—her virtue—like her good works. I don’t know how the conversation came along but the dialogue was that no matter how good her best works were on any day they would always be tainted with the reality of sin. Well somehow in her 11-12-year-old heart, that was terrible news— [Laughter] —that she could never have a good work that would be a 100% pure.

Dennis: Pleasing—Pleasing to God, yes.

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Bob: Right. She shared this story with some of her friends who think I was a terrible parent for telling a 12-year-old that their works would always be tainted by sin. I thought I was just being biblically accurate as I was raising my kids but helping them understand their identity. A big part of that is helping them understand their spiritual identity—who they are apart from Christ, who they are in Christ, and how all of that plays out for them.

Dennis: I’m tempted to run a straw poll—from our listeners—about how many think Bob—

Bob: —think Bob was cruel. [Laughter]

Dennis: —was cruel by doing that.

Bob: I don’t want to know.

Dennis: I don’t really want to know either. Here’s the thing. Our identity—who we are—determines what we become. I’ll give you an illustration of this.

By the way, we haven’t introduced Barbara—Barbara, my bride for now 46 plus years, joins us again on FamilyLife Today. Welcome back.

Barbara: Thanks. Glad to be here as always. It’s fun.

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Dennis: Great mom of six—Gramma of 24. We’re in the thick of this thing called “next generation” right here.

Anyway, I was going to tell you a story about what happened to me when I was a senior in high school. I was in a magazine subscription contest. We were raising money to go on a senior trip. So, the subscriptions back then for Outdoor Life or Time magazine—all the magazines were only two or three dollars—so it wasn’t exactly a big-time ticket item for somebody to buy them.

I started off going to this small town called Ozark, Missouri—where I grew up—a town of 1300 people. I went door to door and I made a couple of sales, but I didn’t do quite well. I thought, “This is not cutting it so I’m going to the farmers. I’m going out in the sticks where there’s people out there who—maybe they’ve got common sense and they’ll buy these magazines subscriptions from me.”

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So I started going door to door. The first one—I just happened on it that the lady answered the door and I said “Hi, I’m Dennis Rainey. I’m Hook Rainey’s son.” “Oh, Hook Rainey’s son. Come on in. Have some cookies and milk. What have you got there? Subscriptions. Oh, we’d like two or three of those subscriptions, of course.” I thought, “Whoa, that was pretty good.” I went to the bank on my dad’s—on my dad’s brand out in the county—this Christian county believe it or not.

I set a school record for most number of stuffed animals that I won—most subscriptions. It was a huge number because of my dad’s identity—Hook Rainey. By the way, they called him Hook because he had a wicked curve ball. It was the only thing wicked about him. Now, Bob, I know you’d say he’s still wicked but [Laughter] —anyway, Hook Rainey had a name that was as good as gold in the community—lived his whole life there.

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But I went to the bank on his identity because I was his son.

Now here’s the deal as you raise your children. First of all—if you’ve trusted in Christ—you are a child of the King. You have royal blood in your veins—as a listener—if you know Christ. As you introduce your children to Jesus Christ and help them begin their spiritual walk with Him, they too can be a royal. They can be one of the members of the royal family—the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This thing called spiritual identity—I think, Bob, is one of the most important components of help...