So when I think about people who are
who who can express themselves in a stubborn, kind of hardheaded kind of way.
One of my favorite illustrations in my mind is to go back to Martin
Luther as he stands there in front of all of the dignitaries
and and all of the the religious and the secular
authorities and says to them,
basically, this is what God says. Here I stand, I can do no other.
And you think that's well done.
And you want that kind of image
for your child so that whether it's the kids
that they hang around with wanting to do something on the playground
that they should not be, or getting into trouble in a dating kind of a setting
or being tempted to cheat on their taxes at some point in time,
you want them to have something inside that says no. Integrity matters,
and therefore, here I stand, I can do no other.
But in order for them to separate and distinguish between
that good kind of integrity and just
I didn't get my way and therefore you have to channel that
and you have to help them understand there are appropriate times and places
where, yeah, we we literally will go to the death
because this is who the Lord is and this is what honors him.
And there are other times where I'm just taking one of his gifts,
using it to create the world that I feel more comfortable
One of the difficulties with
a label or with insulting our children, whether it comes from us
or from someone else, is that some of those can work their way deep down inside.
You're just dumb. You'll just never understand.
You'll never be anything.
You'll never make anything of yourself.
And for
many of us as adults, we can think about some of those things that those labels
that we have worked so hard to escape or some that we never did escape.
And part of our
privilege as parents is to come alongside our child
and to say, let's make sure that we practice
bringing in the kinds of things that God says to us
and holding on to those not letting those go and taking the ones
that he doesn't say and measuring them against what he does say.
So can you imagine the God who carefully shaped each
and every one of us in the womb and made us just unbelievably special
in his sight with all of our gifts, all of our talents, all of our diversity?
Can you imagine him looking at us saying, you're just dumb?
You think, no, that that that's not his character.
That's not what he does.
And so we want to do something more than say, well, God doesn't make junk.
That can trivialize the the issue a little bit too much.
But we want to say God gives gifts and he gives
gifts in various amounts.
And so there are some things that I might want to do
that I'm just never going to be able to do because of the gifts
that he's given to me.
It doesn't make me dumb.
It doesn't make me clumsy.
It just says those are not the gifts that he thought would be best for me
to image him.
And so I can either focus on those things that I don't have
or I can learn to prize and value the things that I do have.
Part of what
happens when you step into someone else's world
and you encourage them is you are actually
doing something that's very godly.
What are you doing?
God speaks truth, but he speaks truth in such a way
that is always for the benefit of the person hearing it
and so he doesn't speak truth in such a way that tears people down.
That's critical.
That's senseless.
That's sarcastic.
He speaks truth even when it's not nice,
but he speaks truth for the sake of the other person.
And so what you're actually doing by encouraging someone is
you are now working in line with the way that God himself is working.
And there's a sense, I think, in those moments
where you are now encouraged by God, you're doing what God is doing.
That's something that he is pleased with, and that's something that he affirms
in his people.
And so what you're trying to do is you're trying to say to your child,
this is the way the world is, and you have an option here.
You can run against the grain of the world.
In the Book of Proverbs, that's called being the fool.
Or you can work with the grain of the world.
And that tends to have a life then
that is full of the
the Fruit of the Spirit that is full of peace,
that is full of joy, that has that sense inside of
even if everybody in the world thinks I'm a nut,
the One who lives at the center of the universe agrees
and thinks that what I'm doing is well and I'm learning then to live now
the way that I'm going to live for all eternity.