If so, you're going to love today's episode because I have two tricks that's going to make it so much easier.

Listen to this episode on Influencing Your Kids Podcast.

Two Parenting Tricks That Work Transcript

Parenting is really hard some days, all right, most days. But let's talk about two tricks that I found early on in our parenting that has made the best results. It literally put our children on the path for them to willingly carry our faith into adulthood without any force, without us pushing anything on them.

All of our adult children willingly and faithfully attend their own church. They're active in their church.

So this is key, and I know these are the things, the two tricks I did to make sure that they did it, and in the end, it makes parenting so much easier.

That's why I'm gonna be sharing with you two tricks for parenting, all right?

Let me tell you trick number one is point to Jesus.

We are called in our parenting to multiply and fill the earth and to train and instruct the children in the way they should go.

Our purpose in parenting is only to raise our children for God. It is not our purpose, although sometimes we benefit from our children.

It is not for them helping us, although they do help us. It's part of Christlike in them. It is not for any other purpose than to ensure that we are raising them to worship and honor and serve God with their whole hearts, with their whole minds and with their whole bodies and to fulfill their purpose that aligns with God's perfect will. So when you know that and you point to Jesus and you're not about you disobeyed me, but you disobeyed God by not obeying me.

We all of a sudden point to Jesus and we take the middle man out of the equation.

In case you didn't know parents, you are the middle man. You are the one that is introducing your child to their savior, to their God, to their ultimate authority. You are the one who's pointing to them.

If you can point to them as much as possible throughout the day, not making it about you. So it's not you have to obey me because I'm your parent. No, obey me because it is right. Children obey your parents and the Lord for this is right. If we adopt that in the way we speak to our children, we're going to stop having them look at us as like, I gotta obey mom and dad as imperfect as they are. I've gotta obey them because it is right. And because it is required of God.

Honor your mother and your father for this is the first commandment with a promise. If you wanna live a long life, obey us. God is the author of life and he determines your length of life.

So letting your children know by pointing to Jesus, and I love the sunflower for this example. I want you to think about how the sunflower rises to look at the sun and it moves as the sun moves.

That's how I want you to parent. I want you to look at the sunflower as your way of raising your children to emulate the Lord and that you are causing them to look at Christ and to follow his ways, and that everything you're doing is pointing to him. Okay? That's trick number one.

Trick number two is to give them ownership of their decisions and their choices early. In other words, don't wait until they're teenagers because it's a little late, still possible, but late. You've gotta overcome a whole lot of habits in nature. It takes a whole lot of effort and it's difficult.

It's like pulling out a rocky land and having to pull all of those rocks out and having very little good soil underneath it and still being responsible to grow something fruitful for God in it.

So why not start early when we are pointing to Jesus from the very beginning and letting them know, you must obey me because God requires it, not me. I have often said to our children, my number one job is to ensure you get to heaven. I cannot put you on my back and take you to heaven, but I have to point you to heaven. That is my hardest job, is to ensure in this world that we live in, that your thought is always Christ first.

So if we give our children that ownership early in their life and we tell them from the very young age that they have a choice, they can choose who they're going to serve. Are they gonna serve God or are they gonna serve the influences of this world? Are they gonna serve themselves and we have to make sure we're giving them a lot of understanding of what that looks like.

That means stories, letting them see what it looks like, having trusted influences, influencing their mind to let them see other people making hard decisions that were the right decisions and doing it the right way.

If we can give our children those ownerships and ownerships over this decision, I'm going to do because this feels like the right thing, the more we can help our children to stand and fall under our love and authority in our home while pointing to Jesus, the chances are they're gonna quickly go the right way and grow to purpose. Now, if we are constantly parenting because it's us, because we're your parents and because we say so, it's my way, not the hi, it's my way or the highway, if we're parenting that way, we're not giving the children ownership.

Not only that, we're not pointing to God, and that's the key of making sure. So if we're pointing to Jesus as trick number one and trick number two, we're giving our children the ownership of their choices early, then we're helping and equipping them in knowing number one, what's the right way? Because we're always pointing to scripture.

Scripture backs up what we're requiring our kids to do in our home, and then we're helping them take responsibility.

We're giving them that tool. Now, if this seems overwhelming to you, if maybe you don't have a lot of Bible knowledge, maybe you don't really understand how to point your children to Christ, maybe you don't know how to give them ownership, I've got you covered inside Wholesome Influencers, level one where it's lasting influences. I walk you through as Christian parents exactly how to do these things so that you don't have to take the time and the energy and effort to figuring it out.

You can just go ahead and do the step-by-step journey of how to do this in your family with all the resources and tools at your fingertips. You can check that out wholesomeinfluencers.com.

Now, when you begin to influence your children this way, by using these two tricks, what's going to happen as you are going to be less emotional, which is important in our parenting, you're going to be quick in that quick to point to Jesus and give them that ownership quickly, and that's just gonna keep the friction down.

The faster you do this, the better your day is going to become. So do those two tricks. Point to Jesus and give them ownership quickly. 

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