The Power In The Tongue

When we have to correct our children, what we say to them matters. William Smith says it's also important for them to know why it is their behavior needs to be different.

The same words can come out probably in close to the same tone and be right and be wrong. You're not going to speak to your mother that way because I'm in charge and I will not allow that. You're not going to speak to your mother that way because that is not good for you. That is not what the Lord has called you to, and therefore it's not acceptable in my home. I don't have control and authority outside the home. I do have control and authority inside the home.

That's unacceptable. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. As parents, it is out of the abundance of the heart that our mouths speak. What's in our hearts really does matter.

We'll talk more about that today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. There have been some times in conversations we've had here on Family Life Today where I've gone, oh, I just got my toes stepped on, you know, where a guest has said something and I just went, yeah, I should have been doing that for a long time. There was a guest one time who said, every time you have a disciplined interaction with one of your kids, where you have to correct them, he said, your goal should be that you walk away with them saying, I want to know Jesus better. And I thought— I'm laughing because that's a lofty goal. That was never my goal. My goal was I want you fixed and I want you acting the way I think you need to act.

And I don't care what you think about Jesus right now. And so we're going to try to give some help to moms and dads today who are in the midst of this. And before we do, we just want to turn to listeners and say, if this kind of help that you get every day from Family Life Today, if it's making a difference, we need to hear from you.

We do. And I have heard, I have several friends that are in their 20s or 30s, and I'm thinking of a couple of girls that have just had kids. And they've told me, like, listening to the Family Life podcast has changed my parenting. They're turning it on in desperation, like, please help me today. And the thing that's encouraging is they're saying, it is my lifeline to Jesus, to parenting. And they're saying, thank you for making a difference in my life as a mom. And so think about that. When you give to Family Life Today, you're investing in the next generation, because you're helping moms raise their kids and point them to Jesus.

Yeah. And I tell you, as Ann said, when we've heard from these friends, it's so encouraging. First of all, that they're young. They're just starting out in marriage and in parenting, and they love the show. They really do.

They're like, this is, we don't hear this anywhere. It literally is life changing for them. And, you know, we know as now we're parents of adult children, that parenting journey is the most emotional roller coaster. It's I mean, yeah, it is. But it's visceral. It's like, God, please help us to raise young men and women who follow you as adults. And it is you're on your knees. And, you know, as we became parents, we had no idea.

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And again, what you're giving to is what we're going to be talking about today, how we can help moms and dads know how to more effectively raise their kids with the relationship intact as they grow. Yeah, and Bob, I can't wait to hear you introduce our guest. Will Smith is with us.

That's pretty exciting, isn't it? We laughed first about the fact that if your name is Bill Smith, you're among tens of thousands of Bill Smiths in America, right? Yeah, it's fun sometimes to Google my name just to see how many hundreds of millions we're up to now. I thought Dave Wilson was pretty common, but I think you beat us. But when you modify it to Will Smith, all of a sudden, do you ever make reservations and say, yeah, the name's Will Smith, and just see if you get a better table as a result of that?

I've not done that, but I did have somebody comment on it at one point. Yeah, yeah. Bill Smith is joining us. He's from the suburbs of Pennsylvania, pastors a church just outside of Philadelphia. He is a counselor and an author. He's written a book on parenting with words of grace. Have you ever thought about discipline encounters with your kids and wanting them to love Jesus more as a result?

In the moment, that's a struggle. But I think that is part of grace. I had one person ask me, how do you know when to give grace and how do you know when to discipline? That's a dishonest question.

I thought about it for just a moment. I said, actually, I think grace is the umbrella under which discipline is. Discipline is an expression of grace. It's an expression of love because the goal at the end of discipline is for my child to be better off than they were beforehand.

Right. It's a point that is made in our video series, The Art of Parenting, the very same thing. It's not sometimes it's grace and sometimes it's law. It's always grace. But sometimes grace looks like I'm not going to let you do the things that are going to be destructive, that are going to harm you, that are going to I know better and I'm going to protect you from yourself in this situation. God extends that kind of grace with us.

And I think that's a great point. Unless you think and I know you write about this in your book and you think about Proverbs 18 21, which many people know is that pretty famous verse about the power of the tongue, life and death are in the power of the tongue. It could almost be truth and grace in some ways.

So how do you as a parent balance? Because it can't always be life words. Every word to our kids isn't always affirmation. Every once in a while, again, they're not death words, but there are moments where you need to correct and you need to discipline and you need to bring a hard truth to your kids. So how do you balance trying to parent with words of grace that balance the fine line between truth and grace or life and death? What I see in scripture, anytime you interrupt somebody, if they're going off the cliff, you're being gracious.

It doesn't have to be harsh. It doesn't have to be loud, but it can be a simple, hey, stop. What are you doing? What have you done in that moment? You have disciplined. You have said, you may not continue. I will interrupt you. And if your child ignores you, then you get a little stronger and a little stronger and a little stronger and a little stronger.

No, I'm really serious. We are not going down this road, but it doesn't have to start that way. It's all a continuum of grace that says, I am most interested in your best, even if that inconveniences me. And I've also found, I think we probably all agree with this as parents, definitely as married spouses, if I'm speaking life on a sort of regular basis, catching my kid doing something right and speaking life into it. And he hears that, again, not over the top, but he hears it every day.

You know, my dad really thinks I'm amazing, mom. And then you have to speak, you know, hey, what are you doing? You're going over the cliff.

They'll receive it better, right? If there's a balance, it's more leaning toward life. Yeah. Otherwise, what are you doing? You're caricaturing who God is. So when you're interrupting your child from doing something wrong, you're speaking as God's representative to say, no, that's not the way that you were designed to live. But if that's the only thing that you're saying, that's speaking as the serpent, because you're refusing to see the other part of who they are and their giftedness. And so I think you have to have both, not as a mechanism.

You're not sort of strategizing, okay, if I say three things that are positive, then I can get away with one that's not. You're saying, no, as God's representative, I call out what is good in this world, and I call out what is bad in this world, and I invite you to move from where you are to where you need to be. What is discipline and correction that is full of grace? How does that look different than discipline and correction that lacks grace? So I think to be gracious, the primary beneficiary has to be the other person.

The primary beneficiary is not me. I'm finally getting something off my chest that I've been holding on to, and it's just been bubbling up for weeks and months. Or I'm going to control your life, or you're going to make my life better by following my rules. Exactly.

I'm sick to death of waiting up till whenever, and you come home, and you just waltz in. Gracious discipline always has the other person's good, best interests at heart. The analogy here is that we discipline like God disciplines us. So he only speaks to us in those ways to correct us and curb us for our benefit.

He doesn't really gain anything. It's out of his love. It is. And the second part of that is he initiates that. I don't always go to him saying, Lord, I'm just not really sure about X, Y, or Z. No, it's often, Bill, you're out of line here, and something needs to change. And it's an offer of, here's a better world.

Isn't this something that you would want? We've been talking so much about our words. What do our words reveal about us? You know, is there a time that we should start analyzing and listening to ourselves of what we're saying? What are we looking for?

I think that you always have to analyze that. What am I saying? I'm saying that parenting is exhausting. There's no way to sugarcoat that. I looked at somebody the other day and I said, we were talking about being the city on a hill shining very brightly, Matthew chapter five, Sermon on the Mount. And I said, the process of being the light is a lot less engaging to us as Americans as the actual event, the light itself. But that's actually where our life has lived. It's lived in that process. And so as I hear myself regularly speaking in certain kind of ways, I need to go back and say, why is that?

Is that because that really does reflect who the Lord is or does that reflect something else? You tell a great story in your book about, I don't know what age your son was, but one of them decided he didn't want to live with mom and dad anymore. He's going to move on. And you kept having these conversations that were going negative and even didn't want to be in it. Tell us that story, because I found that because you had to be introspective and say, what's going on here?

I think it's a normal experience, right? Some of our kids are a little bit more forceful in not enjoying living under our roofs. And some of them are a little more passive, but it comes out the same way.

This one was a little more passive. You would say something to this child and it would be ignored and be ignored. And you'd have to make it into a fight in order to get it done. And then the next day you'd have the same fight back again. Or there would just be the things that we have mutually agreed on, on how our family runs that we're just not to this person's liking. Or you would have a conversation and you would get the, and you think, okay, look, man up and disagree with me instead of making me have to invite you to disagree with me. There's only so much of that that I really enjoy.

One of my huge idols is I don't care if you like me, you just need to respect me. And so I think this one sort of understood that. And I found myself getting more and more irritated and more upset as the days, weeks went on. And the conversation in my head changed and I could start hearing myself, the self-talk that you sort of ruminate over to where you start to think things that you should not say. And sometimes you can control that and you can walk away. And after a while, you start to think, yeah, I need to love my child and think, I don't even like them right now. And that's really dangerous because in that moment you're likely to say out loud, I don't like you. What do I need to do in that moment? I need to understand what's going on in me.

And I need to have that sense of what is it that's controlling me? Because the love of the Father is not. Instead, what's going on here is the love of respect. And it's I must be respected in my house for my sake, not for my child's sake. And that then sparks one of those conversations with the Lord, okay, I'm out of line here. You need to wrestle with my own heart and bring me back in line with where you are.

Now, again, because we're Americans, we want to hear that that then magically changes everything. And the spiritual life doesn't work that way. It changes me and my heart changes, but that doesn't necessarily change my child. But it does give me the resources to deal with his disrespect one more time in a way that does call him to something better without crushing him. So coach a mom or a dad, how do we deal with the child's disrespect in a way that doesn't crush them or alienate them? Because, Bob, every single parent, at least with teenagers, has been to that point of, I don't like you right now.

We've all been there, so coach us and help us. So why do your children need to respect you? Why do they need to honor you? Well, there's a commandment about that. From whom?

From God. So it's an issue between God and them, not an issue between you and them. And if I make it an issue between me and them, I'm out of line at that point. Exactly, because it was never given to you to require that from them.

That's required of them by the Lord. I think we just got counseled by that. I do too.

I think so. And that's where I have to counsel myself. This is something that I think I have to have in order to be okay today, and apparently I don't. Now, Lord, how do I care more about them being in trouble with you than I am about their disrespect of me? Because I realize, man, okay, if they are willing to be this bold against me, they're actually that much more bold against the Lord. That could have eternal consequences for them, and at this moment I don't care about that.

I would be happy if they just smiled at me. So if a teenager is saying something and your instinct is, you're not going to talk that way to your mother. You need to respect your mother. Do I say it that way, or do I have the conversation with the teenager in the moment in a different way?

And that's where I think what the issue that is so critical is down what's inside, because the same words can come out probably in close to the same tone and be right and be wrong. You're not going to speak to your mother that way because I'm in charge and I will not allow that. You're not going to speak to your mother that way because that is not good for you. That is not what the Lord has called you to, and therefore it's not acceptable in my home. I don't have control and authority outside the home.

I do have control and authority inside the home. That's unacceptable. And the child who says, well, I'm not sure I believe in God.

How do you handle that one? At this moment, you don't have to believe in God, but you do have to listen to what I'm saying. And the tone makes a big difference.

It does. It communicates whether I actually have your best interests at heart or whether I'm insisting on I'm bigger and stronger and tougher right now. Therefore, do what I told you to do. This is so hard. It really does take us being connected to the Father and listening to the Holy Spirit continually. Otherwise, we're just going to say what we want and feel. And that's where I think parenting takes me to the end of myself more than anything else. Yes. Amen. Because I realized really quickly, man, who is equal to this?

I'm not. And it's actually been very helpful to realize that I'm not simply a parent in my home, but I'm a child in a much better home with a much better father who's that much invested in me becoming the parent that I'm always supposed to have been. You point out in your book that Jesus in Revelation, speaking to the church in Laodicea, says, I discipline those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. If our kids understand, first of all, if they know that we do love them, then the discipline is easier for them to receive even in those moments. See, I was always afraid of this as a parent. I was afraid that if I was too strong in correcting or putting too many boundaries, my kids were going to rebel. They were going to say, I've had enough of this.

I'm just going to tune you completely out. Mary Ann and I would have the conversation often, and she said, you will probably never be too firm with the kids. And she recognized, and I will probably never be too emotionally expressive of my love for them, right? When I think I'm being overboard in being firm, I'm probably getting to where I need to be. And she said, and when I think I'm being overboard in terms of expressing love and affection, I'm probably where I need to be. We just recognized our own tendencies in that regard. But if our kids know they're loved, even in those moments when they say, I hate you, I don't like living here, or those things that you're ruining my life kind of stuff, they still know deep down mom and dad love me.

And even in those firm moments, if we're doing it right, we're not going to chase them away, are we? And that's where I think the response in that moment is so critical. One of our children really needed to be able to express themselves.

And I could tell that there was something inside that they really wanted, but just didn't have the courage to say. And in that moment, my counsel to them was say it, just say, and it was that I hate you. I said, good, you need to say that, thank you. Now go upstairs and get ready for dinner. You can express yourself fully, and I will respond with love.

I'll still feed you. Because that's how my Heavenly Father responds to me. Did you say it that mildly? I did, as unbelievable as that sounds. Wow. Because in that moment, that's what they needed.

Yeah. And that would not have been helpful if I had responded over the top. Yeah, escalation would just lead to more escalation, yeah. I think it is important because I did want to know what our kids were feeling. I wanted to know what was going on in their hearts and their minds. And so I would draw that out of them. We did have rules in place of how they would communicate it.

Yes. They're not going to call us names, or they're not going to call their sibling names. But they can express what they're feeling in a respectful manner.

But man, they can be angry about it without breaking or going beyond our boundaries. And I think that's so important. Again, the model here is not human parents to human children. The model is divine parent to human children. And you recognize that God in the Psalms invites us to say all kinds of really bizarre stuff to Him. Psalm 73 is wonderful in my mind, where the Psalm starts talking about, it was absolutely futile to do what was right. And you think, God comes along and says, that's good. I want you to spend a lot of time, put that in verse, put that in Scripture.

I will make sure that that lasts for thousands and thousands of years. In fact, that's what I want my people to come and sing to me in worship on the Sabbath. And you get a glimpse of a God who says, if that's what you're feeling, I want you to say it.

I don't want you to pretend that I'm not interested and I'm not involved and I don't care. And so, okay, we sort of learn how then to talk to our Heavenly Father, which reshapes the way that we allow our kids to talk to us. Not disrespectfully, not in a way that creates bigger tension, but that says, no, this really is where I am. And yet, you know, I think the most frustrating or one of the most frustrating things as a parent, and it's right there in the Psalm 73, A.S.A.P. says, you know, when I tried to understand all this, it was mindless. I couldn't understand it.

You know, the wicked prosper and I'm doing good and it just seems like, why waste my time? And then he says, until I entered the sanctuary of God. And so it's like he gets a totally different perspective. And the frustrating thing about being a parent is we know this and you say it in the book and Jesus said it. The mouth is an overflow of the heart so we can correct our teenagers. We can say you can't speak this way. We can correct their speech. But we know we can't change their heart. And if the heart doesn't change, it's just putting a little glue on the outside is not going to do anything. And so that's out of our control. We're trying to get them to respect us or use respectful words. But at the end of the day, if their heart doesn't change, nothing's going to change.

Right? So that's how do you do that? I mean, you can't control that as a parent. And that's so helpful then for me to look in scripture and realize that God does the same thing. We're preaching through the Book of Jonah now. I love the Book of Jonah because of how badly it ends.

It's just in all of its rawness. Here's this prophet who has in Chapter 2 experienced the grace of God. He's got an incredible ministry. A 120,000 person city has been repenting and he's angry and just absolutely furious. And God makes this attempt, this inroad first part of Chapter 4 to come near to Jonah. And Jonah just blows him off.

Doesn't want to have anything to do with this. And God sets up the vine with the worm and all the rest of that to try to really reach his heart. And the book ends with a question. Should I not be concerned about that great city? And you're like, well, I don't know.

Should you not be? Where's Jonah? Because I want to hear as an American that Jonah repented and then everything was fine. And God says, nope, because you have to learn how to ask that question too. And you realize God speaks without necessarily having the guarantee that his words will be received and accepted. He asks questions of Cain. Where's your brother? After he's already told him, sin's crouching at your door, you need to take care of that. He comes back and asks and asks.

Tells the story of the prodigal son, which really ends with the older brother. Because it's really a question to the Pharisees, which is, where's the grace, guys? Do you not experience this yourselves? Do you want more? And again, there's no resolution.

You want to know that the older brother went back in the house and celebrated with the younger brother. And you don't get that. And God's telling you, this is how my world is set up.

And I think this is glorious. You think, Lord, it's going to take me a little while to get on that same page with you. You say that your kids mature through conversation.

I think about that even in our walk with God, of having conversations with him. But I was recalling an incident that happened with two of our boys when they were younger, just hitting each other, complaining. I felt like I was constantly breaking up these fights with them. And so I got them in a room one day and I said, son, tell your brother what's wrong. Because you're just, you keep hitting him.

What is really wrong? Tell him with your words and what you're feeling. And they already know there's boundaries.

You can't say because you're dumb and you're stupid. So tell him what's in your heart. And he said, I'm just mad at you. I feel like you're always mean to me. And so I said, okay, what do you mean?

What has he done that makes you feel like that? And I mean, he's like nine. And he said, you're always making fun of me in front of all of our friends. Which I thought, whoa, that's pretty deep and that's good. And then he said, that makes me feel like you don't like me or you're embarrassed about me.

So then I'm like, oh goodness, this is really good. So I say to the older son, three years older, what do you have to say about that? He said, I thought it was funny. And the younger brother is crying. It's not funny.

It hurts my feelings. And so the older brother apologized. They hugged each other. I thought, man, they have matured in being able to express themselves.

It brought a broken relationship, healing. And it was interesting, just a few weeks ago, we were with those two adult sons. And they had another conversation very much like that one. And here are these sons that are expressing their hearts, what their feelings, they're hurt with one another.

Did you think about this, Dave? But I thought, look, they're still doing it. And it's remarkable. Yeah, actually, as I sat there, it was one of these little family conversations. You know, those are all these wonderful, you're on vacation, you're having a great time, and we're going to sit down and we're all going to talk about hurts and whatever. But as I watched those two communicate, I thought they are modeling how to do it well. Because they were honest. They were polite. They were graceful with their words. And it was hard. You know, there were things that were hard to say to one another. I actually thought my wife trained them well.

That's what I thought. Because Ann was always training our boys on relationships. You know, like, you're angry. She wasn't saying, quit being angry. She'd be saying, what's going on there? Let's figure this out.

Why do you think you're angry? And they'd be like, what? How many people have never done that? And I watched her do it with a six-year-old and a nine-year-old and a 15-year-old. And now I watched these two men do it and we didn't even need to be there. They were mature people using graceful words to speak truth to one another.

It was beautiful to watch. But it takes time and it doesn't happen overnight. Because I think most of the time I felt like I was failing. It does. It takes time. It doesn't happen overnight.

It's not flashy. I mean, that's a beautiful story. You don't always get those.

And there's plenty of stories you probably could tell where the one says this and the other one says like, yeah, okay. I had one good one, Bill. And you used it. But the cumulative impact of, let me help you understand, this is the way God built the world. And this is the way God built you. And this is your place in this world. You can't make up for that with a book.

You can't make up with some kind of highly compressed counseling session. What you did for years and years and years pays off. Yeah, the thing I love that you're doing now, Bill, and you do in your book is you keep reminding us to go back to this is the Father, our Heavenly Father with us and even with our kids. It's so easy to forget that as a parent, especially in the chaos of the moment.

And you keep taking us back there. That's why I would say go get the book and read it. It's going to put you on ground floor, a foundation that helps you do it well. The book is called Parenting with Words of Grace, Building Relationships with Your Children One Conversation at a Time. You can order William Smith's book on our website at familylifetoday.com or call to order 1-800-FL-TODAY is our number. Again, the title of the book, Parenting with Words of Grace. Order online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today to order your copy of the book. And let me also encourage you, if you have not been through the Family Life Art of Parenting video series, make plans to get together with other parents.

Maybe after the first of the year, you can do this on Zoom, you can do it socially distanced, however it works for you. But this series is so helpful for moms and dads to go through the eight sessions in the art of parenting and build a game plan, a strategy for how you're going to raise your kids. Find out more about the art of parenting when you go to our website at familylifetoday.com.

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There's a good way to do that, and we'll talk more about that tomorrow with William Smith. I hope you can be back with us for that. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.