The Power of Gracious Words

How do we talk to our hosts?

Thanks for joining us, your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller. John, look at the book of Proverbs. In Proverbs 18, it says, the tongue has the power of life and death.

Well, for us that are Christians, I mean, that's pretty good instruction, right? And this is especially true in our role as parents. The tongue has the power of life and death with our children. And on the flip side, harsh or biting comments can wear your relationship down little by little with your kids. If you're that biting parent where, you know, you're expecting perfection, it's never quite right. And why didn't you get an A?

A B's okay, but an A would be better. If some of this is ringing true, I want you to stick with us today because we have a guest who's going to talk about how to use words of grace when talking to your kids. Yeah, and the goal is to build a better relationship with your child and to equip them to navigate life better. I wish we had some redos in my home, Jim. So we all do. I'm looking forward to the conversation with Dr. William Smith. He's a pastor, counselor, and author. And he's written a book that we'll be exploring today. Parenting with Words of Grace, building relationships with your children one conversation at a time.

And you can click the link in the episode notes to get your copy or give us a call. Bill, welcome to Focus on the Family. Jim, thanks for having me.

It's your first time. It is. And I love that. I love the title of your book, Parenting with Words of Grace.

Let me kick it off there, because I think even in the intro, you know, setting that up, you can hear, I don't know why I'm caricaturing this as a dad, but I could hear that dad going, Oh, my goodness, I can't believe they're going to talk about this. Sometimes you need to be tough with your kids. And that might be true. But speak to that balance of boundaries, words of grace. I'm sure a lot of people want words of grace.

You don't know my kid. So let's get that out of the way. Absolutely. And here's where I think it's so helpful to realize that what I'm trying to capture is how do we talk to our kids like God talks to us? Recognizing that everything he says is tinged with grace doesn't mean that he's necessarily soft or easy or doesn't deal well with sin, but he deals well with it in a way that actually develops relationship rather than crushes it. Yeah, and that's perfect. You know, somebody once said to me, you know, God's a God of a bunch of teenagers.

Right? We don't behave perfectly. And that's the other aspect of this life. You know, Paul, who, my goodness, who could rise to Paul's ability, right, as a theologian, knowing the word the way he did. Yet Paul himself said, you know, I do those things I don't wish to do.

And I don't do the things I should do, basically. And I think he was giving us that idea of imperfection in this life. Yeah, I think we really I've said it provocatively this way before, it's as though we're trying to raise Pharisees. And we think that the best child that we could possibly have would be one that just looks perfect on the outside.

And we really don't care what's going on on the inside. That is good. And as you go through the Gospels, you realize that the Pharisees were the epitome of good kids, people who had everything down the right way. They were the kids that you wanted your kids to play with, because then your kids would, you know, maybe some of that rub off on your kids, right? You want your kids to marry them. They were the future leaders of the community. And they stood in front of Jesus and did not recognize the one who created them.

And they accused him of being a tool for Satan. And you think, wow, okay, that's not what I want. When I'm helping my kids grow into moral human beings, right. And that's, again, what why I'm so excited to have you here today, because I believe in this message. And I think, you know, even in my imperfection as a dad, I think you'd agree, john. And I Jean would say that as a mom that, you know, we have to realize we're broken people too. And we're not perfect at parenting.

And boy, when you can express that to your kids at the appropriate age, it's revolutionary to them. I remember one time I went into Trent's bedroom, I had disciplined him and I went in and, you know, I said, I just got, you know, too emotional on that trend. I'm sorry, I reacted the way I did. And I remember he was in the top bunk, eyeball to eyeball with me. And he had this big smile on his face. I said, Why are you smiling?

He goes, I didn't know parents had to apologize. Isn't that awesome? That's awesome. And it really, I think it communicated the right thing. Let me go back a moment. You talked about God, obviously being our father and a wonderful, perfect model of that. What kind of words does God use with his children?

Let's, let's get into it. What are the things that he says to us? So maybe even pack, unpack theology of conversation, for want of a better phrase. What does God do when he communicates, he's unpacking who he is, he's the invisible God, but you get a sense of who he is, as he speaks, because he tells you, here's what I value. And you realize he makes us in his image.

So there's an analog out of our hearts. Our mouth speaks as Jesus says, so you can see our invisible values and our concerns as we talk, same is true with God. And so as he communicates to us in the scripture, you're getting a sense of who he is as a person, but you're also getting a sense of our place in his world. Cause he tells you, I value you're important to me.

I want you to be with me forever. And you get that sense of, wow, we, we count what is man that, that you should care about him. And God says a lot. And because he puts that value on us. And as we hear him speak, we get a sense of who he is. We get a sense of how he values us. And with those two things, there's an implied invitation given what you've just learned about me, given how you've heard me connect with other people.

Would you like some more of me? And then as God's images, we do the exact same thing. So every time I talk, whether I'm giving formal theological instruction, or I'm talking about how do we clean up the milk that just got spilled on the table, I'm communicating.

This is what's most important to me, never having any mistakes or mistakes happen. I'm communicating your place in that world. You're this rotten person who always, you know, interrupts my schedule, or you're someone who gets to learn now how to clean something up that they, and in that it based on how I value them, I'm offering an invitation that says, when you have more emotional maturity, when you have more options, are you likely to want to spend some more time with me? Yeah.

Or will you spend that elsewhere? And in the book, you're mentioned an example where your son, I think being a little boy took something he shouldn't have taken, I think some money or something like that. How did that turn into an opportunity to show him this dynamic between God's treatment of us, your treatment of him, what happened? Yeah, that was one of those opportunities you don't really want.

It's the end of the day, you clean everything up and you just want to be left alone. And this little person walks into my office and says, do you remember two, three years ago when $10 went missing and you knew that it was me because it was on my bedside table, but I said, no, it was the cat. I was like, yeah, I remember this. And he says, well, it was wrong. And so I wanted to get that right.

Do you want the money back? I think, okay, wow, here's a beautiful opportunity. Obviously the Lord is at work moving in his conscience. It was how long after the fact? About three years or so.

Wow, that's amazing. He'd been carrying it that long. Yeah. Well, think about how long I carry the things I've been deceptive in and think three years is short, but I was very grateful to see that, but I'm also aware, huh? He has a very moralistic approach to sin.

Sin is an activity only by paying it back on plane. Yeah. Okay. And maybe I'll give you interest, but I wanted, I wanted to expand this for him. And I said, do you really think that you can pay me back for what we went through? I said, yes.

I thought, okay, now I have to enter in a little bit more. I said, so you can pay me back for all the hours that I spent worrying about where you were inside your own heart and mind. You can pay me back for the suspicions that we then had when other money was misplaced around the house. You can pay me back for my concern over how you're building greed into your life and how you're pushing us away.

You can pay for all of that. And he says, no, I can't. And that's that kind of moment that I want for my own life. When I realized here's what Jesus really did to pay for me as something you could never repay. Exactly. Which makes the gospel beautiful, the cross wonderful, and my God amazing. And that's what I wanted him to experience in that moment. You encourage in the book parents to look for the positive in seed form. So I want you to describe what that means.

Looking for the positive in that seed form. So as a parent in my thirties and forties, I wanted to see my kids respond in 30 and 40 year old ways. Is that wrong? It doesn't happen often. That is so true.

Why do we do that? Jean and I have had those conversations, my wife and I, and sometimes she's the one correcting me and sometimes me toward her. And I remember saying, you know, they're 15. They're not, they're not 40 year olds. They're not going to think the way we think.

And that's true. It took me four decades to get here in that time. And you think, well, why aren't you? I, I, I told you how to get and think, no, the maturity takes time.

So I want to walk that back then and say, what's that look like at your level? And how do I affirm that rather than being irritated? Because it's not the way that I really wish it was. Bill, I can imagine some parents watching on YouTube or listening to us and they're going, Oh, okay, this is good.

I get it. But it's difficult to know when to encourage and when to speak the truth. It's kind of that balance. We still need to be mom and dad. You just can't let them do anything they want to do or behave any way you get the argument. How do we balance that? What are the clues that you give us in the book to, to make sure that you're doing that in a healthy way, which probably is the best goal. Yeah.

So underneath of that question, I think is the realization that on any given day in any given moment, your kid is doing some things that are positive and some things that are less than, and so what, what do you focus on? As I go through the scriptures, I noticed that Jesus rebukes people, rebukes the Pharisees. He rebukes Peter when Peter's rebuking him and you realize there are hard hearted moments where he goes after. And then you read a book like first Corinthians, which always is weird for me because the opening several verses are just about how great the Corinthians are, how thankful Paul is from how they've been blessed with every spiritual gift. And then you read the book and you think, really? Yeah. Then it's reprimand.

Yeah. Because these are guys who are engaged in all kinds of sexual immorality and divisions in the church. And look, you think, why did you encourage them?

You go to second Corinthians and you realize, oh, they responded. There's a softness in their hearts. And I think that's the key. The hard hearted people, you come a little bit more strongly, a little bit more energy. If someone is responding and soft lead with encouragement, because what you're affirming is what God has built in there that will last forever. You know, so often, bill, I leave this question to the end, but I think the timing's right now, the parent that has blown it, you know, we have lived by behavioral modification guidelines.

You know, we want you to behave a certain way so that we can be proud of you and our neighbors can be proud of us. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And it's dawning that realization as we're listening to this discussion.

Okay. I haven't managed that. Well, what do they do with their 15 year old who may be rebellious now? I mean, because they never have been able to get to that standard and it's caused division and a prodigal potentially because oftentimes those prodigal kids are walking away from not always, but often because that bar being set so high, they could never attain it.

I can never please you. So why try anymore? So speak to that parent. What can I do differently now? I think for that parent, you have to realize I am that parent as well. And the gospel that was good for me decades ago is still the gospel I have to run to today.

And I always have to go, I have to start there. There are remedial things that I can do with the ones that I've blown it with. You've mentioned some, I think going back and apologizing a huge offering a different kind of relationship. Okay. This is the way I have been. I will not deny it. I'm not going to try to cover it up. If you want to talk about it, we can talk about it, but I will set a new path and new pattern because if Christ has risen from the dead, there isn't anything that's impossible for his people.

That is really good. And, and I think the other thing I would add is it's not too late to start for that kind of reconciliation, confessing your own sin as a parent to that adult child or that teenager, you know, to say I blown it. I did not understand this. That kind of leans into the next question I want to ask you about, which is the need for honesty. I mean, that's brutal honesty. When you, as a parent can come to that conclusion that, okay, I have not done this well. And then confess that to your child, um, describe what it means to be a mirror to your child in that context of honesty. I use a metaphor of a mirror, a verbal mirror. And that's simply when I'm saying to somebody, my child, my spouse, my friend, this is what I see in your life.

I could be wrong. I could be miss reading you, but this is what I see. And you realize that's what a mirror does.

It simply shows you, you the way that you are. And it's up to you, whether or not you accept that. And so I've offered, here's what I think I'm seeing. Am I seeing correctly?

Do I need to be corrected? Or if I'm seeing correctly, what do you want to do about this? How did that work? I mean, practically with your son, describe your kids, by the way, sons and daughters have our oldest as a daughter, uh, now married.

And then we have two sons. Okay. So in that context, as you were the mirror to them, did you, how did that go? I guess I'm just going to ask you I'm going to ask you flat out. Yeah, I appreciate that.

And let me add a caveat up front. There is no guarantee that any time you engage your kids well, that it's going to respond. They'll respond well.

You're not given that authority or that ability in their lives. So sometimes when I've done that with people, it's worked out very well. There's been a reciprocal, Hey, okay. I know dad loves me and cares about me. And so I respond well.

And other times it's yeah. Okay. Get away from me.

Let me press you. I think your son had a, an issue with self-control. How did you do the mirror thing with him in that context? So in that one, um, just sort of watching all of the different kinds of things he'd been doing for several days or a week, realizing I needed to step in and say something to him, which would be that here's what I think I'm seeing.

Can you help us with what that looked like? Uh, just endless time on his phone. Yep. Uh, eating way too much junk food, watching and other kinds of things, just sort of a behavior. Yeah.

Life lived without limits. Were you at our house lately? So, um, so I knew that I need to lay that out for him, but that's a vulnerable spot where you're going to come to somebody and say, here's all these unimpressive things that I see you doing.

So I want to lay the groundwork for that first. So I did by confessing my own sins saying, I know what that's like as a pastor. Sunday is sort of the point you drive the rest of the week towards Sunday afternoon is Friday night for most, everybody else where you just sort of, I I'm all done. The pressure's off. Yeah. The way that I tend to handle that, and I can't slow my mind down.

It's just, I would just want to feel numb for a little while. TV is a great number. It's just this electronic thing. And so I found myself one Sunday night watching Sunday night football. Well, that wasn't interesting enough. So I'm flipping back and forth between that and the world series. One of those ends, I've watched the other one till it's done. If I turn this off, I'm going to feel all of the things I've been trying not to feel. So let's go look for person of interest reruns and now elementary.

And finally by 1230, I was like, you know, just turn this off. And so I'm able to go to my son and say, I get it. I get it.

I know what it's like to go hours and hours and hours without feeling like you can stop. And there's hope. And there's a place where we can both go. It's not just you and your need, but it's collectively our need at the foot of the cross. Yeah. And that's so good again, especially walking the path together. And that illustration of it, I think children, especially teens fall towards you in that kind of dynamic. And they love that, that you're not perfect and you do need to ask for forgiveness.

Yeah. And as I wrote it, it was actually really cool because he dropped by the den on that. The next Sunday, he said, okay, I'm going off to bed, have a good night and see if you can get to bed before 1230. Well, our guest today on focus on the family is bill Smith, and he's written a great book, parenting with words of grace. And we do commend it to you, as you can tell, none of us has mastered this whole thing of parenting, but as you're raising kids or as their adults, it's never too late to be offering grace. This is a great book to help you get ready to do that. Get a copy from us here at focus on the family. Our number is 800, the letter a in the word family.

And the link is in the episode notes. Bill, sometimes your children will need you to explain hard things. You've kind of touched on that theme. You were helping your family prepare for, I think, a family member's funeral. Tell us what happened in that context. That sounded like a heavy illustration.

Yeah. And that was a time where they were very little. It was my grandmother. So very young kids, one of whom really does not, did not like death. And you realize that in the U S we don't handle death. We keep it away from everybody.

So nobody has to engage it. And so sitting down at dinner time and I said, guys have some hard news. Dinner was over. I have some hard news. Nanny has passed away. She's died. And immediately the one person said, do we all have to go to the funeral? And that's the first question I'll have to go.

Yeah. And I was expecting that. I said, let's, let's take a look at a book, a passage out of Ecclesiastes.

And I brought a children's Bible version that said, it's better to go to a funeral than to go to a party. And I paused and I said, that, that seems a little odd. That's counterintuitive. And the kids are like, yeah, that doesn't make a lot of sense. And you keep on reading and it says, because everyone living will die. And so it's helpful to think through that because this life is very short and the life with Jesus is how long? And they said forever. And I thought, nobody knows what forever means. And so I put numbers on things. I said, what's that like 27 million years and like no longer.

And now we do the sort of ramp up 56 million, no longer. And basically was able to say to them, this life is really short. It's like three eighths of an inch long. The life to come is like from here to the sun, about 93 million miles long. So my plan next, I think it was Tuesday. And my plan next Tuesday is to go to the funeral and think about the 93 million mile life and said, I'll be sad.

I'll cry. But I think there's more wisdom to that than just living in the three eighths of an inch. I mean, just having them capture that and tuck it in their heart, right. To give them something to think about.

Let's move to another area that kind of final encouragement. It's important to expect that your kids are going to make mistakes and to be ready to respond well when they do. I think even mental talk for a parent to understand that. I remember Jean and I had that, you know, the boys were younger and I could see Jean panicking a little bit.

And I said, what, okay, tell me what's going on. Well, I'm thinking of when Trent or Troy when they're going to be 15. And what they potentially could be doing. But parents can do that. You can catastrophize what your kids might do when they're teenagers, because you saw them do something as an eight year old. Explain for us the opportunity that you had to comfort your son after a baseball game, which I think is a little bit related to this.

Yeah, I would say it is. And my wife and I, Sally have worked very hard to think to ourselves, they are going to make mistakes. So what can they experience in my home? It's not being perfect, but it would be to have a sense of how God responds to them, when they're not perfect. What does love look like that embraces them that does not say your sin is okay, but still embraces them anyway. And I thought that's what I want them to experience in our home.

But that means then I've got to invite myself into that. So my son lied one time, I'll shorten the story, lied one time about catching a ball when he didn't at a championship baseball game. And I kind of knew that he had, but there's a lot of pandemonium, a lot of pressure on him.

Literally the ump asked him, did you drop the ball? And you know, he's 10. Come on. And everybody's cheering. Everybody's cheering. Exactly.

I can imagine that. And so he lied. And I was praising him on the way back to the van after the game about all the good plays, including that one, which was astounding, even if he dropped it. And I dropped down on one knee and I said, look, I just want to say one thing before we go home. And that is, I want you to know that if you ever do something wrong, like lie about catching a ball when you didn't, I want you to know you can come and talk to me. Okay. He said, okay.

All right, here's another one that doesn't work. But there's wisdom in that you didn't blister him. You didn't say, okay, so what do you want to tell me? Right? Exactly. That's wisdom. Because all you're doing is forcing a confession.

You're not trying to reach a person's heart. And what happened? We drove home. I did a bunch of chores on the way home. After we got back, kids followed me all around.

And then eventually everybody left, except that one. And he looks at me and he says, Hey, do you have a minute? I said, yeah, what's up? He said, you know, when I told you that I caught the ball, I lied.

I didn't. And he, you know, tears streaming down out of his eyes at this point. And he said, it meant so much when he said that I could talk to you whenever. And so all the way home, I just kept thinking about that. And I just, I couldn't wait to say something. Yeah, it's so good. And Bill, this content is so good. I can't express enough yet.

I still have this ringing in my head. When we talk about parenting with words of grace, we say, yeah, I understand that. But kids need to learn how tough a world this is. And, you know, I don't know why maybe this is something about my childhood.

I don't know. But it's just like, I can feel that hard heart parent saying that. And they just, I don't know if it's because they're uncomfortable.

They didn't receive it as a child. And therefore they're gonna, you know, kind of pull up their kids by their bootstraps and life is tough and get over it. And, but man, God's heart for us is all grace. It's all love. He even says, if we don't have love, we're a clanging symbol, right?

That his nature is love. How do we move from that maybe hard hearted parent, even as a believer, into something so much better? When you speak in those kinds of ways, and I've had this question before and had people ask this, what I often hear people doing is equating grace with niceness and discipline with punishment. And you think, no, there isn't a single way that our Father relates to us apart from grace. Grace is the overarching umbrella.

It's covenant. And so everything is done within the context of a relationship, both the positive affirmations, as well as the discipline, discipline from your father. That's grace because it would be ungraced to just let you run and destroy yourself. I think the grace part really does talk to what's the goal is the goal that we would be restored to each other, that we would be closer after this interaction. That's the grace part because you can discipline without grace and you can be accurate in your assessment that discipline needed to be given.

But if the end result is you're driving your child away because they've learned to not disappoint you, to not to receive hatred from you, you're not disciplining them in the same way that God disciplines you. Yeah. And, and you know, that thought came to me, you're right in the action and wrong in the heart.

Yeah. And that's where we miss it. Bill, this is so good. Parenting with words of grace, building relationships with your children, one conversation at a time. What a great resource for parents to have. And, you know, I say this from time to time, John, if, if the listener, the YouTube watcher, if you can send a gift of any amount, one time or monthly, we'll send you a copy of the book as our way of saying, thank you for being involved with the ministry.

If you cannot afford it, I'm going to trust others. We'll cover the cost of that as part of the ministry here and we'll get it into your hands because I feel like this is one of the core key messages that parents need today in a world that is going to beat up our children. They should know they can come home to a loving environment to learn both the truth and the grace of God's heart for them. Bill, thanks for being with us. Thank you guys.

It was really good to be here. And when you get in touch, be generous as you can and request that book Parenting with Words of Grace. And our number is 800, the letter A in the word family, 800-232-6459.

And the link is in the episode notes. Well, coming up tomorrow, Pastor Andy Stanley sheds some light on common arguments people use to debunk the Easter story, including the idea that the disciples stole the body of Jesus. To steal the body in order to perpetrate the lie of a resurrection was absolutely too dangerous and pointless.

Think about it. If they weren't willing to die for Jesus while he was alive, they weren't about to risk their lives now that he was dead. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. I was shocked when she gave me the divorce papers. I was so done.

I had reached my breaking point. I was desperate for a shred of hope. So I called the Hope Restored team at Focus on the Family. They listened to me and they asked about what was happening in my marriage. They encouraged me and my wife to attend one of their marriage intensives for couples in crisis, and they prayed with us. They helped me believe that my marriage could be saved. I agreed to go but was very skeptical that anything could help us.

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