Effective Parenting in a Defective World - How To Discipline Your Child Effectively, Part 2

I've got a question for you. What are the top two discipline issues that you face with your kids or grandkids? I mean, right now, stop.

I mean, if you had to list two things that make you crazy and discipline your kids, what are they? You got them? Okay. Today, I'm going to help you learn how to address those two issues.

Stay with me. Thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Living on the Edge features the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram on this international discipleship program. I'm Dave Druey, and in this program, Chip wraps up his series, Effective Parenting in a Defective World. We're going to jump right in, but before we do, I hope you'll do a quick download of Chip's message notes for this one. You're going to get so many great ideas, his notes will help you not miss a one.

You'll find them at livingontheedge.org under the broadcasts tab. App listeners, just tap fill in notes. Well, now here's Chip with part two of his message, How to Discipline Your Child Effectively. Jot, if you would, 1 John chapter two, verses one and two.

Just all I want you to do is get this principle. The apostle is writing to this young church. He says, I've written to you, my dear children, in order that you might not sin. But if you do sin, knowing they will, we have an advocate.

Jesus Christ the righteous. We have an advocate with the father. Advocate just means we have a lawyer. We have someone pleading our case.

We have an advocate. Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sin. Propitiation is one of those really big biblical words that means he absorbed the just wrath of God. And then it goes on to say, but not only for us believers, but for the whole world. Now, theologically, there are some people who say, I don't want the free gift. I'll take the punishment.

I don't want the free gift. I don't want what Christ has done. And God says, thy will be done. He doesn't force it on anyone. But if you can understand that's how your heavenly father deals with you, he doesn't punish you. He's not down on you. That's been covered.

It's been atoned for. His heart's desire. Now, the discipline may get more and more and more severe if you don't listen, and you may have to cause the discipline for your kids to be more and more and more severe until it gets their attention. But it comes from a different heart.

Does that make sense? See, the reason why you have a lot of conflict and you feel bad and you feel guilty and kids withdraw and they rebel is they need to know and feel your love, even when you're disciplining, because you're not punishing them. It's not I'm going to pay you back. It's not I'm going to pay you back.

It's not out of anger. Now, then the $64,000 question is how. Well, what did we learn? How does God do it? Through consistent consequences, actions, and clear instruction.

And so I want to go over those two things and give you some very practical tools about how to do that with your kids. Consistent consequences go something like this. Proverbs 13 24 says, he who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently. Think of that. If you spare the rod consistent action, not talk, you hate your child. Why?

Because God says if you loved him, you would give him what he needs instead of what he wants. He goes on to say folly is bound up in the heart of a child. Every kid's like this, but the rod of discipline action will drive it far from him. Now I'm going to do something, and this will be, can I just go on record real quickly here? Will you please lean back?

Take a nice deep breath. For the next five minutes, I will be as radically politically incorrect of anything you've heard in the last 30 days, maybe more. I'm going to describe what the rod is. I'm going to describe what it means when biblical quotes banking. I will give you some research on that when I get done about from psychologists, the American Psychological Association that will instruct you very clearly about the non-negative impacts when done biblically. But you are living in a world where many of your kids do not obey, and you have arguments, and it's time out, and there's this, and there's that, and God has provided a way, especially if you start young, to help your children obey and learn obedience that gets down into their soul that's very helpful. Now you can totally choose to say that's not a practice that will be good for me.

All I'm saying is we are so afraid to talk about this. We have parents out on islands struggling with their children and by and large creating huge psychological damage because of the yelling and the screaming and all the things that happen that your kids aren't getting. So I'm going to tell you what the biblical rod or spanking looks like.

You evaluate, you can hear the research, then you can do whatever God leads you to do. Number one, whenever you feel like this is important, you give them a clear warning. A child should never be pulled out of a booth and you never use your hand by the way. It should never be when is this coming?

My Nazi crazy parent out of the blue is blowing up in anger. They need to know, and by the way, the small little windows, this isn't for every little offense. This is when you draw a line in the sand and your son or your daughter steps up and goes, no, I'm not doing that.

And by the way, it starts early. So there are times when it's really clear. Do not, do not do this. There's been a clear warning and you're concerned because you know if they do it, they'll get hurt. There's great damage. And you say, if that happens again, I want you to know when you're really testing who is the boss, that this is going to be the consequence. There's a clear warning. Second, you establish responsibility. So I'll give you a real life example.

I have many of them, but this is just one. My kids were in that five to six, seven age group. They had friends. The parents were about three doors down.

The son was at our house all the time. This is not exaggeration. He'd been through three or four marriages. She had been through three. They had both alcohol and drug problems. They had, you know, a mixed group, which I really understood of all different ages.

The older boys had people over drugs, alcohol, violence. And I told my old boys, Michael can come over here anytime. He can be a part of our family. He can eat you.

Parents are gone all during the day, can never go in that house. I mean, we made friends. We actually, the mom and dad both came to Christ about three years later. And, but, but I mean, you know, it's just like here, the bar is like this and this is like this. I mean, and everything went on.

And so of course this, I don't know how God works this. We're driving by and I watched my kids come out of the house. And so clear warning. Okay. Look, do you understand if I catch you going over to that house again, you will get a spanking.

Eye contact. Do you get that? Yes. Well, you know, two days later, same thing. They do it. So here's, I did not, when I caught them the second time, they know what's going to happen.

They're going to get a spanking. Of course, am I angry? Yes, but I get under control. I did not ask them, why did you do that? You ever, you ever hear yourself saying, why did you do that? Why did you go with those friends? Why did you do that?

I told you not to. Why did you go to that movie? Why did you spend that money?

Why did you take the car without permission? Why, why, why? I'll tell you why. Because they're sinners.

Like you. Why do you mess up? Why do you do stupid stuff? Why do you lie? Because you're a sinner.

That doesn't help anything. I mean, if you want to shame them, why, why, why? What's wrong with you? What do you expect in your seven year old? Well, I was born in Adam and I think, you know, I've inherited sin and I've not yet understood the propitiation of Christ. And I'm really not up on the sanctification process. And because of that, I'm not renewing my mind at the level that allows me to, are you kidding me? But here's important. What did you do wrong? Well, I just, you know, the other kids were doing it and I just, no, no, no, no. What did you do wrong? Well, I didn't mean to do it.

And it was Jason. He wanted to go and I wanted to stop. What did you roll? I went in the house. You told me not to, what do we call that?

Disobedience. Your kids have got to own it. I mean, I see, I see parents doing all this stuff. Like the kid does this, the kid, go tell him you're sorry about what I'm sorry. I guess it's over. But what you want to do is you want to teach.

What did they do wrong? Third, avoid embarrassment. Don't ever do this publicly. Don't do it out in the living room. This is, this is a private moment, either in your bedroom, their bedroom, away from the crowd.

For communicate grief. See, this is why I wanted to teach you the theology of discipline instead of punishment. In other words, you're not an out of control parent. Now, many times I've told my kids, you can't believe how angry I am right now.

But here, here's, here's the core of my anger. I feel so betrayed. I love you. I trust you. We hang out. We do all kinds of things. When I tell you something and you tell me something, and you tell me something, I'm your dad. I'm for you.

And when, and you know what? It's not all bad. In fact, it's not bad at all. But if they see you kind of well up or see a tear in your eye, you broke my heart. Sin is not primarily about behavior people. Sin is not, and your kids outcomes are not, they do this. They don't do that. They do this.

They'll come out okay. Sin is always primarily a relational issue. You want them to learn. They betrayed your trust. They broke your heart because what you want them to learn later and what you need to understand when you lie and when you cheat and when you log on or when you are tempted to do things, this isn't about how close can I get to some line. You're breaking your father's heart. You betray your father, the one who loves you, the one who sent his son, the one who has your best. And so you want to communicate genuine grief because you want it to be a relational issue. And then I brought my little, you know, from about, you know, you have to choose, but somewhere around two or three or somewhere they get old enough where they know and they draw a line in the sand and you never, this, this, you know what this is for?

Loving, touching, caring, praying, and nurturing. This, this never ever strikes your child anywhere on their body for any reason. Well, I have to do it right now. You know, this is a rod. It's a little wooden spoon. It's extraordinarily effective. And I want to show you how to do it. I'm not joking with you because I've seen people, they get angry. You don't, you never, you don't do that. Every human being, especially children, have something here. It's called adipose tissue.

It's a fancy way for saying fat. Here's your goal. You flick the wrist. This will produce an amazing level of sting.

It does absolutely no damage. You want it to hurt. It produces in kids up through about depending on their size and ability, up through about 10 years old or somewhere in there, it produces a level of, oh, I don't ever want that to happen again, which is what you want. And it's immediate. And then you want them to experience sincere repentance. The earlier you start, the better. And so when my kids were, you know, four or five and, you know, even older, we would go through this process and, and when they're crying now, and I would usually, I would usually sit on the floor and I'd have them on my lap and I'd have them on my lap and they're, I just let them cry.

I want them to, I want them to know, I'm here, my arms around you. You did what was wrong. You owned up to it. This is what happens. I'm for you.

I don't know about you. I've cried in God's presence. I've cried in God's presence when I've done really stupid or sinful things. David cried in God's presence.

And then they cry for a while and then they kind of get calmed down and then sincere repentance. I said, well, are you ready to talk to God? And when they were small, I coached them.

So they learned how. Yeah, daddy, I'm ready. So what do you say to God? I'm a bad person. No, you're not a bad person, son. You're not a bad person.

You're special. God loves you. What did you do? I went in the house when you told me not to. Okay. Why don't you tell God? God, I'm sorry for going to the house when daddy told me not to. I disobeyed.

Okay. Well, why don't you tell him you're sorry? I'm sorry, God. Is there someone else you need to apologize to? You?

Yeah, that's right. Okay. I'm sorry, dad. Oh, honey, I forgive you. And I put my arms around him and I teach him, Lord, I thank you that whenever we break your heart by doing what's wrong, that like it's a mark on a chalkboard and the moment we come from our heart and ask you to forgive us, you absolutely erase it and love us. Amen. And then we would get up together and I usually tried to do something very positive. Let's go play horse here.

I want him to know you're not rejected. That's biblical spanking. That's the rod. But what's happened in our day, I've got an interesting article by a psychologist in Chicago and it's called The Killer Narcissist. And I won't read it, but the essence of the article is why do we have wanton killings in schools? And the politically correct answer is because of these desperate underprivileged homes and all the difficult things they're going through.

And then what she does is she goes, well, actually, if you look at Littleton, if you look at what happened in Pennsylvania, and she goes through all the different ones and none of them fit the profile. It's upwardly mobile, white suburbs largely of affluent kids whose parents have given them everything. And she says, what happens is the movement of a narcissist to a radical killer is very small in the teenage years. And when you raise kids who think the whole world revolves around them and they don't get their way, they feel very hurt because they don't get the esteem, the entitlement, and life works for me and it creates rage. And all the kids she goes through are parents, educated, gave them everything.

We're producing narcissist. Every kid doesn't need a trophy. Every kid doesn't need to know that the whole world revolves around them. We don't go out to eat where our kids want. We don't make decisions about all our kids all the time. What you create is an expectation that the world revolves around them and they're going to find out the world doesn't and when they do, really bad things happen.

It's a complete lack of discipline. But it takes being a jerk sometimes. And what I can tell you is when you start very early, this is one. Now, if a timeout works, great. If this works, great. But this is everything.

This is a biblical way to help your children. And here's the difference. The difference is when it's done, it's done. It's not 30 minutes. I told you to stand up. I told you to sit down.

Okay. A 10 minute timeout. You're grounded for three days, five days. You're grounded till Jesus comes.

And then, you know, I hang out in coffee shops and, you know, a couple of high schoolers come in after school and backpacks and got the earphones. Hey, how's it going, man? That's going pretty good.

What's up with you? Oh, man, I'm grounded. Oh, yeah.

Oh, bummer, man. This is coming up. How long?

They say two weeks, but I figure three days. Your kids are really good students of you. Oh, mom, the prom's coming up.

I'm going to miss this. How could you do that? Don't you trust me? You're being so hard on me.

You don't really get it. All my other friends and they go to church and their parents let them do this. And we have a generation of non-jerk parents. And you keep the peace and you will feel the pain. And God says, I love you too much and I want you to love your kids too much to let that happen.

A lady wrote me and I don't know whether it was a small group material or the book. She goes, I recently shied away from spanking even though every other discipline for my seven-year-old has not worked. I've been exhausted with the confrontations and the drama associated with even the minor things in life. This message was the kick in the pants I needed to do what's right before God.

Thank you. This morning, his attitude was the same as normal. We had fights. He wouldn't do his schoolwork.

He was argumentative, disrespectful, and disobedient. He was clearly challenging my authority. So I breathed a helpful prayer. I asked him to come upstairs away from the little brother. I picked up the spoon along the way.

Anyhow, the bottom line, no pun intended. Two quick stings later, he was sobbing and repenting in my arms and apologizing. I held him and then he said this, mama, I'm sure glad they make wooden spoons. The rest of the day has been peaceful.

We prayed together, no arguments, no disobedience. Thanks for the reminder that I need the courage to discipline. So you know what, your kids, their conscience needs cleansed. Your kids need to have a clean moment of, you know, if it's ongoing, you're shaming them. Now, I'm not saying that everyone should do this and it's not for every, I'm expecting like there's a level of common sense in this room, but you need to figure out when they challenge your authority and they cross the line, you need to really think about what you do and if possibly these verses and proverbs may be as true as all the other verses and proverbs that we claim.

But these just happen to be unpopular. Well, actions is one thing, but then words. Clear instructions or reproof. I gave you those two little Hebrew words out of proverbs and the second one had to do with very specific words. And so four ways to use words to bring about correction. And by the way, we always start with words. You know, just clarification, I rarely spank my kids.

I rarely had to. But if that is a clear expectation and they know that when you say this or say that, you actually mean it, you know, a lot of times it's, son, and he looks at you, it's time to go. All it takes is Eric. You know what that means? Consequences are coming.

Damn, he gets up. But if there's never a line, your words don't mean much. So number one, say no firmly.

Say no firmly. Here's what I see happen. And by the way, everything I'm going to share in all these illustrations, like, oh, I do that, I can't believe it.

Well, where do you think I get them? This is our failure as parents over the years, okay? And so this is like, and I'll exaggerate just to make the quick point. You know, your daughter says, can I do a sleepover with these three girls? And we're going to watch this movie, and I think it's really going to be great, and her parents are going to be home, and everything's going to be okay. And immediately, you know, the three girls just got on juvie. It's a triple X-rated movie.

The houses aren't there, and both parents are drug addicts. And, okay, am I exaggerating enough? And inside, you're thinking, absolutely not, right? You know, inside, no way. And here's your response. Oh, honey, you know, I don't know. It just, that doesn't really sound like a good, that doesn't really sound like a good, and what do they hear? There's a window, right? Come on, mom, don't you really trust me?

I mean, everyone's going to, I never get to do anything, and, you know, I love Jesus, and maybe this is my chance to really help them, and come on, mom. And then, and then it's like, well, honey, no, no, I don't, I just really don't think so. Your words are saying one thing. What's your tone of voice saying?

There's a window. So now it's, I can't believe it. You don't trust me at all.

I could never do anything. Slam the doors. And now you've got drama. Say what you mean, say it clearly, say it firmly, and if you don't mean it, then don't say it. So, same situation. She says that, or you fill it in, and you stop, and if you're not sure, you say, ooh, you know what, I need to pray about that, and if you're not a single parent, then you say, I need to talk with your father. This is a big decision.

I'll let you know later. But if it's an absolute one, what you say is, did I hear you right? Absolutely not. But mom, and then you give them this look, if you haven't worked on this, this means, oh, you are on dangerous ground. This is the look. But mom, and you go, and you know what that look means?

There is no more discussion. And you know what? They accept it. Say no firmly. You ever go over to friends' houses, or they come to your house, and the kids really like each other, and they're really having fun, and so they're like running around and going nuts and going crazy, and you do stuff like this because you're with your friends, and hey, hey, hey, kids, kids, kids, stop running through here, stop running through here.

You don't mean it at all. So they run out, run out, and hey, how are things going? Zoom, zoom, they come through again, zoom, zoom, they come through again. Hey, hey, I told you guys, slow down, stop in here. Do not run through the living room while we're talking.

You don't mean it at all. Three minutes later, here they come again, right? And then pretty soon, like the number four time, you do something like this that embarrasses you in front of your friends. Hey, what in the blank did I say? I said, stop right now.

And then you realize, oh my, I am embarrassing myself, and this is not really a good moment. See, say what you mean. If you don't, hey, stop.

I know you guys haven't seen each other, and you really like each other. You can go outside right now, run all you want. Okay, listen, if you run through here again, seven-minute timeout. And then eye contact. Do you understand? Now, what are they going to do?

They're going to run through one more time, correct? So your game face comes on, and boom, here they go, stop. And hey, it takes time. You sit them down, and hopefully the seven-minute works. Say no firmly. Second, clear warning of consequences.

I tried to model that. Let them know. I mean, kids are kids.

Let them be kids. But warn them, this is going to happen if you don't do this or that, right? Give them a clear warning. And get there. Don't make a clear warning.

Hey, if you do that again, you're going to be in trouble. No, stop them. Look them in the eye.

Third, use contracts. You know, they don't do their chores. They're disrespectful. They won't do their homework. They're hanging out with the wrong people. They beat up their brother or sister. I mean, right? It's like they're not responsible.

They won't do this. I mean, there's only like four or five major things that any kid messes up with. And what happens, you get into these wars all the time.

Stop the wars. When you're not upset, when it's not, they haven't done something wrong, it's like you have a good time, maybe it's after a meal, you go out for a Coke, whatever you do. And then you come and you say, you know something, we've been battling one another. I love you too much.

I remember sitting down and doing this. You know, this is just no fun. I mean, I love you. You're so fun to be around, but we keep arguing about you don't do your schoolwork or, you know, my one son, you just keep beating up your brother every time we leave and the hole in the wall just is not really good and true story. And so I said, okay, let's just list the things that are problem on the left side. And then, you know, I've tried everything.

It's not working. So here's a column that says consequences that are negative. You tell me if you do this, what negative consequence would really help you obey? What would help you learn? And then by the way, here's the next column, positive consequence.

Like if you really like obeyed in that area for X amount of time, what would be a good perk? I mean, what would just say, hey, man, that's worth, okay. And we just went through the four or five things and I had him write it down.

And, you know, I remember he said, oh, well, if I was like grounded from basketball practice for two days, okay, we'll write that one down. Okay. Well, of course. Now, by the way, anytime you do this, they test it. You know why? They're like you. It's like Adam and Eve.

Do not do this. Okay. Right.

It's part of the human condition. And so of course he wrote them down. I wrote them down. It's a contract. He does it. He's going to miss basketball practice.

And then he's, dad, you can't do this to me. I worked all summer. I lifted weights. I practiced. I finally made the first team. I'm going to start next Friday night.

If I miss these two practices, I won't start. How could you do this to me? Now I'm very calm. I said, oh, son, this is not, I'm not doing anything. This, the contract that we made and I signed it here and you signed it there.

And you know something? I'm so bummed out. I was so forward looking to you start.

I just watched your hard work. And boy, I am so sad that this, this is, this is your contract. You get to own your responsibility.

Do you see the difference? So you get, get out of this arguing drama. And I had a lady come up with three boys, the most wonderful boys, but she gave me her top three problems or top three or four of everyone. Sit down, write a contract with them. And they were like, you know, teenagers and one younger one.

And they kind of, yeah, we'd do that, but just sit down and use a contract. Finally use consequences. I'll have now and then have someone to say, you can't believe it. My daughter's completely out of control. She doesn't come in at night. She's drinking. I know there's marijuana. We found she's dating a boy that is totally outside the bounds.

She's 15 years old. We don't know what to do. We've been to counseling. I'm powerless.

What do I do? And I'm not the greatest counselor at all. And that's why I don't do much of it. And you all think I'm joking.

I'm not, but here's my response. I said, oh, wow, you're powerless? Yes.

What can I do? I said, well, like, does she drive at all? Oh, yeah. So when 15, 16, so she, did she buy the car? No, it's ours. Oh, well, who pays for the gas? Well, we do.

Who pays for the insurance? Well, we do. Oh, wow. Does she have a phone? Yeah. Who pays for that?

We do. Oh, and I just went through and I started asking her questions. So you're powerless?

Does she have an outside job to eat food in your house and does she rent the room? And I said, excuse me, you hold all the cards and eliminate the drama. Here's one or two very clear boundaries. The next time this happens, by the way, in fact, the car is gone.

This is gone. We'll start with this one. And you just begin through the velvet vise of love and you'd be the parent. And by the way, I got to the point with one of my sons where I did all that because some of you are thinking, well, they might just opt out. I got where 17 and a half years old, tears down my face and tears down his face. I wish you weren't a Christian dad. I don't know rules.

You can't tell me anything. I said, and don't do this unless you've prayed it through, gotten good counsel from a counselor and probably a pastor and thought through. But you know, you've tried everything. And I remember sitting in front of the car in front of my house said, you're destroying our marriage.

You're destroying our home. You're 17 and a half years old. If you're man enough now to get a job, find a place to live and figure out what you're going to do for food, then I can't teach you. So you got 48 hours. You can either cut. You don't have to believe anything I believe.

You don't. But I will tell you this, either you come and have a good attitude and stop ruining our family or you find a place to live. And I wasn't bluffing. And he knew it as crying. Later he came back and he said, you know, dad, it wasn't all the discipline. He said, when you and mom cried, I realized how precious and real Jesus is to you. I went in my bedroom for 48 hours, realized a lot of it was just my pure rebellion. And part of it was you pushed my buttons, dad, and I pushed yours. But he said, God really spoke to me. He came out of the room and I was just, I was waiting for this, you know, the second shoe to drop, you know, like he was a manipulator. It seems like rebellious kids are very smart.

And then we watched a complete change. I want to give parents hope here. God can do anything. Two of the three songs we sang, two of the three songs we sang, this kid wrote them and they're sung all over the world. My prayer wasn't that he writes songs.

My prayer was, oh God, keep him out of the ditch. Oh God, help him not do something so stupid that he's going to ruin the rest of his life. But all I can do is set a boundary over here and say, you know what?

In our house, you can't treat people that way. And over here, no matter what you do, I'm going to love you. And is it hard? It's excruciatingly hard.

All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful but sorrowful, but after they've been trained by it, it yields a peaceful fruit of righteousness. On the back page, I've given you a game plan. It's pretty self-explanatory. Here's some pitfalls to avoid.

I mean, we've all done these, right? The screaming parent, the all talk, you know, you have a good talk or nagging, nagging, nagging, that's not working. I just put this abusive parent.

If you're striking your child or you're out of control, get help. The close-lipped parent is just the passivity of, you just think this is going to go away. When you don't address stuff, your kid's heart is telling him, you don't care. And then finally, the light bulb parent is, you know, it's totally inconsistent.

You know, you're, you know, this is really, really matters on Monday and on Friday, you don't care. The game plan is just simple. Identify the top two behavior problems.

Don't try and tackle everything. Just what are the top one or two things that are just making you crazy and making your kid crazy? And then honestly evaluate. I mean, go back to the first page and ask yourself, honestly, which one of those?

Where do I lean? Where do I need to address some issues? Many times when my kids were disobeying, what I realized was I wanted to blame them. The problem was me. I was inconsistent. I wasn't avoiding some of those pitfalls. And then third, have a family conference.

You sit down and often you start it with, you know something, I've not been the dad I needed to be, or inconsistent, or I didn't do this. But I want you to know, here's the top two issues. Here's the plan. Here's the consequences.

I love you. This is how we're going to move forward. And then strap it on.

They will test you. And you need to win. And then finally, sit down and set some goals together and ask God to work in a powerful way. He will.

There's hope. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Chip's message, How to Discipline Your Child Effectively, is from his series, Effective Parenting in a Defective World. If you or someone you know is in the thick of parenting or grandparenting right now, this series offers practical biblical insight to start applying today.

With all the craziness going on, a little sanity, especially for such an important job as parenting, will go a long way. Don't miss out on the limited time discounts on all the resources for Effective Parenting in a Defective World, including the book and the small group video study. You'll find all the details at livingontheedge.org. You'll also find them by tapping special offers on the app or by giving us a call at 888-333-6003.

That's 888-333-6003. Well, Chip, during this series, you strongly encourage parents or grandparents to connect with at least one other person so they've got some support to keep going. Now, to help with the skills you're teaching, we've got the small group video study, but we also have your Effective Parenting book. Could you talk for a minute about that?

I'd be glad to, Dave. In fact, you know, I wrote my thesis at Dallas Seminary as a young father. I had this privilege of adopting these two little boys, and what I knew was I had no idea how to be a parent. And so, this book really is about Effective Parenting in a Defective World.

How do you help your kids swim upstream? And whether your kids are two or 20, it's a principle based book, very, very biblical. But in other words, what's the goal?

What's the goal? Is it to make your kids happy, or is it cooperating with God so you really learn how to make them holy? How do you discipline your kids in ways that are practical and not overbearing, but where you really teach them to obey, and you don't yell, you don't scream, you don't have to say it four or five times? There's very practical ways to really help parents learn to help their kids reach the potential that God has for them. You know, so often I think we miss the point in parenting because we have this fear that we're going to mess up, and so we parent out of fear instead of out of faith. The other thing is, is I don't think we understand the way that God has designed our children, and the way that He wants us to cooperate with what He's doing to develop them in the kind of character and the kind of gifts that He's given them to fulfill the purpose that He has for them. And I would say that being an effective parent is first and foremost getting on your mind and your heart, what does God want to see happen to my child, and how do I cooperate with that? Because what you then have is the favor of God and the power of God and the direction of God in and through your child's life.

And so I would just encourage you, whether you're leading a group and want to have a better resource or whether you happen to be a reader instead of a listener, what I like about books is I underline things and I can go back to them. Or it might even be something where, you know, summer there's a lot of, you know, times where people are really thinking about, I want to be a good parent, or I want to give something to one of my sons or daughters that would encourage them to raise their kids in a way that would really honor God. And what I can tell you is would bring great joy years later. And so it's proven, it's tested, it's what God says about how to be a parent, to love your child, to set boundaries, and to help them and to help them become all He wants them to become. So that's the book and I hope you'll get it. Great. Well, we know it's made a difference for so many. Now is your opportunity to take advantage of the current discount and get the book for yourself or someone you know.

Effective Parenting in a Defective World. You'll find it at livingontheedge.org when you tap special offers on the app or just give us a call at 888-333-6003. Again, that's 888-333-6003. Well, just before we close, I want to thank each of you who's making this program possible through your generous giving. One hundred percent of your gifts are going directly to the ministry to help Christians really live like Christians.

Now, if you found CIP's teaching to be helpful, but you're not yet on the team, would you consider doing that today? To donate, just go to livingontheedge.org, tap donate on the app, or give us a call at 888-333-6003. And let me thank you in advance for whatever the Lord leads you to do. Well, until next time, for everyone here, this is Dave Drouy saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.