Parenting with Hope: Raising Teens for Christ in a Secular Age

It's so good to be with you to talk about this topic. I love talking about parenting teens.

I want to just say, if you're on the cusp of the teen years, you always hear from older moms—this was a statement I used to hate—“Oh, little people, little problems. Big people, big problems.” And you're just like, you know, getting thrown up on today was kind of a big problem from this little kid. Or the tantrum, where you're carrying a child like this and they're kicking you—you know, those moments feel kind of big in your life. So that was actually always incredibly discouraging to me.

So, a little bit of just my background. I have three kids. I have a daughter who—she actually turns twenty-five at the end of this month. I have a son who will turn twenty-two next week, and I have a daughter who is eighteen, and she turns nineteen in November.

We were only able to get pregnant in February or March. It seems like that’s what we've determined. And so those are where my kids are. So I'm actually—I cannot believe I'm slowly moving out of the teen years. I've only got two more years of—I've actually only got one more, one 19, that’s it. And so that is shocking to me.

I just want to say, I've truly enjoyed these years. I love teaching teenagers. So I say I got to fail on all the ones I taught before I could see. I had 150 kids. I taught at a large public high school, and I taught everyone’s favorite subject—mathematics. I taught Algebra One, Algebra Two. I taught Discrete Math.

And I'm not telling you—if you can get them to listen to you for fifty minutes, that feels like a minor miracle in that season of life. And so that’s kind of my background.

And so I will say, I want to give some encouragement as we get into this. I'm not going to be able to say everything there is to say, obviously, but what I hope that this session will do is infuse some hope in this season, because I think it can feel overwhelming. It can feel scary; it can feel shockin; and it can feel really guilt-ridden.

So I just want to say before we begin, I know everyone’s coming into this topic from a little bit different of a place. Some of you—I’ve seen a lot of babies in here—and I’m like, you are one second away from being a parent of a teenager. It’s how it feels, right? Like, yeah.

So I'm really glad you're here, because a lot of the principles we’re going to talk about, I wish I had known at six months. Okay? Yeah. So, a lot of it is applicable for all of motherhood.

But I also know there are some women in here who are looking back, and it’s really—sometimes it’s really tempting when we’re having talks about parenting to just feel our failure and just to be like, “Oh, I didn’t do that. I didn’t do that. I didn’t do that. I didn’t do that.” And I don’t want anyone to do that, because here’s the thing: tomorrow is another day.

And tomorrow is a day that you can start parenting with hope. So even if you look back and say, “There’s a lot of things I did wrong,” don’t get stuck in that. Just say, “Tomorrow, I want to be the godly mother to my kids and honor God in my parenting.”

So that’s part of the hope as we get into this topic. And I just want to say that in the beginning—don’t feel the failure. If the Lord convicts us, yeah, we can go to Him, we can confess. But just always remember, Christ came to die for all of us.

We are all imperfect parents. No child out there is being raised by a perfect mother—they do not exist. And no one has a perfect father either. So we’re all trying our best to follow God as we walk through this mothering journey. And the best thing we can do is cheer one another on, rather than condemn one another.

So I'm going to start us with prayer, and then we’re going to jump in. And I'm going to set my timer so I don’t drive y’all crazy by going too long. Okay?

Okay, let me pray.

Father, we thank You so much for this time together. Lord, I thank You that You allow us to be mothers. Lord, what a gift to get to raise the next generation. Lord, we pray that we would be faithful stewards of the grace entrusted to us, that we would pass it on to the next generation, that we would not fail to tell them the good news that You have come into the world to save sinners, of whom we are the biggest.

So, Lord, I pray that we would mother, that we would parent, that we would do it all with hope—not in our own motherhood, but in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s in His name we pray. Amen.

Okay, well, what I'm going to do in this session is go through seven principles that I think help us to parent with hope. So if you're a note taker, you can get your pen. We're going to go through seven principles. I'm just going to springboard off those principles and talk about those, and I hope that they will provide clarity.

Again, they are not going to say everything that needs to be said, but I hope that they will kind of be some signposts on the journey of parenting. 

Principle One: Our hope must be God-oriented, not child-oriented. 

Our hope needs to be God-centered, not child-centered—or I'm going to even say circumstantially centered.

Now, here’s the thing. When you look out at the world today, it can feel just ominous when you talk about teenagers, right? It feels like there are threats around every corner. And so we're looking at our world and we're saying, “We're in the secular age. How on earth can I raise children who love the Lord?”

It can be cell phones. It can be sexuality. It can be—we see this anxiety. It can be apathy. We see disobedience, and we see discord. We see all of these things culturally. And if we look at our circumstances, we are tempted toward despair.

A story I always like to go back to in the Bible is the story of the twelve spies as they went into the promised land. Do you remember what happened when they did that? These twelve men go in—one from each tribe—and we have Caleb and Joshua. They go in as well.

Everyone returns, and what do they say? “Those people are fierce. We look like grasshoppers in comparison. They are wealthy, they are strong, they've got it all together, and we are this little nation.” Ten of them said, “We shouldn’t go in. We should just quit altogether.”

Do you remember what Caleb said? Listen to this—he saw the exact same thing, and he said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it. The Lord is with us.”

He knew. What did he trust in? The Lord was with them.

And so if you notice one common theme through Scripture when you see the words “Do not fear,” think what it’s always accompanied with. It is not “Do not fear because there’s nothing to fear.” It is not “Do not fear because they don’t have way bigger soldiers than you.”

It’s “Do not fear” because—this is a pagan world we’re living in in a lot of ways. It is always, “Do not fear, for I am with you.”

It is always God’s presence that alleviates our fears—not a circumstantial change.

And so that is what Caleb and Joshua did. Yes, they saw the circumstances. So we don’t want to be is blind, okay? We are living in an age that is not—your children are not going to be promoted in their faith just by living in a secular world.

This isn’t an age that’s encouraging them in their faith. So we’re not blind to that. We see the giants in the land—there really are giants in the land—but what we say is, “I can have hope because I serve a God who is with me in this parenting journey.”

You are not alone.

Okay, so that’s the first thing: we keep this God-centered hope, because God is with us.

And here’s the second thing I want you to hope in—and this is really good news for everyone in this room: children are not saved by perfect parenting.

And you can say amen. Children are not saved by perfect parenting. It never says in Scripture, “For by perfect parenting you have been saved, and this through the mother.” You know, it doesn’t say that!

What does it say? “For by grace you have been saved through faith—and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works,” not even by your “mother works,” “so no one can boast.”

So every child who becomes a Christian is saved by the grace of Jesus Christ—the grace of Jesus Christ, not perfect parenting. So we hope in that.

The other thing we hope in is this—and this is true too—so that’s true: God saves, but He also does work through families.

So here's the thing: both are true at the same time. God is the one saving, and what you do in your home really, really matters. Okay? It’s what the environment of your home is doing— something to shape and fashion this child.

We see this, don’t we, with Paul? When Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy, do you remember what he says? Who does he comment on? How did Timothy start to know the Scriptures that were able to make him wise for salvation? His mom and his grandmother.

Isn’t that interesting? The thought is that Timothy’s father was a Greek and didn’t know—and that his mother and his grandmother taught him the Holy Scriptures. Okay, so what’s going on in the home matters.

There’s a really great book—it’s called Handing Down the Faith—and it’s a study of the passing of faith from one generation to the next. It’s not just Christian; it looks at different faith traditions. The question was, How is faith transmitted from one generation to the next?

I want you to listen to this, because it’s really—it’s encouraging and maybe a little bit terrifying:

Some readers might be surprised to know that the single most powerful causal influence on the religious lives of American teenagers and young adults is the religious lives of their parents—not their peers, not the media, not their youth group leaders or clergy, not their religious school teachers. Myriad studies show that, beyond a doubt, the parents of American youth play the leading role in shaping the character of their religious and spiritual lives, even well after they leave the home.

So what you are doing in the home really matters. But it does not matter in a salvific sense, okay? You are creating an environment in which the Spirit can come in and be at work and make a life.

You know, we think of leaving an inheritance for our children as money. Guys, that’s not what it’s talking about. What’s a children’s inheritance? An inheritance to leave to generations—this is the treasure: God’s Word.

What Nancy was talking about last night—you know, it’s way more of a treasure than a pile of gold or honey. Okay? So to know the Word and pass it on to the generations—that’s an inheritance. That’s what we get to do.

So then, if the Spirit—if God—saves them, think about a child who is saved, who has been raised in the Scriptures. Think about how that affects their faith and how they go out into the world with the Word already memorized because of all those songs you sang around the breakfast table.

Think about that—wow! That’s amazing. What an amazing gift to the church. What an amazing gift to the world. That’s an inheritance we get to do.

So yes, it’s the Spirit—we hope because the Spirit saves. And we hope because what we’re doing actually really does matter. It really, really does matter.

Principle Two: Parenting begins not with making sure your kids follow God, but making sure you follow God.

Okay? Parenting teens—the most important thing about parenting teens is not making sure they follow God, but that you follow God. And this is one of the most important things, I think, to think about.

I think one of our temptations is always to be thinking, How do I control my child’s behavior? I just want to say—you can’t. You cannot control your child’s behavior. You can control your behavior, though.

And one of the most important things we can be doing as parents, whether you are parenting a six-month-old or a sixteen-year-old, is to be a woman who sets herself before the Lord, who knows His Word, who is in prayer, who is begging the Lord daily to save her children.

Remember what Deuteronomy 6 says? Listen to it with me again:

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (vv. 5–7)

So here’s the thing—it doesn’t start with you doing the teaching. It starts with you doing the abiding.

So we abide in God’s Word. We know it ourselves. And guess what? Then you are equipped when you are in the car and they ask you, “I don’t [fill in the blank] what’s going on? Why shouldn’t I lie? Why should I tell the truth?”

Your time in the Word is going to equip you for those car-ride conversations that come later. So that’s what we need to be focusing on—that we are putting on God’s Word as we walk with our children.

One of the scariest verses in Scripture for me—it’s actually in 2 Kings, if you’re taking notes—2 Kings 17:41, if you go and look it up. And this is what it says, even while these people were worshiping the Lord—listen to this—“while they were worshiping the Lord,” this is Israel, “they were serving their idols, and their children and their grandchildren did likewise.” (paraphrase)

So here’s the thing—they had an outward sign of religiosity. They were worshiping the Lord, but what were they really doing? They were serving their idols.

And so this is going to be one of those hard truths that I think we need to talk about, but we don’t often want to talk about. Culture out there is actually a lot less impactful on my children than the idolatry in here.

We want to blame culture because we don’t want to look at our stuff, okay? Culture out there is actually impacting your children a lot less than the idolatry in your own heart.

We all have idols of the heart, you know? You can go through them—comfort, approval, power—you can go through all of those types of things.

And think about it. When I look culturally at America, and I look at the West, the idols that I see very prevalent in our world today—scholarship and affluence, sports and activities, social approval and acceptance—not sex, drugs, and rock and roll. We’re worried about the wrong things.

We think all these bad things are out there that are encroaching, and what I want to say is—we are sacrificing the better thing for something that seems like a good idea.

So think about it. As a parent, it is really tempting in our day and age to not go to church because you’ve got to be at that sports thing. It is really tempting to say, “Oh, you’ve got a big math test tomorrow, so okay, you’re going to miss youth group.”

It’s really tempting to say, “Oh, yeah, my kid can’t really study or memorize Scripture,” but, you know, they have to take five APs so they can get into a good college.

You see what we’ve done? We are telling and teaching our children what really matters. It’s subtle—it’s subtle—but we want to tell them the best thing in life, no matter what they do in this world, is to follow hard after God. That’s what we want to be communicating.

So we’ve got to look at our own hearts. We’ve got to think about this. And the only way our kids are going to be convinced that this is the most important thing to us is if it is the most important thing to us.

But there’s something in us, right? That when we see them doing the amazing thing on the soccer field, we’re like, “Yeah, that’s my kid.” You know? Whereas when they’re pursuing and going to church and taking notes—yeah, there’s no highlight reel of that.

But that’s the thing our hearts need to hope for the most.

So, point two is simply this: parenting teens with hope begins with making sure we follow God, not just that they follow God.

And let me just also say this on this point—I want to highlight this. I could say this after every point: We all get this wrong. We all overemphasize the wrong things.

I just want to say one of the best things we can do as parents is learn to give a really good apology. Get in the habit of apologizing.

One of the best compliments my new son-in-law gave our family—and he said it so in jest—he was like, “You guys say you’re sorry way too fast. In this family, you’ve got to let it lie for a little while and have some tension.”

And he’s so fun. I love him. It’s the best—to just get a new family member that you love so deeply.

But that’s one thing we really worked hard on—is to own our stuff as parents, to say, “Hey, I am sorry. I yelled about the shoes. The shoes should not have been left where they were left, but me yelling about it—that’s all me. That is all me, and I apologize for it.”

“Could you please work on putting your shoes back in the proper place so I do not trip over them next time? But Mom should not have yelled at you anyway.”

So I just want to say, us learning to do that is really important as parents, because what you are doing is you are modeling what it is like to be an imperfect person. And guess what? You’re an imperfect person raising an imperfect person. And they will go on to an imperfect marriage, and they will have imperfect children. And so you are helping them—and that is what the Bible helps us to do and understand.

How do I, as an imperfect person, go forward? Oh, I repent a lot in life. I say I’m sorry, and we give forgiveness. And that’s what happens in a family. That’s what we keep doing.

And I actually, really—I listened to a really interesting podcast about this. It was a secular podcast, and she was talking about this very thing, this need to apologize. And she said it’s actually how our physical bodies work. Our physical bodies work in such a way that when you lift muscle, it creates small tears in the muscle, and that’s how they actually get stronger.

And she was like, these small tears between relationships that are then repaired with an apology actually strengthen the bond. So when we do this—apologizing, saying we’re sorry, doing this relational thing—it’s actually strengthening our families. It’s not weakening.

It’s not weakening you as a parent. Your kid, in their soul, already knows you were wrong to be yelling like that. So it helps them to actually hear you say, “I’m sorry I did it.”

Principle Three: Don’t underestimate the power of the basics.

Again, if we look at our physical bodies—if I were to ask you, “How do you maintain a healthy physical body?” Every diet in the history of the planet basically comes down to: eat right and exercise. Right? There’s issues, but eat right and exercise.

At some level, eat right and exercise—that’s how our physical bodies are maintained.

If we want to create a healthy spiritual culture in our home, it’s actually not hard. It’s not hard to understand—it’s difficult to live out. Okay?

We need to be a family that’s in the Word.
We need to be a family that’s in prayer.
And we need to be a family that’s in the church.

Okay, it’s not hard, but it is difficult to live out, because our world is constantly pressing in. We think it’s pressing in on all these other things—you know, we think it’s pressing in on sexuality, we think it’s pressing in on social media—and it is doing all that. I’m not denying those.

But what it’s really—what Satan’s really trying to keep you from—is God’s Word, from prayer, and from the church. Because God has given means by which He works in the life of His people, and those are the means by which He works.

What did we hear about the Word? It is able to make you wise for salvation. It is living and active. It can work in your child’s heart.

What do we know about prayer? That is our lifeline to God. We cry out to God for the salvation of our children.

But what am I tempted to do? I am tempted to go to Google and be like, “What do I do about this? What do I do about this?” Or now we go to AI, right? “What do we do about this?”

We have the God of all the universe who could change their hearts. And I want to call up my friend and say, “What should I do?” And then I do this over and over. Then finally I’m like, I have not even prayed. I have not even asked, “God, will You help me in this situation?”

And His Word is constantly shaping us and fashioning us to help us.

But I want to give this one quote. This is a quote—this is a Harvard Chan School of Public Health study—and this is what it says about the religious life of teenagers and participating in church services:

And I just want to say this—it’s okay to make your kid go to church. Again, I taught a large public high school. No child wanted to be in my Algebra 2 class. I can tell you, they did not want to be there.

No parent said, “Well, I’m scared they won’t really love Algebra 2, if I force them to go.”

Okay, no one said that to me. You know what they said? “You’re going to Algebra 2. You’re going.”

I just want to say, you can say, “Hey, in our family, while you live here, we go to church.” I don’t want you to be afraid of doing that, okay?

And so, listen to this:

Participating in spiritual practices during childhood and adolescence may be a protective factor for a range of health and well-being outcomes in early adulthood. Researchers found that people who attended weekly religious services or practiced daily prayer or meditation in their youth reported greater life satisfaction and positivity in their twenties. They were less likely subsequently to have depressive symptoms, smoke, use illicit drugs, or have a sexually transmitted infection than people raised with less spiritual habits.

Here’s another quote from this:

The results showed that people who attended religious services at least weekly in childhood and adolescence were approximately 18 percent more likely to report higher happiness as young adults than those who never attended services.

So if I told you there was a drug that could give your child an 18 percent bump in happiness and less anxiety—y’all, we would have people lined up for it, because we know we are living in a completely anxious age with our kids. But the very community that God created to enfold them and bring them in and make them feel safe, we are too busy to go, because we’ve got sports to play, and we’ve got other things to do on Sunday, and that’s our day off. And so we want to rest and be together as a family.

Be together as a family in the church. It really does matter. It really does matter.

Principle Four: Parental warmth promotes healthy community in the home.

I wish I had this chart—I don’t have it—but when you do any teaching styles or parenting styles, there are four styles that we often talk about: there’s authoritarian, there’s authoritative, there’s permissive, and there’s absentee. It’s a quadrant.

There are a ton of studies done on this, and basically every single study says authoritative parenting has the best outcomes. And what that means is there is a high degree—in an authoritative home versus an authoritarian—authoritative has a high degree of warmth and a high degree of accountability.

So authoritarian has a high degree of authority—like, “You’re going to do what I say”—but low warmth. Okay, so there’s really not the warmth; it’s just expectations, expectations, expectations.

Then permissive has no responsibilities but lots of warmth.

Best outcomes are actually neither of the extremes, but in the middle.

And one of my students said this to me one time. He came into my classroom, and he goes, “You know, Miss Bryan”—I was Miss Bryan at the time—he goes, “I know you actually care about us, because you keep us on task the whole class. I’ve got a teacher over there in my science class—I know she actually doesn’t care about us, because she just lets us do whatever we want in her class.”

He could see it. At seventeen, he could see that wasn’t caring—and it wasn’t caring.

But what we want to have is a high degree of warmth, a high love for our kids. We want to be so relational with them and love them, and yet also have high expectations.

Yeah, you know, we are going to have certain family rules. We’re going to live by them. It’s okay to say no. It’s okay to be the parent. But never, never use a lack of warmth as a way to try to discipline your kid.

You know what it says: it’s His kindness that leads us to repentance (Rom. 2:4). Okay, be kind even as you give the standard. Be kind as you teach them how they should go.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness—that’s the fruit of the Spirit working in us as parents.

One of the best pieces of parenting advice that I give almost every time I talk about this topic—that I learned—was on The Oprah Winfrey Show. And she was interviewing Toni Morrison, and she said, “The best advice I—” (I was a teacher at the time, I think, when I heard this)—and she said, “When that child walks in the room, light up.”

She said, “Often, when a kid walks in the room, you look at everything that’s wrong with them.”

You’re pulling up their pants. You’re saying, “Yeah, straighten your shirt. Yeah, do all the—” you’re just criticizing when they walk in the room.

Especially with teenagers—think about how it feels to be a teenager. You see every imperfection. You see every—you're convinced you are wrong for being alive. And then they walk in, and you know what too often happens? I’m looking at my phone. I’m like, “What do you need?”

What did I just communicate? You are just one more disturbance.

That is horrible. Okay—thank the Lord for His grace. We’ve all done it, you know. We all do these things, right?

But it was the most helpful thing for me to hear and to remember: stop. Put it down. Light up.

What a simple thing—but to think about my child and show them in that moment everything I feel for them in my heart. Light up.

Light up. Do the same for your husband. Sometimes that’s even harder—y’all, yeah—but do the same for him. Light up when these people we love walk in the room.

And then the other thing to build family warmth and community: have family dinners together again. One of the things that gets pushed out because of busyness is just the simple act of a family dinner.

There’s a really good book I highly recommend—it’s not a Christian book—it’s called The Price of Privilege by Madeline Levine, and it’s a secular psychology book on raising teens. It’s excellent. She has a lot of common grace insight, and here’s what she says:

“Perhaps the single most important ritual a family can observe is having dinner together. Families who eat together five or more times a week have kids who are significantly less likely to use tobacco, alcohol, marijuana. They have a higher grade point average, less depressive symptoms, and fewer suicide attempts than families who eat together two or fewer times a week.”

Okay, so some of these are really simple things that we can put into our home: light up and have dinner.

Light up and have dinner. That can just really bring warmth to our homes.

Principle Five: Lead with a conversation, not a command.

Here’s the thing: if you’re parenting your twelve-year-old like you parented your two-year-old, something needs to change.

It is totally appropriate—you know, my two-year-old ran out into the street. I’d grab him. I’d be like, “You cannot run into the street!” I did not sit him down and have a conversation. I just gave him the command. That’s totally appropriate.

But your twelve-year-old—you are six years away from her making every decision without you around.

So here’s what a conversation does: it invites her or him into the decision-making process. You are still the parent. You are still going to enforce whatever rules in your home you want to enforce. But they don’t have to know that.

You start with the conversation. You say—let’s say it’s the cell phones—and they are convinced, you know, at ten they need a cell phone because everyone else has one.

And you can do this: “Nope. Our family rule is thirteen,” or “Our family rule is fifteen.”

I don’t recommend it, though. Your kid is going to feel shut down—just like you would if you were in a situation with an authority who was like, “Nope, it’s the rule. This is what we’re doing.”

Have a conversation. What’s to be lost by having a conversation?

So just say, “Well, tell me why you want a cell phone.”

Be curious about what’s going on, because maybe they’re going to tell you, “Well, I’m missing out on all the group things because I never get to hear that everybody’s meeting at the ice cream shop, and I feel completely left out of my friend group.”

Well, then maybe you can figure out a way that they could at least get on some text thread. You have the conversation so you understand why they want something so badly.

The other thing I just want to encourage you with—we are all new moms trying to get through this—it is actually okay to change your mind on rules. You set them; you can change them.

Here's the thing—and that is actually a teaching moment for your child. God's Word never changes. Yours can, okay? His never will change. But we can actually say, I did make that rule, and now I look back . . . now it's kind of a dumb rule. I'm sorry. We're going to change that.

Our kids have out-argued us, and I appreciate that—I really do—because you know what? They're thinking. I know that they're engaged with us. We let them debate us. They need to do it respectfully. They can't do it with a bad attitude. But we let them push about why they are . . .

I mean, I ended up giving my thirteen-year-old son a miter saw. When he was thirteen! I was terrified. Every other kid just wants a cell phone. He wanted this big saw, and I was like, he's gonna cut off his hands. Yeah, I was just convinced. But he wore me down and convinced me that it would be okay.

And it was actually a great thing for him—like, he loves being in his workshop and doing all this stuff. And so sometimes they will convince us, and that's okay, because what they're starting to learn is what I'm not—I'm absolutely not—going to change my mind on is anything in Scripture. I'm never going to say it was okay to lie. I'm never going to say it's okay to sleep with your boyfriend. I'm never going to say that things in Scripture are okay, and they know that.

But what they start to see is, this is absolute. These other things are gray areas, and that's a tension. That's a tension we all live in, and that's okay for them to start seeing. You're introducing that to them. So then, when they get to college, they are going to be better thinkers about the decisions they're making. And that's part of the process when you're doing that.

And one thing I will say—I just want to talk about social media for a minute, give you a couple quotes. It is not good, okay? There's not a single exception. All screen activities are linked to less happiness, and all non-screen activities are linked to more happiness.

Get your kids outside as much as you can—as much as you can. Eighth graders who are heavy users of social media increase their risk of depression by 27percent. Okay? So this little device has a lot of power.

The church also has a lot of power. Think about which one you're encouraging your kid to get—to get them to church, get them to God's Word, get them off their phones as much as you can.

I do want to say this: my oldest—and this is just a little piece of hope—my oldest, she . . . I can't—she’s twenty-five now. So Instagram—I didn’t know anything about Instagram. This is, yeah, when Instagram was starting to be used by everyone. I was completely clueless. I thought, Oh, it's just where people share cute pictures. Yeah, so she asked, could she get it? And I think she was like twelve.

I was like, “Sure, you can share your pictures with people.” I had never thought what it might do to share a picture and you get fifty hearts and your friend gets three hundred. Yeah, I never thought what that might do to a young girl's heart. Never, you know?

And she was not posting inappropriate pictures or anything—just little friend pictures. But I hadn’t thought about what could happen with social media at the time.

And here's the amazing thing. We were at church one Sunday, and we actually had a guest preacher. He was a missionary, and he was preaching—and his sermon never mentioned social media. It was before anybody was talking about it. His sermon was on not wasting your life.

And she got in the car that day, and she said, “Yeah, I'm deleting Instagram off my phone.” And she goes, “I just realized it's a waste of my time.”

So here's what I want to say: I didn't know it was dangerous. The Holy Spirit did. And guess where she heard it? Not from me. She heard it sitting at church.

So these are the hopeful places—the church, your prayers, the Word. Go back to the basics constantly. I don't know what the new danger will be. There'll be another new danger for every generation.

And that's why we build on the foundation—the Word, the church, and prayer. And that is a solid foundation, because it's going to do what we don't even know to do.

So I just want to give you that—just that little image of how the Lord can be working in these ways. Okay.

Principle Six: You cannot protect your child from difficulty.

As the parent of a teen, I think sometimes we want to manufacture everything so that they never suffer. It is hard. I was talking with Anne and Courtney this week. One of my daughters called me in tears about something, and she's dealing with it.

And you know what? When they're dealing with it, you're dealing with it. It's so hard to watch them walk through hard things. It's really hard. We cannot solve life for them. We need to let them feel the hard, because the hard that they're feeling is actually part of what's going to help them learn to depend on God and walk with Him in the heart.

And you know what? I can't be there always. I am not omnipresent. What they're going to learn in life is the Lord will be with them wherever they go, just like He is with us as we parent wherever we go. And so that's what we constantly have to point them to again.

This is—from Levine again—another quote:

Difficult as it can be for parents, it is imperative that we allow our children to go out into the world, to try their hand, to bang up against difficulties, to learn how to fall down and then get up again. By allowing them—listen to this—by allowing them to get occasionally bruised in childhood, we are helping to make sure that they don't get broken in adolescence; and allowing them failures in adolescence, we are helping to lay the groundwork for success in adulthood.

So it's really important that we don't try to, you know, bubble wrap our teenagers. We cannot protect them.

Now, this is funny because Kevin last night quoted Tim Keller—two men, both of them I respect—and they quoted that, “You're only as happy as your at least happy child.” You know?

Know, it's actually in my book—I say, don't live like that!

Okay, so sorry. And here's what I mean by that: it is actually a huge weight if someone thinks that your happiness is dependent upon them, okay?

What does Scripture always say? I will never leave you or forsake you; therefore, be content (Heb. 13:5).

Okay, it doesn't say, “If your child's okay, then you're content.” Do not base your contentment—don't set your hope on your child and how they're doing. Set your hope on an object that can actually hold it.

Okay? Your child—if you're riding whatever emotional roller coaster with your child all the time—that's actually not helping them walk through it. You be the stable one who's constantly just pointing them to the Savior constantly.

They're going to go through hard things. Now let me say this: you are going to feel it. Don't let them know you're feeling it. Okay? You're gonna feel it. You're gonna have to entrust their heart to the Lord in ways that are really difficult, and that is part of His sanctification in your life, right? They're being sanctified by the heart in their life, and their heart is always going to sanctify you.

So both things are working and true, but we can't let them think. I want my daughter to know, when she calls me like that, I want her to know—”I'm here for you. Let's just talk it through. You're going to be okay. We're going to walk through this together.”

That calm is what she needs from me in the moment. She doesn't need to be thinking, “I'm worried about calling my mom because I know this is going to upset her so much.” That's what I don't want her to feel. I want her to feel like she can come to me.

Principle Seven: Leave room for doubts and have a conversation about those doubts.

And then, lastly—and this is, I think, a really important one, as we get into this last principle—leave room for doubts and questions.

It is really normal for kids who are raised in Christian homes to get to a point where they think, Is this all true? Haven’t we all gone through that? I mean, I still sometimes look at my husband, and I'm like, We've banked our whole life on this. Are we doing the right thing?

See, we all have these moments of doubt, and that is normal. I mean, that is a really normal thing to experience.

And here's what can happen as parents: when we do this, we can get so self-focused. Oh my gosh, if they don't—if they don't become a Christian, it's all my fault.

We forget point one: Why are we hoping? Because God is able to save.

But we get—we make it all about us, which is just really myopic and prideful in a lot of ways.

Their doubts are totally normal for them to have as they're trying to figure out, What do I believe now?

When I say normal, that doesn't mean it's extremely comfortable as a mom, okay? It's extremely uncomfortable when we start seeing them go certain directions and feel like they're pulling away.

But the more that you can keep calm and just say, “Well, tell me. Tell me more about what you're—what you're saying,” when they're like, “Yeah. I mean, why do we follow a book that's 2,000 years old? I mean, who wrote the Bible anyway?”

Be like, “That's a really good question. You want me to send you an article about it? That's really good for you to be thinking about it. You know, I'm glad you're actually thinking critically about the faith, because that's how faith gets stronger.”

Lean in, rather than get so tense and stressed out. Lean into their doubts and say, “Let's have a conversation.” That's going to keep the conversation open.

And here's the thing: as parents—and I know I feel this—I often don't feel equipped. I'm like, “Ooh, they're going to ask something I don't know.”

And I fully admit I am spoiled, because I can say, “Go ask your dad.” My husband has his PhD in the New Testament, and he speaks on how the formation of the canon—like, he really knows this stuff.

And so I get—I am spoiled—but I also, because I get that, I told him he needed to write this book, and it's called Surviving Religion 101, and it's actually for this very purpose.

He wrote letters to our daughter, and every letter is, Dear Emma, and he goes through different questions people might have as they're entering a secular college or university: how they're going to be pushed in, whether it's sexuality, whether it's “Is the Bible True?”

You and I said, Will you please write it down so other people have it?

So I highly encourage—I actually think it's great to do with high school kids—to have the conversation. See, all I'm saying about that doesn't need to be his book. It could be someone else's book. There are good resources out there for all of us to help us.

Sorry, let me turn this off. There are really good resources out there that we can find.

And this is the thing: as parents, I think when our kids are zero to two, we read a lot of books. You know, we know what to expect when we're expecting. We know about every kick, what that was doing. We know about when they should be walking. We know when they should be talking. When they should be saying their first words, and what.

And then we slowly get out of the habit of learning. I just want to encourage you: your teen needs you to be learning. So learn with them. It's okay not to have all the answers.

And let me say this: a lot of pastors would be glad to sit down with your teenager. A lot of pastors—they're getting questions on how to solve marriages that are in horrible places, and these pastors are like, “I do not know how to help that person,” but when it's a theological question, they're like, “I actually went to school for this. I know how to do this.”

That's sometimes their most exciting thing. They're like, “I'd be glad to help them know how the Bible came to be. I'll sit down with them and talk to them.”

Don't be afraid to have your teen ask. My husband gets calls from teenagers, and they'll say, “Hey, can you help us understand this?”It's his delight to get to talk with them in that way.

There are YouTube videos that help with these questions all over the place, so some of what we might have to do as parents is dig in and try to find the resources they need to help with some of those questions, and give them the video and say, “Hey, here's a really good video on how the Bible came to be. Would you—would you listen to it? We could talk about it more.” But just do it in a way, as much as you can, that allows the conversation to continue.

Who they are at sixteen is not who they will be at twenty-six. It's not who they'll be at thirty-six. Don't get fearful about one moment.

And I know it's hard because it feels like so much is riding on these years, but remember the relationship. Don't lose the relationship with your kid in these important years.

Take the opportunity, keep the relationship open, and trust the Lord with your child. This, this is the thing: we have to trust the Lord with our children, and that is hard to do.

But as soon as that child feels that you are trying to control them, they're going to push back, and they're going to stop talking to you.

So you want to keep those communication doors open. We're going to have to be able to have conversations about their doubts.

And actually, we don't want to normalize it in such a way that we say, “Yeah, doubts are good.” It's not like that. We just want to say, “Hey, this is part of making your faith your own, and it's okay. And I'm here. I'm here. I'm here to have that conversation with you.”

Okay, so we've looked at seven principles. I'll go over them again:

1. Our hope needs to be God-oriented, not child-oriented or circumstance-oriented. We want a God-oriented hope.
    
2. Follow God first.
    
3. The basics really matter.
    
4. Parental warmth promotes community in the home.
    
5. Lead with a conversation, not a command.
    
6. You can't keep your kids from hard.
    
7. Leave room for doubts and have a conversation about those doubts.

I'm going to close with this verse:

Therefore, [and this is really important] preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:13)

We talk all the time in this world about being hopeful. That is the most empty phrase on the planet: Be hopeful. What are you hoping in?

Okay, listen. Set your hope—the object of your hope is the power of it. Don't set your hope on your kids. Don't set your hope on your circumstances. Don't set your hope on the school they go to.

Set your hope on the God of all the universe and His ability to save. That is the only secure place. Put your hope fully on Him. Follow Him. Trust Him. Pray to Him. Beg Him. Be in His Word—that's where you set your hope. That's the only way to be hopeful in any season of parenting.

Let me pray:

Father, we thank You that You are a secure refuge where we can go when this world clamors with all its divisiveness, its anxiety, its division, its hardship, its suffering. Lord, we know that we can cry out to You, and You are mighty to save. So, Lord, I pray for all the children represented in this room, all the teenagers, all the kids, the wayward kids who are not walking with You right now. Lord, I pray that by your Spirit You would bring them to Yourself. Lord, we are a desperate people who desperately need your Spirit to be at work. So we ask that You would save, Lord. We ask that our children would turn to You, that they would follow after You, and that they would walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. It's in Your name we pray. Amen.

 

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.