Courage and Compassion: Two Words for Parents

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"How to Warn Your Kids of the Danger"

"This Is Bigger Than Your Boy"

"Looking Well to the Ways of Her Household"

------------------

Dannah Gresh: Calling all moms of teenagers! Have I got some encouragement to download for you today! 

If you don’t know, I’ve devoted the lion’s share of my ministry life to preparing parents for the teen years by ministering to tweens. I was hanging out with one of my True Girl moms just a few days ago. True Girl, if you aren’t aware, is our outreach to girls ages 7–12 and their moms.

We provide resources like a podcast that’s listened to in 130 countries and live events. (In fact, I’ll be on tour with True Girl in October. I’d love to see you and your tween daughter there. Get tickets at MyTrueGirl.com.) Anyway . . . this True Girl mom was just so burdened and discouraged. Her sweet tween daughter is turning 13, and the relationship is simply changing.

Her daughter says things that are, well, I guess I’ll say it like this mom did. The words this mom used to describe her daugher were:

• rebellious
• impulsive
• moody

This mom was discouraged and very sad. She had devoted so much time to discipling her daughter and she had hopes. She was hoping the teen years would look more like her daughter moving toward: 

• responsibility
• maturity
• And, she told me, she was hoping for it to be FUN!

Today, I want to give you, as the parent of a teen, two words. These are words you need as you raise your daughter . . . or your son!

Hi, I’m Dannah Gresh. You’re listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. Thanks for joining me.

Here are my two words. Ready?

First one is courage. That’s right. Courage. You need it in your parenting, especially when you get to those teen years. There’s a lot to be afraid of for our kids, but God can give you the grace to rise above all of it. We’ll talk about that today.

The second word is compassion. You’ll need God’s Spirit to guide you in knowing the difference between having compassion for the learning curve, for hormones, new responsibilities, and becoming who God wants your teen to be. Because sometimes we redirect and even discipline our children. Other times, we act with compassion.

Courage and compassion—I think parents need them both, especially when they’re raising teens, but honestly, it really applies at any stage of a child’s life. Let’s start with courage. Why courage? Well, courage is the ability to do what you need to do, in spite of your fears.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and I discussed some of the fears parents have and face. This conversation happened around my book Lies Girls Believe and the Truth That Sets them Free. Here’s Nancy.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Now, I think that in some moms’ hearts, there’s a fear of discussing things like: gender, depression, eating disorders, boys, and other things in age-appropriate, truth-oriented ways.

Dannah: I identify with that, because I had a tremendous fear of talking to my children about sex, because my heart had been bloodied and broken by sex. My sin as a teenage girl, getting out of that sinful relationship, standing before God and saying, “God, teach me to live a life of purity!” And I did; I did live a life of purity after that!

But I remember as a 19 year old, not having met my husband, writing in my prayer journal, “Lord, please don’t let my daughter know the pain that I’ve known.” And I think as my children became tweens and the topic needed to be discussed, I was so afraid, because my own healing just wasn’t quite complete yet. 

I felt, “If I bring that up, I’m going to mess it up!” or “If I bring that up, will it increase their risk?” And so, fear’s a really big thing! In these focus groups with moms, I noticed that if they struggled with eating disorders, they didn’t want to talk about their daughter about food and weight management.

If they struggled with sex and sexual boundaries and sexual sins, they didn’t want to talk to their children about sex. If they had a history of gender confusion in their family—in any way, shape, or form—they were terrified of discussing that with their children.

Nancy: And one of the things God wants to do through this resource, I think, is to release them from those fears.

Dannah: Yes. One of my favorite passages, to release me from fear, and it was very helpful in helping open my heart to talk to my children about sexuality, is 2 Timothy 1:7, which says God does not give me a "spirit of fear but of power and love and a sound mind."

I wore that Bible verse out, over and over, until my heart was strong enough to overcome the fear and to talk to my children about the things I was afraid of discussing. I’m not saying, Nancy, that there’s not discernment: “Is my child ready for this part of the conversation? Is my child ready for this topic?”

But I really want to challenge moms to make sure that when you’re saying, “No, they’re not ready,” that it is out of discernment from God’s Spirit, not out of fear.

Nancy: Did you find, as you talked to moms, that some of them thought, My girl isn’t at risk, like other girls are.

Dannah: Oh, that was the third lie! I asked moms in the first few focus groups, “Okay, I want to know, do you think today’s tween girls are more likely to believe lies than when you were a tween girl?” Eighty percent of them said yes, which I thought was pretty accurate.

Then I’d ask, “What about your daughter? Is your daughter more prone to believe lies than you were?” Eighty percent of them said no!

Nancy: So everybody else’s girls were more prone, but not theirs!

Dannah: I thought,  Okay, this can’t be right! So, the third or fourth focus group, I said to the team, “Let’s try something different! Let’s try this: let’s ask them those same questions.” Then I asked them, “Okay, tell me about your daughter. When it comes to the topic of submission and obedience, how’s she doing in that area?”

And that’s when the floodgates opened. Moms would tell me these stories: “Oh, my daughter treats my husband like a brother, not her father!” “My daughter throws tantrums when we try to set boundaries.” Lots of submission and obedience problems!

And then I asked them about the future: “What does your daughter believe about the value of being a wife and a mom?” These moms, they love being moms! They think it’s the best job in the entire world. And so, it’s heartbreaking for them when they say, “Yeah, the world’s programming my daughter to believe that it’s not a great job to be a mom.”

So we would discuss that for maybe fifteen minutes or so, and then I would say, “I want to reposit a question: ‘Is your daughter more likely to believe lies than you were?’” And suddenly the answer changed and they realized, “Oh . . . yeah . . . she is!”

But what that identified for me was this: as moms, we really can have a stronghold of pride in thinking, Everyone else’s daughter is at risk, but mine’s not!

Nancy: And maybe it’s just naivete, just not having your eyes open. And the Lord wants your eyes to be opened as a mom to know how to lead, how to guide, your daughter.

Dannah: I want to say, “Here’s the problem with that lie. You are going to miss important cues to identify where lies are at work in your daughter’s life.”

Nancy: That’s why you as a mom or as a grandmom or as a spiritual mom in some young woman’s life, you’re going to find that Lies Girls Believe and A Mom’s Guide to Lies Girls Believe is an incredible resource to help identify where lies are at work in these girls’ lives and to help these girls identify those lies and—even more importantly—the truth that sets them free.

Dannah:You can hear more of Nancy’s and my conversation at a link in the transcript of this program. Find it at ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend. 

If you have a teenage daughter, be sure to point her to the Wonder app. This is something I’m so passionate about. This app is designed to get your daughter into the Word, and get God’s Word into her. It will help her:

• Reject cultural lies
• Embrace her identity in Christ
• Understand Scripture
• Build a daily Bible-reading habit
• And live rooted in biblical truth that God means for her to live in .

Every day she'll receive TikTok style videos, but it is devos from God's Word. There are "streaks" and "weeks" and all kinds of rewards for her to stay in the Word. Again, the app is called Wonder, and our hope is that she’ll develop a wonder for the Word of God as she uses it. You can look it up wherever you get apps for your device, or find a link in the transcript when you go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend.

So, we do a lot of girl talk here at Revive Our Hearts, as you've probably noticed, but what about our boys? Erin Davis and her husband, Jason, wrote Lies Boys Believe: And the Truth That Sets Them Free. In this conversation, she’s joined by author and mom and grandmom Joy McClain. They recorded this for Erin’s podcast The Deep Well. 

Erin Davis: I’m super hesitant to give parenting advice. I always say, “I’m a cracked pot raising cracked pots.” So I don’t share the things we do as examples of, “We’re getting it all right!”—because we are not. We are sinners raising sinners.

But something I started several years ago was “mornings with Mom.” When you have multiples, it’s very hard for them to get one-on-one time, and they crave it. So on Thursday mornings, on a rotating basis, one of them gets to have Morning with Mom. 

We get up very early. We go to the coffee shop. We walk outside if we have capacity. They love food. They can get a big ol’ cinnamon roll if they want it on Morning with Mom, and it’s just that opportunity to connect one on one. 

The cell phone is absolutely a battleground! I’ve often thought certainly my parents had parenting challenges, their parents had parenting challenges. I mean, I’m not worried about my sons getting polio. But I am very worried about them getting infected with the lies that are coming through phones!

You can only regulate it so much. We do. My sons will tell you they are the only ones with those rules that we have at our house (which I know not to be true). But it is a place where I think that verse in 1 Peter 5:8 we read applies: “Be sober-minded; be vigilant. Your enemy the devil is prowling around and he is devouring many hearts and minds,” through that seemingly neutral device!

And it is. Cell phones are morally neutral, but there is a lot that comes in through them that isn’t, so that’s really a place where we have to stand and fight. Unfortunately our family has experienced what can come through those phones even in a moment of just turning our attention away. So, it’s an area of prayer.

Cell phones aren’t going away, so we have to learn how to navigate them and how to help our boys navigate them. 

Joy McClain: So, what areas, and how does it play out? Erin talked about, “Not on my watch!” Prayer obviously is such an important element of that, and to pray for our little guys by name. But what does it look like in your home?

What does that look like when you’re dealing with the spiritual trajectory for your little guys? What are you doing? 

Erin: How do you do it, Joy?

Joy: Oh, prayer! I mean, I think just keeping the relationship with my boys. That means going to a lot of sporting events! That means cheering them on even when I don’t understand what’s going on. “You did such a great job!” 

It means spending time with them, and not always making it about my agenda when I’m with them. It’s not about what I want to do. What do they like? One of them loves to pitch. He loves baseball; he loves it! He loves to pitch! So I actually pitch the ball! 

I just found, just stepping into their world . . . But that prayer element, just speaking their name in the presence of our Savior! There’s something so sweet to pray over them, to put my hand on their head at night and let them hear my voice speak their name before the throne of heaven. 

And sometimes, when my knees let me, I will actually get on my knees so they have that visual of just surrender over them.

Erin: That’s good. Helen Jones, who’s connected to the ministry of Revive Our Hearts, I’ve heard her say the parenting mantra is, “Pray it, don’t say it” when related to adult children, which is so good! I mean, sometimes we need to say it, too.

I’ve noticed with my boys as they’ve gotten older, they’ve said at times, “Will you pray for me, Mom?” Because there has been now this many, many years of me praying for them. And I am the product of a praying Mama.

Scripture indicates that God’s ear is attentive to praying mommas. Now God’s ear is attentive to more than praying mommas. But I think of Hannah, I think of others—these women that just cried out on the behalf of men and boys, and God listened.

So, that can feel like it’s throwing a cotton ball at a bonfire, but it is not. It's actually, I think, our most effective weapon in this fight.

Joy: It is! And I’ll tell you something: I’ve prayed for my beloved—my husband—for twenty-two years. He says men are just big little boys, that’s what he always says. So my husband, my beloved, was an alcoholic—just a raging alcoholic. Our marriage of course was in crisis. At the time we had three kids, and it just affected every area of our lives.

I was bound and determined not to give up! And the only thing I could do . . . I could not control him. I could not be the Holy Spirit to Him, but I could pray! And there are a lot of lessons in there that I had to learn. But I learned just consistency in prayer. It took twenty-two years—over two decades—of praying, asking the Lord. And of course, He saw. God hears those prayers!

I just want to encourage you, if you know a prodigal little guy, big guy, middle-aged guy, boy, man, do not cease in your praying. Keep storming the gates of heaven in your praying!

Erin: Yeah, we can and should parent, but we can only parent to a point and then the Holy Spirit takes over and works in the true heart and mind transformation of our sons. But we get the joy of partnering with the work of the Spirit. Nobody wants our boys to be in love with Jesus more than Jesus Himself. Through the work of His Spirit, we get the joy of partnering in the Spirit and praying for that.

I have a women’s Bible study group that meets in my home weekly. And a few weeks ago (I don’t even know how we got here) but we started talking about our boys of all ages that are not with the Lord. Many of them are in serious patterns of addiction, some cutting their moms out of their lives because their moms are truth speakers, some having grown up in the truth but now wrestling with that. There were lots of tears shed in that circle, but also just reaffirming a commitment with each other: we’re going to keep praying. These are our boys!

We’re going to pray for them together, we’re going to trust God to do exceedingly abundantly more than we ask or imagine, that no addict is too far gone for the Lord, no prodigal is too far gone for the Lord. And that circle could be repeated wherever there are women, there are also young men that we are attached to, that we are grieving over some of their choices.

But we are not left without power. We have the Lord of hosts! All the power of His to tap into. So I love that you encourage us to keep praying. It matters!

Dannah: That’s Erin Davis speaking with Joy McClain about prayer as a tool (dare I say a weapon?) in a the Christian parent’s arsenal. I started out today talking about two words: courage and compassion. I think prayer is a great way to grow in both of those things. As you pray, the Spirit gives you courage. But He also warms your heart with compassion for your teen, for their friends, for their school, all the different areas that can be fraught with danger and temptation. Prayer helps a parent take their teen before the only One who can really do something about it . . . Jesus. 

Courage and compassion are characteristics of the woman who’s walking closely with God. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth talked about that in a series she taught about the virtuous woman, the “excellent wife” described in Proverbs 31. Here’s Nancy.

Nancy: When you were growing up, did you ever feel your mother had eyes in the back of her head? You thought, How does she know? How did she see?

Well, according to Proverbs chapter 31, moms are supposed to have eyes in the back of their head. Now, it doesn't exactly say that, but we're going to look at a verse that makes me think of that phrase.

Proverbs chapter 31, verse 27, this virtuous woman, this woman of noble character, the Scripture tells us in verse 27, "She watches over the ways [or affairs] of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness."

Look at that word "she watches." This is a woman who is watchful. She knows what's going on. She's alert; she's tuned to what's going on around her. She's just not letting her family grow up; she is watching as they grow up. She's watching what happens around her. She's like a watchman.

If a man has a job being a night guard at a business or a large home, his job is to make sure that no one comes in or out of those gates without him knowing what's going on. It's his job to watch. It's his job to keep his eyes open. He's not supposed to go to sleep on the job.

You say, "That's right, when you're a mom, you're never allowed to sleep, right?" Well, that's not what this passage is saying. But it is saying that she has a watchful eye. "She watches over the affairs [the ways] of her household." She's alert to the condition of her home. She knows what's going on; she knows the needs of her family. She knows the temperature, the climate of her home.

She's tuned to changes in her children's lives, and by the way, moms, this is one way that you can help your husband because some of these things you're going to be alert to before he is. Women, being typically more relationally-tuned, you may pick up on some of these things or on an issue in one of your children's lives, a seed you see developing that you may be concerned about. A part of being your husband's helper may be that you may bring this to his attention. Now that doesn't mean you nag him about it; it doesn't mean you're the Holy Spirit of his life. You think before you say it. You wait for God's time to make sure you are perceiving it correctly.

As you're watchful, you're being a helper to your husband. You're being a helper to your family. Here's a woman who, as she watches over the ways of her household, she doesn't miss anything. She's alert to the details of what's happening in her family. It's not so that she can be the controller of her family but so that she could be a better servant to her family, so that she could better minister to their needs.

If you don't know what your family's needs are, how can you minister to them? Now, watching over the ways of your household may be as practical as noticing your 8-year-old's pants are almost up to his knees. He's growing; he needs some longer britches. That's a practical way that you watch over the ways of your household.

It may mean watching over what they eat and noticing that if your children are having too much sugar, that this is affecting them behaviorally and being alert to the fact that some children just can't handle as much sugar, so watching their diet, their intake, watching over the ways of your household.

But it's a lot easier to watch over the physical aspects of your household than it is to watch over the spiritual aspects of your household, to be tuned to what's happening in your children's hearts.

I sometimes ask parents of children and especially as the children are getting older, as they're approaching the teenage years, "Do you still have your child's heart? Does your child have your heart? What's happening with your child's heart?"

As a mom, you want to be attentive and alert to what's happening in your child's heart. Now some of this you can't know by looking. But I'll tell you what, as you pray for your children and as you're in the Word, the Holy Spirit will help you know what you might not otherwise be able to know. God will give you wisdom. God will give you insight into what's happening in the lives of your children. He'll show you what to watch out for. That's why as a mom you can't do this alone.

Parenting and being a wife, being a virtuous woman, is something that you do by walking in the power of the Holy Spirit. He's the one who enables you to do this.

So here, particularly thinking of a wife and a mom, she's alert to who her children's friends are. I asked a mom the other day, "Are you pleased with the friends your children are choosing?" And the mom knew the answer. She knew who her children's friends were, and she knew what kind of influence those friends were having on her children's lives. She's a mom who's watching well over the ways of her household.

Moms need to know what their children are reading, what they're watching on television. Someone said to me the other day (they were in someone else's home) and they said, "The TV's on an awful lot in that home. I wonder if that mom realizes the influence that's coming into those children's lives."

Watching well over what the children are watching, what they're listening to, what they're wearing. I have to say, moms, I am sometimes just really amazed at the way some parents allow their children to dress when they leave their home. Moms, are you watching well to the ways of your household? Are you watching what your children wear?

"Well," you say, "that's all they'll wear." Listen, you're the mom. God gave you the responsibility. As long as those children are under your authority, under your roof, God gave you the responsibility to watch well to their ways—to know when they're coming in and when they're going out and what they're doing.

Your children, probably at a certain age, will come to the point where they aren't real excited about you knowing everything that they're doing and where they are and who they're with, but that's your job.

Now not, again, so that you can be micromanaging every detail of your children's lives, and one of the challenges that as your children get older is letting them go. But if you have watched well to the ways of your household when your children were young, then you'll find as your children get older that you're better able to release them.

Watching well to the habits, the activities of your family members, the spiritual development of your children, the climate of your home. You may notice that it's just getting to the point where everybody is going in so many different directions that your family is not really having talk-time, time to just be together.

And you may need to say, "Look, we need some time as a family. We need some time when we close the door, we turn off the TV, we send the other friends home." There's a time to open your door for hospitality, and there's a time to say, "Our family needs to be together. We've been coming and going too much." That's watching well to the ways of your home. And, of course, we are not doing this alone but in partnership with your husband.

Dannah: Ah, great reminders there, from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. I think it does take both courage and compassion to watch well to the ways of your home, don’t you?

Do you need to reflect on the beauty and greatness of God in every season? Whatever season you find yourself in right now, God is not absent from it—He is purposefully at work in it. Revive Our Hearts wants to help you see His hand and find the beauty He has placed there for you. 

When you give a gift of any amount this month, we'll send you our brand-new book, Finding Beauty in Every Season. This is thirty days of stunning nature imagery paired with encouragement drawn from Nancy's teaching. So it will give you a full month’s worth of reflection for any time of day. It’s a gentle, daily reminder that in every chapter of your story, God is writing something beautiful, even when it involves teens!

To make a donation to Revive Our Hearts, contact us at ReviveOurHearts.com/donate. You’ll be able to request your copy of Finding Beauty in Every Season there. 

So, we’ve been looking at the various seasons of a woman’s life. Today covered the upper parenting years. Next week we'll talk about that later seasons, like grandparenting and the difficult time that comes for many: widowhood. God has some wonderful purposes for us even in that difficult season. 

I hope you’ll join us. Thanks for listening today! I’m Dannah Gresh.  We’ll see you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.