The Hero of the Story

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"Don't Put Your Toddler in a Cardboard Box"

"More than a List"

"Why Kids Can't Be 'Good'"

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Laura: It’s a universal law of nature that kids love cardboard boxes. 

Dannah Gresh: This is my dear friend—and mom of six kiddos, Laura. 

Laura: In fact, if you are ever agonizing over what to give a child for their birthday, just remember that if the toy comes in a cardboard box, the child will love the gift . . . one way or another.

Dannah: You know, she could have saved me some money had she told me that before I became a mom! You too? 

Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend! I’m Dannah Gresh.

You know, speaking of cardboard boxes, I remember one time when my husband Bob turned our old plastic laundry basket into a choo-choo train for our twin granddaughters Addie and Zoe! So, I guess a laundry basket is just a more permanent cardboard box! To this day, the girls want to play with Nana Dannah’s laundry basket. And they’ll do it for hours. (Of course, we have to push!) So many memories! 

Well, our main purpose today isn’t to talk about the creativity of kids (or husbands), though I’m sure you have your own cute stories. We are going to talk about kids, though.

If you’re a parent, teacher, babysitter—actually, unless you stay at home all the time and never see kids—you already know that children are naturals at sinning. Right? You don’t have to teach them to be selfish!

But if you are a parent, you know that it’s a sobering thing when you see your kids following the same sin patterns that you struggle with. Laura explains why that realization doesn’t have to be devastating, and what you can do about it, or rather, what God can do about it. But what got her started thinking about that was her own cardboard box story. Let’s listen.

Laura: Well, my kids are like all other kids. They love a cardboard box. I remember one day when they had three perfectly-sized cardboard boxes in the playroom. They had turned them into their own private boats. My little girls sat inside the boxes in the middle of the sunroom . . . I mean the sea. And at one point I walked through the room with my one-year-old son on my hip, and I realized there was an extra box just for him, so I popped him in and said, “Oh, it’s your own little boat.” Then I went on my merry way to tackle this or that in the kitchen. 

A few minutes later I heard a “thunk” and tears. I ran into the room to see that my son had tipped over in his cardboard box. He had hit his face against a toy, and his lip was bleeding. So, I picked him up, and I realized we would have to get ourselves over to the emergency room. 

To the emergency room we went, and they put a couple of stitches in his lip. He was so brave. They gave him a plush frog as a prize, and we came home . . . and that was that. Once we got home and settled down, I realized that he had cut his lip in the exact spot that I had cut my lip years ago when I had disobeyed my dad and did gymnastics in the house. It was dramatic. It had marked my life. 

I couldn’t believe that the very thing that I never would have chosen for myself, and I certainly wouldn’t have chosen for my son, had happened to him . . . and it was my own doing. 

So, there was no changing it: I have a scar on my lip, and now my son would have a scar on his lip . . . and it was my fault.

Do you ever notice a similar trend when it comes to our hearts? In this case, my son didn't "sin" by falling over in the cardboard box. But the scar on his lip was a reminder of a sad truth: my kids would sin, and bear the consequences of sin. We know this from Romans 3:23. All have sinned. All have fallen short of the glory of God. All includes our kids.

But that scar that resembled mine reminded me of another sad truth. My kids will see my sin close up. I tell them about the way God took all my sin because of what Jesus did on the cross. And I hope they see me continually becoming more and more like Jesus. But they also observe that process of sanctification. Which means they're going to see me blow it. And sadly, that could influence them.

Have you ever noticed that the very sin you struggle with seems to be the sin your child struggles with too? And maybe you feel like you taught them how to struggle with it simply by being a bad example or giving into indulgence or lashing out in anger, giving into fear, or trudging through a lukewarm walk with Christ. You look at your child and you see them struggling in sin and you think. Oh, I didn’t want this for myself, and I certainly don’t want it for my child, yet here it is.

I think all parents face this from time to time. It is upsetting. It’s humbling, and sobering. We might feel angry about it and lash out at our kids, or we might feel intimidated by it and look the other way. But I hope that instead of taking things into our own hands, we see this as an opportunity to turn to God. He said we are welcome to approach His throne of grace for help any time, and this would certainly be a good time to do that. 

Sometimes I wonder if my children know what to do about the sin that I have passed down to them? The Bible is full of guidance for sinners like me and you, who are called to respond to other sinners, like our kids, with grace. The apostle Paul writes about it a lot. In Galatians 6:1–2 he says, 

If anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

And in 2 Timothy, Paul writes, 

The Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth. (2:25–26)

In light of these truths, I’ve brainstormed some tangible ways that you and I can respond when our child struggles with sin just like we do. We can pray for them. We can correct them and teach them the truth that will set them free. We can wait on the Lord to work in their hearts. We can say, “You can learn from that.” We can listen, and we can say that we’ve been there, too. And most of all, we can remind our children of the grace of God through Jesus, lavished on all repentant sinners. 

We are all sinners, who will keep putting our children in the very box that we do not want them to be in. But God is the Father who when He put His Son down on this planet for you and me, He put Him on a cross where He would be pierced for our transgressions, and blood would flow. When He did that, it wasn’t to visit the iniquities of the fathers on their children, but to interrupt the generational curse of sin with mercy and grace.

Here’s what I know: when my children struggle with the same sin I do, they can count on the same Savior I do. Let’s not forget that our devastating sinful impact on our children does not compare to the impact that we can have as we tell our children, and Lord willing, our children’s children, about our Redeemer, our Savior, our God, who’s good heart is to love and forgive generation upon generation. 

Dannah: That’s Laura.

Laura hosts one of the podcasts in the Revive Our Hearts podcast family. It’s called Expect Something Beautiful. I love the knack she has for telling stories and then connecting them with Scripture! You can find more stories from her at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Laura had a great reminder for us: Jesus died for you and your children, for me and my children. I pray that truth will give you hope when you see your kids making the same wrong choices you did.

Now, it’s easy to tell kids, “Do this; don’t do this,” but how do you help them understand what Jesus did for them? How do you teach them that they can’t do anything to please God?

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth says that it’s important not to just give kids a list of rules. Instead, take them to the Word of God.

Nancy: One of the most important principles that you’ll find repeated over and over and over again, in the Old Testament in particular, is the importance of parents teaching their children the ways of God.

Ladies, if you don’t teach your children how to think biblically, don’t expect that the world is going to teach them how to think in a way that is right. What a responsibility is yours, as a parent, as a mom, to teach your children the ways of God! 

It’s vital that you model a consistent example in your standards for your children.

But you know, it’s not enough just to set an example. If you don’t set an example, this next point you won’t be able to do effectively. But even if you do set a good example, you’ve still got the responsibility to actually teach and train your children what’s right and what’s wrong. 

Don’t start with a list. Start with the principles of God’s Word. Teach your children, beginning at the earliest ages, what God thinks and what are the principles that need to govern our lives.

Deuteronomy 6 says that God has given us commandments and rules. Moses taught them to the people of Israel, and he said, “You need to obey these laws. And as you’re obeying, you need to make sure you’re doing it out of a heart of love for God.”

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (v. 5) so that your obedience is not just rigid and legalistic, but your obedience springs out of a heart of love for God.

Then he says, “These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children” (vv. 6–7).

Now, he’s not saying that you just sit down for one hour a day and say, “We’re going to teach you how to obey the principles of God’s Word.”

There are times, formal, structured times, to sit down and teach your children the ways of God; but more is taught in the course of everyday life using teachable moments and opportunities to instruct in the ways of God than is taught from the formal, structured times where you think your kids aren’t paying any attention.

That’s why Deuteronomy 6 goes on to say, “Talk [about these things] when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (v. 7). All day, every day, be naturally communicating with your children the ways of God.

Now, I thank the Lord that my parents did this. I think about my dad who, just in the course of everyday life, would just talk about the ways of God. I don’t remember those as being sermons or lectures because it was just interwoven into the fabric of our everyday life.

He says, “You shall bind [these words] as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (vv. 8–9).

Dannah: That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth with a reminder: teaching your kids isn’t a one-and-done thing, it’s a way of life.

But you might still be wondering, That’s all great, but how exactly do I teach them the gospel?

Barbara Reaoch is the director of children’s programs for Bible Study Fellowship. Several years ago she gave a talk about how teaching kids is about more than just telling Bible stories. To start off, she reiterates what I mentioned earlier, that kids are born sinners. Here’s Barbara.

Barbara Reaoch: Most of our kids believe that the world does revolve around them. We don’t have to convince them. They believe they are Number One, and anybody who doesn’t think that has a problem!

Kids love applause. We don’t make them idol-worshippers; they already are. They idolize themselves. 

With gospel-centered teaching, a child learns that it’s all about God—that we are created to know Him, to love Him, to enjoy Him—and the purpose of our life is to glorify Him, not ourselves! We learn that true fulfillment is not ours through our achievements, through our successes, or our moralistic behavior. Lasting happiness is found in God and living to His glory.

Our kids do need to know that God loves them, but not because they have anything to offer Him and not because He needs them for any particular work. Forgiveness and acceptance come to them, not because they deserve it, but because of God’s great mercy and love, and because He has satisfied His justice by pouring out His wrath against His dearly loved Son.

We want our kids to realize that all the applause goes to God. And as a teacher and a leader, here is a good question for you to ask yourself: “When I teach the Bible story or the Bible lesson, who is the main character? Is it God?” Because God will be magnified in your teaching when He is magnified in your own heart first!

Every time I teach the Bible, it’s with, “How can I best communicate God and His attributes?” Here’s the number one tool for you as you begin thinking about teaching in a God-centered way: The message of the text is about God, so just teach in a way to keep God the main character, no matter what passage of Scripture you are in.

And then, ask Him to help you keep Him central. He is the Hero of every Bible story and Bible lesson!

Teach about God’s plan for sending Jesus. A Bible lesson or a Bible story that is gospel centered is one that teaches about God’s plan for sending Jesus.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you turn every lesson into a story about Jesus and the cross, but our kids do benefit from hearing how this slice of Scripture that you are in right now fits into the big gospel pie. They need to be reminded of the big picture view of God’s plan through Christ, and it runs all the way through the Bible. So as you study you will find it, and you will be able to highlight it.

So here’s a simple way of remembering the main points of the gospel plan for sending Jesus. We’ll just use J-E-S-U-S to help you remember that.

J is for Jesus left His home with God in heaven to become a man and show us who God is. Jesus shows us that God is our loving Father who rightly tells us to live for His honor.

E is that ever since the first man and woman, Adam and Eve sinned, all of us are born into this world with sin in our hearts. We do not honor God because we want to honor ourselves more than anything.

S is for sin. Sin in our hearts separates us from God. We can’t know or love God when we are separated from Him and deserve His just judgment of hell. Only God can help us, and He does. God loves us so much that He sent Jesus. Jesus lived a sinless life in our place, and Jesus died in our place as He took the punishment for sin by dying on the cross. And then three days later . . .

Up He came. He came back to life. Jesus rose from the grave and came back to show us that He is stronger than everything, even death, and God promises that everyone who turns to Him and trusts in Jesus is forgiven of the sin in their hearts. They will never be separated from God again, but spend eternity with Him in heaven. And He gives a special gift to them now.

S is for Spirit. The Holy Spirit from God is Jesus right with you all the time. Everyone who turns to God and trusts in Jesus has the Holy Spirit living in them. That’s how close He is. And the Holy Spirit teaches you about temptation and gives you the power to say “no” to sin and “yes” to what is right.

So as you prepare, ask yourself:

What do I see about God?

And what am I seeing about God’s plan for sending Jesus?

Okay, here’s a little sidebar: Guard against just saying “gospel” when you want to kind of throw that in your Bible story or Bible lesson. We don’t know what to say, so we’ll just call it that. We assume that everybody knows it, but no, that’s not it. So avoid just popping in that word “gospel” and letting that account for what you really want to say.

Don’t rely on a pamphlet—as good as they are and as wonderful as you want everyone to read the “Am I Sure?” pamphlet, because it is very helpful and a wonderful tool, but don’t rely on it.

Don’t use catch phrases like, “Ask Jesus into your heart.” Know the gospel for yourself so that you can teach the important connection in this passage of Scripture that you’re studying this week to some truth that you know about Jesus Christ.

As you prepare to teach, ask yourself: What is it in this passage that lets me know about God’s plan for sending Jesus? And it will come out. You will be able to communicate.

Now, let’s go on to the next part.

Kids strive to be accepted. The world plays on this need by using behavior modification to create acceptable kids. We talked about that earlier.

But we do, too. We do it very subtly by making kids feel that God’s love and acceptance is based on whether they behave or not. Kids are wired to want to figure it all out and then just do what they have to do. It’s kind of like they are saying, “Just tell me what I have to do to get to heaven and avoid hell, and I will do it—no problem.”

They get into that works mentality and just figure, like with everything else in their life, they’re going to have to work to earn it.

But here’s the moralistic statement that they end up saying about themselves: “I obey God, and therefore, I’m accepted.” Or they think that they couldn’t ever possibly do it right, and therefore, they will never be accepted by God.

This is how teaching can be twisted toward moralism in both our pre-school and our school program, Bible stories, and Bible lessons. Let me just give you a couple of examples, because when we go to the Old Testament, I think we find it the hardest.

We want to teach about the characters. We want to tell them about Noah and Abraham and Moses. It’s really easy to get focused with our attention on what these characters did right, what they did wrong, or use the passage to teach a moral lesson.

Now, the kids translate that to mean: “Okay, if I’m good, like Noah, God will think of me as righteous,” or “God is pleased with me, or not pleased with me, based on how I act.” And what we really want to message is that God did not choose these people because of their character but because of His grace—just like the rest of us.

The Bible in fact is very faithful in recording the scathing sins of each one of these people. That typically makes us feel pretty uncomfortable if we’d relied on these people to give us good moral lessons because: Noah gets drunk. Abraham lies. Moses gets angry. And what we want to realize is that God is faithful to tell us about their weaknesses because it underscores His grace in saving and using sinful people.

What we really need to be messaging is that God prevails in His plan regardless of imperfections in people, and His promises prevail no matter how powerful worldly leaders appear to be.

So the point is that when we teach these Old Testament passages about Noah, Abraham, Moses, whoever—Joshua, whoever—remember that God is always the hero. People are always imperfect, and God is always the hero.

Now, when we teach about Jesus, it may sound kind of funny to say this, but it is possible to teach about Jesus and never teach the gospel. It is surprisingly easy to talk about Jesus and connect His life to moralism instead of gospel-centered teaching.

We tell kids things like, “You need to act like Jesus, just love like Jesus, just forgive like Jesus, just tell the truth like Jesus.” Kids end up connecting the dots that, “Okay, I’m right with God as long as I imitate Jesus—imitating leads to pleasing God.” And the reality is that we will fail on every count of trying to imitate Jesus because of our issue in our heart. Jesus did not have sin in His heart. He lived perfectly. We will not.

So the gospel-centered teaching says, “Jesus is the one who lived the perfect life. Jesus pleased God for us. He loved perfectly. He forgave perfectly. He never lied. He never cheated. Jesus never sinned. He did for us what we can never do ourselves.

When you teach a child about Jesus in this way, they begin to delight and glory in Jesus as their substitute. They learn to draw into your teaching about what it means to be in Christ and to be part of God’s family.

Now, obedience to God’s commands are to be taken very seriously. Knowing that disobedience has serious consequences, we do want to be faithful about teaching that. But obedience to God’s commands is based on being in Christ and living in the power of His Holy Spirit, not on trying to imitate or trying to act like Jesus on my own steam. But with God’s Spirit living in us, which is what happens when I am in in Christ, I am then transformed by His Holy Spirit and given His empowerment to then live more and more like Christ with the eventual lasting changes in my behavior.

Dannah: That’s Barbara Reaoch with some great tips on how to point kids to Jesus. And you know what? Those are great ways to point adults to Jesus, too. Listening to Barbara motivates me to live even more for Christ!

If today’s program has inspired you, we’d love to hear from you! Go to ReviveOurHearts.com to write a note or make a donation. You know, when you give to support this ministry, you’re helping spread the message of Jesus to more women all around the world. 

We can’t say thank you enough for your support, but as a token of our gratitude, when you give this month we’ll send you a magnetic notepad. It’s floral and has a quote from Nancy on it—perfect to hang on your fridge where you’ll see it every day!

Today we talked about the gospel in relation to kids. On Monday, on our daily program Revive Our Hearts, we’ll continue this theme. Kathryn Butler will help us see how great stories in literature can help point our kids to the greatest Story of all, the gospel. And she’ll have a wonderful list of recommendations of things to read out loud as a family. 

Then, next week on this program, we’ll return to the theme of God’s love, but specifically how it relates to you, and then how you can love Him better in return.

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

Revive Our Hearts Weekend is calling you to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.

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