Breaking Their Will and Gaining Their Heart
by Matthew Chapman
When you
are disciplining your children, do you know specifically what you are
after in going through the process? When your child disobeys you or
when they are setting their will against yours and you engage them in
order to bring correction, is their a specific “end game” you have in
mind? Many parents understand and implement the chastening aspect of
child-rearing very biblically and yet, even so, they have no idea what
their real goal is.
So
what is the goal? Is it simply to just get them to obey or to quit doing
whatever it is that they need to stop doing? Certainly those things
need to happen, but is that the ultimate aim? Others would say the goal
is to raise up godly children who will turn out to be good people and
faithful followers of the Lord Jesus. Amen! That is definitely what
we want, and it is good that this is what is in your heart when you
are disciplining your children, and yet is our possessing this long-term
desire when we chasten them really the point? I have known and observed
many parents who discipline their children very diligently, consistently,
and faithfully, and yet still miss the most important thing.
So
what is the goal, the “end game,” the aim we need to be certain to achieve
when we deal with our children? It's a full surrender of
their will. Just because you get your child to comply
with what you want, and just because you have good motives and long-term
aim in your parenting, it doesn't always mean that you have their heart.
A lot of serious and well-intentioned moms and dads parent by employing
the same method in every situation or by working through a fixed mental
checklist of things they are supposed to do based upon biblical principles.
But most children are experts at working you and your system and enduring
whatever they have to endure because they know the ending point of your
method or sequence before it ever begins, and they will many times comply
and “hold their breath” until it's over without ever submitting their
heart to you.
If
you think that if you just do your Bible-based method then God will
do the rest and it will all turn out fine, you are mistaken. God is
faithful, yes, but there is more to it than that. Read and consider
the whole of scripture (and not just “the parenting verses”) to find
God's heart and way for how we are to bring our children into subjection.
We are to instruct them, thwart them, teach them sowing and reaping,
train them, aim them, rebuke them, love them, be bigger than them, and
never ever let them “win” when they have set their will against ours.
In other words, we give them what the Father gives us, right? Right!
But don't miss the most important aspect of His example—He persists
and keeps the pressure on until He knows He has our heart!
In the same way, when we are disciplining our children,
we need to persist and keep the pressure on until we can tell they have
fully surrendered their will to us. To stop short and not exercise discernment
here is many times the difference between your child continuing “in
the way they should go and not departing” as they become adults and
losing them to rebellion because their will was never broken. If they
never fully surrender their will to you, then when it comes time, what
makes you think they will fully surrender it to the Lord? They will
very likely continue on in hardness of heart and following their own
way. Mom and Dad, whether your child is obvious or a more difficult
one to read, you have to be discerning and persist until you break through
and reach the core.
When
our oldest daughter, Lauren, was little, we trained her to obey the
first time we said something. When we told her to do something, she
did. When we told her to stop doing something, she stopped. Outwardly,
she was very compliant and she even helped serve others continually
with her little girl capacities, yet there came a time when Maranatha
and I could tell that we still didn't fully have her heart. She was
an independent little thing and we soon discovered that she had risen
above us in her heart, but because she was more introverted, she kept
any overtly resistant types of behavior or outbursts to herself—it was
a hidden yet discernable attitude and unsubmitted heart-posture. So
she would “obey,” but there were many times an element of haughtiness
mixed in as she did what we required of her, because “obedience” in
the normal, daily things had become a self-serving means to ultimately
get back to what she wanted to do.
Now
did she fit the criteria of a rebellious child based on a character
chart or parenting book definition? No. Was implementing a 5-step method
of discipline our answer to get this worked out? No. We prayed and asked
the Lord to help us and give us wisdom, for Lauren's sake, with what
to do. It soon became apparent to us that we needed to press her in
areas where we knew there were things she clearly would not want to
do and so mere outward compliance would not be an easy thing for her
to give. I remember one of these things was in the area of talking to
people outside of our family. She would much prefer to keep up a wall,
glare, and never say a word, even when asked a question. So when we
had visitors over or were out running errands, we would require her
to be friendly or to answer herself when people asked her how old she
was or what her name is, and that's when the unsubmitted heart came
up to the surface. We worked with her in these and other areas, requiring
her submission and stretching her until that thing in her was broken
and her heart was fully yielded to us.
Lauren
is now a young woman and, as I write these words, about a month away
from getting married. She is not perfect, as none of us are, but she
is one of the godliest women I know. I am convinced that if we had simply
settled for her compliance as “good enough” and not won with her way
back there when she was a little girl with these things I just described,
that I would probably not be saying this. And if those things had remained
unbroken in her, she would certainly not be as prepared as she is to
be a godly wife.
When
you are disciplining and chastening your children, never lose sight
of the fact that what you are after is a full surrender of their will.
So many times it is easy to shop short and fail to ever reach what is
at the bottom—“the root.” If a child's heart not being fully submitted
to you is “the what,” then what is “the why” behind it?
The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” (Psalm 14:1, 53:1)
Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child… (Proverbs 22:15)
Remember,
this is what the fool says “in his heart.” As this applies to children
in Christian families, obviously very few, if any, declare with their
mouth that they are atheists and do not believe that God exists. Of
course they believe in God. But the fool-ish attitude that is bound
up in their heart thinks, believes, and rationalizes that there is no
one bigger than they are, that no one will ever know or see, that they
will get away with it and never be called into account, and therefore
they do not have to submit to the authority in their life (their parents…
and ultimately the Lord Himself, Eph. 6:1-3).
Parents,
don't settle for doling out consistent discipline only to achieve mere
outward compliance. Have the courage to love your children enough to
persist with them until this attitude of their heart is broken and they
are fully submitted to you. I think we can clearly see that there is
something in the heart of every child that has to be broken in order
to help them stop attempting to “be God” for themselves and the world
around them. The longer this goes unchecked, the more your child develops
into a tyrant. Regardless of whether they are the quieter stubborn ones
or the seemingly others-oriented extroverts, their heart is bound up
with self and them being their own center. You have to move them off
of that place to a place where you are their full authority inside the
deepest place in their heart—and they want you there. That's when you
know you have won.
How
do you do it? That too is where you must use discernment. The rest of
the verse I quoted above that says, “Foolishness is bound up in the
heart of a child…” is “…the rod of discipline will remove it far from
him” (Prov. 22:15 ). Obviously, spanking is a God-given tool we can
use with little ones to bring immediate consequences to their disobedience
and help them to learn sowing & reaping and the value of keeping
their heart with ours. But remember that this isn't the only tool in
the toolbox. Lots of children can endure a good, proper spanking, and
if you are one of those parents I referred to earlier who thinks that
when the chastening is over then the job is finished, then you need
to realize they can figure this out pretty quickly too and know that
it will soon be over and choose to keep their unsubmitted will intact.
My
eight-year-old son has been struggling with his attitude some today,
and a few minutes ago, I could tell that there was something going on
in there where he was with some of his sisters watching a sign language
DVD. I stopped writing and went and checked it out, and sure enough,
he was having a bad attitude about not being able to keep up with writing
things down as quickly as the signing presentation was going. Instead
of asking for help or if his big sister could pause it for him, he got
upset and threw his notebook down on the floor in frustration. Well,
any kind of fit-pitching in our home is a big no-no and he knows it
well, but he chose to do it anyway (“the foolish child has said in his
heart…”), and so I called him out of the room to talk to him about it.
He
would have gladly endured a spanking so that
he could soon get on back to his sign language DVD, but I knew that
this would in no way achieve a full surrender of his will to me and
bring him to the place of wanting what I want (for him to fully close
the door on his bad attitude and especially the fit-pitching) more than
what he wants (to get back to the signing video). So after he acknowledged
what he did, I told him that his discipline was that he didn't get to
do the sign language thing. He broke immediately. I affirmed to him
that because I love him I will discipline him as much as he needs, and
that his attitude and his keeping his heart with mine was far more important
to me than learning sign language—and he agreed. After that, I set him
to do some jobs around the house and have noticed that his attitude
has been wonderful ever since. He just now popped in and excitedly asked
permission to organize his clothes drawers better and more neatly! Wow!
Praise the Lord!
Take
the time to work with you children. Ask them questions until they expose
their own motives and rebellion. Help them to “connect the dots” and
see the connection between their actions, choices, and words, and their
heart not being with yours. Help them to see where and how they wanted
what they had more than they wanted what you had for them. Before children
reach their teenage years, you have to do whatever it takes to make
certain that they live yielded. Beginning
when they are real little, I explain to my children that we all have
to submit and obey—they have to obey Daddy & Mama, and Daddy &
Mama have to obey the Lord. I also describe how whenever any one of
us disobeys, we get disciplined—them by their parents and us by the
Lord. Of course when they are little, there eyes get big and they inevitably
ask, “What's it like to get in trouble with the Lord?” It leads to a
great conversation about God's order, the fear of the Lord, sowing and
reaping, and all kinds of other good offshoots.
And
this brings us around to why this is so important. The greatest thing
we can do for our children is to prepare them, in the way that they
relate to us, to have a relationship with God and how He will relate
to them. Is the Lord satisfied with outward compliance or does He go
for the whole heart? We know the answer to that question. But if they
have never been pursued on a deeper level and kept at the place of living
yielded to you, how will they ever do so with the Lord? They will either
be shallow and make “life with God” all about the outward appearance,
which inevitably leads to hypocrisy and pretending, or they will have
to go through some major breaking as an adult through very difficult
circumstances in order for God to get to their heart, break their will
and their life-long patterns of being unsubmissive, and bring them to
a place where they can have a real relationship with Him. Is that what
you want for your children? Why not do the work now, while they are
young? Discipline and chasten them diligently, yes, but in the process,
make sure that their will breaks and they fully surrender their will
to you—then you have gained their heart!
I
want you to think of each of your children. Do you have their hearts
right now, today? Do they want what you have more than they want what
they have right now, today? As you honestly answer those questions,
you'll know where you stand, and you'll know what you need to do. Your
children are worth it—go for it!
Kindling Publications
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USA
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