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Wednesday, March 27, 2019

The Parenting Series: Engaging vs. Enabling (Pt. 3)

(Part 3 of 3)


“So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.’ “But his father said to the servants, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. And kill the calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast.”-Luke 15:20-23

When it comes to empowering versus enabling there are a couple more key points that warrant our attention. First, notice how the father did not focus on what was squandered. I have been guilty of this.  The father saw the son and had compassion on him. The father’s heart was to restore him, not to nit pick the  “could have beens” or highlight the consequences. 

As a loving father he was going to make sure that his son was fed and clothed, but there is no evidence that he was going to give him any other financial gifts, without evidence that he was going to squander it again. 

With the robe, ring and sandals the father restored to his son the favor of a son, the identity of a son, and the dignity of a son. He did not, however, give him more money. 

That wouldn’t have been fair to the other son. However, the other son had a heart issue of his own. He didn’t even want his brother restored to sonship. Proper parenting, nevertheless, finds a healthy balance. We don’t abandon people because of their poor decisions, but we do not enable them to continue in them. 

Don’t allow a child to convince you that your love is tied to bailing them out. The truth is, real love, allows them to walk through the consequences of their poor decisions so that they can “come to their senses” and learn how to take responsibility for their own lives. The goal is to restore, not reward. 

As parents, my wife and I, walked through times where another parent thought they knew our child well enough to question whether our parental decisions were motivated by our own unwillingness to let go of them. However, after raising my child for 18 years, I recognized things in them that this person had not been in their life long enough to see.

I say that because we may try and step into an older teen or young adults life, thinking we understand what is happening, but truly only know what they want you to know. You could be very well giving them what their parents are using as leverage and completely undermining that parents ability to influence their child. So be careful. 

Parenting is hard at any age, but we can begin now preparing our hearts to release responsibility, give them room to fail, use leverage wisely, avoid focusing on what was squandered and learn to restore without reward. 

Pastor Scott Burr

Dayspring Community Church 

Monday, March 18, 2019

The Parenting Series: Engaging vs. Enabling (Pt.2)

(Part 2)

Then He said: “A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.’ So he divided to them his livelihood.”-Luke 15:11-12

An integral part of empowering our children is learning to release responsibility. In this parable, the father released responsibility of a portion of the inheritance to his son. Doing so, the son was now empowered to manage, steward, and take responsibility for his own livelihood. 

(Of course, it is pertinent to point out that what we release is certainly dependent on the maturity level of the child. )

I can tell you from personal experience, that, although I released responsibility to my kids as they grew up; I did not release as much as I should have at the appropriate times. When it came time for them to take responsibility for certain things there was a large learning curve in many areas, because I held on to that responsibility far too long. Things like managing finances, time management, and organizational responsibilities. 

To be responsible means to be answerable, or accountable for something within one’s power to control or manage. Most kids like the idea of responsibility, but only in the areas they want it. They want to determine their own curfew, but they are not necessarily interested in folding laundry. That is where leveraging comes in.

To leverage is to use something that you already have in order to achieve something new better. The father in our parable had a degree of leverage, based on his son’s own admission: 

“But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you,”-Luke 15:17-18 

The son was prepared to live as a hired hand for a roof over his head and food in his belly. Leverage is not a bad thing, as long as it is used wisely. This can best be done by tying responsibilities together. In order to gain more responsibility in an area a child wants, they must also demonstrate responsibility in other areas as well. For example, coupling cell phone usage with the completion of chores. 
However, there is a fine line between leveraging and bribing. We certainly don’t want to appear as rewarding a kid’s rebellion to get them to do what we want. I am not buying my child a bicycle today to get them to clean their room tomorrow. Now, if they clean their room for six months straight and demonstrate they can be responsible, I will honor that with something because they earned it. That is healthy leveraging!

Pastor Scott Burr
Dayspring Community Church 




Monday, March 11, 2019

The Parenting Series: Engaging vs. Enabling (Pt.1)

(Part 1)

“To illustrate the point further, Jesus told them this story: “A man had two sons. The younger son told his father, ‘I want my share of your estate now before you die.’ So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons. “A few days later this younger son packed all this belongings and moved to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money on wild living.”-Luke 15:11-13

As our children grow older, a fight for independence often emerges. We have already discussed, in an earlier column, the goal of parenting and that is to move our kids from dependence on us to complete dependence on God.

The reason, in retrospect, that the early years of parenting are less challenging is simple; because they are not grown, we can impose our will on them. However, as they journey into adulthood, we are no longer able to do that as they begin to develop thoughts, plans, expectations, and opinions of their own. They begin to push the boundaries trying to clarify what is them from what is you as a parent. 

Parenting at this point has to shift. Modeling, training, and correction continue, but we have to begin to add a new component and that is releasing (empowering). However, that means that at times we will have to love and lead our kids through the consequences of their own poor decisions. 

“About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. He persuaded a local farmer to hire him, and the man sent him into his fields to feed the pigs. The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything.”-Luke 15:14-16

Like it or not, we cannot totally protect our kids from failure. In fact, if we want to see them mature we must give them room to fail. The amount of room we give is dependent on the age and maturity level of the child. The son, in this story, was an adult, so he was given a wider birth than a teenager or adolescent. 

His father did not attempt to restrain him. Some may argue that by giving him his inheritance early that the father was enabling his son’s lifestyle. Enabling, however, is the behavior of protecting others from experiencing the full impact and consequences of their actions.

This, the father did not do. He released the inheritance, but he did not micro-manage his son’s life. The son squandered his entire portion of the inheritance and ended up as a hired hand feeding pigs, until one day he came to his senses:

“When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, ‘At home even the hired servants have food enough to spare, and here I am dying of hunger! I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired servant.”’
“So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.”-Luke 15:17-21 

It is obvious that the son learned a lot from his experience in the pig pen. He came to his senses. I know from personal experience, that I’ve learned far more from the consequences I had to endure from poor decisions than from those moments I was bailed out. Are we truly worried about our kids failing or are we worried more about feeling that we have failed as a parent? It is when we buy into the idea that our children’s poor choices are a reflection of poor parenting, that we will try and compensate for it by helping to make sure they don’t have to face all the consequences of their decisions. 

It is brutal to watch your child experience the pig pen, but a person can only “come to their senses” when they realize that their own choices brought them to that point. 


Pastor Scott Burr

Dayspring Community Church

Monday, March 4, 2019

The Parenting Series: Working together to overcome favoritism (Pt. 3)

(Part 3 of 3)

“Isaac loved Esau because he enjoyed eating the wild game Esau brought home, but Rebekah loved Jacob.”-Genesis 25:28

Addressing favoritism in our families is so important that God dealt with it in the first book of the Bible. Genesis records that Jacob and Esau, twin brothers, were heavily influenced by parents who were less than even-handed in their relationships with them. 

Esau was the older brother, even if it was only by minutes, so Jewish law conferred the rights of the firstborn upon him. That means when Isaac died, Esau would get a double portion of his estate and become head of the family. 

Because Rebekah loved Jacob more than she loved Esau, she conspired with Jacob to fool Isaac into granting Esau’s birthright to Jacob. The Bible records that the trick worked and Jacob, with the help of his own mother, stole his brother’s birthright. However, there was a definite cost to their deception. 

Favoritism, like Isaac and Rebekah displayed in their family, set the stage for a lot of heartache and bitterness. Esau and Jacob ultimately reconciled their differences, but the Bible also points out that Esau carried a lot of unforgiveness around with him for years. 

The favoritism shown each of those young men spawned a distrust that lasted for decades. It created a sibling rivalry, pitting one against the other and bred  competition between the brothers: 

“Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Padan Aram to take himself a wife from there, and thatas he blessed him he gave him a charge, saying, “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan,” and that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and had gone to Padan Aram. Also Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan did not please his father Isaac. So Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife in addition to the wives he had.”-Genesis 28:6-9

Ultimately, it caused an unhealthy pursuit of acceptance. For instance, Isaac dressed up as his brother just to get his father’s blessing and Esau chose a wife from the family of Ishmael in order to gain his mother and father’s acceptance. 

When we play favorites, we position ourselves for disaster by inviting division into our homes and sowing distrust and disloyalty among our family members. 

Pastor Scott Burr
Dayspring Community Church