Disciplining Your Kids Part 1

Establish the need: Have you wonder how do you spiritually disciplining your children?

 

Purpose: we will see the three Bs concerning how to discipline your kids.

• Be clear with rules
• Be self-controlled
• Be in a private place

 

 

Be clear with rules

Proof

1. Reason 1: We are to teach God’s rule clear enough to be a guide for children’s life: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105)
   1. The imagery here is of a lamp helping someone walk in the dark.
   2. Notice God’s Word is that lamp that guides.
   3. Thus we too need to be clear with teaching God’s rule so it guides them rather than confuses them.
2. Reason 2: You don’t want to exasperate your kids if expectations aren’t clear: “Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart.” (Colossians 3:21)
   1. You don’t want to exasperate your child.
   2. Pastor Paul Tautges said “These instructions should then be consistently communicated to your children so that you do not unnecessarily provoke them to anger or discouragement.”[1]
   3. Also a child can be exasperated if parents don’t make clear what are the rules and boundaries of what is and isn’t acceptable behavior. So you want to make the rules clear.
3. Practice
   1. Pastor Paul Tautges said “As a manner of principle we recommend that you not spank your child for violating instructions that you have not made clear unless the safety, or life of the child or another is in danger.”[2]
   2. It is helpful when you tell a child a rule to have them look at you with their eye so you know the rule was heard and received and understood.
   3. At times it might be helpful to have the child explain a rule you have for them.
   4. Help the child know the rules clearly with repetition: “You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up” (Deuteronomy 11:19)
      1. Notice it is a command to teach about the things of God to our kids: “You shall teach them”
      2. God wants us to teach God’s word to our kids to obey them since the context specify it is God’s commandments that is being referred to since verse 22 talks about the need to keep God’s commandments.
      3. Yet how do we do it to teach it in various situations; 4 of them is mentioned:
         1. “when you sit in your house”
         2. “and when you walk along the road”
         3. “and when you lie down”
         4. “and when you rise up”
      4. Of these four is there any time you can make to further make family rules and God’s law be clearer for the child?
   5. Also when you do discipline your child ask to clarify if they have heard the rule.
      1. If you haven’t explain the rule clearly or adequately this is something you can work on.
      2. If you have explain the rule clearly and adequately then let them know the discipline is also for disobedience.

 

Be self-controlled

Proof

1. Reason 1: Self-control is important for a fruitful Christian life: “Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, 6 and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, 7 and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. 8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 1:5-8)
   1. Listed are qualities Christians should have.
   2. Self-control is mentioned in verse 6.
   3. Notice these qualities should be increasing according to verse 8. So should self-control.
   4. Verse 8 also tells us the result of increase self-control: “they render you neither useless nor unfruitful”
   5. In knowing Christ more deeper this also helps us have a spiritually fruitful life including our family life and parenting!
2. Reason 2: If we discipline without self-control it does not accomplish the righteousness of God: “for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.” (James 1:20)
   1. Often when we have no self-control in disciplining our child it is because of anger.
   2. Yet this verse makes it clear that ungodly anger does no accomplish God’s righteousness.
3. Reason 3: You don’t want to be a hypocrite: “Do not judge so that you will not be judged. 2 For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and [a]by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. 3 Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:1-5)
   1. We see here how bad hypocrisy is in God’s eye.
   2. Our kids will see it too. They are smart enough to see hypocrisy!
   3. For example if you are disciplining a child for a bad temper but you are also having an ungodly temper that will confuse the child.
   4. Or another example: The child has no self-control but you have no self-control in how you punish your child, that is also hypocrisy.[3]

Practice

1. Do not spank a child out of anger.
2. If you are still very angry it is helpful to send the child to their room or somewhere for you to cool down before you discipline them.[4]
3. To help with self-control sometimes it is helpful to speak softly. After you gather the child in trouble have them look at you in the eye and ask them if they know if they are in trouble.  Speaking softly to the at that moment allows you to be more collected and cool.
4. Also to help with self-control it is helpful to be proactive in nipping a child’s sinful behavior in the bud rather than tolerating it and the frustration builds up to an angry explosion.[5]

 

Be in a private place

Proof

1. Reason 1: Biblical way of confronting sin is one-on-one: “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.” (Matthew 18:15)
   1. The context is about church discipline.
   2. However we do see this should be the normal manner of dealing with sin BEFORE the church is involved with unrepentant sin.
2. Reason 2: You don’t want to humiliate the child to bitterness: “See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled” (Hebrews 12:15)
   1. Here God is clear He does not want bitterness in our lives.
   2. Yet when we discipline our kids we can minimize that by not humiliating them in public before others that don’t need to see them getting spanked.
   3. Wouldn’t it be sad if you discipline your child for one sin you contribute to your child further sinning by being bitter?
3. Reason 3: To avoid enablers of sin in the audience: “and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.” (Romans 1:32)
   1. This verse shows that it is a sin to approve of those who practice sins.
   2. Yet sometimes in terms of public discipline you might have strangers who give a sympathetic look to the child and the child then take it as it is alright to sin and disobey.

Practice

1. Discipline in private.
2. Sometimes in public place you might have to go the car or the bathroom.
3. Other times you might have to let the child know they will be disciplined when you get back home.
4. Also be careful of extended family members and relatives that can send mix signals to the kids.

 

Conclusion: We are not perfect in our parenting; which ones of these things you are weak at?  Remember God’s grace: Go to Him and confess!  Ask Him to help you!  There’s also sanctifying grace through Jesus Christ!

 

 

[1] Paul and Karen Tautges, Help! My Toddler Rules the House (Wapwallopen, PA: Shepherd Press, 2014), 38.

[2] Paul and Karen Tautges, Help! My Toddler Rules the House (Wapwallopen, PA: Shepherd Press, 2014), 39.

[3] D. Martyn Lloyd Jones, Life in the Sprit in Marriage, Home & Work (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1973), 279.

[4] Paul and Karen Tautges, Help! My Toddler Rules the House (Wapwallopen, PA: Shepherd Press, 2014), 41.

[5] Paul and Karen Tautges, Help! My Toddler Rules the House (Wapwallopen, PA: Shepherd Press, 2014), 41.