Episode 635: TLP 635: How to Convince Your Kids

The Challenge of Convincing Parenting and the Goal of Worship

And I know this kind of convincing parenting is daunting. It requires more of us, it'll take more time, we'll sometimes feel like we have less control over the outcome. Parenting isn't about us. In fact, parenting isn't even about our kids.

Parenting is just one way Christian dads and moms are to worship God. So welcome to the Truth, Love, Parent podcast, where we train dads and moms to give God the preeminence in their parenting. Welcome to the tail end of season 35.

We're quickly winding down and preparing for season 36, and let me tell you, I just outlined the content for it, and I'm really very excited. I don't know why I didn't have this idea for a season of content before.

But anyway, we're not there yet, we're here, and isn't that so often like our parenting? We're frequently tempted to always be looking ahead to some perceived better days in the future, but what we need to be doing is focusing on where we are now and how God would have us worship Him by parenting our kids for His glory.

So that's why we're going to talk about how to convince your kids, or better yet, how to be more convincing with your kids. That's what really parenting is. If it's not convincing our kids to eat their vegetables and finish their homework, it must include convincing our kids that God is amazing and that He deserves our submission.

So to that end, we have free episode notes, a transcript, and related resources linked for you in the description of this episode to help you become a more convincing parent. I need to convince my kid better?

Okay, fine, I know it doesn't sound very touchy-feely or even spiritual for that matter. Use whatever word you want. Persuade, influence, assure, prompt, urge. The key is, if we're only ever providing information, but we're not doing it in a convincing way, why would our kids need or want to take our advice?

Too much parenting is presented as a negotiable. It's what I do, but it may not be what you do. And that's fair. There are a lot of things I do and wear and eat that my kids don't have to do and wear and eat in order to glorify God.

Christian liberty is a thing. But there are many more non-negotiables God expects us to present to our kids as the only option for life and godliness. So, if we're going to rear them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, if we're going to talk about the things of God when we're rising and walking and sitting and lying down, then shouldn't we be doing it in a way that convinces our kids they actually need this information?

I think so. And so does God. That's why the writers of the scriptures weren't just providing us information. They were urging and explaining, all with the hopes that we would believe and act on what they were teaching us.

One of the best examples of this is John 20, 30 -31. Many other signs Jesus did in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

John absolutely wanted to convince us the things of which he testified were true and worthy of life-altering change. But before we dive any deeper into this process, it's really important that I remind you of our current initiative.

We're trying to raise more annual support by September of 2026. That will be our 10th anniversary of podcasting, and we're praying that our nonprofit can finally become financially sustainable. You can visit truthloveparent .com forward slash donate to learn more, but we're hoping that you'll partner with us to equip families all over the globe to better worship and glorify.

God.

Why Children Do What They Do

It may be $10 or $20 or even $100 a month. We're not really asking much, but when a bunch of God's people come together and give, we'll be able to teach more people, create more content, and counsel more families in more persuasive ways.

So, please visit truthloveparent .com forward slash donate to learn more. All right, why do your kids do what they do? Well, they do what they do and say what they say and feel what they feel because they want what they want, and they want what they want because they believe what they believe about God, His Word, and themselves.

God boils this truth down and illustrates the negative reality of it in Proverbs 16 2 and 25. Proverbs 16 2 says, all the ways of a man are pure in his own sight. Yahweh weighs the motives. And Proverbs 16 25 tells us, there is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.

We did a whole episode all about what happens when your family does what's right in its own eyes. Because when we're truly convinced of something, for the good or for the bad, it will direct the course of our lives.

The point I'm making is that your kids are absolutely convinced they are right. They believe their way is pure. It seems totally right to them. But here we are trying to convince them that something else is better.

They're convinced they're right, but we're telling them that something that looks wrong to them is better than what they think is best. Faced with this extremely difficult task, there are two not-so-great ways most parents approach their calling, and one we all need to start using more.

Don't Leave Children to Figure It Out on Their Own

Number one, leave your child to figure it out on their own. These parents will say things like, since there's no way I'm going to convince them, I'll just trust they'll come to the truth in their own time and way.

I have family members who take this approach to talking to their kids about God. They don't want to quote-unquote force God on them, so they're just sitting back and hoping their kids somehow get it by osmosis.

Of course, if I'm being honest, those particular family members don't really have a very good understanding of who God is to begin with. But this is not the way. In Proverbs 29, 15, the Lord teaches, The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother.

Whether it's by your help or the assistance of someone else, no one comes to God on their.

Own.

We all need to be persuaded by someone. The Holy Spirit is pleased to use God's people to be salt and light in the world, to bring people to Him, to convince them, through His truth and His power, that they need Him.

Left to themselves, children will only bring shame to a godly mother and father. This is why Proverbs 22, 6 commands, Train up a child according to his way. Even when he's old, he will not depart from it.

Episode 94 is an oft-overlooked standalone episode, but it's so important. It's called, How to Train Your Child to Stay with God. And it picks apart this verse to help us better understand God's plan for how we are to train our kids.

The point is, they need to be convinced. They need to be persuaded so that they'll participate in the Christ-honoring training process. Biblical parenting is never passive. It's an active endeavor. Therefore, we should never leave our kids to just figure these important truths out on their own.

They need to be shown from the pages of Scripture who God is and how He would have us worship Him with our lives. So, because of this reality, other parents will, number two, tell your kids how to live.

Why Mere Authority Structures Fail

Even though I don't agree with him on all of his biblical takes, Nick Freitas is a man I respect. I recently saw a video in which he discussed how a lot of Christian parents think their parenting style is teaching their kids biblical truth, when in actuality, it's just creating an authority structure in which the kids are to live.

And it's when that authority structure changes, when the child goes to college or on the job or in a marriage, that the parents realize their kids were never really convinced by all the telling and legislating and authority structures they created.

How do the parents figure this out? Well, the kids end up following the new authority in their lives, even though it contradicted the authority structure they had growing up. Since the child had no real foundation of truth they believed, if the next authority sounds convincing, why wouldn't they just go along with them?

The New Testament illustrates many individuals who are easily swayed by falsehood. They're described as having no foundation, being blind, or being like a leaf on the wind. They go wherever the wind blows.

But a person has to be convinced in order to stand against the raging tide or go against the current. They have to be so persuaded that they will sprint hard against the crowd when the entire world is running the opposite direction.

They have to firmly believe the truth for them to want to fight the daily spiritual warfare raging right now in your home. If they are not convinced, if they simply exist within the current authority context because they want to avoid consequences or conflict, then they're going to continue living just like that when they get out into the world.

They're going to continue to want to avoid consequences and conflict, only now they'll have to go along with worldly belief systems in order to do so. This is exactly what happened with the children of Israel.

They had a theocratic government, but the influence of the nations around them pulled them away from God. The same thing happened to Judas. So, don't leave your child to figure it out on their own. But also, don't just tell them what to do.

Telling isn't convincing. Teaching isn't inherently persuasive. I've been a professional educator since 2007, and I've studied education since the 80s. We're fools if we think that just because I have a nice personality and stand up in a room and speak truth that people will absolutely be convinced of that truth.

Some will. The soft hearts will, but the hard hearts can't even understand what they're hearing. The rocky hearts will accept the authoritative construct until they don't have to anymore, and the thorny hearts will embrace it until they don't want to anymore.

Listen, there is a place for lecturing, haranguing, soapboxing, teaching, and other forms of knowledge impartation, but it's not good enough if it stops there. As we learned in the biblical parenting essentials, it's not until our kids actually participate in our teaching that we can move from the teaching and reproof stages of parenting into the correction and training stages.

But our kids are absolutely not going to participate in those stages unless they are convinced it's best. They're only going to do what's right in their own eyes. Now, even though that phrase is most often used to describe destructive thinking, what if your children were convinced that God's way was best?

What if following Him was right in their eyes? And that's what we need to do. We need to, number three, help your children choose truth for themselves. Now, please notice that despite my call to be more convincing, this third point wasn't simply, we need to convince our kids.

I didn't say that for a couple reasons. First is that we don't have any ultimate control over whether or not they choose to believe what we present them. Even if we're the most convincing person on the planet, Jesus was perfect.

He performed miracles. There was no human more convincing than Jesus, but so many weren't convinced. The second reason is that we need to understand how to be more convincing. We don't simply need an inspirational call to be more convincing.

We need steps. So, generally speaking, we need to focus our parenting toward helping our kids choose truth for themselves instead of just telling them truth. Imagine if Proverbs 16, 2 said, all the ways of your child are pure in his sight because Yahweh is his motivation.

And imagine if Proverbs 16, 25 read, there is a way which seems right to your child because its end is the way of life. Instead of waiting for your spiritually dead or immature child to wander into the truth of God and hopefully embrace it for their own, instead of constraining your child to outwardly walk God's path even though they don't truly believe it, how about we help our children to know, understand, embrace, and choose it for themselves?

And listen, before I go on, I know that many Christian parents, probably all of us, believe that what we're already doing is exactly what I just described. We believe that by teaching and reproving our kids, we're helping them choose God for themselves.

But as was said before, far too often, our kids are simply going along with what we told them because they want to avoid the consequences or they're rocky-hearted and merely mentally assent to the lifestyle.

And I know this kind of convincing parenting is daunting. It requires more of us. It'll take more time. It will sometimes feel like we have less control of the outcome, which is honestly fine because we never really had any control at all in the first place.

So, let's consider one Old Testament and one New Testament version of this kind of parenting and end our time with a four-step formula for being more convincing by the grace.

Eli, Samuel, and Persuasion in Training

Of God.

In 1 Samuel 3, 8 through 10, we learn about young Samuel hearing the voice of the Lord at night. Samuel went to Eli thinking that Eli had called him. Eli sent him back to bed because Eli had no idea about what Samuel was talking.

After the third time this happened, though, Eli, likely more awake now than he was the first two times, finally discerned that God was calling Samuel and said, Go lie down, and it shall be if he calls you, then you shall say, speak, Yahweh, for your slave is listening.

Eli didn't choose to handle the situation himself. He didn't even have to be there with Samuel. He simply instructed Samuel and went back to sleep. In the short letter to Philemon, we read how Paul was encouraging Philemon to forgive and restore his former slave Onesimus.

In verse 8, we read, Therefore, though I have much boldness in Christ to command you to do what is proper, yet for love's sake I rather plead with you. In verses 12 through 14, we read, I have sent him back to you in person, that is, my very heart, whom I intended to keep with me, so that on your behalf he might minister to me in chains for the gospel.

But without your consent I did not want to do anything, so that your goodness would not be in effect by compulsion, but voluntary. And in verse 21, we read, Having confidence in your obedience, I write to you, since I know that you will do even more than what I say.

At least three times in this short letter, we hear Paul saying, You know what's right. I don't need to tell you what to do, though I could. I trust you'll choose to please the Lord. Now, again, it's easy to think that our usual teaching and reproof is setting our child up for success, and I want to be fair, sometimes it is.

By God's grace and the prompting of the Holy Spirit, our children truly submit to the teaching and reproof with genuine love for God. But even in those cases, they will mature faster and become stronger as we follow these steps.

Know the Truth, Teach the Truth, and Connect It to Life

Letter A, we need to know the truth. We can't convince our children of God's truth if we don't know it or understand it correctly ourselves. And I need to say this clearly, none of us know and understand as much as we think.

All of us need to continue learning and understanding and believing and studying and growing. Too many parents think they're okay or they know enough, but none of us do. We absolutely must continue learning so we can teach better and be more convincing.

Letter B, we need to teach our children what is right and wrong and reprove them when they do wrong. We need to teach accurately, we need to teach passionately, we need to teach consistently, and we need to teach persuasively.

In addition, we absolutely need to model the teaching of our mouths in our daily lives because do as I say, not as I do, is wicked and dangerous. Of course, we have so many episodes about teaching and reproving, including the Biblical Parenting Essentials series.

It's going to involve teaching their knowledge, teaching their understanding, and teaching their application. Now, don't be confused. I never suggested that we stop teaching and reproving. We simply need to do it differently, and those steps are next.

Letter C, ask your child to connect the current situation to God's will. This can be as simple as, so, we've decided that we're going to take our family vacation to the grandparents' house in Indiana.

Can you give me some reasons this may or may not glorify God? Now, the child isn't making the decision, but they will have to give at least one Biblical example of how the Lord might be pleased or displeased by this course of action or facets of it.

Another example may be, can you think of some Biblical principles or commands or character traits of God that support your current bedtime? Now, before I go on, you might be thinking, Aaron, I can't even begin to imagine anything the Bible says that would affect my child's bedtime.

Well, if you're feeling that way, trust me, I understand. However, since the Bible gives us everything we need for life and godliness, our being ill-prepared to connect God's word to our lives is evidence that there's more learning we need to do.

By the way, how can we teach our kids to make Christ-honoring choices for Christ-honoring reasons when we're making our decisions for any and every reason other than God? Moving on, you can also ask your child to connect God's truth to the family's media.

You can pause the movie to ask your child what God's word has to say about the scene you just watched. This is the spiritual equivalent of word problems in math. It invites the child to step away from mere verse memorization and see how the truths of scripture have to connect and impact our daily lives.

If your child presents a biblically accurate observation, you know they're growing wiser. If, however, they're off on their theology or application, you know they still need more teaching in this area or the spiritual life necessary to discern the scriptures in the first place.

Normally, these are the things we'd want to simply tell our kids. We might stop a movie to tell the kids that what is being portrayed there is wrong. Your kids may hear your admonishment, or not, and register it, or not, simply waiting for the movie to be back on.

But they weren't exercising their own spiritual muscles. It's like watching someone else lift weights. Boring and unproductive for me. And you can parent like this in literally any area. It can revolve around future choices, good choices, money choices, past choices, bad choices, relationship choices, hypothetical choices, and so many more.

Relinquish Appropriate Decisions as Children Mature

And when your kids have shown a pattern of knowing, understanding, trusting, and applying God's word accurately and consistently to life, letter D, give your child practice making their own Christ-honoring choices.

Now, listen carefully. Yes, I am suggesting that you stop making every single decision for your kids. I'm not saying that you won't make any of them. I'm simply saying that you need to stop making all of them.

Your kids absolutely need to make more and more decisions as soon as possible. They have to exercise this muscle before they're out from under your authority. Remember, we're trying to help them internalize God's will so that they'll pursue it.

It'll be right in their eyes, regardless of who their current authority is or what their influences expect of them. You cannot wait until they're 18 to say, well, okay, I'm now no longer going to make any of your decisions for you.

You have to do all of that yourself, even though you never have. This is really, that's hateful and dangerous. If they haven't had copious teaching and reproving and correcting and training and testing and practice making the right choices their whole life, they're absolutely going to fail because they don't know what they're doing.

Sure, by God's grace, some will flourish, but most won't. And I know this. I counsel the ones who don't and rarely hear about the ones who do. So, what does this kind of parenting sound like? Here's just one example.

I know you had a bad dream, but how does God want you to respond to it? Does he say in his word that you can't sleep unless you're in my bed? Does he give you any guidance for this decision? What do you think?

Listen, Aaron, I think you've finally gone too far. Do you really expect a child who's young enough to still want to sleep in my bed if they've had a bad dream to know what God has to say on the subject?

Well, if you don't know and you haven't taught them and you haven't given them opportunities to connect God's word to real life, well, then absolutely not. They won't be able to do this. However, I know for certain that children who've been taught and reproved and tested absolutely can make the mature decision when we relinquish it to them.

I've seen it happen over and over. Now, you might wonder what we need to do if they make the wrong or foolish decision. Well, it honestly depends on the situation. It may be something that we can safely let them fail in order for them to recognize the consequences of their bad choice.

Consequences are a very important part of the convincing process. But this will depend completely on the child, the decision, and the consequences of their actions. It's one thing to teach. It's another to be negligent.

But let's consider some examples for older children before we finish our time together. Does God want you to eat all of the food on your plate? How do you know? What does his word say? You're going to need to make a decision about how much time to allot for playing video games this week.

What would the Lord have you do and can you support it from the scripture? Would God be glorified by you starting this book series? How might you know for sure? What are the biblical commands and principles you have to consider before accepting or declining that job offer?

Do you honestly believe it will please the Lord for you to be romantically involved with that person? What does the Bible say about such relationships? When was the last time you asked your child a question like this?

I'm guessing if you're anything like I am, you've either never done it or it's been a.

While.

It's so much easier and faster to just tell our kids what to do. But though we might be setting up an appropriate expectation for behavior or creating a sound authoritative framework for their lives, we're not teaching our kids to understand the truth and apply it for themselves because they believe it to be right for themselves.

Eli could trust Samuel to make the right choice because he'd been teaching and observing and assessing Samuel, Samuel's whole life. Paul could confidently trust Philemon to make the right decision in regard to Onesimus because, and I guarantee you, this was not the first time Paul led Philemon to make the Christ-honoring decision or watched him choose to glorify God on his own.

Now, before we conclude, let me be clear. There are still going to be so many decisions you need to make for your kids. Which ones are they? You need to make the ones that failing to make correctly will irreparably hurt them physically or spiritually.

Or the ones that they absolutely are just positively going to make wrong and it's going to be bad. All the rest, you need to be turning over to them as soon as possible. In conclusion, if you want to convince your kids to follow the Lord, you need to do four things.

First, you need to know what it is to follow the Lord. Second, you need to teach your kids how to follow the Lord. But don't stop there. Third, give them opportunities to connect the truth of God to actual life.

And fourth, relinquish appropriate decision-making to them as soon as they've consistently shown they're able to connect God's word biblically to life. We need to know, teach, connect, and relinquish.

This process will be far more convincing than merely telling them what to do. And Lord willing, what seems right to our kids will be the truth they've seen and understood and put to use in their lives.

Please share this episode with your friends and email us at counselor at truthloveparent .com or leave a voicemail at 828 -423 -0894 if we can assist you in the amazing task that is your parenting. And then join us next time as we discuss how to be a courageous parent.

I'll see you then. Truth Love Parent is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you worship God through your parenting. So join us next time as we study God's word to learn how to parent our children for life and godliness.

And remember that TLP is a listener-supported ministry. You can visit truthloveparent .com forward slash donate to learn more.