Heart to Heart {Supernatural Parenting}
Lesson 3- Heart to Heart
Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. Proverbs 4:23 (NLT)
A teenage girl stared at me with vacant eyes from her seat on my couch.
“Why do you keep doing this?” I asked softly. She and I had repeatedly been having the same conversation over the past few weeks where she told me about how guilty she felt about the decisions that she had been making. But despite her deep guilt and shame, she continued to do the same thing over and over.
“I don’t know,” she started, “I guess it is just who I am.”
She stared down at her feet with a forlorn look.
A barely audible whisper spoke, “My dad said I am just a nobody. And the reason I do stupid things is because I am stupid.”
The truth was out. And suddenly I understood why I felt like a broken record with this young girl. It didn’t matter how many times I told her about what God or I thought about her, there was a deep rooted belief that none of it could be true because of what she had been told her entire life.
I took a breath and began at the beginning once again. “Yes, it is true that you have made some pretty bad decisions. You have a sin nature, just like me…just like every other human being. It compels us to do things that we know we shouldn’t and sometimes don’t even really want to do. But it is also true that God loves you for who you are and not what you have or haven’t done. God’s love for you is beyond what you can even begin to comprehend and it is what drove Him to become a man, Jesus Christ, and offer Himself to die the death you deserved so that you could have life.”
Tears fell to the ground from beneath the hair that was covering her face. Her body began to heave with sobs as the barriers to her heart came down and allowed the love of God in.
Sadly, this teenage girl is not an unusual case. Countless young people are carrying deep hurt and pain hidden just beyond sight in the recesses of their hearts. And having the opportunity to minister to them has taught me an important lesson in my own parenting- the heart is a sacred place.
It takes a great amount of trust for someone to be vulnerable enough to allow you into the inner workings of their heart. And it isn’t a trust you will keep for long if you don’t walk carefully in that place.
The heart of your child is invisible. Just like you have to learn how to get quiet and hear God’s voice, you have to learn how to interact with the heart of your child without being able to visibly see it. You have to learn to speak the language that communicates from your heart to theirs.
I spent many weeks, even months, with that teenage girl before she would open up her heart to me. A lot of listening was invested before she knew I would hear her. She had to believe that I would love her unconditionally before she was ready to tell me what she had been hiding in her heart. There had to be a place of trust before she was willing to be vulnerable.
When your child is young, they naturally trust you with their hearts. They tell you their fears, their desires, the things that bring them great joy. But if you do not treat that place with great care, your child will begin to hide their heart from you. It doesn’t matter whether your child follows all the rules or breaks all the rules, as soon as your child’s heart becomes off limits to you then something needs to change in your parenting. You can’t parent your child towards Christ if you don’t have access to their heart.
How do you cultivate a place of trust with your child’s heart?
Listen intently
Do you hear what your child is saying? I am not talking about the words coming out of their mouth. Do you hear them when they are asking you to pay attention to them, to make them feel valued and loved?
Are you listening when they need you to affirm them and let them know that you love them and believe in them regardless of whether they succeed or fail? Regardless of whether they made a good choice or a bad one? I am not talking about condoning wrong actions. But I am talking about unconditional love, the same kind of love that God gives you…free, without strings attached.
Correct the heart
Discipline in your child’s life should never be to just manage behavior but, rather, to address the issues of the heart. If you discipline your child for anything other than heart issues, you open the door for bitterness and resentment in their heart towards you. Children do childish things- they break things, they make mistakes, their curiosity gets them into jams. Your child doesn’t need discipline for being childish, they need instruction.
But your child does need you to discipline them for issues of their heart- disobedience, lying, stealing. When you don’t ignore the matters of the heart, but invest time into addressing them it tells your child that their heart is valuable to you.
Engage with the heart
It isn’t a question of whether or not your child will open up to you, but how you will respond when they do. A child naturally wants to trust their parents with their heart. So, they will open the door and begin to share about their feelings, their dreams, and their fears. What will you do when they give you that privileged place? Will you brush them off? Will you make light of their emotions? Will you sharply correct what you perceive to be weakness in them?
Or will you communicate to them that their relationship with you is a safe place to be vulnerable.
If your child is young and their heart open to you then treat their vulnerability with great care. Linger over bedtime conversations. Make time to give them your undivided attention during the day. Ask them questions that tell them you are interested.
For some of you, your children have closed their hearts to you already. And I encourage you to make it a matter of focused prayer. Let the Holy Spirit show you areas that you can earn their trust and vulnerability again.
Remember, you have committed to a divine partnership inside of your parenting. You and God can make impossible situations turn into supernatural restoration.
You might have grown up in a home where you learned to hide your heart from your parents and have never learned a different way of living. And now you are watching your child retreat into himself just like you once did.
Be courageous enough to take that first step and open up to another person about your parenting. Pave the way for your child to follow after you in building meaningful relationships. Ask someone that you can trust to pray with you and start breaking some new ground as you pray in faith that your child will follow in your footsteps.
If you need prayer or have questions, leave me a comment or send me an email. I am believing and praying for supernatural breakthrough in your parenting as we walk through these lessons together. And if you are a seasoned parent who has already raised your children, feel free to share some of the things that you have learned along the way as they pertain to the topic we are discussing.
Photo Credit: Jam-0111 (Creative Commons)
Related posts:
- The Heart of the Issue {Supernatural Parenting}
- Supernatural Parenting Series
- Enemies of the Heart by Andy Stanley
4 Responses to “Heart to Heart {Supernatural Parenting}”
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My name is Jamie. And this site is a gathering point for women who are passionate about creating "home" in their families and communities.
Home is unconditional love, genuine kindness, unwavering encouragement and sometimes even a little brutal honesty. The home that we are looking to create is governed by Christ and established by His Word, the Bible. It is a home that embraces all as they are, but doesn't settle for anything less than everything that God has in His heart for every person who graces the door frame.
Really enjoying this series Jamie!!! Have a blessed week!
thanks so much for this word it has opened my eyes to a new way of thinking and now i need to aply to my life
Wow! That was good. I want to believe I listen eventhough I had great parents, I do remember them shutting my hope, dreams and ambitions down; not to hurt or discouragement me but because they did not understand. It does take me back and makes me stop and LISTEN to my kids. I am not perfect forsure. I do find myself ignoring them when I’m texting or reading something on the computer and I get the, “mom, quit texting!” REMINDER.
Lovin’ this series. BTW-you should consider writing a book. I was on the edge of my seat at the beginning of the lesson..:)
Thanks, Tricia! I am enjoying writing these lessons. They are challenging me as I dig down deep into what I see inside of the Bible about parenting. And it encourages me so much to know that you are finding them both helpful and uplifting!