Our children were in Lincoln last week for “Bright Lights,” a five-day summer school adventure. Aidan took a class on “Crime Scene Investigation” in which he learned how to collect clues, decipher codes, and keep a journal of observations. One day a policeman visited his class and taught him how to collect his own fingerprint.

The last thirty minutes of the final day is the “class presentation.” Parents join their kids in the classroom and their child walks them through all his projects from the week. With three children and only two parents, Jamie and I had to come up with a plan for supporting each of our children. We decided that Jamie would go to our daughters’ presentations and I’d go to Aidan’s.

Then I got a flat tire. I had run over a sharp piece of metal on the way to the school. When I’d parked the truck, I noticed a hissing noise coming from my right rear tire. Jamie went on to the girls’ program and I raced to a nearby auto repair shop.

The program began at 11:30, and I walked into Aidan’s room at 11:35. I’ll never forget the scene, or the look on his face. A room full of fathers and sons—each dad was sitting at a desk as his son excitedly exhibited one project after another—and there was Aidan, in the middle, standing by an empty desk. His eyes, giant blue bright lights, were fixed on the door, wide and anxious.

It doesn’t matter how old you are, feeling lonely is not fun; especially when it’s your dad’s presence you’re missing. One of my favorite passages in the Bible is Matthew 28:18-20. Jesus commissions His disciples, and then promises that they’ll never be alone. He says, “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

“I am with you always.” That God loves to be with His children and promises to never leave them is one of the strongest themes in the Scriptures. He made this promise to Joshua before His people moved into the Promise Land (Joshua 1:5). He made this promise to Israel through the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 43:2a). At the very end of the Bible, in Revelation 21:3, we’re given a picture of eternity, and one of the main aspects of the picture is that God will be with us: “He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”

When I walked through the classroom door, Aidan lit up inside. My presence with him meant EVERYTHING to him. I could see it in his eyes. It’s hard to explain the feeling, but it brought me such pleasure to know that by walking into the room and sitting next to my son took him from anxiety and longing to pleasure and relief.

What an awesome responsibility we have as moms and dads to teach our children about the power of the presence of a parent. I love it that one of God’s strategies for teaching us how to delight in the presence of Him as our Father is by giving us parents that will show up and enjoy being with us.

Moms & Dads: have you had any memorable moments with your children lately? Do your kids have a special way of showing you that their glad you’re with them?

Tired. Last one in the office. Need to get some work done to salvage my day.

There’s movement out my window.

Car. Man gets out. Chubby. Shuffling. Woman in driver seat stays.

I’ve seen this before.

I wish Pastor Scott was here. He knows what to do with these people.

Walk out front. Auto-smile.

“What can I do for you?”

He’s sweating, even though it’s a beautiful day.

I’ve seen him before. Not him him…but here it comes.

(driving from East Riverville to Midwestfactorytown…ex-wife blah blah blah…my adult kids blah blah blah …Crawford Motel blah blah blah …used to go to church blah blah blah …gonna start back up blah blah blah …just need some gas money blah blah blah …)

“I got some checks in the mail and I’m here to tithe.”

Come again?

“They were for $X.95 and $Y and $Z. How much is that?”

“Do you need me to help you figure it out?”

“Yes.”

“Could you give me those numbers again?”

“They were for $X.95 and $Y and $Z.”

“Well…here’s the total…did you want to give 10%?”

“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to give?”

(lump)

“God loves a cheerful giver. You need to give what you’re happy to give. I think you’ve honored him by what you’re doing.”

(slightly bewildered look)

“But if you’d like to give 10% that would be great.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s __ dollars and forty-nine cents”

Slowly counts out the bills. He’s over by 51 cents.

“Do you want change?”

“I’ll just give the extra…is that okay with God?”

(lump)

“He just wants your heart.”

(pause)

Shuffles away.

“Thanks.”

And not just for the money.

I’ve known wonderful parents who have prayed and prayed while doing their best to carry out Proverbs 22:6—“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it”—only to have a child leave home and abandon his faith.

I’ve also known parents who didn’t provide any spiritual direction, and yet their child grew up to have a deep, vibrant faith in Christ. That doesn’t seem to “add up,” does it?

One brokenhearted father reiterated this idea to me recently when he said, “Why doesn’t Proverbs 22:6 work?”

“Work” is formula language. It reveals that inside, whether we vocalize it or not, we believe that life with God is linear. If we do this, this, and this . . . then God does this.

To script it out in equation language, it would look something like this: If I pray + read my Scriptures + discipline + read this latest parenting book and follow its advice = then God will give me a child who is well behaved and faithful.

This formulaic outlook works if you’re doing long division or paying taxes, but it breaks down when you’re relating to God.

Or parenting.

Why does it break down? In part because certain things that God says in His Word are promises (i.e. “I will never leave you nor forsake you), and other things He says are proverbs (i.e. Proverbs 22:6).

A promise is something you can take to the bank. A proverb is something that is often circumstantially relevant, and proves to be true much of the time. When we try to take a proverb to the bank . . . well, sometimes the bank refuses to make good on it.

Formulaic thinking also breaks down because God is simply an untamable, sometimes unpredictable being. He often allows earthly “blessing,” or good things, to happen to evil people (cf. Matt. 5:45, Psalm 73). And He often leads His children whom He deeply loves through horrific pain and loss (cf. John 15:20, 2 Cor. 6:3-10).

Why does God do these things? That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?

What does this mean for our parenting?

It means that we need to keep our eyes on the right goal. If our goal is to work the formula in order to produce good, well-behaved, faithful children . . . our goal is out of our hands.

The Lord has a mysterious, perfect plan for our son’s life, and it likely won’t look anything like what we expect. Expecting a certain product, or outcome, as a result of our parenting is setting us up for pain and discouragement.

However, if we make our goal as parents to walk with the Lord in faithfulness and obedience, enjoying His grace each day, then our goal is on solid ground.

Making faithfulness, and not working the formula, our goal prepares us for whatever God does in our child’s life. If our son grows up to walk with God, we’ll see it as a gift; we didn’t earn it or produce it.

But if our child ends up not walking with God, we will see it as a mysterious, albeit difficult, work of God . . . but we won’t have to reconcile the idea that either I failed or God failed.

Nobody failed . . . it’s just the formula wasn’t there in the first place.

Do you know where ‘lyss’ is?

No, isn’t she with you?

The search was on. Incidentally, Faith (age five) was missing too. Neighbor Caleb found her quickly where we figured she would be. Inside his unlocked house. With nobody else inside. For Faith it’s always su casa mi casa.

But Alyssa (age four) wasn’t with her. Double-check the yard. And the house. And the neighbor’s yard.  Nope. Nope. Nope.

Now it’s serious. Toss up a quick prayer. Make a plan. Last year about this time she flew the coup and someone found her a block south.

Shirtless.

In the middle of 15^th Avenue.

Caleb…could you go north? Carol, knock on doors. I’m going to drive around and look. Kids, I’m going to play a DVD. DON’T LEAVE. Are you sure you don’t know where she is?

No Dad. What movie do we get to watch?

I get in the pickup. I scan the neighborhood. How worried should I be? Stranger danger? Not likely, although if kids were kidnapping targets on sheer cuteness she would have been snatched a long time ago. Has she wandered into someone’s unlocked house? Decent chance. And if someone has a TV and left a bag of candy laying around she’s going to be there for a while. Pedal in front of a moving car? Good chance. She’s only about two feet high on her bike.

I begin to plot out in my mind what her “consequence” will be when I find her. Clearly, this cannot keep happening.

So I drive a block south. Not panicking. Not relaxed either. No sign. No sign. No sign. She cannot keep doing this. Wish I had brought the spoon with me so I could do it as soon as I find her.

Turn right. Scanning. Scanning. Scanning. Still no sign. She cannot keep doing this. End of the block. Look left. Nope. Straight ahead. Nope. Look right. Flinch. Looks like a mom walking while her child bike-rides. Or possibly my daughter.

I drive that way. The little bike rider comes into focus. She looks very familiar. She HAS to learn her lesson. Drive a little closer. It’s her.

The “mom” is holding a tennis racket.

“We were playing tennis and she rode past the court (three blocks from the house). I was trying to help her find home and just about to call the sheriff.”

I tell her I’m the dad and thank her.

The fugitive looks up at me from her bike. (lavender…butterflies…tiny training wheels).  Her big brown eyes seem a little bigger and a little browner than usual. Dark brown hair falling out from under that oversized purple helmet. Shirt soaked from riding through a sprinkler.

Angry-intense-focused-disciplinarian-daddy’s blood pressure drops. Muscles relax. Breathing slows. Back de-arches.

I couldn’t find you and mommy!

Lyss, we couldn’t find you! We didn’t know where you were!

I didn’t know where YOU were!

That’s because you rode away!

I pick her up to eye level. She doesn’t know what to expect. She looks like she knows what she should have coming. I decide that’s enough of a consequence. I put her in the back seat, then lift her bike into the back of the pickup.

I dial mommy.

Found her.

We head home.

Luke 15:3-7 (ESV) So he told them this parable: “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

To read the rest of this blog…visit Heritage Builders at this link.

Recently I have been reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to my 11 year old daughter.  Middle Earth has swallowed her whole.  I read aloud, and as we follow Frodo and Sam through the perils and triumphs, the peaks and valleys of that imaginary land, my daughter paces, she snarls, she groans, she bangs her fist on furniture, she shouts and rails at orcs and trolls and evil wizards who have the audacity to threaten her newfound friends in the fellowship of the ring.

More than once, people have come by our house and interrupted our reading at a particularly dramatic moment, and she’s had to flee upstairs to avoid being seen in her state of acute distress.

We are now 950 pages into the book.  I can testify that Tolkien likes words.  At times I am tempted to turn two pages at once, to skip lengthy descriptions of the flora or fauna of Middle Earth.  She catches me every time.  “Wait a minute dad, what just happened to Legolas – I thought he was running through the woods just now? How did we suddenly jump to the cave trolls?”  ….Ummm… maybe the story will come back to that scene in a little bit… “Stop it dad, you’re skipping pages again!”

I am constantly amazed at the extent to which she absorbs the detail, and the way in which she gives herself over wholly to this imaginary world.

Simultaneously, I have been reading a wonderful biography to myself in the evenings: The Narnian, by Alan Jacobs, professor of English at Wheaton College.  The book tells the life story of CS Lewis from a unique angle, through the prism of his Chronicles of Narnia.  Jacob’s book also speaks much of the unique friendship between Lewis and Tolkien, and describes their weekly meetings at a local Oxford pub where they read their stories aloud to one another over adult beverages.

Both men had a keen sense of the power of fairy tales and imaginative stories to fire the human imagination, for children and adults alike.  And both men viewed epic stories as a way of quickening the imagination, and in a sense, awakening us to the larger cosmic story that we are all caught up in, but so easily forget.

We find ourselves in a world that slowly but surely crushes imagination; where good guys frequently finish last, and evil so often seems to prevail, and we are relentlessly assaulted with reductionist and naturalistic explanations for every wonder that we see.

Lewis realized that the story of a frog turning into a prince or a pumpkin turning into a stagecoach is hardly more astounding than a world where a homely green caterpillar turn into a butterfly, where a smooth, cool round egg turns into a fluffy chick; where a crusty, academic rationalist turns into a portly, laughing, lover of children’s stories.

Lewis’ treasured a childhood love for fairly tale and myth.  But during his teens and twenties, he tried to kill off this part of himself during a methodical pursuit of atheism.  He found, however, that he was strangling the most vital and beautiful part of his life.  He eventually reached a crisis, and the imaginative stories and longing they evoked gradually led Lewis back to his earlier sense of childhood wonder. The epic stories chipped away at the naturalistic box in which Lewis had caged himself, a box that he found to be cramped and sterile with air that was barely breathable.  In that box, he found that he could hardly live or move or have his being.

Eventually, God used these stories to usher Lewis out of that box, and into a much larger room, into faith in God Himself.  Lewis discovered a God who is behind all wonder, and whose existence is the only thing that can account for the everyday miracles we see around us, a world in which our hearts are full of longing and desire and imagination.

——–

During WWII, several children came from London to live with Lewis and his brother in their country home, in order to avoid the German bombing campaigns over England’s cities.  Lewis was struck by the children’s inability to entertain themselves and sustain any kind of imaginative life.  He wrote a letter to a friend, in which he described reading the Peter Rabbit tales to one of the children every evening: “Would you believe it, the child has never been read to nor told a story in his life? Not that he is neglected. He has a whole time nanny, an insufferable scientific woman with a diploma from some Tom-fool nursing college; the boy has a hundred patent foods, is spoiled, and far too expensively dressed: but his poor imagination has been left without any natural food at all.  I often wonder what the present generation children will grow up like.  They have been treated with so much indulgence yet so little affection, with so much science and so little mother-wit.  Not a fairy tale nor a nursery rhyme.”

My daughter tells me that when we finish the book, we need to start over again at the beginning.  I think I’m going to need a break. But we will keep reading good stories, and I hope that neither of us will ever out-grow them.

My son asked me this question as we were driving away from church. He was genuinely confused. I’m the senior pastor, the one who stands up front and teaches others on Sunday. To a seven-year-old boy, that makes his dad “the boss.”

So when Aidan overheard me say to one of our elders, “I’ll go along with whatever the elders decide. I’m happy to follow your decision,” he scratched his head. Dad submits to the elders?

That led to a conversation on authority. Some of our best conversations happen while driving home in the truck, our eyes connected through the rear view mirror. Aidan asked several questions about who my authority figures are, and what it looks like for me, a leader, to submit to them. I could see that this idea was new and fascinating to him. I could also see his little wheels turning as he was constructing his own paradigm for authority and submission.

That moment impressed me that one of the most important visions dads impart to sons has to do with their posture toward authority. Our sons are watching us, asking questions such as:

Who does my dad need to follow or answer to?

Is authority a good thing?

Does he agree with what his authority figures are asking of him?

When he doesn’t agree, does he submit with a willing, gentle spirit or does he fight back actively or passively?

These are the issues our sons are piecing together as they study us. They’re watching to see if we buck or bow.

But they’re doing much more than watching. They’re forming little paradigms that they’ll build on and work from the rest of their lives. And here’s the scoop: how our sons orient themselves to the authority figures in their lives will largely determine whether they go through life in peace, or in angst.

The Apostle Paul said, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. (Romans 13:1-2)”

This can be a hard command to follow. People in Washington drive me crazy sometimes. I don’t always agree with my political or spiritual leaders. The police and military and other governing agencies don’t always get it right. Like you, I’m tested all the time with the issue of following my leaders with a good heart. Yet, Romans 13 reminds me that the stakes are high. Leer-jet-cruising-altitude-high. If I’m not submitting well to my leaders, then I’m not submitting well to God. And when I don’t submit to God, all the wheels start to fall off.

And as this happens, I can be certain my son is watching. He sees it all. He hears it all. Tiny ears hear us when we bash the President. They’re tuned into our words when we grumble about our bosses. They’re listening when we speak poorly of our pastors, elders, or other spiritual leaders. Our sons hear us, record what we say, and then set their own compass.

I’m working on this. It’s one of my front-line-issues. It’s a challenge, but I’m trying to pay attention to how I speak about my authority figures when my children are around. More than that, I’m trying to determine if my heart is right toward them, and then when I see that it’s not, ask for help from the One who gave them to me.

Questions: How about you? Who are your authority figures? Are they leading you well? How do you handle it when they don’t?

My son stayed by my side and looked down at the kitchen tile. “Aren’t you going to watch the movie with your sisters, Bud?”

Here’s what Aidan said to me: “A friend told me that there were a lot of girls wearing bikinis in that movie, and I don’t want to have to keep turning my eyes away. Is it ok if I don’t watch it, Dad?”

It’s difficult to describe how I felt in that moment. I’ve prayed for Aidan for eight years that he would become a man of conviction. I’ve especially prayed for his heart in this area of sexual purity. I’m painfully aware of how many men struggle and fail in this soul-diminishing category today. My son’s statement gave me hope that God was answering my prayers.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not in any way pronouncing judgment on the movie Soul Surfer. I haven’t seen the movie, but from what I’ve heard it seems to make several good statements. My point isn’t to debate whether my son’s opinion of the movie is right or wrong—my point is that seeing convictions in our sons’ hearts is a beautiful thing.

I thought of Romans 14:5 when Aidan asked me Is it ok if I don’t watch it, Dad? Paul writes, “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.” He is teaching us in that verse that God directs us through our convictions and conscience. Then, later in the passage, he warns us about pushing someone to do something that would violate the other person’s conscience. He writes, “Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble…” (Romans 14:20a).

This verse applies to us as dads—it isn’t for us to make our sons stumble. I knelt down and looked Aidan in the eyes and said, “Buddy, I cannot tell you how proud I am of you for listening to God on this. If He’s put it on your heart not to watch that movie, then you shouldn’t watch it.”

We found another movie that Aidan wanted to watch and he watched it on my computer while his sisters watched Soul Surfer in the other room.

My son and I are entering new territory. As his dad, I want to get to know his convictions and then support him in them. There sure may be times when I need to challenge them with truth, making sure he has a full understanding of the issue, but in the end, I need to support his convictions.

Question: Dads, has your son expressed convictions? Tell us about a time when you admired your son for a decision he made.