Transcription
Teach your kids to process a difficult situation, a traumatic situation with God and let God interpret the situation for them. That's the game changer. It's living in the mystery of the kingdom of God in the connected world view in your true identity.
A lot of you have written in or or emailed in and asked questions about kids like how do you how do you pray with your kids? How do kids understand identity? And and it's a great question and it's obviously a really important question and we have adult kids and we have grandkids. So this is a big deal and something that you know we really need to think about.
Yeah. And I think traditionally um kids have a natural capacity to be up in their imagination. There are studies that show that up until about age six or seven that children can't even distinguish between imagination and reality, dreams and reality. And that we actually train that out of children. and this high capacity to dream and be creative. And we get them in school and we train it right out of them. And this is so crucial for them to be able to image forth the unseen real and perceive the communication of God in their spirit through their imagination.
So the younger that we start with children, teaching them how much God cherishes them and teaching them how to perceive that communication. And I use that language because we always say listening prayer, hearing from God. But God uses all of our senses to communicate with us. Sometimes it's a feeling. Sometimes it's an image or a vision. Sometimes it's what we hear. Sometimes it's what we read. Sometimes it's music. And so we don't want to hinder how a child might perceive because we say, "What did God say?" And so it's more a perception. And so just even in your own life, be aware of that.
But the absolute best way to teach this to your children, the number one way is that you receive it for yourself because you are modeling to your children what life is like. And they will do more what you do rather than more that you teach them. They become who you are and who you are becoming more than what you teach them or even what you tell them to do. They're going to be watching you, observing you without you even even know without they don't even know it is what I'm trying to say. It's just naturally how life works, how God God created us.
So the more you work on your capacity to receive from God, remember Jesus came to serve us, he came to serve us. He says to the Samaritan woman, he says, "If you knew the gift of God that was standing before you, you would ask me for a drink and then out of you will flow rivers of living water, fountains of living water." And so the more you are receiving from God, the more your children will learn to receive from God. We have to get out of this guilt, unworthy mentality that we have to serve God. We have to serve God. We serve God out of an overflow of allowing him to serve us.
And so we have this great resource at Identity Exchange and it's called the Daily Affirmation Prayer. It's free. You can go to the website and um it's there under free resources and just at the end of that prayer, it's just a simple prayer that you can recite every day. It takes five minutes and again it's building that neural pathway and you can simplify it and do it with your kids. Remember your brain works on repetition. So if you're repeating negative things, bad things, unhealthy things, you're building a neural pathway that keeps you in this cycle of fear and anxiety. But if you're repeating what's good, what's pure, what's lovely, if you're engaging in Romans 2, stop conforming to the old patterns and you're doing it with your children, the more their capacity to be able to trust God and receive from God is going to expand.
And so I highly encourage you to go to identity exchange.com, get that daily affirmation prayer, and do it with your children every day. It's just stating truths about who God is and who you are in relation to him. And that the at the very end there's just a beautiful listening prayer. God, what do you want me to know today about the truth of living in my identity? And then listen and do it with your children. You can reframe it so it's more simple, the actual affirmations. And then what did you sense? What did you sense? Did you see a picture? Did you feel a feeling? And don't make it a big deal. Just talk about it. So that's one way. But the more you're doing it for yourself and receiving.
And I would say number two really is talking about your own transformation. Don't keep it a secret. You know, there's this fabulous prayer. It's the foundational prayer for the Jewish people in Deuteronomy chapter 6. Here, O Israel, love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your might, all your strength. It begins with that word hear. And it's not like hear ye, hear ye. It is hear e a r. It's called the shama, which means to listen with deep understanding in the original language in Hebrew. And so as that prayer goes along, it says, talk about what you're hearing. Talk about it as you walk along the way. Teach it to your children. And so make your own experience of transformation, of course, at a level they can understand just the normal part of your day and your conversation with your children.
Yeah. And if you're and if you're I love that it's it is a part of our just normal life. It's organic. And when you keep separating it out like it's this other thing different from you know normal life it it it it it u fractures how your kids think about things. Oh there's the way to think about this and then we think about God over here and then we think about um other things and this is just no it's all it's all connected and it's unified.
Jamie and I always say that we tend to separate our life into like pieces of a pie. We have church life over here and then we have some ministry we do is another slice of slice of the pie and maybe our work life is another slice and our oh let's work on listening prayer that's another slice no this is the whole slice of the pie this is life in the kingdom is the entire slice of the pie living fully connected to God in your true identity is the whole pie. It's not one slice.
And so, and I think when you I I know from our growing up in our kids and doing like family devotions or something like that, it's so funny how we would make like, okay, it's time for family devotions. And it's like this interruption to life, like, okay, now we're going to do this family devotion. And for our kids, that was not the way to do it. Just for ours, but go ahead and say it. who was the first one to leave the table. Donald was always the first one out of the family devotion. Um so and and it wasn't it who always did it right after dinner and I couldn't stand the mess on the table. I had to clean up. Yeah. So um so we had mass mutiny on our family devotions.
But really what it's it's I didn't ask God like what's the best thing for our kids? I I never even thought about that. And we have three sons and they're all different. So what's the best for this one is different than this one. And then they're ve we all know if you have kids they're different. And so you to have just these blanket ways of trying to do this stuff. It's just normal life everyday life with each kid. And then when you're reading the scriptures with them I think it's really beautiful is to in is to say read the stories with them is like asking like why was Abraham afraid here? Have you ever been afraid like this? Like these kinds of questions of things that they could apply directly to their their daily life. um or or why did these people think they weren't good enough in the story? Do you ever think you're not good enough? Do you And that just so that it's like part of like, oh yeah, this is like this these scriptures are about my own life all the time. It's not like the Bible story again that it allows them to separate it out as something different than what they're going through and that's the Bible and that's different. It's it's all part of the same thing. and and so that these stories come back to mind.
But even as you're saying, even more than that is like when we when we're talking to people like, "Oh, my dad was an alcoholic and the effect it had on their life or or you know, my parents were not emotionally present." Those that's not parents planning things. That's just them living their life out in front of their kids and it has long-term effect. So in the same way, even more powerfully is like, "Yeah, I watched my dad walk through fear. I watched my parents um talk about money and how money is not the main thing and how to be generous and I watched them do it. I didn't hear them talk about it. I watched them do it. For me growing up, I can remember being downstairs in my room with my brother listening to my parents at night argue about money and to to the point of tears and loud words. And when you're young and you're hearing like, "Wow, money must be really important and really scary, like that's what we're hear." And then on Sunday we're in church, you know, like trust God and but that's that wasn't the reality of the world we were in. So letting your kids tell them tell the truth in front of them.
And one thing our kids always say to us is that they watched us transform and realize we're wrong about some things and adjust to believe the new thing. How they got to watch like we were constantly in this flux of learning and understanding. It wasn't just we know this is the way to believe this which gave them flexibility in their own lives to to explore mystery and to challenge things um which was to their benefit.
Yeah. Another great thing you can do with your kids, you know, there's uh uh that fabulous verse, um it's in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So, it's pretty important. And it's where Jesus says, "Let the little children come to me. Do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." And I just think about bedtime with children, especially young children. Sometimes they're afraid at night because of the dark and their imagination runs away from them. They couple imagination with fear and that leads to anxiety. So why don't we take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. And remember that word obedience in the in the original language means to listen and respond. So let's take those thoughts and bring them to Jesus. take the children to Jesus.
And in a in another video, we've done the favorite place exercise. Do that with your children laying in bed at night. Don't rush that process or do it in the daytime when they're not afraid. Take them to their favorite place and take your time. Let them really experience and feel it. And then where's Jesus? And draw close to Jesus. And what does Jesus want them to know about about his love and their identity? And then when they become accustomed to that and it's normal for them, then at night when they feel afraid, okay, go to your favorite place. Where's Jesus? Jesus is with you. And then what does Jesus want you to know? You feel like there's monsters under the bed or whatever the issue is. What does Jesus want you to know about about that? because Jesus is stronger than anything and nothing can separate you from the love of Jesus. So you're you're building that neural pathway of safety and comfort. um and it overrides the fear pathway. Remember children, all humans are only born with two fears. The fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. So every other fear is learned. If there's a fear of monsters, they learned that from somewhere. So, be careful what those little eyes are are taking in and and what they're watching and their friends that they're playing with, what they're what they're hearing.
But always, it's an exchange. What's what are they afraid of? What does Jesus want them to know? Give the fear to him. Visualize the fear going to Jesus. He takes it. And then what does he replace it with? What does he give them in return? And I would also suggest take every opportunity. I always say the prayer that literally changed my life that I didn't learn, we didn't learn till we were in our 40s living in another country in Southeast Asia was God, what do you want me to know? And when your child's had a bad day at school or someone's made fun of them, the main question, well, tell me how that made you feel. That made me feel really stupid. Well, God, what do you want Susie to know about that? What do you want Colin to know about that stupid feeling? What do you say? Billy made Colin feel stupid, but you were right there with Colin. That's what Billy wanted him to know, but you were right there also. What were you trying to say? And Colin couldn't hear you. What did you want him to know in that same moment? And teaching them that the presence of the Lord is always there and what the Lord says is more important and lasting and true. and helping them to have compassion that Billy made fun of him because Billy feels insecure and is just trying to to make himself feel more important and processing these things.
You know, trauma doesn't come from the incident. It comes from how the incident is processed and the response to the pro. And if you can teach your kids to process a difficult situation, a traumatic situation with God and let God interpret the situation for them. That's the game changer. That is the secret sauce. That is living in the mystery of the kingdom of God in the connected world view and your true identity. And that's living the transformed life. The younger you we can teach this to our kids, the less they will have to go back and do memory work when they're when they're older. If they can process it in real time and you may say, "How do I do that? Teach me how to do it. You do it for yourself and you'll naturally know how to do it with your kids." And at our website, we have so many resources to help you with this. And some of them are absolutely free. And then if you want to do a deep dive, you can see some courses there. But I just really encourage you to just make this a normal part of how you talk with your kids.