Perhaps your children have the same continuum of crying as ours.
On one end of the continuum is fake tears.
Next comes “I’m tired” crying.
Followed by “I think you won’t punish me if I cry” tears.
Then “I’m mad or sad or scared and need you” tears.
And finally “the world is ending and I can’t stop crying” waterworks.
One Tuesday morning, Krista’s tears pegged the last.
Our then eight-year-old walked into our bedroom in full-blown, wet-faced panic.
Krista has always loved to read.
Her nightstand is invariably covered with books.
She also loves to have a glass of water at night.
That morning, Krista learned the hard way that books and water don’t mix well.
“Mom, water was spilled on a book.”
(I’m regularly struck by how our kids use the passive voice when they make mistakes.
It wasn’t that Krista spilled the water; it was that the cup somehow mischievously decided to tip itself over and spill its contents.)
She managed to catch her breath in the midst of her tears.
“It’s a library book.
I don’t want to tell the school librarian what happened.
I don’t want to have to tell Mrs. Heidenreich.”
(I’m not making that up; that’s actually the school librarian’s name.)
I hugged my weeping daughter.
Together we walked to our laundry room, spread the sopping book on towels, and aimed a hair dryer toward its soggy pages.
I wasn’t sure that our paper patient would fully recover,
but spreading the book over towels seemed to calm my daughter.
By the time we jumped in our van and headed to school, Krista was back to her normal self.
Until we pulled into the school’s car line.
As Nathan and Jessica grabbed their backpacks and slid out of our van, Krista panicked.
“Mom, my stomach hurts.
I can’t go to school.”
More tears, this time of the “I’m scared and need you” variety.
Allowing Krista to stay in the car, I drove across the street and into the school’s parking lot.
Unbuckling my seatbelt and turning to face her in the back seat, I wondered aloud, “Krista, since you didn’t mention your upset stomach until we got to school, perhaps what’s happening is you’re scared about the library book.”
I don’t have a medical degree, but I do know our daughter.
I continued, “Sometimes when I’m nervous about something, my stomach gets upset.
Do you think that’s what’s happening?”
Nods from the back seat.
I make so many errors as a parent.
I regularly say the wrong thing, or say the right things in the wrong tone of voice.
But this was one of those times when the Holy Spirit helped me.
I knew exactly what I needed to say to Krista.
It was six words.
Six words that I now share with every young person I can.
Six words that I hope become a mantra in your family, as they have in ours.
The six words I told Krista are, “Jesus is bigger than any mistake.”
I added, “Krista, if Jesus can’t handle a wet library book, we need a new Jesus.
But Jesus can handle that.
He can handle everything you feel, and all your mistakes and flaws.”
The same is true in your family.
Jesus can handle our smallest accidental mistakes as well as our greatest intentional sins.
If Jesus can’t handle your kid’s partying, we need a new Jesus.
If Jesus can’t handle your kid’s rebellion, we need a new Jesus.
But Jesus can handle it.
He is our Savior because he can handle our sins and struggles, and so much more.
He can also handle your mistakes as a parent.
Parenting is by far my toughest role.
My full-time job as the execu
tive director of the Fuller Youth Institute is fairly demanding, but it’s a piece of chocolate cake compared with being a parent.
As you read these pages, you’re likely tired.
You might even feel defeated.
Although this is not at all my intention, reading the findings and ideas to help you be a Sticky Faith parent might unfortunately stoke your “I feel like a failure” fire.
Mom, Dad, Stepmom, Stepdad, Grandma, or Grandpa, please know this: Jesus is bigger than your mistakes too.
On those days when you’ve failed to be the parent or grandparent you want to be, may this truth about Jesus help you learn from the past but not be imprisoned by it.
Sticky Findings
Many Christian Young People Have Toxic Views of the Faith
Unfortunately, too many young people — like those climbing on the branches of your family tree — have inaccurate and inadequate views of Jesus.
Toward the end of our longitudinal study, we asked youth group graduates in their third year of college what it means to be a Christian.
We were stunned by their answers.
Of the students who defined what it meant to be a Christian, one-third didn’t mention Jesus.
You read that right.
One-third didn’t name Jesus.
What was the dominant answer?
That being a Christian means we are supposed to “love other people.”
Does Jesus want us to love other people?
Of course he does.
But I could walk into the donut shop down the street and ask customers as they pour into the store, “Is it a good idea to love other people?”
They would answer, “Yes.”
Surely there has to be something more robust beating at the heart of our faith.
If our faith is only behaviors — even good behaviors like loving others — then no wonder young people aren’t sticking with it.
I wouldn’t want to either.
As parents who want to expand and correct our kids’ views of Christianity, we need to start by asking a central question: What
distinguishes Christianity from all other religions?
The immediate and obvious answer (and one that every third-grade Sunday school child knows is normally the right one) is “Jesus.”
But let’s peel back the layers and explore a bit more what makes Jesus different from Buddha, Joseph Smith, or Muhammad.
The answer is one word: grace.
Amazing
grace.
Grace is what makes Christianity unique.
In all other religions, you earn your salvation.
There’s a ladder of good works you climb to reach God’s favor.
The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus smashes the ladder.
Through the incarnation, God comes near to us, offering a gift of salvation that, like all true gifts, isn’t dependent upon our actions, our goodness, or our ability to clean ourselves up.
It’s a gift we simply receive.
And continue to receive as we stumble forward toward the author and perfecter of our faith.
Young People Run from God Just When They Need God the Most
Tragically, too many Christian young people still feel they have to climb the ladder of good behaviors in order to have a relationship with Jesus.
They’ve embraced what Dallas Willard calls the “gospel of sin management”
— a reduction of the gospel to a checklist of do’s and don’ts that allegedly helps them feel better about themselves and their relationship with God.
As a result, kids end up more interested in doing and saying the right things (often with adults applauding their “Christian behaviors”) than in seeking a genuine faith.
But invariably, no one can check off all the behavioral boxes.
Your child will sin and struggle and fail to live up to their picture of what it means to be a “good Christian.”
It’s not a matter of
if but
when.
During our research, I had a chance to speak with Rebecca, a student in our church’s youth group when I was a junior high leader.
The July before her eighth-grade year, Rebecca was one of
the girls in my cabin at summer camp.
Rebecca and I grew close that summer, but as she graduated a year later from middle school and then four years later from high school, we saw each other less and less.
Now a college graduate, Rebecca contacted me to find out more about Fuller Seminary.
As both an alumna and a current faculty member at Fuller, I was thrilled not only that she was interested in studying with us but also that she wanted to have coffee and catch up.
For the first twenty minutes of our lively conversation, I answered her questions about Fuller’s world-class programs and ministries.
After I felt we had covered most of her interests, I broached a more personal topic.
“Rebecca, I lost touch with you after you graduated from high school.
We’re studying what happens to youth group graduates as they head to college, and I’m wondering what that was like for you.”
Rebecca had been giving me eye contact, but she immediately looked down at her coffee cup.
“Kara, it was really, really hard.”
“Why?”
“Well, I started dating a non-Christian my freshman year of college,” Rebecca said.
“It was my experiment with ‘missionary dating.’
I went farther sexually than I ever thought I would.
I felt so bad about what I had done that I plunged into an eating disorder and a depression.”
Sitting across the table from Rebecca, I felt my heart breaking.
But what she said next was even harder to hear.
“In the midst of how guilty I felt about how I had sinned, the last place I felt I could go for hope was the church.
The last place I felt like I could turn to for healing was God.”
I wish I had talked with my kids more about my failures, setbacks, and weaknesses.
I didn’t want my kids to know about my temptations.
Looking back, I see that was a mistake.
— Dwayne
Like many students we have interviewed these last ten years, somehow Rebecca had graduated from our church thinking that her
faith was like a jacket — what we now call a “Jesus jacket.”
It’s a jacket of behaviors that hasn’t really changed young people from the inside out.
When kids like Rebecca make poor choices, they feel they have tossed their Jesus jacket in the corner.
What they don’t understand is how to pick up that jacket, and even more important, that their faith is so much more than a coat of behaviors.
Like Rebecca, instead of repenting and running back to God, they run away from a faith and a church that demand they worship a behavior-modification god.
Our Lives Are Great Big Thank-You Notes to God
But what about all the do’s and don’ts in Scripture?
If the gospel boils down to grace, what’s the role of obedience in our kids’ lives (as well as our own)?
Because of our studies revealing young people’s false views of the gospel, my favorite way to explain the real gospel of Jesus Christ is through five words that start with the letter
G.
While you may have a different way of describing the gospel, part of why I
have adopted this version is that it’s simple and memorable.
Nine-year-olds can grasp it.
The Five Gs of the Gospel
Good
God created us good, in God’s image.
Guilt
We then chose to disobey God, leaving us with the guilt of sin.
All of us carry this mark, and it impacts us daily.
Grace
Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God has extended grace to us to make things right and restore us to relationship with God and one another.
God’s people
As we experience grace, we are adopted into the body of Christ, embodying God’s reign in the world.
We join the mission of God, participating in the work of God happening through God’s people.
Gratitude
Empowered by this gift of grace, we respond in gratitude toward God.
Grace is the well out of which our obedience — those behaviors — flows.
In other words, the Sticky gospel doesn’t begin with behaviors, nor is it dependent on behaviors.
The behaviors are like a big thank-you note we offer back to God in response to grace.
The first G word is
good.
All of us are created good, in God’s image.
The second G is
guilt.
Our sin has separated us from God.
God couldn’t stand that separation, so by God’s
grace (for those of you keeping score, that’s the third G word), God sent Jesus to be crucified and resurrected so that we can repent of our sin and experience real life in the present as well as eternal life with him.
While this grace is central to our faith, it is not final.
The fourth G is
God’s people.
As we experience adoption into the body of Christ, we embody God’s reign in the world.
We join the mission of God, participating in the work of God happening through God’s people.
The final G word,
gratitude, helps connect the dots between the previous four Gs and the divine directives of Scripture.
Why do we try to obey God’s commands?
It’s not to make God love or like us more.
It’s not to feel better about ourselves.
It’s because we’re so full of gratitude.
As I tell our three kids, our lives become great big thank-you notes to God for all that God has done for us.
Some days, you and I might not feel very grateful.
We and our kids both have those seasons when we don’t want to live as thankyou notes to God.
In those moments, we circle back to the third G of grace.
You and I need God’s grace every day to live as he wants.
We are fools if we think that in our own strength we can be the people or parents God wants us to be.
This obedient and grateful response is what separates true grace from what twentieth-century theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.”
Cheap grace is a so-called grace that focuses on the beauty of God’s goodness without shifting into conformity to God’s will for our actions and attitudes.
As Bonhoeffer summarizes, “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession. . . . Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”
Cheap grace is not grace at all.
I didn’t make up these five Gs.
They are based on a theological framework that emerged from the Heidelberg Catechism in the sixteenth century.
But even more important, they are rooted in the apostle Paul’s own descriptions of the gospel.
The early chapters of Paul’s letters revolve around God’s love, our sin, God’s grace, and the power of community.
The final chapters are typically where the bulk of the commands — the do’s and don’ts — appear.
For instance, we see the progression of these five Gs in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.
In Ephesians 1:4 – 5, Paul writes about how God has chosen, loved, predestined, and adopted us.
(For those of you keeping score, that’s the first G,
good.)
Yet in Ephesians 2:1 – 3, Paul warns that we were “dead in [our] transgressions and sins . . . gratifying the cravings of our flesh,” making us “deserving of wrath” (aka the second G,
guilt).
Yet because of God’s mercy and love, when we repent and believe in Jesus, we are saved by God’s grace (the third G) and made “alive with Christ” (Eph.
2:4 – 5).
So now, as God’s people (G number four), we are “fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household” (Eph.
2:19), and we can experience “unity of the Spirit” (Eph.
4:3).
And now, as “children of light” (Eph.
5:8), we are empowered to embrace the commands of the last chapters of Ephesians related to marriage, family relationships, and the armor of God (paralleling the fifth and final G,
gratitude).
If faith is behaviors, then we expect our kids to be perfect and hide our own mistakes, claiming to be perfect.
If faith is a journey, then mistakes are part of the process.
— Zeke
Being Sticky Faith parents means seeing all five of these Gs in our children.
If we are unaware of the goodness of God’s image in our children, we will never be able to love them as they need to be loved.
When we are blind to our kids’ guilt, we lack the discipline and boundaries to tackle the dark and sinful sides of who they are and what they do.
We will never offer our kids the second, third, and seventeenth
chances they need if we don’t understand that God’s grace does the same.
Without God’s people, we wouldn’t have the strength, encouragement, inspiration, and modeling we need to pursue relationship with Jesus and each other.
It is our sense of gratitude that points our kids to the potential they have to be changed by Christ to change the world around them.
The Contagious Power of “I’m Sorry”
In our fifty interviews, it became obvious that Sticky Faith parents are quick to apologize to their kids for their own mistakes.
As one dad we interviewed confessed, “I’ve apologized to my daughters three times this week alone.”
The transformational power of these apologies is captured by a family that is part of one of the congregations that nominated parents for our study.
One Wednesday while the mom was in her teenage daughter’s room, she found a used condom in her daughter’s bed.
While this was challenging enough for the parents to navigate, it was even more complicated because two weeks prior both parents had told their daughter, “Your room is your room.
It’s your private space, and we will not enter it.”
This mom and dad had basically told their daughter, “What happens in your room stays in your room.”
It was only because they violated that promise that they discovered the condom.
It’s easy to put on a good face for other people, but my kids live with me.
It’s hard to be a parent with authority and admit that I’ve messed up.
I wish I had admitted that more, though.
— Melody
After praying and talking with their daughter’s youth pastor, the parents decided that their first step was to repent before their daughter.
The father approached his daughter later that night and confessed, “We made a mistake.
We told you your room was your room, and we shouldn’t
have.
We went into your room, and we shouldn’t have.
But we found something that we need to talk about.”
Then they held their breath.
They knew that they needed to have a heart-to-heart and very direct conversation about their daughter’s dangerous choices but first they wondered how their daughter would feel about the fact that they had broken their promise to her.
Would their daughter lash out because she felt betrayed and lied to?
Or would their apology pave the way for candid and repentant conversation?
Would their daughter lash out because she felt betrayed and lied to?
Or would their apology pave the way for candid and repentant conversation?
They immediately got their answer.
Their fifteen-year-old leaped into her dad’s arms and confessed, “I’m so sorry, Dad.”
After a few minutes of hugging her dad, she asked, “So what now?”
The dad answered, “Let’s go get ice cream.”
Over chocolate sundaes, they talked honestly.
Mom and dad shared their deep concern over their daughter’s sexual choices, their daughter further expressed her repentant desire to live a life of purity, and together they agreed on a plan that would hold her accountable for that purity.
I’m not implying that every time your children sin or struggle, you take them out for dessert.
What I am saying is that if your families are like those of the parents we interviewed, when the going gets tough, you’re more likely to have children who repent if you have made “I’m sorry” a regular part of your vocabulary.
Showing Grace Doesn’t Mean Eliminating Boundaries
Right about now, you might be wondering if this Sticky Faith emphasis on grace means that we parents eliminate both behavioral boundaries for our kids as well as consequences for our kids when they cross those boundaries.
After reading the previous story, you might be asking, Should kids sin all the more so that ice cream abounds?
Let me be clear: kids need boundaries.
They need parents to
clearly lay out behavioral guidelines ahead of time and then discipline them when they step across those lines.
But wise Sticky Faith parents have found a way to sprinkle grace even into their discipline.
Sometimes it’s the tone of voice they use as they are taking away technology or certain other privileges.
Other times it’s the way they empathize with their child’s frustration — whether that is frustration the child feels over their
own poor choice or (more likely) the frustration they feel with their mom or dad for imposing discipline.
What if I’m struggling with forgiving my child?
If your child hasn’t made you seeing-red mad, you haven’t been a parent for long.
Sometimes our kids burn so many bridges with us or others we care about that it’s hard to know how to even start rebuilding the relationship.
Sometimes our kids don’t even seem sorry about the way they have tossed a grenade into our families, oblivious to the damage they have done to parents and siblings alike.
If you want to rebuild relationship with your child, perhaps an early step is to view your child not only as your offspring but also as a fellow follower of Jesus Christ and a part of your faith community, even if they may be currently unrepentant and in rebellion.
In describing one of the keys to healthy community, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, “If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. . . . My sin is the worst.
He who would serve his brother in the fellowship must sink all the way down to these depths of humility.”
*
Bonhoeffer’s description of his own sin parallels Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 1:15: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners — of whom I am the worst.”
For both Paul and Bonhoeffer, the bad news of their sin made them more grateful for the good news of forgiveness through Jesus Christ.
But the effects of their sin-awareness glasses didn’t stop there.
Their mindfulness of their depravity also changed the way they viewed others, making them quicker to embrace fellow sinners with love and compassion.
As you think about your family, ponder these three questions:
1.
Are you aware enough of your selfishness to view yourself as the worst sinner in your household?
2.
How would seeing more of your own sin expedite forgiveness in your family?
3.
If your kid’s mistakes have been so grave that you’re feeling that these steps don’t help at all, whom else could you seek for counsel to find a way forward?
*
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (New York: HarperCollins, 1954), 96.
Still other times, if they felt their child was truly repentant, a few parents we interviewed
every once in a while erase the consequences of their kids’ “crimes,” explaining that “just as God shows us grace and mercy, I am going to show you grace and mercy.”
While it’s not easy to do, the remarkable parents we interviewed hold a ribbon of discipline in one hand and a ribbon of grace in the other, and somehow tie the two into a beautiful bow.
Sticky Ideas
The Note That Trumped the Lego Set
Pamela thought her son, Zachary, was strong-willed.
Until Ethan was born.
Parenting Ethan ushered Pamela into the big leagues of tantrums, power struggles, and the word
no (a word she found herself saying and hearing more often).
One afternoon, seven-year-old Ethan’s resistance to cleaning up his toys pushed one too many of Pamela’s impatience buttons.
She lashed out in anger.
“Go to your room and stay there.
I can’t take you anymore.”
As Ethan slowly walked to his room, his hunched shoulders told Pamela that her words had caused him to question not just what he was doing but also how she felt about him.
While Pamela had always been quick to apologize to her boys, she knew Ethan needed a bolder gesture.
She swung by the store and picked out a new Lego spaceship that Ethan had been eyeing.
She paired the spaceship with a note that simply confessed, “Ethan, I am sorry for what I said.
Will you forgive me?
I love you.
Mom.”
To Pamela’s surprise, Ethan barely played with the spaceship.
Instead he clung to the note as the real treasure.
Now a college graduate, Ethan still has his mom’s note.
Despite moving in and out of multiple dorm rooms and even a few apartments, Ethan has kept his mom’s tangible sign of repentance.
Your Family
• In what situations do you have the hardest time apologizing to your child?
• What past apology has meant the most to your child?
• The next time you blow it with your kid, how can you vividly and tangibly communicate that you are sorry and ask for their forgiveness?
The More Specific, the Better
Greg knows himself well enough to know that he tends to be pretty stubborn.
While his tenacity has built profit in his company, it has eaten away at his relationship with his kids.
The toughness that earns him promotions in the boardroom costs him at home.
Greg has learned that when he needs to apologize to his son or two daughters, he has to be specific.
A vague “I’m sorry” accomplishes little.
But his kids come to life when he gives more details, such as, “God has convicted me that I didn’t honor you or respect you.
If I want you to honor and respect me, I have to honor and respect you.
Will you forgive me?”
What drives me crazy about my kids is what drives me crazy about myself.
My daughter struggles with having a bad attitude.
Guess who else also struggles with a bad attitude?
Me.
She has my DNA, so she has the best and worst of me.
— Eleanor
Your Family
• When you apologize to your kids, what do you usually say?
• How might being more specific, and perhaps even mentioning that God has convicted you about your sin, make a difference in your relationships with your kids?
No Statute of Limitations on Forgiveness
While we parents blow it on an almost daily basis, the reality is that we’ve been sinning every day since we were born.
Sometimes the mistakes of previous years reach into today’s calendar, affecting not only us but our kids too.
Gary never imagined he would get a divorce.
While the decision to disband the marriage was his wife’s, he still feels guilty for his role in his marriage’s deterioration.
Now his two young teenage children pay the price as they ping-pong back and forth every week between his house and his former wife’s.
Many times Gary has explained to his children that divorce was never something he wanted or expected.
His kids didn’t cause the separation, and he hates that divorce is a reality of their lives.
As Gary has confessed his regrets to his kids, his kids have shown him grace.
They have forgiven him for his role in their family’s splintering.
He feels that the remorse he has shown in front of his kids is part of his healing — and theirs too.
Your Family
• How are your past sins and mistakes possibly affecting both you and your kids?
• What role, if any, do you think talking about these realities with your kids might play in your family’s healing and faith journey?
The Mistake of the Day
In an effort to make mistakes a topic that their kids feel comfortable talking about, one family asks each night at the dinner table, “What mistake did you make today?”
They laugh together over the story about how father and son headed to the wrong hockey rink, or the account of how mom’s calendar confusion caused her to arrive at an important meeting fifteen minutes late.
Plus, the family’s youngest member loves keeping track of her siblings’ and parents’ mistakes throughout the day.
Whether the mom overfills the soap container or the dad forgets to set the
house’s overnight alarm, six-year-old Madison loves warning, “Oh boy, that’s going to be your mistake of the day.”
My daughter is thirteen and she’s hormonal.
I’m forty-seven and I’m hormonal.
— Mayra
But even more important than those rather harmless blunders, talking about the day’s mistakes gives the family a chance to confess their sins to each other and erase any hostility that has smudged their relationships.
Whether it is the mom’s tone of voice at the grocery store or the son’s mean mocking of his sister’s singing, sharing mistakes often leads to sharing apologies.
Your Family
• How often do you talk about mistakes in your family?
(Apart from someone needing to be disciplined; that doesn’t count.)
• What could you do to try to make mistakes a more normal part of your daily conversation?
Long-Term Relationship = Long-Term Influence
As youth leaders at their church, Chuck and Helen have seen conflict erode far too many families in their congregation.
Angry words and slammed doors cut off not just communication but also relationship.
So Chuck and Helen have adopted a couple of mantras in their parenting:
1.
As long as we have relationship with our kids, we have the potential for influence.
2.
It is our responsibility as parents to keep the relationship with our children, not theirs.
Given these two ground rules, Chuck and Helen are determined to maintain relationship with each of their children, even while they discipline them.
Or as Chuck and Helen would say,
especially when they discipline them.
When eighth-grade Blake’s report card meant he was grounded from all activities, including the upcoming baseball tournament, he
stormed out of the family room and sequestered himself in his bedroom.
While Helen knew it was right for Blake to be grounded, she also knew she needed to help Blake save face and give him a gracious entree back into the family.
So she brought him popcorn and invited him to join them for dinner.
Blake’s shame and pride could have kept him in his room, cut off from the rest of the family for the night (even if he really would have rather come back downstairs).
But Helen’s initiative opened the door for Blake to leave his room and rejoin the family.
When getting ready to punish tenth-grade Suzanne for violating curfew by setting an earlier curfew for the next three weeks, Chuck told her, “What I’m about to tell you about your new curfew will make you mad, and I’m okay with that.
You can say anything you want to me, but you have to do it in a respectful way.”
Chuck’s message to his daughter was simple: You need to honor our rules, but I want to have a relationship with you no matter how you feel or what you say.
While other parents are tempted to subtract communication and relationship from their discipline strategies, Chuck and Helen try to add opportunities for conversation and connection.
Your Family
• What do you think of Chuck and Helen’s two premises?
• What can you do in the midst of your family discipline to maximize conversation and relationship?
Keep Calm and Carry On
The key to navigating discipline in Christine’s family was that she told her three daughters ahead of time how she would respond to them when they told her they had blown it.
If any of her kids told her what had happened themselves, they would face firm consequences, but those consequences would be merciful.
If Christine found out herself from another source, the girls were then taking a gamble that she wouldn’t be as gracious.
The girls knew that if they
were proactive in coming to their mom with their mistakes, they would be rewarded with a calm and compassionate mom.
Wanting to keep their mom calm, all three were fairly quick to talk to her about their everyday mistakes as well as their more egregious offenses.
Not only did early conversation mean a more harmonious family, but it also meant that Christine could help her girls choose different paths before the ruts of their poor decisions grew too deep.
Your Family
• How do you tend to respond when your kids share their mistakes and sins with you?
• How does your typical response affect the likelihood that your kids will confess their struggles to you both early and often?
Our Family’s Steps toward Sticky Faith
Take a few moments on your own, or with your spouse, your friends, or your small group, to reflect on some potential next steps toward Sticky Faith.
Sticky Findings
On a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 being “we stink at this” and 5 being “we rock at this”), rate your family on the research findings presented in this chapter.
1|
My kids understand that our faith is grounded in grace, not works.
2|
My kids understand that Jesus is bigger than any mistake.
3|
I regularly apologize to my kids when I blow it.
4|
I clearly communicate behavioral boundaries to my kids, and my kids experience appropriate consequences when they cross those boundaries.
Sticky Ideas
1|
In what ways is your family already permeated with a sense of repentance, forgiveness, and grace?
2|
Given your ranking of the findings in the previous section, as well as the ideas you’ve read in this chapter, what one or two changes might you want to make in your family?
3|
What can you do in the next few weeks or month to move toward these changes?
