Would This Book Have Helped Me? And As A Result Blessed My Kids? Sure!

Maybe it's the season in my own life, but I think How Children Raise Parents: The Art of Listening to Your Family by Dan Allender is one of the most important books on parenting I've ever read. As the father of grown and out-of-the-home children, I wish I had read it - and understood it - while they were much younger.  I'm thankful that all three are doing well with exciting and productive lives.  With this book though, I see now that I could have given them more of what mattered,  and received more of what the Father had for me in them.

Not Sure I Could Have Understood It Though
Folks at Christ Covenant know the details of my story, but let me review it briefly to give some context.  I was a pastor for twenty years while raising a family with my wife.  The churches I led would be considered conservative in theology, contemporary in expression, and compassionate with needy and hurting people.  But there followed a decade in which the Heavenly Father blew up my life, so He could redirect it.  The redirection was discovering that the Gospel of Grace was not the A-B-C's  of the Christian life to be followed by my own efforts at maturity.  Instead, Grace was the A THRU Z of biblical Christianity.

I have no doubt that as a young man, I had come into a relationship with God through His grace, just as the Bible speaks of.  But I also look back and now see that soon after that, I became busy trying to understand what to do and then to do it.  I worked hard to faithfully understand and apply the Truth of the Bible, and to lead my people in that.  I see now that I started off with grace, but soon, and with imperceptible subtlety, got shifted over to performance.

Reading this book helped me to see how that approach to life spilled over into the way I parented my children.  I thought I needed to figure out what they needed to do, and then help them do it.  I can see how that set them up for a very performance-oriented view of my and God's love for them.  I'm sad too at how much of the Father's love that He had for me through them was missed by me.  I was busy instructing and not so ready to listen.  And because my intentions - at least in my own eyes - were good, it has taken me a long time to see how misdirected my efforts were.

So I'm not sure I could have really grasped Allender's message before my life had been interrupted and redirected by grace.  In that early era, I was looking for my steps to helping my kids become who I thought God wanted them to be.  Dan Allender shares a story of the Father's grace at work through an event where his daughter was arrested and convicted for underage alcohol possession.  Not sure I could have wanted to hear that earlier in my life.

And that is why I missed listening - and learning better - to God's voice in the life of my family.  I was too busy trying "to do my responsibility" to be able to listen well.  And I missed some important things.  My family missed some important things from me.

So first, let the Gospel of grace renovate your own heart and life.  Discover the irrepressible security and joy of God's love and live out of that life-changing perspective and energy.

Then read this book, and be free to listen to your family.  By hearing more, you'll need to say much less, and what you do need to say will communicate what matters.

The Thesis
Allender says that every person - children included - are asking two questions: "Am I loved?" and "Can I do whatever I want?"  God's answer is "yes" to the first and "no" to the second.  Parents need to listen to how and when their children are asking or acting these questions out, and speak the Father's grace to that.

In order to do that, we need to recognize how and when we are asking those same questions in our own life.  And hear the Father's answer to them - sometimes even through our own children.  After all, when it is a matter of grace and not mastering the principles from the latest seminar, God can easily speak through our children.

Allender's honesty and transparency is both refreshing and frightening.  It's like that when you discover that someone else can actually be open about some of the thoughts and attitudes you've been trying hard to hide!  That's why a grace foundation is so important.

Dan Allender is a counselor, teacher, father, and husband, eminently qualified to teach in the area of parenting and family life.  Most of all though, he is a man whose life has been redirected by the Gospel of Grace. If books like Hurt (to see my post and review, click here) help us get a glimpse of the difficult world in which we and the children we love really live, then How Children Raise Parents has been for me a great book for finding the Hope of the Gospel in that same real world.