No Sanity Required
No Sanity Required is a weekly podcast hosted by Brody Holloway and Snowbird Outfitters. Each week, we engage culture and personal stories with a Gospel-driven perspective. Our mission is to equip the Church to pierce the darkness with the light of Christ by sharing the vision, ideas, and passions God has used to carry us through 26 years of student ministry. Find more content at swoutfitters.com.
No Sanity Required
How God’s Discipline Should Guide Our Parenting
In this episode, Brody dives into the topic of discipline in parenting, focusing on how God disciplines His children, and how we can reflect that same love with our own kids. Drawing from Hebrews 12, he explores three key aspects of discipline: conviction, accountability, and consequences.
Brody shares personal examples and stories, including funny childhood memories, while offering practical tips for disciplining kids in today’s world. He stresses that discipline isn’t about revenge or humiliation—it’s about guiding our children toward growth, joy, and a healthy relationship with God.
Hebrews 12:5-13
Building a Christ-Centered Family (pt. 1)
Building a Christ-Centered Family (pt. 2)
Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help improve No Sanity Required and help others grow in their faith.
Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.
This episode of no Sanity Required, we're gonna continue in our conversation about parenting. Today we're gonna be talking about discipline and I'm gonna start this episode off by telling you about the funniest and worst butt whooping I ever took as a kid. It ought to be good. Welcome to no Sanity Required.
Speaker 2:Welcome to no Sanity Required from the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters. A podcast about the Bible, culture and stories from around the globe.
Speaker 1:Get a lot of people asking us about, and these questions will come at our marriage conferences, men's conferences, women's events, where people are looking for guidance and just biblical counsel and insight on parenting. And I want to be the first person to say that I don't have parenting figured out. We have such a dynamic. I walked a couple episodes back, I walked through in response to an email, I walked through the dynamic of my family and I can tell you this parenting older kids I'm sorry, my three older kids, which are biological children, is different than parenting the three non-biological children. It just is, and until you've lived through it and experienced it, then that may not even register or make sense. But what I want to do is I'm going to start by telling you a funny story and then I want to walk through. I'm going to break this up this way I want to look at in this episode, I want to look at Hebrews 12, which is an explanation of how God, our Father, disciplines us, those of us who are Christians how does God discipline his sons and daughters? And then I want to give some not parenting tips as far as, like hey, I've done fail ways. I've watched parents parent and then have failure in that approach and then some things that I've seen work. So this is not going to be hey, here's what I've done and it works, and here's what I did and it didn't work, and there might be some of that in there. For sure It'll be informed by that.
Speaker 1:But with a massive sample size of teenagers 200,000 teenagers have come through SWO in the last 27, going on 28 years. So what have we learned in that time? Little, and I've been in student ministry for 30 years. In 30 years we've watched multiple generations. If a teenage generation would be measured in six year, really, really five years, 13 to 18. But if we, if we bump that up to six or seven years and look at their transition into adulthood and then we get some 12 year olds, say six years, how many five generations of you know? Six years each? We've seen five generations of kids come through. That's just a kind of a a rough way to measure how many waves of students.
Speaker 1:And the reason I want to break it down that way is because I will tell you that this generation of kids that are coming through right now, they are not experiencing life in the same way that the generation 20 years ago was, and you all know that, we all know that that the generation 20 years ago was, and you all know that, we all know that. And so, how, how does parenting change? In particular, discipline, how do you discipline in this generation? If you're a, if you're a mom or a dad, listen to this and you've got young children and you're bringing them into an up in this generation it's. There are challenges that are presented to you that, uh, were not presented to your parents, and there are things that you're going to have to figure out and deal with that your parents didn't have to deal with. There are also things that, um, that you now don't have an excuse and listen closely. You don't have an excuse not to get this right. Uh, 10, 12, up to maybe 15 years ago, parenting there are some things that could have snuck up on parents and the damage was done before they realized it. An example would be 2012, 2013,. A kid gets a smartphone. We don't realize the danger that that smartphone presented and that kid ends up addicted to pornography or they end up being exploited, something like that, where now there is no excuse for you to let that happen, no excuse for me to let that happen. We have to be diligent and we have to be courageous in the way that we parent in this day and age when it comes to the use of personal devices, and so there are things also within social networks.
Speaker 1:The first online social network I was aware of was called Zanga, and it was something that was utilized by college kids and young adults.
Speaker 1:And then there was one that targeted kids a little bit more younger kids, called MySpace, and we tend to make jokes about MySpace, you know it's kind of something you'll hear people make jokes about, but the reality is it was, it was very cutting edge.
Speaker 1:It was it was early social media and kids were using it to create online, you know, communities and and and uh networks. And we didn't, we didn't really understand. I remember being aware of hey, you know this, doesn't this seems like this could be dangerous and hazardous, and when that came out, I didn't have kids that were old enough Cause I think this was 20, almost 20 years ago. This was late two thousands. So my kids were too young, my older kids were too young to to really have to worry about it. We didn't have a computer in the home, had a desktop computer at the SWO office that I shared with a couple of other people and my admin at the time, steph Gatton. She managed a MySpace account for me but it was kind of that first moving into using social media as a networking device for, you know, for ministry and for, uh, for networking opportunities.
Speaker 1:But she managed it Like I never went on there and posted anything and I don't even remember exactly how it was formatted, you know, or whatever, but then, uh, I didn't have kids old enough to worry about it, but I didn't have kids old enough to worry about it. But what happened is, I think, with the rise of Snapchat and TikTok and Instagram, I guess what took things really mainstream was Facebook, which started off as something that young kids used, and then Facebook became the social network of old people, and young kids have different things that they use. So, anyway, this is not an episode about social media, but I'm saying right now we're at a point where, if you're entering into parenting where I was 20 years ago you've got kids that are 4, 5 years old, toddlers, even 7, 8, 9 years old. Then let me just say you don't have an excuse not to build a strong defense in your home and prepare to protect those kids from the things that the world wants to throw at them.
Speaker 1:But I want to. I want to use this episode to talk about discipline, and I'll start off by telling you a story that I've used as a sermon illustration through the years here at SWO. It was when I was I think I was a junior in high school and I grew up. My folks did not split up until I was out of the house. Right after I was out of the house is when my folks' marriage had major issues. My folks their marriage wasn't healthy.
Speaker 1:I didn't know what a healthy marriage was supposed to look like, but I know now, looking back, it was very unhealthy love my mom so much and she's in a healthy marriage that with her second husband, who is the only, really the only, granddad my kids have known and my dad is no secret I it was a lot of tension. I carry a lot of tension and and fight bitterness towards my dad. I have a couple of sisters that think he's the greatest thing that ever walked and I do not share that sentiment, and they were younger when things became exposed. I have one sister that I love her deeply and dearly, but she'll talk about our dad like he was just the greatest.
Speaker 1:And the reality is there were things he did really well and I'm grateful for them, and there are things that I fight bitterness over. And so when I tell, even when I look back at my life growing up, my dad disciplined me one way and he disciplined my younger brother a different way and I've done the same thing, that's just parenting, so I don't have any resentment towards that. My dad, the automatic reaction to me needing discipline was a whooping. You can call it a spanking or whatever, but it was a whooping. It was a belt to the rear end and my brother did get a good many of those, but nowhere near as many as me, because I think they started to mellow out a little bit and things changed. There were some different mechanisms put in place, so my brother didn't get whooped once he hit a certain age where I got whooped. All the way into my junior year in high school I got whooped. So that's a story I want to tell you.
Speaker 1:So I was going to school one morning and I had a buddy. My junior year I would ride to school with a buddy of mine and he would come pulling in every morning and I lived no neighbors, lived kind of on a little hill, a couple hundred yard driveway off the road, but the driveway kind of came through a hayfield and so you could see the car. You could see somebody coming in and um, and so he would. He would come in and pull around behind the driveway, kind of wrapped around, and came around behind the house and he would, you know, he'd pull in and I'd be watching for him and I'd go out, jump in the car and we'd head off to school and the music of the day was Guns N' Roses, def Leppard, metallica. That was like before the Metallica Black CD, so it was when they were just straight metal, you know, and he loved Metallica. That was. That was like before the Metallica black CD, so it was when they were just straight metal, you know they were, and he loved Metallica. But that, that was the year the injustice for all album came out. If you're a music aficionado, especially if you're a metal person, um, and so that's when they started to shift a little bit towards more mainstream music that was going to get radio airplay. So I remember, um, I remember playing that album, remember guns and roses, appetite for destruction, steal some, bon jovi, um, but I remember deaf leopards, uh, the album that had pour some sugar on me. That came out that year and so anyway, I go out, get jumping to jumping the car.
Speaker 1:My buddy, he had a 1983 Buick Regal. Go look it up. He had inherited his mom's car. So when he turned 16, his mom's you know uh luxury sedan was passed over to him and then he spent his birthday money buying a set of Crager mags and uh and some white letter tires for it to try to make it not look like a mammal car. Pretty funny. And then he got a sound system.
Speaker 1:So we'd go to school. He'd come pick me up, I'd go out and jump in my Letterman jacket. Go jump in. It was 80s living, you know. Nobody had cell phones, nobody had flip phones, nobody had bag phones. This was in the 80s.
Speaker 1:And I would go jump in a car this would have been 1988, I think 19 at fall of 1988 school year and head off to school. And so I go, jump in the car and off we go, and the commute to my high school was maybe a six or seven minute ride, you know. Then we then we'd drive up, pull up, sit in the car and listen to some music for another five or 10 minutes and we head in, and so he pulls in this one morning and what had happened? I was on my way through the house getting ready to head out the door and it was the last day of school before the Christmas break and I think it was a Friday. Christmas was like the next Wednesday. Christmas is on a Wednesday. This year, whatever it was, I feel like it was on a Friday. Anyway, it was the last day of school. It was a short day of school.
Speaker 1:Everybody's having parties, homerooms, classes are having parties, people bringing food. My mom had made me had made a batch of brownies the night before and I didn't know she was doing this and so she had done it as a you know, just to be kind to me and, uh, as kind of just a nice gesture. So I was gonna. So I'm walking out the door and she's got a, a paper grocery bag full of brownies and she holds it out and she says, hey, I made you brownies to take to your home room and give to everybody. And I said, oh my gosh, I don't want to carry this big brown bag. That's embarrassing.
Speaker 1:I was a punk. I cared way too much. What people thought, you know, cared way too much. I just was very concerned about what people thought. I'm thankful that my three oldest kids did not care what anybody thought. Um, it was refreshing to raise kids that that were their own selves, you know their true selves, and didn't didn't matter what what was going on around them. I was not like that. I was very influenced by culture around me and impressing people. I came from a family that didn't have money and so I never, you know, if I wanted really nice clothes I had to buy myself.
Speaker 1:If I wanted to wear something that was expensive and fashion conscious, and so I was trying to impress people all the time and I don't know why, but for whatever reason I did not want to carry that big old brown bag of brownies and hand them out. It was stupid, just stupid, and I said something about it being embarrassing. Well, usually my dad was gone and I didn't realize he was standing behind me when I said this to my mom, she had been up late, she had stayed up after we went to bed and made this batch of brownies and I mouthed off how embarrassing that was. I was like I didn't take, I'm not taking that to school.
Speaker 1:That's embarrassing, can a brown bag of brownies and handed whatever and my dad caught me by the back of the letterman jacket and I had a hoodie on under it and he just grabbed oh you know, just the, the nap of the neck. Basically it's I'm. I'm 16 years old at this point. I guess Something like yeah, I think I was 16.
Speaker 1:I was probably 6'1", maybe 6'2", and my dad was not even six feet tall. You know he was a dad, he had old man strength, he was a tank of a dude. But he grabbed me by the nap of the neck and he beat me with a belt. I mean wore my rear end out, just. I mean he didn't hit me like in the back or the face, he hit me on the butt, like a whooping's supposed to be given, and he hit me with that belt five or six times and then it was like you know, that's it. I got to go get my buddies waiting outside with Guns N' Roses blaring and I'm squalling. I mean I'm 16. At that point I'd had stitches, broke bones never cried over that stuff, but I was squalling. I mean there's something about the nerve endings God puts in a rear end. You don't think a person like a butt whooping on the butt with a leather belt will make you feel pain. You didn't know you could feel there's nerve endings in them, rear end cheeks, that's just how it is. And I remember going out I was like, oh my gosh, I've got to get my crap together. I said I don't want to go to school right now and he's like you get your you know what out there and get in the car. So I had to go out and get in the car and like I'm snubbing, crying, you know, like I'm trying to get my composure and wipe my, remind me that kid we just watched a christmas story, that kid, scott farkas, the redheaded kid, if you know that movie. After he gets beat up and he looks around, everybody's looking at him. He's trying to act like he ain't crying. I was. I was trying to act like and it wasn't just my buddy that had was driving, it was another guy that rode with us, so he would pick one buddy up, then pick me up. So there's two dudes in the car and I'm sitting in the back seat with my bag of brownies, you know. And I just got whooped and it was completely humiliating. Um, but that's my, that's my funniest. But I remember that, my dad, that's my funniest. But I remember that, my dad, that's my funniest story of getting a whooping. But I remember my dad telling me I don't remember if it was that morning or later that day he said it's the last time I'll ever give you a whooping like that. And I was like, oh, thank God. And then he said from now on we'll go in the backyard and do this like two grown men. And I was like I'll take the belt please. And so it.
Speaker 1:You know, I remember when I became a parent going, okay, how do we discipline? I don't want to be heavy handed, but I'd also seen people be pushovers. I had one cousin who I don't think ever got a spanking. I don't think he ever got a whooping, and he had material possessions, he had whatever he wanted. And then I had another cousin that would get whooped and beat. I remember being at I think we were at Pizza Hut. I just remember it was our family and their family and I don't know what he did, but his mom grabbed him by the like, by the jacket, and smacked him in the face about five times, just pop, pop, pop. I like you know, and not only the pain but the humiliation. And so you know I didn't want to do that. I knew like, okay, I know what it looks like to be abusive. I've seen that. I know what it looks like to have no discipline and just be spoiled. You know, I've seen that. I know what it looks like to, because that cousin that never got whooped. He was. He was a um, a fairly disciplined dude.
Speaker 1:Because they would use a grounding, or what people call restriction, is how they would punish him. They're okay. Is that the way you do it? Or do you corporately punish a kid when they're young, and then at what point do you stop spanking them or physically striking them? And then you go to doing restrictions from from, you know, tv or games, or they're grounded, they can't drive, they, they lose the keys to the car if they're teenagers, whatever, and just wrestling through all of that. And so what?
Speaker 1:What we landed on is we, we put together a set of principles. Now, go back two episodes ago and we talked about sort of the principles and the mission statement of our home. It comes from Romans 12. Here are principles that we want to live by when it comes to discipline. What we did at an early age with our oldest kids is we established principles of discipline, and I want to walk you through those, and that's based out of Hebrews 12. And then I want to give you some things I've seen fail miserably. Okay, that don't work, um, and so let's start with Hebrews, chapter 12. This is going to be verses five through 13. Okay, so Hebrews 12, verse five.
Speaker 1:And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him, for the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons, for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you're left without discipline in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live For? They disciplined us for a short time, as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. So we've got here in Hebrews 12. We've worked through this before. On NSR, we try to, at least every few months or once a year or so, walk through these principles in some capacity, because so many of our listeners are young parents or parents of teenagers, and so what we have in this text is sort of a principled layout of what biblical discipline looks like in terms of how God disciplines his sons and daughters.
Speaker 1:Now, um for vernacular. When I say discipline, uh, we were talking about, um, some people might use the word punishment, which is a little different word, because a person could be punished with, with the only goal of punishing someone might be to inflict pain and fear. You think of someone being punished by being beaten in a gulag or a concentration camp or something. They're being punished, but it's not developing necessarily. The goal isn't to make that person more disciplined or to discipline them.
Speaker 1:So when we use the word discipline or chastisement, punishment, what we're talking about is, as a parent, how do you train up a child? Proverbs 22, six. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he's old he won't depart from it. How do I do that when that child is being disobedient or defiant or is in some way out of line? And so I want to recognize, in Hebrews 12, three different forms of discipline. The first one is conviction in my heart to live or act according to what God desires for me. So when I think about the discipline of the Lord, one aspect of it is preemptive to wrong actions. So God gives me conviction, he convinces my conscience of right or wrong, and so this would be in parenting. It would be a parent making it very clear what is expected from a child.
Speaker 1:So discipline begins by not, um, confusing a kid. Make it very clear what you expect from that child, whether they're a three-year-old kid or a 15-year-old kid. Here's what I expect from you. If you live your life within these parameters and inside of these expectations, then everything's going to be okay, everything's going to be peaceful, and I think that is helpful, because the scripture says that fathers are not to provoke their children, and I think one of the things that provokes a kid is when that kid is punished for something that they weren't.
Speaker 1:Clearly, a couple things can happen. If a child is punished for something that they didn't know was wrong, that then that's going to provoke them or discourage or exasperate them. But usually that's not going to be the problem. The problem is going to be a kid is going to look for easy ways to manipulate a situation, and if you have made clear what your expectations for them are, then they cannot manipulate you. For them are, then they cannot manipulate you. Um, a simple example would be um that you have uh told a child, um, here are the, here are the expectations for how you're to keep your room clean. You know, whatever that is, your bed needs to be made up. You're no dirty laundry in the floor, whatever, whatever I'm, I'm just spit balling, but you've you've laid out parameters and expectations. If that kid leaves and heads off to school and their room is trashed and you see that it's trashed, then you bring consequences to that they. They get restricted from screen time for that evening or they don't get to go out with their friends that.
Speaker 1:Friday. Whatever you know, whatever it is that you've made it clear on the front end, if you've never communicated clear expectations and the kid's room sloppy and messy, and finally you just get fed up with it one day and you say that's it, your room looks like garbage. You're not, you're, you're grounded for two weeks. Um, that's, it's just sloppy. And either that kid's going to get discouraged and frustrated or they're going to act out or they're going to manipulate circumstances. Maybe. Maybe it's understood in a more vague way hey, everybody, you know everybody do their part and keep your. Let's keep the house clean, everybody keep your own room clean. And that's kind of the end of it. You've not given real clear parameters. That kid's going to turn your words maybe and say well, you never said I had to pick up my dirty clothes and make my bed. You just said keep my room clean and to me it's clean. You know they're going to manipulate your words. So the Lord gives us conviction in our hearts, he convinces our conscience. We become super sensitive to this through the communication that comes from his word. So as parents we should emulate that by communicating clearly what's expected. Second form of discipline. So that's a sort of a preemptive form of discipline. Second form of discipline would be, for me, I need to surround myself with people that are going to hold me accountable and to a higher standard, and so it is.
Speaker 1:It is good parental discipline to pay attention to the people that your kid is being influenced by, and this goes for toddlers. This is not just well, I got a, you know, my daughter's 15, and there's a couple of 16, 17, 18 year old girls that you know won't, that are really starting to try to befriend her, but they're not. I know, they're not believers. I know their family dynamic, I know that. I know that they're allowed to drink and they don't have, you know, any parameters for their screen time and what, what their social media looks like. Their device, you know, is. So I'm going to, I need to, I need to preemptively protect my child, even though she's 15, from being around those people in an unsupervised way, or that she's not going to jump in the car and go to town with them. You know, but that that also applies for a toddler. Um, you see a kid that acts out to their screams, spits, hollers, stomps, yells, and the parents don't know what to do and they get frustrated and they're exasperated, um, you know, then, then I want to be careful how that might influence my child, if that makes sense. Um, so you know, you got to pay attention to the, those outside influences.
Speaker 1:As Christians, it's a principle for us. I want to be surrounded by people that are going to make me better, you know. And then the thing that we'll focus on here today is sometimes discipline is correction or a chastening that comes as a consequence to my disobedient actions, that sometimes God disciplines me, and verse five there are two reactions that were warned not to have when it comes to the discipline of the Lord. The first one is it says don't, don't regard lightly the discipline of the Lord. The second one is don't be weary, so don't be overwhelmed by God's hand of discipline. Don't become afraid of God in an unhealthy way. Don't be weary, so don't regard lightly. That means don't just blow it off, don't brush it aside, like, don't ignore God's word or the conviction of his Holy spirit. Um, pay attention to those things, uh, and. And then the other thing is but don't let it.
Speaker 1:Weary you Don't become, don't be, don't have an unhealthy fear of God. You can have an unhealthy fear of God where you know you. You fear God the way you might have fear and might fear an abusive father. If you come from a, if you come from a background where you got beat and hit and abused and then somebody says, well, you got to fear the Lord, he's a, he's a father, he's your father, then all of a sudden you project that onto God and you have an unhealthy fear of God. So don't be weary.
Speaker 1:So don't regard lightly, don't blow it off, but also don't be weary. So don't regard lightly, don't blow it off, but also don't be overwhelmed with a weariness that, oh my gosh, I just dread the relationship we've all had. I think a lot of us have probably had experiences where let me think how I want to say this these two things tend to be what most of us have experienced in our parental relationship growing up. So either you don't fear your parents. You regard like you regard very lightly. You know your mom said, hey, don't do this or don't do that, or I'm not going to tell you again, but you knew she wasn't really going to do anything about it. So what does this mean for us as parents? Teach your kids not to regard your discipline lightly. They should know.
Speaker 1:Here's a principle Hebrews, chapter 12, verse five Do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord. Teach your kids not to regard lightly your discipline. If you say and I would warn against just making threats Don't say, if you do X, y or Z, I'm going to bust your honey in or you're going to get a spanking or whatever. Just speak, let your be yes, let your no be no, don't do that. You might say to your child you know, don't, don't do that. Don't hit your brother, don't get another cookie, don't take the remote and get on the television. Don't do that, that's it. You don't say if you, if I catch you doing that again, I'm going to X, y or Z. Just say don't do it.
Speaker 1:If they do that, there needs to be swift action on your part. Um, we're going to get into in a minute. It's not, it's not a retribution, it's not revenge, it's not to humiliate them. It's simply there needs to be swift action. Just bam, you. You are going to have to understand that I'm serious when I, when I say this, and so I don't want them to regard lightly my discipline and so I'm the one that has to maintain control of that. Um, I don't want them to ignore my, what I'm saying. I don't want them to reject what I'm saying. I don't want them to um reject what I'm saying. I don't want them to um, to, to laugh off Like I.
Speaker 1:I remember as a kid getting uh, uh, my mom giving me a spanking one time and I thought this is a joke, it didn't hurt. I remember she left the room. I was laughing, you know, and and uh. So then after that I was like how do I work this thing so that my mom is the one that gives me the whooping, not my dad? You know? Um, there needs to be.
Speaker 1:We need to teach our children not to regard lightly our discipline. The flip side is it says don't be weary, and so I don't need to be wearied by the hand of the Lord's discipline. This is the idea. Like I'd be overwhelmed, you know, or become afraid of the Lord in an unhealthy way. So I need to make sure my child doesn't fear me in an unhealthy fear where they think, where they're scared to be themselves, they lose joy.
Speaker 1:I think this is a big piece of this. I don't want them to lose joy at being a kid, and specifically at being my kid, and so, um, I don't want to create. I think one way that we can address this is that old adage that comes from Douglas Wilson in the book father hunger, when, and we we've talked about this a couple of years ago in an episode, but he talked about how God created a garden full of yeses and put one no in the middle of it. So don't don't wear your children by creating an enormous set of do's and don'ts and then every time they mess up, they get, you know, they get the rod. Um, create a system that sets them up for success. That is joyful, and so they're joy. When they do make mistakes, or they do, or they do defiantly disobey, there's consequences, but then we work to restore the relationship back to a relationship of joy. So the reason, the result and effect of getting these two things right is that we'll live, um, with a healthy view of the lord, a healthy fear of the lord, and then same then for you, that that your child would live with a healthy view of you, a healthy fear of you, and one that draws them to you, not away from you. Nothing push them away, it draws them to you. Okay, discipline. Let me tell you what it is not for and what it should not cause.
Speaker 1:Discipline is not for revenge, it's not for retribution and it's not for humiliation. Now, there may be a time where a kid gets embarrassed and humiliated. You know, for example, a kid loses their cell phone. A disciplinary measure you take is they had a cell phone. Now they don't, and I would say you can get them a fake smartphone. You know, if they've got one of those screen phones, it's, it doesn't really have access to the internet, whatever, but they're able to have a phone, they can text with their friends or whatever, and then they lose that. That's gonna be embarrassing when they're the only kid in the ninth grade walking around without a phone. It might be embarrassing. I'm fine with that kind of embarrassment, that's, you're not humiliating them.
Speaker 1:The discipline is not for humiliation in the sense that you, you tear them down in a way that demoralizes them and robs their joy. And you know, like, like the story I told about the one cousin I had whose mom would beat him in public. That's humiliation, okay, um, so discipline is not for humiliation, it's not for revenge, it's not for retribution. Um, that's not why we discipline. I don't discipline my kid to get back at them because they disrespected or made me mad. Okay. Discipline, then, should not cause frustration or discouragement. I don't want to discourage Again.
Speaker 1:The scripture says fathers, don't provoke your children to wrath, don't exacerbate, or don't don't frustrate. So I don't want to exacerbate my child or the situation. Rather, you know, you take someone, someone gets up and gives um and gives a political speech. That exacerbates the tension. It creates more bitterness and violence and and passion against the opponent. I don't want to create resentment and anger and bitterness from my child toward me. God doesn't discipline us so that we would grow bitter towards him and create tension.
Speaker 1:The goal of discipline and punishment is not to create tension, it's to alleviate tension. The tension comes from the fact that this child or this young man, this young woman has defied or broken fellowship with you, and so we need to alleviate that tension. Discipline is a path to alleviate it, and so, then, the flip side of that is it. And so, then, the flip side of that is it's not to exasperate. I'm not doing this to make a kid more angry or to to just annoy them, to to irritate them. It's not to exasperate, it's not to, it's not to exacerbate, it's not to intensify uh, the, the, the, the tension and the bitterness, and it's also not to just frustrate them or make them indifferent. It should not cause frustration or discouragement. It should drive towards peace and wholeness in the relationship.
Speaker 1:Okay, so how about the why? Why does God discipline us? And then? So, then, in turn, why should we discipline our children? The short answer to this is because we love them, we delight in them. God disciplines us because he loves us and he delights in us. And so back to our Hebrews 12 passage.
Speaker 1:If we move on, we move from verse 5, we get into verse 6. It says the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. So the Lord disciplines the one he loves and the one whom he receives or delights. In. Another way of saying that is to delight in or to accept. So the Lord accepts us, he delights in us, he loves us. Therefore, he disciplines us. You discipline your child because you love them, you accept them, you delight in them. Okay, the next thing is he says it is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons.
Speaker 1:Then he asks a question For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you're left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. So there's legitimacy in discipline. When I discipline, I'm legitimizing the father-son relationship or the mother-son, father-daughter whatever. The parent-child relationship is legitimized through discipline. If I don't discipline, there's no distinction in the relationship and so it delegitimizes it. If I'm just trying to be this kid's buddy, then it delegitimizes. It makes the relationship illegitimate in terms of the value of the relationship. God has created the order within the home to be the order in which the parents raise and teach and instruct and discipline children so that they ultimately would know God and discipline children so that they ultimately would know God. So discipline is a sign of legitimacy. It's a sign that you love your child, it's a sign that you delight in and accept them as your child and it's a sign of the legitimacy of your parenthood. So you want to be a legit parent. You've got to discipline.
Speaker 1:Next, verse 9 says, besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live? So verse 9, it's to bring we discipline, to bring honor and respect to God. He disciplines us so that we might in turn, honor and respect him. So we need to discipline, as parents, our children so that they would honor and respect him. So we need to discipline, as parents, our children so that they would honor and respect God. They're going to learn about honor in the way that you discipline and instruct and teach them. They're going to learn about respect in the way that you handle that and ultimately it will give them great joy and purpose, just as it gives it gives me great joy and purpose to honor and respect the Lord. So discipline when I'm out of line is to bring me back to a place of respect and honor of God and that ultimately gives me the greatest purpose. So I need to reflect that in my own parenting.
Speaker 1:Next, in verse 10, it says they disciplined us for a short time and it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. Discipline is designed to make me more like Jesus. We use the word sanctification. So, as a child of God, a Christian, god's discipline in my life is to make me more like Christ. So, as a parent, when I'm disciplining my child, it's to make them align with the standard of life that I believe God has called us to live and that I as a parent and to instruct them in. But ultimately, as it leads them to Christ, it's also like once your child makes a profession of faith, you're playing a critical role in their sanctification process, them becoming more like Jesus. So disciplining them helps them. It gives them sort of the guide rails to how they're to follow Jesus. Even verse 11, we're almost done.
Speaker 1:For the moment, all discipline seems painful and rather, uh, seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. So verse 11 is saying that we discipline. God disciplines us in order that we would bear fruit, which just just means we would do good works that glorify God, we would help others, we'd be better people, we'd be the peaceful people who pursue righteousness. And so I'm teaching my child in the same way. I'm disciplining them so that their lives might be productive and fruitful, so that they might be a good friend to other people and be helpful and pursue that which is good. And then verse 12, I love this one. Therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees. What is he saying? He's saying God disciplines us so that our hands would be stronger, our knees would be stronger, our backs would be straight. He's disciplining us to make us stronger. So God disciplines us so that we would become stronger.
Speaker 1:The point of your discipline is to make your child a stronger man or woman, a stronger boy or girl, a stronger young man or young woman. It's to build strength and character in them, not to tear them down and make them weak. And I love you know. I added verse 13 because I think this is a helpful sort of flip side to this, the other side, the other edge to the sword. Make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.
Speaker 1:There's a, there's an illustration here that I think is very helpful, and it is the picture he's painting is that when a child is defined or disobedient, or they've sinned against their parent, that child has um. That child has created disunity and has broken fellowship with the parent, and he uses the picture of a dislocated joint. The other day, little tore her ACL a few years ago and she didn't choose to have it repaired and so, as a result, she doesn't have really lateral movement and she went back and forth about whether or not to have it repaired. Her competition days are over and some people are like man, you get that thing repaired when you're at this age and it could create more problems than just the rehab process. So anyway, she's gone back and forth. But one thing that will happen is if she twists a weird way, her knee will dislocate and it happened the other day. And it's so painful to put it back into joint and reduce that dislocation. But it's critical to do it because once it goes back in, there's relief.
Speaker 1:I tell you a story. I like to tell this story to. I like to tell it to illustrate this point. And this is a story I've told before but it bears telling again. We're going down the river. This is early snowbird days. This is over 20 years ago. We're going down the river. We've got a group of students Back in the old days.
Speaker 1:A lot of people remember this man. We used to play so rough on the river. It was like rough and tumble. I mean we would go at it, you know, boat to boat. We would boat fight and just kind of war back and forth. You're trying to throw people in and you're splashing. It was a lot of fun and we still do a good bit of that, but nowhere near as much as we used to, for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1:One too many people were getting hurt. We had broken ribs. Broken ribs, broken wrists, you know, people come out of the boat and hit their head, and so 20 years ago it was like, okay, we gotta, we gotta scale this back. People are getting hurt and so, uh, we had to scale it back. And I remember we were having, we were going at it and there was a kid uh, he was. He was a strapping kid, probably a 16 year old boy, fun kid, great sense of humor, awesome personality, a lot of fun. I don't remember where the church was from, I don't remember much about the group, but I remember we were having a ball, we're going on a river, we're going at it and we're boat fighting, fighting back and forth, throwing each other in, and okay. So I'm at this point, I'm in my early 30s and I was still very youthful in my outlook and approach to things. I was probably 30 years old, 29, 30, 31, somewhere right in there, and very strong, very active, very fit and veryful. Nothing like like now.
Speaker 1:I did not feel like I feel now, you know. And so I remember grabbing this kid to pull him out of the boat and toss him in and he had been kind of, he had, he had been the, he was getting the better of most people. He was just a big, strong kid and he was a competitive kid, he was an athlete. So I grabbed him and he wedged his leg under the seat in the boat in front of him. He wedged under the seat and when I pulled him out of the boat we kind of twisted, weird, and it dislocated his knee and I remember that kid was just wailing, I mean like not crying, just like, ah, my knee, my knee, he's just yelling. A tough kid. Because he settled down and he was just kind of, just kind of, you know, deep breathing and trying to maintain some composure.
Speaker 1:And back then we didn't have, there was no cell phones. At least we, we would carry. Uh, this would have been let's, let's say this is is 2002. We would have a flip phone on the river but, gosh, you couldn't get a signal out of the Nantahala Gorge. So we're about a mile from the end of the river where this happens, and it was probably 40 students. They were all from one church and we were all running the river. Zach Mabry was there, sean Clark was there, sean clark was there, spencer davis was there, and uh, so I little was on the trip, little was there. Little used to run those river trips.
Speaker 1:And so I I go up to the road and start running and hitchhiking to try to get down to the nana hala outdoor center where I could call 9-1-1. We didn't know, you could tell the kid's knee was dislocated, but we were afraid his leg was broken because it was at a weird angle coming out of the knee. And a buddy picked me up. He's coming down the road, saw me, gives me a ride. He's like, hey, I'll just ride with you. Well, you can call 911 and I'll run you back up. And so he waits. I run in, use the landline, call 911. My buddy gives me a ride back up to a mile back up the river.
Speaker 1:I work my way down the bank to the river's edge and we had this kid just sitting with his leg, uh, kind of propped up. And then we're like you know what, let's put it in the water, in this cold water. So while we're waiting on the ambulance. We put his leg in the cold water and we just put a little bit of traction at the ankle. We just pulled a little bit of traction on the end of his leg and, uh, we're sitting there waiting and the the ambulance pulls up rescue squads making a way down the bank and we're just applying traction. With traction, I'm sure you know what this is Traction's where you apply um linear, linear pressure.
Speaker 1:So imagine one I had one hand under his heel and one hand on top of his foot and I'm just applying a slight bit of pressure, like I'm pulling his leg just to apply intention and that relieves. And where that's really helpful is like if you had a broken bone and it was a compound fracture, like especially if it was your femur and you could put that in traction. It would alleviate some of the pressure possibly. So we're trying to alleviate some pressure, keep some tension on this kid's leg and all of a sudden it just slipped back in, it reduced the dislocation and he just goes oh, something just happened. I think I'm good, I think I'm, yeah, I'm good, I'm good. And he starts bending his leg and so he ended up not having to go in an ambulance and watched his leg, you know, for the next couple of days till they went home and just say, hey, keep an eye on this and you might want to you know, get it checked out or whatever, and he was fine but it was a, it was a good.
Speaker 1:Those two situations little's leg dislocating and I've, most of us have had a dislocated joint. It is excruciating, it's as painful, if not more so, than a broken bone, but then if you can just reduce that dislocation boom, you can put it right back in place and it alleviates the pressure. And so he's saying what he's saying there and I just love this picture is a good picture of visual and Hebrews 12 and verse 13. The reason I like to add verse 13, he says so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. It's this picture of, I mean, you, you haven't, you've got a lameness issue. We don't need to dislocate and bust stuff up, we just need to put everything back in place. And that's the picture of what discipline is doing so principally. And that's the picture of what discipline is doing so principally when your kids are young. Make sure that you are managing the relationship with all of these principles in place.
Speaker 1:Now again, we've got a bunch of other episodes we can walk through. We did episodes on the cop coach counselor phase. We've done episodes on that, where you go through the early stages of their development You're the cop, counts the cop, coach, counselor phase. We've we've done episodes on that, where you go through the early stages of their development You're the cop, then you become the coach, and then, when they're adults, you become the counselor. Um, there's, there's other, we've we've put a lot of content out and you can search that up. But but for today I just wanted you to hear some biblical principles of discipline. Remember, and your job is not for, you know, to exact retribution or to get revenge or to humiliate them. It's to restore fellowship, to put what is dislocated back in place and to teach them not to regard lightly, but also not to fear you in an unhealthy way, to where they grow weary and that they lose joy. So hopefully, these principles of discipline will be helpful for you. And then also, the last thing I'd say is no, no, when you've messed up and recognize that you're not going to be a perfect parent, you know you're going to make mistakes. It might mean you need to apologize, you need to confess to your kids hey, I failed here. But then also, um, you might need to do something difficult and and bring some a firm hand of discipline and then, um, don't, don't apologize for that. This is what you need to do. It's going to be a hard decision. It's never fun to bring discipline to a kid that you love, but it's necessary for their growth and their development. Just remember that principle what, what kind of a father is a loving father? What you're not a loving father or mother If you're not willing to apply discipline, um, in a healthy and biblical way? All right, hope that's helpful. That's going to kind of wrap up.
Speaker 1:This little mini series is three-part mini series on parenting and we'll do more of it in the in the coming year, 2025, as we're wrapping this year down. I thought that would be helpful, maybe, and so let me know what you think, send us some questions or comments, let us know what you think about it and hopefully this has been helpful. So we're going to interview Little soon. We're going to do an episode where we talk about pinwheel tutoring and what that looks like. I say interview Little. I'm not going to interview her, but we're going to. We're going to turn on the mic and just have a conversation about pinwheel tutoring, and we're also going to talk about, um, kids that are trauma brained. We're going to talk a little bit about the importance of recognizing, if you're going to foster or adopt um, just what all that might entail and some of the hurdles that that I wish we would have known beforehand. But I'm thankful that we know now and maybe that'll be helpful.
Speaker 1:It's that season, it's christmas season. I'm loving it. I hope y'all are loving it, loving it, loving it. God was good to me this past week. Uh, my man, moses, shot a buck and that was cool. He got first buck. He shot it at 130 yards and high shoulder hit, dropped it in its tracks and that's what we're eating tonight. So that was fun, me and Moe. It was a cold hunt. We're bundled up hand warmers in the pockets, set up in an old barn and watching out over a field. We had a corn feeder set up that. We've been watching several deer and that was fun. And yeah it's good.
Speaker 1:So thank y'all for following along and listening. Appreciate you more than you know. Hope this has been a helpful little series and, um, hope you're enjoying this christmas season. We put our tree up last night. I went and cut it yesterday. Put it up last night. I went and cut it yesterday, put it up last night. As I'm recording this, which by now it'll be a week, over a week, from when we did that, um, so this I'm recording this way ahead of when it's actually going to drop, but anyway, it's early December and got our tree up and house is cozy. We could spend cold. Gosh, it's been cold. I'm sure it's been cold where you're at. It has been frigid, and so keeping a hot fire in the wood stove and staying close to that bad boy, um, I love this time of year, I love the season.
Speaker 1:Hopefully you're enjoying it and if you're, uh, if this is a season where you're dealing with grief or loss, pray the Lord's blessing on you and that you would experience the peace that passes, understanding that only God can provide, and that his presence will be rich in your life and in your home this Christmas season. Thankful for what Jesus has done and thankful that he came into the world to provide salvation for us, he is worthy to be praised. The baby in a manger is the king of kings, and so let's worship him as such. Y'all have an awesome week.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to no Sanity Required. Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a rating. It really helps. Visit us at SWOutfitterscom to see all of our programming and resources, and we'll see you next week on no Sanity Required.
