Loving Our Kids on Purpose - Book Review

I don't know if I have mentioned before that I have seven children. Four girls ages 20, 22, 24 and 26 and then we had the boys 6 years later and they are now 9, 12 and 14.

Through the years we have wandered our way through our parenting trying to do our best to love our children and bring them up to become successful adults who hopefully would choose to be lovers of God and man.

When one of them would do something funny or embarassing or crazy we would just look at each other and say, "Their parents were probably idiots," or "It comes from bad parenting!" We all (I think) always realized that we were simply trying to do our best with our kids to love them while providing guidelines and the necessary discipline to teach and train them.

Then the God Journey did a recommendation on Danny Silks, Loving Our Kids on Purpose. I was intrigued with what Wayne had to say about this book. I have loved Wayne's teaching on Grace and it has simply changed my life with how I relate to my Father. So when he said that here was a book on parenting that reflected this grace filled message and allowed us to parent our kids in a way that they could also understand the heart of God I sent away for the book.

After reading the book I also sent away for the 6 disk set on Danny teaching the series. Britt and I listened to it yesterday while driving to the North Carolina coast to stay for a few days with friends. (Best Friend is my bestest, bestest ever friend ever!!)

The series has absolutely blown me away. I wanted to be a parent who showed grace to my children but I had no idea exactly how to do that. To me it was either grace showed (which meant letting them get away with anything they wanted to do) or an old testament punishment system (if you sin, you will get punished). Exactly how could you be full of grace to your kids and yet hold a house together and train them up like we know they need? What do you do if they disobey? What if they are disrespectful? How do you get them to do their chores without punishment? And how do I show them the heart of the Father in all of that.

This series/book answers those questions while giving you VERY practical ideas of what to do and how to become creative in parenting our kids.

I can't wait till Marshall can listen to this with me. Over and over Britt and I would pause the tapes and exclaim..."Oh, I understand now...this makes so much sense!" We would look back on episodes in the family and realize how much we tried to control each other. We saw the times where we could have allowed consequences to be the deterent and still loved and provided a safe place within our hearts. We saw over and over how the Father loves and disciplines us and therefore how we can learn how to love and discipline our children.

I can't recommend a book/series any more highly than this. Please do yourself a favor and read or listen to it. Even if your kids are grown or you have no children yet, you will understand more of the Father's heart towards you. You will understand how he can love you in the midst of your sin, how he can avoid anger towards you and remain the safest place in the world to run to even in the midst of your worst days.