Parenting With Purpose: Day 12 – Focus On Your Marriage

Today for our Parenting With Purpose Series, I’m sharing a guest post from my church-planting pastor turned life coach husband, Chuck.

His gift is sharing insight and wisdom with those traveling the faith journey. He’s passionate about working with individuals and couples to help them live out their God-given potential in their personal lives and in their marriages and I hope what he shares with you today is a blessing to your life!

{If you’re a single parent, I’ll be sharing a guest post from a single mom “on the other side” of parenting soon just for you!}

The secret sauce to rearing great children of faith comes with something as simple as investing in your own marriage.

I took inventory of my peers who have a deep faith and I noticed this trend. As a pastor of almost 20 years I have spent most of my time working with teens. In that time I learned one central truth about parenting.

Parents who intentionally work on having a strong marriage tend towards rearing kids with their own deep personal faith.

It seems that when a child doesn’t have to worry with the stability of their parent’s marriage they can focus on the larger questions of life that impact their relationship with God.

This is surprising even in homes where the parents don’t attend church but the teenagers do. It seems that when children see their parents devote themselves to the service of someone other than self, they see a commitment to personalize that in their own walk with God.

As a pastor who performs marriages, I require that all my couples listen to my first pre-marital counseling session online “God’s Plan for Marriage.” In it I discuss what God intended marriage to be and how things got messed up fairly quickly. One of the passages I use in the session and in most of my weddings comes from Ephesians 5.

It this passage Paul tells husbands and wives to mirror their relationship to that of Christ and his bride, the church. Listen to what Paul asks of wives:

For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of His wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of His body, the church (Eph. 5:22-23).”

As I humorously tell my brides, “all you are required to do as a wife is to willingly choose to do for your husband whatever he asks, just as if Jesus Christ himself asked you to do so.” Of course, most wives give me one of their famous whiskey tango foxtrot looks. But I say, wait, wait, wait! We haven’t gotten to the men yet.

To husbands, Paul says:

For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church… In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself (Eph. 5:25 & 28).”

To the men I say, “your responsibility is to wake up every morning and begin serving your wife in any possible way that you would care for your own needs.”

You see, Jesus didn’t just die for us, he gave up every conceivable comfort in heaven to live a destitute, hard and selfless existence for the benefit of others. When husbands model the attitude of selfless concern for their wives, they also inaudibly teach their children a most valuable attitude of being, “life ain’t all about you kiddo!”

Imagine a home where children witness their parents serving one another daily.

In my experience watching their parents serve one another daily teaches children how to be wise, caring, humble and secure people. Children don’t need parents who focus solely on their needs. To do so risks making the children feel too important – it’s called “loving your child too much.”

Instead, children need a model of selflessness to follow. In an attempt to become more independent they will follow the example presented to them, and become the adults leaders this world so desperately needs.

Here is my action step for you this week. Whether your spouse willingly participates or not, read Philippians 2:3-4 and do the following for your spouse:

1. Don’t be selfish with your time, energy, or focus.
2. Don’t try to impress your spouse. Just serve him or her willingly.
3. Think of him or her as better than yourself.
4. Think about what they might want and then do or give that to them.

If this list seems especially hard for you, then you are the perfect candidate for it! Just give it a try for a week and watch what God will do.

Notice that when Jesus did this for us it was God who lifted Him up. Like Jesus, God will raise your kids up to new heights when you model an unusual love for others.

Looking for more ideas and resources for Parenting With Purpose as you create a God-centered home? You can find the whole series here.

Sharing with Wedded Wednesday, Works for Me Wednesday, Wholehearted Home, and Coffee and Conversation.