[00:00:00] Anthony: Welcome once again to the Shepherd Press Podcast. My name is Anthony Russo and joining me today is Margy Tripp. Margy is the author of “It's Not Too Late: Restoring Broken Relationships with Teenage and Adult Children.” And she and her husband, Ted, have been in the counseling and parenting ministry for many years now.

And we're delighted to talk with Margy today about the issue of children and their rebellion and how God can reconcile relationships between parents and children, whether they're children that are still in the home or grown children that are out on their own. So Margy, it's a joy to have you with me.

Welcome.

[00:00:42] Margy: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

[00:00:45] Anthony: Moving from the theological to now the applied theology; practically speaking, as far as working through rebellion and reconciliation, several chapters give wisdom for parents to prepare spiritually to address rebellion and the process of reconciliation. How can a Christian parent who is at their proverbial wits’ end look at such spiritual preparation as a delight and a privilege and not as another sort of a gold standard that they may already feel that they can't live up to?

In other words, if they're going, I've tried it. I can't live up to that. I'm not a perfect parent. How can we give hope to them in that spiritual preparation for reconciliation?

[00:01:28] Margy: That's a kind of a multifaceted question because, of course, people respond in many different ways to their rebellious children.

Some may be heartbroken and weeping, others may be angry and at their wits’ end in that way. But a general answer to that question would be that this is just, this is not just another methodology. What we're talking about here from God's word, is not just another effort. It's a spiritual endeavor and we're not in it alone.

The Almighty of the universe has revealed himself to us and he is present in the battle. I love passages like James 4. It's a wonderful passage on repentance, but there are also great promises that are attached to repentance. God gives grace to the humble. If we resist the devil, he will flee. If we come near to God, he will come near to us.

If we humble ourselves before the Lord, he will lift us up. The promises of God in his Word to be with us, in the midst of our struggle, whether they're struggles that we brought on ourselves because of our own sin, or the circumstances of life that have come at us that have nothing to do with what we have done and we've been wrong, regardless of what the issue is, we're not in it alone.

These aren't just hoops that we jump through to fix our kids. I'm, that's not what I'm suggesting. Just try this. It'll work. It's a delight and a joy in the midst of our trials to draw near to God, because in that we know his presence and his comfort and love. I think of something that's familiar to every believer is Psalm 23.

Now, if you look closely at Psalm 23, we think of it as this wonderful pastoral psalm, the green pastures and the quiet waters. But if you look more deeply, what is the psalmist experiencing? He's going through the valley of the shadow of death. And God has prepared a feast, but while he's enjoying this feast, his enemies are all around him.

They're poking him in the side, they're whispering lies, it's a terrible place to be. His sensory experience of life at this moment is terrible. Where do the green pastures and quiet waters come from? Where does comfort from the rod come from? I think it's the places of his heart. It's because he is enjoying, in the midst of his sensory experience of distress and grief and pain, he's experiencing the reality of that unseen world that 2 Corinthians 4 talks about. And so, he can say that he's comforted. He can say, surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. He's talking about temporal relief and eternal relief and so that's my answer to this. It’s not another methodology. You're not in this alone, God is present with you, and His word is filled with illustrations of and truth about His redeeming of us in those moments.

I think I just have to say this. Think of the three Hebrew children. Here they are in front of Nebuchadnezzar. The fiery furnaces beside them. What made it possible for them to say, “Oh, King, we will not bow before this idol. Our God is able to save us. But even if he does not, we will not bow down”?

It's because they had their eyes fixed not on their experience of the sensory world, but they had their eyes fixed on unseen world of spiritual reality, out of which God ministers to, loves, comforts, and cares for his children.

[00:05:47] Anthony: It reminds me too of one of the statements you make in the book, as parents are moving forward now in spiritual preparation to initiate this conversation and this hopeful reconciliation of these issues of rebellion you point out “this is a spiritual endeavor, a holy mission.”

I know in Christian circles, we often talk about a calling or even parenting as a calling, which it certainly is. But I love that phrase, “a holy mission,” because it’s so practical and just like you were just talking about, it's really tied with the vital need of the Spirit’s equipping and his presence to accomplish that mission.

You were talking, you said how God is with us in these times. And again, this whole idea that it's a spiritual endeavor, a holy mission, God is with us. It's the old saying “where God guides, God provides.”

[00:06:44] Margy: I think our temptation each day is to go into what Paul calls in the New Testament, spiritual warfare in our spiritual underwear.

We have not made spiritual preparation. We need to remember all of life is spiritual. That's why we need spiritual armor. Because the way we live and respond to all the stuff of life is, as we've said before, preaching powerful messages to our family. We're either breathing life into our profession of faith or we're making it out to be a lie.

So how we respond to the guy who cuts us off in traffic or the friend who gossips behind our back, it has a profound impact on the people who are around us. So what makes it possible for us to fulfill this holy mission? It's not us. It's not in us. It's the power of God's work at work in us through his spirit.

So we better get on our faces before the Lord in the morning. We need to be people who are proactive rather than reactive. Putting on the armor of God is proactive. It's saying, Lord, today, I know there's going to be a struggle. And so I want to be prepared. In fact, it's good for us to even identify those areas of struggle with our spouse, with our children, with our coworkers, other brothers and sisters in Christ, our neighbors, identify those and get them before the Lord and say, “Lord, today, I want to be like Christ in this situation, but I'm going to need your help so that I answer, so that I respond, so that I even use body language that is in keeping with your calling to me to preach the gospel.”

[00:08:37] Anthony: That is so vital. Like you said in parenting, even in our own Christian lives whether we're married or single and in marriages, that walking with the Lord, starting each day with the Lord.

As you progress through reading the book, you talk about spiritual preparation and then the beginning of initiating what is really going to be the first of several, numerous conversations with the rebellious child, if they're open to it if you can have those conversations, it's a process and not to expect it all to be resolved in one conversation.

You provide a step by step through the process, not a script, but just coming alongside and discipling parents who are at their wits’ end, or maybe at their wits’ end, through ways that they can biblically seek to be reconciled to these rebellious children.

And that's not so much a question. It's just a statement of how helpful this book can be for those who are struggling going, how do I even begin this conversation?

[00:09:46] Margy: The reason I put those conversation starters in the book, it was not to script things for parents. Obviously, when we talk to our children, it has to be in our own voice, but it's more the overall content, the idea that's behind the conversation, the love, the acceptance, the welcoming spirit of whatever words we choose has to be there if we're not going to continue in the same path that we've already been with our children.

1 Peter 1:13 says prepare your mind for action. And that's really what this is about. Think through, we have to think carefully how we're going to initiate dialogue, not monologue, dialogue. It has to have these qualities. It has to be filled with love, commitment, understanding. It has to have a goal to restore.

If that's not the case, we're going to fall back into the same rhetoric that created the tension and conflict in the first place. We need to think about these, what I call healing conversations, and plan as much as we can. Obviously it's give and take, so you can't plan everything. You're going to have to be ready with an attitude of love and patience and kindness and forgiveness, even to respond to things that are hurtful.

But as much as possible, we want to think about those healing conversations beforehand. So we don't lose our way as we go along. And you can even use your botched efforts. They say, “oh no, I blew it again.” I say, “no, use that botched effort.” First of all, you want to learn to say as soon as you realize what you've done, say, “I'm so sorry.

I didn't want to say it in that way.” And then either restate it or say, “you know what, could we come back to this conversation later? Because I need to think about and pray about how I can respond to this in ways that are truly healing for our relationship.” And then go aside and use that botched response in order to say to yourself, “how can I do this better? How does scripture inform What just happened?” So yes, it's really important for us to think of. It's that proactive stuff again. I want to be proactive rather than reactive.

[00:12:21] Anthony: The book opens with hope. It's right there in the title, in fact and it also concludes with hope because even in the chapter, What if all my efforts to disarm rebellion fail? That chapter goes into greater detail in answering that question. But one of the ways in which you answer that, is by turning it from a negative to looking at it positively with faith and hope. Essentially saying it hasn't worked for me yet. Can you maybe share a story of a seemingly hopeless situation where God did bring reconciliation?

[00:13:00] Margy: I recently talked with a family who I worked through these issues with about 15 years ago.

And they came to me with a situation where they had a 15-year-old who was in violent rebellion. To the point of punching holes in the sheet rock, tearing the door off of their bedroom because the parents had tried to lock them into the room. There was screaming, fits of rage, refusing to cooperate with anything the family was doing.

I met with this teenager, but after one conversation with the teenager, I thought, boy, what I really need to do is talk with the parents because the angst, the anger the fury that this teen felt toward their parents was a little overwhelming, and their parents were very willing to do that.

[00:13:58] Margy: They were, as you've described earlier, at their wits’ end. They didn't know what else they could do. We began to work through these principles from God's Word. And their parenting was really transformed by scripture. I'll give you one little example. The habit of the family for family devotions was for the father to have prayer where he began praying with who he had perceived to be the biggest sinner in the family in the recent day or days since their last family devotions. So the family knew that whoever got named first was the big sinner of the week. And then he'd work his way down and he was usually at the end, with the very meek “help me to be a good father.” During these times of family worship, this teenager, who was forced to come to family worship, would sit with their back to the family and their arms crossed and fuming and muttering to themselves the whole time.

So in one of our sessions, my recommendation to the parents, was for the father to name himself first in his time of prayer and to put this teen at the end of the prayer list. But to, in appropriate ways acknowledge in prayer before the Lord and in the hearing of his family, those spiritual struggles that he has.

It transformed family worship. It took a few family worships for this teeb to realize dad was serious, but the family was amazed to see this teen turn around, and face the family during periods of family worship.

Okay. Fast forward 15 more years now. This adult child, now 30 years old, is not a believer, but their relationship with mom and dad is restored, and they have many opportunities to speak the Gospel into the life of this adult child.

Now, notice I said this adult child is not a believer yet. Because God is powerful, it's not only the power of his Spirit, but it's the testimony of the change in his parents and their willingness to humble themselves. And to [admit] their struggles to their child and ask for this teen's forgiveness over these years has resulted in this teen being willing to hear. They have a right to speak now that they didn't have previously.

In addition, a younger sibling who was a witness to all that was going on was rescued by this dramatic change in their parents. And really rescued from following in the older sibling’s footsteps.

Obviously, it's not up to us. It's the work of God. But what we're doing in what I call disarming rebellion, what we're doing is we're getting our junk out of the way.

We want to clear the path from our complicity in the child's rebellion, if there is any. Because sometimes it's dreamed up on the part of the kid for an excuse to be rebellious. But if there is any complicity on our part, any ways that we've clouded the Gospel, we want to get that out of the way so that the path is clear and the child is not angry at us.

They have to deal with God. That's a powerful way for us to bring the Gospel to our children.

[00:17:59] Anthony: I'm so glad too that in the wisdom here, you just shared, that you also mentioned that to get rid of any complicity that may exist on the parents’ part, and it's not necessarily that every parent has any complicity. There are many parents who maybe are struggling with guilt saying “I was a bad parent and that's why my child rebelled or et cetera, et cetera.”

When, they did what they could biblically, they really tried to be godly parents and raise them right. And that child just went off and eventually chose their own way. So, I'm glad that you mentioned that it's not always a parent's fault.

[00:18:41] Margy: Yes, I think that's important. Obviously in this book, my primary audience are those parents where the relationship is broken because there has been anger and frustration and really difficulties on both side of the equation. And I strive in the book to recognize that very often parents are in very difficult situations parent-child relationships, not by their doing, but by the choices of the child.

Here's the important issue. We still have to address it, and the humility and a Gospel-centered responses that we make to those rebellious children are true, whether or not we have been complicit. So I think that the disarming process is valuable regardless of what brought about the rebellion in the heart of the child. So I hope that parents will receive that.

[00:19:46] Anthony: I know many, even in my own circles, I know of at least five sets of parents who are struggling with grown children who are not walking with the Lord. And it is, it's a real trial for them as believers, as parents. It's a burden. And so, these are helpful and encouraging words that you're giving. So I so appreciate what you've written, what you've preserved for other parents to read and what you've shared today.

Thank you. Thank you so much for that. You've encouraged us so much, but I'll just throw it out there. Any final words of encouragement for listeners who maybe are enduring this trial right now or any other thoughts you might want to share?

[00:20:29] Margy: Yes. I think that we need to remember that we are never at a place where our work has been in vain. As long as our children are breathing, there is hope. We need to remember that we plant the seeds, we water the seeds in this spiritual word. But it's God that brings the harvest. It's not our job. Our children's response to the Gospel is not dependent on us.

In fact, when parents have this guilt-response, “if only I had or whatever,” they're forgetting that they are not the reason their child either believes or disbelieves. That's between their child and God. We're responsible for shaping influences. And our job is before the Lord to do the best we can at the holy mission that he's given us, and we'll fail a lot. We have to be people who are willing to say, “please forgive me. I was wrong.” In fact, in some ways, I think that saying, “please forgive me I was wrong” is more powerful than getting it right the first time, because our children need to see that they are times of failure, that it's okay to humble yourself and say you were wrong. So, it's important for us to remember that it's God who brings the harvest. It's not us. We're just called on to play this role of being the planters and the water.

And of course, we always need to remember God's agenda for us as parents or in any of our roles. He's making us like Christ. He's always at work to refine us through our trials. There's a quote by, I think it's Spurgeon. If it was before him, he's the oldest one I can find who said this, but it's a memorable thought about trials.

He said, “I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me against the rock of ages.” What a precious statement. Every trial is precious because it brings us to God. His purpose is for us to see his glory, to go through his refining fire and to bring us out as pure gold.

I think I would recommend to parents Matthew 11 in times of distress. I've used it scores of times. It's a wonderful call to salvation, but it's also, I believe, a powerful passage for us in the midst of our trials. “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Because my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” My counsel to parents in the midst of all of this, is rest in Christ. It is a precious place to be. Take hold of that unseen world of spiritual reality and you will find rest for your soul like David in Psalm 23, in the midst of difficulty.

[00:23:47] Anthony: Margy again, that's a wonderful word and a wonderful word to end our time together with. And again, the book is “It's Not Too Late: Restoring Broken Relationships with Teenage and Adult Children.” Margy, again, thanks so much for joining us here today on the Shepherd Press Podcast. Thank you for your life of parenting ministry along with Ted. We're just so appreciative. So thank you so much

[00:24:14] Margy: And my privilege to be with you. Thank you.