Parenting Help - Week 1

Part 1: Real vs. Ideal

Ideal can seem out of reach, and it sometimes feels easier to put it out of sight. Part of being a parent is to point our children toward the ideal, while at the same time navigating what is real.

Discussion Questions

1. What is a truth or characteristic your parent or person of influence taught you, that you want to pass down to those you have influence over?

2. What is a truth or characteristic you wish your parent or person of influence would have taught you that you want to give to the one you have influence over?

3. The message discussed 4 characteristics of parents with healthy relationship with their teens.

   1. Fewer Rules

   2. They weren’t afraid of their children

   3. They discovered and facilitated what the interest, strengths and talents instead of forcing the parent’s interest on their child.

   4. They resisted the temptation to involve their kid in everything.

4. Why are each of these valuable to the parenting relationship with their kids?

5. Even if you may not have been able to achieve ideal marriage in your life, how important is it to you to make available the ideal to those you have influence over?

Read John 1:14

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

6. What stands out to you in this verse?

7. Would you say that you were raised with more truth or more grace?

8. Which would you have preferred and why?

9. In your relationships are you more geared toward grace, and in what areas are you more geared toward truth?

10. How can you extend more grace or truth toward others (especially kids if you have them)?

Moving Forward

Truth without grace creates pretenders and hypocrites. But grace without truth creates a tolerant version of faith that hurts everybody in the end. Jesus was the full embodiment of truth and grace. He never dumbed down the truth, but he never turned down the grace.