The importance of respect

It’s been proven that children will grow up thinking God is like their dads. If the dad is a wimp, God will become a wimp in his mind; One he can‘t count on. If the dad is dishonest or doesn’t keep his word, that’s the way he will grow to think of God, and of course, he won’t want God for himself, or believe God’s word. Or if the dad is gone, he will grow up thinking God doesn’t care about him. You can see that parents like this are giving their children a push down the stairway to hell.  But if parents teach their children to respect them at an early age, the children will have no problem in transferring that respect and trust to God.

Maybe YOU didn’t have respect for your parents. Neither did I. Maybe you have a hard time believing that God loves you and wants to do you good. Please get my brochure called God loves me and do what it says. I did this, and it changed my attitude toward God, and I have found out how very good God is!

Now, here are some things that make your children not respect you: I’m sure there are more that I haven’t thought of, but this is a start. If you yell or scream at your kids, you are causing disrespect. If you don’t keep your word ~ saying you’ll do this or that, and not follow through with it.

Maybe you’ve given your kids warning after warning, end up screaming, and then don’t ever spank  ~ Oh!  Get my brochure, Must I spank my child? There is important information in there. These also cause disrespect: Talking too much, not listening when the child wants to talk, or treating his thoughts as not important   Then when he’s older and you want him to talk, he won’t.

How do we gain respect?

As I state in the spanking brochure, you can only become a good parent by spending some time every day in prayer and reading in the Bible. This must become a habit with you, or you will fail in gaining respect. I’m sorry, but without God helping you, you have no power to change. You may try, but it won’t be permanent. WITH His help, you can do this, and your kids will turn out great.   Guaranteed!!

Here are a few verses that prove what I’ve just said: Matt. 6:33 ~ Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you.

Phil. 4:13, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. 

John 15:5, Without Me you can do nothing.

What God did for us He’ll do for you!

We were married for ten years before we had any kids. The reason was because T.A. (my husband) didn’t want any kids turning out like him. But in 1972, five years before we had our first child, we went to a week-long seminar. It was called then Basic Youth Conflicts, taught by Bill Gothard. It’s called now, Basic Life Principles. Anyway, T.A. and I came home and put into practice the things that we’d heard. Incidentally, we know people who’ve been to this seminar many times, but never put any of it into practice. Their lives stayed the same. Our changed!

We started the process of cleaning up our lives; giving back things that weren’t ours, asking forgiveness of people we’d wronged or hurt, and we started developing the habit of having daily prayer times and time in the Word of God. This gained T.A. respect from his boss and fellow employees! God helped him to treat others with respect and to be honest, dependable, and a good worker. Col. 3: 23, Whatever you do, work hard as if you were working for God and not men.

In a prayer time, God spoke to T.A. (in his thoughts) and said, “Will you have kids if I raise them?” T.A. answered, “Sure, but how are You going to do that?”   God’s answer: “If you keep your vertical relationship right, I’ll take care of your horizontal relationships.”  

We have so many testimonies showing how God has kept His end of this bargain.   I have room for a couple here: Our second son was about nine years old. T.A. got up in the night to have his prayer time, but noticed that this son was already in the living room, praying. T.A. quietly went back to bed and lay there, amazed. God spoke into his thoughts, “Why are you amazed? He’s just copying you!”

Both our sons were growing in their own times with God. God was speaking to them and leading them into His purpose for their lives. We were pleased. Many years later, when this son was a teenager T.A. got discouraged concerning something he was wanting God to do, and so he quit having those nightly prayer times. It was right after that, this son became rebellious and started pursuing the world’s way.  T.A. had given Satan access. (Eph. 4:27,  Give no place to the devil.) That was a very costly mistake. At this writing, this son is in his mid-20‘s and still not back to God in the relationship he had when he was young. But I must hasten to add here, that God told T.A. recently that it is very hard on this son that we are not confronting him with his sins. God explained that because we are loving him and saying nothing, God is able to work on him directly.   That is good news! Another thing that helps is how we pray ~ in faith, not fear. I have a couple other brochures to help you with those subjects.

If your children are still at home, you can gain their respect by: 1. Start having private prayer times and Bible reading every day.  2. Ask God to help you be kind, loving and consistent with your children.  3. Tell them you are going to begin doing things differently with them.  Don’t just surprise them!  4. With a calm voice, tell your children what you expect, make sure they understand, (can repeat what you said), and then give no warnings. If they disobey they get three swats with a small, smooth board. Disrespect gets two swats. These should sting. Then give a big hug and read to them Eph. 6:1-3.  Then say, “We love you and want you to have a good, long life. So you must learn to obey when we speak quietly and once.” (This is big! It means they won't be killed in an accident or die early.)

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