Disappointed Children

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What do you do when children are disappointed? How do you solve their upset if you have let them down in some way? Should parents placate an upset child? Or is this a place for tough discipline? What is your solution?

Children Face Disappointments

Every child faces disappointments along the way. They may want you to be excited about something and you are unimpressed. Maybe you’ve seen or head it before. Maybe it just doesn’t seem important to you. Maybe you think it’s a bad thing altogether.

At other times your child may have special expectations of you which you fail to meet. You might forget a promise you made them or forget their birthday or something special to them. They might catch you out showing favouritism to someone else or being more interested in something else than them.

You may not buy them the present they have asked you for or you just may not have the finances, talent or skill to meet the needs they believe you should meet.

After all, parents are only human, aren’t they? So parents are going to disappoint people, including their spouse and children. So parents bring disappointments into the life of their children through the years.

What Disappointment Does

The Bible teaches us that disappointment has emotional impact. When an expectation exists and it is not met the experience is called “hope deferred”. That is to say that the thing being hoped for has to be put on hold, either temporarily or permanently. The Bible tells us that facing that kind of disappointment makes our heart sick.

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick: but when the desire comes it is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12

Being ‘sick’ in heart involves the emotions being pained. And since all the issues of a person’s life come out of their heart, having a sick heart can be quite serious. Let me show you how central the heart is in life’s journey.

“Keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” Proverbs 4:23

So, to make the point clear, disappointment challenges our emotions and that is dangerous, because if we respond wrongly our whole life can be affected. That’s why it is important for parents to take the issue of disappointment very seriously.

Mind you, husbands and wives, friends and associates all need to be attentive to the issue of disappointment. What I am applying here to children works the same in us all, young and old, in and out of the family.

Wise Responses

The first wise response from parents is to see the disappointment. The worse thing you can do in a case of disappointment is to ignore it or fail to see that it is there. If you allow disappointment to go unchecked and unaddressed then you leave the child with a ‘sick heart’ and vulnerable to unwise responses which create ‘issues’ in their life.

Most people are carrying ‘issues’ around with them that have come out of wrong heart reactions to things they experienced in the past. If you help your child deal with disappointment you will not only save them from developing a life issue from the case in point, but you will help them learn skills for resolving other issues that come up along the way.

The next wise response is to nurture the child’s heart. Remember that it is ‘sick’. The child who is feeling ‘hope deferred’ is not trying to be difficult, but is struggling to deal with internal responses that they may not want. They will be contending with hurt feelings, frustration, anger, resentment or other dangerous reactions which spring up within them due to what they have been through.

If you act in anger, using your authority to punish them for struggling with pain, you will only compound the problem.

Nurturing the Child’s Heart

If a person is feeling hurt, rejected, unloved or disappointed they will most likely be helped by a healthy dose of loving care and affection. They will benefit from any reassurance that they are loved and valued.

An apology is a good start. This shows the child that the parent did not intend to hurt their feelings. It teaches the child that we can all take responsibility for our actions, which is something you will want your child to do too.

As mentioned earlier, nurture is not achieved by being angry or reacting negatively to the child’s hurt feelings. You are going to be their parent for the rest of your life, so why in the world would you want to make a difficult situation worse? Surely you will want to build quality bridges into your child’s heart, forging a strong, life-long bond of affection and care.

So go ahead and nurture that relationship. Take care to build those bridges. While your child is feeling a little raw and sore their feelings are more easily able to be spoken into. Cold, unfeeling children are harder to build close relationship with than those who allow you to see their emotions. So capitalise on the soreness that they are feeling to touch their emotions and link their heart with yours.

Hold Your Ground

Another important thing for you to do, that will greatly benefit your child in the long run, is to hold your ground. Some parents feel they have failed if they upset their child. Those parents may go out of their way to placate the child by giving in to the child’s demands. This is not healthy for the child.

If you give in to your child’s upset feelings you teach your child that they can get their way by expressing emotion. You are training them to sulk, cry, complain, exploit and give in to hurt, and so on. Such processes do not work in the real world. So don’t lead your child into lifestyle habits which set them up for failure and further pain.

Responding properly to life’s disappointments is a skill we all need, for we will continue to face our share of unhappy moments. Anything can turn out to be worse or less than we wanted, from the weather to our health, or the performance level of others, or ourself. A mature person handles those disappointments with purpose and wisdom. You want your child to be a mature person, so help them face the disappointment and come to terms with it.

Don’t crumple in the face of your child’s disappointment, but show them how to embrace their situation, even though it is less than they want.

Coming to Terms With Disappointment

In order to resolve disappointment a person needs to work through the various feelings which erupt from their chest. So coming to terms with disappointment is a tailor-made process, customised for the child’s individual emotional responses.

Some children readily become resentful. Others embrace despair. Some feel worthless and rejected, while others retreat into their own world of self-reliance. There are many possibilities.

A wise parent will seek to understand the issues emerging within the child and then escort the child through the appropriate steps to resolve whatever that is. I suggest that my Steps to Release, which I discuss in other posts, will help.

Certainly forgiveness toward those who let the child down will be important. Accepting their lot, even though it is less than they wanted is also important. Repenting of wrong reactions is also very valuable. So too is expressing faith in God, recognising that God knows the end from the beginning and can be trusted to sort things out, even if they are disappointing.

Deal with Disappointment

The bottom line is that parents must be ready and willing to deal with the disappointment which they create in their children. But remember not to respond with intolerance, anger or frustration at your child’s hurt feelings. Instead, help the child deal with their personal struggles so they grow strong in facing this reality of life effectively. God bless you as you do.

Honour Forgotten

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Giving Honour, which I have looked at in some recent posts, is a matter of the heart. We are commanded to give honour, not as an outward form but as a heart choice. The problem in our society is that we have lost the notion of honour and only the form remains.

In bygone eras the giving of honour was a matter of character training. Children and youth learned to hold people in a place of honour. From that heart to give honour the child would happily do the things that expressed the honour in their heart.

When I was a child, and that wasn’t so long ago in historical terms, children still called adults by a title, such as Mr Jones or Mrs Smith. We were taught to respect our elders. Adults could not be spoken to the way we would speak to another child in the school yard. We had to say, “Excuse me”, when we wanted their attention. We had to wait for them to give us their attention before speaking. And so it went.

In a generation before mine it was customary for children to remain silent in the company of adults. At the dinner table, for example, children were to sit quietly and not speak unless spoken to. This behaviour pattern expressed honour to the adults and humility and self-control on the part of the children.

In the middle of last century it was still considered reasonable for a wife to serve her husband. She might prepare a hot drink for him and fetch his slippers to make him comfortable.

When travelling in a bus or train children were to give up their seat to an adult and everyone would give up their seat for an elderly person.

Honour was given to adults, the aged, those who were in positions of responsibility, those needing care, and so on. However, many people only learned the form, and not the heart attitude of honour that went with it.

In a previous post I pointed out that honour is a visible process. I’m going to almost contradict myself here, by noting that it is possible to go through the external motions, but not actually have the right heart attitude.

What happened historically was that children were taught to do the right thing, but not to feel the right heart attitude. Giving up their seat to an adult was seen as a duty, like a chore, but not as an expression of honour for that person.

Wives were told to please their husband, but as a matter of duty, not as an expression of the honour that was to come from their heart.

Children were told to be silent but did not understand why. So they demanded to be heard and no-one knew how to deal with that.

The actions have all but disappeared, because the people trying to teach them only held them as duties and appearances that had to be kept up. When the actions were challenged or disobeyed the teachers could not come up with a compelling reason to reinstate the lost practices. The problem? The practices had become a hollow and empty form of the process that was remembered. The action prevailed for a season, without the true heart basis upon which the actions were built.

We need to rediscover ‘honour’ and that will be reflected in actions that express honour to others. But it starts in the heart. If a child despises their parent then forced acts of honour are vain. If a child has no heart for the elderly then they will resent having to give up their seat for those people.

Honour has been forgotten and needs to be rediscovered. I pray that the Lord give us grace to make that discovery and to change the way people behave because we are able to transform their hearts first.

Peddling Poison

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How many times have you been poisoned? Have you always recovered or have you suffered permanent loss?

Those are silly questions, aren’t they? Poisoning is something we read about in books, from olden days and far-off lands. We laugh at the idea.

“The pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle, while the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true!” (Poisoning featured several times in the 1956 Danny Kaye movie, The Court Jester).

It’s ludicrous to think you’ve ever been poisoned, isn’t it? Surely you’d know if someone tried to poison you, wouldn’t you? Maybe not, if you’ve not been attentive.

The most common poison people use on each other today, in homes, schools, offices, the media and society at large, has doubtless been tasted by everyone, young and old. I dare say there is hardly a person on the planet who has not been poisoned in some way or other in the past year. We have all drunk from the “vessel with the pestle” that has the “pellet with the poison”.

The toxic substance that is doing all the damage is easy to consume. It is often drunk down willingly and passed on to others with hardly a thought. While its effects on the body are minimal and not fatal, the effect on people’s lives, often for as long as they live, are deadly and pervasive. Whole villages, organisations and communities have been poisoned by this stuff.

What is it called? I was hoping you’d ask. See if you can work it out in the following example.

A new person enters one of your social circles. He or she may meet you at work, school, church, social functions or some other place. You find them friendly and likable. You enjoy their company and welcome them into your circle of associates. You may even plan to get to know them better and maybe invite them to social events you organise.

Then someone come along and whispers information to you that you were not previously aware of. You may find out, for example, that the newcomer is under suspicion for theft, or some other crime. Possibly you find out that they recently abandoned their family for nothing but selfish reasons. It may be that they support some horrible cause. I’m not talking about gossip or lies here. Let us assume that there is ample proof for the claims being made. Someone is simply passing on the information without malice or evil intent. However, whatever the information may be, it causes you to feel sore on the inside.

That sore feeling is the poison taking effect. You are hurt by the news.

So now, what happens next time you meet that person? How do you feel toward them now? Do you continue to welcome them into your circle or do you find it hard to be warm and open to them?

The universal experience is to feel a strong desire to cut that person off. The universal experience is that the budding friendship and the respect and warmth that existed is now poisoned off!

It’s based on feelings of offence that cause you to resent the other person. The poison is the resentment which is passed on, penetrating your heart and mind and killing off something in your attitudes and lifestyle. It’s a toxic poison that has killed off millions of things each year, right around the world.

Before you dismiss this as something of little consequence, let me show you how it works on the grander scale. The poison of resentment has powerful social impact.

At one time in our history it was normal for a woman to enjoy her home-maker role and her domestic responsibilities with the children. At that time women found fulfilment and delight in what is now considered an old-fashioned social order.

Then along came various voices which sowed resentment. Examples were touted of women who were oppressed by domesticity. The case was presented that every woman should be allowed to openly compete with her husband and completely reverse the domestic order if possible. In all the to and fro of the agitation and feminist action many offences were sown and resentments formed.

Now many women in domestic roles, looking after children and out of the workforce, feel resentment toward their situation. They feel as if they are being looked down on. They feel put-down and needing to justify their predicament. The domestic situation which is still able to be enjoyed by women is not enjoyed any more. The roles which their grandmothers found fulfilment in are now not suitable.

Why? Because a poison has been spread through society. It is the poison of ‘resentment’. Things that are noble and worthy have been made to seem offensive. Attitudes of resentment have been spawned toward those things.

Millions of people have been impacted by this kind of toxic attitude, causing the whole society to go through upheaval. While some people demand the right to make their own choice, they resent certain options and those who make them. Many women who intend to enjoy their domestic, stay-at-home role as a wife and mother come under the pressure of resentment from other women who feel duty-bound to rail on them

As another example, is it possible that your attitudes toward rich or successful people have been poisoned off in some way? Have you heard talk that the only way to become really rich is to take advantage of others? Do you tend to feel that super rich people are worthy of resentment?

And what about cultural resentments? Do you have toxic thoughts about people from America, Asia, third-world countries, jungle villages, extremist groups or high society? I guarantee that at least some of those attitudes are anchored in resentment which came from your reaction to information you heard about them. For example, there is a cultural hatred of Americans which is being propagated in many places today, with ugly consequences.

Whole cultures have been sprayed with poison, through popular media and social attitudes. Millions of possibilities lie dead on the ground, because resentment-based attitudes prevail, killing off any chance of change for the better.

Let me take you back to my starting questions. Have a look at them again and see if you might have a different answer now.

How many times have you been poisoned? Have you always recovered or have you suffered permanent loss?

It’s time you became aware of the poison you are being fed. It’s time to do something about it. Don’t you think your life could be different if you could take the antidote to those toxins?

Hmmmmm…..

Hurt Spirits Picnic

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How would it be if a bunch of smelly, spiteful, murderous and hateful creatures were having a picnic on your lounge-room floor? How would it be if a bunch of ‘hurt spirits’ regularly turned your home into their picnic ground? Well, that’s what a lot of marriages allow to happen.

I talked before about how Hurt Spirits work in marriages (see: Hurt Spirits Working). The spirit stirs up hurt feelings in one or other of the spouses, prompting them to act out of that hurt. The spouse may be prompted to pout, withdraw, accuse, manipulate, contend, be angry or whatever. As soon as the ‘hurt’ spouse begins to behave like that, especially out of their own hurt feelings, their actions cause hurt in the other spouse. Thus the cycle of hurt is ignited and the relationship is set on a course of destruction and pain.

I believe that this process is epidemic in marriages today and most couples, including Christian couples who should know better, get caught in this ‘device’ of the enemy. We are not supposed to be ignorant concerning the enemy’s devices, but this one seems to have slipped in and caught many couples in the trap of celebrating their pain.

What the hurt spirits want to do is to move in to your home and host picnics in your kitchen, lounge-room, bedrooms and so on. They want to turn your home into a pain-filled picnic-ground where hurt spirits feel completely at home and can celebrate their evil influence over your marriage. The Hurt Spirits want to picnic at your place.

So, let me unpack for you what is really going on. The hurt spirits want to enshrine ‘hurt’ and hurt feelings as the top priority in the home. In a culture that is selfish and self-centred, that is easier than it would be in a godly culture. So, as the West becomes increasingly selfish, hurt spirits have a much easier time picking off the easy targets. There are more hurt spirit picnics these days than at times in the past.

Hurt spirits want to make ‘hurt’ the central theme of your home. So these spirits arouse feelings of hurt in marriages. They remind people that they are being neglected, misunderstood or offended. They point out that their spouse is not being what they wanted them to be. They stir up feelings of offence, frustration, disappointment and so on. As soon as a person buys into the hurt the next stage is to accentuate it until it becomes a central issue for that person, not just a passing feeling.

As the couples begin to fight with each other and hurt each other the stage is set for the home to be polarised by hurt feelings. The couple may withdraw from each other, only heightening the feelings of hurt they each carry. They may play ‘no speaks’, or one or other may become demanding, contentious, angry, resentful, or the like. Before long the unresolved hurt feelings have become king in the home.

No progress seems possible until the huge burden of hurt can be dealt with. Yet the mountain of hurt feelings is SO enormous that it would take a giant person to be able to wade through it all. The marriage may end up just limping on, with both spouses making the most of the good moments and battening down for the stormy times.

Both husband and wife will desperately want their marriage healed, but the hurt spirit will continue to stoke the fires of hurt, frustration, offence, etc, to ensure that the barrier between the couple remains firm.

Now, that’s the enemy’s strategy. Would you like to know the solution? I think it’s remarkably simple and delightfully do-able.

First step toward breaking this cursed cycle is to recognise that it is going on. I explained to a couple recently that their problem is the action of a hurt spirit and they were able to make gains in their relationship from that very night. So, this article needs to be passed on to as many people as you can get it to, so couples recognise what they are really dealing with. For some, that very realisation will be liberating and allow them to move toward forgiveness and healing.

The second step is to dethrone the hurt. Hurt and hurt feelings are not meant to picnic in your home. They are not meant to be on the throne in your heart. They are not meant to have any place in your home or heart at all. If you keep them on the throne, demanding that they be placated, you will stay in slavery to their destructive work.

Much more worthy and noble things should be on the throne in your home and heart. Righteousness and the fear of God should be exalted in your home, not hurt feelings. Humility, submission, grace, love, peace, forgiveness, compassion, hope and joy are much more worthy things for centre stage than hurt can ever be.

As you dethrone hurt you now need to push past it, knocking it to the ground and walking all over it. When a hurt spirit jumps up and says, “You should despise your spouse”, knock that thing to the ground as you step toward your spouse and fulfil your godly calling in their life.

Husbands, press in to love your wife, while she is throwing hurt into your face. Wives, press in to submit to your husband while he is hurling hurt into your heart. Determine that you will be who God has created you to be and you will serve Him, not some dirty demon.

Don’t let the demons picnic at your place. When the hurt spirits turn up with their picnic basket, throw them out. And fall on your knees to worship the true and living God, not some filthy demon who hates you and your marriage. Don’t give in to their goading and their fear-filled stories of what will become of you if you don’t stand up for your rights and fight your spouse. Reject their taunts and the aroused emotions of your heart.

Be who God has made you to be and do what He wants you to do, whether you have hurt feelings or a heart of joy. As soon as you change course to accommodate hurt feelings you have elevated hurt above God and allowed the hurt spirits in with their picnic baskets. If you purpose to do what God asks you do to, no matter whether it is easy or hard or whether you are filled with joy or struggling with pain, you have dedicated your heart and home to God, and fortified it against evil spirits.

It is time to withstand the enemy’s scheme. It is time to resist him to his face. It is time to fight the demons, not our spouse. It is time to so worship God that we do what He asks us to do, despite the hurt feelings our situation prompts within us. Cast your care onto Him, don’t take arms against your spouse.

And let us celebrate the glorious liberty which God gives us as His children. Don’t let that bully who hates you have any place in your heart, home or marriage.

“Lord God, we ask You to empower us with wisdom and insight, to see the enemy’s hand at work and to resist him with all the authority of heaven. Lord, forgive us for elevating hurt feelings when You ask us to elevate forgiveness. Forgive us for fighting with our spouse, instead of fighting with the enemy. Forgive us for pressing on in our own strength, instead of working in Your power. Now, come and deliver us from all evil we pray, in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

Marriage in Two Easy Lessons

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I recently noticed a sweet little summary of marriage in the Bible, that I had not noticed before. I like what it says and it gives me a fresh handle on some things I have been teaching and new things I need to bring out in my teaching. So, here’s a look at “Marriage in Two Easy Lessons”.

The passage which caught my attention is in the last book in the Old Testament, the book of Malachi, written by one of the prophets at the close of the Old Testament era. Malachi is a prophet who challenged the backslidden attitudes of the people in his day. Malachi was preoccupied with challenging God’s people, including the religious leaders, about the fact that they were going through the motions but were missing the core essence of many godly things. One of those things Malachi addressed was marriage.

I was struck by the way Malachi summarised marriage in two simple descriptors. Have a look at the verse and see if you can see the two key points that impressed me. Malachi 2:14 “the LORD has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously: yet is she your companion, and the wife of your covenant.” Can you see in that verse that marriage is described as both a ‘companionship’ and a ‘covenant’?

Here we have marriage in two easy lessons. Let me unpack these two lessons for you. I’ll start with the second one, since it is something I have had a beef about more recently on this blog.

Marriage is a ‘covenant’. That means it is something which God created for us. We didn’t invent it and we don’t get to make of it what we want to. It is a divine creation to be operated and explored by God’s rules and for His purposes. I have spoken out already about how people try to make marriage into a product of their liking. They may choose to have consensus instead of headship. They may choose to have shared roles instead of God’s specifications for their roles. They may choose to allow things in their relationship which God does not allow. They may deem for their relationship to be temporary and transient when God declares that it is permanent.

By being a ‘covenant’, marriage is not something we can tamper with. God will judge us, as He did in Malachi’s day, on the basis of how we have treated the special relationship which He created. We cannot get off by saying, “Oh, we decided to make marriage into something more modern and more acceptable to our cultural values.” That just doesn’t wash with God. Marriage is what He made it to be. Your wife is the wife of your covenant, even if you don’t know what a covenant is. Husbands must love their wife. Wives must submit to their husband. The husband must be the head. The husband must perfect his wife and rule over her.

When a man says, “I don’t go in for that headship stuff”, he is defying God and rejecting the gift of marriage which God created for him and his wife. When a man says, “I won’t rule over my wife”, he is denying the wife any opportunity to prove herself as submissive, so he is denying her the chance to be a truly godly wife.

At the same time, given equal weight in Malachi’s summary, is the fact that marriage is a ‘companionship’. Husbands and wives are travelling companions. They are privileged with a close friendship relationship. The formal, by the book, covenant relationship is not the whole story. A couple could have a correct ‘covenant’ relationship and yet not even be good friends. Malachi rescues marriage from that sterility by giving equal weight to the fact that the couple are ‘companions’.

I find that exciting. While I am a strong contender for the covenant roles and model of marriage, I am delighted with having a bride who is my life-long companion. To see that companionship role enshrined so worthily in scripture seems completely fitting to me. Susan is my best friend, my partner, my lover, my travelling companion. She is the one who shares the happy moments with me and who blesses me like no other.

Also, by bringing companionship into focus, we can look at those things which spoil the journey – such as resentment, nagging, contention, unforgiveness, neglect, competition, and the like. When we see those things come between us we know that we have a divine mandate to remove them. Susan is not just my companion because she is my wife, but she is my companion because God declares it so! I have no right to have her as anything other than my companion. When either husband or wife would rather be on their own than with the ‘companion’, there may be something that is spoiling the divine quality which God intends every couple to enjoy.

Now, two cannot walk together except they are agreed (Amos 3:3). So couples may have to work at preserving companionship, just as we may have to work at the covenant aspects of our relationship. We can now do both of those things with a sense of divine injunction and authority, and with the clarity that these are the two broad lessons of marriage.