One of the books I am reading right now is called Get Outta My Face: How To Reach Angry, Unmotivated Teens With Biblical Counsel
The book is written by Rick Horne and it is a very helpful parenting resource. Your teen may not fall under the category of angry or unmotivated. Still, you may have a hard time connecting with your teenager. This counsel would work in a number of situations for children, teens, or adults.
The section that I found particularly helpful had to do with connecting with teens on the basis of their wants. This sounds controversial and un-reformed like. Those of us who love sound theology are quick to point out that our wants are deceptive and that, if anything, parents should steer their teen away from being overly concerned with their desires.
It is true that Scripture speaks to desire being a key driving factor in quarrels and strife. Consider James 4:1-2
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.
Or consider 2 Peter 1:4
...he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
Parents should be suspect of a teens desire, especially if they are overly driven by them. There is a healthy and needed consideration here that reflects wisdom. However, there is another side of the story. It is easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater, too. It is easy to dismiss legitimate concerns and longings that every teen is motivated by. This is where Rick Horne's counsel is very helpful as he instructs parents and counselors to discern the difference between your teens fleshly desires and the longings that they experience that are God-given. Horne calls these desires "wise wants." Here is what he has to say about it:
"By common grace...the sense of the moral law of God-that which is right, admirable, and desirable-is imprinted on each of us as creatures of God (Romans 2:14-15)."
Parents and counselors of teens are forced to look at their teen in this sense. To recognize and validate their wise wants for peace, joy, love, acceptance by God that lie deep within them. Proverbs 20:5 tells us that The purpose in a man's heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. Parents, you are that man of understanding in your teens life that God has equipped to help them draw out. Don't let your teens selfishness and sin be the only thing you see of them.
Here is another quote from Rick Horne that further develops this point:
"These desires are in angry teens too. In Proverbs 10:4, for example, Solomon says, "A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich." When parents are urged to reason with their youth about laziness and poverty, they can do so because the connection between diligence and wealth makes sense to young people. All of the proverbs have assumptions of "wise wants" like this lying beneath them.
One more example may make these assumptions more visible. Solomon's counsel that "sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness" (Proverbs 16:21) may make sense to a teen with a caustic, sarcastic tongue because she probably wants to be persuasive. She wants people to see things her way. She'll be able to compare the effects of the speech and language she uses with the effects that "sweetness" produces...Learning how to tune into these wise wants will set the stage for you to communicate with your teen because you are appealing to what is motivating her-some constructive, God-imprinted desires, whether she recognizes God as their author or not" (Horne, page 33-34).
There are many things to be said here. One common mistake Christian parents make with their teen is to be too quick to point out their folly, their sin, their idolatry, or their hypocrisy. Perhaps there is a good desire that is being pursued incorrectly. No one is denying that this eventually needs to be pointed out, in some situations more quickly than others.
However, wisdom is required by parents. Often times pointing out the flaw in the teen too quickly can lead them to further distancing themselves. What Rick Horne is suggesting that I find so helpful is the diligent pursuit on the part of a parent or counselor to dig a little deeper into the true motivations of the heart. How might things change if our teens saw someone who understood what they wanted? And cared about what they wanted? And helped them understand that there is something valid in those wants? Maybe a lot! Maybe they would start listening to the Bible's counsel about how to get it!
Thus, this can obviously go on and on and I want to end it. Let me call us to extend the kind of fatherly compassion that lies in the heart of our Father God (Psalm 103:13). Perhaps the gospel of Jesus would be better communicated through counselors who approached their teens not just as sinners, but as sufferers who are also trying to find their way in this world.
May God fill us with his Spirit to rightly apply his Word,
Pastor Kevin
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