Tackling “The” Talk~ Covenant

By on August 30, 2011 in tackling the talk

Understanding the biblical concept of covenant has opened my heart to a deeper understanding of God’s heart for me, God’s heart for His people and God’s heart for marriage.

The phrase “make a covenant” is mentioned 13 times in the Old Testament and the Hebrew words “karat beriyth” are translated “to cut a covenant”.

There is much to this theology that I do not have time to get in to here but I do want to talk about how it relates to our sons and their sexuality.

One of the places that covenant is referenced in the Bible is in relation to the marriage relationship (Malachi 2:14).  In the Old Testament, cutting covenant involved cutting through pieces of flesh and producing blood, such as during the sacrifice of animals.  In the New Testament, Christ’s death on the cross satisfied this requirement.  God takes covenant very seriously and expects His people to as well.

During a study on Covenant, by Kay Arthur I learned how the physical marriage relationship mirrors  the “cutting of covenant”. This blood covenant is even illustrated in marriage. The virgin bride bleeds when the newly married couple consummate their relationship. Marriage is a sacred covenant.

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh Genesis 2:24

Today’s culture and society has lost sight of the seriousness of the covenant of marriage and the role of sex. Sex is symbolic of a covenant between a married man and his wife. A covenant that we will be held accountable to one day.
In a culture where sex is viewed casually and more than half of marriages end in divorce, we as moms need to teach our boys about covenant.
Help them to understand the beauty of covenant, the seriousness of covenant and the responsibility that comes with covenant. Having that knowledge, in their minds and their hearts, will help them take sex and commitment seriously in the future.

Here are some resources if you want to learn more about covenant and marriage/sexuality:
~ The Marriage Bed
~Covenant, God’s Enduring Promises by Kay Arthur

Is this a concept you had considered when tackling “the talk” with your boys?

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Tackling “the talk”- Protecting the heart

By on June 28, 2011 in Uncategorized

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. ~Proverbs 4:23

Jake went from “in a relationship” to “single”

Oh, Facebook, how I loathe thee. {actually, it is a love/loathe relationship}

I see these status changes on the pages of my boy’s friends all too frequently {sometimes several times a day for the same person, and I kid you not!}

It is one of the myriad of reasons my younger sons {ages 15 and 13} are not permitted to be “in a relationship” with anyone {learned that the hard way}.

God designed the relationship between a man and a woman to be a life long commitment.  In our home, we do not believe that the culture of serial dating reflects God’s plan for marriage and sex.

But, the world flaunts a different way.  You only need walk the halls of a local high school {or middle school, for that matter} to observe the world’s way. Holding hands, exchanging “I love you’s”, competing for the attention of the opposite sex~ it has become the norm.

How do we think this is preparing our children for the sanctity of marriage?  How can they save their heart for the one God has purposed for them if they give up pieces of their heart along the way?

When we tackle this part of the talk with our boys, we provide three ways to guard their heart.

  • Put God first. When our boys are walking in the path God has created for them and have cultivated a personal relationship with their Creator, they will be able to see the way out of temptation {I Corinthians 10:13}
  • Put popularity in context.  Knowing who they are in Christ is crucial for our sons in order to resist the temptations of the world.  When our boys accept Christ into their heart, they are a new creation. {II Corinthians 5:17} Their citizenship is not of this world and they need to be reminded of that {Philippians 3:20}.  There is so much outside pressure to do the “popular” thing, our sons need us to remind them what the right thing is.
  • Pace yourself.  Sometimes, it seems kids are in a hurry to grow up.  The part of the male brain responsible for judgment and impulse control {the pre frontal cortex} is not fully developed until our sons are between 22-25 years old.  From a young age, we need to be setting boundaries for what is appropriate when it comes to opposite sex relationships.  Help them understand the benefit of not rushing into emotional intimacy.  Help them make good choices until they are ready to make them on their own.

 

The condition of our sons hearts determines the course of their life.  Are we, as parents, taking the protection of their heart seriously enough?

 

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Tackling The Talk- Persevere

By on April 28, 2011 in tackling the talk

 

For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.  I Thessalonians 4:7 NIV

They are naturally curious.

They explore the world with eyes wide open and hands reaching out to touch.

They experience life in a rough and tumble, physical kind of way.

They like to understand but often don’t want to stop playing long enough to listen to the explanation.

“Raising boys is like nailing jello to a tree”, my grandfather used to say.

We laugh at such analogies but, truth be told, there is a lot of truth there.

Sometimes I worry and fret…wonder if I am getting through to them about the important things in life.

Especially when it comes to tackling “the talk”.

Have they heard me?  Have they learned from watching their dad and I navigate the marital waters?  Have they been receptive during the times we have tackled this subject?

Boys are curious and physical.  Those are attributes that are integral to who they are and they are attributes that can lead them down the wrong path when it comes to sexuality and purity.

So, I do the only thing I know to do.  I pray.  I relinquish control of the outcome to the One that loves them more than I do.

And I keep talking, walking and tackling.  That’s all a mama can do.

 

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Tackling The Talk- Transparency

By on March 6, 2011 in Uncategorized

I was pregnant with my youngest son on my wedding day.

Not something I am proud of, not something I am ashamed of {thanks to God’s grace} but an issue I wondered how to handle when our boys were smaller.

My husband and I came to know Christ, our gracious Redeemer, when our boys were 6, 3 and 1 1/2 {12 years ago}.

When tackling the talk with our boys, my past is always at the forefront of my mind. There are mistakes that I made that I do not want my children to make.  There are lessons I have learned about life and love and sex that I want to teach them, rather than having them learn them another way.

So, how do you go about this?  How do you reconcile a tainted past and still teach purity and God’s design for sex and marriage to your sons?

  • Be transparent.  We have our wedding picture hanging on the living room wall.  Matt (now 13) has always known he was in mama’s belly in that picture.  When my middle son, Jared, was about 7, he asked “why weren’t you and Daddy married and then have kids?”.  His question hurt me {because the enemy wanted it to} and I prayed silently before answering.  God reminded me that my son’s questions was perfectly in line with what he was being taught through living in a Christian home.  My answer was honest and pointed back to God’s plan.  “Mama and Daddy didn’t know Jesus when we got married.  Thankfully, Jesus forgave us for our sin and we learned the right way to do things through reading the Bible”.  As our boys got older and were ready to understand more of my testimony, I have shared my heart with them about my past and prayed different for them.
  • Details are not necessary.  Being transparent does not mean that your children are entitled to your “dirty laundry”, so to speak.  Sharing your past should be done in doses appropriate to your child’s age and maturity as well as according to the prompting of the Holy Spirit.  My children know that I was pregnant with Jared when I met their dad, that their dad was married before AND they know that our slate was wiped clean by the blood of Jesus.  The details are not what matters.  Grace is.
  • Use your experiences as teaching moments.  My boys and I have had many discussions about the kind of situations to avoid with friends, the conversations that you want to avoid with members of the opposite sex and more.  I use the experiences I choose and am convicted to share with my boys as teaching moments.  I also use my previous experiences to think ahead about things I would like my boys to be prepared for, situations I would like for them to know how to handle.  When our boys lack the information to make good choices, poor choices are the more logical outcome.

…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.  Romans 3:23-24

God has healed my heart and allowed me the freedom of forgiving myself for my past.  He has also shown me how useful it can be in parenting my boys, especially when it comes to tackling “the talk”.

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