Sarah Cowan Johnson - Teach Your Children Well: A Step-By-Step Guide for Family Discipleship

InterVarsity Press
P.O. Box 1400 | Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426

2022 by Sarah Cowan Johnson

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InterVarsity Press is the publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA. For more information, visit intervarsity.org.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

While any stories in this book are true, some names and identifying information may have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

Hand-drawn figures are by the author.

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Cover design and image composite: David Fassett

ISBN 978-1-5140-0381-7 (digital)

ISBN 978-1-5140-0380-0 (print)

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For Mom

I still want to be like you
when I grow up.

I live in Providence, Rhode Island, with my husband and two boys. To get to our house from the highway, we usually take the Douglas Avenue exit, which takes us through Smith Hill into Elmhurst. It also takes us right past the Foxy Lady, an establishment that advertises its 6:00 a.m. Legs and Eggs breakfast on a billboard featuring not one but two pairs of sexy lady legs in enormous black heels.

I knew the question would come from the back seat one day: Mom, whats the Foxy Lady? I did not want to lie to them. I wanted them to hear about strip clubs from me before some kid with a phone showed them a video in the back of the school bus. To be honest, I wanted them to link the idea of the Foxy Lady to a distortion of Gods view of women and their bodies, and I wanted that link to lodge viscerally in their developing brains. So I took a deep breath and did my best. I told them it was a place where men paid money for women to take their clothes off and that it was not a good place for women. They were appropriately horrified. One of them suggested we call the police. I told them it wasnt illegal (cue additional shock). I dismissed a few other suggestions involving guns and flamethrowers. In the end, I told them they could do what I do every time I drive by: pray that it will close.

Raising young Jesus-followers is not for the faint of heart. Helping to guide them into their own adult relationship with Jesus is the greatest gift we can give them; at the end of our lives, and theirs, its the thing that will matter most. But sometimes the journey there seems unclear to us or fraught with obstacles along the way, such as an unfortunately placed billboard.

But heres the thing: our life is full of opportunities to disciple our children. And, whether or not we disciple them, they will be discipledby billboards, by kids in the back of the school bus, and by a world that does not know Jesus and his love.

Silas, who was six at the time, was paying close attention. The impact of this drive-by discipleship moment was so significant that a few days later our babysitter relayed the following conversation:

Silas: Do you know about the Foxy Lady?

Ashley: [Thinking he could not possibly mean the Foxy Lady and that this must be some kind of character from a show.] No, I dont think so...

Silas: Ashley, do not go there. There are men there who will try to pay you money to take your clothes off. Promise me you will never go there.

We were one part mortified, one part doubled over in laughter, and one part incredibly proud that in his six-year-old way, Silas was doing his best to love his babysitter.

This book is for parents, stepparents, foster parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles (genetic or spiritual), and all others who want to see our childrenwhether ours specifically or collectivelylearn to walk the way of Jesus for the rest of their lives.

This book is for single parents juggling a thousand roles, married couples living at home with their children, blended families, 3G families where grandparents play a large role in child-rearing, and for those FaceTiming in from thousands of miles away. Its for parents of newborns and teenagers, with an only child or whole soccer teams at their dining room tables.

This book is for those who have been loving and following Jesus for years and for those who are still discovering their own spiritual path.

This book is designed to help us lean into our calling as parents to guide our children into an adult relationship with Jesus.

HIGH GRACE, HIGH CHALLENGE

I am such a fan of these two-by-two, matrix-style grids that my friends joke I need to get a blank grid tattooed on my forearm. That way whenever a matrix would enhance a conversation, I would have easy access to one.

For this particular conversation, the values of Grace and Challenge will be essential to keep in our back pockets. Grace says, Come just as you are and let God meet you wherever youre at. Challenge says, We cant talk about something this critical without trying to do something about it. When these two values intersect, they form a grid with four quadrants, the Grace/Challenge Matrix.

A grid with 4 blank quadrants. At the bottom of the grid is the word Challenge with arrows pointing to the word high to the right and low to the left. To the left of the grid, vertically, is the word Grace with arrows pointing to the word high at the top and low at the bottom.

The lower left quadrantLow Grace, Low Challengeis what I call the Stagnation quadrant, a place of little to no growth. Without grace, this quadrant is cold and bleak, but without challenge, theres no incentive to leave it. These parents constantly feel like spiritual failures (spoiler alert: you are not a failure) but have little motivation to try something new.

The upper left quadrantHigh Grace, Low Challengeis what I call the All Set quadrant. On the surface, this quadrant looks cozy and warm. This is a quadrant of liberty, of acceptance, of welcome. We know we are loved, just as we are, no matter what we manage to accomplish as parents. But the dark underbelly of this quadrant is that, without challenge, its just as motionless as the Stagnation quadrant. These parents take a hands-off approach to discipleship for the sake of freedom but often feel unsure how to engage when challenges arise.