PARENTING, OVERVIEW      Part I
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One question which continues to arise from Christian Parents is " How can I be a good Christian Parent? I want to love as God does but at times I really don't know what is the right decision."

This is the same question conscientious Christians ask themselves about their everyday lives. Am I doing what God wants me to? If we look at Jesus' life as our example, we see that He spent much time in prayer and was well acquainted with the Scripture. So we too MUST  spend regular time in *God's Word each day, even if it is only 10 minutes, my ourselves and 10 minutes together with Family in Scripture reading and prayer. Once this is conquered, a major step has been taken.

Again, if we look at Jesus' example, He always started where the other person presently was in their development. One of the clearest examples was Jesus and the Samaritan woman ( beginning John 4:7) Jesus did not confront her but rather He educated her through the Holy Spirit. And began teaching her where she was at in her thinking. With children, we need to start with where they are at, in there development. In Genesis, God created Mankind as adults and in His Image. Some scholars believe that Adam used a larger portion of his brain than we, due to the relationship with God and their responsibilities for the earth. However, the first child, was conceived when Adam and Eve were in a sinful state. Now I am not going to debate the innocence of childhood. All of us have a certain innocence. But if you objectively study a developing infant, toddler, child and teen, you will clearly see the imprint of "self." Positive and Negative ( another discussion) exists in each of our characteristics. Self survival, a will to live and the need to provide for one's basic needs, is positive. None the less, the "self " is the cause for strife and division in all relationships--God, our Family and all people we have contact with, when "self"/my way of thinking, wants things its own way. My belief, based on my own behavior and over twenty years in the counseling field, is that people operate primarily out of their unconscious. These brain patterns for the unconscious were developed, for the most part, during the first seven years of our lives. So my premise is that we are born in sin (a broken relationship with our Creator) and it controls us whether we want to accept that or not. Jesus addresses this when He states in John 3:3 that a person must be "born again".

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