The Biggest Mistake Christian Parents Make

There are many classic mistakes, but the biggest mistake I see Christian parents make is to assume, or even worse, to give the impression, that their children are Christians. Parents take their children to church and create cultural Christians, nominal Christians, churchgoers and good people who follow the right path, but who’ve never had an encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ themselves.

Parents tell their kids, “You’re born again,” and the kid sort of believes it, but they’re not. Later in life the world offers them something and they think, “This is far better. This whole Jesus thing isn’t that powerful or compelling.” You want to know that your children are truly born again and baptized in the Holy Spirit. I would never tell your kids that they are. Let your kids tell you. You will know.

Jonathan Edwards preached on how to know if you’re truly born again, and there are many good keys: the fear of God, the hatred of sin. I’ve never seen anybody who wasn’t born again truly worship God. Anybody can sing the right song and clap. When you tell your kids they’re born again when they’re not, you’re anesthetizing them against the gospel. Make sure they’ve had encounters with God that college, or anything or anybody else, can never talk them out of. As written in John 3:3, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

The second biggest mistake is environment: taking kids to the wrong church. In America parents often choose a church for its cool programs, its bouncy castle and its crowd of kids. After a while, the world has better entertainment than any church. My wife and I have taken our kids to churches with just a few other kids and wondered whether we were hurting them. Parents, don’t choose a church for your kids. Choose the right church for you and take your kids along. What God is doing in you will affect what God is doing in them.

Raising Children Who Genuinely Love God

This is actually a really easy question. How do you raise kids who genuinely love God? Raise them in the love of God. Be filled with the love of God yourself. Husband, love your wife. Wife, love your husband. Love your kids with the love of God, and raise them in an environment filled with it.

Every time your kids step outside that environment, it’s like stepping out of a warm home into the cold. When they meet people who talk about love but really mean sex, using people or transactional things, they’ll recognize that it isn’t the love of God. If you raise them as the world does, they’ll go out into the world and think it doesn’t look much different from how they grew up. Your kids come from the love of God and are built for the love of God. Everybody responds to love. As written in 1 John 4:19, “We love Him because He first loved us.”

Biblical Parenting in Today’s World

Biblical parenting looks the way it has always looked, because God doesn’t change. We need to separate principles from practices. Should kids go to public school, a Christian school or be homeschooled? I can’t give you a law on that. My wife and I decided to homeschool our kids, and we were okay with a lower income so my wife could school them. If I stood in front of my church and said, “Thou shalt homeschool,” a single mom holding down three jobs would be condemned. The answer isn’t homeschool. The principle is that you hold the primary responsibility for the education of your child. Don’t just hand them over without knowing what’s being taught.

Is it wrong for kids to watch movies or TV? No, it depends what’s on. Is it wrong for them to have a phone? No, but it’s wrong if it becomes like a drug they can’t control. The Amish tried to solve problems by giving up electricity, and they have a lot of success, but it’s less about what they don’t do and more about the emphasis they put on family, parents, love and kids. We could learn a lot from them, but I like heating, dishwashers and my self-driving Tesla.

Don’t buy into the lie that it’s so hard to raise kids these days. Love God. Love each other. Love your kids. Put an extra carrot in the pot. God will give you what you need to raise amazing kids if you’ll follow Him. Just don’t follow the world. As written in Hebrews 13:8, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

Balancing Grace, Love and Discipline

You don’t balance them. It isn’t 33% grace, 33% love and 33% discipline. Go 100% on grace. Like the movie Spinal Tap, turn it up to eleven: eleven out of ten on grace, eleven out of ten on love and eleven out of ten on discipline. You don’t need to compromise these things.

I’m all in on loving my kids, and I’m all in on discipline. At times I’m like the Rock of Gibraltar with my kids, because I love them. People try to divide life into percentages: so much for God, so much for marriage, so much for kids. No. I’m 100% about God, 100% about my wife, 100% about my kids and 100% about my calling. Go all in, and God will figure those things out for you. As written in Colossians 3:23, “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men.”

Handling a Strong-Willed, Defiant Child

I love this question. All children are unique. There’s nurture and nature, and nature is real. Some children are compliant and peaceful; some are stubborn fighters.

First, don’t look at a strong will as a failing, as though one is a good kid and this one is a bad kid. God probably put that in that child. We want to be stubborn and strong-willed about the right things: about righteousness, integrity, excellence and faith. Stubbornness is great when it comes to faith. The problem comes when a child uses that will against the parents.

The answer is to establish boundaries, authority and discipline. My daughter was probably the strongest-willed of our three as a child; my son not at all; my youngest son different again. It doesn’t matter how strong they are. I’m not trying to crush their will. Imagine feeding a two-year-old: “It’s lunchtime, you’re in the high chair, and you will eat this meal. We’re not leaving the table until it’s finished. I love you, but I’m in charge.” Don’t engage with their will. Engage with your boundaries and your authority.

I remember a young teacher at my high school, fresh out of teaching college, who knew her subject but had no authority. Kids screamed and threw things; even they hated the mayhem. Then an older teacher, about five foot two, walked in, raised her hand and said, “Stop. Sit down, shut up and open your books.” We all did it. She wasn’t shouting, begging or threatening. She knew she was in charge, and we knew she was in charge.

If you let them get away with 5% of things, they’ll always assume the 5%. Many parents try to persuade teenagers by reasoning: “Don’t take drugs, they’re bad for you.” All that is true, but it tells the child, “Obey me if you agree with me.” Instead say, “You will obey me because I’m Mom and Dad and you’re living in my house.” When a child keeps running into a wall that doesn’t move, they learn quickly that exercising their will against your authority doesn’t work. God has given you that authority as a gift, and you bless and serve your children when you let it work as it should. As written in Ephesians 6:1, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.”

Scriptures for Study

Proverbs 22:6, John 3:3, John 3:5-7, 2 Corinthians 13:5, Romans 8:16, John 4:23-24, Acts 2:38-39, 1 John 4:7-8, 1 John 4:19, Ephesians 5:25, Titus 2:4, Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 13:8, Deuteronomy 6:6-7, Romans 12:2, Philippians 4:19, Colossians 3:23, Matthew 22:37, Hebrews 12:11, Proverbs 29:15, Proverbs 29:17, Ephesians 6:1-4, Romans 13:1, Luke 7:8, Matthew 5:21-22

10 Questions for Reflection

1. Have I assumed my children are born again without them telling me?
2. Do my children see genuine worship in me?
3. Did I choose our church for myself or for my children’s entertainment?
4. Is my home an environment filled with the love of God?
5. Will my children recognize counterfeit love when they meet it?
6. Which of my parenting choices are principles, and which are only practices?
7. Am I taking primary responsibility for my children’s education?
8. Am I trying to balance grace, love and discipline instead of going all in on each?
9. How can I channel my strong-willed child’s stubbornness toward faith and righteousness?
10. Do I reason with my children when I should be exercising authority?

Key Six: Discipline With Consequences

Let me make this point really clearly, lest somebody misunderstand. Most of us have seen bad examples of somebody trying to discipline a child, and we hear horror stories of violence against children. That’s not what I am talking about. It is abhorrent. Anybody who hurts or punches a child probably belongs in jail in my book.

Yet I want you to be clear on this. Parents have a duty to discipline their children. As written in Proverbs 13:24, “He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly.”

I had an amazing, godly set of parents and a godly father who loved me and loved God. I remember once or twice in my life when I was really naughty, after I’d been warned. I remember my dad taking off his belt and giving me two or three whacks on my behind. First he prayed with me, and he said, “Graham, this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you. I love you. I love you. But what you did was really wrong, and I want you to know how wrong it is.”

My goal is not to hit or hurt, and I’m not really talking about anything physical here. The point I’m trying to make is this: if we’re going to have boundaries and we’re going to have authority, we need to have consequences. There’s an age, quite soon in a child’s life, when they’re too old to be physically disciplined, but there are many, many ways you can discipline a child.

My son has just turned sixteen and lives at home. If he were rude to me or my wife, didn’t do his chores or left a mess all over the place, I would tell him once, I’d tell him twice, and then I’d say, “If you keep breaking that, I’m going to take your phone away for twenty-four hours.” I’ve done that several times. I switch it off and put it in a drawer. I’m not going to smack his behind, but taking his phone away will talk. Believe me.

There was a season when we had a naughty chair in the middle of the room. If our kids were rude and naughty at a certain age, they sat on that chair for an hour, and an hour is a long time for a kid. If you simply keep saying, “You must tidy your room,” and nothing ever happens, there’s no consequence. You are actually helping a kid when you say, “After a warning, if you won’t tidy your room, this is what will happen.” Throughout the whole of life, and even eternity, there will be consequences and results for what they do or don’t do.

Key Seven: Use Your Faith for Your Children

This is where it gets really good. Most people say, “I have faith,” but they don’t mean anything by it. Faith is the principle laid out in Mark 11:23-24: “Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.” Faith is when you put somebody in God’s hands and then believe you have received God’s result.

Years ago, Norvel Hayes wrote a book, How to Stand in the Gap for Your Children. His daughter was in her late teens or early twenties, sleeping around, on drugs, a party girl. He prayed for her for years, and nothing happened. In the end, the Lord said to him, “If you keep praying for her the way you are praying, she’s going to go to hell. You need to change the way you’re praying.” The Lord said, “You’re not using your faith. Give Me your daughter, ask Me to save her, fill her with the Holy Spirit and make her a woman of God, and then believe you have received her in that state.”

From then on, every time he saw her or thought about her, he said, “Thank You, Lord. My daughter’s walking with You. My daughter’s a woman of God. My daughter no longer drinks, no longer does drugs, no longer parties.” He said it even when she wasn’t yet a woman of God. That’s what faith is. As written in Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

Most of us observe our children as they are and then come to God saying, “Oh, Johnny’s got a problem.” God wants you to believe His promises, not that He will do them one day. That’s hope. Faith says it’s done now. My child is healed now. My child is walking with You now. My child is baptized in the Holy Spirit now. Faith believes it receives when it prays.

Key Eight: Follow the Leading of the Holy Spirit

This key will only work if you do key number seven. Every child is different, and every path and journey a child takes is different. I don’t want a formula. I want the Holy Spirit to lead and guide me as a parent.

Pray, “Lord, I want to be there at the important junctures, the key pivotal moments, for my child. Lead and guide me in what I say, when I discipline, when I love and when I show grace. Give me discernment about the situations my child is in and about their friends.” The Holy Spirit will do all of that if you ask Him. As written in Romans 8:14, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.”

Key Nine: Pass On an Inheritance

God has given you children as an inheritance. We are part of a long line that goes all the way back to Jesus, and it’s great to raise our children with a sense of identity and inheritance: “This is who you are. God has a plan for your life.”

I received an incredible inheritance from my parents. I’m not talking about money and stuff; I’m talking about a spiritual inheritance. My wife and I get to pass that on to our kids, and they get to run with it. They get to take our ceilings and make them their floors, and build higher, and run further and faster.

We should raise children to go further than we’ve gone spiritually, not less. The sad thing in the Christian world is that I often see parents who walk with God, children who walk with God a bit less, and grandchildren who think Nanny and Papa are just crazies. It diminishes, when it should increase. As written in Proverbs 13:22, “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children.” Look at your children through the lens of inheritance.

Key Ten: See Their Prophetic Destiny

The first key was vision. Key ten is linked to it: seeing the prophetic destiny and calling on your child. There’s something in you as a parent that will see things in your children that other people won’t, things even your children won’t see in themselves.

We can pray for people at a basic level, that God will feed and clothe them, and that’s all good. There are also prophetic prayers you can pray over your children. Right at the beginning of Exodus, Moses’s parents saw that he was a special child. As written in Hebrews 11:23, “By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful child; and they were not afraid of the king’s command.” Every child is special, and no child is of more value than another, but parents should look at their children. If you open yourself up to the Holy Spirit, He will share prophetic promises that you can pray over them, and you can become the guardian of those things. Know what heaven is speaking over your children, and align your words and prayers with the destiny of heaven.

Don’t Pretend It Has Happened

God wants to save every child. It’s God’s will that none should perish and that all come to repentance. One of the worst things I see, at least in the American church, is parents who so want their kids to be born again that they con themselves, and then con their kids, into believing they’re born again when they never really have been. I’ve seen many good, moral kids who serve in church and aren’t born again.

I’ve made a point of telling my kids, even in their late teens, “I do not know that you’re born again. You need to know you’re born again.” I’ve never asked any of them, “Would you like to be baptized?” At about twenty-two, my daughter came to me and said, “Dad, I’m ready to be baptized,” after years of watching me baptize hundreds of people.

If we tell somebody they’re born again when they’re not, we’re anesthetizing them against the gospel. Later, when the world tempts them, they see no beauty and no depth in the Christian life, because they don’t have a Christian life. They have a church life. My parents took me to church all my life, yet at age fourteen I was born again. I met the Lord Jesus Christ for myself. As written in Jeremiah 29:13, “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”

God knows how to catch the fish, and He knows the encounters your kids need. Don’t pretend it has happened. Say, “Lord, You will do this. I’m going to raise them correctly, let them see me enjoying a spiritual life, give them the gospel and keep them safe.” Then let the Holy Spirit call their name in His time, and they will respond.

Scriptures for Study

Proverbs 13:24, Proverbs 22:15, Proverbs 23:13-14, Proverbs 29:17, Hebrews 12:5-11, Galatians 6:7, Mark 11:22-24, Hebrews 11:1, Hebrews 11:6, Romans 4:17-21, 1 John 5:14-15, Romans 8:14, John 16:13, Isaiah 30:21, James 1:5, Proverbs 13:22, Psalm 127:3, Psalm 78:5-7, 2 Timothy 1:5, Exodus 2:2, Hebrews 11:23, Jeremiah 1:5, 2 Peter 3:9, John 3:3, Jeremiah 29:13

10 Questions for Reflection

1. Do the boundaries in my home carry real consequences?
2. How can I discipline my children in love rather than anger?
3. Am I praying for my children in faith or in hope?
4. What would I thank God for if I believed my prayers for my child were already answered?
5. Where do I need the Holy Spirit to guide me at a pivotal moment with my child?
6. What spiritual inheritance did I receive, and what am I passing on?
7. How can my ceilings become my children’s floors?
8. What prophetic promises has God shown me about my children?
9. Have I assumed my children are born again without knowing it?
10. How can I let my children see me enjoying a spiritual life?

Let’s begin with a scripture you’ve heard many times. Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” This is a really tough thing to say, but if somebody grew up in a Christian family and departs from it when they’re older, either the Bible isn’t true, or we didn’t do the best job of training up that child. Children need to be loved, and we’ll get to that, but we have a role and a responsibility as parents to train them up in the ways of God.

Key One: Get a Vision

God has a vision of the life He wants your child to live. When a baby is born, most of the time there’s no history with that baby. We look at a baby through the eyes of hope. It’s like a wonderful blank piece of paper. Then parents live through experiences with their children, through what they consider faults and challenges, and they begin to shift from God’s vision to what’s actually happened.

I spoke to somebody in a different country recently who was telling me how difficult his town was, how he’d been rejected and how people were mean to him. I said to this chap, “Every single thing you say is true, but it’s not the truth.” The problem is you end up living in reaction to what’s actually happened, not in reaction to the plan of God.

Your child is the most amazing thing on planet Earth. There is nothing more valuable. Your child is fearfully and wonderfully made, and your child is not a mistake. God has a glorious, stupendous, amazing plan for your child, for the rest of their life and throughout eternity. He has put gifts, callings and anointings in that child.

As written in 2 Corinthians 5:16-17, “Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh… Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” What we often do with children is know them after the flesh: “That’s little Johnny, and he’s a little stinker,” or “She’s got a temper,” or “He’s rebellious.” We relate to them through the lens of our perception and our experience, rather than through God’s vision. If you will look at them through God’s vision, they will end up looking at themselves through God’s vision.

Sometimes we need to go to the Lord and repent of the vision we’ve allowed the world, our own experience or our parents’ failings to put in us. Whether your child is two days old, two years old or twenty years old, it’s never too late. Pray, “Lord, wipe away my second-hand, tawdry vision and give me Your vision for my child. Let me look at my child through the eyes of promise and potential, and not the eyes of experience.”

Key Two: Love Them

God is love. Love isn’t something He does; it’s who He is, His intrinsic nature. As written in 1 John 3:1, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!”

Every single child who has ever been born needs love. You can never really love your children too much. Children are like starving birds, squawking; they long to be loved. They don’t need TVs, iPads or the latest gizmo. They don’t need a battery-powered, rocket-propelled baby stroller. They don’t need to go to the college somebody else tells you is best. They need love.

Let’s be honest about ourselves as parents. We are all broken. I love Jesus and I work on me, but all of us carry rejection, and at times that makes it a struggle to love others. We need to learn to love our children, and I would say love them in a tactile way. As babies, hold them, hug them and kiss them. Things change as kids get older, but your kids are never too old for a hug, and they’ve never heard “I love you” enough. Say it: “You are the most precious thing in the world to me.”

When a kid knows it’s loved, you’ve solved about 80% of its problems in life. If a child doesn’t know it’s loved by its parents, it will spend the rest of its life, even after the parents are dead, chasing after that love, that approval, that approbation. What does the Father say to Jesus on day one of His ministry? “You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased.” Jesus hadn’t preached one sermon. The Father says, “I love you and I’m pleased with you.” Kids need to be anchored in love.

Key Three: Set Clear Boundaries

This is countercultural to the way the world tries to get us to raise children. Every child, even a tiny baby, but especially as children grow, needs boundaries. The world will tell you you’re being mean and restrictive. At the appropriate age, your children need to know what time they go to bed. If you allow them to watch TV or look at a phone, they need to know how much and where that ends. If you put a meal in front of them, do they have to finish the plate and rinse it? Whatever it is, they need boundaries, and boundaries need to be defined.

Imagine I’m driving happily down a country lane in Ireland and a policeman pulls me over and says I’m going too fast. He’s the cop, I’m not, but I have a right to ask, “Where was the sign?” If I don’t know where the boundaries are, I’m going to cross them.

It’s our job to put good and correct boundaries around our children. Make them really, really clear. At the right age, it’s worth writing them down. Make them unemotional: “Here’s the boundary in this house. You will not smoke cigarettes in my house.” It doesn’t matter what the next-door neighbor does with their kids. With clear, defined boundaries, if somebody crosses one, they know they’ve crossed it. As written in Psalm 16:6, “The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; yes, I have a good inheritance.”

Key Four: Establish Authority

Keys three, four and five are all linked. A parent needs to have authority. This word has been maligned and misused. People hear “parental authority” and think of some angry dad shouting at kids, and that is actually a lack of authority. Authority simply means there is a person in charge and a person under their authority. It doesn’t mean the person in charge is always right.

When a cop flashes his lights and pulls me over, it doesn’t matter how young or old he is, male or female; he’s a cop and he’s in authority, and I should be respectful. If somebody stands up while I’m preaching and starts screaming in tongues, I’m going to tell them to sit down. God’s in charge of the church, but at a practical level, I am.

With all children, this is best done at a very young age. We can usually establish authority with a certain tone of voice. If a young child hits a sibling or a friend, I wouldn’t try to reason with them. I would put on a certain voice, like the policeman putting on the uniform, and say, “No. Stop.” The child immediately recognizes, “This is Dad and Mom saying no.” It’s not about shouting. You are not called primarily to reason with your kids; you’re called to have authority. Authority isn’t there to squash and destroy people. Authority keeps the boundaries.

When a parent draws a boundary, the child will usually push back and exert its own will. That parent doesn’t need to get angry or lash out; the parent simply needs to say, “No, you will not do this.” If you don’t teach your kids authority at age one, two, three, four or five, the policeman will teach them, or the prison cell will teach them. The goal is to raise children who will one day stand in their own authority, but while they’re under our roof, they submit to ours. As written in Ephesians 6:1, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.”

I tell my kids, “You will be in church every Sunday.” Once in a blue moon there may be a vacation, but staying at home on Sunday is not an option. When you leave home, you get to make your own rules.

Key Five: Guard the Environment

So much of what molds a child is the environment in which it grows up. If it grows up in love, it tends to be loving. If it grows up in strife, it drinks from that. Most of us think carefully about what the nursery will look like, but we don’t think about the environment that child will grow up in: church, school, friends, and media, social media, TV, movies and phones.

You can be living as a child of promise in the promised land, but if you send your kids to an Egyptian church and an Egyptian school, let them hang out with idol-worshipping Egyptian kids, and put the Egyptian app on their phone to doom-scroll Egyptian TikTok every day, Egypt is raising your kids.

This will upset some people, but I mean it from the bottom of my heart: parents should not choose a church for their kids. Parents should choose a church for themselves, and the kids should come with them. The best thing you can ever do for the whole life and the eternal life of your children is that pretty much every Sunday, your children see you in a born-again, spiritual church worshipping God. I say this particularly to dads. “They’re bored.” So what? Let them sit in the front row and see you worship the living God.

Every Sunday I’m at the front with my kids. I fall to my knees, raise my hands and praise Him in tongues. Often when I’m leading worship, I’ll look down and my wife will be unashamedly dancing before the Lord, even if nobody else is. That will mark kids. Again and again I’ve seen parents choose a cool church with a bouncy castle and two hundred kids, and everybody backslides. The parents grow lukewarm, and the kids wander away from God.

The same principle is true for education. I’m not giving you a law that says you must homeschool, but don’t hand your kids over to somebody else to raise or indoctrinate. Know who their friends are. As written in Proverbs 13:20, “He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.” Know what they’re looking at online. Whatever environment you put your kid in, they will end up looking like it.

Scriptures for Study

Proverbs 22:6, Matthew 5:21-22, Psalm 139:13-14, Jeremiah 29:11, Jeremiah 1:5, Mark 8:36, 2 Corinthians 5:16-17, Ephesians 2:10, 1 John 3:1, 1 John 4:8, 1 John 4:19, Mark 1:11, Matthew 3:17, Romans 8:38-39, Psalm 16:6, Proverbs 29:15, Ephesians 6:1-4, Colossians 3:20-21, Romans 13:1, Luke 7:8, Hebrews 10:25, Psalm 122:1, Proverbs 13:20, 1 Corinthians 15:33, Deuteronomy 6:6-9

10 Questions for Reflection

1. Am I seeing my child through God’s vision or through my experience?
2. What labels have I put on my child “according to the flesh”?
3. What is God’s dream for each of my children?
4. Do my children know, without doubt, that they are loved?
5. When did I last hug my child and say, “I love you”?
6. Are the boundaries in my home clear, defined and unemotional?
7. Do I try to reason with my children when I should be exercising authority?
8. Who chose our church, and why?
9. Do my children regularly see me worshipping God?
10. Who are my children’s friends, and what are they watching online?

Again and again in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said… but I say to you.” In other words: you’ve been taught this, but I’ve come from heaven to tell you this. Here is how we do it in heaven. That principle applies to every area of life, and I am convinced it applies powerfully to the way we raise our kids.

Saved, but Still Walking in the Old Ways

You become a Christian by repenting of sin and placing your faith in Jesus and His finished work on the cross. You don’t have to understand everything to get saved; otherwise nobody would get saved. As written in Romans 10:13, “For ‘whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'” You have to call on the name of the Lord with a true and sincere heart.

Yet just because you’re saved doesn’t mean you’re walking in the ways of God. What happens, frankly, to all of us is this: we have a saving encounter with Jesus, but we still carry all of the ways we had before. If you were a Brit like I was when I got saved, and you always drove on the left, you’ll probably keep driving on the left. If you were a coffee drinker before you were born again, you’ll still be a coffee drinker.

God saves our soul in a moment, but He is interested in teaching us the ways of heaven. There is a recognizing and a rejecting of the ways of the world, and then a turning to and embracing of the ways of the kingdom of heaven.

Here is the problem I see. We come to Christ, we’re born again, we speak in tongues, we’re going to heaven, glory, glory, glory… but when it comes to our children, we simply do what the world does. If you’ve been delivered from Egypt, but you send your kids to an Egyptian school, let them watch Egyptian TV and put the Egyptian app on their phone, they’re going to walk like an Egyptian. They’re going to think like an Egyptian, not walk in the ways of God.

I don’t want to spend much time on the world’s ways of raising kids, because it’s really bad and it doesn’t work. I want to focus on God’s ways.

Flourishing Children, Not Perfect Children

Let me be clear: this isn’t about perfect kids, because there are no perfect kids and there are no perfect parents. The only perfect one is Jesus. What I am talking about is children who flourish. Children who do well in life, who know who God is, who know who they are in Christ, who are committed, and who will in turn become amazing husbands and wives, parents and grandparents.

You may have come from a long line of dysfunctional people. You may have a lifelong subscription to issues. As far back as you can look, your family may never have walked in the ways of God. My point is that it can change with you. You can be that first generation.

It takes humility to look honestly at what we’re doing and to realize, “Oh, we’re just doing what everybody else does. We’re just copying the world.” I once drove past a banner promising to train kids to be fit for the world. I don’t want somebody training my kids for the world. I want to train my kids for heaven. I want them walking in the ways of heaven, the blessing of heaven, the life of heaven now. As written in Romans 12:2, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

The Prescriptive Will of God

I’m a pastor, and I know people. In any church on a Sunday there are people who have had miscarriages. Statistically, there are people who have had abortions. There are people who have brought children into the world and those children have died. There are people estranged from their children, who haven’t seen them in twenty years, and their hearts break over it. There are parents whose son is in jail, whose daughter is on drugs, whose child is confused about who they are.

If that is you, my goal is not to press your button, to judge you or to make you feel like a failure. Grace, grace, grace. Grace isn’t God saying, “Oh, it’s okay; it doesn’t matter what your kids are doing.” Grace is the power to change.

Let me give you a principle I learned years ago that will really help you if you bake it into your thinking. The will of God is prescriptive. God comes to you and me and says, “Do this. Don’t do this.” Raise your children, discipline your children, love your children, provide for your children. It’s like a prescription from heaven, except you can read the handwriting. It’s in this Book.

My wife and I have three amazing kids. We love them and we’re proud of them. We were blessed with great parents, and on the whole I believe we’ve done this parenting thing well. Yet we failed many times. We got things wrong. God draws a bar and says, “I want you to walk this way,” and all of us have fallen short of it. Every marriage has two broken people inside of it, trying to live with one another, and every parent is, in one sense, a broken parent. I’m not criticizing you. I’m saying, be real.

The Redemptive Will of God

Many people get condemned by that prescriptive will. They say, “I failed. Nobody could live up to that.” That’s why I want you to see the second truth: the will of God is also redemptive.

God says, “Walk this way.” That’s His will. Yet the will of God comes to you and me wherever we are, no matter what we’ve done. In John 4, Jesus meets the woman at the well. She has had five husbands, and the man she is living with now is not her husband. In that society she was considered damaged goods; nobody would have anything to do with her. Jesus doesn’t say God is okay with that. It isn’t His prescription. But He is a God of redemption.

God will take you no matter where you are or what you’ve done, no matter whether you failed, others failed or the world failed. The question is not who failed. The question is this: will you come to Jesus now and allow Him to begin to redeem your life and bring you back on track?

Imagine I’m driving from my home in Sturbridge to New York City in my Tesla. I put New York City in, and it plots a route. That’s the best route, the prescriptive will, if you like. What if I take a wrong turn and drive completely off course? Will the GPS say, “Nope, you’ve messed up, you’re a bad driver, you’ve had it”? No. It starts recalibrating. Even if I start driving towards California, it keeps rerouting from wherever I am, back to New York City.

That is God’s heart. We have a God of grace, a God of redemption, a God of mercy, and what He wants to do is bring us back. As written in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

If you’ve had a miscarriage, I won’t pretend; I can empathize and sympathize, but one day you will meet that child again. If you’ve had an abortion, that is sin. Repent and ask Jesus to forgive you, just as I need Jesus to forgive me. Nobody is throwing stones at you. “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” One day you will meet that child again. Hallelujah.

If your child has wandered far from God, use your faith to get them out of prison, off drugs, out of that destructive relationship and back on track. Love them where they are now, and begin plotting a route back… not to New York City, but back to the perfect will of God.

God has ways, and His ways work. Let me challenge you to stop copying the world and start training your children for heaven. Recognize the prescriptive will of God, receive the redemptive will of God, and let Him reroute your family from wherever you are today into His very best.

Scriptures for Study

Matthew 5:21-22, Matthew 5:27-28, Matthew 5:43-44, Romans 10:9-10, Romans 10:13, Romans 12:2, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Proverbs 22:6, Deuteronomy 6:6-7, Ephesians 6:4, Psalm 127:3, Psalm 78:4-7, John 4:16-18, John 4:25-26, John 8:7, John 8:11, 1 John 1:9, Romans 3:23, Romans 5:20, Titus 2:11-12, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Isaiah 55:8-9, Exodus 12:31, Jeremiah 29:11, Joel 2:25

10 Questions for Reflection

1. In what areas of family life am I still walking in the ways I had before I was saved?
2. Where have I simply copied the world in the way I raise my children?
3. What does it mean for me to train my children for heaven rather than for the world?
4. What “Egyptian” influences are shaping my children right now?
5. How can I be the first generation in my family to walk in God’s ways?
6. Where have I let the prescriptive will of God condemn me instead of guide me?
7. How does the story of the woman at the well change the way I see my own failures?
8. Where does my family need God to “recalibrate” the route?
9. What would it look like to love a wandering child where they are now?
10. What step will I take this week to begin walking in God’s ways as a parent?

When we come to Jesus, we become new creations, yet so many of our old scripts remain. If you drove on the left before you were saved, you will still want to drive on the left. When it comes to raising children, most of us simply copy what we saw growing up or what the culture tells us. It is vital that we go back to God and His Word and say, “Lord, how do You want me to do this?”

Prescriptive and Redemptive: The Grace to Begin Again

Before anything else, let me be clear. Some reading this have lost children. Some have a son in prison or a daughter on drugs. I do not want anyone to feel judged or condemned. God’s will is prescriptive: He tells us how to live, how to marry, how to raise our kids. Yet when we measure ourselves against that standard, it slays every one of us, because none of us outside of Jesus can fully meet it. God’s will is also redemptive.

Think of a car’s navigation system. Take a wrong turn and it simply recalibrates: “This is now the best road to get there.” No matter how far you have wandered, the Holy Spirit comes and says, “I love you, and I want to lead you into the will of God from here.” We should not lower the bar of God’s Word, but neither should we judge ourselves or others. Grace is not permission; grace is the power to change.

It is never too late. Your children may be forty, sixty, or older, yet you are still their parent, and your prayers carry weight. Norvel Hayes was preaching to thousands across America while his daughter Zona was partying, drinking, and wandering far from God. He prayed for her every day for two years. One day Jesus appeared to him and said, “If you keep praying the way you are praying, she’s going to die and go to hell. Change the way you’re praying.” The Lord told him three things. First, bind the power of the devil, because you have authority in your home. Second, love her with My love, not according to how she is living now. Third, stop waiting to see her repent before you believe it is done. Put her in My hands and receive it by faith.

Every time he saw her, even across the breakfast table while she nursed a hangover, he said, “Thank You, Lord. Zona is a woman of God.” About three months later, the Lord sent a warrior angel into her bedroom. She fell to her knees in repentance, and she went on to lead a Bible school for years. As written in Mark 11:24, “Whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.”

Get God’s Vision and Love Them Lavishly

Your children are the most amazing thing on planet earth. They may not have been planned, but they were designed. Every baby ever born is made in the image and likeness of God, fearfully and wonderfully made. When I preached in India, I would hold up a small child and say, “This is what God looks like.”

God has a vision for your child. He designed them to be someone the world has never seen: not a carbon copy, but unique and glorious. He has the right person for them to marry, the right work, even the right place for them to live. Yet Satan also has a vision for your children, and he works through culture, schools, media, music, and friendships. Many of us also see our kids through the lens of our own upbringing, or we take the mistakes they have made and project them into the future. Simply put, we must catch God’s vision. Write it down and make it plain (Habakkuk 2:2). Hold it before the Lord by faith, seeing your children through the lens of promise and not their present struggle.

I also want to be honest. Your children are sinners. A baby’s uncontrolled rage is the same nature that, left undisciplined, can lead to terrible things. Our role is not to get the sin out of them; only Jesus does that. Our role is to bring them into a relationship with God.

Second, love your kids. You do not have to like them all the time, but you must agape them. God’s plan is for children to grow up inside the warmth of a home filled with His presence, His love, and His peace, like a passenger in a warm car on a cold day. When they step out into a cold world, they will recognize the difference. At the right moment, God will call their name and ask, “What you have experienced around you, do you want it inside you?” Hug them. Hold them. Tell them you love them. You will never say it too many times. A child who does not know they are loved will spend a lifetime chasing that love in relationships and career.

Boundaries, Authority, and Discipline

Kids love boundaries, even though they do not know it. Good parents set bedtimes and expectations. God sets boundaries for mankind, and a child raised without them becomes an adult who thinks there are none, until they meet the flashing blue light. Our prisons are full of people whose parents, and primarily fathers, never taught them where the lines were.

Boundaries need authority to keep them. The world has a perverse idea of authority, picturing a bully crushing a child’s will. That is not authority. Authority creates an environment of protection and grace. The time to establish it is when children are very young, with a calm tone that says, “No,” and means no, not “no-ish.” Many parents, especially with teenagers, shift from authority to explanation, as though winning the argument earns obedience. Teach them, yes, but you are the parent. “One day you will set up your own home. Right now, my house, my rules.” That is not bullying. It prepares them for a world of bosses, police officers, and governments.

Discipline follows. Proverbs 13:24 says, “He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly.” This has nothing to do with violence. If authority is established early, discipline rarely needs to be physical; with a teenager, losing a phone for a day speaks volumes. Simply put, there are consequences to actions, and if we do not teach our children that, the world will.

Faith for Your Children and Their Own Encounter

Put your faith to work for your kids. Believe God for their health, their protection, their character, and the right person for them to marry. Why accept “the terrible twos” when you can believe for the terrific twos? Why assume teenagers must sow wild oats?

A friend of mine in England once lived entirely by faith. One Christmas Eve, his little girl told him she had asked Jesus for a green stroller. He and his wife had barely enough for food. They decided, “She asked Jesus, not us,” and refused to rescue her faith with a backup plan. When they returned home, a box sat outside the door labeled “stroller, color blue.” On Christmas morning they opened it, and inside was a green stroller. Let your children have adventures in faith.

There is also a moment when God calls every child by name, and you cannot manufacture it. Many loving parents convince their kids they are born again when they have only grown up in church. I had wonderful Christian parents, yet it was not real to me until a Billy Graham meeting at fourteen when I met Jesus for myself. Believe for that Kairos moment: a genuine new birth, the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and a supernatural experience of God.

The Right Environment, Led by the Spirit

You are in charge of the environment in which your children grow up. Imagine God delivering His people out of Egypt, yet every day they send their children back to Egypt, watch Egyptian television, and hand them Egyptian phones. Do not be surprised if they begin to walk like Egyptians. I am not giving you laws about schooling. I am asking you to pray and take ownership. God did not call the state to raise your children; He called you.

One of the most powerful things you can do, especially as a father, is to bring your children to church every week and let them see mom and dad worshiping God. Choose a church for its presence and its Word, not its bouncy castle. Your children should see a knee healed and hear a message in tongues. As Proverbs 13:20 says, “He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.”

Above all, be led by the Holy Spirit, not rules and regulations. God has a different plan for every child. Take the principles of His Word and ask, “Lord, how do I apply these?” Every one of us has missed it somewhere, yet God gives grace for every mistake and wisdom for every season. Let us raise children who know who they are and who God is, who know they are loved by Him and by us, and who will one day pass that inheritance on to another generation.

Scriptures for Study

Proverbs 13:20, Proverbs 13:22, Proverbs 13:24, Proverbs 22:6, Psalm 139:14, Genesis 1:27, Habakkuk 2:2, Mark 11:24, Matthew 5:21-22, Matthew 6:33, John 4:13-14, Romans 12:2, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Philippians 3:13-14, Hebrews 12:1, Psalm 23:6, Isaiah 61:3, 1 John 4:8, 1 John 3:14, Ephesians 6:4, Deuteronomy 6:6-7, Joshua 24:15, Galatians 5:18, Matthew 16:19, Psalm 127:3

10 Questions for Reflection

1. Which of my parenting habits come from culture or upbringing rather than God’s Word?
2. How does knowing God’s will is both prescriptive and redemptive change how I view my past mistakes?
3. What vision has God given me for each child or grandchild, and have I written it down?
4. Do I see my children through the lens of promise or through their present struggles?
5. How can I express love to my children more freely and more often?
6. What clear boundaries does my home need?
7. Have I shifted from authority to explanation, and how can I recover godly authority?
8. Where can I put my faith to work for my children this week?
9. Am I believing for a genuine encounter with God in my children’s lives, rather than settling for churchgoing?
10. What in my home’s environment needs to change, and how is the Holy Spirit leading me?

How Does Your Identity in Christ Change Your Perception?

We see through ourselves. If you have been rejected, you will see people as a threat. You will see people as those who don’t love you and don’t want to be around you. As written in Proverbs 28:1, “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.”

Unpack that for a minute. The wicked flee when nobody is even chasing them. A wicked man is in the street and sees a police officer going about his business, and he starts running. Why? Not because of the police officer, but because of himself. His own identity causes him to run. In so many circumstances, how we see ourselves affects how we see every situation. We talk about imposter syndrome; if you don’t think you are worthy of being somewhere, or capable, you will act that way.

When I help people learn to teach and preach, I find it hard to describe, but there is a place they need to get to. It is not self-confidence, bravado or ego. There is a place in God you need to step into where part of you is saying, “I’ve got this. I’m going to enjoy this. I’m not nervous. I’m not threatened. I’ve done my homework, and God is going to flow things out of me that other people need to hear.” The problem is that all of us have an identity, and hardly any of us see it. It is like the fish in the water. One of the first things we need to do is ask God to show us how we see ourselves: not yet how He sees us, but how we see us. Your identity in Christ has a massive effect on your perception.

How Do Childhood Labels Shape Your Identity and Belief?

To what degree do they shape us? Massively. As it is written in Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” I hate to say it (and this can be broken) but the reverse is also true: train a child up badly, and when he is old he won’t depart from that either. What gets set in our minds in those younger, formative years is so important.

Most of us have very few memories from before the age of five. I can probably access three or four, where I can play the movie in my mind. Yet think about that five-year-old. He has lived five years on the earth, plus nine months in his mother’s womb, and all of that love or lack of love, acceptance or rejection, joy or its absence, peace or turmoil is forming how he sees the world around him. Childhood affects us absolutely massively.

For many of us, it will be a lifelong journey of learning to say by faith, “That old me is dead. By faith, this is who I am,” and then practising stepping into that new identity. I believe the Lord can rewire those things in us. All the more reason, as parents, grandparents or parents-to-be, that we think it through and are intentional and purposeful about the way we raise children.

How Does Renewing Your Mind Transform Your Self-Image?

I am writing a book on AI and its history, and it has helped me, because there are many terms, like LLM (large language model), that I knew vaguely. You can float around with a bunch of ideas. I am fairly up to speed with that world, yet I had never studied it the way I am studying it now. The point I am making is that we think with words, pictures and feelings, and we carry what I would call scripts: perspectives and beliefs. If I drop this book, it will fall to the ground. I don’t have those words memorized; they express a belief I hold, a sense of how the world works that I have adopted on the inside.

The Lord wants to renew our minds. We have a spiritual mind; as it is written in 1 Corinthians 2:16, “But we have the mind of Christ.” We also have a natural, rational mind. Without going into high-school psychology, there is the current thinking of our mind, the handful of things we are consciously dealing with (one, two, three, four or five things is already a lot). Then, more like the hard drive of the mind, are all our commitments, memories, ideas and beliefs, these scripts running in the background.

The Lord gives us a brand new identity. We have it by inheritance. We received it in a moment. We don’t earn it, produce it or work to get it. We have it. What we then have to do is practise it, until we have assimilated those beliefs and look at things as the Lord looks at them, and it is not that hard. When you believe something deeply in your heart, it will keep expressing itself out of your mouth. The words may change, like the LLM, but the belief will surface.

The opposite is equally true. Keep engaging with God’s words, God’s scripts in the Bible, and say, “Lord, You have said this.” The danger is simply repeating something like a parrot, as if it were a magic mantra: “My God will supply all my needs. My God will supply all my needs.” Instead, engage with the truth of it, and the imagination is probably the best way to do that. See yourself walking through life, this day and every day, knowing that your God will supply all your needs. God has given you your identity; He wants you to be aware of it and to practise thinking it through.

How Does Rejection Shape Your Identity and Relationships?

Profoundly. We were born from God and born for God. We were created and constructed to be in relationship with Him, and all of us have been grandfathered into rejection through Adam and Eve. We are born into a world of rejection. There is something in us, from the moment of conception, that knows we are estranged from God and, in a way, rejected by Him (I am speaking of the fall, not of what we have through Christ; that is the good news). We are born into a world where everybody else lives with that knowledge too. As written in Romans 8:19, “For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.”

So there is innate rejection in us, we are born into a world of rejection, and hurt people hurt people. Rejected people reject people. We long to be loved; that is the passion of all of our hearts, the driving mechanism behind everything. People want to be famous, and it is not usually about the money. They want to be loved. Rejection is painful, but most of us live in the fear of rejection.

I heard somebody suggest recently that one reason many Mormons make such good businessmen is that, as young missionaries, they go in knowing they may need to knock on five hundred doors before anyone is even kind to them (I am inventing the figure). They start from that premise, and rejection becomes normal. The point is that we live in the fear of rejection, and it defines our identity. We become the person who says, “I’m afraid of going there, because that hurts.” Like a dog with an invisible fence, most of us aren’t actually feeling rejection. We have a whole set of places we no longer go, and it is limiting our lives. The Lord wants to take all of that away and set us free.

How Can You Overcome Insecurities Through Your Christian Identity?

First, you have to see them. Ask God to show you, because, as with rejection, when we are insecure in an area (and we all are) we tend to avoid it. After a while, we don’t go down those streets anymore. I have known the city of Liverpool for fifty years, and there are probably areas I wouldn’t walk at night. In a way, I have constructed my own Liverpool, and I no longer have a problem with those areas because I simply don’t go there. That is how most of us construct life. So ask God to show you those insecurities and be aware of them.

Second, invite the Lord into them. Say, “Lord, lead me into the places where I am no longer captive and bound by these insecurities.” As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 12:10, “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Third, step into a place I call the beloved. You are loved, but it is not enough to know you are loved; you need to be the beloved. God wants you to know you are so loved and accepted by Him that you cannot be rejected. Insecurity dwells where we say, “I’m not loved, but I want you to love me, and if I can get you to love me, then I’ll be happy.” Start instead from the place where you have already won. Jesus began His ministry with the Father declaring, “You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” He had already won the top prize; there was nothing left to win on planet earth. Rejection never really touched Him until the cross, because He was perfectly accepted. If we will start from that place of perfect acceptance, then if God is for us, it is game over.

How Does Fear Shape Your Self-Image and Decisions?

In a sense I would rather reverse engineer this and talk about how hope does. We all have an identity. Most of us don’t see it. God wants to show it to us, and to make it in the image of Christ, in the image of the new creation we read about in Colossians 3. How does that shape our decisions? Through everything, because we live by projection. We live by imagination.

I don’t know anyone who simply wanders through life letting things happen. Each of us has an image of the day ahead, a movie we are going to play: where I will work, what I will buy, where I will eat, what I need to prepare. When we allow God to centre and set good, godly, righteous beliefs in us, we rewrite the movie that way.

Imagine you want to be an evangelist, a soul winner, and the Lord says, “I am going to take away every trace of fear. You can go up and talk to anybody. You will experience no rejection.” What would you do? How would it change your life? If you believed you were like that, you would live like that. That is what God wants. He speaks things to us that contradict and contravene our own perceptions of ourselves, and then He says, “Be that person. Live that way.” As Jesus prayed in John 17:17, “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.” If you believe His word is true, you will live and walk in that manner.

Scriptures for Study

Proverbs 28:1, Proverbs 22:6, Proverbs 23:7, 1 Corinthians 2:16, Romans 12:2, Philippians 4:19, Philippians 4:8, Romans 8:19, Romans 8:31, Romans 8:38–39, Romans 5:12, Ephesians 1:4–6, Matthew 3:17, 2 Corinthians 12:9–10, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Colossians 3:9–10, John 17:17, 1 John 4:18, 2 Timothy 1:7, Galatians 2:20, Psalm 27:10, Isaiah 54:4, Hebrews 13:5–6, Joshua 1:9, Mark 11:23

10 Questions for Reflection

1. Where does your own identity cause you to “flee when no one pursues”?
2. What does it look like for you to step into the place of “I’ve got this” in God?
3. Which childhood labels still shape how you see yourself?
4. How can you, by faith, declare that the old you is dead and practise the new?
5. What background “scripts” might be running on the hard drive of your mind?
6. How can you engage with God’s promises through imagination rather than empty repetition?
7. Where has the fear of rejection created “invisible fences” in your life?
8. Which streets of your life have you stopped walking down because of insecurity?
9. What would change if you lived from the place of already being the beloved?
10. If God removed all your fear, what would you do differently?

The Setup Hasn’t Changed. I Have.

For many years, probably twenty, I would fly into the United States and, every single time, I would be interrogated. Maybe I had the wrong face. “Why are you here?” It was a horrible experience. On the plane I would dread it, like a trip to the dentist later in the day. When I came through, I would text my wife: “Phew, I made it through. They let me in.”

Now I am an American citizen, with Global Entry or whatever the trusted traveller programme is called. Sometimes they hardly ask a thing: “Did you buy anything? No? Welcome home.” As I walk through that easy experience, I glance to my left and see other people who are nervous, struggling and being interrogated. The setup hasn’t changed. I have changed. The context hasn’t changed. My identity has changed. Instead of a red European Union passport, I now carry a blue American one, and my identity changes my experience.

I don’t mean to be political here, but think of someone living in a country undocumented (in France people say sans papiers). Other people in that same city are thinking, “This is so modern; I’m really enjoying living here,” while that person sees a threat. When I walk around Liverpool and see police officers, I am glad they are there for law and order, to help old ladies with their shopping and to direct traffic. If I were lost, I would go straight up and ask them for directions. If I were there illegally and I perceived them (notice the word) to be a threat, my interaction with them would be completely different. As written in Proverbs 23:7, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.”

Key Number One: Ask God to Show You How You See You

You may want to write this down. Ask God to show you how you see you. Here is my experience of what a lot of Christians try to do: they jump straight to what is really key number three, asking God to show them how He sees them.

Underneath, we are walking around with a settled identity, a whole set of beliefs under the hood: “This is who I am. I’m good at this. I’m worthless at that. I’m a sinner.” Then, on top of all that, we try to bake in, “But I’m a new creation.” Forgive the analogy, but think of that frightened person who feels they don’t belong and are about to be caught. You could put a nice suit on them, but all of those insecurities would still be on the inside. It would not change much. We are often trying to put a surface identity on top of something else.

So allow God to show you how you see you. As we have seen, one of our challenges is that it is hard to see ourselves. We think we are one way when, in reality, we are another. As David prayed in Psalm 139:23–24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

I don’t think you need to rummage around for years doing this. Ask, “Lord, how do I see myself? What are the formative experiences, the culture, the crises? Show me me.” At times the Lord can give you a download in a moment. In my experience, He usually leads you through a journey (not a long one) of noticing your reactions. Notice how you react to people and how you respond to them. Notice what you say and do around certain people. Notice what you fear in certain situations. It is amazing how many things limit us that we don’t even know are there.

I love an example Tim Ferriss, the podcaster and author, gives (without my recommending everything he does). He challenges people to go into Starbucks ten times and, every time, ask for a dollar off. Nobody goes into Starbucks and asks for a discount, especially with a big queue behind them. The social pressure, the barista, the person behind you, the feeling of being an idiot: all of it is illustrative. His point is that after ten times you would realize the fear isn’t real. It is only on the inside of you. It is that identity thing in you.

In the book Rees Howells, Intercessor, there is a story of the Lord telling Rees Howells to walk through the streets of London with no hat on. Plenty of people do that now, but in the early part of the twentieth century it would have been like walking around London with no trousers on. You were not dressed if you didn’t wear a hat in public. Working men wore a flat cap, aristocrats wore their own kind of hat, and you could literally judge somebody by their hat. To be sans chapeau was an embarrassment. He walked those streets in obedience to God, and I believe the Lord was communicating something to him.

Key Number Two: Ask the Lord to Expose the Lies and Rewire You

Key number two is to ask the Lord to take away those things, to rewire them and to expose the lies within them. There are some parts of how you see yourself that you need to make peace with and accept. If you see yourself as short in height and you are short, then you are short. Say, “This is how God made me, and that’s awesome.” If you are eighty-five, accept that you are eighty-five. Don’t try to be eighteen; believe me, we all know you’re not.

Most of the ways we see ourselves don’t need to be changed so much as re-scripted, realigned, rethought and reframed. Maybe you have been divorced. Maybe you have been fired or gone bankrupt. Maybe you have been raped. Maybe you have lost a child, or been through something horrific I can’t even begin to imagine. I am not excusing or minimizing anything you have been through, and no part of me is saying, “Move on and get healed.” What I am saying is, come to the place where you ask, “Lord, how do You see this? How do You want me to frame this? How do You want me to construct my reality around this?” As written in Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Key Number Three: Ask God to Show You How He Sees You

Key number three is to ask God to show you how He sees you. Ask Him to speak to you. Even if your response is, “What? That’s not true. That’s not me,” allow Him to give you your identity. Allow Him to declare to you how He sees you.

The Lord came to Gideon and declared who he was. As written in Judges 6:12, “The LORD is with you, you mighty man of valor!” Everything about Gideon was saying, “No, I’m not. I’m not a mighty man of valor.” God, however, was not describing how Gideon saw himself. He was declaring how He saw him.

Key Number Four: Put On That Person

Key number four is to put on that person. Gideon began to act like a mighty man of valor. That very day, he did something only a mighty man of valor would do. If you will start acting as if what God says is true, you will grow into it. God says you will lay hands on the sick and they will recover. So what do you do? You find a sick person, put your hands on them and say, “Be healed in the name of Jesus.” As Paul writes in Ephesians 4:24, “Put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.”

If you will do what God says in that identity, over time (like going back into Starbucks ten times) you shift into being that person. God declares the identity to you in key number three; then you practise living it. The more you practise, the easier it gets.

I play the guitar. I am a rhythm player, not a technical one, but I love getting creative and playing higher up the fretboard. Most people are taught to play chords only at the bottom end of the neck, which is fine, but there is so much fun in exploring the whole fretboard. Every time I learn a new chord, it is as if I am telling my fingers, “You stay there, and you stay there.” Everything in me says, “This hurts. This doesn’t feel natural. Let go and go back to the old way.” If I keep practising, the motor skills kick in, and after a while I am on autopilot. Let me challenge you to do the same with your identity. Ask God to show you how you see you, let Him expose the lies, receive how He sees you, and then practise new creation until it becomes natural.

Scriptures for Study

Proverbs 23:7, Psalm 139:23–24, Psalm 51:6, Jeremiah 17:9–10, Romans 12:2, 2 Corinthians 10:5, Philippians 4:8, Judges 6:11–16, Judges 6:25–27, Ephesians 4:22–24, Colossians 3:9–10, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Mark 16:17–18, James 1:22–25, James 2:17, Hebrews 5:14, 1 Timothy 4:15, Philippians 3:13–14, Isaiah 43:18–19, Romans 4:17, 1 John 4:18, 2 Timothy 1:7, Psalm 34:4, Galatians 2:20, Romans 6:11

10 Questions for Reflection

1. Where have you seen your identity change your experience of the same circumstances?
2. What settled beliefs about yourself are running “under the hood”?
3. Have you tried to put a new-creation identity on top of old beliefs? What happened?
4. What reactions or fears in your life reveal how you really see yourself?
5. What everyday “Starbucks discount” fear might God be inviting you to face?
6. Which parts of how you see yourself do you simply need to accept and make peace with?
7. What painful experience is God inviting you to let Him reframe?
8. What has God declared about you that feels untrue or unlike you?
9. Like Gideon, what is one action you could take that matches who God says you are?
10. How can you keep practising your new identity until it becomes natural?

When the Prescription Changes

Some time ago I picked up a new pair of glasses, and the prescription had changed. Walking was a little weird at first. The world around me hadn’t changed, but my eyesight, my perception, had changed, and so my interaction with the world changed too.

As a pastor, I deal with this all the time. A lot of people have had some really dreadful pastors; there seem to be abusive pastors out there. Many people are not dealing with me as I am. They are dealing with me through the lens, the grid, the memory and the perceptions of every other pastor they have dealt with before. It takes a while to get them to recalibrate to me. I am there in the room. I am not some man who shouted at them and demanded to be called Reverend and Pastor. My name is Graham. I am a person. How we see things determines how we treat people, and how we see ourselves is where it all begins. As written in Proverbs 23:7, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.”

The Younger Son

In Luke 15, Jesus tells three parables: the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son, the one we often call the prodigal son. You probably know the story, so let me run over it quickly.

A father has two sons. The Bible doesn’t give their ages, but they have come to maturity; they are probably somewhere between their mid-twenties and mid-thirties. The younger son comes to his father and asks for his inheritance. From a Western perspective that seems very strange. If my children came to me and asked me to sell my house and give them their portion, I would lovingly slap them. (Don’t try this, Dylan.)

Some cultures are different, though. In Western culture, a child receives an inheritance when the parent dies. In Jewish culture (and frankly, it is more of a biblical culture) a son received his inheritance when he came to maturity, when he had fully grown up. This is the point Paul makes in Galatians 3 and 4. As written in Galatians 4:1, “Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is master of all.” You could be born in the royal house, but while you are still a child, you are no different from a servant. Only when you come to maturity do you receive your inheritance.

There are four Greek words in the New Testament used to describe a child or son. One is literally a newborn baby. One is more like a toddler, a young child. Another describes an older child, and the last, huios, a fully mature son. In Jewish culture, a boy becomes a man in one sense at his bar mitzvah, but he really becomes a man nearer the age of thirty. It was at thirty that Jesus entered His ministry and heard the Father say, “You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

What I want you to see is that it wasn’t wrong for the younger son to ask for his inheritance. What he did with it was wrong; what he did with it was foolish. His father gave him his inheritance and hoped he would deal with it wisely. The younger son went off to a far country and wasted it on wild living, on parties, drinking and prostitutes. The Bible isn’t specific, but he threw it all away.

He ended up in that far country with no money, and in the end he took a job looking after pigs. We read that through Western eyes and think of sausages and bacon, but this is a Jew working for a pig dealer, caring for pigs and longing to eat the pigs’ food, because he was so poorly paid he couldn’t even feed himself. A pig will eat anything; in a way, that is why they were called unclean.

When He Came to Himself

The Bible says there came a time when he came to himself. It was as though his eyes were opened. As it is written in Luke 15:17–19, “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.”‘”

He gets up, leaves the pigs and walks a long way back. As he nears the house, he sees his father in the distance with his arms wide open. The father runs to him. The younger son tries to go through his speech (“I have sinned, I am not worthy”), and the father says, in effect, “Forget it. I love you. You are my son.” He puts a robe on him, a robe of righteousness, and a ring on his finger. In that culture a ring signified identity, who you are. Then comes the feast.

Son, All I Have Is Yours

Then we have the story of the elder brother. From the outside, he has done nothing wrong. He comes to his father and says, “I won’t celebrate my younger brother coming back. I have worked for you all these years, and you never even gave me a young goat to celebrate with my friends. Now you are happy because this one has come back.”

The father says some amazing things to his elder son, and this is where I want to land. He says three primary things. As written in Luke 15:31, “Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours.” First, son: he establishes identity. Second, all I have is yours: inheritance. Third, you are always with me: presence. Identity, inheritance and presence.

Both of these brothers had perspective problems. Neither of them really understood who they were. The younger brother came back into that place of identity a lot more quickly and easily than the elder brother did. We could pick two believers, both living in the Father’s house and both accepted in the Beloved. He calls both of them sons. He says to both, “Everything I have is yours.” As written in John 1:16, “Of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.” God is not holding out on you. He wants to bless your socks off. Everything He has is yours, and He is saying, “I am forever with you. You are always in My presence. I will never check out on you.”

Step Into Your Identity

So much of what we do right, or what we do wrong, depends on how we see ourselves. The elder brother is working in his father’s house, and he thinks his father is mean to him. That is what he experiences. Yet his father is not mean; his father is glorious. You will receive from God based on how you see God, and you will receive from God based on how you see yourself.

We need to ask God to give us our identity. What we need is what was done for the younger brother, and in a way God has already done it. He has adopted us. He has cleansed us, put a robe of righteousness on us, put a ring on our finger and blessed us. Now we have to step into that identity.

Don’t miss this. Most of us, and I am talking about born-again, Spirit-filled believers, are living in the Father’s house like pig keepers. We think we still smell of pigs. We think other people keep their distance because we still smell like a pig keeper. We think we are not worthy, and that we should be like one of His hired servants. Then there is a breakdown in our relationship with the Father, because the Father won’t relate to us as a servant, only as a son.

We have to recalibrate, readjust and realign, and learn to put on that identity, as Paul writes in Colossians 3. If we will step into that new identity, our whole lives will be transformed.

Scriptures for Study

Luke 15:1–7, Luke 15:8–10, Luke 15:11–16, Luke 15:17–19, Luke 15:20–24, Luke 15:25–32, Proverbs 23:7, Galatians 3:26–29, Galatians 4:1–7, Romans 8:14–17, Romans 8:32, Ephesians 1:3–6, Ephesians 1:11, John 1:12, John 1:16, Matthew 3:17, Isaiah 61:10, Hebrews 13:5, 1 John 3:1, 2 Corinthians 5:17, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Colossians 3:9–10, 1 Corinthians 3:21–23, 2 Peter 1:3, Psalm 103:13

10 Questions for Reflection

1. How has your past experience of leaders or authority figures shaped the way you see people now?
2. In what ways does your view of God determine how you live and respond?
3. Do you relate more to the younger son or to the elder brother? Why?
4. What does it mean to you that it was not wrong for the younger son to ask for his inheritance?
5. What “pig keeper” thoughts still shape how you see yourself in the Father’s house?
6. How does the father’s word “son” challenge the way you see yourself?
7. What would change if you truly believed that all the Father has is yours?
8. How might seeing God as mean, rather than glorious, be limiting what you receive from Him?
9. Where is God inviting you to recalibrate and step into the identity He has already given you?
10. What is one practical way you can live as a son or daughter, not a servant?

You See Things as You Are

So much of what I have been teaching on kingdom perspective comes back to the concept of learning to see differently, and of how God sees things. God doesn’t see things as we see them. We think we see accurately, but we don’t. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face.”

The challenge is this: we don’t often see as we are. We don’t see ourselves as we truly are. Many of us carry a distorted, corrupted, sick, twisted and suffering image of who we are. If my own concept of myself is damaged and patched up, then everything I see around me will be like that too. I am convinced that you see through your identity, and that part of the pathway, the journey of learning to see correctly, is learning to put on a new identity.

Only Two Identities

Paul writes to the Colossians, under a heading that the publisher of my little travel Bible has titled “Put on the new self” (those headings are not inspired, and they are often terrible, but I like that one). As it is written in Colossians 3:1–3, “If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

He goes on to tell us to put to death what is earthly in us (sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and covetousness, which is idolatry) and to put away anger, wrath, malice, slander and filthy language. Then he gives the reason: “since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all” (Colossians 3:9–11).

At one level, this is very binary and very clear. We could say we are all different, that we have all had different experiences, and amen to that. The bottom line, though, is that for a believer there are only two identities. There is an old identity and there is a new identity, and we have all received that new identity in Christ. We can unpack that and explore what it means, but the foundation does not move. As written in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”

The Problem With Self-Help

God is interested in giving us our identity. He is not interested in self-help or self-development. The problem with self-help is the word self. We can’t do it. Self-help is like a modern version of the law: it is you trying to improve yourself. God looks at all of our efforts to improve ourselves and says, “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m not interested in those.”

So I want to lay a simple foundation. God really has only one plan for your old self, and that is death. I was about to say that God wants to kill you. The better response is to realize it is not that He wants to; it is that He already has. God has dealt with your self problem. He dealt with it on the cross.

Dying to Self Is a Historical Event

Dying to self isn’t a day-by-day journey and discipline. It is not something we learn to do slowly over time. Dying to self is an historical event. It happened two thousand years ago. In a mysterious way we don’t fully understand (and yet it is as clear as the nose on your face in the Bible) God took your old self, my old self and, in a sense, the old selves of the whole world, put them on Jesus and slew them on the cross of Calvary. Then, in Christ, He raised you in newness of life. As written in Romans 6:6, “knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.”

We are talking about seeing, about perspective. From God’s vantage point, He looks at you and says, “Your old you is dead. Your old identity is dead, and you have a brand new identity.”

Now pause. How do we look at ourselves? I have been a Christian for over forty years, and I have been around this stuff long enough, in the UK, in Europe and in America, to know whereof I speak. Here is the point I am making: our Christianity is usually a reflection not of what the Bible clearly says, but of what we actually see in our lives.

Most of us have a working theology that goes something like this: “God touched my life and saved me, and I’m sort of struggling through this life. I’m learning to be a Christian, like somebody learning to play golf. I’m a bit of a failure, but God loves me anyway. As long as I don’t give up on the journey and try to be good, He won’t throw me out. When I die, He’ll come and say, ‘Shazam!’ and I will be transformed into the glorious, sinless person I will be throughout all eternity.”

That might sound rude or facetious, but can I tell you, that is what 99% of Christians really, truly believe. Nobody may state it quite that clearly, yet that is usually exactly where people are coming from. I want to tell you there is no truth in it. Think about it: if that were so, the moment of salvation would be the moment of death. Death would become the thing that saves you, and all we could do is grapple our way through the day and make it through this vale of tears.

Start From New Creation

That is not how God sees you. God sees you now as a new creation. He sees the old man in you as dead. As Paul declares in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

Let me reverse engineer what Paul is saying in Colossians 3. He is saying, “Put on that new man. Practise that new man by doing all the things the new man does. Practise putting off the actions, the deeds and the habits of the old man.” Yet he begins by telling us how to do that: set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. Fix your attention on who you are, on who God says you are.

He is not coming to you and saying, “If you will do these good things, you will become a new creation.” What he is saying is, “Start off in new creation. Acknowledge your new creation. Fix your mindset there.” When you do, the actions will flow out of you. Let me challenge you to stop trying to build a better old self and to begin, by faith, from the place God has already put you. Your old self is dead. You are a new creation in Christ.

Scriptures for Study

Colossians 3:1–4, Colossians 3:5–8, Colossians 3:9–11, Colossians 2:12–13, 1 Corinthians 13:12, 2 Corinthians 5:17, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Romans 6:3–4, Romans 6:6, Romans 6:11, Romans 8:1–2, Romans 12:2, Galatians 2:20, Galatians 5:24, Galatians 6:14–15, Ephesians 2:4–6, Ephesians 2:10, Ephesians 4:22–24, Philippians 3:9, John 3:3–6, John 15:5, 1 Peter 2:24, 1 John 3:1–2, Hebrews 10:10, Hebrews 10:14

10 Questions for Reflection

1. What do you see when you look at yourself, and where did that picture come from?
2. How might a damaged view of yourself be shaping how you see other people and circumstances?
3. Do you believe there are really only two identities, the old and the new? Why might that be hard to accept?
4. In what ways have you tried to improve your old self through self-help or effort?
5. What changes when you see dying to self as something that already happened at the cross?
6. How closely does the “working theology” described here match what you have believed?
7. Why is it dangerous to treat death, rather than Christ, as the moment of transformation?
8. What does it look like for you to set your mind on things above?
9. Which habits of the old man is God asking you to put off, starting from your new identity?
10. How would your coming week look if you began each day by acknowledging that you are a new creation?

I don’t think we see half of what God wants us to see. You do see with your eyes, but you perceive and understand with your heart. Two people with perfectly good eyesight can look at the same thing and not see the same thing at all, because we look through our history, our culture, the experiences we have had, the books we have read and our understanding of how things should be. We need our thinking rewired by the kingdom of God.

You Have Heard It Said

In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 to 7, one phrase comes again and again. As it is written in Matthew 5:38–39, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you not to resist an evil person.” My goal is not to unpack each of those matters of life (giving, purity, honouring God) but to notice what Jesus is doing. In effect He is saying, “This is how you have heard it. This is how you were brought up. This is your perspective. But I have come, and I have brought My kingdom with Me. I see things completely differently.”

I believe God is declaring war on the neat idea that you pray a little prayer, get saved, and then simply wait to go to heaven one day. God wants to change your life now. The kingdom of heaven is not something that begins when you die or when Jesus returns. Jesus came with His kingdom, and everywhere He went, He brought it with Him. The Lord is radically interested in changing our mindset, so that we no longer live as Brits or French or Americans first. I love all of those cultures, but we are citizens of heaven.

The danger is that there are things we no longer see because we are so used to them. Like a dog with an invisible fence, we learn, “I can’t go there. I can’t cross that line.” One of the reasons I love to take people to another culture, like Ireland, is that it sets them free. Suddenly they will preach in a public square in Belfast. God loves to take us into places where our old boundaries disappear, not simply to give us an experience, but to rewire us and show us how He sees. So my challenge is to go on a journey with the Lord and say, “Lord, I know how I see this. I know how I was raised. How do You see this?”

How Do You See God?

I grew up in the Lord around wonderful people who really believed in faith, but when it came to finances, they carried a missionary-style message: you can believe God, but you are really going to suffer. God will provide, but only just. If you serve God, you wear second-hand socks. Let me be clear: everybody should be willing to do anything for Jesus. Yet for years I believed God was always late and would only just pay, and because I believed God would only just meet my needs, He only just met my needs. I drove a twenty-year-old car held together by prayer and duct tape. I ran out of fuel more times than I can count, putting two or three dollars of gas in and praying in tongues over the meter. I have great stories of nearly starving and people bringing groceries, but it is a horrible way to live. I had to realize I had heard it that way, but God was saying, “I’m not like that at all. That is not My nature.”

Could I lovingly suggest that many of us walk around with ideas about God that did not come from the Bible, or that come from a twisted interpretation of it? We even read the Bible through the lens of those religious ideas, and we conclude that God is harsh, mean and difficult to please. He is not like that at all. Remember the elder brother in the story of the prodigal son: “I slave away for you, and you never even gave me a young goat.” As it is written in Luke 15:31, “Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours.” How we think about God determines how we relate to God. If you believe God is harsh and mean, that is how He will be to you, not because He is that way, but because we limit the Holy One of Israel with false beliefs.

As a pastor I have learned this. I might email someone on a Wednesday and ask to talk on Sunday, simply to tell them how great they are or to invite them into something. Some people would not sleep for four days. In their minds it was like being summoned to the headmaster’s office or a visit from the tax authorities. They would walk into my office shaking, and I just wanted to hug them. It doesn’t matter that I am not like that if they think I am like that.

God’s goodness is scandalous to our minds. He is so good, so generous, so kind, so holy, so righteous and so pure. Everything we do dumbs God down to our level. Years ago, living far from God in Lyon, France, Jesus walked into my apartment. I wasn’t looking for Him. I felt the glory of God come into the room, and I thought He was going to kill me; I saw how holy He was and what a mess I was. He looked at me and said, “I love you.” It wasn’t information. Suddenly everything in my life became about this: I am loved by God. Not used, not tolerated, loved. So let me encourage you to pray, “Lord, open my eyes and show me who You truly are.”

How Does God See You?

Secondly, pray, “Lord, show me how You see me.” The only opinion of you that really counts is God’s. We grow up constantly thinking about what other people think of us, but God has an opinion about you, and He wants to sow it right into your soul, so that everything anyone else thinks about you bounces off like water off a duck’s back. We shouldn’t live for the praise of people or for their censure. At times people will love you and at times they will hate you, and it is foolishness to live for their opinions. As Paul prayed in Ephesians 1:17–18, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened.”

Whatever you are struggling with, the key is to allow God to give you an identity. Most of us play a game: if I do this, I will be this; if I stop doing that, I will stop being that. We try to change our identity by what we do and don’t do. In the kingdom of God it is the other way around. God comes to us and says, “You are My child. You are free.” When Jesus met the woman at the well, He was not pretending her relationships were fine, but that was not why He came. He came to give her living water. Once He changed her, that change would work its way through every relationship. Sin is sin, but people jump from one relationship to another because they are not drinking from the living water and they don’t know who they are.

God wants to anchor in your soul who you are, whose you are and what He thinks about you, so that you live for an audience of One. If God is not happy with me, I want to know it. I don’t always enjoy it, but I would rather be rebuked by Him than live in a fantasy, because those He loves, He rebukes. So keep praying for a season: “Lord, show me me. Open my eyes to see me as You do.”

Seeing People as God Sees Them

Thirdly, pray, “Lord, show me how You see other people.” God has never seen a person He doesn’t love. There is not one person on planet earth that He doesn’t look at and say, “I made that. That person is a masterpiece.” You are more valuable than a million Mona Lisas. Sin and the fall marred the image, but God still looks at you and says, “You are the most valuable thing in the universe.” As written in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.”

The selfishness of this world wraps us up in our own little lives. God could give you a flying car if you wanted one, but what He is really looking for is people who go into the streets because they love people. Sometimes we should sit in a shopping mall and pray, “Lord, show me these people as You see them, behind the youth, the age, the cool clothes and the poverty.”

The problem in the church is that we try to like people. We find people who are like us and likable, and we try to love them with the “like” of the Lord. God did not so like the world. He puts us with people we cannot naturally like, so that we run out of human love, phileo, and have to love with His love. When Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love Me?” He used agape, and Peter answered with phileo. I believe Peter did love Jesus, and Jesus knew it, but Peter didn’t know it. Broken by his denial, he needed revelation. Jesus said, “Feed My sheep,” not so that Peter could prove his love, but out of a love already settled. You don’t do things for God to prove you love Him. You love Him, and because you love Him, you do things for Him.

I have a friend who used to drive into London every day from the countryside, a successful businessman and a Christian, though not a dramatic one. One morning a flood forced a detour through a village he had never visited. He stopped for a coffee, and standing outside that quaint village he began to hear screaming and moans of pain that nobody else seemed to hear. It happened three mornings in a row. He shut himself away to seek God, and the only answer he got was, “Take your wife for a coffee.” When he did, she heard it too, and the Lord spoke to them both: “I am showing you the pain in this village: the broken-hearted, the people thinking about suicide, the alcoholic, the abused child.” The Lord told him to sell his business. They bought a row of houses, knocked the walls through, opened a centre and spent around twenty years loving that town, because they began to see people as God saw them.

Seeing Your Circumstances Through His Eyes

Finally, pray, “Lord, show me my circumstances through Your eyes, not through what I have heard, what my culture says or how I was raised.” Nothing that has ever happened to you has surprised God. You have never had a bill that surprised God. Every time I received a bill I couldn’t pay, I used to slide into a mild depression and put it on a shelf, where it sat like an enemy. Then the Lord said to me, “Graham, you will never have a bill in your whole life that I can’t pay. I have a bigger pocket than you. Stop looking at your pocket; look at Mine.” He trained me to hold up every bill and praise Him for an opportunity to prove His provision. As it is written in Philippians 4:19, “And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Since I learned that, many years ago, I don’t believe Leah and I have had one need God didn’t meet.

The same is true of our bodies. The world tells us that every ache means we are getting old, and we even pray “prayers of agreement” that we are getting old. I have learned to say, “Thank You, Lord, for reminding me that by Your stripes I am healed and that You renew my youth like the eagle’s.” God is looking for people like Paul and Silas, who turned a prison into a praise meeting. A friend’s son was competing in a fishing contest with thousands of entrants and catching nothing. She felt the Lord prompt her to tell him to ask God, and before the contest closed he landed the biggest fish of his life and won. God cares about your fish, your business, your job, your relationships and your children.

The twelve spies saw the same land, but ten of them saw it through a heart of unbelief: “we were like grasshoppers in our own sight.” Joshua and Caleb saw the same hills and vineyards and said, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.” Years ago the Lord told me, “Graham, you don’t see things as they are. You see things as you are.” It is not the world around me that needs to change; it is my heart. When we see things as God sees them, every attack becomes an upgrade in our walk with Him.

Many of us also carry baggage from abuse, trauma, loss or failure, and before we can learn to see, we need to learn to unsee. At about nineteen, I was a passenger in a car that flipped over and over on a motorway at around ninety miles an hour. I was sure I would die. I walked with a cane for a week or two and thought I was fine, but for years, whenever someone else was driving, I would be in terror, clawing at the dashboard even at twenty miles an hour. Fear doesn’t live in your mind; it lives in your heart. Perhaps you were abused or went bankrupt, and you think you have moved on, yet you look at something new God wants to give you through the eyes of who you were years ago. Pray, “Lord, show me what I need to unlearn.” That experience will always be part of my history, but it is not my identity. God defines my identity.

Let me challenge you to pray this, again and again: Lord, show me who You really are. Show me how You see me. Show me people as You see them. Show me my circumstances through Your eyes. You have heard it said, but He says to you something far better.

Scriptures for Study

Matthew 5:21–22, Matthew 5:27–28, Matthew 5:38–39, Matthew 5:43–44, Psalm 119:18, Philippians 3:20, Luke 11:20, Luke 10:9, Luke 15:25–32, Ephesians 1:17–18, Ephesians 2:10, John 4:13–14, Revelation 3:19, Hebrews 12:6, John 3:16, John 21:15–17, Psalm 139:14, Philippians 4:19, Isaiah 53:5, Psalm 103:5, Acts 16:25–26, Numbers 13:30–33, Numbers 14:28, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Romans 12:2

10 Questions for Reflection

1. What cultural or family assumptions shape the way you see things without your noticing?
2. Where have you “heard it said” one way, while Jesus says something different?
3. What ideas about God have you carried that did not come from Scripture?
4. How might your beliefs about God be limiting what you receive from Him?
5. Whose opinion of you carries the most weight, and why?
6. Where are you trying to change your identity through what you do or don’t do?
7. Who is God asking you to love that you would never naturally like?
8. What would change if you saw the people in your town as God sees them?
9. Which circumstance in your life do you need to see through God’s eyes?
10. What past experience do you need God’s help to “unsee”?