Samantha: Parents have a God-given responsibility to pass truth on to the next generation. But it’s easy to lose sight of what the long game is in parenting. Here are Dennis and Barbara Rainey.

Barbara Rainey: It’s never too late to impact your kids for Christ.

Dennis Rainey: What we must do is impart to our children the truth about God, the experience of God, and also the gospel of God—how they can know Him—that’s our assignment.

Barbara Rainey: It’s never too late to make investments in their lives for things that will last forever.”
Samantha: Welcome to the Barbara Rainey Podcast from Ever Thine Home, where we’re dedicated to helping you experience God in your home.

The family plays a key role in shaping the way we view life. As Charles Swindoll has famously said, “Home is where life makes up its mind.” In Deuteronomy chapter six, God tells parents to teach His words diligently to their children.

Dennis and Barbara Rainey consider themselves blessed to be the parents of six children, and the grandparents of 27. So they know a thing or two about what they call “The art of parenting.” In fact, that’s the title of a book they wrote.

Barbara says she values this role God gave her.

Barbara: I loved being a mom; I loved raising kids. It really was—it was stressful; it was hard, but it was rewarding. It was what I felt like I was made to do in those years that I was doing it. I was very engaged, very committed, very involved—reading things all the time—trying to improve, trying to be a great mom, trying to give my kids what they needed; so I was very invested.

Samantha: As every parent knows, a part of your job description is helping place and maintain some healthy boundaries in your children’s lives. Dennis shares how that lesson hit home for one of their kids.

Dennis: Our daughter, Deborah, came to me one time—do you remember how old, Sweetheart, she was?

Barbara: No; but I would guess 13/14—early teens.

Dennis: Yes—just in that age that kind of knows it all, you know. She came and she said, “Dad, I want to be able to do what I want to do, with whoever I want to do it with, whenever I want to do it, for as long as I want to do it.” I said, “Really, sweetheart?!” [Laughter] I said, “What if your parakeet came to you,”—and the parakeet’s name was—

Barbara: —Sweet Pea.

Dennis: Sweet Pea—“Sweet Pea came to you and said, ‘I want to be able to do whatever I want to do, with whoever I want to do it, for as long as I can possibly do it,’ and Sweet Pea said to you, ‘I’d like to go out on the porch and play with the cat.’ What would you say?” She said: “Oh, Dad! That’s silly!”

Barbara: “That’s dumb.”

Dennis: “That’s dumb.”

Barbara: She was disgusted with him.

Dennis: She was. And I said: “Here’s the thing. God’s given you parents to help—not cage you up—but to create boundaries that protect you. Sweet Pea doesn’t need to play with the cat.”

It was just the beginning of the teenage years for Deborah; in all fairness to her, in some form or another, all six of ours asked a question very, very similar to that.

And God, in His sense of humor—God is so mischievous, and I mean that in a holy way—not evil—just holy mischievous. [Laughter] He has a way of getting our attention.

Not long after that, we had the opportunity to travel, as a family. We needed to find someone that would take care of Sweet Pea, so we got a nearby family to take care of our favorite parakeet.

Barbara: So a family down the street that we knew well—some of our kids matched up and they played together—we called them and asked them. They said, “Sure,” they’d be delighted to. But we couldn’t make the handoff occur before we left, so we left Sweet Pea in the cage in the house. They came by later that day—after we’d left town, gotten on our plane, and flown off—to pick up Sweet Pea, and keep the bird for the week, and get the bird feed and everything.

One of the younger kids in the family was tasked with the responsibility of taking care of the bird that week. He was going to earn a little money by doing this—we were going to pay him. So anyway, they came to the house, got the bird, got the parakeet cage, and the food and everything, and they were walking out to their car.

It was January, too, by the way, which is an interesting piece of the story; because, as they walked from our front door to their car, the tray on the bottom of the parakeet cage came unhooked.

It dropped open; and the bird saw his chance at freedom, and dropped through, and took off flying up into the trees. He got his freedom sooner than expected.

My friend’s name was Jessica, and she just was panicked. She went, “Oh my.” So they tried to coax it down. They put food in their hands and offered food, you know, trying to get the bird to come down; and nothing worked. They tried for nearly an hour, and the bird was in the tree and was not coming down.

Dennis: So, we’re away on our trip when we get the phone call that the parakeet had flown the coop, literally; okay? We tried to time the telling of the story to Deborah— when it would perhaps be a little bit of a shock absorber—but there was no good time to tell her. This completely bummed her up.

I mean, the rest of the trip was miserable.

Well, how long passed, Barbara?

Barbara: Just a couple of days—say we got home on a Friday; maybe on Monday morning our neighbor, who lives up the hill—he called. Dennis had gone to work; it was about ten or eleven in the morning—the kids were off at school, and I was home alone. He called and said, “I have something really interesting I want to ask you.” He said, “Do you guys have a parakeet?” I said, “Well, we did have a parakeet.” He said, “Oh, okay.” He begins to tell me this story about how he found Sweet Pea, and I was so amazed that the bird had survived.

Dennis: He found Sweet Pea where?

Barbara: Well, that’s a part of the story. [Laughter] I called Dennis and I told him—I said, “Our neighbor has Sweet Pea.” He said, “You’re kidding.”

Deborah was not happy; so I wanted to go get her at school, and pull her out of class, and tell her. Dennis said, “Don’t you dare go tell her.” He said, “We need to make a big impression on her about what happened and how God spared this parakeet for her.” I said, “Okay; great”; so I didn’t go tell her.

Dennis: What happened was—Bob, our neighbor, was watching TV, and he heard a thump on the window. Bob just walks out, sticks his finger up in the air, kind of horizontal to the ground, and Sweet Pea flies right down to it.

Barbara: He turns around and walks in the house, carrying the bird.

Dennis: Well, that was how we would get Sweet Pea to land on us, just put the finger up horizontally and let the bird fly down. So he put Sweet Pea in a spare cage that they had—

Barbara: They just happened to have a cage!

Dennis: —and went to town to get some parakeet food.

Barbara: Yes; and so while he was in town to get parakeet food, after he got what he needed at the pet store, he stopped at a yogurt place on the way home. It was real busy, so he had to stand in line. Bob’s very chatty/very conversational, so he started talking to the guy in front of him.

As they were talking, the guy said to him, “So, what are you doing today?” Bob said, “Oh, I had to come into town to get parakeet feed for this bird that I found.” The guy said, “Well, where do you live?” Bob told him where he lived; and the guy said, “Is that anywhere near the Raineys?” Bob said, “Yes; I live next door to them.” The guy said: “Oh. I’m the kids’ youth pastor.” He said, “I think they have a parakeet,” because Bob had said—for this parakeet that he found—he had no idea where it had come from.

Dennis: That’s 15 miles from where we live—

Barbara: Bob goes, “Oh, well maybe that is where it came from.” When he called Monday morning, he was confirming, “Do you have a parakeet that is now missing?—because if you do, I have it.”

Dennis: I told Barbara—I said, “After dinner, let’s just drive the point home with Deborah.” After dinner, I just stopped, and I looked at Deborah, and I said [emotion in voice], “Deborah, God really loves you.”

Barbara: And she was still not happy.

Dennis: No; not happy at all. She wouldn’t look at me. I said: “Deborah, look at me. God really loves you.” She still wouldn’t look. I said: “Deborah, God loves you. Bob, our neighbor, has your parakeet.”

Well, at that point, two things happened. First of all, our daughter, Laura, had been sitting with her head—

Barbara: Well, the very first time you said to Deborah: “I want to tell you something. Can I tell you that God really loves you?” Laura piped up and said, “Do I have to listen to this?” [Laughter] Because she knew that her dad was about to talk to her sister about some lesson, because she was not happy. [Laughter] She’s thinking: “This isn’t about me. Why do I have to be here?” So she said, “Do I have to listen to this?”

Dennis said, “You do have to listen to this,” and Laura went, “Ooh!”

Dennis: So, at the point I told Deborah that the parakeet was up the hill with Bob, Laura screamed and said, “What?!” And Deborah slowly—

Barbara: Yes; like an ice cube.

Dennis: —almost imperceptibly, at a point, began to smile.

Barbara: She was real skeptical—she said, “Really?”

Dennis: Yes; we walked up—

Barbara: All four of us marched up the hill to the neighbors’—

Dennis: —reclaimed the bird, put Sweet Pea back in her home, and all was well. But we just said, “Deborah, God really loves you and is looking out for you.”

Barbara: Well, it was so obvious that it was God—because it was January; the parakeet had been outside for over 24 hours; it was really cold—so that it actually survived the night, and then showed up at our neighbors’ and banged on his window and not ours, where nobody was home—I mean, so many things.

And then, that Bob would run into that youth group guy—I mean, Bob never went to church. He didn’t know where we went to church. I mean, it was so obvious that God was all over this story that I think we knew that somehow this was going to sink in; somehow—whether we said anything or not—it was just too big for her to miss it.
Samantha: So parents need to be on the lookout for teachable moments that God graciously gives. He orchestrates them! After all, He’s on your side in this whole parenting endeavor.

Dennis: You know, Deuteronomy 6 comes right after the giving of the Ten Commandments; and right after those commandments are given, God commands the parents of Israel, He says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and you shall teach your children to do the same.”

Parenting is God’s idea; He loves our kids more than we do. As parents, so many times we feel so helpless; but God does care about our kids. Now, He may not do it in our timing; but He does have a way of getting our children’s attention, because, really, children are God’s statement that the next generation must take our place. What we must do is impart to our children the truth about God, the experience of God, and also the gospel of God—how they can know Him.

That’s really why Barbara and I wrote the book, The Art of Parenting. We want to call a generation of parents—and there are some 16 million millennial parents right now—another one million have been added this past year—who are raising their kids according to some kind of plan.

The question is: “Is it the best-selling-book-in-history plan?—is it the Bible?”

What we want to do—and what we’ve done in the book—is break down the Scriptures and give folks some very simple, practical ways—but biblically-anchored—of how to raise the next generation.
Samantha: Often it’s new parents who feel like they are totally in over their heads and are looking for advice on how to raise their children. But Barbara says their book The Art of Parenting is meant for parents of older kids, too.

Barbara: If you still have children at home, even if it’s one who is 17, there is something for you in this book; because it’s never too late. That’s one of the big messages that we want to send—that: “It’s never too late to impact your kids for Christ. It’s never too late to make investments in their lives for things that will last forever.”

We feel it more acutely, I think, with newborns, and toddlers, and preschoolers; because it’s so new and fresh; and we’re so acutely aware of what we’re missing. We’re much more worn down when our kids get to be teenagers, and it’s easy to give up. But God doesn’t want us to give up, because He’s always available and wants to intersect our kids’ lives at any stage so that we come to Him.
Samantha: Dennis says that even though parents may be tired, they need to avoid giving up … throwing in the towel.

Dennis: We know the feeling—we’ve experienced that feeling. In fact, yesterday, Barbara talked to one of our children—adult children—who has a teenager or two, and our daughter was discouraged. Just going through the teenage years had just sapped her strength and her courage. What we want to do, Bob, is—we want to give parents courage to hang in there, not to quit.

Basically, what we’ve broken parenting down into are really four areas. Number one: relationships—relationship with God and with one another. That’s our assignment—to train our kids to know how to relate to God properly and also how to get along with human beings.

Secondly, character—that’s the Book of Proverbs—being wise and not a fool; choosing right and not wrong. That’s a big part of being parents today—equipping children with boundaries.

The third area is identity. Listen to me—there is identity theft taking place today that is far more important than somebody stealing your credit card. There is a sexual identity theft, a spiritual identity theft, and also an emotional identity theft that we talk about in the book to help parents know how to raise kids, who reflect who God is.

Finally, there’s a child’s purpose—that’s their mission. We believe a child was designed by God to be raised and then released—released toward the bull’s eye on the target that God has for them. If you’re not sending your child to that destination on purpose, the world does have a plan for your child; and it’s not a good plan.

Samantha: Those four areas—relationships, character, identity, and purpose—are categories Dennis and Barbara found after studying what the Bible has to say about parenting. They proved to be true in their experience, as well.

Dennis: Over, and over, and over again, these four areas really were distilled down into the essence of what God’s trying to do in our lives.

Samantha: Well, the book by Dennis and Barbara Rainey is called The Art of Parenting. And here’s the subtitle. Aiming Your Child’s Heart Toward God. If you’d like a copy of The Art of Parenting, just head to EverThineHome.com/ArtOfParenting, and order yours. Again, go to EverThineHome.com/ArtOfParenting.

I’m Samantha, inviting you back for the Barbara Rainey Podcast, from Ever Thine Home.