Do you know my friend, Desiré from When You Rise? If you don’t, you need to:) She is guest posting here today. Desiré shares my heart and passion for teaching our children about Jesus and the only gospel that saves. In today’s post, she puts words to my own thoughts about all the parenting books that are out there.

“Do A, B and C and you’ll have a new kid by Tuesday!”

So I try… and I don’t.

<Sigh>

Parenting books can leave me so discouraged. They often lead me to believe that I’m either a) not consistent enough with the “method” or b) my child is worse than most or c) I stink as a parent in general.

I like to read. A lot. But in the past few years I’ve become increasingly picky about what I read. If that “good advice” found in a lot of parenting books isn’t tempered with solid, biblical truth, it can leave this mama deflated and defeated.

I know why I’m drawn to them. I’m practical. I like people to give me a list of what to do and exactly how to do it. But for some reason it’s hit me in a very real and fresh way the last few weeks why it might be the wiser choice to avoid books that offer lots of methods and promise results. Why?

First, results are limited.

While most of the parenting books I’ve read have some helpful insight, no parenting tactic is fool proof. When I first started to discipline my oldest son, Isaac, I relied heavily on some books that offered the “right way” to do it. While there was good advice and helpful approaches, I found myself feeling like a failure on a regular basis because, try as I may, I began to feel like a drill seargant trapped by my own set of rules. I would see some results and then throw my hands up in exasperation when he would regress. So I’d look for the next parenting book that offered results using a different method. Maybe theirs would work.

Second, they don’t usually have the right goal in mind.

These books do have their place. Honestly, I’ve gleaned creative ideas for helping to correct children with various bents from books of these kinds. It’s not using the discipline methods that are wrong, it’s the goal.

And what exactly is the goal in the overwhelming majority of these books?

Kids who behave.

Okay, so I absolutely want my kids to obey me and do the right thing. It makes my life easier and makes them more likely to be productive members of society someday. Those are both good things. Christian books often go at it from the angle of doing what God tells us to do. And that’s not bad… necessarily…

What I’ve found is that something MAJOR is missing from many popular parenting books.

My child’s heart.

What if I found a “method” that worked beautifully for one of my boys? What then? They act appropriately and obey in most situations. Yay! But that doesn’t do them a bit of good in the long run apart from Jesus Christ. They could be the most moral, obedient, submissive child on the planet, but apart from a Savior their good works gain them nothing.

I’m convinced that pointing my kids to Christ is the best parenting “method.” But much to the dismay of my practical personality (and crazy love for my boys), results can’t be promised with this method.

Results can’t be promised when a real life human being’s heart is involved. I don’t have any guarantees over God’s work in their lives. There are some encouragements like, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Pr. 22:6). But Proverbs is not a book of promises. This verse is a truism (meaning it’s typically true or likely to happen), but not a guarantee. We’ve probably all known people who’s kids have gone astray despite their upbringing, not because of it.

That’s why I now run from parenting books that promise results. I’m not going to give you a long list of books that I could bash or pick apart, but instead direct you to a few books that have been encouraging to me in embracing a Christ-centered mindset that parents to the heart. (And by the way, there are things that could be debated and argued in these books as well, but they’ve all helped shape some aspect of my parenting and I think they’re worth a read):

Give Them Grace by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson

Loving the Little Years by Rachel Jankovic

Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp

(You can read reviews for all of these books on When You Rise under the Resources page if you’d like to know more about them.)

So, I read and I strive to parent well and I ask God to give me his eyes to see their heart the way he does. To remember to look past the behavior (bad or even good!) and point them to Jesus as I discipline. I pray that my methods will be shifted to a mindset that desires to point my kids to their Savior.

Desiré is married to her best friend Matt and gets to be “Mommy” to Isaac (4) and Silas (almost 3) with a Caleb joining the mix in just a few weeks. She loves chocolate, running (when she’s not gigantically pregnant) and reading! She blogs at When You Rise, a site dedicated to sharing fun ideas for teaching kids the Bible as well as sharing the lessons God is teaching her on this parenting journey. You can find her on Facebook and Pinterest as well.

It’s the month of love. The card aisle at the store is lined with messages of love. Today my youngest has party at his preschool where he will hand out sweet treats to his classmates. And red heart shaped decorations are everywhere.

With Valentine’s Day this month, I wanted to help my boy focus on real love. Not just the kind you share on the 14th of February each year with little poetic thoughts and heart shaped candies. No, I want them to learn about true love.

“We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us.” 1 John 3:16

For the past few weeks, my boys have been memorizing 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. A famous passage often used in weddings, it summarizes what real love looks like. When they started learning it, I not only talked with them about the fact that God wants us to love each other that way, but more importantly, that 1 Corinthians 13 tells us how God loves us.

They know it is hard to love others. We pray about their own battles and arguments between each other all the time. As my youngest always reminds me, they can’t love perfectly.

But Jesus did and does.

And it’s that truth that is at the heart of the gospel: because Jesus loved us, we can now love one another. 1 John 4;19 says, “We love each other because he loved us first.” Without God’s love, we cannot really love others. Oh, we can feel warm fuzzies, we can respond in kind when someone else is loving to us, but real love is impossible without Christ.

Self-sacrificial love is the love Christ has for us. It’s this Love that left heaven above for a cattle trough on earth. It’s this Love that left riches unimaginable to live a life of poverty, having no home of his own. It’s this Love that dined with the outcasts, walked with sinners, and washed the dirty feet of a traitor.

It’s this perfect Love that became sin so that we could be freed to love one another.

When I instruct my boys in what it means to love one another, I have to first teach them about this Love that died for them. They can only love others because He loved them first.

Do you ever talk with your children about scripture and then later realize there is a lesson there for you too?

I’ve hidden this truth about love, deep in my heart where the other treasures of His word are stored. I’ve listened to my boys recite 1 Corinthians 13 over and over. Then comes a day of running late, whining, losing things, boys bickering and I’m pushed hard. And then one more argument breaks out. My irritation builds and the frustrated sarcasm begins to rear its ugly head.

I breathe deep and pause. ”He loved me first, He loved me first, He loved me first…” It’s like a mantra I repeat over and over in my soul. I remember the Gospel of Love, of all I’ve done against my Savior and of all He’s done for me. I remember that He loved me first so that I could love my children. I return to the cross and remember that His perfect life of love was given to me.

Slowly the irritation and impatience lessens, like air being released from a balloon. Focusing on Christ’s love for me frees me to love my children. I can only love these little eternal souls because He loved me first. It is His love which empowers me to love as He loves.

My children and I are in the same boat, none of us can love on our own. They can’t love each other without Christ, and I can’t love them without Christ. This Valentines Day, as we make our heart shaped cards and give out red and pink treats, let us all remember the source of real love and why we can even love in the first place-because He loved us first.

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” 1 John 4:7-10