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Every Parent Prefers To Say This —- “YES”
Learn how to say yes and empower you kids to make better decisions.  

God really designed things well when it comes to parenting.  Your first blessed with this little baby that can’t get around very well, can’t communicate very well and doesn’t have a very demanding pallet.  As parents we can focus of some pretty basic and simple tasks.  Then they become mobile and the job get a bit harder.  However, if your babies are getting into something they shouldn’t be you can simply walk over pick them up and move them to a new, safer place.  It an awesome time as a parent.  You supply the nurturing and love and they provide the smiles.  Things get tough when they start getting a mind of their own, develop friendships and start asking questions about life.  It’s in this season when there is no substitute for your time, guidance and best relational skills.

Today we’re going to talk about the “NO’s”.  Sometime as parents we can feel like we are always at odds and are struggling for that moment where we can say yes and maintain a happy home.  Jesus life on Earth gives us some clues on why this can be so hard.  Will the importance of all He came to do and teach us why all the stories?   Why not just come right out a say it?  There is a great saying, “stay in the head and your dead, get in the heart and now you can start.”  Jesus had to find away to get past the minds indifference and deliver a message that wrestles with the heart.

I love how John Eldridge puts it, “The mind receives and processes information: The boiling point of water is 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Lincoln was our sixteenth president. Light travels at a speed of 186,282 miles per second. The heart knows and wrestles with realities: Your son is missing in combat. God has heard your prayers. Your daughter is getting married tomorrow. You are now and always have been loved. The mind deals in abstractions: 2 + 2 = 4. You should get an oil change every three thousand miles.”  “Your mind tells you that it is now 2: 00 A.M. and your daughter has not returned, for the car is not in the driveway. Your heart wrestles with whether or not it is cause for worry.”  “The heart lives in the far more bloody and magnificent realities of living and dying and loving and hating.”

Eldredge, John. Waking the Dead: The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive (p. 42). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

The YES’s

As parents we must work hard to create environments where our children can come to their own conclusions build on the facts and hand and the love and guidance you have poured into them.  Does that mean you orchestrate things?  Yes.  It’s in these scenarios that you can say yes while helping them learn valuable life skills and lessons.

The NO’s

There are going to be times when no is the only correct answer.  These are those family issues where your kids do not need mixed signals.  The enemy will work very hard to confuse them and create conflict in what they believe, and they don’t need mom and dad to fuel that conflict.

Alcohol, Rated R Movies,

The most important thing here is to establish the no’s early and reinforce them when the time is right.

Dating

Tattoos

Curfew

Parties

Sleepovers

Relationship Is the Glue

None of this will really work where there is no relationship.  Rules without relationship breads rebellion, rules with relationship breads respect.

The beauty of Rangers is that all these things are built into the foundation.  Rangers is relational at its core and offers dads and families lots of yes opportunities to build into young men a code of conduct and a grasp of Gods word in a hands-on environment.