I have known a number of homeschooling families wherein their teenagers did not go through a period of rebellion.

I’ve known homeschool families which saw their children go through terrible rebellion and I’ve known public school families whose children never rebelled at all. And, of course, I’ve seen homeschool kids who never rebelled and public school kids who did. I’m not sure what rules we can draw from such things!

Much needed today, Tim. Thanks.

Thanks, Tim. It is good to know that I am not the only one who frequently feels that God is generally displeased with me. I really needed to read this today.

And I think you are right…because of the wrong understanding that so many people have of God’s love (a pampering love rather than a perfecting love), many of us naturally gravitate to the other side of the equation and get overly focused on His righteous anger and demand for holiness. However, a right understanding of God’s anger should either (a) bring one to repentance and faith; or (b) bring one to their knees in joy and tearful thanksgiving ” [f]or God so loved…”.

The one thing you said, Tim, that I think is massively neglected in much of our Reformed theology is the truth that God not only loves me, but that he LIKES me. That may sound to “pop-psychology” for many Reformed people, but I think it is important and biblical. If God is pleased with me in and through Christ, then there is no possible way that he does not LIKE me as well. He rejoices over me (Zeph.3:16-17) and He rejoices to do me good with all his heart and soul (Jer. 32). He takes delight in me as his redeemed son, and his heart is filled with merriment over me as a co-heir with Christ. Obviously none of this is based on my merit, but on the great happiness God has in his redemptive work within me. We do well to meditate on this just as much as we meditate on our depravity.

Xandra: I’m with you. As God exposes the dimensions of my depravity, he reveals the length, depth and width of his grace. It’s a paradox that only makes sense from the middle of it.

When I think of Christ’s love for me, there’s always the awkwardness of accepting it fully and completely. I must never foregt I was a child of wrath, and the same as all sinners. And I must embrace the Gospel, and cloth myself in His good tidings of forgiveness, a forgiveness that takes my sins as far as the east is from the west.

Now I can accept His love. Not because of anything in me, but because He first loved me, when I was a child of wrath, and now has made me a child of peace, and after His own heart.

I often think of Peter, how he bowed to Chrust, and said,”Depart from me Lord, I am a sinful man.” And from that point on Peter loved Jesus, and Jesus love him, even through Peter’s gravest sins, even though Peter cussed Jesus, and denied Him, Peter jumped in the water and swam to Jesus when he saw Him on the beach, and Jesus chatted with Peter in gentleness and genuine love, though rebuking Peter at the same time.

Christ loves us like this. He’s a brother, and He’s not ashamed to say so. Though I may be ashamed of myself at times.

It really is so good to drink from His cup of grace and love. It tastes really good and when we do drink from it, we know it is true. We still are amazed, but it becomes real.

Thanks for being real.

This is exactly the truth I’ve been missing for a very long time. It has led to all sorts of legalistic attitudes and behaviors, and lots of hopelessness, and judgementalism on my part. I’ve been struggling to embrace the truth of God’s love for me - ME individually, and to understand the great truth that “there is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” -That God looks at me and sees the righteousness of Christ, and as one of his children - that He loves me MORE than I love my children.

I do see this as a problem in reformed circles, but I can also say from experience that it is a real problem for Armenians as well. It is a sin problem, a human problem. It’s hard for us to accept grace as free - forever free - not just when we first receive it. We can never repay it, and if we try to pay for it, we sin. When we work to earn His favor, rather than because we are already in HIs favor, in Christ, we sin and find ourselve in bondage all over again.

This is a very encouraging post. And I can say, I’m seeing this come up in very diverse places, among people unaqcuainted with one another. God is at work in His church!

It was having my kids that clued me in to what God must feel like as our parent. I’ve always loved the scripture where Jesus said, “You being evil want to give your sons good gifts…” Meaning, “You guys are so screwed up and you still adore your kids, imagine God’s love.”

Tim: Thanks for this post today. I’ve often struggled with similar thoughts. Last year, at the Resolved Conference, CJ Mahaney said something that has stuck with me ever since. He said, “The proof that God loves you is that you love God. You can only love God because He has chosen you and opened your eyes to Himself.” I find myself constantly reminding myself of this over and over again. Your post was well written, and I’m sure it was much needed encouragement to many of us today. Thank you!

He loves us and delights in us. I’ve also struggled with this many a time when I saw the potential of my depravity and how far it can go. I don’t get all that warm and fuzzy about God’s love in those circumstances. And yet, the truth remains that he does love me regardless. With maturity I’ve come to separate the two. God’s unconditional love does not mean that he approves of my sinful behaviors and proclivities. He can love me and still be displeased with me at the same time. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Focussing on his love alone, lowers our guard against sin and can make us complacent. Focussing on holy living and pleasing God alone, is tyrannical pietism that burns all spiritual fuel we may have. It is at the very point of failure that we need to remember the truth of God’s love and be comforted, not the other way around. In the past if I felt very guilty about a particular sin, I would “pause” my relationship with God until I got it under control. If that ever happens to me now, I do exactly the opposite. Staying close I have a much better chance to overcome sin than staying at a distance!

“To be loved we must open ourselves to receive that love, for a person cannot receive love against their will.”

God has to do the opening of the heart that not only doesn’t love God, but actually hates God; and that’s all of us.

“We love Him, because He first loved us”.

The Lord loved us personally, before He created the world, and even though He saw us as rebels, and crimminals, and deserving of His wrath, gave His own life, and took His own wrath, so that we would be set free, free to love Him.

We need to remember that we are not made up of our sins but we are made up of His righteousness. Thanks for the post Tim.

[…children he not only loves but children he also genuinely likes. And there’s a difference between the two, isn’t there?]

Just before my firstborn came into the world, one of our friends (a lady) said to me, “You’re going to Love your baby SO much.” and I said, “Yea, I just hope I like him.”

Yes, there is a difference.

I’ve thought of this often. I usually think about the Lord’s THREE that were asked to accompany Him to the Mt. of Transfiguration or pulled aside to join Him in prayer.

There is a difference and I must confess that I sometimes wonder if the Lord “likes” me even though I don’t doubt His love for me.

Now that I have two sons of my own I wonder if “liking” is really that important.

Good food for thought. Thanks for the article.

Thanks, Tim. This is a nice piece. I love my Heavenly Father more every day. The more I know Him more I am aware of His love and the more I am aware of my unworthiness.

Thanks Tim for your thoughts here. I think it’s good for our souls to think of God’s love in this way, to counteract some of our lingering “performance” driven value system.

Tim, I think Hebrews 11 is the best snapshot of this. There, like your pastor, you find God “pulling out His wallet”, showing the photos and bragging about His children. We all know the “real”stories about these people, but look how God presents them….All the sin winnowed away and just the beauty of their characters left. What is “realest” to God about us is the eternal, the holiness He Himself is working into us. The other is real, but less “real” - ephemeral, passing away.

Thanks Tim for this post. After being a parent for 22 years, with one of my daughters telling me recently in a birthday card that she sees my love for her children is unconditional, I now understand just a little bit God’s love for me, even when I was his enemy. WOW. Picked up When God Breaks Your Heart by Ed Underwood and read it in on sitting. It addresses this very issue.

Hi, Tim! I’m the Creative Director for a small educational publishing company, and I thought you’d find this interesting… we just completed a “Map of the Humanities” diagram which lays out history as a road map. Take a look!

www.tapestryofgrace.com/explore/mapofthehumanities.htm

Tim said I’ve known homeschool families which saw their children go through terrible rebellion and I’ve known public school families whose children never rebelled at all. And, of course, I’ve seen homeschool kids who never rebelled and public school kids who did. I’m not sure what rules we can draw from such things!

I can only think of one rule we could draw from this, and that is that is that we ought to set aside speaking of teenage rebellion as though it were a phenomenon produced (exclusively) by the teen years.

Dr. Cynthia Lightfoot (Professor and Program Director of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State University) notes:

“When kids are cut off from adult society they begin to affiliate with each other in ways that historically they did not,”

“With the advent of formal education, kids are more isolated from the adult world than they have been in the past. They also spend a lot more time with other kids. ”

“So this creates the conditions for the emergence of a youth culture or a peer culture. ”

“And as kids interact with one another, their group affiliation shifts from being primarily the family group to being the peer group.”

Her last observation is poignant, as it identifies how peer codependencies are formed. Codependency, as I am sure you are aware, is an adaptive behavior - one learns to be codependent as a means of coping to a situation one has no control over - many of those teens who are separated from family for hours on end daily, transfer their primary allegiance (whom they turn to for authority and comfort) from family to peer group - and this is where, I believe “teen rebellion” comes from.

Rebellious behavior (and and of itself) is certainly not new - we see it recorded even from our earliest literature, and scripture too. What is new, is how our society has invented the perfect incubator for that rebellion - institutionalized isolation from family, and immersion into a peer culture of equally isolated individuals during what is arguably the most formative period in our adult lives.

My comments are not meant to exalt one schooling method above another. There are excellent teachers, and schools, as there are poor ones, and likewise there are excellent homeschoolers, and very poor ones - and it cannot be otherwise that our opinions are going to be flavored according to that variety that we are most exposed to. There are many other ways in which our culture isolates into peer groups, even television programming is “aimed” at target audiences. Sports, clubs, hobbies, leisure - all of which leads to isolating the individual from the family - and whether this is by Satan’s design or by mere coincidence I leave it to the reader to decide.

What we cannot help but conclude, if we are honest, is that teenage rebellion is something our culture unwittingly promotes, if not outright manufactures.