Rebel Without a Cause // How to Get More Out of Your Parents, Part 2

It seems par for the course that at some point, teenagers want to rebel. I know I did. So, why is that? What’s going on in their hearts when they get this urge to rebel?

Now I remember when I was a teenager it was a time of anger and tension and conflict with my parents. You see, I knew that I knew everything and I knew that they knew nothing; I mean they were so old fashioned.

They made me have my hair cut short when all my friends had long hair. They made me clean my room every Saturday morning, I mean come on! All my friends were allowed to have messy rooms. I had to learn the piano whether I liked it or not, I mean who did they think they were? Hm, does that sound familiar?

I really remember those days; I remember slamming my door shut with anger in my heart and with tears in my eyes and my fists thumping the door. Through gritted teeth I swore I would never do that to my children what they did to me but you know something; years later I saw the wisdom of their ways. I just wish that someone could have explained to me, back then, what I know now.

Well you know the saying, "you can't put an old head on young shoulders" and I guess to some extent that’s true but you know something, I think sometimes we as parents use that as a bit of a cop out too, where we kind of abdicate our role of teaching our kids to grow up because teaching them to grow up is just plain hard work.

There's conflict and parents stop talking to their kids, they give up on them, they let them have a messy room, it's just all too hard you know, and you know what happens then? We stop talking and life becomes a series of flash points and blow ups and the relationship deteriorates to a point where there isn't one.

I believe that young people today hunger for a sense of family and community and the whole conflict thing is something that we have to discuss and work through.

Yesterday on the program, we looked at the whole process of growing up and when you stand back from that process, growing up really is about moving from complete dependence when we're little bubs, (you know, and we need our nappies changed and we need to be fed) to the ability to be independent of our parents and when we walk out that door for the last time or we go and make our own lives in this world, we have to have the skills and the abilities to do that.

Growing up is moving from being incapable of looking after yourself to being capable of looking after yourself. It's a big deal, there's lots of things involved, just basic physical things, there's managing with money, there's working, there's dealing with our emotions, there's caring for other people, there's serving people.

All that stuff is hard to learn and the way God planned it was for us to learn it in our families but somewhere along the way our children go from being little kids to being adults but as teenagers they're kind of in that "not quite yet" spot aren't they?

Those teenage years are in between years and they're so hard. I mean it's natural for our kids to go from being little children to being teenagers and they develop and they learn and they become more independent and there comes a point when they know that they're not kids anymore and they kind of know that they're not adults yet but they really, really want to be. Yep, those in between years are really tough and they're typically years that involve quite a bit of conflict.

I remember rebelling against my parents and my Father sat me down one day and he said, "Son, this is the way it is. As long as you live under my roof and you eat my food, you'll do what I say. If you don't like it”, He pointed at the door and he said, "there is the door." In effect he said, "I provide – I decide". I hated him for saying that, how dare he! But you know something as much as I hated it, he was right.

Rebellion is when we want our own way. Rebellion isn't unique to childhood or teenage years, you see it in adults all the time because some people have never grown up, some people have never learned to accept authority, "I want it my way!" Well get a revelation, you can't always have it your way. And as a teenager I used to think, "when I'm an adult I won't have to put up with this."

Well wrong, I mean when I left high school I went to train as an officer in the army, I became an army officer, I became a senior manager in a corporation, I owned my own business, I mean I had made it.

Then I became a Christian, I went to a Bible College, we had to do chores there, can you believe it? I had to vacuum people’s carpets and clean the toilets. That was really, really good for my ego and now I'm a C.E.O. of this ministry called Christianityworks and I speak to millions of people each week through radio but even today, at age 48, I am subject to a Board of Directors. Godly men and women who exercise authority over me and you know something; that is the way it should be.

Obedience is hard and there's only one way to learn obedience, the hard way. It hurts to be obedient, it hurts when you're a teenager and your parents tell you to do something and you don't want to do it. Jesus went through exactly the same thing. Hebrews, chapter 5:

During the days of Jesus' life on earth he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could have saved Him from death and He was heard because of His reverent submission. Even though He was the Son, He learned obedience from what He suffered and once made perfect He became the eternal source of salvation for all who obey Him.

Do you get that? Jesus, the Son of God, learned obedience from what He suffered. Obedience is only obedience when we do something that we're told to do that we don't want to do. I mean, let's face it, if it's something we want to do that's not obedience.

If a Dad goes to his teenage daughter and said, "Darling, let's go to the shop, I want to buy you an ipod." And she says, "Yeah, sure Dad, I'll come to the shop." That's not obedience. But if a father says to his son, "Son, clean up that mess in the kitchen that your sister made" what's the son’s reaction? "I didn't make that mess." That's hard!

If you're a teenager listen to me, sometimes what your parents ask you to do doesn't seem fair, you know why? Because it isn't, it's not what you want to do, its inconvenient, especially cleaning up something that your brother or your sister did. And if you do it, if you obey your father and your mother, it's going to hurt like hell inside. Do it anyway, do it with a good heart. You know what happens when we do that? We grow up inside.

People, as a teenager, people think growing up on the outside is growing up. You know you see young teenage girls at the shops with make up plastered on and low cut dresses and they think they look so grown up. No they don't, they look like young girls who are trying to look grown up. And you see boys swearing with their mates and acting tough, they think they look grown up. No they don't, they look like boys trying to look grown up.

Look at the example of Jesus again; Jesus learned obedience from what He suffered. Growing up is about learning to lay your life down, it's hard. Growing up is learning to be obedient.

When we are obedient to our parents, get this, it matures us like nothing else. It prepares us for life like nothing else. Part of Gods plan, that's why God gave us parents. When you're 35 and you're 40 and 50 we still have other people exercise authority over us. I know obedience hurts – do it anyway.