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