FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. God’s Got Your Back Guests: Dennis and Barbara Rainey From the series: The Art of Parenting: What Kids Need (Day 1 of 3) Bob: When you have a newborn or there are toddlers around the house, it’s easy to get focused on the day-to-day and forget what the long game is in parenting. Here’s Dennis Rainey. Dennis: Children are God’s statement that the next generation must take our place. What we must do is impart to our children the truth about God, the experience of God, and also the gospel of God—how they can know Him—that’s our assignment. Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, September 5th. Our host is Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. Okay; let’s pull back and look at the big picture: “What is it that we are supposed to do, as parents, as we raise the next generation? What’s the priority? What’s job one?” We’re going to talk about that today. Stay with us. 1:00 And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. I think I’ve heard you say—I don’t know if you’ve called it a mistake or not—but you said something about the fact that you wrote a book on parenting teenagers before you were done parenting teenagers. Dennis: One of the big mistakes— Bob: Okay; I just wanted to make sure. I didn’t want to put words in your mouth. [Laughter] Dennis: —of our—of our lives. Barbara joins us. Would you agree, Sweetie? Barbara: Well, it was rather brash, I think, to write on parenting when we hadn’t finished. Bob: The truth is—it’s a great book. The concepts in the book are solid, and I’ve referred to it many times as we were in the process of raising our kids. Dennis: And we paid the price for many of those lessons, Bob; but we were not done raising teenagers. [Laughter] What we had to do, on numerous occasions, is go back and rip pages out or reread what we’ve written. Bob: Well, now, here we are—and you have finished the process of raising your children— 2:00 —and you decided, “Okay; now, it’s safe to write a book on parenting,”—right? Dennis: We did. This is something that I’ve wanted to do—actually, we’ve wanted to do since we were a part of starting FamilyLife®, all the way back to 1976. Barbara and I had been working with high school students nationwide, and we saw the need and really wanted to make an impact on teenagers and the next generation. The way we did that was by helping people stay married / have a good marriage; but also, ultimately, one day, I wanted to get to this topic of equipping parents to know how to do—not just marriage God’s way—but do parenting His way as well. Bob: Barbara, I’ll ask you; and then I’ll ask you as well, Dennis. If you could only speak or write about one or the other— Dennis: Oh, you’re going to do that to her? Bob: —marriage or parenting? Barbara: Oh, that’s a terrible question. [Laughter] Bob: If I said, “For the rest of your life, you have to either talk about parenting or you have to talk about marriage,” which would you pick? Dennis: I think—I know the answer. 3:00 Barbara: Well, I think I would have to say marriage, because not all couples have children; and if you don’t get your marriage right, you can’t get parenting right. So I would say marriage over parenting if I had to pick one—if you’re going to force me. Dennis: And I thought she would have said motherhood. Barbara: That wasn’t an option, though! [Laughter] Bob: Well, that’s parenting. Barbara: I’m very precise. Laughter] Bob: Being a mom and raising kids has been a passion of your life. Barbara: Well, yes; and I loved being a mom; I loved raising kids. It really was—it was stressful; it was hard, but it was rewarding. It was what I felt like I was made to do in those years that I was doing it. I was very engaged, very committed, very involved—reading things all the time—trying to improve, trying to be a great mom, trying to give my kids what they needed; so I was very invested. Bob: If you had to pick?—marriage or parenting—and that’s all you could talk about / write about. Dennis: Well, here’s the thing. 4:00 I have to answer the way Barbara did, because that’s where we have been focused over the past 41 years—we have been focusing on marriage. We have done a lot of parenting work—we’ve written a lot of books on parenting; we’ve had a conference that we created on parenting, which we mothballed until recently, Bob. You know that we’re finally getting a chance to roll this out—a parenting conference in a box, which is a small group kit to help folks know how to do the art of parenting, which is also the name of a book that Barbara and I just completed as well. We’ve been wanting to get after this and do this for some ...
