Strongheart | Jill Garner

a Self-absorbed World. Her work is endorsed by focus on the family, Family Life Today, Doctor Kevin Leman, and many others, and our featured resource is her book Strong Heart Cultivating Humility, Respect and Resiliency in Your Child. Find out more at Building relationships.us.

almost 22 years ago now. And our mission has been unchanging and all that time to reawaken respect in our society through the education of the hearts of children so that they can carry this into the next generation, carry respect once again, and carry it into the next generation.

that'll do it. And so that morning, I took a whiteboard and I drew a heart on the center of the board and then turned it into a little character with a head and feet and arms and all. And I turned to the children and I said, you know, you really can teach this lesson today because your manners of the heart, kids, you've had manners of the heart now for five years. And I think you're going to know the answer to my question what is in the

heart of a strong heart? And they had really not had that terminology of a strong heart at this point yet in the curriculum. And so I just threw it out there and hands went up and they started saying things like obedience and compassion and, um, respect and self-respect and forgiveness and these wonderful qualities. And this was a local public school and, um, all these amazing qualities. And

in some ways I let them keep going. And you kind of found the fruit of the spirit even listed, even though the children weren't aware necessarily, you know, of what they were speaking. And I filled the heart with all those beautiful qualities. And then I turned to the kids and I said, so here's what you need to hear today. This is what your heart is full of today.

And as you move into middle school, even some of your closest friends might take a wrong turn and start trying to break into that heart and fill it with the wrong stuff. And I want you to see what happens if you make those wrong decisions. So if you and I let them give me some scenarios which were mind boggling because they already knew the troubles they were going to face and that they were already facing. And I said, what if you said yes when you should

have said no? Here's what happens. And I erased a piece of the outline of the heart. And I continue doing that until the outline of the heart was gone. And I said, so what's going to happen to all this good stuff? And they knew from their lessons. Well, the bad stuff comes in when the good stuff falls out. And so we replace love with hate. I replace respect with disrespect and continued until now, the heart of our strong heart was filled with horrible stuff. And so this

was the the shattering part of this moment. So I said, so now take a look. Who is our strong heart become? And a little boy raised his hand and he said, oh, he's a murderer.

And I let it sit for a little while. And then the children started saying, oh, it's Strongheart's fault. Oh, oh, it's my fault. Oh, it's my fault. And they understood fully. They fully understood the idea of responsibility and accountability. Right? Yes. And so I said, all right, now what are we going to do to fix this? Now we have to understand this is public school. I couldn't go to the full cross to take them to the foot of the cross, because I wanted to stand up and say, right, we

need Jesus in your heart, right? So how you know? So where could I take them to lead them in that direction? So I said, well, I said the what are we going to do to fix this? And one of the little girls said, we're going to remember our manners of the heart lessons. And I said, that's right. So next time when somebody says, are you going to do it, you're going to say, no, not me. And every time you do and you make those right choices,

you start repairing your heart. And now that hate gets out and the love comes back in, the disrespect leaves and the respect comes back in. And as we repaired it, I continued drawing around and around the outline of the heart and I said, look what's happened now. Now it has become easier to do the right thing and make the right choice, and harder now to do the wrong thing because your heart's going to tell you, and now you're going to know, and now you will become a leader.

You truly will become a strong heart.

Grounded in truth and a strong heart. As a kid who's going to be able to defend their faith and defeat their foes, even those foes within, those foes within and those foes without. Yeah.

And so I really squirm to To be totally honest, I squirm when I hear the word mindfulness because it's Heartfulness is really where we should be focusing our attention, because it truly is the the heart that informs the mind. It's not the other way around. It's what's in the heart that's going to determine what's in the mind. Yeah.

But in the 1940s, it kind of sat in the, um, you know, in the clinical circles in the 60s is when it was brought forward. And the person you really can give credit for bringing it forward to the rest of us really was Carl Rogers. If you do the research and Carl Rogers is the grandfather of humanism. Well, that should have been a red flag to us as Christians.

But somehow we missed it. Because the truth is, self-esteem is the same as the sin of pride in the Garden of Eden, the glory vanity of self, as we heard a lot of talk about in the 16 and 1700s. The difference is that we understood in the garden and we understood in the 1600s that it's a bad thing that, you know, the sin of pride got us in a lot of trouble. Vainglory is the glorifying of self. Neither of those make any sense. It's ever the thought of

being good. And then though that same term, that same concept, or that that reality was reframed and called self-esteem. And this time we fell for it hook, line and sinker. But it's the same thing, the esteeming of self. Go back to Scripture. You're not going to find in Scripture where Scripture tells us to esteem ourselves. Scripture tells us quite the contrary to esteem God and to esteem others. And it's through that process that we gain respect for ourselves,

which is what our children truly need. They don't need to esteem self. They need to to esteem others in God and respect themselves. And one other little caveat I'll throw in there. A lot of our generation is having difficulty with the next generation and that are raising our grandchildren. And we feel those those tugs and those struggles and, um, and a lot of that, I believe, has come from this cycle of respect that first, children learn respect by

respecting parents. We then introduce them to God, hopefully through our love and our attention and our respect toward them. And then it's through that respect for God that they begin to turn outward and have respect for others, as Scripture tells them. And that process brings them to respect themselves. And that process begins again, and that cycle of respect continues.

But if we have spent our time, which our generation was so guilty of buying into the self esteem notion, and we poured esteem into our children, well, they grew up with plenty of steam, but not enough of respect.

And so often with this, um, self-esteem emphasis. Um, I'll give you I'll give you another way to look at it that goes along with this sports analogy. You know, if little Johnny comes off the baseball field today and he struck out twice and he missed the fly ball, if mama's worried about his To self-esteem. Mama's going to say, hush, Johnny. You listen to your mama. You're the best kid on the team. If every kid played like you, we'd never

lose a game. Well, obviously there's something wrong with that, right? Johnny is going. Did she not see me? Was she not looking today? Oh, she was talking to her friends. I guess she wasn't paying attention to me. You know, she doesn't pay a lot of attention. She's not paying attention. Or she would know I bombed today. And when mom does that, he also knows she just lied to me. If every kid on the team played like I did today, we'd never win another game, right? And the child knows that.

And so what happens when we give kids false praise, which is what we get caught up in with self esteem? Um, we're chipping away at their ambition because either they're thinking, well, somebody's going to tell me I'm great when I do nothing that participation trophy or someone is going to To help me, because maybe that really is the best that I'll ever do. So either way, they stop trying. Either way, we chip away at their ambition. The contrast of that.

If mama was worried about self-respect when Johnny came off the field that day, she'd go, hush, boy. Johnny boy, we had a rough game today, huh? Man. Couldn't get hit that ball and the bat didn't connect your feet didn't get off the ground. Golly, what a rough game, son. I was sitting in those bleachers feeling your pain, but I got an idea. Maybe Friday we'll make those that famous.

Those good cookies everybody loves that they talk about. And we'll get those boys over who figured this out and get out there and give them some cookies, and y'all get out there and work at it. Because I know if you keep working at it and we get the people to help you, I tell you what, I think you'll get it. What do you think, Johnny? Wow, what a difference, huh?

was serious. And, um, so Christmas rolled around the next year, and I got him a drum set and he started playing, and it was awful. No rhythm. I was standing in front of him. Okay, son, here we go. One, on a two, a one, two, three, four. And it was terrible. He couldn't find any rhythm. And so I got a teacher and he was helping him working, and he he'd listened and he'd try to mimic what the teacher was doing with little tapes and things that he'd bring home.

And after several and I'd sit and I'd encourage him. And I didn't tell him he was great because he wasn't. Uh, I encouraged him to keep going, keep working at it. Let's keep trying. Let's keep working. Keep trying. It's the trying, son that matters. We just don't. We're not going to give up. And so after a few months, I hear him in the room playing something, and, uh. Or I thought it actually, in the moment, it was the tape. It was so good. And I opened the door and

it was my son. And he hand slammed his sticks down on the drum and he said, mom, I can feel it, son. I said, oh, son, mama feels it too. Rip it. He ripped it out. And here's my question. Was that a moment of happiness, or was that a moment of joy in my son? What do you think?

And that's what happens to us as parents when we buy into that notion that our goal in life is to keep our children happy and think of a Walmart moment with a child I love to most, most mamas immediately start chuckling if I say a Walmart moment because they know exactly what I'm talking about. Mama's coming into the finish line to get out of the store, and the child's in the buggy and the and they're having that discussion which is now become a total, you know, tantrum. Right.

But I want but I want and mama's saying no. The child's saying yes. And they're having this horrible Walmart moment. And I've learned to step over because I care so much I don't I don't really care anymore. And I'll take what comes and I'll step over and said, oh, let me help you. Can I help you? Listen, stand firm mama. I'll stand here with you. Don't give in to this and I'll stand there with her. And I haven't had anyone slap me yet. I have. Some haven't

been so welcoming, but they haven't slapped me. But I'll stand with them to try to keep them strong. But what does mama say to me? You know, and I'll say, don't give in. No, no. But you know. But I just want her to be happy, right? Yeah. And I'll say, no, no, no, no, no, no. You want her to be humble and you really want her to grow. To become holy is what you're really looking for, but not happy. Don't worry about being happy. That's not your job as a parent. And truly, we keep.

We prevent our children from finding true joy because we masquerade it as this moment to moment. Keep them happy all the time.

really protecting myself. Is that where some of it stems from?

unhappiness and, and truly even those moments of failure. Um, if we don't allow that in their lives, how are they ever going to learn and grow and mature, just as we did in those tough moments? Because it's in those tough moments that we have to dig deeper and that we need. That's when a child needs mom and daddy to stand with them, not to walk away, certainly, but to stand with them and walk through those disappointments with them. But we must allow them, because if we don't,

we really are stunning their growth. You know, uh, we want to think today that, you know, kids are growing up faster. That's so not true. I know Doctor Chapman from from your work. You agree with that? Um, kids aren't growing up faster. In fact, they're maturing at much

slower rates today than ever before. And a lot of it has to do with this topic that we're discussing because someone made it their job to keep them happy all the time, and didn't allow them to have those disappointments from which they could grow and mature.

and help them at the gym. And he would get down in my ear when he was trying to get me to do more reps. And he would say, where, where, where is your grit? I was like, what was that, Arnie? His name was Arnie. I said, I said what? Arnie? He said, grit. It takes grit. You must use your grit. And it has. It is so stuck with me because the moment at which he would choose to say that to me, it was that moment when I thought I

knew I couldn't go any further. I thought I knew myself better than he knew me, but he actually knew me better than I knew myself, right? He he knew I was capable of more than I thought I was. And he in those moments that that was such a that was just something that has just stayed in my

mind all these years. When I think about when I think about grit, and that's really why I chose to use grit, was thinking about Arnie and the way in which it was such, such an incentive and such an inspiration to me to keep going because I recognized, wait, he knows something about me. He sees something in me that I don't see. And that's what we should be

doing as parents, right? We see into the hearts of our children, and that truly is one of my top ten daily prayers I love to offer to parents is to always pray. Lord, help me to see you know with your eyes into the heart of my child. Help me to see what's there that might not be revealing itself outwardly in the moment. Help me to see deep inside. And so if we're going to really help our children become strong cards, we have to help them develop guts, resiliency,

integrity and tenacity. And I'll give you just a 1 or 2 little sentence quickie on each one of those for for the listeners today, if we're helping our children develop guts, what I mean by that is that is

simply trying. That is the ability to say, I'm going to try again, um, in a high school program that we that we did for several years, I would always tell the kids up front, those high school students when I would ask the first question, or I'd say, I need a volunteer to come up and help, and of course, dead silence in the room, right? Nobody would raise their hand. Nobody would move. And I would say, you know what I found in these years of working with you teenagers?

The first one to respond and offer to volunteer when no one else is volunteering. That's the kid who's going to go far in life. And of course, you know, 25 hands in the room suddenly would go up, right? Those hands would go straight up. That's what I mean by guts having the guts, the willingness to try, you know, having raising our kids with that willingness to try. Because whether you and I would go on and tell those teens whether you succeed or whether you fail in this

moment really isn't the issue. The issue is you were the one willing to stand up and try. You win just because you're willing to stand up and try. You've made a step forward. That's guts. Resiliency. So that's even a bigger part of the book. Um, and this resiliency is, you know, the old, um, the old Weebles remember old weebles that toy, the weebles wobble, but they.

that's resiliency. And of course that resiliency comes through hope. You know, one of those side notes here is, you know, don't ever let your kid come in and go in their room and close the door and come out for supper and go back in. Well, no no no no no, don't. We always had a open door policy at our house. The boys had when they needed their time. They had their,

of course, their, you know, quiet personal time. But as a rule, we had an open door policy because we I was not going to allow them, um, to get off to themselves and get lost in themselves, because when they get lost in themselves is when they can't see the hope, they can't see the hopefulness, they can't see the way, their way out of situations when we allow them to get lost in themselves and integrity. Of course, integrity, the whole thing of doing the right thing when no

one's looking right. But it's even so much more than that. Um, integrity. The root of the word is integral, which really means having that strong, firm foundation so that whatever happens and the world crumbles around them, that they don't crumble because they have such an integrated personality and they're they're a whole, complete person. And so they're going to do the right thing no matter what, even in the difficult moments when it's easier to go along with the crowd, they're going

to be the one because of their integrity. Who doesn't go along with the crowd turns their back on, the crowd turns the other direction. And you know what happens when they look over their shoulder? There's going to be another kid who's going to follow them, because everybody's just looking for someone to be the leader. And so that kid with integrity is the one who turns away and then becomes the leader, because others will follow in their steps and tenacity. Oh, goodness. Back to back to Arnie.

We'll come full circle. Right. That great. Where is your grit? Right. That is tenacity. That's that. Not stopping. Not giving up no matter what. Trying. Trying and trying again. Um, when I wrote my first book, someone said, you know, Jill, you got to get 30 no's before you finally get a yes. And when you're, you know, when you're trying to get a publisher or something like that, and I would come to the mailbox and my neighbors would see me, and I'd see a letter and I'd rip it open

and I'd go, yes, oh yes. And they'd go, Jill. They'd holler over Jill. Oh, did you get it? No, no I didn't. It's another rejection. I'm one step closer. You know. That's tenacity.

bad rep. You know, today, like that, mama who said, I want my child to be happy and I want to tell her, no, you really want to raise a child to be humble because a child who's humble is a child who has the greatest confidence. So what do I mean by that? Moses stepped into his God given place of authority. Not for Moses. He did it for the good of his people. Right. Uh, when he accepted his call, it was for the good of his people.

He understood that it's not about me. It's about God's calling in my life so that we talk a lot about. So that's it. Matters of the heart. So? So that is how you judge your motive. I'm going to do this so that this is the outcome. So it's a way to check your motives. So and especially when it comes to humble confidence, I'm going to do this, take this action so that others can learn the lesson that I learned the hard way, and maybe I can make

it easier for them. That's humble confidence. It's when it's not about you. It's about taking what you've learned, taking what you've mastered, working hard to to really become all God created you to be. Step into that place of authority he's given you. But the so that is what makes the difference. It's the motive behind it. It's not so that the bright light shines on me and the world says, well, look how smart he is, boy. He knows it all. He's something else. No, it's so in

the bright light shines. You step out of the way. So the light shines behind you. And you have the great satisfaction and privilege of helping someone else. Now learn what God has taught you. That's humble confidence. When it's not about you, but it's about the calling. And I'll just mention, I love the thought that God's calling in our lives, God in our calling, is truly God calling out what he placed in us when he created us.

Our calling is when God says, it's time to use all that I put in you when I created you, the time is now for you to pull it out. Use it fully for the good of the kingdom. Blessed to be a blessing. That's humble confidence.

going to be for me? Is this my faith? Is this my belief system as she's moving into teenage hood? And I thought that's, you know, that's the struggle that you're feeling. Well, after a few months, it became evident it was much more serious than that. And this was not that phase of life, that season of life. There was something wrong. Something had really was going wrong. And we went to see Christian Counselor and started doing some deep dive looking into, you know, where did all this

come from? And through that process, we did the most interesting assessment of that child's life. And we looked back at her upbringing and the parents, um, looked at really how their time had been spent as a parent in raising her. What had the actions been and what just what did it had it look like? Almost kind of like their parenting style. And they came up with this

kind of odd percentage that's going to be startling. They recognize that 90% of her upbringing had been spent in entertainment and in entertaining her, and kind of goes back to that happiness, joy a little bit. And 10%, only 10% had been in intentionally training her And these are Christian parents. And you know, they felt, you know, gosh, we do it. We're a close family. We do things together. And, you know, we're always on the go. And we we spend time together.

We're intentional about that. And, you know, how could how could she have gotten us so off track. But what they recognized in a hard, tough way. But fortunately it was not too late by any stretch. They had not spent the time intentionally training her. They had not had regular times of of of devotional times. They had not truly, truly made Christ the center of their home and God's Word as the center of their home. They had. She kept her happy, they kept her happy, and she had

moved along. And she wasn't was an easy kid, you know, hadn't had much troubles and easy, pretty obedient and stuff. But when it came time for her to step in toward adulthood, which, you know, before we came up with the notion of teenage hood, there was no such thing in Scripture. We went from being a child to being an adult. When she hit that stage of life, she didn't have anything to fall back on. She was not

grounded and she was not rooted. She didn't know what she believed because they had not spent that time to pour into her and make sure she knew the values and truly a deep belief system.

He was a little younger, and they came back to true family time. Not busy time, you know, but family time where they had long conversations and they had gotten away from having dinner at the table that had come by the wayside in the busyness. They came back to kind of the basics and just pulled back in. Their whole lifestyle really made a tremendous lifestyle change and the changes that it made in their child and their daughter,

it was just astounding to see. And they hit it just such a critical juncture that 12 to 13 age, because as you're well aware of the Barna research, um, you know, a child's worldview begins to be established at two. By ten, it's set in place, and by 13 it's pretty much written in stone. And so they had that window. They were just at that window of time where they could kind of reframe her perspective and really, really reframe the whole family's perspective on what it really meant to

be a family. And what did it really mean to train up a child rather than entertain their child?

And so it's incredibly difficult to make this swap because they will find themselves being completely countercultural. Um, but so it's, it's I'm not saying it's easy. It's a hard thing. But the freedom that is found, I can and so many parents are running through my mind right now, over 25 years here, parents who have made that decision and made radical changes, um, I don't know. I don't know of a one that I've helped or have been privileged to walk through it with them through the years, um,

that have ever regretted it, uh, ever regretted it. But it is totally countercultural. But the freedom that is found in it. Oh it's true. I just want to tell everybody, try it. Cut out some of that stuff. Try it today. Work on it this next semester.

adds persuasiveness to his lips. It's from Proverbs 1623. That's, to me the foundation of persuasive pressure when we use persuasion with our kids. Persuasive pressure, what we're really doing is we are using our wisdom and our speech in a wise way that enables them to come out of wrong behaviors. And we use discipline, not punishment, training not punishment in order to help reform kind of their their behaviors. And it's I call it persuasive pressure.

Just imagine if we prayed this prayer every morning all over America, if parents and grandparents were putting on their armor every morning for the sake of those children and those grandchildren, we we really could revolutionize our society and maybe call out and bring out the next great revival, which is what our society so needs. So I encourage you to embrace your spouse as you pray the prayer.

As my husband and I do every morning, we embrace and we use a singular plural kind of pronoun in there because as Scripture tells us, the two have become one. So we say, father, place upon our head the helmet of salvation, because the two have become one. I want

to encourage any listeners who might be single parents. When God first gave me this scripture many years ago, I found myself in that position and I was raising those twin sons on my own because my husband had had walked away from us when they were 12 and God gave me. That's out of that time is when he gave me this prayer as armor. So you can certainly pray it as a single mom or a single dad. That father place upon my head the helmet of salvation.

So for today, I want to pray it as the as a couple would pray, father, place upon our head the helmet of salvation to protect our mind. Place upon our chest the breastplate of righteousness to protect our heart. Father, wrap around us the belt of truth, that we would know the truth and speak the truth, that we would not be deceived, nor would we deceive. Father will carry the sword of the spirit. Your word, as an offensive weapon.

Enable us to walk in the path of peace you laid before us this day, not stepping to the left or to the right, but walking in its narrow way with the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, with Jesus Christ, our brother, standing with us and with you, the Lord God Almighty, empowering us. We will stand and hold the

shield of faith this day. And for us. We say for Garrett and Allie and Jack and Austin and Kate and Addison and Elliot and you would name your children, or your grandchildren will carry the shield of faith this day until each can carry it in their own faith. In Jesus name.