Parenting On PurposeExemplo

Peer Pressure

Jalene: 

As a young parent, it captured my heart when I heard the quote, “Peer pressure is as strong as family identity is weak.” I was the poster child for the very opposite. Coming from an abusive background and a broken home, I sought identity with my peers, and that led me away from my relationship with Christ. I wanted my kids to be confident in who they were in Christ. As a family, we often talked about what scripture says about our identity. In 2 Corinthians chapter 5, Paul talks about how anyone who is in Christ is a new creation: “The old has passed away, and the new has come.” The goal was for them to see themselves as Christ saw them.

One day when my youngest son (who was in high school at the time) came home early from hanging out with friends, I was sitting in my office and he came and sat down next to me. I asked him why he was home early, and he explained it was because all of his friends were getting drunk and making poor choices at the moment. I asked a simple but loaded question. “Why aren’t you doing it, too?” He seemed shocked that I would even ask. He paused, thinking about his answer. Finally he said, “I guess I just care more about what God and my family think of me than I care about what my friends think.” 

This moment is what I had been praying for his whole life: that he would, like Paul, know who he was in Christ, and make his decisions based on that. 

Macy:

My parents never kept it a secret what the end goal was for their parenting. We always knew they deeply desired us to have a strong relationship with Christ and a deeply rooted identity in Him. We even had a creed, which may seem crazy to some people. It read “Great families don’t happen by accident. We live on purpose. We are walking the narrow path in pursuit of God, blazing a trail for future generations to follow.” We knew exactly who we were and what we stood for and why. Were we a perfect family? Absolutely not. But peer pressure carried very little weight in the grand scheme of things. 

Action Step: Take the time to talk to your kids about their identity in Christ. Challenge them to base their decisions on that identity instead of on the opinions of others. There is strength in a family when God is in the center of it.