Finding God through Parenting - Words and Language with John Van Sloten

Full video http://vimeo.com/33610399
We continue our series on the parenting heart of God. This morning we're going to focus on the power of parental words.

"In the context of a loving parent-child relationship, language has a cascading effect in stimulating child development. First, words are a medium of relationship. Through them we express love, sadness, curiosity, awe, and joy—to name just a few. Second, words are a tool of exploration by which we navigate the world. Words, when used well by loving parents, can foster healthy, exuberant creativity. By contrast, words used to discourage and denigrate have the effect of stunting linguistic, emotional, and cognitive development."
Graham Scharf, Liturgies of Life, Comment Magazine

"It appears that authoritarian parents produce children with concerns about their personal worth and God's love, which are associated with fears of abandonment... consequently relationships are viewed as conditional, generalizing to a fear of abandonment by God and others."
McDonald, Beck, Allison, Noseworthy, 2005, Journal of Psychology and Christianity

"And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."
An Angel speaking to Zechariah about his son, John the Baptist in Luke 1:17

"But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God's instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted."
1 Peter 2:9, MSG

"Of all bodily functions speech is the most intimately linked with communal existence, or; as we shall put it, with co-existence."
French Philosopher Merleau-Ponty in The Divine Voice, page 76

"Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls."
Jesus in Matthew 11:29, TNIV

"I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love.
To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them."
God through the prophet Hosea 11:1, 3-4, TNIV

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