I recently attended a Men’s Retreat where four words were given defining the activities of a father: Provide, Protect, Promote, and Pursue. It is a powerful list and one which extends beyond fathers. In fact, I’ve been pondering for some time the parental secrets locked up in the most famous of Psalms, number 23, and I recognize the attributes David gives to his Shepherd God match exactly this list for fathers and mothers.

They are the four attributes of every parental shepherd:

Provision, Protection, Promotion, and Pursuit.

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¹The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
² He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside the still waters.
³ He restores my soul;
He leads me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake.

 

It is essential our kids feel and trust our provision for them. However, so often in the pressures to provide, we end up providing the wrong things.

The Parental Shepherd Provides:

• green pastures for children to lie down in.

Childhood is a time to exist, to discover, to sit and chew the cud of nourishment. It should be slower paced, sunshiney, and full of leisurely grazing. We make kids lie down. Give them that schedule.

• leadership by still waters.

I realized more fully during a recent camping trip by a lake that still waters reflect. I believe we must intentionally provide opportunity for children to look at themselves, to reflect upon their strengths, weaknesses, and thereby to understand their unique personhood and purpose.

• soul care.

Behavior issues are always an overflow of the soul. Childhood is the time to learn the skills to handle our inner feelings in ways which are constructive and restorative.

• leadership in paths of righteousness.

We provide the space for our kids to chew, reflect, and care for themselves, and then we lead out. Children, with the time to observe and learn, and parental lives worth emulating, will instinctively build the character to follow and surpass their shepherding parents.

 

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⁴ Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
For You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

 

When we think protection, we often think safety measures or muscle, but the greatest protection parents provide is the gift of discipline.

Unlike the divine Shepherd, we do not walk through every dark valley with our children, but if we provide them a strong rod and staff when they are with us, they will carry our comforting DNA with them wherever they go. The goal of discipline is to provide a self-sufficient, internal compass inside our children. This is developed when kids are from an early age taught that they are the only ones who can control themselves, and they are held accountable for their actions by experiencing the positive or negative consequences of those actions.

We can and should protect our children from bad guys, but we must not protect them from themselves.

When they walk through that future valley, we want them to think, “I’ve been here, I’ve failed when it was less important. I learned some things. I can take comfort= because the rod and staff of my parent’s guidance has made me the person who can walk through this valley and tell the tale.”

 

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⁵ You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil;
My cup runs over.

 

The parental shepherd promotes their children by giving them a proverbial seat at the table.

The life journey of a child well-promoted is not an arduous, striving, fearful one. They are not fending for themselves, but even in the presence of bullies or bad bosses, they have parents reminding them they belong, preparing a feast of access for them, and comforting them lavishly. In ancient cultures with hot climates, oil was provided to cool heads. In a modern, rat-race culture, where hot-heads abound, the well-promoted child stays cool and quenched with overflowing access to resources and positions through which to influence and be influenced.

 

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⁶ Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
All the days of my life;
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord
Forever.

 

Love says “Yes.” Always. No matter where you go. No matter what you do. My goodness, my mercy, the love of my house will follow you.

When you hit your sister at three, you turned around and discovered they were following you. When you lied at six, you turned around and discovered they were following you. When you scored a goal and missed the goal, you turned around and discovered they were following you.

 

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Through the provision of green pastures, calm waters, and righteous leadership, through the discipline which brings comfort, and through promotion to the table of access, the parental shepherd positions herself to communicate the clearest message of pursuit, the one which makes all his actions echo with the eternal, “I love you.”