Instilling Purpose In Your Kids

Instilling Purpose In Your Kids…I am thrilled to have Destry Wilborn founder of Men of Purpose as a guest today on The Peaceful Haven discussing how to instill purpose in your kids!  I encourage each one of you to read and reread what Destry has to say about faith, family, and our most precious commodity our children.  The wisdom he shares is life-changing as well as thought-provoking.

At the top of my “To-Do List”, today is to ask all six of my kids these critical questions Destry suggests to help your and my children determine their purpose.

I am not certain that there was a specific event in which Men of Purpose, Journey to Self-Discovery was birthed. I think it was a combination of my professional and personal experiences of what I felt was missing and needed within the lives of young men in Chicago. By profession, I have been a detective with the Chicago Police Department for 15 of my 22 years with the department. I have been assigned to investigate violent crimes which generally include Criminal Sexual Assault, Shootings, and Homicides. Outside of my professional life, I also coached wrestling in the Chicago Public School system for a number of years. These two perspectives gave me a more insightful look, behind the curtain.

This next generation is moving at speeds that we cannot even fathom. They constantly have new apps and new upgrades on mobile devices. They were born communicating “online” and have to be taught to communicate “offline”. They communicate via text and very rarely have face to face interactions. So the trends that concern me the most are that because of these technological advances, we are actually less advanced than previous generations. They lack the ability to have a meaningful dialog that exceeds 140 characters. Because of these advances, we’ve blurred the lines of what a friend actually is. I mean a true friend, not the 1500 friends that they have on FB. Because of these advances, FB has over 80 gender identification terms. What happened to the days of Male and Female? We have become so secularized that the body of Christ and the word of God have become obsolete in our culture.

I think the only way for parents to address these concerns is with the truth. We must stop living in an age where we believe truth is relative. By definition, the truth is always singular and absolute. We must stand on truth, even if it offends. We cannot sacrifice the truth because some people will actually suffer from it. We must monitor our children’s online friendships just as we monitor their offline friendships. We must be friends with our children, without becoming their friend. Dr. Ravi Zacharius states that 75% of our children will walk away from the faith in college. Dr. Frank Turek states that many of our children are talked out of the faith because they were never talked into it. We must teach our children the truth, like 1 Peter 3:15 …. “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and rear”.

Purpose is the latest buzzword. Everyone stresses find your purpose right now. Let me first by saying, you don’t find your purpose, you discover it. It was placed in each of us before the foundations of the world, we simply have to discover what was already there. Another cheap trick is to simply say “ask God” and he will tell you. While that is true to some degree, we have to also know what question to ask Him. It is difficult to ask God questions about a purpose, we don’t even know we have. I believe that every person was born with a purpose. We are either assigned to a person or a group of people. But more importantly, we have to ask ourselves some questions.

Instilling Purpose In Your Kids

#1. Whose pain do I feel? Whose tears move me? Whose enemies am I willing to confront? The answer to that question can help reveal who you are assigned to. Purpose can also be geographical as well. We don’t belong everywhere, we belong somewhere. Find the place you belong.

#2. What makes you angry? This is also a clue to who or what you were designed to solve.

#3. What are you jealous of? I know we’ve been taught that jealousy is a bad thing. However, it is not always bad. Jealousy is one side of a two-sided coin. On one side is jealousy, and on the other side is desire. You see the thing that we are jealous of in others is oftentimes the things that we secretly desire but either don’t believe we can have it or don’t believe we deserve it.

There are many issues facing our nation. I believe that can be traced back to either the disconnection from the creator and the misunderstanding of purpose. The late Dr. Myles Munroe often stated: “whenever purpose is not known, abuse is inevitable”. Meaning if we do not know why something was created we will misuse and often abuse it, which also includes our lives. Another one of Dr. Munroe’s often-quoted statements is “the greatest tragedy in life is not death, but life without a purpose”. I believe that when you know the purpose, it becomes impossible to abuse your life or the life of others.

Men of Purpose, Journey to Self-Discovery continues to strive to change the lives of young men in the Gresham neighborhood in Chicago and in Africa. Currently, there are 19 young men in the 3rd-7th grade in the Chicago Chapter, along with another 30 young men in Bujumbura Burundi who are enrolled in the mentorship program. Prayers for us to be able to meet the needs of the young men in order that we can transform minds and lives are always welcomed and much needed. If you are moved to give a financial contribution, we can be reached via our website at www.mopjourneytoselfdiscovery.org  and click on the donate button or do to the direct link of bit.ly/GIVETOMOP or via email at uncoveredpurpose@gmail.com

YOUR TURN…

How are you instilling purpose in your children’s lives?

Blessings,