It happens in a second. Your child spills the milk, drags their feet, talks back, and out of your mouth comes your father’s voice, or your mother’s, or the silence you grew up inside. You swore you would never do it. There it is, in your own kitchen.
If that is you, you are not alone, and you are not stuck. Scripture has a plain way through.
1. Patterns are agreements
In his series on spiritual covenants, Pastor Alan teaches from Breaking Covenants that a covenant is a binding agreement. People make them with God, but also, in his words from the notes, with “habits, addictions, people, thought patterns, and sin itself.” He points to Romans 6:16: you become a slave to whatever you obey. Obedience becomes repetition, and repetition becomes a contract.
That is how a parenting habit forms. Nobody signs a paper. You obey the old reflex a thousand times until it feels like who you are.
2. You cannot break what you refuse to renounce
That is the emphasis point of the message: “You cannot break what you refuse to renounce.” Pastor Alan teaches that this starts with repentance and with saying it out loud. Not in shame. In honesty.
For a parent, that can be as small as one sentence in a quiet room. Lord, I did not choose this pattern, but I have been practicing it. I do not agree with it anymore. Then, when you have gotten it wrong with your child, say that part too: I was wrong, and I am sorry. Pastor Alan teaches that “Breaking a covenant means refusing to let a behavior, circumstance or person take the place of Christ.” Even a parent you love and miss can be honored without being obeyed in every habit they left you.
3. Tear down the thought behind it
Second Corinthians 10:4-5 speaks of casting down arguments and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Pastor Alan teaches that strongholds are mental contracts. Break the thought, and you break the agreement.
Listen for the thought underneath your worst moments. I am a bad mother. He will turn out like me. If I let this go, I lose control. Those are arguments. They sound like reasoning, and they are not truth. The notes call for “replacing your participation in forming the stronghold’s foundation with biblical truth.” Romans 12:2 says to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Pick the verse that answers the lie and say it back.
4. The Spirit displaces what you cannot muscle out
Here is the part a worn-out parent needs. You do not break a habit by white-knuckling it. Pastor Alan teaches the law of displacement, and he states it simply: “The Spirit doesn’t just fight the flesh, He displaces it.” Like two magnets that cannot occupy the same space, one pushes the other out.
Galatians 5:16 says, “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.” The Spirit brings new desires that take the place of the old ones. You may find that where you used to reach for a sharp word, you start to want to kneel down to your child’s eye level. That is not you getting better at willpower. That is displacement.
5. Take God’s way out in the moment
First Corinthians 10:13 promises that God provides a way of escape. Pastor Alan teaches that He gives you “a moment of clarity needed to choose God’s way of escape.” You know that half second right before you snap. That is the moment. Take a breath. Walk to the next room. Say, I need a minute, and come back and finish the talk calmly. That is not weakness. Second Corinthians 12:10 says, “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
The New Covenant gives you grace for the day you get it wrong too. Romans 5:20 says that where sin increased, grace increased all the more. Your child needs to see you receive it.
This week
Name one pattern you do not want to hand down. Renounce it out loud, once, in prayer. Choose one verse to answer the thought behind it. Then the next time you feel it rising, take the way out.
If you want to sit with other people who are working this out, Today’s Victory Church meets Sundays at 3pm in White House, Tennessee, and Thursday Bible Study is at 6:30pm. Bring the kids and the hard week.
Scripture in this piece: Romans 6:16; 2 Corinthians 10:4-5; Galatians 5:16; 1 Corinthians 10:13; Romans 12:2; 2 Corinthians 12:9-10