What I didn’t know then was that I was being a complete fool. In fact, my unformed frontal lobe had me believing I was invincible. What I do know now is that getting found out was the best thing that could have happened to me. Re-telling this little story always leaves me shaking my head and a bit embarrassed at just how stupid my younger self really was, but I’ll share it with you anyway.

I’m 12-years-old and it’s a Friday night in winter. I finish dinner and tell my parents as I did every Friday night, “Goodbye. I’ll see you after youth group.” As the front door closes behind me and I’m out-of-sight, I make a right to head to my friend Steve’s house, rather than a left to head to the church. A few of us had planned earlier in the day to spread our wings to run around through the neighborhood in the dark. We weren’t sure what we were going to do. We just knew that it would be fun to stretch and break the boundaries that had been a part of our young lives since. . . well, forever. And so we embarked on a mission to ring doorbells and run, to soap some windows, and to generally just disrupt that quiet Friday night. I remember feeling a strange combination of freedom coated in well-deserved guilt.

After about two hours or so, we called it quits and I headed home. As I approached our house I could see from a distance that the front door was wide open. The light coming out of the house framed the unmoving silhouette of my father, standing stone-cold still as hands-on-hips he watched me come down the street. When I got close enough to see his face, I knew that he knew what I was about to know. . . and I was scared-stiff.

His angry “Where were you and what were you doing?” preceded the kind of excuses that a cornered pre-teen boy would use, none of them believable. It wasn’t until later as I was laying on my bed lamenting the severity of the well-deserved grounding that was issued, that I finally put two-and-two together to figure out how my parents knew I had not been at youth group. This is the part of the story where my earlier confession of complete foolishness will be validated in your mind: You see, my dad was the pastor of the church. We lived directly next to the church. Our volunteer youth leader always stopped at our house after youth group. And, there were only four kids in our youth group, so when the 25% of the group that’s missing is the pastor’s son. . . enough said.

I remember getting older and revisiting that incident with my Dad. He shared with me a parenting commitment he had made which I embraced when I became a parent. He knew that like our first parents, all of us are sinners who fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). He knew that all sin flows out of the sin-stained hearts of human beings (Mark 7:21-23). He knew that the human heart is “deceitful and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9). In short, he knew that I was a sinner. He also knew that he and my mom had been given the responsibility to train me up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Consequently, he was committed to praying that my sin-nature would rear its ugly head while I was under their roof, when they could address it, rather than later in life when I was out from under their influence.

We need to remind ourselves that part of our teenagers’ makeup is that just like us, they were born with a default setting to sin. In other words, they don’t have to be taught how to do wrong. The Apostle Paul recognizes this when he instructs parents to teach their children how to do right by bringing them up “with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). But in many Christian homes, kids will often hide their sinful natures through behavioral conformity that doesn’t reflect the true condition of their hearts. But if the symptoms of their corrupt nature come out when they are young, we have the opportunity to address those heart matters now. If those matters are left to rear their ugly heads later in life and our adult children don’t know how to deal with them, think about the great troubles and difficulties that will create.

Parents, pray that God would reveal your children’s sin issues and tendencies now so that you are able to teach them how to recognize, confess, repent, and receive God’s grace and forgiveness now – and for the rest of their lives. When God grants this request, it will make for some interesting parenting situations. But it’s important for us to call out and address their sin now so you can nurture their hearts into a God-honoring adulthood. Stand in the doorway. Love them enough to tell them the truth, discipline them, and help them see their sin. Point them to the freedom that comes with the Gospel!