God wants your children and mine to grow up to be more than "kids who stayed out of trouble", or "kids who got a great education and a great job" or even "kids who made a difference". God wants us to assist him in producing human beings who fully reflect the fact that they are created in His image - and not just ours.

"From the moment my first child was born, I was determined that she would never be denied what I considered fundamental: a parent with an understanding heart, an attuned ear, and a loving attitude. Like many first time parents, I picked up my baby at every peep. As a result, she didn't go to sleep until 2:00 in the morning and woke up several times a night for the first year. When my second child hit other children when he was two, I would say, 'no, no', but then I would stroke his hair or hug him to show that I empathized with his bad feelings. When he cried for me to stay with him at night ... I stayed and stayed until I had no evening left. In short, I felt that by saying no to my kids [the controlling kind of authority], I was depriving them.

"Without realizing what I was doing, I was actually turning my children into little tyrants. They wielded power that ... no child should - or wants to - have."

"If our hearts (as parents) are controlled by something other than God, the great opportunities of the teen years will not be viewed as opportunities at all, but as a constant stream of hassles brought on by a selfish, immature person who upsets our otherwise comfortable life."

When God gets involved, the person in the situation least likely to be conducive to great parenting - which is the situation we're talking about this morning - can become a great parent. Humanly speaking, it seems impossible. But with God, everything is possible. That's the single most important foundational principle that you need to build on as a parent in a step-family.

"The process of parenting is one of the most spiritually formative journeys a man and woman can ever undertake. Unless we are stone-cold spiritually, the journey of caring for, raising, training and loving children will mark us indelibly and powerfully. We cannot be the same people we once were. We will be forever changed, eternally altered. Spiritually speaking, we parents need to raise children every bit as much as they need us to raise them."