Rewire Your Heart: Replace your desire for sin with desire for God
by David Bowden
(241 pages)
My Recommendation:
I would like to highly commend to you Rewire Your Heart from David Bowden. Bowden is a Masters of Divinity student from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary as well as a noted international speaker and spoken-word performer from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He has also written two earlier volumes There Were Words and When God Isn’t There, which I haven’t read as of yet.
Bowden writes with a rich, illustrative simplicity. He delivers a careful examination of how we perceive and experience sin. Rewire helps the reader understand how sin is fundamentally an affections issue; it is fundamentally a matter of desire, want and trust. This proper understanding of sin gives way to the proper way of (successfully) combating it. Rewire culminates in what Bowden calls “(re)evangelism,” that is, the gospel (re)ordering of the affections to delight in God. Please don’t be fooled. While this sounds very basic, and maybe it is, Bowden demonstrates how easily we can get it wrong and how wonderfully God gets it right.
How this (especially) relates to discipling our teens:
As we discussed in our February breakfast Parentnar, middle schoolers often encounter a season of (re)evaluation of their relationship with God. I typically see this occur around thirteen years or eighth grade. Often in counseling conversations, the student expresses skepticism of the (authenticity of) an earlier, childhood conversion. This can be for a variety of reasons:
(Re)evaluation is a natural by-product of pubescent, logical development and autonomy onset. The student is asking the whys for the whats. As Dell Tacket would say, “…do I really believe that what I believe is really real?”
A simplified childhood understanding of the gospel has not made robust application to a (radically) more sophisticated teenage reality. Consider the thrust from G.I. Joe and Barbie to hormones and social media—Chuck-E-Cheese to Eighth Grade Formal.
The barometer for the relationship is based upon the student’s works (or lack thereof). Works equals salvation (in that order). “I sin so I must not be saved.”
Rewire Your Heart is a great aid for moms and dads navigating the third reason—the works-based barometer. The student typically thinks this way: poor performance = poor relationship (or vice versa). The focus is on the external v. the internal, the actions v. the heart, what he or she does v. what God does. The temptation is to think, “if I clean up my conduct then (eventually) I will clean up my heart.” There can be a quick—maybe subtle—slip into a works-based theology or what Bowden calls our tendency towards “self-salvation” in these middle school years. Rewire provides great source material in talking with your child at this time and in this area.
My Hesitation:
My only concern with recommending Rewire is its incorporation of adult subject matter that might warrant editing by mom and dad along the way. So parents give it a read first before handing it off; your discretion is advised.
Sharing resources:
We strive to pass on helpful resources to our fabulous GBYouth parents. I would love to hear your feedback on this book. Also, please let us know if you come across something that you think would be of benefit to other parents of teens! You can drop me a line at bryan@gillionville.org.