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Raising Soldiers In Christ - Family Series
90 Plays2 years ago
Welcome to Grove Hill Church, where we come together to explore and embrace the teachings of Christ. In today's episode of our Family Series, titled "Raising Soldiers In Christ," we delve into the crucial topic of training children in the ways of the Lord. Our speaker encourages parents to start discussing modesty and scripture with their daughters from a young age, emphasizing the need for followers of Christ to stand out from the world.
But that's not all - we also tackle the subject of physical discipline, specifically when and how it can be used. Our speaker shares their personal reflections and offers practical examples, reminding us of the importance of guidance and discipline in order to raise god-fearing adults. We'll also explore how the responsibility of training children lies with parents, not just the church, and the impact of neglecting to study scripture ourselves.
Join us as we learn about the significance of teaching children to pray, understand God's word, and listen for His voice. Our ultimate goal? To raise soldiers for Christ who can face spiritual battles with unwavering faith. So, grab your headphones and get ready for an insightful and thought-provoking episode of the Grove Hill Church podcast. Let's begin our journey of raising soldiers in Christ.
Timestamps:
[00:00:00] Excited about parenting talk, different backgrounds mentioned.
[00:05:43] Train children as soldiers for Christ at home.
[00:08:56] Parents and children battle for favor. Pray for estranged children.
[00:10:31] Natural child: heart deceitful, wickedness within. Teach obedience.
[00:14:04] Children and parents need obedience to God.
[00:19:33] Raise children with discipline, not excessive punishment.
[00:22:36] Discipline: hand over rod, defining its boundaries.
[00:24:12] Intervention for young child, discipline vs persuasion.
[00:27:04] Discipline and grace: handle punishments with care.
[00:32:39] Teenagers learning from cell phones need guidance.
[00:34:27] Train children with god's word for modesty.
[00:39:07] Sister, kids, water park, teaching scripture, hear god.
[00:42:47] God protected and empowered individuals to succeed.
[00:44:17] Be an accountable authority figure for children.
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Transcript
Transitioning Roles: From Partners to Parents
00:00:00
Speaker
Like I said we're going to talk about parenting and I'm excited because the last time I was up here was in March and I spoke about the first half of Ephesians 5 and I was talking about being imitators of Christ and ridding ourselves of everything of this world and focusing on who we are in Christ. It's neat because the last three weeks pastor has been talking about the second half of Ephesians 5 which talks about
00:00:25
Speaker
who we are as men, who we are as women, who we are as husbands, who we are as wives, and now it's going to flow directly into our role as parents. So before we move on to this,
00:00:38
Speaker
I want to address something. We all come from different parenting backgrounds. None of us in here are the same as far as how we were parented. You might think, hey, I had a mom and dad. They did a decent job. I'm going to do the same thing that they did to try to raise my kid. You're like, I turned out pretty good. I'm going to do it the same way, right?
00:00:56
Speaker
You may have come from a terrible, terrible parenting background and those types of things you don't get over easy and most of the time we neglect to heal from that and then we portray that onto our parenting with our kids. You may have been raised in a single home and the single parent did a phenomenal job. You may have been raised in a single home where that person never dealt with the hurt that they had.
00:01:19
Speaker
they didn't know how to parent.
Prayer for Healing from Parenting Influences
00:01:21
Speaker
And so we're gonna look at this morning at setting aside all of our worldly contributing factors into our parenting and look at what God has for us. So before we go any further, I want to actually offer that up to the Lord in prayer. Father, we are all different.
00:01:40
Speaker
We are parented different ways. We parent different ways. Lord, some of us are praying to be parents. Some of us are already parents. We're at different stages. And Lord, we carry things from our past. So I pray that that you can heal our hearts in that way. I pray that we don't hold on to what hurt us, that we don't hold on to what formed us, and we find our identity in you.
00:02:09
Speaker
So, Father, as we move forward, we see you as the ultimate Father. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Ephesians
Ephesians 6: Obedience and Respect
00:02:17
Speaker
six. I'm going to give you time to flip there because I want you, it is going to be on the board, but I want you to read out of your Bible there. Ephesians six verses one through four.
00:02:28
Speaker
It says, children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and your mother, which is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy a long life on earth. Fathers do not exacerbate your children, but instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
00:02:52
Speaker
Over the years, we've seen the US citizen become less. There's like this degradation of the quality of US citizen. You could look at the news on any given time and you could see that there's a lack of respect. There's a lack of respect for authority, for parents, for teachers. Even as adults, we have a lack of respect for the government. And it's all because of the home.
00:03:16
Speaker
It's all because of the parents, because we could blame society for that. We could blame the school system for that. But what we're doing is we're giving them the authority to raise our children.
00:03:27
Speaker
But I need to take charge of my children and my household and teach them that proper authority and respect. Military,
Decline in Authority: Societal and Family Influences
00:03:34
Speaker
law enforcement, they are starting to dumb down the standard and the tests for people to get into those entities because they're finding that people are not prepared with basic skills when they get to that age to even get into these. Local law enforcement is doing that currently where the physical standards or the testing standards is being lowered to meet the quality of citizen that we're producing.
00:03:57
Speaker
More importantly, we're seeing that in the church. There's illiteracy to the Bible. People are not understanding it. And it's not because the Sunday school teachers aren't teaching it proper. It's because inside the walls of our home, we are not guiding our children properly through the Bible from a very young age.
00:04:16
Speaker
Now, we're talking about a physical standard and a civilian standard. And that's important, right? We want our kids to be able to be self-sufficient at 18. But what about a spiritual standard?
Preparing Children for Spiritual Challenges
00:04:27
Speaker
What about their spiritual well-being with the spiritual battles that they face every day? When I went to college, right out of high school, I went to college to get brainwashed and, I mean, get an education.
00:04:39
Speaker
And my first class, my first professor, there's 60 of us in the room. He says, I want all the Christians in the room to stand up. And five of us stood up. He said, forget what your parents said, forget what your pastor said, forget what your youth pastor said, forget what Jesus said. Those things are blanking idiots.
00:04:59
Speaker
So it's obvious that as we send our kids into the world that they're going to face opposition. But let me tell you something more important. That doesn't happen when they get to college. It's happening right now in their life. They're facing spiritual battles in their life right now. This stat isn't to scare you. The average age of a child being exposed to pornography is 12 years old. 15% of those are children 10 and under.
00:05:28
Speaker
The main device used to view that pornography is the cell phone. And you're like, well, you know what? I'm a good parent. My kid doesn't get a cell phone until they're this age. A large percentage of kids under 10 was because it was introduced to them by a friend. So we can put the necessary guards in our life, the necessary restrictions for our children, but we can't control what the world is doing with their children.
00:05:55
Speaker
The responsibility to train up our children to teach them to guide them on how to be a follower of Christ comes from the home. It's not the responsibility of the church. Kelly and I decided very early on that we were not here to raise good children. And I know that sounds funny, but we decided that we wanted to raise God-fearing adults.
00:06:15
Speaker
because I'm watching my daughter grow and I know that someday she is going to be someone's wife. She is going to be a productive member of society. She is going to be an individual on her own and I need to be the one to help guide her through that and show her the path through what God says in his word to get her to that point. So this morning we're going to look at raising soldiers for Christ.
00:06:41
Speaker
The only way that they're going to fight these spiritual battles is if we train our children to be soldiers for Christ.
Understanding Parental Stewardship
00:06:49
Speaker
First, we need to understand the importance of who our child is. Your child is a gift from God. We are to be good stewards of that gift. I remember very clearly the first time I held Noah. I'm sitting in the hospital room, beautiful fluorescent lights shining, and I'm holding Noah and I have this overwhelming sense of being unworthy.
00:07:11
Speaker
I didn't see how God can entrust me with this child and entrust me with this young man to raise in his authority. And so I honestly, I did this like Lion King thing and I held him up and I'm sitting there in the middle of the room and Kelly's there and I'm sitting there praying. I'm saying, God, this child is not mine. This child is yours. I hand them back to you. Thank you for trusting me to raise him. Thank you for entrusting me to raise him.
00:07:37
Speaker
Psalms 127 three through five says children are a heritage from the Lord offspring a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. Claim your children for the Lord. If your children are grown, I don't expect you to hold them over your head and offer them up to the Lord.
00:08:05
Speaker
But make a conscious decision to say, this child is yours, Lord. I want to raise them in a way that honors you. Committing that every step of the way, every point in their life that you direct him or her to the Lord. If the Lord isn't trusting me with this child, I'm going to do the best I can to honor him by raising him the way that he wants me to. That goes from the first tantrum to their walking away to college. Every second counts when you're raising your child in the Lord.
00:08:36
Speaker
One of the big things in our society is establishing your God-given authority in the household. This next point, don't write anything down, but this is what it looks like. It says, father, mother, children. I want you to write your names on those lines. Write your name, write your spouse's name, write your children's name on that line.
00:09:01
Speaker
If you come from a broken family and your ex is also parenting that child, put their name too because you guys stand as a parental unit still raising your child.
Guidance and Authority in Parenting
00:09:11
Speaker
And oftentimes when that happens is there's a battle between the two parents and we're seeing who could be the best friend of the child to win favor for that child. When even though you're separated, you still need to be standing and saying, Hey, we are the parents in authority over you and you are still our child. We're still raising you up in the Lord.
00:09:32
Speaker
If you're older and you're like, my children are out, I don't really have authority over them anymore. You still put their name there and say, you know what? I'm a pray for them. Maybe they're estranged. Maybe you went off the Bible verse, hey, raise a child up in the way he should go and he'll never apart from it. And you're like, he's part. He's parted from it. He's going his own way. She's going his own way. Still put your child's name there because you have authority to pray for that child and never says stop praying for that child. It's not over. There's still opportunity for them to come back to the Lord.
00:10:00
Speaker
Ephesians 6, 1 says, children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother. So the first thing we're looking at today is actually a command to the children to honor your father and mother. And we love this one because we use it for our benefit and we say, hey, go clean your room. They say, why? And we get to say, because I said so, right? Or we take it further and we say, because God says you have to obey me. But let me ask you this, is it a child's natural tendency to obey?
00:10:30
Speaker
Absolutely not, absolutely not. Let me give you a little insight of who the natural child is. Jeremiah 17, nine, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick, who can understand it? First Corinthians 2, 14 says, the natural person does not accept the things of Spirit of God, for they are folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. And my favorite, Mark 7, 21 through 20, see it 23,
00:10:59
Speaker
It says, from within, out of the heart of a man comes evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness, all these evil things come from within and they defile a person. Aren't they little sweethearts? A child left to his own doings,
00:11:22
Speaker
We'll turn to those every time without guidance from the Lord, without guidance from the parents, without guidance from scripture. So we must, we must, we must, we must show our children how to obey. The first act of obedience for our children is that we obey God first. We are setting an example. We are living an example of who God is as our father and who we are as fathers to our children.
00:11:52
Speaker
1 John 2, 5 through 6 says, but if anyone obeys his words, God's love is made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him. Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. That is a tall order because it is easy to say, I'm a follower of Christ. But when you attach on there that that means I have to live like Christ. It's a different ballgame.
00:12:16
Speaker
So I think we say I'm a follower of Christ, but we throw it around too flippantly because if I'm saying I'm a follower of Christ, that means every single step of every single day, I'm choosing to live just as Christ did.
Impact of Parental Behavior on Children
00:12:29
Speaker
I think it's common for a parent to say I'm in full obedience to the Lord. And then step out of that obedience to the Lord. I could tell you in front of you right now, I'm a follower of Jesus. I'm in obedience to the Lord.
00:12:42
Speaker
And I can go home right to now and treat my wife poorly. I could treat my children poorly. I could raise them without biblical principles. I'm not truly following the Lord though. I need to back up what I'm saying with my mouth, with the actions in my life. Proverbs 27, 19 says, as water reflects the face, so one's life reflects the heart. Who knows us best? Our family. Who knows us best? Our children and our wife.
00:13:09
Speaker
I could put on a front and I could pretend and I could fake you guys out. But if I go home, I cannot to my wife. She knows every part of me because we live so close in community with each other.
00:13:23
Speaker
Now we're all working to progress. We're going to make mistakes, but those are the perfect opportunities to teach our children. Hey son, hey daughter, I made a mistake. Would you forgive me? It's actually the perfect act of saying obedience to the father in heaven to describe that obedience to us as a parent.
00:13:48
Speaker
When we're making those mistakes is different than when we're choosing to live in a sin that we have. When we're choosing to live in a sin that we have, we're telling our child that it's okay to live in disobedience to the Lord. And then now they know that it's okay to live in disobedience to us.
00:14:06
Speaker
At that point, it's hard to require anything from our children because we don't even feel worthy ourselves because we're living in our sin. And we don't require any obedience from our children, and that causes child-centered homes instead of Christ-centered homes. Verse 1 is directed at children, but it's for me to realize that I need to establish that authority over my household.
00:14:29
Speaker
Do I want to be in authority in disobedience to God or do I want to be in authority in obedience to God? And I want to set that standard for them Just as I said a natural tendency for man is not to obey and so we look at a child We look at a baby God gave babies this incredible alarm system inside them that when they cry we tend to their needs And so they cry we feed them they cry we change their diaper we cry they cry we cry yeah, we cry
00:15:00
Speaker
They cry. We nurture them to sleep. And very quickly, a baby learns to manipulate that system. A baby will cry and get you to come just because they want you to come. Not because there's a need in their life, but they've learned to manipulate the system.
00:15:20
Speaker
I saw this TV show, I think it was called British Nanny or 9911 or 950, I don't know, but it was this British lady that would go into households with parents who were having disobedient children and she would try to impart wisdom on these children. In this particular episode, the camera crew goes into the house and the first thing you see is this seven or eight year old kid jump up and slap his mom. It hits her right across the face.
00:15:41
Speaker
The dad says no, tries to grab him, he throws himself on the ground, he starts kicking and screaming and throwing a fit, right? And I'm like, this is good, right? This nanny's gonna whoop him. And she walks over, she puts her hands underneath, she goes, Gregory, use your words, Gregory, you know? And he's going, I hate you, I hate this house. And she's like, Gregory, express your frustration through your words. As a parent watching this, I'm gonna use something, but it's not gonna be my words, right?
00:16:10
Speaker
Noah tried this. Noah tried this. He was about 18 months old, maybe 20 months old. The week prior he had seen a kid get told no, the kid in the grocery store threw a fit, mom went and grabbed the candy that he wanted, gave it to him and solved the issue, right? And so he thought that that would be a good idea. A week later, I thought, man, he's too young, he's not going to do this, but a week later,
00:16:31
Speaker
I told him, no, he understood what no meant at 18 or 20 months old, and he fell to the ground, and he was kicking like a kangaroo and spinning like a crocodile, and he was screaming, right? He was trying to throw a fit to get his way. I had no clue what to do. I picked him up by his shoulder, I slapped him on the butt, I looked him in the eyes, and I said, men cry standing
Discipline: Strategies and Love
00:16:49
Speaker
up. And he goes, mooooo! To this day, I know I didn't use the right words. I know that's not what I was supposed to say.
00:17:04
Speaker
But he never threw a fit again. He never threw a fit again. And then he set the example for his sister because his sister has never thrown a fit like that. I didn't know what to say, but I knew at that point in time that there needed to be some type of physical intervention to relay to my kid that this act of disobedience is not okay in my house. Which leads us to our next point, which is your child is not your friend.
00:17:32
Speaker
And we throw this around. We say, yeah, your child's not your friend. Yeah, I know that. They're my child, right? I birthed them. Obviously, I'm not their friend. But then we act a different way. Because when you're a friend to your child, it's hard to make the hard decisions because you want your child to like you.
00:17:48
Speaker
Go to your best friend this week and say, hey, can you fix me breakfast? Hey, can you fix me lunch? Hey, can you fix me dinner? Hey, can you pay my mortgage payment? Hey, can you take care of my every single need? That is not a friend. That's the responsibility of a parent to take care of that child. So you are an authority over your children. With lack of authority, children often see themselves as equal and they want to play an equal role in the parenting.
00:18:15
Speaker
In chapter 5 22 in Ephesians, we talked about the wife submitting to the husband. This act of submission is also is just following under the lead of somebody.
00:18:26
Speaker
But it says children obey your parents. It's a different command and it's the same Greek word that is used in in verse five that says slaves Obey your earthly masters with respect and fear and sincerity of heart just as you would obey Christ the same verse or the same word obey is used in Mark 8 25 where it says in fear and amazement They asked one another who is this?
00:18:50
Speaker
Even he commands the wind and the waters and they obey them. So there's this naturally stated authority in the relationship as a parent. This means we give the hard commands, we give the hard directives, and we expect more from our children.
00:19:07
Speaker
We're in charge of the well-being of our children. We are in charge of raising this child in the image of Christ. Proverbs 22 6 says, train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. If we go to verse 4, it says, fathers do not exasperate your children.
00:19:29
Speaker
but instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Exasperate your children says just don't mean don't spur them on to anger. Don't use excessive punishment or don't use punishment without explanation or instruction says instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. This word training is the actually the word discipline.
00:19:49
Speaker
And if you look throughout the Bible, it's used over 60 times. And the majority of the time this word discipline is used, it's not in a physical sense. There's only a few times where it's talking this word discipline in a physical sense. There are, however, plenty of verses that do speak to the physical discipline of a child. And we're going to get to those in a minute. But this word discipline is used for training, guiding, correcting. It is used in a way that you're supposed to develop this child
00:20:18
Speaker
into a way that is honoring to God.
00:20:23
Speaker
We discipline our children because God disciplines us. Hebrews 12, 6 through 8 says, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, he chastens everyone he accepts as his son and duresh hardship as discipline. God is treating you as his children for what children are not disciplined by their father. If you are not disciplined and everyone undergoes discipline,
00:20:48
Speaker
then you are not a legitimate son. You are not true sons and daughters at all. And so if you're going back to that living in sin, if you're going back into that area where you're dwelling with the sin and you're not being confronted by the Holy Spirit with conviction, or you're not being disciplined in that way, you need to consider whether you even fall under the title of being a child of God.
00:21:12
Speaker
The Lord as our Father uses discipline to correct us, and the Lord expects us to correct our children. So we're going to look at discipline. I didn't fully intend on doing this, but I'm going to. And we're going to talk about what discipline looks like, the different styles of discipline. It ranges from everywhere. Each kid is different. I may not have to spank my daughter as much as I spank my child or my son, but each child requires different discipline from the parents. But there's count to three, timeouts,
00:21:40
Speaker
knows to the table, taking privileges, hopefully taking privileges, and then they're spanking. And I think we understand the majority of the top ones, but I want to talk about the physical discipline of sight because I think as a church we've stepped away from it because we don't know about it. We don't understand it. And the Bible says plenty about it, so I want to talk about that today. But the first thing we need to understand is that all discipline is used for correction.
00:22:09
Speaker
Proverbs 13, 24, he who withholds the rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him gentle or diligently. Proverbs 19, 18, discipline your son while there is hope and do not desire his death. That one makes me crack up. I wish you die.
00:22:28
Speaker
Um, proverbs 22 15 foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. The rod of discipline will remove it far from him. And proverbs 23 13 says, do not hold back discipline from a child. Although you strike him with a rod, he will not die. I read this list to my son a couple of weeks ago and I said, what do you think about this son? He goes, I'm just glad you use your hand and not the rod.
00:22:52
Speaker
So I want to touch on this, on what discipline looks like, what physical discipline looks like, and maybe some areas that are okay to use physical discipline. And the things, Kelly and I have never really sat down and defined it, but we do have an understanding of when that takes place and when we would do that. So a couple of weeks ago, I sat down and tried to figure out what it was, what were the details behind our physical discipline to our children. And the three things were to combat direct defiance,
00:23:23
Speaker
preventing harm to self or others, and correction of moral issues like lying, stealing, cheating.
00:23:32
Speaker
So I'm going to give you some practical examples. You're at a soccer game, and you have a two-year-old or a two-and-a-half-year-old, and the road is maybe 50 yards away, right? And little Gregory, he's going to start and go play, and he starts running towards the radio. You're like, Gregory, stop. There's traffic. Gregory keeps running. He keeps going. Gregory, stop. There's danger in the traffic. Gregory keeps going. You're going to go over there, and you're going to physically pick up your son and bring him back over to protect him from that danger. You'll have a conversation. Gregory.
00:24:00
Speaker
It's very dangerous to run towards the road. It could threaten you, it could hurt you, it could kill you. Do you understand? Yes. You set Gregory down, what does he do? He runs towards the road. You can't reason with that young of a child, and so there needs to be some type of intervention to get them to understand what that means. And you're like, that's pretty severe, right?
00:24:23
Speaker
I'd rather have the discipline, the controlled discipline of my hand on his little tushy than the uncontrolled discipline of the world and what his it has to offer because that is death and destruction for sure. But if I could guide them with a little persuasion on my end in the name of what God asks us to do, I'm benefiting that child in the long run.
00:24:45
Speaker
And you might say, well, he's two and a half, just hold him the whole time. That's the same parent that walks to UT Knoxville with their 22-year-old and said, I'm going to protect you from everything the world has to offer. We have to start setting that standard of protecting our child and giving them the ability to make those decisions themselves from an extremely young age. Focused on the family and Dr. Dobson, they did a study and they said, what are the appropriate ages for discipline? And they said, for physical discipline, anywhere from 18 months to around seven to nine years old.
00:25:16
Speaker
And you're like, wow, I was beat as a 15-year-old. Maybe there's time for that. But what I'm saying.
00:25:23
Speaker
The developmental years of getting a child to understand obedience is very, very young. Once you've hit the 15, then you're dealing with someone who God designed to become independent and become an adult. And so you're saying this rebellion and it's a natural tendency for someone to gain independence, right? So now you're fighting against basically someone who's entering into an adulthood and they're seeing things completely different than when you have them in your control as a young child.
00:25:53
Speaker
physical discipline is always this is probably making you some some of you uncomfortable because of what you were raised in. And I'm sorry for that, because that is not a depiction of who God the Father is. You may have had the best earthly father. He still made mistakes. You may have had a terrible earthly father. And I apologize for that.
00:26:16
Speaker
Don't let it skew what God's true version of discipline is. Parenting or discipline is always supposed to be out of love and for the purpose of correcting your children. Parenting is full of grace. After all, we're modeling what God did for us.
00:26:34
Speaker
Another example would be candy from the cupboard, right? Little Gregory's getting into candy in the cupboard, and he's not supposed to get candy from the cupboard. So you say, Gregory, come here. Gregory comes into the room. He said, Gregor, were you getting candy out of the cupboard? No. He's got sugar crystals all over his face. You know what he did. And you said, Gregory, I want you to be honest with me, and I want you to come forward and tell me the truth. Were you getting candy from the cupboard?
00:26:56
Speaker
No. If you accept that behavior, you're now training him that it's OK to lie and get away with it. And so at that point, I personally would use a swat on the behind to help little Gregory understand that it's not OK to break God's law. Now, on the flip side, Kelly and I have always said that if our children come to us and tell the truth, that we extend grace.
00:27:22
Speaker
If my son or my daughter comes to me and they said, hey, I did this wrong and I'm offering up to you, I am not at that point going to grab them, bend them over my knee and spank them because they volunteered that information to me. I'm mimicking God, right? So if I bring my sins to God and I offer up that sin to God and I'm confessing my sin to God, that's not the time that God chooses to discipline. That's the time that God offers his son on the cross and said, it's OK, it's taken care of.
00:27:47
Speaker
And so that's what we need to do with our children is extend them grace in a time that they're coming forward in confession. We also extend grace in times that they deserve punishment. I've taken my son and daughter up into their room many times and had conversations with them before I spanked them. And during the conversation, the Holy Spirit says, hey, this is a time to extend grace, not discipline.
00:28:10
Speaker
When I see the face, when I see their eyes changing, and I see that they see that they did wrong, and I see that they know they're in the wrong, and I see the remorse in their heart, the Holy Spirit guides me to go, you know what? Instead of giving the spanking of this time, I'm going to extend grace.
Teaching Prayer and Reliance on God
00:28:28
Speaker
We're going to jump forward, Ephesians 6.4. Part of that training and instruction is to teach your children to pray.
00:28:39
Speaker
1 Thessalonians 5, 16, and 17 says, be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. To teach your children to pray, you must pray first. Just like obedience, to teach your children to obey, you must first obey God.
00:29:01
Speaker
And so what does that look like? Start praying for your child before they're conceived. Start praying for your child when they're born. Pray for your child over their crib while they're sleeping. Pray with your children before they go on their first day of school. Pray with your children before they go to the second day of school. Pray with your children after discipline. When you get in the car after the ballgame,
00:29:24
Speaker
or after school or after church, and you're talking about the people around you that hurt you, or you're talking about the lifestyle of people around you, instead of talking about the people, offer up those people in prayer to the Lord. Because that teaches us to start loving people how God wants to love people, regardless of how they're treating us.
00:29:43
Speaker
Another one is anxiety. Anxiety is huge in our culture. Anxiety is huge with kids and adults alike. It's at the top of the discussions for mental health that we are suffering from anxiety, and we have the answer in the book. Philippians 4, 6 to 7 says, do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
00:30:13
Speaker
We have the answer to what the world's looking for and we neglect it in our own homes. And we raise anxious children and we are anxious adults because we fail to pray. And so this isn't just the pray, right? This isn't just the dinnertime prayer where they say, Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for this day. Bless us, fruit our bodies and give us a day, good day. Amen. Right?
00:30:33
Speaker
We get so caught up in the habit of that. We need to walk our kids through how to offer up their hurt, how to offer up their feelings. If I discipline, he doesn't like that. I want him to turn that over to the Lord and say, God, I don't understand this. I asked Noah this week. I said, hey, man, do you like it when I thank you? He goes, I don't understand it, but I respect it. Right. And so he understands that there's this authority that he has to abide by and teaching a child to pray through that should be one of our priorities.
Biblical Guidance on Sensitive Topics
00:31:03
Speaker
Next, we want to teach our children to study God's word. How do you teach your child to study God's word? You study God's word. This is all by example. Our parenting is all by example. That's why I brought up at the beginning of the service that if we had a poor example for parenting, we are likely carrying that into our parenting and we're creating this chain that continues on generation to generation. Jesus breaks chains.
00:31:32
Speaker
Jesus breaks chains through prayer. Jesus breaks chains through studying God's scripture. So we need to study God's word and teach our kids how to study God's word. If God's word is not a regular practice in our daily life, I'm going to go to say it's nearly impossible to properly raise your child. We need the influence of God's word. I don't know if you know this, but when your kid was born, he came with an owner's manual.
00:32:01
Speaker
Every topic that we are afraid to talk to our kids about is lined out in this book for us. We have to be willing to search for it ourselves, point them to it, even better, if you don't know and they don't know, open it up together and walk through what God says about it. If your kids are struggling with lust, look it up. If your kids are struggling with anxiety, depression, sexual immorality, loneliness, pornography, suicide, look it up.
00:32:31
Speaker
The answer is here. And you're like, well, I don't want to mention it to them because it might put it in their mind.
00:32:37
Speaker
Your kid already knows. If your teenager has a cell phone, they are already learning about these things. They know what they're doing when they open up their phone. Sorry, they don't know what they're doing when they open up their phone and they search, how do I deal with this problem? And the world gives them a worldly answer instead of a biblical answer. Someone, if you aren't, someone is raising your kid and informing them on these topics.
00:33:06
Speaker
Deuteronomy 6 4 through 9 says here Oh Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one this commandments to us Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your strength these commandments I give to you today are to be on your hearts verse 7 Impress them on your children
00:33:26
Speaker
Talk about them when you sit at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up, tie them as symbols to your hands, bind them to your foreheads, write them on your door frames of your houses and write them on your gates. In a more modern practical sense, put it on a posty note and stick it on your daughter's mirror. You are beautiful. Find verses in scripture that talk about her beauty from within and who she is in Christ and stick that on your daughter's mirror in the bathroom.
00:33:53
Speaker
Put his post, you know, in your son's lunch that says, remember to set your mind on things above, not on earthly things. Put it on your kitchen cabinets. Put it on the front door of your house when you leave your house that says, you now go with the Lord.
00:34:09
Speaker
Holding close to Scripture is the only thing that gets us through this life, and it's the only thing that's going to properly get our children through this life. So these topics that we're afraid to discuss, like the sexual immorality, the impure thoughts, the depression, the modesty, all those types of things. Let's look at them. I want to practically go through a few of them to give you an example of how we need to be training our children up by studying God's Word.
00:34:35
Speaker
First Peter 4.3 it says, we're going to talk about modesty. First Peter 4.3 says, for you have spent enough time in the past doing what the Gentiles used to do or like to do, living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, carousing, detestable idolatry. We are called to live holy lives set apart from the world. This means that our behavior should look different from those who don't know God. This is not your typical modesty verse.
00:35:01
Speaker
But it's saying if you are a follower of Christ, you absolutely need to look different than the world. I'm going to tell you right now, if you have daughters, moms, even dads, start talking to them about modesty now. We talked a story probably from the age of six years old on what it means to dress properly and dress so that people's eyes are on the Lord and not you. Because if you wait, if you wait till it happens and your 13 year old comes down and something that's inappropriate, you are now
00:35:31
Speaker
battling a nightmare. Because you ladies know that once you've decided on your outfit, your whole identity is wrapped up in the outfit. The hair matches the makeup with the shirt and the skirt and the pants. Everything matches and you're set on it when you're ready to leave the house.
00:35:49
Speaker
Same thing for a child who's 13 years old and comes out with something inappropriate. They've already decided that this is what they're going to wear, and this is who they are in their identity. I want to tell you a story. I heard a pastor tell this story about 25 years ago, so I don't remember who the pastor was, but he talked about modesty with his daughter. He hadn't really trained her up in it. 13 years old, she comes down the stairs, and she's wearing some midriff thing and her mini-skirt to begin with, but it's too short. And he says, no, you're not going to do that.
00:36:17
Speaker
It was a half hour long fight. He described it as basically a brawl, right? They went back and forth and back and forth, and after a half hour, she finally decided, okay, I'm going to go put something appropriate on, and they let her go out with her friends. I wouldn't have let her go out at that point, but they let her go out with her friends. This continued for the next four years every time she wanted to go out. She constantly pushed the limits on her modesty, and he constantly fought for his daughter.
00:36:45
Speaker
At the age of 17, she comes out of the house. He's pulling weeds in the front yard, got sweat dripping down his head. He's had a rough day, and she comes out in something wildly inappropriate. He kind of thought about it, and he's like, it's not worth the fight today. I've had a rough day. He goes, sweetheart, have a good time. Be home on time tonight. And she kind of was taken back, and she walked down the path, and she got in the car with her boyfriend.
00:37:11
Speaker
Fifteen years later, they had a conversation with each other. She said, Dad, do you remember that night that you let me go and out wearing what I was wearing? He goes, Yeah, I remember very clearly. She goes, That was the night I lost my virginity. She said, It's not what you're thinking. It wasn't because my boyfriend couldn't control himself because what he was seeing. That night, I had decided that that's when you stopped caring about me.
00:37:33
Speaker
It's always worth the fight to fight for our children when it comes to biblical principles. If we give up and say, you know what? It's too hard. We're here. We're here as a group. It's us against them. Let's take them, right? We can lead them. We can bounce ideas off each other and say, hey, how are you raising your child in the Lord? I want to do the same. Let's get this done. Simply put, the way you dress is appointing men to Christ or drawing attention to yourself.
00:38:03
Speaker
Well, you might say, well, doesn't the Bible tell young men to guard their eyes, guard their hearts, set their mind on things above, not on earthly things? Absolutely it does. But it's not a either or situation. It's a both and. We need our sons to guard their eyes and guard their hearts and protect their mind. And we need our daughters to create an environment that they can do so properly. Young men, set your eyes on things above, set your mind on things above, not on the earthly things.
00:38:33
Speaker
Let's switch topics. Now we went from the daughter and modesty. Let's talk about our boys in sexual purity. Like I said, people are being, our children are being exposed to pornography at a super early age. And that's the development of what they're thinking that sex is. So we as fathers, we as dads, we need to start having age appropriate conversations with our sons at a very early age and start training them how to captivate those thoughts and send them out the door to the Lord.
00:39:04
Speaker
I went to a water park with my family. My brother-in-law was there. My sister was there, and they have a couple teenage kids. And if you know anything about women's bathing suits these days, 97% of them are not appropriate. And so we had spent the day in the water park, and we'd go out to the car for lunch. And my brother-in-law and his 14-year-old son go for a walk. And I told my sister, I said, are they going to eat? And they said, yeah, they'll eat. I said, well, what are they doing? I said, he's walking his son through everything he just saw and having him captivate those thoughts and offering it up to the Lord.
00:39:34
Speaker
As you go, teach your kids scripture. He's literally walking at a water park and teaching his son how to captivate those thoughts. The resources and the answers of all of our hard questions are found in this book, and we have it at our fingertips, and we neglect to study it to the point of being able to teach our kids.
Spiritual Independence and Community Support
00:39:59
Speaker
Next is teach your children to hear God speak and see God move. And you're like, well, my kid's young, right? I'll teach them that when they can understand in high school and when they can understand in college. The reason that we do this is because we are not always there and we are not always right.
00:40:18
Speaker
The idea is to raise a child that is one day going to be an adult in the Lord. And so we need to start identifying that very early and teaching them to pray. This goes hand in hand with the first. Excuse me. This goes hand in hand with the first two of teaching your child to pray and teaching your child to obey or.
00:40:40
Speaker
Thank you. You guys were listening. It goes hand in hand with teaching your child to pray and teaching your child to study God's word because you are giving them foundational roots in them that when they go to school and they're presented with that temptation or that spiritual battle, they now have the tools to fight that spiritual battle. They may not always make the right decision. I didn't. You didn't. They may not always make the right decision, but at least you've given them the tools to make that decision.
00:41:08
Speaker
And when they fail, they have the roots to say, you know what, I still know who I am in Christ. I still can build on this failure and become successful in Christ. John 10, 27 said, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I study God's word so I can hear God speak. I want to teach my son and my daughter to study God's word so they can see, hear God speak.
00:41:37
Speaker
And you're like, well, Kyle, I don't even hear God speak as an adult. Again, go back to one and two, pray, walk through scripture. God uses scripture. He uses people who are following the Lord. He uses your situation. He uses the Holy Spirit to speak to you, but you must understand parts of scripture before he does that because he will bring those back to your memory as you're going throughout your life. And you want to instill that in your children as well.
00:42:06
Speaker
skipping through some of my stuff here because we are coming to the end of our time. Like I said, this would be a 52-week series for the next 18 years. But the last thing I want to bring up is we must have high expectations for our children. And what do I mean by that? A few facts here. Bible scholars believe that the 12 disciples were in their late teens to early 20s when they were following the ministry of Jesus. And after he died and rose again and went to heaven, it was those men that spread out with the gospel and started the churches and overturned the Roman Empire.
00:42:37
Speaker
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were young teens thought to be as maybe middle schoolers who were captured by Nebuchadnezzar. They were said, hey, worship this idol. They refused because they stood up for the Lord. They got thrown in the furnace and God sent them an angel to protect them from that furnace.
00:42:52
Speaker
Esther was a young queen of Persia in their teens, and she sacrificed, risked her own life to save her people's life. And David was the youngest of eight brothers, the youngest in the Israelite army. He was the only one with a face strong enough that God would use him to defeat the Goliath.
00:43:10
Speaker
So here's what I'm saying about high expectations. We must call our children out of being children and start having them stand on their own two feet at an early age because we want to have those high expectations for them so that they can fail under our care. Because if I never let my child fail, when they get to college and they fail, it's detrimental.
00:43:32
Speaker
But if they fail within my care and I say, hey, failures are just building on opportunities to succeed, I can train my child up in that and walk them through those failures and teach them how to respond with prayer and God's word and hearing God speak. So as Matt comes forward with the ban, I want to say something. And this goes for everyone. You're sitting here, you're like, great, Kyle, but I'm not even a parent. Or my parents are up and out of the household.
00:44:04
Speaker
The reason the Bible talks about the church and having community to surround is so that we can help each other do this together. Your children may be up and grown, but you still have parental guidance that you could share with me. Walk up to me, slap me upside the head, and say, hey, I saw you treat Noah this way. Is that the right way to do it? I want you to keep me accountable in my parenting. We have children in our youth group, our students in our youth group, who don't have a mom, who don't
00:44:32
Speaker
have a dad who have no mom or dad and raised by their grandparents, we can stand in as that surrogate father or mother and stand in a place that they can look at us and see an authority figure that reflects who God is.
Hopeful Prayers for Children Who Stray
00:44:48
Speaker
And then I want to speak to those who have prayed for their child and they raised them in what they thought was raising my child up in the Lord. And I thought they weren't going to depart from it. And right now they're departing from it.
00:45:01
Speaker
If that's you, you're not done. You don't have the parental authority to go grab that kid and wop him in the air and say, real men stand in Christ standing up. You don't have that authority anymore when they're 28 with a wife and two kids, but you do have the authority to proclaim prayer over their life and pray that they come to God. It's not uncommon for someone to leave the faith and go, Oh shoot, life is harder than I thought. I need to turn back to the Lord. So it's not over. Don't lose heart.
00:45:30
Speaker
Let's pray. Father, thank you for who you are. Thank you for who you are as a father, and we look to you for our guidance. Lord, there's so much pain and agony wrapped up in one being a parent, but also being parented. And Lord, some of us, even at an old age, as 35, 40, we still feel like a five-year-old because we're still dwelling on how our father treated us at that age.
00:45:58
Speaker
And so I ask that we could just release that to you, Lord. Help us to release the pains and hurts of our childhood so that we can stand in the gap for you, Lord, and raise our kids in honor of you. Father, you've given us this gift. Help us to prioritize it. Help us to follow you in how we handle it. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.