I'm excited to get to talk about parenting this evening.
This is, I think, we were counting them up before the service tonight.
This is the second sermon on parenting we've ever preached here at Resonate.
So in fact, in preparation for tonight's sermon, I went and listened.
It's always sometimes good to go and figure out what are other people saying about a
subject before you go and preach on it.
So I went and listened to some other sermons and went to some searches online and found
a sermon from a popular evangelical pastor and I listened to him download a few things
from him.
And then also in the midst of searching around, I thought, this would be interesting, I downloaded
a sermon from a universalist, unitarian universalist church knowing that I probably would disagree
with a lot of things they said and I did.
So I then also downloaded another sermon by another famous evangelical pastor, Josh Martin.
And it was when he preached this past spring on parenting out of Ephesians, chapter six,
and it was my favorite of the three.
And so I just pretty much stole everything he said.
I'm going to say it again tonight and it should be good.
So yeah, as Keith said in his prayer, I'm a little bit intimidated by this sermon and
by this subject and standing before you because I am a parent, but more times than not, I
feel like, and I ask myself, am I doing this right?
Is this how it's supposed to go?
And I feel a little self-conscious about it.
And honestly, the one thing that the unitarian universalist sermon that had correct was that
parenting is hard and that we often look at it and we think, man, what do I do?
And there's so many questions and my background comes into play and how I was parented, how
my parents led me and then my spouse's background and how others say we should do it and popular
books and then how society and culture, what they're pressing in on our family and how
I should be doing what I'm doing and all of this is coming in and then I stand before
and I'm like, oh, well, we'll see if we can figure something out here.
And so somewhat I confess that to you, but also I need to establish some credibility here
before you, before I speak on parenting, I have to show you my kids.
So I brought some pictures of the fam, if we could put that one up there.
Yeah, there it is.
Man, what a good looking family.
So this is our Christmas picture this year and we all put on our lovely sweaters.
We can stop there.
So go back to the facts, go back to the previous one, I want to talk through here.
So this is my oldest son, Sam.
He's eight years old and did he go into venture village or is he still here?
Okay, he left.
All right, I can talk about him behind his back now.
So he's eight years old, going to third grade this fall.
This kid is smart.
He reads better than I do.
He's smarter than me and his mom combines.
We got to watch him.
He's, yeah, he tries to get away with some stuff.
He loves Legos.
He loves to play video games, probably more than he should, probably my fault.
But we've had a lot of fun this summer and I love Sam a lot.
My daughter, Ella, she just got her hair cut.
But anyways, it was longer than that picture.
She's six years old, going into first grade this year, going to be a big first grader.
Ella is beautiful and she is my, it sounds cliche, she's my little princess and I love
her and she loves to sing and dance.
This summer she did, she was in her first production this fall where she had to learn
lines and sing songs and stuff and it was so fun to watch her do that and she loved
every second of it, pretty much every moment in our households of musical because of Ella,
mostly frozen.
And she is a servant.
She loves to serve her brothers and serve her family.
She loves to cook with her mom and make dinner and she takes pride in doing that.
It's a lot of fun.
Our little guy, Jack, he's three years old and he is a ball of fun.
The thing about three-year-olds is like they're just old enough for like, they figure out
how to use their body and do stuff and use language and still discovering and figuring
out the world but they also know some stuff so they know enough to get into some trouble
but they're just cute enough that you don't care.
And so he's really cute and he plays that card really well and he was diagnosed with
celiac disease last year and so he's gained some weight even since this picture and he's
kind of turned into a chubb but that's Jack and I love him a lot.
So these are my kids and you can show that next picture.
So this is us.
Josh Martin took this picture a couple years ago and I love this picture because it just
looks like we're having fun.
And honestly I love this picture because it makes me look like an awesome dad and because
I mean look at us, then I look like perfect like guys I'm a pretty good dad, look at me,
working it, holding the kids up, you know, carrying them on my shoulders.
So we love to have fun together and as a parent like you love to have fun with your kids and
you love for your kids to love you and like you and you want them to like you and to have
fun times together and laugh and you wish all those moments could be just like this.
And then there's other times you can show that last picture.
You do some things that, well they may not be wise, they may not be best.
I look at this picture and I think that was a lot of fun that day when I was throwing
Sam into the sky.
And then I also look at it and I kind of shudder and I think what was I doing?
I mean what if I caught him wrong or what if I missed him and he broke his legs or his
head or sometimes in parenting you do things and you look back on it and like what was
I thinking?
Why did I say that?
Did my kids really hear me say that?
Did they really see me do that?
And so even in this picture I think on that that was a lot of fun but I also think man
that might be maybe was unwise.
But so there's some realities in our parenting and that some things we're proud of and we're
excited about and we feel like yeah I nailed it on that one.
And other times we think oh I missed it there.
I didn't do so well in that spot.
And so as a parent we have to be, we have to realize that.
Sometimes we don't get it right and there's many things, well there's a reality that we
all have to accept in life and that's that we are sinners.
We don't do things right all the time.
We have issues.
And it's because of that fact that we need God.
And so as we dive into this tonight and we look at this passage beyond what I can, what
wisdom I can muster up and share with you from my experiences and what I read about or heard
other people say, we have to know that ultimately we have to turn to God.
Our heavenly Father as the Scriptures call him.
The best Father there ever was, ever is, is our heavenly Father, is God.
And so if you have your Scriptures with you I want you to turn with me to Deuteronomy
chapter 6.
Deuteronomy, maybe you haven't been there very often.
It's the fifth book in the Old Testament, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
It's fun to say Deuteronomy.
Chapter 6, and this passage of Scripture is a, that we're going to look at is, it's a
famous passage of Scripture.
More famous in the Old Testament among those of the Jewish religion, because they use this,
that book and those first five books especially, they call it the Torah, and this is like a
high point in that.
It's in the story of Israel, the nation of Israel's.
They're traveling in, they're about to go into the Promised Land, this area that had
been promised to them, part of God's covenant to them, and Moses is leading them.
And before they go in, Moses said, I'm going to write this down, I'm going to tell you
one more time, this is how we do it.
This is what we're about.
This is who we're about.
This is what we need to hear and do, and we go into this new place, so that we can be
led by God as we go there.
And so he's beginning to communicate one last time in the book of Deuteronomy before they
head into it, the law or the instructions on how to live life with God.
And so he says this in Deuteronomy chapter six, starting in verse four, here, oh Israel,
the Lord our God, the Lord is one, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with
all your soul and with all your strength, verse six, these commandments I give to you
today are to be on your heart, impress them on your children, talk about them when you
sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up, tie
them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads, write them on the doorframes
of your houses and on your gates.
This passage of scripture is known in the Jewish religions, known as the Shema.
Again, it's like for Christians, it's like our John 3.16, that passage that if you've
been around Christianity very long, you know John 3.16, if you've been around, if you've
been, grew up Jewish from this Old Testament religion, if you know that, you would know
this verse because they would put it everywhere.
They would follow the instructions of this verse and they'd make sure everybody knew
these things.
Here, oh Israel, and that's what the Shema means, it means to hear.
Literally it means to obey, it's equivalent with obey.
So the thought is if you hear this and you don't do it and you didn't really hear it,
that hearing this should cause you to react, should lead you to respond, should put you
into action of doing the things that it calls you to do.
So here, oh Israel, here, oh Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
And so it's important, they say talk about it all the time, put it up everywhere, be
reminded of this, and so they would memorize this and they would put it everywhere and
they would strap it to themselves, I'll talk about it here in a minute, but it says right
here, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength.
Trying to communicate in every bit of who you are as a human being, love the Lord your
God.
And so in their ancient understanding of physiology and the way the body worked and
the makeup of a person, he breaks into these three parts, the heart, the seat of the intellect
as they saw it, the equivalent of the mind or the rational part of who you are.
If you think, they would look at that at the core of who you are, it would all come out
of your heart as they saw that, as they understood the heart is beating and flowing blood the
rest of your body, they said that's the core of who you are, your mind, your intellect,
it all comes from there, love the Lord your God from that, the seat of your intellect
if you will, and love the Lord your God from your soul to first the invisible parts of
the individual, including your will or your sensibilities and your will to get something
done to do something from the core, that secret part of who you are from your soul, love
God from that part, from that part of who you are, love God from there.
And your strength, love the Lord your God with your strength, with your physical parts,
with what you do, and everything that you do, love the Lord your God.
So in all of who you are, in every bit of your essence and expression of who you are,
love the Lord your God.
And so that's what they would call themselves to and be reminded of, here, oh Israel, do
this, love the Lord your God.
And so as we think about this, and honestly we could stop here and that would be the,
that's everything you need to know about parenting right there, is loving God, and we're called
to that.
And throughout scripture, and throughout, and honestly every week at Resonate we talk
about how do you love God, how do you continue to push into this relationship with Him and
allow Him into your life.
How do you engage this relationship with God and learn to love Him better?
And parenting is right there, that's what it's all about, is learning to love God.
Because if you love God, you're created, the one who made you, if you allow that love,
His love for you to affect your life, you can't help but reciprocate.
That's worship.
That's when you turn to Him and you sing songs about how deep the Father's love is, because
you've experienced it, you know it, and you want to sing about it.
You want it to affect your actions, you want it to affect your life, you want it to affect
all of you, and you turn, you praise God, you're made for that.
That's what you're made for, here, oh Israel, do this, here, oh Resonate, do this.
As I said, this is a parenting sermon, but most of the room I realize are not parents.
Don't check out, I hope you haven't checked out yet.
Because many of what I'm about to say about parenting is just as applicable to you and
your relationships, not to the same extent as maybe one day when you're parenting your
own children.
But some of this stuff you can apply on your roommates this fall, you can apply to your
friends and people you work with and how you relate to them and what you do with them.
But in this, we're called to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and strength.
And then he goes then, he says, these commands I give to you today are to be on your heart
in the core of who you are.
In verse seven, impress these commands, impress them on your children.
Share these things with your kids, may they know about this, impress them upon your children.
And so what he's saying is, don't just know this stuff yourself, don't just do this stuff
yourself, oh Israel, don't just love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength
but also teach someone else about it.
Teach someone else about it.
And the first person you're called to teach someone else about it too is your kids to
your children, impress it upon them that they may also know and learn to love the Lord your
God with all of their heart, soul, and strength.
Parents, you are the most influential person in your kids' lives.
You are the most influential person in your kids' lives.
You need to say that to yourself right now.
I'm the most influential person in my kids' lives.
Those of you who aren't parents, it's okay, write that down, you need to know that still.
I need to remind myself of that daily.
My kids wake me up earlier than they should be awake.
I need to remember I'm the most influential person in their life.
When they again are disobedient, when he doesn't turn off the video game, when they
are disobedient, I need to remember I'm the most influential person in their life.
When I see them going off to school and see them learning and engaging the world around
them, I am the most influential person in their life, and I need to not forget that.
Parents, you are the most influential person in your kids' lives.
Don't give away that privilege.
Don't give away the privilege that God is giving you, the blessing that God is giving
you to be able to influence these kids the way he's giving you the opportunity to.
Don't give that away.
Don't forsake that.
Don't take that lightly.
On the drive here, I was behind a car, a little Subaru, and on the back of it had a bumper
sticker that said, nobody cares about your stick figure family with this big monster truck
running over this family.
It was pretty gruesome, and I was like, oh, interesting.
Not even my family?
Actually, I'd followed them from Moscow all the way over here, and I thought they were
going to turn into the parking lot, and I was going to have words with them, but they
kept going.
Maybe they came back, if you're here, we can talk later, but yeah.
And that's a reality, though.
You're the most influential person in your kids' lives, and nobody else cares as much
about your kids as you've been given the opportunity to.
And so embrace that opportunity, impress upon them the most important thing.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart-soul and strength.
As I say that, maybe you think, that sounds familiar.
I think I've heard that before.
It's because Jesus said it once.
That's how my guy asked him, Jesus, what's the most greatest and most important commandment?
He said to love the Lord your God.
He quotes the Shema, love the Lord your God with all your heart-soul and strength.
And so that's the most important thing for us to do, for us to engage in.
We must impress that upon our kids.
One of the things we need to remember is we resonate.
We care about your kids.
In the process of preparing the sermon, I was provoked to pray for my own kids numerous
times, but also thinking about our church, I was provoked to pray for your kids several
times as I was preparing it.
And man, we love your kids as Resonate Church.
I hope you've noticed.
We've put some more stuff up there because we love your kids.
We got a sweet new sign that Linnea worked on, and it looks awesome out there.
And they're bouncing around the bounce house, having a great time right now.
And we love them that much.
Maybe that's like throwing them up in the air.
I don't know.
It's kind of dangerous, those things.
But the reality is don't let someone else take the influence or use the influence that
you have the opportunity to have.
Even the church.
Don't farm out your parenting to us.
You've been given opportunity influence.
Now we love them and what happens at Resonate and Adventure Village and what happens in
church and through other Christians is important and good, and that can be a good supplement
and that can be helpful.
But you take the first step.
You are primarily responsible.
You get to have the most influence in your life.
Embrace that and don't give it away to somebody else.
Be careful.
And this is just a caveat.
Going back to even some of the stuff we talked about in our last sermon series on work, be
careful that you don't provide for them and not even be involved in their life.
Dads, don't check out and just say, hey, I'm doing all this stuff.
We ought to give me a place to live and stuff.
Don't then just check out of their life and not be engaged.
And then finally, don't give up what only you as a parent can do for what anybody can
do, your job or other things.
Again, don't give up what you've been given the opportunity to impress upon them the most
important thing, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.
And then he goes on throughout this passage and says, may the direction from God always
be present.
May these commands that I'm giving to you, may they be involved in every area of your
life.
And so he says, when you sit down, talk about it.
When you get up and go for a walk, when you talk about it, whether you're resting or you're
being active, whatever you're doing is a great time to talk about loving the Lord your God
with all your heart, soul, and strength.
Parents, any time is a good time to talk about it.
You're on a drive to the grocery store and they're in the back seat of the minivan.
Talk about it.
When you're laying on the couch in the evening, when you're playing video games, when you're
going to bed, when you're at the dinner table, whenever it is, is a good time to talk about
loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength, with all of these areas
of your life and how you do that.
There's this section that says wrap it around your hands or put it on your forehead in some
ways it's figurative.
Put it on the doorpost of your home.
Some ways it's figurative.
It's saying bring it to attention whenever you can, write this verse, remember these
words, hear this, do this, make it evident throughout your life to love the Lord your
God with all your heart, soul, and strength.
They took it quite literally.
By the time from this passage being spoken in Deuteronomy to the time of Jesus, some
time later, and the Jewish religious at that point, they took it quite seriously to the
point that when they would go to worship the religious leaders, they would literally have
these big boxes strapped to their head with these scriptures inside of them rolled up,
written on a little piece of paper in there.
They'd be like, hey, check me out.
I've got it written on my forehead, loving the Lord my God with all my heart, soul.
And then Jesus would criticize them for it.
In Matthew 23, he goes off on it, all you care about is how big that box is on your head
and you don't even obey what's on those scriptures and he criticized them for it.
So within this, don't just wear Christian T-shirts and put plaques up in your home with
verses on it, like allow this to be who you are and affect who you are, not just hear
this and acknowledge it, but hear it and do it.
Again, the shema means if you don't actually do this and you're not really hearing it.
And so he's instructing the Israelites to engage the scripture and to know it.
And as we, as parents, as we say, okay, how do I parent and what do I do?
Again, I think we follow this instruction.
We love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and strength.
And that educates us on all areas of life that tells us what to do in every area of
life, including parenting, and we impress this upon our kids.
So as we go further into this, I want to say a few things, two things that we can't do
and one thing that we must do is we engage in parenting.
There's two things that we cannot do.
We have to be careful that we not do these things.
The first thing is this, parenting can't be all about you.
It can't be all about me.
One area this comes up is, again, that reality that we have a sin issue.
We typically see life as how it affects me and my life revolves around me and when left
to ourselves, everything about life is about me and how it affects me and how I feel about
it and my thoughts and my experiences and my personality and how I view everything.
When left to ourselves, life is about us.
And the same thing will happen in parenting is that, hey, I have these kids, but really
they're just about me.
And so my life is this, it's headed in this direction, if I have these kids, how can I
allow them to inconvenience me the most?
And that's what affects and educates my parenting the most.
How do I, you know, they should be seen and not heard.
And how do I just minimize my input so I can go do what I want to do?
And that sounds harsh and none of us would be like, oh yeah, I want to do that.
Choose that, but you find yourselves doing that.
Your parenting cannot be about you.
The other side of that is how little can I do and they still turn out decent.
What's the least amount I can get away with?
And they still be okay kids, you know, they still turn out to be decent human beings.
What's the least amount I can put into this?
Again, you would never choose to do that and say, oh, that's all I want to choose to parent,
but sometimes I think in our actions we do that and we have to be careful there.
Now, another question is, are you consumed with how they make you look?
Are you consumed with how your kids make you look?
Maybe this is your litmus test of if your parenting is about you.
If the thought is, what are other people going to think about me because of what my kid is
doing or how my kids are acting?
One example of this is if you go to their baseball game or their sports or their events
and what you're rooting for is their last name instead of their first name.
Are you more concerned about what's on the back of their jersey and who they're representing,
how they're representing you?
Do you want others to see your kid excel in sports or excel in these things because
how it makes you look to your peers or whatever that may be, is that what drives you?
Another question, this one is personal.
If you use Instagram to prove that you are a good parent, your parenting might be about
you.
My Instagram feed is full of pictures of my kids, and sometimes I do it so you'll see
how awesome I am, like that one picture.
But if that's the reality of I'm parenting so that other people will see me and draw
attention to myself, that's not healthy motivation.
That's not what's best for you or your kids.
Here's why.
The second one is parenting can't be all about your kids.
It can't be all about them.
Another way to say this is we can't idolize our kids.
We can't make them into an idol, something we worship.
Oftentimes we think of an idol as some kind of man-made object that you bow down to, and
that's this Old Testament picture oftentimes.
I don't know if anybody really does that, this day and age anymore, but an idol is really
anything that we love more than God.
And again, it's applicable to everybody in the room.
An idol is anything that you love more than you love God.
And so in that, you have to be careful that you don't allow your kids to consume you.
If your kids consume you, if they consume our thinking, if they consume our energies, then
it's something, or this idol, it's something that's so central to our life that if we didn't
have it, we'd be devastated.
If I lost my kids, I would be wrecked, could indicate, and obviously that would be hard,
that would be sad, but it could indicate an idolatry there, being careful to not allow
our kids to be what we worship ultimately.
Now, to love your kids is a good thing, obviously.
We've been talking throughout this sermon series, especially in relationship with husband
and wife, to love sacrificially, to give up so that they can have a beautiful picture
of sacrificial love that we learned from God.
That's how he loved us by giving us his son.
And that's good.
Love your kids that way.
That can be great.
But to allow, that can be Christ-like.
But if your identity is wrapped up in them, and their failure or success is where you
derive your purpose in life, then you have made them an idol.
If they fail, if they succeed, or if they fail, if they aren't successful, if they aren't
the most popular, if they aren't the best athlete, if they aren't at the top of their
class, class, it will crush you.
If they don't do everything that you hope they will do, as you worship them and give
to them and sacrifice for them, then it will crush you.
And then eventually, when you recognize they can't be your God, they don't fulfill you
like they thought they would.
If they just could reach this point, and then they don't, and it crushes you, and then you
find yourself distancing yourself from them.
Maybe emotionally, or maybe even physically, you say, I don't need them in my life anymore.
They didn't meet up to my expectations.
They didn't do what I hoped and wanted them to do, what I worshipped them for.
The other side of that is you crush them.
They can't stand up under the weight that you put on them.
You have to do this.
You have to do these things.
I want you to be like this.
This is what's best for you.
I'm trying to give you this life that I want for you so bad.
And they would crush under that pressure, and they'd just find them distancing themselves
from you again.
And that opportunity that you have to be the most influential person in their life, you've
influenced them not to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, and strength,
but instead, if you idolize your kids, you ultimately teach them that they are God.
You say, hey, whatever's most important to you is what's most important.
And whatever you want is what's best.
Whatever whims that you, that educate your decisions, or whatever you feel, or your emotions
in a moment, or whatever your friends are doing, whatever it is, whatever you want, that's
what drives your decision making.
That's what drives my decision making as a parent, because I want, and more speaking,
you have idolized you, and then that's not good for anyone, because we're not making
the Lord our God, we're not loving Him with all our heart, soul, and strength.
I'm loving you.
I've put you in the place of God as my kids, and we have to be careful in those places
that we don't turn to that place.
And then also in that, we relativize what right and wrong is, because it's all based
on what they want and what they need.
It's not based on what Scripture says or what God calls us to.
And then finally, when you idolize your kids, you lose the reality that they can't die for
your sins.
They can't give you what you need most, what God has provided.
And so we can't idolize our kids if we hope to be parents like God has called us to be.
Again, we must love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and strength.
And so it made this drive us back to this reality that parenting is about God.
Parenting is about God.
It's not about our kids.
It's not about us.
It's about God.
And so to impress upon them these truths is simply to make them disciples of us.
As we learn to walk with God and understand Him and be in relationship with Him, and we
turn and the first people, as it says, that we turn to share this with as our own kids,
and we impress this upon them, we make them little disciples of ourselves, followers of
our teaching, and they will be, whether you teach good things or not, they will follow
you and learn from you.
We impress upon this truth, that love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.
And in doing that, you sit in this interesting place, this valuable place, and that you are
a bridge between them and God.
The Ten Commandments, right in the middle of the Ten Commandments, the first, a couple
of Ten Commandments, the first four, are all about relationship with God.
Love the Lord your God.
And know other God's before Him.
Don't worship idols.
Don't take His name in vain.
Keep the Lord's day Sabbath, the Sabbath holy.
And then Commandment number five, honor your mother and father.
Honor your parents.
Relationship with your parents.
It's like a bridge commandment right there as He goes from this authority figure, God
in your life, to the other commandments that all have to do with all about our relationship
with each other, don't kill each other, steal from each other, those things.
And so right there in the middle is the crux of honor your parents.
Relate well to your parents.
That relationship is so key.
Because as we stand as an authority figure in front of our children, as their parents,
we teach them about what authority is like.
We model for them who God is.
As best we can, we teach them about who He is.
There's a reason.
Every time we preach a sermon at Resonate Church, we begin to have to refer to parents
and talk about our Heavenly Father.
We have to give this little caveat of, recognize that many of your parents haven't done well
at this.
They haven't been a good model of who God is and how He loves you.
It's because we haven't done well at that parents.
You guys are familiar with that.
We sit in this place where we get to be a bridge and communicate to our kids who God
is.
I remember before even I got married, I prayed two prayers, God, I said, God, one day allow
me to be married that I might understand how much you love us as the church, how much
you love the church.
Because as we've been talking about this sermon series, again, the scriptures say that Christ's
love for the church is like the love between a husband and wife.
How a husband loves his bride is like how Christ loves the church.
I remember praying, God, teach me about that.
Allow me to be married so I can learn about that.
My second prayer was, God, teach me about how much you love me by allowing me to have
kids that I may understand that.
Through my relationship with my kids, I love them, I have a better and clearer understanding
of how you love me.
And as we do that, as we experience, again, our relationship with God as individuals,
as parents, we get to show, we get to experience how He loves us and then as we turn and we
face our kids and we get to experience this challenge, this tug of war sometimes in our
hearts where we see them be disobedient and see them do what's not best or see them make
unhealthy choices.
And we say, oh, I don't want that for you.
And God says, yeah, that's how I love you.
And it draws me back to Him and it says I want to draw, and it helps me to want to draw
closer to my kids.
We are a bridge.
We are a communicator to our kids about who God is.
So as we teach them about who God is, we have a phenomenal opportunity to teach them about
God's faithfulness.
In this same passage, Deuteronomy 6, verse 20, it says, in the future, when your sons
ask you, what is the meaning of the stipulations, the decrees and the laws and commands of
the Lord, the laws the Lord our God has commanded you, tell them, when we were slaves of Pharaoh
and Egypt, we were slaves of Pharaoh and Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with
a mighty hand.
Essentially, He says, if your kids come along one day and ask you, why do we have to learn
all this stuff?
Why do you constantly talk about when we walk or when we're laying down or always from
morning to night, why are you always bringing up loving the Lord of our God with our hearts
holding the strength?
Why does that always come up, Dad?
And then you say to Him, son or daughter, because God is faithful.
He has been faithful to us.
Let me tell you about it.
And as Moses says, hey, tell them about that time when He brought us out of Egypt.
Tell them that story.
And in our lives, we get a chance to say, all right, let me tell you about it.
Let me tell you what God's done in my life.
And you tell the story of what God has done in your life, how He's wooed you and drawn
Him to Himself and brought you to love Him with all your heart, soul, and strength.
Within this, oftentimes we think, yeah, that's great.
I love God and stuff, but really what I want for my kids is for them to have a good life.
I want them to have, you know, I want them to be comfortable.
I want them to be safe.
I don't want them to have hard times.
I want them to have some good stuff.
I want them to have food.
I want them to have a roof over their head.
I want to provide for them.
I want to take care of them.
Look, that's good.
Those desires are good, but again, they're not what's most important.
They're not as important as loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.
In the book of Matthew, Jesus comments on this, and he says in Matthew 6.33, but seek first
the kingdom of God and all, and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you
in a passage where he's talking about stuff and our worries in life and where, how am
I going to be provided for?
The same thing goes for your kids.
Ultimately, you keep loving God and you trust Him, and He's called you to action to provide,
protect, to do those things for your family, but ultimately trust Him for the provision
in your life and for your family, and routinely give thanks for His faithfulness.
And again, that's a great way to draw your kids into this and allow them to see, oh,
Dad's thankful for this food we have, God's, Dad's thankful for our house, Dad's thankful
for the sunshine today, Dad's thankful that it rains, Dad, why are you thankful that it
rains?
But allow them to hear you and see you be thankful for God's faithfulness.
Another passage that I came across in studying for this is Psalm 127, and I thought it was
a beautiful passage that communicates our role as parents, and as we point towards God,
we also point towards the mission of God.
The beauty of God's love is that when it comes into our life, it automatically overflows
out of our lives, and when it's perfected, when it does what it's meant to do, it begins
to affect the lives of someone else.
And we enter into the mission of God, of loving others, of going to those who don't know Him
and to love Him, and it's an interesting passage, Psalm 127, verses 3-5, children are a heritage
from the Lord offspring, a reward from Him, like arrows in the hands of a warrior, are
children born into one's youth, and blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them, arrows,
kids are like arrows in a quiver, blessed is the man who has a lot of arrows, and the
nuance of this passage and the time when it was written, obviously when you have more
kids, it's like you have an army to protect you, and when you get older, your kids take
care of you, but also kids are arrows, and arrows aren't meant to be held on to.
When an arrow does what it's meant to be done, it's shot, and you pull it back, and you release
it.
Raise your child up in the way it should go, and it'll go well for him as another proverb.
Your kids are meant to be released into the mission of God, and if they're going to be
on the mission of God, they must understand the love of God.
If you're to send your kids out, may your kids be the greatest thing that you do in this
world by sending out missionaries who love God.
May you send them off to college one day to a resonate campus somewhere in the Northwest
or across the world to help plan a church somewhere, and may they be on mission with
God.
May you send them out like arrows on a mission from somewhere to go.
Again, parenting is about God, and we have a chance to lead our kids in that direction,
to teach them some practical things.
I'm going to give you six things that you can do this week, if you will, to love the
Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength, and impress that upon your kids.
So you can write these down.
I'll put them up here.
Make some notes.
And those of you who don't have kids, I want you to say, how can I do this myself?
How can I begin this already?
Towards one day, maybe God will give me kids to be able to have this kind of influence with
them.
This first one's easy in that respect.
First of all, pray for them.
Pray for them.
So pray for God's provision in their life, those prayers that you want to pray for them.
They would have one day get married to a lovely Christian young lady or to a very handsome
and wise and rich young man.
Pray those prayers for them.
Sure, go for it.
God's like, yeah, I'll listen to those prayers, maybe.
And pray that they'll, you know, that tomorrow at school will go well, that they'll get along
with their friends and, you know, have a good group of friends.
Pray those prayers.
Please pray those prayers for them.
But also pray this prayer.
This is a hard prayer to pray.
Proud prayer to pray.
Pray that they would understand their sinfulness.
Pray that they would know that they need Jesus.
Pray that they know that they're not OK without their God.
Pray that prayer.
And the reality is that prayer is going to hurt.
God answering that prayer is going to hurt them.
Because that's a struggle to come to the place of brokenness to say, God, I am not OK on my
own.
I need you.
Ah, but that's the best place for them to be.
Pray that prayer for them.
And coming to a realization of that throughout their life that will begin when they're old
enough to think that they need to understand that they don't have it all figured out, that
they can't do this on their own.
They need to know that reality.
And that's a hard reality to grasp for all of us, no matter who you are.
Pray that prayer for your kids.
Also pray this prayer, that God would help you to know his love.
That you would know God's love.
But how much he loves you and that you would in turn be able to be a good picture of that
to your children.
Pray that prayer.
Pray it incessantly.
Never stop praying that prayer.
That you would know God's love.
Two, do this.
Let them see you learn from God.
Let them see you learn from God.
So and sometimes I try to kind of on purpose, let them catch me reading my Bible.
Let them catch me reading the scriptures, you know.
So I'll get up early when I know that sometimes before they get up, I've been doing this a
little bit this summer.
It's been successful some.
When I'll go in and I'll know where Sam's going to come downstairs when he gets up and
I'll be just resting there reading my Bible.
Oh, hey, what's up?
Just reading the Bible.
Someone I want my son to see me reading the Bible.
So he'll know that it's important.
Wow, dad's up even before I was reading the Bible.
That's interesting.
I wanted to know that.
I wanted him to see me learning from God.
Here's something else we do.
My wife helped institute this.
When we sit down at dinner at table, we talk about highs and lows of the day.
What was the best part of your day and what was the worst part of your day?
And sometimes it's just menial things like worst part of my day.
The printer wouldn't work.
I wanted to crush that thing.
I hated it.
What was the worst part of your day?
Well, I had a really hard conversation with a student.
Why, dad?
What was hard about it?
The decisions they were making were not best for them.
Well, tell me more about that and we'll get to get into this conversation.
I don't tell them your name, but we talked through that.
It's a teaching opportunity to say, hey, there's good decisions and there's unwise decisions.
This is what it looks like to love God in these moments and not love God.
What was the best part of your day?
Oh, the best part of my day was when I got to see this thing happen to students like,
or when I got to share the gospel with someone and they began to hear, oh, okay, that's what
good looks like.
Or I began to say, I talked to them about how I saw God when I was driving home today
and I saw him as I was in his rainbow over the wheat fields and described him about what
this beautiful thing I saw and I encountered God.
They began to say, oh, okay, that's what it looks like.
I love the Lord of God, my God with all my heart, soul, and strength, and I let them
see that, not purposefully, not purposefully like in a lesson all the time.
Here, we have three points on what you need to learn about God tonight.
But hey, let me tell you something I learned today.
See that.
Read the Bible with them.
Take some time to sit down with them and read the scriptures and allow them to see it.
An introduction to that is a great book that, honestly, everyone in this book, in this room
should read.
Jesus' Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones, and it breaks down the scriptures in a real
easy way for the kids to understand and goes through the story of the Bible, but it's a
beautiful picture that draws all the attention to Jesus, and I love it.
But read the scriptures with your kids.
Come up into small sections and sit down and read with them.
Number four, tell them that you love them and that you're proud of them.
Tell them that you love them and that you're proud of them.
Don't just hope that they assume it by all your actions and the ways you provide for
them, but tell them, allow them to hear this.
The Heavenly Father did this with his own son.
There are a couple occasions when Jesus would just go along doing this thing, be in Jesus,
and out of the heavens, God, the Father would say, this is my son and whom I'm well pleased.
It was baptism.
He said that.
And I love this picture.
It's like God is looking down on the sun.
He says, yeah, ask my boy, and I'm proud of him.
And I want you all to know that.
And he said it in front of all these people, and people are like, what was that?
Do that for your kids.
Allow them to hear you say, son, I love you, daughter, I love you, and I'm proud of you.
Number five, know them individually.
Know them individually.
When we got married, this is something my wife taught me about my own mom that she learned.
I have two sisters and a brother, and my wife came to our family, she learned this about
parenting from my mom, that it's important to know your kids as individuals, not just
to see them as a herd or as a group or as all these little things over there, but each
of them have a personality and they have a story and they have interest in my wife.
It's helped me do this and learn this about my own kids, who they are and how they're
different from one another.
The reality is our Heavenly Father does the same thing.
Psalm 139 is a beautiful passage that says, God knows us.
He knew us when we were still in our mother's womb.
He knows everything about us.
He knows everything we're going to say before we say it.
He knows everywhere we're going to sit before we sit there.
He knows everything.
There's nowhere we can go to escape him.
God knows us.
And as a parent, you get the chance to know your kids individually.
And when you do that, you will learn more and more how to love them and how to direct
them towards God's love and how they can love the Lord their God with all their heart,
soul, and strength with all of them.
And then finally, six, and this is a hard one and important one, say you're sorry when
you mess up.
Say you're sorry when you mess up.
Teach them that you aren't perfect, that they aren't perfect and we all need Jesus.
And so when things aren't going well and you do things you aren't proud of, it's okay
to tell your kids, I'm sorry.
Son, I'm sorry, Daddy shouldn't have raised his voice.
Son, I'm sorry that I grabbed your arm so tightly that wasn't very respectful of you.
Son, I'm sorry I didn't explain to you what was going to happen today and that sets you
up to fail because you didn't know how to be obedient.
I'm sorry I didn't communicate what I need from you today and I got frustrated with you.
To say those things to your kids is important.
For them to hear that from you is important.
For you to be able to repent of your sin, of your selfishness, of your idolization of
them and then walk in health, walk in restored relationship with them.
That they may learn to trust you and follow you and give you influence in their life so
that when you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength, they'll
be like, okay, I want to do that too.
Teach me how to do that, Dad.
Teach me how to do that, Mom, and lead them in that.
Begin that this week.
What can you do this week on that?
And to ask yourself those questions and maybe this would be good parents, if you're going
to engage date night to more night, here's some questions for you just reflecting on
those things.
First of all, it'd be good for you to sit down and talk about, hey, what did my parents
teach me?
How did they influence me towards the God?
Was that a good thing or a bad thing?
This is what I want to take away from that influence they have on me and I want to apply
in our relationship with our kids.
Ask yourself those questions.
Here's something else.
What is your, or when are you, when is your parenting about you?
Ask yourself that question and discuss that among yourselves, amongst yourselves.
When do you idolize your kids or how are you idolizing your kids?
Parents ask yourself that and talk about it.
And then finally, what are you going to do this week to love the Lord your God with all
your heart, soul, and strength and invite your kids into that?
We have a chance to continue in this, even right now, the band's going to come up here
in just a moment and we're going to take communion.
And as you do that, parents, I want to invite you into this, and even those of you who aren't
parents yet, I want you to pray a prayer as you take communion, as you take the bread
and you dip it in the juice, and you remember what Christ has done on your behalf.
You place that in your mouth and you taste the sweetness and you say, oh God, it's good.
I remember His faithfulness.
And as you walk away from communion, as you take that and you taste that sweetness in
your mouth, I want you to pray a prayer.
God help my kids to know this truth.
God help my kids to know how much you love them.
So as we worship here in just a moment, pray those prayers.
God that my kids would be able to stand here and take communion with me.
My kids would know your love.
They would love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, and strength.
God, I pray those prayers right now and I pray that you would indeed lead us, that you
would guide us to be parents that love you with all our heart, soul, and strength.
God give us the courage to be honest with ourselves, to be honest with you, to be honest
with our kids, that we don't have it all figured out all the time.
God help us to rest in the fact that we need you, to release ourselves of the burden of
trying to do it on our own, and God allow your grace to educate us, allow your love
to teach us how to love them.
God may we be beautiful pictures of who you are.
God may the parents, they're here tonight, experience that this week.
God may all who will have kids one day in this room, God may they know this truth.
May they know the joys of loving you with all their heart, soul, and strength.
May they lead their kids to one day, do that when they lie down and when they wake up,
when they walk and when they rest.
May they have these truths in all areas of their life.
God teach us to walk in them.
And ask this in the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
