SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning.
SPEAKER_00: It's so good to see all of you here worshiping with us today.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to welcome all of you here at this campus, but I also like to welcome all of you to all of our campuses and all of our venues and those of you that are worshiping with us online.
SPEAKER_00: I'm Tony Walliser, I'm one of the pastors here at Silverdale, and I have the privilege today to share with you God's word.
SPEAKER_00: So this one I encourage you to do.
SPEAKER_00: Go and take your Bibles, open up in the Old Testament to the book of Psalms, Psalm 127.
SPEAKER_00: Turn to Psalm 127, and you can also do this.
SPEAKER_00: You can take out these Bible study outlines that we provide for you.
SPEAKER_00: We give you these so you can follow along and take notes as we study God's Word together.
SPEAKER_00: We've been in a series called Turn Your Heart Toward Home.
SPEAKER_00: And it's been a short little series where we focused on the family.
SPEAKER_00: And today we conclude that series by talking about the real purpose of parenting.
SPEAKER_00: Why, why, and what are we supposed to do in parenting?
SPEAKER_00: So as we get started with this, I want to take a quick poll here in all of our venues as well.
SPEAKER_00: So if you are a parent, would you raise your hand?
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: All right, awesome.
SPEAKER_00: That's the vast majority here.
SPEAKER_00: Awesome, great.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you are here that are new parents?
SPEAKER_00: That means you have a child that's two years and younger.
SPEAKER_00: Any new parents here?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to our world.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00: This is sweet.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you are empty nesters?
SPEAKER_00: I mean your sort of job is done and you sent your kids out.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody here?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's hootin' and hollering.
SPEAKER_00: Happy people there, you know, whoo, absolutely, okay?
SPEAKER_00: There's a new um phenomenon in parenting.
SPEAKER_00: It's called the boomerang parent, where you send your kids off and then they they're back, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so they come back, okay?
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna have you raise your hand.
SPEAKER_00: We already know who you are.
SPEAKER_00: It's the grimaces on your face, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um how about this?
SPEAKER_00: Um, any grandparents here?
SPEAKER_00: Woo! Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of love that grandparenting.
SPEAKER_00: Parenting is very important, and the fact is that we're gonna look at a psalm today written by King Solomon.
SPEAKER_00: Now, he wrote a lot of Proverbs, but only a couple of Psalms.
SPEAKER_00: And so he was described as the wisest man on the earth at the time.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's pretty important the things that he thinks about parenting.
SPEAKER_00: And so let's look at this passage together.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 127, let's begin with verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says, Behold, children are a gift of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The fruit of the womb is a reward.
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: That means children are a blessing.
SPEAKER_00: That means that if you have a child, you have been blessed by Almighty God, right?
SPEAKER_00: Now, I know that we live in a culture today that doesn't believe that.
SPEAKER_00: They think that, okay, you know what, children, there's sort of an inconvenience, they're a burden, you know, I don't want, you know, I don't want to have any kids, don't want any stretch marks, I don't want to, you know, lose out on the adventures of life and all that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_00: You hear all that stuff, right?
SPEAKER_00: Well, let me say.
SPEAKER_00: The adventure of a lifetime is parenting, right?
SPEAKER_00: It is an incredible joy.
SPEAKER_00: And so no matter what the world says, God says if you have a child, you are blessed by Almighty God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, does that mean that parenting is easy?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Parenting can be hard, it can be difficult, um, it can be challenging, but think about it.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that's important in life has challenges, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so you learn to overcome those challenges because you realize there's an incredible reward.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Bible says that children are a reward.
SPEAKER_00: It is a blessing from God.
SPEAKER_00: But then what Solomon does next is he gives us an analogy of parenting that we're sort of not expecting.
SPEAKER_00: Look at it.
SPEAKER_00: The next verse, verse 4, says this like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth.
SPEAKER_00: How blessed is a man whose quiver is full of them.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Solomon knows that you can use a metaphor, right?
SPEAKER_00: A word picture to describe what parenting is like.
SPEAKER_00: Now, he could have easily said, hey, parenting's important, it's a blessing, this is how you should parent.
SPEAKER_00: But what he does is he gives us an analogy.
SPEAKER_00: He paints a picture for us, and what is that?
SPEAKER_00: That children are arrows.
SPEAKER_00: And parents are warriors.
SPEAKER_00: And we have this task of shooting those arrows in the right way.
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: Like I never really thought of parenting as being at war.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, at war with my kids.
SPEAKER_00: No, it's not talking about being war with your kids.
SPEAKER_00: So talking about being at war with the world.
SPEAKER_00: And that we have this responsibility as warriors, parents, to launch our children in such a way that you know what?
SPEAKER_00: They make a difference in this world.
SPEAKER_00: And the reality is, is we're seeing so many kids that don't get launched the right way, and so they become casualties in the war.
SPEAKER_00: And so, by using Solomon's analogy of parenting, I want us to learn, okay, what's the proper way?
SPEAKER_00: What does parenting look like?
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So several things that I want you to see on your outlines.
SPEAKER_00: Jot them down.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, is this the arrow must be shaped.
SPEAKER_00: The arrow must be shaped.
SPEAKER_00: And so children are described as arrows.
SPEAKER_00: And I have an arrow here that I um I got from our academy.
SPEAKER_00: And um, as I did a little research on arrows, I discovered that there's over 180 different kinds of arrows.
SPEAKER_00: Depending on what your target is, what your distance is, what you're trying to take down, there's all these different arrows.
SPEAKER_00: Now, today, if you want different kinds of arrows, what do you do?
SPEAKER_00: You just go to a sporting goods store and you buy the arrows that you need.
SPEAKER_00: But that was not the case in Solomon's day.
SPEAKER_00: In Solomon's day, the warrior had to make his own arrows.
SPEAKER_00: The warrior had to find the wood, the right wood, and he had to shape it, right?
SPEAKER_00: You know, he had to make sure, okay, there's feathers on the end, okay, I gotta make sure that they're the right way so that this thing will fly straight and not crooked.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, the tip is dull.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have to sharpen it to make sure it's correct, right?
SPEAKER_00: It was the warrior's responsibility to shape the arrow.
SPEAKER_00: It is the parents' responsibility to shape the arrow of the child, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And so if that's the case, there's a basic principle here.
SPEAKER_00: Jot this on your outline, and it's this discipline your children when they are young.
SPEAKER_00: You need to discipline children when you're when they're young.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because, hope you know this, children are not born straight.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: They're not.
SPEAKER_00: They are born crooked, they are born with a um a bent away from God.
SPEAKER_00: We have a sin nature.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child.
SPEAKER_00: And so, what do you have to do?
SPEAKER_00: You've got to be able to shape your child.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, think of it as a young tree.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's amazing what you can do with a young tree when it has tender branches, you're able to bend those branches, and you can literally shape that tree into all different kinds of ways.
SPEAKER_00: But what happens?
SPEAKER_00: When that tree gets a little older, and then you try to bend those branches, they won't bend anymore, they will break.
SPEAKER_00: And so you have a limited window, a period of time in the life of your child where you can shape them effectively.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And then what happens if you do?
SPEAKER_00: Well, look at this promise in Proverbs 22.
SPEAKER_00: It says this train up a child in the way he should go, even when he's old, he'll not depart from it.
SPEAKER_00: So you're training children when they're young, and then when they're older as adults, okay, they're still walking in the right path.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because they were shaped the right way.
SPEAKER_00: Now, on your outlines, I've put down there um four stages of parenting.
SPEAKER_00: Um, there's a lot of overlap in years here, but basically, whenever I understood these different four stages of parenting, it helped me know that, okay, I parent a preschooler different than I parent a teenager.
SPEAKER_00: And so what does that look like?
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's look at the four stages.
SPEAKER_00: First, let's talk about the discipline stage.
SPEAKER_00: The discipline stage that is the preschool years.
SPEAKER_00: It is going to be during the preschool years that you train your child to respect you and obey.
SPEAKER_00: That happens in the preschool years.
SPEAKER_00: Respect, honor, and obedience happens in the preschool years.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't teach your preschooler to respect and obey you, they're not going to do it as a teenager.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So you've got to do it during the preschool years.
SPEAKER_00: You've got a limited window of opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: Next is training.
SPEAKER_00: Call that the elementary years.
SPEAKER_00: You're training your child, you're equipping them, helping them learn some life skills.
SPEAKER_00: Did you know that 80% of your child's character and 90% of their personality is developed by the age of seven?
SPEAKER_00: And so what do you do?
SPEAKER_00: You say, This is how you're supposed to live, this is how you're supposed to act, this kind of behavior is unacceptable, right?
SPEAKER_00: You're training them in life skills.
SPEAKER_00: And then what?
SPEAKER_00: Well, then comes the coaching.
SPEAKER_00: Call that the teenage years, the coaching.
SPEAKER_00: So the parent becomes more like a coach.
SPEAKER_00: Now you're still the parent, but the child is the one who's running the plays, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so what does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: You're preparing them for adulthood, so that means that you have to train them more, give them understanding why you're doing what you're doing, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, so basically, as an example, you know, as a preschooler, you tell your child to do something, they go, why?
SPEAKER_00: What do you do?
SPEAKER_00: You said, because I said so, that's why, okay?
SPEAKER_00: But as a teenager, they go, why?
SPEAKER_00: You go, okay, let me explain to you the why behind the reason, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Because they need to know that, because they're about to enter into adulthood.
SPEAKER_00: So you're parenting differently.
SPEAKER_00: And if you do a good job in the first three stages, then Lord willing, you'll come to the fourth stage, which is the friendship stage.
SPEAKER_00: That's whenever your children are adults.
SPEAKER_00: Like all my kids are adults now, even though they respect me as their father, our relationship is more like a friendship relationship.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the problem: a lot of parents want to bring that friendship stage up earlier than what they should, right?
SPEAKER_00: I want to be your buddy, I want to be your friend.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, what they need most is you to be the parent.
SPEAKER_00: Only you can be that parent, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Eventually the friendship will come, but you gotta be the parent at the proper stage.
SPEAKER_00: Now, you know, I gotta admit, um, I was blessed to grow up on a farm.
SPEAKER_00: Um at the time I didn't think it was a blessing, I thought it was a curse.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I am the most underprivileged kid I know, right?
SPEAKER_00: I've got daily chores on the farm.
SPEAKER_00: I wish my dad had a real job like all the other kids I know, their dads work in the city, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's the way I thought.
SPEAKER_00: But as I look back, I realize it was a gift that I got to spend every day working right beside my dad.
SPEAKER_00: And because my dad is a godly man with good character, I learned a lot of his values just by working next to him.
SPEAKER_00: I look back, and the way that I view life, I'm very pragmatic, I learned that from my dad.
SPEAKER_00: I'm very frugal with my finances, I learned that from my dad.
SPEAKER_00: I have a strong work ethic, I learned that from my dad.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I realize that there's different ways that people view life.
SPEAKER_00: I remember when I was a teenager, we had some family friends that lived in Tampa, um, Florida, and so they asked my dad, hey, can can you come?
SPEAKER_00: We want to have a proposition for you.
SPEAKER_00: So my dad, you know, goes there to visit with them, and and they said, Ed, that's my dad's name, they said, Ed, um, our oldest son, Freddie, he needs a car.
SPEAKER_00: But we have terrible credit, and we can't, you know, help help him buy a car.
SPEAKER_00: Would you consider co-signing for Freddie's car note?
SPEAKER_00: And um, so that he, you know, he can get a car and go to work and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_00: And my dad said a couple things.
SPEAKER_00: He said, No, I don't think I can do that for a couple reasons.
SPEAKER_00: One is because I don't want money to you know divide us as friends.
SPEAKER_00: And then secondly, um, when I was Freddie's age, I didn't have a car.
SPEAKER_00: I had a bike.
SPEAKER_00: I um drove my bike back and forth to um to work for a couple years.
SPEAKER_00: I saved up my money, and um that's how I bought a ticket to go from Switzerland to um to the United States.
SPEAKER_00: And uh he goes, you know, if I did that, you know, I think Freddie can do that as well.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, this is what I'll do.
SPEAKER_00: I will um pay, give you some money for Freddie to get a really good bike.
SPEAKER_00: He can probably do that for a couple months, save up money, and then he'll be able to buy his own vehicle.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Freddie thought that was the stupidest thing he's ever heard in his life.
SPEAKER_00: But to me, it made absolute complete sense.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's the way I was raised.
SPEAKER_00: I was raised not to get a handout.
SPEAKER_00: I was raised to make the best out of your circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: I was raised to save up money and prepare and then buy things later on.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way I was raised.
SPEAKER_00: The reason I was raised that way is because I was raised by my dad.
SPEAKER_00: I was shaped by my parents.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And so the first thing is the arrow must be shaped.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, is this the bow must be steady.
SPEAKER_00: The bow must be steady.
SPEAKER_00: So if you and I are parents and we are warriors, then obviously we have arrows.
SPEAKER_00: We just talked about them, but we also have a bow.
SPEAKER_00: Now I have here, you know, compound bow, it's a modern-day bow that is used.
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, imagine in Solomon's day, they didn't have this kind of contraption.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine, you know, the Native Americans with the bows and arrows.
SPEAKER_00: That's sort of the idea of what they had.
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, you say, okay, I've got this arrow, I've been shaping it, but I've got this bow.
SPEAKER_00: And this bow is gonna have to be, you know, steady.
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, what so I'm looking at the bow as sort of some characteristics of our parenting style, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so you go, what is it, what does a parenting style look like?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the apostle Paul talks about this in Ephesians.
SPEAKER_00: Look at it in Ephesians chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: The apostle Paul writes this He says, Fathers, do not exasperate your children to anger, but nurture them in discipline and instruction of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul says there's a wrong way.
SPEAKER_00: You can be so hard on your kids that you can literally exasperate them to anger.
SPEAKER_00: You can dishearten them.
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's another extreme, okay, extreme, and that is you can have no rules at all.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, no, neither one of those are right.
SPEAKER_00: What you need to do is you need to train and discipline your kid in the instruction of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so you can be too harsh, you can be too soft.
SPEAKER_00: So what's the proper thing?
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's use the bow as an analogy.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, the bow has to be flexible, right?
SPEAKER_00: The bow has to be flexible.
SPEAKER_00: And so, whenever you think about parenting, you do know parenting takes a lot of flexibility, right?
SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna parent, okay, there's gotta be some flexibility in that.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about it.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever you got a bow, it bends, right?
SPEAKER_00: There's some flexibility in a bow.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the very same way in parenting.
SPEAKER_00: Now, you may go, does that mean, you know what, we got no standards at home?
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, I'm not saying that at all.
SPEAKER_00: We're not compromising our values, our ethics, but we are saying that you know what?
SPEAKER_00: You can give some grace.
SPEAKER_00: If you are always hard all the time and you're just a drill instructor and a drill instructor, and it's rules, rules, rules, rules, and there's no grace and there's no flexibility.
SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna exasperate your kids.
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna feel like there ain't no way I can, you know, keep up with with mom and dad's, you know, expectations of me.
SPEAKER_00: Think of your heavenly father.
SPEAKER_00: Does God have standards?
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, he does, right?
SPEAKER_00: But he also gives grace and mercy and forgiveness, and we've got to have that same kind of flexibility.
SPEAKER_00: And so, parents, yeah, you're shaping your kids, but guess what?
SPEAKER_00: You need a little flexibility with your kids and the way you parent them, which then leads to the second characteristic.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, you have flexibility, but also you need to be consistent.
SPEAKER_00: You need to be consistent.
SPEAKER_00: Now, let's be honest, this is the hardest part of parenting because we're so inconsistent.
SPEAKER_00: But one thing that's true about this bow here, it's always consistent.
SPEAKER_00: I pull it back, it always has the same strength, it always has the same power, right?
SPEAKER_00: So I know exactly what this bow's going to do.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's the very same way in your home.
SPEAKER_00: When you set a boundary, that needs to be your boundary.
SPEAKER_00: It can't just be one boundary one week and another set of boundaries another week.
SPEAKER_00: It can't be one rule for one kid and another rule for another kid.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the fact is that you've got to say, I've got to be consistent.
SPEAKER_00: I've got to be consistent in the way that I treat them, the way that I talk with them, the way that I lead them.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is especially why divorce is so impacting negatively for kids.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because they're in two different households.
SPEAKER_00: And so you got two different sets of rules, and the kids are confused.
SPEAKER_00: What's right, what's wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And so, yes, we need to be consistent in our parenting, but guess what else?
SPEAKER_00: You need to be consistent in your faith.
SPEAKER_00: We're just not parents here.
SPEAKER_00: We're Christian parents.
SPEAKER_00: And so, what do we want?
SPEAKER_00: We want to pass on our faith to the next generation.
SPEAKER_00: And if that's gonna happen, they need to see consistency in your life.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, during the preschool years, in the elementary years, your kids they'll go, oh yeah, mom and dad take me to church, they love Jesus, I love Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is all awesome at church, right?
SPEAKER_00: But then what happens?
SPEAKER_00: Teenagers are able to sniff out hypocrisy.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: They can.
SPEAKER_00: They can see through our act, they can go, okay, either this is fake, it's not real, or basically we train our kids to just play church, right?
SPEAKER_00: And it's not real.
SPEAKER_00: We just go through the motions.
SPEAKER_00: And so so we need to learn to be consistent.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think about a guy that almost a couple hundred years ago, his um his dad was Jewish, and he was being raised Jewish, and so they moved to Germany, and he says to his son Carl, he says, Um, Carl, this is what I'm gonna do.
SPEAKER_00: Now that we're in Germany, we're gonna convert and we're gonna become German Lutherans.
SPEAKER_00: And um, so that's where we're gonna start going to church now.
SPEAKER_00: And so Carl, his son, asked his dad, he says, Does that mean that you now believe that Jesus is the Messiah?
SPEAKER_00: And he goes, No, I don't believe Jesus is Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I don't even believe there is a God at all.
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm just doing this so that, you know, becoming a German Lutheran, so that, you know, more people will come to our shop.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a business decision.
SPEAKER_00: And so something in that child's heart sort of died.
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, oh, okay, faith isn't real.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish faith isn't real, the Christian faith isn't real, God isn't real.
SPEAKER_00: That became his worldview.
SPEAKER_00: Well, eventually that boy Carl, he grew up, he moved to Britain.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a picture of him.
SPEAKER_00: You know him as Karl Marx.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote the Communist Manifesto, which became the most devastating philosophy known to the world in the last hundred and fifty years.
SPEAKER_00: It has devastated more countries, brought about more violence, has killed tens of millions of people on this planet.
SPEAKER_00: And it all goes back to a young man who saw the hypocrisy of his dad's faith.
SPEAKER_00: Do you understand how important this is?
SPEAKER_00: Consistency is so important.
SPEAKER_00: And so, parent, you're a warrior.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to shape the arrow of your children.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to make sure the bow is steady in your parenting.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a third thing that I want you to see, and it's this.
SPEAKER_00: Number three is that the aim must be straight.
SPEAKER_00: The aim must be straight.
SPEAKER_00: If you are a warrior and you're going to battle, then you got to make sure you know what the target is, right?
SPEAKER_00: You've got to be aiming in the right spot.
SPEAKER_00: Well, today I just happen to have a target on stage here, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So I've got this target over there, and Lord willing, by the end of this service, I'm gonna hit that target, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So you got that target over there, and it's the very same thing.
SPEAKER_00: We've got a target.
SPEAKER_00: The problem is that there's a lot of kids that are launched from our homes with no target at all.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: It's sort of like that um that old poem, I shot an arrow in the air, then it landed, I know not where.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of parents that, you know what, they're just haphazardly doing this thing with no really goal or target at all of where they're gonna launch their kids.
SPEAKER_00: As a pastor, I've seen a lot of different parenting styles.
SPEAKER_00: Some parents, I call them the ostrich parents.
SPEAKER_00: These are the ostrich parents, they just stick their head in the sand and hope that it's all gonna work out around them.
SPEAKER_00: And then you have the delegating parent.
SPEAKER_00: These are the parents that basically delegate the responsibility to everybody else, right?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, the school will take care of them, okay, the church will take care of them, or the sports league will take care of them.
SPEAKER_00: Then you have the Amazon prime parents, those are the ones that are always buying stuff for their kids, thinking that stuff is the answer to their needs, and it's not.
SPEAKER_00: And then you have the warden parents, where house just feels like being in prison, and it's all rules and regulations, and there's no grace, and you're, you know, you're a drill sergeant.
SPEAKER_00: Then there's the career advancement parent.
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's the parents that are all about, you know, getting my kid in the right school and getting the right grades, go to the right college so they have the right career so they can be advanced.
SPEAKER_00: Then you have the taxicab parents are always running their kids around from this event to that activity to that sporting event, right?
SPEAKER_00: They're always running the kids around thinking that is what's most important.
SPEAKER_00: Now, let me be honest with you.
SPEAKER_00: I have been like those parents at one time or another.
SPEAKER_00: Every one of those parent styles has been me.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: But what happens is, and I'm not saying that some of those things are not important.
SPEAKER_00: They are.
SPEAKER_00: But they're not the most important thing.
SPEAKER_00: They're not the primary target that you're aiming your children toward.
SPEAKER_00: So, million-dollar question, okay, what is the primary target where to aim our kids for?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jesus tells us.
SPEAKER_00: Look at this passage in Matthew chapter 6, verse 33.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 6, 33.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, let's read this verse aloud together.
SPEAKER_00: Ready?
SPEAKER_00: Let's say it together.
SPEAKER_00: But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these other things will be provided for you.
SPEAKER_00: You see what Jesus is saying?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is saying, seek me first.
SPEAKER_00: Seek the kingdom of God first.
SPEAKER_00: And if you will put first things first, then what happens?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, all those other things you need, all those other things you feel are very important, I'll take care of those things.
SPEAKER_00: I will.
SPEAKER_00: I'll provide those things, but you've got to put me first, right?
SPEAKER_00: So the fact is, is that you can have kids that are smart kids and athletic kids and pretty kids and popular kids, but if they don't love Jesus Christ, you have failed as a parent.
SPEAKER_00: You have shot them in the wrong direction.
SPEAKER_00: They have not hit the target.
SPEAKER_00: Let me explain to you how precious your children are.
SPEAKER_00: When you die, you can't take your, you know, your house with you.
SPEAKER_00: You can't take your wealth with you.
SPEAKER_00: You can't take any awards or degrees with you.
SPEAKER_00: When you die, you can't take your car, your bank account, or your boat, or your stock portfolio.
SPEAKER_00: You can't take any of those things with you.
SPEAKER_00: But there is one thing you can take with you.
SPEAKER_00: Your family, your children.
SPEAKER_00: Point them to Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Make sure you are always pointing them to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That, yes, hopefully they'll be successful and be well-adjusted kids in this life.
SPEAKER_00: But I want them to have a heart for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's the most important thing.
SPEAKER_00: Now you may go, how do you do that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, let me just give you some basic things of what my wife Susan and I did that helped.
SPEAKER_00: You begin young.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever they're young, we would read Bible stories to them at bedtime.
SPEAKER_00: Kids don't want to go to bed anyway, so they really listen attentively to Bible stories at night.
SPEAKER_00: And then what do you do?
SPEAKER_00: You pray over them.
SPEAKER_00: You pray for them.
SPEAKER_00: You pray that they come to know Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You pray God's favor on them.
SPEAKER_00: You take the hurts of their life and you pray about those things.
SPEAKER_00: And then what do you do?
SPEAKER_00: You take them to church.
SPEAKER_00: You don't just send them to church, you bring them to church.
SPEAKER_00: And then after church, you talk about what you think?
SPEAKER_00: What what how about this?
SPEAKER_00: What did you learn in your group, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you talk about baptism, you talk about the Lord's Supper, you talk about Easter, you talk about Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: You talk about those things with your children.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you what you don't talk about after church.
SPEAKER_00: You don't say, boy, that worship was terrible.
SPEAKER_00: That pastor, man, he can't preach.
SPEAKER_00: Or that um, you know, those people there are this, right?
SPEAKER_00: You know what you do?
SPEAKER_00: If you talk negatively about the Lord and his people in front of your kids, they will not have faith.
SPEAKER_00: You'll just destroy their faith because that's what they'll see from that.
SPEAKER_00: What else?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, buy them Christian music, Christian videos, things like that that just can introduce them to the Lord in different kinds of mediums.
SPEAKER_00: Um, have a devotion time together.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we always took breakfast, um, just a short time, you know, 10 minutes just to read the word or read a devotion together.
SPEAKER_00: And then hear this pray for your kids.
SPEAKER_00: Pray, pray, pray.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody's gonna pray for your kids more than you do.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I know that I've shared this with you before, but I could remember when my dad started directing me spiritually.
SPEAKER_00: Now, again, great parents loved me, cared for me, provided for me, was a role model for me.
SPEAKER_00: They brought me to church, okay?
SPEAKER_00: But they did not spiritually direct me.
SPEAKER_00: And so what happened?
SPEAKER_00: By the time I was 19 years old, um, had a great work ethic, had a lot of friends, um, you know, working on my dad's farm, everything's going great, but there's a problem.
SPEAKER_00: My life was spiraling out of control.
SPEAKER_00: I was an alcoholic.
SPEAKER_00: And my dad could see my life was spiraling out of control.
SPEAKER_00: And he could see that my two brothers, our lives were just as bad.
SPEAKER_00: And so he made a decision in one January.
SPEAKER_00: He said, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: This is what we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_00: Every morning, whenever we get up, before we go to work on the farm, we're gonna read the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna read through the entire Bible this next year.
SPEAKER_00: Now, at first I didn't like it, my old brother didn't like it, had to get up earlier in order to do that, but you know, he's my dad and he's the boss, and so you do what your boss says.
SPEAKER_00: Can I just tell you that the more we did that, God starts changing my heart, softening my heart.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: And by the time that fall, I'd given my life to Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And it all goes back to the point where my dad said, Okay, I need to start directing my kids spiritually.
SPEAKER_00: And that made all the difference in the world.
SPEAKER_00: He pointed the target that we are supposed to be shooting for.
SPEAKER_00: And so, as parents, you are a warrior, you got your arrows, your children, you got your bow, your your parenting style, right?
SPEAKER_00: You're aiming them where?
SPEAKER_00: Toward the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: But then there's a final thing.
SPEAKER_00: Number four is this the arrow must be sent.
SPEAKER_00: The arrow must be sent.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to launch your kids into the world to fulfill their God-ordained design.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if your kids are arrows, that means it presupposes that you are to launch them, right?
SPEAKER_00: You are to send them out.
SPEAKER_00: And so after you have loved them and disciplined them and trained them and coached them, what do you do?
SPEAKER_00: You send them.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the problem.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of parents that don't like sending their kids out, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the fact is, is listen, the reason why you parent is to work yourself out of a job and release them, right?
SPEAKER_00: You at some point you gotta say, you gotta get out of here.
SPEAKER_00: You can't stay here anymore, right?
SPEAKER_00: You're 35 living in the basement, and that ain't gonna work no more, right?
SPEAKER_00: You gotta move out, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the truth.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, at a certain point you gotta cut your dad's purse strings, you gotta cut your mama's apron strings, you gotta say, okay, I gotta be my own person, be my own adult.
SPEAKER_00: I remember when I was um 20 years old, I left Florida to go to Texas to go to school, had to get a full-time job.
SPEAKER_00: I was going to school full-time, I made it all on my own.
SPEAKER_00: I was, you know, my own adult.
SPEAKER_00: That's what every child needs to learn to do.
SPEAKER_00: Work yourself out of a job and send your kids out of your home.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you're called to do.
SPEAKER_00: Now, it is typically after you release your kids that you begin to see how good or how bad you did as a parent, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's sad.
SPEAKER_00: Now, again, I'm not putting all guilt on us, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because the fact is your kid has their own self-will, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they they're they have their own free will, they make their own decisions, but you can see a little bit, okay, I did a good job in parenting this way, or maybe I didn't in that way.
SPEAKER_00: It becomes the test that you can't study for, you can't cram for, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about it.
SPEAKER_00: I mean when I was in college, what I would do, you know, I'm gonna have finals, so I'd stay up all night cramming for those tests.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you you take caffeine or um, you know, Red Bull, you're staying up all night, you're trying to cram for that test.
SPEAKER_00: You can't cram for parenthood.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's like going to the dentist, right?
SPEAKER_00: You go to the dentist, you you you know, you see on the counter, oh no, I've got a dentist appointment today, but I haven't flossed all year long.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't been brushing right, so let me brush real quick right now and floss my gums, you know, three times the, you know, what are you?
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna go there, they'll go, we know what you did.
SPEAKER_00: You're bleeding, your gums are bleeding, you didn't floss all year long.
SPEAKER_00: We know what you were doing today, right?
SPEAKER_00: They can see why, because you can't cram for a dentist appointment.
SPEAKER_00: You can't cram for parenting.
SPEAKER_00: It's not like the night before their 18th birthday, you go, okay, I got a decade of father-daughter, you know, dates, I gotta get in here, and we've got to have some deep conversations real quick, and I've got to have a couple of decades of um, you know, um, of taking you to church real quick.
SPEAKER_00: No, that's not gonna work.
SPEAKER_00: You can't cram this.
SPEAKER_00: It takes 18 years to parent.
SPEAKER_00: It takes a lot of time and effort and energy and love and consistency.
SPEAKER_00: But when you've done that, guess what?
SPEAKER_00: You can launch them out with confidence and joy, knowing they're gonna hit God's mark.
SPEAKER_00: Well, in fact, look at the promise that Solomon gives us in verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: How joyful is the man whose quiver is full of them.
SPEAKER_00: He will not be put to shame when he confronts his opponents at the city gates.
SPEAKER_00: What's going on there?
SPEAKER_00: You got a dad who has a legacy of children, he has incredible confidence even with his enemies.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because his kids are passing on his legacy.
SPEAKER_00: Notice what it says this way in Proverbs.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 10 says this a wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish child brings grief to his mother.
SPEAKER_00: So, parents release your kids.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the reality your kids will touch and do things and have influence in areas that you never could.
SPEAKER_00: That's the joy of parenting.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think about my dad.
SPEAKER_00: When my dad made a decision that he was gonna start directing his sons spiritually by reading the Bible, he had no clue the impact that was gonna make.
SPEAKER_00: He had no idea.
SPEAKER_00: My older brother Carl, he's an elder of a church in um in Florida.
SPEAKER_00: Myself and my younger brother Troy, we're both pastors.
SPEAKER_00: My older sister Kathy, she's a pastor's wife.
SPEAKER_00: He had no idea.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the impact he was going to make with that one decision, I'm gonna start directing my children spiritually.
SPEAKER_00: So let's put all this together.
SPEAKER_00: If you have shaped the arrow correctly, right?
SPEAKER_00: And you can hold the um the bow, you know, steady, and then you can um aim correctly.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's really gonna be the problem here, okay?
SPEAKER_00: All right, and then what do you do?
SPEAKER_00: You launch it.
SPEAKER_00: Well, hang on, I can do better than that.
SPEAKER_00: It's a crooked target.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, ready, here we go.
SPEAKER_00: A little better.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll do better in your parenting than that.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Parents, your warriors.
SPEAKER_00: Shape them, train them, aim them, and then send them.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're called to do as parents.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you so much for your word.
SPEAKER_00: I thank you for the importance of parenting.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray, Lord Jesus, your blessings over every parent here.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, I know that a lot of us who are kids are already grown, we can look back with some regret and maybe guilt.
SPEAKER_00: But Lord, we know that's not from you.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Lord, we come knowing that today is a new day.
SPEAKER_00: And God, you've given us the ability as parents and grandparents to influence the next generation.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to be faithful to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Bless us.
SPEAKER_00: Meet with us even today.
SPEAKER_00: We pray in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.