14 Gospel Principles for Parenting (part 2)

Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Parenting (by Paul Tripp)

Principle 1: Calling - Nothing is more important in your life than being one of God’s tools to form a human soul.
Principle 2: Grace - God never calls you to a task without giving you what you need to do it. He never sends you without going with you.

Principle 3: Law - Your children need God’s law, but you cannot ask the law to do what only grace can accomplish.

Principle 4: Inability - Recognizing what you are unable to do is essential to good parenting.

Principle 5: Identity - If you are not resting as a parent in your identity in Christ, you will look for identity in your children.

Principle 6: Process - You must be committed as a parent to long–view parenting because change is a process and not an event.

Principle 7: Lost - As a parent, you’re not dealing just with bad behavior but a condition that causes bad behavior.

Principle 8: Authority - One of the foundational heart issues in the life of every child is authority. Teaching and modeling the protective beauty of authority is one of the foundations of good parenting.

Principle 9: Foolishness - The foolishness inside your children is more dangerous to them than the temptation outside of them. Only God’s grace has the power to rescue fools.

Principle 10: Character - Not all of the wrong your children do is a direct rebellion to authority; much of the wrong is the result of a lack of character.

Principle 11: False Gods - You are parenting a worshiper, so it’s important to remember that what rules your child’s heart will control his behavior.

Principle 12: Control - The goal of parenting is not control of behavior but rather heart and life change.

Principle 13: Rest - It is only rest in God’s presence and grace that will make you a joyful and patient parent.

Principle 14: Mercy - No parent gives mercy better than one who is convinced that he desperately needs it himself.

Bringing It Home: Final Thoughts

ABOUT JAMES AND LESSONS FOR LIFE

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Transcript

James: 0:26

let us open in prayer. I'd like to just do a high fly over the first seven principles that we did last time and maybe get some insights from you. And then we'll talk about the last seven and we'll take the rest of the time to talk about the last seven. But let me pray. So Father, thank you. For your kind, mercy and grace, thank you for your love for us. Thank you for your faithfulness. Thank you that you give us these gospel principles gospel principles for parenting, but it's not just for parenting. These gospel principles can be applied to every relationship we have in our lives. So Father, teach us about ourselves. Teach us about you, teach us about the gospel. Teach us how to relate to one another and help us to honor and reflect you in all that we say and do. In Jesus match's, holy and powerful name, we pray. Amen. Okay. Last time we had an opportunity to talk about these transformational gospel principles. And I told you we were gonna do this over two teachings. And all of it is focusing on the grace of God, the authority of God, the mercy of God, and the principles that we see in parenting. And it said that Paul David Tripp is one of my favorite authors. He's been a pseudo mentor to me. And I would strongly encourage any of his writings. But this book in particular about parenting now, if you remember when we started last week, we talked about the calling principle number one, that nothing is more important in your life than being one of God's tools in the forming of a human soul that God is using You. Paul talks about being an instrument in God's hands, and he talks about that as a counselor, as a pastor, as a leader, as a parent that God has given you the ability to be used in god's, in people's lives to see transformation. So you're a tool where you're an instrument, you're not the cause, you're being used by the cause agent. You're being used by the molder. The second principle that we talked about a couple of weeks ago was that grace, that God never calls you to, to a task without giving you what you need. He never sends you without going with you. This is big because so many of us think that God is calling us to do something that we can't do. And that is potentially true. We can't do it in on our own. But God gives us the power, the authority, his presence in our lives. And that's a big principle that we should be relying on grace. And as we remind ourselves that we are relying on grace, then we can help our children to rely on that same level of grace that moves to The third principle that we dealt with last time was law. Your children need the law but you cannot ask the law to do what only grace can accomplish. I don't think I got into this last time, but there were three primary reasons for the law. One was to reveal sin and reveal God's character. So when God gives us a law, it reveals something that's offline. I was driving down the road and actually I was doing the speed limit, believe it or not, but there was a police officer were by the side of the road, and what was my initial reaction? I braked and I looked down and it's I was doing the speed limit. Now I went even further under the speed limit. But there is something within us that the law is there and it causes us to do something towards it or respond to it, or that we are guilty. We feel guilty because we know that we've done something wrong. So the law exposes our sin and points us to grace. The law is a restraint for evil as well, a nation that applies God's law. It restrains evil. Our nation has. It wasn't a perfect nature nation by any stretch, but there was a Judeo-Christian principle that was behind this nation, and when we were formed, the laws were based on God's word, and that was a restraint of evil. So it deals with our own sin and points us to Christ. It restrains evil. And the third purpose of the law is a guide for a believer empowered by the Holy Spirit to live a righteous life. But that's it. It doesn't save us. The law in Paul, in fact, says that if it weren't for the law, I would never know that I was a covenant. I would not have known my own sin. So the law points us to our sin and then points us to gospel grace. That leads to the fourth principle. Inability in recognizing what we're unable to do is essential in good parenting. If I make it about me or if you make it about you, I can turn my kid's heart, I can change my kid's heart. I can make my kid do the right thing. I can make my kid become a believer. You are going to fail. And so I, when we come to a realization that we are unable, there's an inability that is there in our lives, we cannot. And I think I said last time, I have this phrase they use, I can't. He can. He has. He does. He will. I can. Only in him I can't is a really huge piece of humility. It's a huge piece of recognizing our failures and it points us to the only one that can, so calling Grace Law, inability identity. We're stuck in a society today where so many people are finding their identity in things. They may find their identity in race or their color. They may find their identity in tattoos or piercings. They may find their identity in gender or sexual expression. All of these people are finding their identity in something other than what we are called to find our identity in. If you are not resting as a parent in your identity in Christ, you will look for identity in your children. There's so many parents that I know that feel like an utter failure because their kid doesn't go to college, feel like an utter failure because their child is doing something different. And that and some parents clinging to their kids and not let them go and not let them leave home because if they leave home, they've lost their identity. And we talked about the fact that for some men we struggle with finding our identity in. In our jobs for women, they often struggle with finding their identity in their children. And there's a major area that our identity has to be in Christ that is first and foremost, we are used as a tool for a temporary period of time to raise up this young person so that they move on so that they develop their own families and their own futures. That was the led to the sixth principle. The sixth principle was, Process. You must be committed as a parent to the long view of parenting because change is a process, not an event. It happens over time. It's step by step. You may have to have multiple conversations with your child maybe conversations over weeks, months, maybe even years, to see the roots in their lives. And so keeping that in mind and then lost was the last principle that you'll see there that we dealt with a couple weeks ago. As a parent, you're not dealing with just bad behavior, but a condition that causes bad behavior lost. Now some of our children are not believers and some of the reasons why they're responding the way they are because they are not in the faith. And we can try to deal with external things, but we need to bring them and evangelize their hearts so that they could see gospel grace. But then I alluded to two weeks ago, is that even when we have a believing child, They can act like a lost child at times because they go back to living according to the flesh and we do the same thing. So either they are truly lost or they are acting like a lost person. The reality is it's not just the behavior that we're dealing with. It's a condition that's underneath. Okay. Those are the first seven principles. We're going to jump into principle number eight. Principle number eight is the principle of authority. One of the foundational heart issues in the life of every child is authority, teaching and modeling the protective beauty of authority is one of the foundations of good parenting. So when you see the phrase protective beauty, what comes to your mind? Protective beauty of authority. What comes to your mind? The authority is gonna protect you. Authority protects good. What else? The authority is beautiful somehow. Why is it beautiful? Because we think of sometimes authority as negative, especially in our context with cultural context. We think of authority as something negative, not beautiful, right? Yeah, you're right. Yeah, absolutely. Good. Yes. Authority brings boundaries and children test those boundaries, and we have to be steadfast in teaching them what's right. Cause without those boundaries, without any authority, the sky's the limit and they'll just, they'll lose them. Good. Yeah, I said that love cares enough to do something by your kids. If you don't care, you don't do anything, but if you care, there's a beauty of making boundaries, loving saying yes, saying no. Correcting teaching really, so God's authority is invisible. We can't see God. God doesn't have a body so we can't see him. And so he makes his invisible authority visible through you. And so what he does is he puts parents into the lives of our children and helps them to be a visual viewpoint of his great authority. So that means though that we as parents don't act in our own independent authority. It's not our own independent authority. It is. It is. It's a delegated authority. It's God's authority, and it's been delegated to you, which is really important. Our authority is meant to represent God. Now, this is important because that means that every time I exercise that authority in the life of my child, I should be exercising that authority in such a way that it reflects God. That means that it should not be harsh, it should not be impatient. It should not be unforgiving. It should not be unkind. It should not be unloving. It because we are should not be selfish because we are representing God's authority. And that's where we know that when we are representing these other things, the harshness and patience and irritability, selfishness, condemning authority. When we are doing that, we are actually representing our own authority, not God's authority. But the problem is that for our kids move that from Our authority to God, and it creates a major struggle in life. This true address the concept of when your authority ends, or does it ever end? Because I have kids from 19 Adam's gonna be 40 this year in December, so that's a big span. Do I have, I believe that I, in certain situations, I still have authority over my. 39 year old son, but it's a totally different authority than when he was eight. Yeah I think it comes down to how we are gonna define authority. I do think there's no doubt our kids are supposed to care for us and submit to us in some level, all the way throughout. They're supposed to care for their parents. In fact in Timothy Paul talked about the fact that we are godless if we don't care for our parents, put our, protect be there for our parents. How I speak into the life of my. 27 year old or my 17 year old is different. Is radically different. My 17 year old is under my authority in my home and my 27 year old is not. But I still think that we are called to be there to speak truth, to model truth. We talked about those three things last time. If you remember, we're called to model. We're called to serve and we're called to teach. I don't think we ever lose those. So I think I'm called still con well, even with my adult daughter to model, to serve, to teach Now the expectation of her following that teaching. I don't have the same level of authority as an adult for her, as an adult that I would with my 17 year old. But I don't think we ever lose that position to model, serve and teach. But that's a great question. Now, what would happen if our authority was a loving authority? What would happen if our authority was a kind authority, a patient authority? What would happen if our authority was a beautiful authority a forgiving authority? What would happen if it was a tender and a secure authority? What would happen for our children versus the other type of authority? So our job is to teach children how beautiful authority is. You may know that I've taken on a role as a principal of a Christian school and one of the, one of the. I love the kids there. And we have a number of great kids, but one of the disappointments for me is the rebellion against authority that is happening even among professed Christian believers. And it's just the disrespect. And once again, I don't think we have anything close to what you're probably experiencing at your school and your environments. But I just, it. Just dumbfound to me that the disrespect for authority that is there, but that is just driven into humanity's heart. And one of the things, one of the ways that you can deal with that discipline is disrespect and breaking of authority is to be heavy handed and come down law. But law doesn't change Human hearts, we just talked about that. So it's law and truth and thankfully in a Christian school I can go law and gospel at the same time. But authority is big and teaching kids that when they rebel against God-given authority in their lives, it's not only horizontal, it's vertical. It does allude to one other thing that I was thinking about with authority, our nation, it's not just our nation. The West has become there's a breakdown of authority. The people don't want to submit to government, they don't wanna submit to. Church authority and they're even breaking their submission to their own conscience. Now, I'm not saying, I'm not saying that we're supposed to always follow government cuz government is wrong oftentimes, but, the attack against police, it's like going against the authority of the police. It's just all of that rebellion that is talked about in Romans chapter one. We rebel ultimately against the authorities that God has set up in our lives. That most says to principle number nine foolishness. Excuse me. Oh, I'm sorry. The most perfect example of loving authority is Jesus Christ and life. He just expressed truth with love. But I think about Joseph and how Joseph was wronged by his family, but then what did he do and did he rebel against his brothers? No. He came back with love to look at the result of that. Absolutely. Those are two great examples. The ultimate example in Christ and then the lesser example in Joseph. And both of them showed that even in spite of the struggles that were happening around them, they submitted to God's authority in life. And in fact, we're going to I'll do a little sermonette today on baptism before I think nine baptisms today. And Jesus was willing to submit himself. To the authority, God's standard was that we were gonna be baptized. And if you remember, he's going to the waters of baptism and John the Baptist says wait. I, I should be baptizing. You don't, I shouldn't be baptized by, I shouldn't be baptizing you. And Jesus says, let it happen so that all righteousness is fulfilled. Jesus Christ fulfilled all of those standards that we should have fulfilled, he fulfilled for us perfectly. So yeah, I had a situation one time with my youngest. I got called into the school to meet with the principal and him. Discipline issue. Okay. So in there, and he's, the principal's laying out has happened and I said I spoke with him last night and I said, God, I told him that God has put you in a position of authority and that the, as far as I know, secular right administrator, God has put you in a position of authority to be a blessing to him. And when he usurp your authority, then he's removing a blessing from himself. So it was a great time to share with the principal. That's right. But also reinforce, with my son, but the concept of why people are in authority. Absolutely. I wish it would've sunk in better. Thank I got you. But that's a huge, that huge opportunity. Yes, but that's a huge opportunity to be able to be a, an evangelist and also a leader model for your son. That's really great. All right, foolishness. Number nine. The foolishness inside your child is more dangerous to them than the temptations outside of them. Only God's grace has the power to rescue a fool. So the two things that are important to remember, it's only foolishness inside your child that will hook them. In James chapter one, it says, no temptation is overtaking. That is not common to man. God is not tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone. But each one is tempted. When by his own evil desires, he is dragged away and enticed. So we have a tendency, and it's all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Our tendency is to cover up our sin, run and hide from God and to blame other people. It's just epidemic, right? And so we tend to do that. And so when we look and we say the greatest problem is outside of us, once again, I have parents loving parents at the school, but they think it's this bad kid that's going to be a bad influence on my son. And. There's no doubt. It says the Bible tells us bad company corrupts good morals, but I think they think that if they can get rid of all the bad kids, then my good kid will be a good kid. And it's wait, you don't understand the rebel that is within your own kid. Your kid is a sinner. If they were righteous, then Christ would never have had to come here and die. And it's so you could protect them from every foolish person outside, but that doesn't change the fool that's within them. And and I know that's harsh. That sounds harsh, the whole book of Proverbs is about wisdom versus foolishness. So we don't protect our children by protecting them only from the outside world. We need to help them to understand the foolishness of their own heart, because as we can under help them to understand that the foolishness of their own heart, there's no doubt that there are external temptations, but none of us would ever sin if it weren't for the fact that we f our own sinful flesh. And so helping us, helping the student to understand the child, to understand that they have a rebel with inside of them, and that rebel with inside of them may be influenced by the world outside, but the rebel inside of them is what causes them to fall to sin. So absolutely so the Bible's interesting because when it talks about foolishness, it talks about the fool does what? Do you know what it says? Says something about God. What is the fool says? There is no God denies God. The fool denies God. And so this is not as trip would argue, it's not philosophical atheism. It's not that this person is calling himself an atheist. That's not what's happening here. It's the fact that at that moment in time, we live our lives as though there is no God. Yes. We don't seek his wisdom. We don't seek his guidance. We don't submit to his authority. We don't want to reflect his glory. What we do is we make it about us, and that's the foolishness that happens within us. And so when I say I don't need God, inevitably, who do I insert me? I become the center. I become the center of life. I make it all about me, my wants, my feelings, my desires, my hopes, my dreams, my future. Me and I will never have life. I will never have peace. I will never have hope. I will never have joy when I make it about me. And so what does a fool need? A fool needs to be rescued, a fool that runs back into a burning building to get something that is of no value, that firefighter needs to grab them and pull them out of danger. And in essence, that's what we do with our kids. We pull them out of danger because it's only by God's grace. That we can ever rescue a fool. 10 character. Not all of the wrong, your children do is a direct rebellion to authority. Much of the wrong is a result of a lack of character. Okay, so what do we mean by a lack of character? We talked about the fact that there is this lostness that happens within us. We're unwilling to submit to authority. There's this rebellion that happens within us. There is this character. Quality that happens within us. There's a heart issue that it happens, and the beauty of God's work in our lives is that he justifies us when we are saved. Everybody that goes into the warders of baptism today will profess faith in Christ and they'll profess faith in Christ. They'll tell you a testimony, and in that testimony they'll tell you in some level that they recognize at one point that they were a sinner. They recognize their need for a savior and they trusted in Christ. Now everything that happens in a person's salvation, we could talk about that, but there's a series of things that happen. This person hears the gospel message. I believe the Holy Spirit opens their hearts to draw them to faith. They then confess their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They repent. They're immediately justified, they're declared not guilty. They're immediately adopted into the family of God. But the big piece as the reformers used to talk about is justification. It is like the hinge. They said it's the hinge in which the church door opens and closes, that you do not have a church if you do not have the ability to call someone righteous, cuz we stay, you can't get into heaven without righteousness. The Bible says, Yes, and so there's a justifying grace where you are declared righteous. But we're not righteous. The reality is we're not righteous. Now, there are some faiths that teach that you have to be made right before you can be called right in God's sight. That's far into the Bible. The Bible's clear indication is that you are still a sinner. You're still a rebel. Paul, as he's writing his magnificant in Roman seven, he says, the things I want to do, I don't do the things I don't want to do. I do what a rebel I am. There is a rebel within me that is still there, even after I am saved. But we move from the fact that you are viewed as righteous in God's sight to the fact that he really wants to make you righteous, and that's where he has progressively long-term progressive work in your life and day by day moment by moment, will you surrender to the authority of Christ in your life, will you submit to God's standard. That's what those people that are gonna get baptized today are doing. God has commanded baptism and they are going into the waters of baptism. To submit themselves to the authority of God, we have to do the same thing. So character is big because it's not just their direct rebellion to authority, which it is, but it's also the fact that there has to be a character being built in this child's life. This is so important at heart level. God created us to be worshipers. Right in the Garden of Eden, he created us to worship him and him alone. And the reality is that when we stopped worshiping Christ, we started to worship something else ourselves or other things. And so a lot of parenting is being able to help your child grow step by step, day by day, moment by moment in the character of Christ what God is doing in us, and then what God is doing through us. That moves to the 11th principle that there are false gods. Now these false gods are big because what is taking your child away from the worship of God is something that the Bible calls idolatry. It's a false God. Now, there are three questions that Tripp always asks if you read any of Tripp's writings. He asks these three questions almost all the time. Why does my child or my client, or my whatever. Do the things that they do. Why do they do the things that they do? And so what we have a tendency to question is, why? Why is my kid, why is it always a war at the dinner table? Why is it that when I ask my kid to clean up their room, they don't do it? And so what happens is the trip will argue that the first question is the question that all of us ask as parents, why do my kids do these things? But then the second question is, the re is the big question. How does change take place in their lives? See, he would argue that change takes place. And more than Trip, the Bible argues that change takes place at the heart. It's not me screaming at my kid to eat the right way or screaming at my kid to make their bed. It's the fact that when they don't make their bed and when they're acting out, they're revealing something that's happening underneath. And that the way that I'm going to get them to a point where they'll ever make their bed is to recognize that there is a hole that's still in there, and then to develop the character in their life so that they get rid of these false gods and turn to him. So the first question he would ask is, why do my, why does my kid do the things that they do? Second is, how does change really take place? It starts from the heart out. And then the third question you asked is, how can we be used as a tool or an instrument in God's hands? In the life of our kid. How can I as a counselor be used or a pastor be used as a tool in God's hands and your lives we're just a tool. I can be gone in a moment. That's not a big deal. God can replace me in a moment because he's good with a bunch of different tools, but we're just a tool. And if I could just remind myself of that, that lasting change happens in the heart and I am just used as a tool in God's hands, then that. Helps. And the Bible's answer to those three questions comes down to one word worship. All three of those questions come down to one word, the answers to it. Why does my child do the things that they do worship? How does lasting change take place in their life? Worship. How can I be used as a tool in God's hands? Worship. Remove idolatry from our hearts. Remove those false gods. The craving for the physical, the craving for this earthly thing, instead of finding my pleasure in people or possessions or power and prestige, I find my satisfaction in Christ. Now as I do that radical things change. See, if I ask my kid, why did you do what you did? For the most part, our kids are not gonna be able to understand it. Because Jeremiah and Jeremiah 17, it says, our hearts are deceptive and desperately sick. Who can know it? Our kids. I can't know my own heart. Almost 60 years old. I can't know my own heart but God can know my heart. My kids don't know their heart. And what God can do is do something radical in exposing that heart. And that's what God uses you. You're a tool. You become a light to our kids to expose heart issues. And as you expose your own heart issues and to your kids, and then you help them to expose their own heart issues, and then you point them to the rescuer Christ. Principle number 12, control. Control. If the goal of parenting is not the control of behavior, but. Rather the heart and life change. Control is big because we have a tendency to set up systems of control and these really strong systems of control. We think, like some of my parents at school, they think that if they get this real strong system of control that they're gonna be able to protect their child. But every year children go off to college and it seems like they reject the faith. I would argue, and I think Trip argues that they're not really rejecting the faith because it was never their faith. It was their parents' faith, because the parents instilled control. Were going to church, you're gonna read your Bible. And so they instilled this control rather than nurturing those desires in those children's hearts. So it was never their faith, it was the faith of the parents. It was the control of the parents. That's why when they're outta the parent's viewpoint, they'll just do whatever they want. Because they just, I don't have to submit to my dad's authority or my mom's authority any longer because I'm not there. And the goal of our parenting should be to help our children understand this very important thing, this very humbling thing, that the deepest problem is not outside of them, it's inside of them. And that, yes, you may be outside of your dad, James's authority, Isaiah or Abby or Hannah. You may be outside of my authority at one time, but you're never outside of the ultimate authority. God but let me do these last two rest. It is only rest in God's presence and grace that will make you a joyful patient parent. It's only resting in God. That's huge. Parenting is hard and it is burdensome and it's important that you find your rest in God, that God is in you, that God is for you and God is with you. That's so good. It is absolutely all good. God is in you because he is resided in your heart. He is for you. He is fighting for you. He is with you. That is so important and one of the passages I'm gonna use in my sermon at this morning is Matthew 28, the Great Commission, and Jesus said that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. And he's now given that authority at least a delegated level of authority to you and what was the authority? It doesn't. That means that no matter what the situation, no matter where the location is, no matter what the relationship is, your parenting should be ruled by King Jesus. He's the ultimate authority in your life. And then he promises at the end of the Great Commission, I am with you always. And so that rest of, okay, it's not my power, it's Christ's power. And it's not, I'm not alone, but Christ is with me. That should just give us great, take a load off your shoulders. He rules what I cannot rule. He gives me what I do not have in my own ability. So rest. In Matthew 10 I think it is. It says, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. That leads us to our last principle. Mercy. This is probably the first principle, but we will end with it. We need to embrace the reality of who we are. No parent gives mercy better than one that is convinced that he desperately needs it himself. Here it is. And if I remind myself that I'm a sinner that is in need of a savior, or as the Heidelberg catechism breaks down it breaks it down into three phases. Guilt. Grace, gratitude, and if I can keep those three G's in mind, guilt, my sin, guilt, grace, gospel, Christ, and then gratitude. And so if I can remind myself of that, then I look at my son and I look at my daughters. I look at my wife, I look at you, and we're all sinners, then we're in desperate need of grace. And I can magnify your guilt or my sin, or your sin, or I can magnify God's grace in his gospel in Christ. And when I do that, that should lead to a greater level of gratitude and heart and life. It should lead to tenderness. Cuz I can be impatient, I can be irritable, I could be unkind, I could be harsh in and of myself. But when God doesn't work to tenderize my heart, that Tenderize heart displays something different. So I gave you 14 principles, and as you look at those 14 principles, you're probably saying, I failed. I failed in the past. I failed today. I failed maybe even this morning. And so the Bible's argument is confession and repentance. Proverbs 28 13 says that he who conceals his sin will not prosper. That he who confesses it and forsakes it finds mercy. Proverbs 28 13. So what do We need to do? We can either conceal it. But that won't help. Or we can confess it and forsaken. And when we repent daily because we sin daily. And the repentance should be of attitude and action. It's not gonna remove the consequences. But what it does is that when we confess vertically to God and then horizontally to people that we've hurt and offended, God wants to bless us. You were talking about that blessing before. Bless. 14 principles. Look at those 14 principles and look at the ones that maybe I would encourage you to circle the ones that are lacking. Go vertically to God and ask for his forgiveness. Go horizontally to your family and let them know where you've gone offline, and then start applying those principles today. All right let us pray. So thank you for your feedback today. I really appreciate it. So father, I pray that you would remind us of great these great principles that. Over and over again, remind us of our inability but Christ ability that we're lost and, but you've given us great authority, the foolishness that's within our own heart, but the character that you're looking to build within us the great desire for mercy that you've given us. And grace and Lord over and over again. I pray that we would rest in you and find our giving up control of things and focusing on controlling of ourselves and help us to do this in a way that honors you. For some of us in this room where new parents are soon to be parents. Father, I pray that the principles that we've talked about will help us help them to build a strong home that's gonna honor you. For some of us, our kids, that were out of our homes and we look back and say, I wish we had done some things differently. We could start to do it today. So help us to do that by your grace and for your glory, and Jesus matches holy and powerful name we pray. Amen