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Well, again, Harley said this while ago, and I don't mean to be overly redundant, but we are a family of Jesus followers. We're following Jesus. We don't pretend to have it all together. In fact, if you spend much time with us, you'll find out pretty fast that we're all a little jacked up. And so we have our our issues, our challenges, our struggles, and if you look at our families, if you look at our lives, you'll see that we have our own share of problems, right? And so we say that to you just because sometimes people put on a front at church. They think you got to come into a church and you gotta act a certain way, you gotta uh be fake in order to fit in. Um we hope you know you can be real here. And we hope you know there's a safe place to be real here, okay? Um so anyway, uh we are starting a three-week teaching series tonight on parenting. And so for some of you, you instantly went, I'm checking out, right? I'm not a parent. Uh some of you college students uh were thinking I'm not there yet. Uh some of you folks who maybe are past that stage are like I'm done. Uh I know Trey and them uh back here with some friends of ours are here that um, you know, he's getting close, right? Getting close to getting that empty nest, excited about that. Um my wife and I, we dream about that sometimes in the midst of the chaos. I'll be honest, okay. I told you I'd be honest. Um there's some days I'm like, I'm ready for emptiness uh stage. Uh but then there's other moments I'm like, I don't want it to get here. I'm I'm I'm excited about where we are. But uh if you have your Bible, I want you to go ahead and open it to Proverbs 22, okay? But while you're doing that, let me just tell you a couple things. Um we all are here because we're part of or have been part of at some point a family, right? Now your family may be really messed up in your mind, but let me just go ahead and say again, every family has its share of problems, its share of issues. And so don't be surprised uh when I share illustrations as the pastor, as the leader of this thing of issues that my family has. Okay, I've asked my wife for permission already, so I'm not just embarrassing her. Um most of these issues are mine. I'm usually the culprit, so it's easy for me to share the stories, okay? But here's the thing we all have challenges in our family. And the thing that I love about family is that family is such a beautiful place to learn and to grow in our walk with God. So if you're not a believer, if you if here tonight you got invited in and you're just here hanging out and you're not uh a follower of Jesus, or if you don't believe the Bible to be true, or you don't really buy into this whole thing, hey, listen, this is a safe place to come, and we're glad that you're here. Welcome. Um, but if you if you don't, uh just know that there's still truths in the Bible that you can apply to your life, even if you don't believe. And so I just encourage you to come with an open mind and an open heart and say, okay, like what can I take from these spiritual truths? Uh if you are a believer, hopefully you know that God's word is like, it's it's amazingly wise and it's incredibly helpful. It's practical. Sometimes we teach it in such a way that's not very practical, but it's very practical, it's very helpful for us. And so we can go to it and we can ask God for help and he gives us help, right? But here's the thing: all of our families are very different. Some of you came from families where you had a single parent family. Some of you came maybe even from a situation where uh both of your parents belled and you ended up being adopted, or maybe um maybe there was just some circumstances in your family that created a very hard dynamic for you. I don't know what your story is, but I was thinking about what brings us all together, what's some common things that we can all attach to? And here's one thing that I know is that none of us chose the family we were born into. That's one common thing, right? We all came into our family because that's where we were born. And when you're born into a family, you don't pick your family. And that can be a good thing or a bad thing, right? Some of us would say, I'm really glad that I was born into the family that I was born into. And if that's you, awesome. Some of you are like, I'm really uh kind of angry and bitter still of the family I was born into. And I understand if you're there. That was kind of my mom's story in her life is she just had a brutal upbringing on multiple levels, and God has redeemed a lot of that. He's done it, and that's why I love this idea of redemption, and even our name redemption, because some of our families need actually, all of our families need some redemption somewhere along the way. And for some, that redemption is uh is a greater need than for others, or at least may seem to be bigger. But we didn't choose our family, and and not only that, but sometime along the way, probably in your path, you actually wanted somebody else's family. Ever been there? Let's be honest. There were probably moments, you know, high school students, middle school and high school students, they're like, when you're in that stage, it's like, I want their parents. I want to go to that house. I mean, look, I could eat cereal for every meal, it'd be awesome. I could sleep in as much as I want, not to do any chores. That's an awesome house. I want to go there. Let me just go ahead and dispel that myth. It's not true. Okay, it just looks like it from the outside when you're there spending the night for that night. The parents are real chill and they're nice, and then you leave and then they turn back into the normal parents, just like yours, okay? But here's the deal. Sometimes we want other families, don't we? We want other parents. But another thing I know that's common for all of us is that no one is as smart as you are. Students, right? Adults, no one knows it quite like you do. In fact, it's easy to look at somebody else's family and go, I can figure it out. Or for that matter, you sit down with another family as they're trying to parent, you go, well, this is what you need to do. Your kid is doing this, just this is how you fix it. And you talk about it. But then your own kids, your own circumstances, your own situation, it's a much, it's much greater challenge. But here's the thing whether you have kids right now or not, one day hopefully you will, whether you uh plan to get married or not, okay, uh, you still will be involved with people who have children. Whether you are out of that stage and or you don't ever want to have kids, um, whatever you are, you're gonna interact with families, and you you need to know that there's wisdom from the Bible and you can speak into that, all right? And so we're here knowing that tonight all of us need help at some level. Now, I always love speaking about family. It's one of my passions, but here's the problem. I can guarantee that every time I'm gonna talk about family, it's gonna be like World War III in my house that week. All right? And what I mean by that is that the moment I say I'm gonna talk about parenting, I can guarantee that we're gonna have some knockdown, drag out like moments with my kids. And they're all, you know, 10, 8, 6, 4. For those of you who don't know, I have five kids. Okay, so we got a full quiver. If uh according to the scriptures, you know, it's it's blessed is the man whose quiver is full. I always say bless is the man whose minivan is full, and our minivan is full, okay? We have no more room in it. Um that's where we are. But I know this that, you know, this week I had three come to Jesus meetings with my kids. Three of my. So three out of five. I didn't, two of them. One of them's one, so we haven't really gotten there yet. And the other one was just really good this week. It was awesome. But the other three, there was a moment where I had to sit down with each one of them and have a serious conversation about what was going on in their heart, what was going on in their life, and try to parent them. And so let me just tell you again, I'm giving kind of reiterate, you see this theme. I don't have this all figured out. But I know that there's a God who's given us wisdom, who's given us insight, who's given us instruction in his word, and he wants to teach us, and if we will be teachable, if we will come and say, God help us, he will give us wisdom. He will give us insight, he will give us instruction. So, um, the way I like to think about it is you guys remember these things from when you were in school? You guys remember these? Um I love these things when I was in school and you know, had it on my locker, had it on my gym bag, had it everywhere, these these locks. And it's like, you know, you're sitting there working on it. This is the thing about kids. Every kid you have is a little bit different. Every child that you have, and for those of you again, you're like, I don't have children yet, just know when you start having kids, they're all a little different. If you only have one kid right now, um, then that's awesome for you. Okay, that's great. I'm trying not to be bitter. No, it's kidding. I'm really thankful for all of my kids because each one of them teaches me something different about God. Each one of them teaches me something different about life, and each one of them challenges me in a different way because there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all parenting. Every kid is different, their personality is different, uh, the way that they're wired is different, okay? And so as we think about that tonight, we need God's help to kind of unlock the combo, if you will, on each one of our children in the different way that they are created by God. And so if you try to apply the same parenting ideas to every one of the kids exactly the same, guess what? It won't work. In fact, all three of those conversations I told you I had this week, I sat down with each one of my kids, and each one of them went very different. Now, not only because they're different ages, and there's certain words I can use with some and not with others, and there's certain ways I have to come at it and uh change that up every time, but also because they're wired different. I mean, this isn't picking up on my picking on my son, but my son, I get onto him and I look at him wrong, and he melts, he cries. I mean, he was our only boy for for almost four years, and he's the most sensitive. And so, like, I just look at him and say, son, and he's like, I'm like, it's the easiest one to discipline in that way, right? And then I got my oldest child who I love to death, sometimes love to death, and and so, and I look at her and it's like stone faced, like steel, like I'm gonna, man, we we're going. And then I got I've got a four-year-old daughter who is a firecracker. And some of y'all know her, Emery, and I mean her personality. And I listen, I love all each one of my kids, and I'm so thankful for each one of them because they are so different. And they teach me, like I said, so many different things. But I wish that when we came to the Bible, there was like a book of parents. Like somewhere in the Bible, you just saw there was this one book that was designated to here's how you parent. In fact, there's very little in the Bible about parenting. I mean, just straight up direct parent, parent this way, do this. This is how you handle a 13-year-old when they're going through puberty. Um, you know, what there's none of that in there, right? It'd be so much easier. And in fact, when you most of the time when you look at the Bible, what you find is a lot of bad examples about how not to parent. I mean, crazy stuff. Like starting Genesis. Well, like let's think about the first parents, Adam and Eve. What happened to their two sons? Well, one of them killed the other one. I mean, that was kind of a rough start for humanity, okay? Started with a murder in the first family. Sometimes I think my kids are gonna kill each other. But thankfully we've only shed a little bit of blood. Nothing major yet. But that's pretty insane, isn't it? That the first family, or let's fast forward to Jesus' parents. Because I always feel better when I think about Jesus' parents, Mary and Joseph. They take him to the temple. We think they might have only had one kid at the time. We don't really know. But what'd they do? They lost Jesus. I mean, think about that for a second. God, um, you entrusted us with the Son of God, and uh, we lost him. Can you imagine that? How does that feel? How does that feel, you know? Does that help you feel a little bit better? But if you think about it, you go through the book of Genesis, you go through the Bible, and you see story after story where parents didn't parent well, and you learn what not to do. But the Bible does have some wisdom and does have some instruction for us. We can go to it and we can look for wisdom. I'm only gonna pull one verse tonight, and I want you to read it with me. If you've got your Bible and you had to open it up to Proverbs 22. If you don't own a Bible, there's some Bibles in front of you in the chairs, and if you don't own one, feel free to keep it. It's a gift to you, okay? And here's what it says. I'm gonna read this out of my Bible, and then I've actually got it up on the screen behind me here. Teach a youth about the way he should go, even when he is old, he will not depart from it. Now I'm gonna read it from off the screen here. This is the NIV, which is what I memorized it in. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not turn from it. Now, how many of you know that verse? Have heard that verse before? This verse was a verse that was in my life very early on. In fact, there was a play on words, because in my room, in my house as a very young child, there was this little picture and it had a train on it, and it said, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not turn from it. Choo-choo. Okay? I just remember that being sealed away in my memory from the time I was very young. But I want us just to break this apart for a second tonight, because what's interesting is this verse is actually not written explicitly to parents either. But it's a promise, it's an instruction from the Proverbs. And if you're not very familiar with the Bible, let me just remind you that the Proverbs were written primarily by King Solomon, and he wrote these wise sayings that we can trust. In fact, I find myself camping out a lot in the Proverbs as I parent. I come to my kids a lot and I'm saying, Do you know, son, that the Bible says in Proverbs that a wise man listens to instruction. And I know you want to be wise, so listen to instruction, okay? I quote a lot of Proverbs to my kids. And I think about this a lot, but here's the thing, as I think about this particular verse, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not turn from it. He begins the process by saying train. Well, what does he mean by train? If you're falling along in the guide, you can write some notes down here. I didn't give you a lot there. Just some space to write. But the actual word would be the idea of imparting. Now, how many of you guys use the word impart on your daily, in your daily vocabulary? Anybody? Probably not. Okay? But imparting is the idea here that you impart information. The idea that you teach them, that you train them, that you instruct them. Did you know that as a parent, you are instructing your children all the time. Even when you're not doing it intentionally, you are instructing your children. Now it would be really nice, let's be honest, it'd be really nice as parents if they only learned from us what we wanted them to learn from us. Right? It would be nice if they would only pick up on the things that we really wanted them to know, and if we could just kind of filter out the things we don't. But here's the problem. Kids teach up, teach or learn a lot more from us from the way we act, the things that come out of our mouth when we're not specifically talking to them, than when we are actually intentionally trying to teach them. Because here's a phrase for you if you don't know this already, but we teach what we know, but we ultimately reproduce who we are. We teach information that we know, but we ultimately reproduce who we are. And I see this over and over in my life. And it's a scary thought sometimes. Because there's times when I'm parenting my child and I look and I see something, and if I'm honest, I go to, I have to say to myself, that's me. They're being just like me. Because our kids pick up not only on what we say, what we teach them from our words, but they teach up, they they they pick up and they learn what we're saying with our lives. Our values become their values in many ways. Our insights, our instruction, our way of life, our behaviors many times become their behaviors. In fact, um, I noticed one thing in our kids not long ago that they were doing a better job of saying I'm sorry. And I was I was kind of complimenting them, and my wife was saying something about how that I was doing a better job of that. I was like, oh, that's awesome. Like they're actually following that, which has been a hard thing for me, by the way, to learn how to say I'm sorry, and please forgive me. And I've been really proud of my kids. So I thought maybe it would work if I started cleaning my room more, they would start cleaning their rooms more, but for whatever reason that didn't really work. I'm just saying. But the bottom line is that we reproduce not just what we say, what we teach with our words, but we reproduce our lives, we reproduce our values, and so where you spend your money, they're watching, right? Where you spend your time, they're watching. Where you invest your energy in your life, they're watching. Now, let me just stop here because some of you are going, this is not good. I know myself, I know what I've done, this is not good. Listen, God is a God of grace. And thankfully, there were probably behaviors in your parents' lives that today you're not mimicking, even though those behaviors were there consistently, and and you know those behaviors weren't good, and you've turned the corner, you've you've moved away from that. In fact, I mentioned my mom a while ago. She grew up in a very dysfunctional home. A home where there was a lot of drug abuse and alcohol abuse, a home where her mom left her at a very early age and just abandoned them with four brothers. She kind of became the mom, stepped into that role. And can I tell you that she chose not to live like her mom lived? She didn't follow that pattern. She didn't end up abandoning us as her children. She lived with us and she she taught us. In fact, I much of the Bible, much of the scripture, many of the things that I know today are a result of my mom pouring into me and investing in me. So praise God, He can take us from where we are to where hopefully we we know He wants us to be, where we want to be. And He can do that because He is gracious, He's merciful, He's patient, He's good, isn't He? So the idea of training. Also know that with the word of training, what do you hear when you think about training? Anybody? What comes to mind? It's a time process, it's not like an instant thing, right? Don't you wish that parenting was just something you could go, man, I'm gonna teach them this and they're never gonna have that problem again. It doesn't work that way. Training doesn't work that way. I hear that it takes time. The other thing that I hear in that is that it's work. It's work. And listen, most parents, many parents in our culture, they just say, I'm checking out. I don't really want to engage in the work that it's gonna take. And so they just let their kids go. And they just say, I don't have time, I don't have the energy, I don't really want to give to that. I don't think that any parent sets out to be a bad parent. In fact, I think every parent in this room wants to be a good parent. But sometimes the process just gets overwhelming. Sometimes you get tired, and sometimes you just get worn down by your kids. Sometimes they make you lose your mind. And you just have to say, God help me. I need strength, I need power, I need, I need what whatever it's gonna take to get through this season. So training, it's a reminding us it's work. But the next thing it says is a child. Train up a child. And you say, Why is that important? Well, let me tell you why it's important. Because you've got to understand that children are immature. And you go, Well, that's obvious. Sometimes in our culture, and sometimes just in general in parenting, we expect kids to know things and to be able to do things that adults do. And we have to understand they're children, they're immature. And by the way, just because our children act immature doesn't mean we have to act immature. Right? Just because our children have an immature response to authority doesn't mean that we have to then get into their world and act like them when we're disciplining them or when we're instructing them or when we're interacting with them. But we need to remember that children are children. Why is this so important? Because early on in our parenting, I started figuring out that I was disciplining my kids for things sometimes that was purely childishness. And we have to learn something that's been very helpful for me is learning when is it childishness and when is it foolishness. Because the Bible speaks against foolishness. We don't want our kids to be fools, right? Because in fact, Proverbs says that the fool is gonna hurt himself and he's gonna hurt others. We don't want our kids to hurt themselves, we don't want them to hurt others. I don't want to hurt myself and I don't want to hurt others. We don't be fools, but here's the reality sometimes our kids are acting out of childishness, and so when they do that, they don't know better. They're immature. And so sometimes they're hyperactive, sometimes they just do silly things. And we need to teach them and we need to instruct them, but it's different than stepping in, right? And disciplining them harshly, or for that matter, just really disciplining them in the same way we would when they're actually foolish, right? So we're gonna talk in a few weeks. Jada and I are actually gonna teach the third uh third uh session of this together and talk about discipline because many times I'm out of the home, and so my wife is there at the house with the kids, and she's disciplining them throughout the day. And so we're gonna get really practical and disciplined, because this is a big issue in our culture. There's a lot of different ideas and thoughts on this. But we know that you can't discipline everything the same way, and especially if they're being childish, you can't discipline them that way, right? My uh four-year-old Emory, I mentioned she's a firecracker, and uh not long ago we were driving down the road, we were on a long trip, and we had been having some some uh battles with her, and along the way, uh we started noticing just again how uh how much work it was to get her to get in line. And uh as we were driving, this was an indicator of kind of where we were. Um here was Emery, she was only three at the time, and she just out of the blue asked the question Hey mom and dad, can I be in charge? And I remember her looking at my wife as I was driving down the road, and I'm like trying, it's one of those moments as a parent, you know you're not supposed to laugh, you know. But I'm like, I'm kind of like giggling to myself, thinking, did she just ask that question? And I and when we said, Emory, or my wife did, uh she she was she wisely said, uh, no, Emory, you can't be in charge. We thought that'd be the end of it, right? Five seconds later. Hey, mom and dad, um, when can I be in charge? And we began to have this conversation with our three-year-old about who's in charge. And every kid has been a little bit different, but let's be honest, they're all fighting us for who's in control and who. Is an authority. And we still are in our own lives. Even as adults, we don't like authority in our lives. And I say that because as a child, we have to teach them how to submit to the authority. It's part of understanding that they are children. And it's not a part of who they are. When they're born, they are broken. As I like to say a lot, and I don't mean this in any way derogatory towards my kids, but my kids are little sinners. They are. They were born, they were beautiful, and then they learned to say no. They learned how to throw a fit. And just like all of us in this room, that comes out of us naturally, doesn't it? Because we're broken. We're messed up. And we'll go into that later on. The next thing you see in the verse is not only train up a child, but train them up in the way you should go. Let me ask you the question. You don't have to answer this, but what is the way they should go? What is the way that our kids should go? Now, some of you that have uh that are still uh students living in your home, you probably have sensed your parents pushing you certain directions. Here's what I see a lot in our culture. I see a lot of people saying that the way they should go is the way of success. What does it look like for my kids to do what I didn't do? To succeed at sports, to succeed in the classroom, to succeed, or even just to experience things I never experienced. That many times is the way they should go culturally, right? And I could see in my own life how that there are times that in my parenting, I'm pushing my kids towards something that I want them to do, something that I want them to experience, something that I want them to be involved with. And I have to back off and say, okay, God, what's what is the way they should go? You see, the idea of this parenting passage that I love so much from Proverbs 22, 6, and taking this, is that we have to parent with the end in mind. We have to parent about where are we trying to take our kids? Where do we want them to end up? Where do we want them to be when it's all said and done, right? And mom and dad, if you're if if you are married, okay, and you and you've got uh a husband and a wife involved together, a mom and a dad involved together in the parenting process, which by the way, we'll talk about that in a couple weeks as well, especially in the area of discipline, being on the same page. You need to take some time and you need to pull aside and you need to say, what are we trying to do here? Where do we want our kids to go? Where do we want them to end up? And then you need to reverse engineer. You know what I'm saying about reverse engineer? We need to ask the question, okay, what's going to help us get there? What things do we need to be doing now? Because let's be honest. In the middle of the chaos of everyday life, in the middle of the crazy things that are going on, when one kid is agitating all the rest of them, when when then none of them are, when they're having one of those days when none of them are listening, sometimes it's hard to remember what are we really trying to do? Because parenting, even going back to training, being a time process that it's for the long haul, right? So we can't get lost in the moment, in those moments where we feel as a failure as a parent. We have to remember what we're trying to do long term. The way that they should go. What is the way they should go? Well, let me just submit to you whether you believe in the Bible or not, God's word tells us that the way that they should go, as in the way that we should all live our lives, is for the glory of God. Now, that seems pretty simplistic and churchy and hyper-spiritual. The glory of God, because we hear that a lot. What is the chief end of man? That was what I was taught as a kid. What is, I don't even know what chief end of means, right? As a kid I didn't. So the idea is that we live for the glory of God. Isaiah 43 speaks to this. In other passages in the scripture, we see that God is pointing us towards our purpose, our God-given purpose, to live for his glory. We ask our kids this, and I promise you, again, my family is not perfect, but we do some questions with our kids regularly as we do our family devotions and spend time talking about what God wants for our life. And one of the questions we ask is, Who made you? God made you. Why did God make you? For his glory. And they can all tell you that, except for Cray. But why is that important? Because we want to ingrain in them now that the way they should go is to live their life for the glory of God. And practically speaking, what that means is that we love and obey God. That we love and obey God. That we enjoy God, that we want to honor him, that we want to serve him, that we want to do the things that God has for us, and that we obey him, we listen to him, we understand he is wise. And we listen, listen, we do all this, we teach our kids this, not because God's got a big ego and he's like, worship me, worship me, because I need you to worship me. We've said this before, right? You hear, remember this? But because God knows that the greatest thing for our lives is for us to enjoy him, because when we enjoy him, we will fulfill the purpose he called us to. And there is nothing more satisfying than doing what we were made to do, which is to worship God. Are you with me? There's nothing more satisfying than worshiping our God. And so we have to teach our kids because that's not the way their hearts are bent. You know, the way our hearts are bent is to worship self, to do what we want to do, to be selfish. That's what our hearts are bent towards. And so we need God to help us. And parents, that's our job. And by the way, if you're not a parent yet and you see other little kids, you can speak into their life. In fact, we say around here, not only are we a family of Jesus followers, but in being a family, that it takes, uh, it takes all of this family to raise these kids. And so if you ever see the shock kids acting out of line, worshiping self because they're disobedient, disrespectful, rude, whatever that, hey, listen, you have my permission to speak into their life. In fact, as a kid growing up, I kind of hated the fact that my parents were leaders in the church. And they would, every time we would go somewhere, kid you not, they would say this. They would say, Listen, this is my son. I love them, they're gonna be with you. And if you need to spank them, you spank them. They would tell them that every time. It's like every time we show up to place, they're like just telling people to spank me. Okay, first off, that is not acceptable anymore. You know, they like call CPS on you if you say, I'm gonna spank my child. But, man, I uh you know, I wish they had that back then, right? Because but and nobody really ever did, but I always felt like, why don't why do you say that every time you drop me off? Like you spank, you know, giving them permission, and then they would tell me, they would look, they'd look at me, and they'd say, Listen, if they spank you, I'm gonna spank you too whenever I see you. And so we kind of were like, maybe a little fear-based parenting, you know, there. Maybe my heart motive wasn't always right. Like, I don't want to get spanked because I'm gonna get spanked again, it's gonna be bad. In fact, I kind of got to the point as a kid sometimes where literally I would go home. I just we always did it, we always did our spankings uh at our my parents' room, and we had to put our hands on the bed because you know, we're with those kids, you know, it's like you're doing this, you're kind of running from your parents, and it's put your hands on the squares. Okay, put your hands on the squares, get your get your spanking. And I knew I needed it, and so I would just walk straight in from church, walk over to the bed and just put there and wait on them without them even telling me. It's pretty bad, huh? Thankfully, my kids aren't like that, and I'm not warped completely. So, anyway. But here's the thing the way they should go. We want to train them up in the way they should go. And there's different ways we do that, but we ultimately want them to worship God, to be fulfilled in God, to find that God is why they were made and he has a plan for their life. Now notice this. It says, when he is old. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, what does that mean? Well, actually in the text, when it's talking about this and then talking about uh in the Jewish culture, we know that it's speaking to uh moving into adulthood, right? And so in the Jewish culture they celebrate bar mitzvah. You ever been around a bar mitzvah? Have you ever seen that? Which is when they turn 13. They do a much better job than than probably many of us in the West do of celebrating what it's like to go from childhood into adulthood. And by the way, we see a phenomenon in our country. Well, I'm I can't speak to all this right now, but in being in student ministry, where we have more and more uh teenagers who live in this adolescent stage, and that adolescent stage is extending out. In fact, Wednesday night we met at the coffee cup and we've talked to all the men about what it looks like to be a man and what does it mean to follow Jesus as a man? And part of the struggle that's going on in our culture is we've got what's called extended adolescence, where men are still acting and living like boys. And so they're 30 years old, they're still living at their parents' house playing Xbox all day. It's like, what's up with that? Parents didn't teach them, didn't raise them up, didn't release them, right? Winning or old. In fact, I have college students sometimes come to me and they'd say things like this Man, I just can't stand the fact that my parents, they keep asking things of me and they keep calling me uh to be responsible and accountable to do stuff around the house, and I'm like, well, where do you live? My house. Who pays the bills? My parents. There's a problem? Okay? Now listen to me. What I'm saying in that is this if we're gonna be independent, I would say to you to uh college students a lot that you are as responsible and accountable to your parents as you are financially dependent on your parents. They don't really like that. But I think biblically, if we want to be treated like adults, we have to grow up. And sometimes in our lives, we find that some kids are truly handicapped emotionally, physically, mentally, physically, like and I'm not talking about like something they were born with. I'm talking about what happens as they are raised in their homes because their parents hold on to them. They're the helicopter parents I'm talking about, hovering around them all the time, and they hold on to them so tight they didn't, they don't prepare them for launch to leave their home one day. So their kids get to that point and they don't know what in the world to do. I've got an uncle that's a year older than me, lives in Florida. And uh it's kind of an interesting thing. I met him when I was about six years old, and I was like, wow, you're my uncle and you're seven. That's pretty cool. And so we we we never really connected a lot because he lived far away, but I can tell you this that his mom didn't want him to grow up. And he's 35 years old today, and he still lives at home, and he still acts like he's a 13-year-old. And I can tell you it's because his parents didn't train him up to leave and to be independent. So when he has a need, when he has a problem, when he has whatever, he's there. He lives at home, he comes to them, and he he truly doesn't take care of anything on his own. They still take care of his bills, they still take care of care of his life, and he's completely healthy, he's completely physically capable, but he's been handicapped because his parents didn't set him up for launch. Parents, do not do this to your kids. Prepare them for when they are old, when they are out of your house. That's the way I read it, when they're out of your house. So if they're 13, 14, 15, they're still under your instruction, they're still under your leadership, if you're paying the bills, if you're taking care of them, and you have to learn to teach them and trust them more and more with more things and trust them. Let the uh the leash out, if you will. That sounds terrible to say leash on our kids, right? But we let we let them more and more have responsibility as we're preparing them to leave our home and to be independent adults when they are old. The last thing he says is they will not or he will not turn from it. And let me say what this doesn't mean. This doesn't mean that your kids are going to be perfect. If you do these things, your kids are gonna be perfect. Don't you wish there was a formula? Not only do I wish there was a book in the Bible that was like, here's the first book of parents, okay? Here's what you do from zero to three. Okay, here's what you do from four to ten, all right? Here's what you do in adolescence, okay? I wish it was that way, but it doesn't work that way. But we know that in our kids' lives, when we release them, they're not going to be perfect. They're not gonna have it all together, they're not gonna make all the right decisions. But here's what I'd know is the promise of this verse is that when they are old, when they are out of your presence, and I watch this a lot with college students particularly, that as they go to college and nobody's there to wake them up and get them out of bed, and nobody's there to help them make wise decisions, and nobody's there to teach them how to manage their money. So they get that first credit card thing in the mail, and they start using a credit card and spinning it up, and pretty quick they're in debt up to their eyeballs, and they don't, they're like, they didn't even know what happened to them. And when nobody's there to help them make those decisions, listen, if you train your kids to be independent and learn to be wise and to walk with the wise so that they will grow wise and not suffer fool, suffer harm because they hang out with fools. Then when they are old, when they go through hardship and they go through crisis and they go through tragedy, and listen, I'm speaking to this not from a place of having done this. We're at 10 years old. But I'm telling you, from being a student pastor and working with hundreds of students and dealing with hundreds of parents, I've watched heartbreak after heartbreak after heartbreak saying, What's wrong? What happened to my kid? Sometimes kids just choose to rebel. Sometimes kids just choose to go and do what they want to do for a season. Maybe, maybe you did that in your life. Maybe maybe you chose to walk away from what your parents had taught you. But when we are old, we will return. We will come. When we are in that spot that we have been taught what's right, we trust that God will bring them because He is with them even when we're not. Right? That they know they can trust God even when no one else is looking. They can trust God even when we're not there. I wish I could give you 100% guarantee tonight that if you parent your kids, God's way, that every single one of them is going to turn out perfect. But it doesn't say that in the Bible. But I do trust in the scripture. I do, I do hope in the scripture. I do have a lot of um, I guess just hope that this Proverbs 22, 6, that when my kids are old, they will turn back to God. Even if they turn away from him. I'm not speaking over the fact that they will turn away from him, but they're gonna have moments they're gonna dis disobey. They're gonna have moments they're gonna be like just like their dad. But I pray that they would turn to God and know they can trust him no matter what. You see, the goal of parenting is to raise kids that live out their God-given purpose. And we've said that that God-given purpose is to glorify him, to love, and to listen to him. And we cannot, listen, we cannot do this without understanding what our God-given purpose is. That our purpose is to bring God glory. Some of the most insecure people on the planet, and I'm speaking from experience here, are parents. Some of the most insecure people on the planet. You know why? Because there's a lot of pressure on parents. There's a lot of things that parents face, and let's be honest, we go to in the public setting and our kids perform poorly, and we feel like we're a failure. I mean, I've taken my kids to a restaurant before and just wanted to crawl under the table. And we were like, we're not going back to the restaurant for six months at least. And we've trained our kids, and we've gone back and we've had successful times, and we've had people come up and say, Your kids are so so good. They've been so sweet, that's been awesome. And as those are moments you go, oh, thank you. Praise God. Somebody saw, we're doing something good, we're doing something right, so you cling to that, right? But here's the thing mom and dad, and even for those of you that aren't parents, your God-given purpose is to bring God glory, and you can't do everything perfectly, you can't do everything right, but you can glorify God to the best of your ability. You can love God, you can obey God, you can pursue God. And let me just close out with this thought tonight. If you feel like a failure right now as a parent, first off, welcome to the club. You're gonna have moments like that. I've had moments like that. We're in this together. We need to help each other. But know this while the Bible doesn't explicitly teach us a ton about parenting, it does remind us that we have a heavenly father. That we have a perfect heavenly father. And tonight, some of us as parents, we need to come to that perfectly heavenly father and say, God, I just need you to help me. I need you to just uh, and this may not sound very masculine, but God, as my heavenly father, tonight, I need you just to hold me and help me as a parent. Because I'm I'm struggling. God, I need you as my heavenly father to guarant me wisdom. And you know what the scripture says that God is a good heavenly father? In fact, it even says that if earthly fathers know how to give their children good gifts, that your heavenly fathers you can guarantee he knows how to give good gifts to those who ask. That we have a heavenly father that's perfect even in our imperfection and our brokenness. And some of you tonight, let's be honest, the the term father, it's not a neutral term. For some of you, when I say the word father, you think really bad things. And for some of you I say the word father, you think really good things. Some of you I say, mother, you think really bad things, some of you I say mother, you say think good things. But here's the deal: you have a perfect heavenly father. So whatever your experience on earth has been like, you have a father that loves you perfectly. And he will not leave you, he will not forsake you. He will not abandon you in your mess, he will not abandon you in your hardship. He loves you so much. In fact, he loves you so much as it says in the scripture that he gave his only son to die on the cross for you and for me. That whoever would believe in that could have eternal life. And if we are gonna be the parents that we are called to be, if we are gonna be the people we are called to be, we have to trust in what Christ has done for us in his perfection, what the Father has done in sending Christ to die on our behalf, so that we can be with him forever. And that's where we can start. We can start in that place, knowing that even when our kids don't perform well, we're still loved. That even when our kids mess up, we're still loved. Even when we mess our kids up, we're still loved. We're still forgiven. We don't disgust God because it says in Romans 5.8 that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Isn't that an amazing reality? That even in our brokenness, even in our failure, even in our mess, Christ said, I will still die for you. That's the kind of father we have. And I want to be a father to my children that's for them, that's on their side like our Heavenly Father is. It's not against them. Train up a child in the way it should go. When he is old, he will not turn from it. I don't know that what that'll look like for my kids. I don't know what that'll look like for your kids, but we just trust in God. And we pray, I pray this almost every day. God, I'm gonna listen to you and I'm gonna obey you the best I can, but ultimately, I'm resting in your grace. I'm resting in your grace that you're gonna capture my kids' hearts and you're gonna draw them to yourself because I can't change them, I can't fix them, I can't control them. But you, God, can transform them into who you want them to be, into their God given purpose. And pray for us.