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Alright, jumping into what we're talking about today. We're in the middle of a family series. And as we've talked through the family, we've done two weeks on marriage, and we did one week on parenting, and now this is the second week on parenting. Now, when I say that, I'm just asking any of you who aren't parents or don't have kids at home right now, don't turn the off switch off, okay? Because I believe as we look at this passage we're going to look at today, that there are truths that will apply to everybody. Okay? All of you have kids that you're influencing. And really, when we say parenting, we're specifically talking about influencing the next generation. And all of you have like grandkids or nieces or cousins or little ones around you that need pointing towards God. And so I want to ask all of you to stay engaged as we talk about this this morning. Next week, as we wrap up this family series, we're actually going to do a week on singleness, which I think will be a great opportunity for us to remind ourselves what does that look like to be single and to honor God in that. So that's going to be our last week in the series next week, okay? And as we talk about parenting, I just need to put out a little disclaimer. I don't have it all figured out, okay? I am not a perfect parent by any stretch of the ma imagination. I'm a little daunted myself, actually, by talking on this subject area. We have three kids in diapers right now. So we have my son, who we're potty training, sort of. I mean, it's a slow process. He's about to turn three, and then we have twin girls that are about to turn one. So our diaper budget is really high, and all I know about is how to change diapers. I don't know a lot of the ins and outs of the further parenting. But as we examine this text this morning, and as we talk about this concept of passing on a love of God to the next generation, practical parenting, I hope that I'm learning just as much as you are in this process. So let's pray. I'm going to ask each of you to bow your heads and close your eyes one more time. And what I'd ask you to do this morning is just ask God wherever you are in that seat and where whatever you believe about God, just say this prayer. God, would you speak to me this morning? God, thank you that you've heard these prayers go out this morning from all these seats in this building. Thank you that you are faithful to answer that prayer. God, I just pray that as I speak, that my words would come from you, that you direct my heart and my mind as I speak. I pray that each person here this morning would be encouraged in some way. God, as we talk about the gospel, as we talk about parenting, as we talk about loving on the next generation, I pray that we ourselves would be reminded of how essential it is to love you and to follow you with our lives. Thank you. Amen. Well, there were two brothers that were like setting out across the country to find a new place to settle and to live for themselves. And as they traveled across the country, they finally came to a valley. And this valley was just beautiful. It was like the perfect place for them to set up their homes. It was had a little creek running through it, and there were some woods right there beside the valley that they could use for building their homes. And so the first brother set about building his house, and as he went through the process of building, it went pretty quickly because he picked this spot down by the creek, and as he began to dig, he was digging into the sand to lay his foundation. And so he dug pretty quickly, laid the foundation, the woods were right beside his house, he cut down the trees and built his home. The second brother was almost the opposite of that. He decided to build on just a little bit away from the first brother, up on a rocky shelf, and he had to painstakingly chip away at the rock to be able to even lay a foundation. And when he'd finally got to laying his foundation, he had to drag all his limb lumber, all his timber up onto this rock foundation and build his home. Well, the brothers lived there happily for several seasons, but in the change of one of the seasons, this big storm, a storm like they'd never seen before, rolled in over the valley. And as this storm came and it drove against these homes, the waters started to rise, the winds were picking up, the first house, the first brother's home, was swept away and devastated in the flood. But the second brother's home stood the test of time. And the reason that was was the first brother had built his house on the sand, the second brother had built his home on the rock. This is just a paraphrase of a parable, a story that Jesus told in Matthew chapter 4. Some of you have heard it before. And I tell it to you this morning because I think it's essential for us to understand when we're talking about parenting, that we have the option of laying, as we're instructed, as we're given the task or the responsibility of building up, raising up the next generation, we have to ask ourselves, what foundation am I laying for my children? Am I laying on a rock foundation, one that's gonna last? Or am I laying a foundation on something that's just gonna blow away at the first storm or the second storm or third storm of life? Because we all know that in life, storms are gonna come, storms are gonna go. And so when I ask this question of you, I want to ask this question of myself. What foundation are we laying for our children? If you were to look around and ask the world, our culture, our American culture, to inform us on what sort of foundation what we should lay as most important for our kids, what that should look like, you'd get a myriad of different answers, right? You might get the answer that, you know, we need to help our kids to be well educated, or we need to help our kids, our children to be successful or to be happy. Uh the most important for our thing for our kids to be is popular or financially stable, emotionally stable, you name it. All of these things are at different points in our culture held up as being the most important foundation to lay for our kids. But all of those things, I believe, are laying on the foundation or the kingdom of self. And so you first fill in the blank there this morning are that there's two foundations that we can build in a child's life. The kingdom of self is the first one. I encourage you to just jot down some notes this morning. If you write something down, you're much, much more likely to remember it, even if you don't look at it again. The first foundation you can lay in your kid's life is the kingdom of self. We're going to talk about this this morning and how destructive that is. How unhelpful that is for a kid to think that the universe revolves around them. Or even as adults, how destructive that is for us to think that the world revolves around us. The second foundation, and the one I want to propose to you is the rock foundation, is the kingdom of God, basing our lives on the good news, the gospel message, that there is a God who loves us, a God who wanted to fix the problem that separated us from him. There's a thing called sin, right, in the world, and it separates us from God. Here's God, here's man, and there's this sin that separates us. He sends his son Jesus. This is the rock foundation that we should be building our lives on and building the next generation's lives on. And the sad thing is, as I looked across and as I look across our world and our culture, and then I look across the church at large's culture in America, I don't see a lot of difference between what people inside of church and what people outside of church are laying as the most important foundation in their kids. I spent seven years in Houston working with high school students, and I got to see some great examples of parenting. I got to see some horrible examples of parenting. And I just want to let you know that as I was in that whole student world, my eyes were open to the fact that in churches across America, there's a huge problem that has arose and has arisen in the last 10 to 15 years. And this problem is that vast numbers of children, of kids, when they are getting to that age of about graduating high school, early college, are leaving the church. And there's a bunch of different statistics. Conservative people will put it about 60%. The more liberal people with the statistics will put it in the high 80s. Whatever the case, it's a bad number, right? Of kids that are leaving the church. Now, some of them are coming back, and that's great. Praise God for that. But some of them aren't. And whatever the case is, I want to lay it to you guys today that as I saw this as somebody who was in the student ministry area and looking at that a lot, going to conferences, reading books, and doing all those things that you do, my eyes were open to the fact that the foundation that we were laying for these kids was wrong. Even inside the church, parents are putting other things other than God as the most important thing in their lives. And so this is just hugely important. And as the experts in student ministry and family ministries across the nation began to ask the question, what's going on? What's wrong? Why is this happening across the church? They turned to God's word, and there was this scripture that came to the top. It was Deuteronomy chapter 6. And it's a scripture that Nick used last week, he touched on last week, and it's a scripture we're going to actually just park on this week. And we're going to read through it a couple of times and just kind of ask God, practically speaking, what are you asking us to do as parents or as leaders of the next generation? So I'm going to ask you guys this morning to open your Bibles. If you don't have a Bible, that's fine. There should be some Bibles maybe in the seats in front of you. You can grab one of those that are the church's Bibles. If you don't own a Bible, feel free to take one or use your app on your iPad, iPhone, or whatever mobile device you have. Deuteronomy chapter 6 is where we're going. It's pretty early on in the Bible. I'll try and show you when I get to it myself. Here we go. Deuteronomy chapter 6. Right here. See? Not far in. Okay. Does that help? Okay. Deuteronomy chapter 6, and we're going to read from verse 4 this morning and ask ourselves the question: what does this scripture tell us? Okay, here we go. Deuteronomy 6, 4, and we'll go through to verse 9. Listen, Israel. You could paraphrase that as God's chosen people. Listen, God's chosen people. The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. And in the culture when this was first written, this commandment was first given. And even in our culture today, this was a really counter-cultural idea. They were surrounded by nations who worshipped all sorts of gods. Anything that moved was a God, you know, like they worshipped all sorts of things. And God gets up in front of his people and says, Hey, I am the one and only true God. I am the creator of life, I'm the sustainer of life. You cannot find your meaning and your purpose apart from me. Radical idea, right? Pretty cool. Second thought that we see in the scripture is that we are to love God with all that is within us. I don't know if you heard the language, but it's pretty strong. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. It doesn't really leave any room for questioning, right? How much am I meant to love God? No, it's it's clear. You're to love him with all your heart, soul, and strength. The third theme that we see in the scripture, and this is where we're going to spend the rest of our time here this morning, is this idea that we're to pass on this information, who God is and how we're to love him with all our heart, all our soul, and with all our strength. Where to pass this information on to the next generation. If you look with me in verse 7, I think it is, it says there, repeat these things, repeat them to your children. And then it goes on to explain that. And this idea of passing from one generation to the next, a love of God, is a thing we see all throughout scripture. This is something that's hugely important for each of us as parents or just influencers of the next generation to realize and to understand. I I happened to stumble across a psalm the other day that talked about this, Psalm 78. I'm going to put on the screen for you this morning so you don't have to turn there. But it says this My people, hear my instructions, listen to what I say, I will declare wise sayings. I will speak mysteries from the past, things that you have heard and known that our fathers have passed down to us. We must not listen to this, hide them from our children, but we must tell a future generation the praises of the Lord, his might and his wonderful works he has performed. Goes on to say, He commanded our fathers to teach their children so that a future generation, children yet not born, really cool thought, might know. They would arise and to tell their children so that they might put their confidence in God and not forget God's works, but to keep his commands. This sounds strange, but I think of myself like a hamster. And uh let me explain that just a little bit. I was just making sure you guys were awake. I did say a hamster. I feel like my life is a little bit like a hamster on a wheel. I'm going, you know what I mean? Like the hamster's spinning the wheel and it's just going around. I've got bills to pay, I've got a busy schedule, I've got things going on, and I don't ever stop to get off the wheel of parenting and go, how am I doing it as a parenting? Am I laying the right foundation for the next generation? Am I doing what God's commanded me to do? You know what I'm saying? Like just in the busyness, I never take the time to hop off the wheel and to look at it and to really examine my heart and say, God, am I investing, am I making the most of the opportunities you've given me? As you've made me the primary one responsible for raising up my kids, am I doing this in the right way? And so I just want to ask each of you this morning to commit with me as we go through and look at these practical thoughts from the scripture, to commit with me to get off the wheel this morning and to look at your life and to ask the question, practically speaking, what am I doing? Take away the distractions, take away your busy schedule and the all the things that you're involved in, and ask, hey God, am I really investing in the way that you're calling me to? That's my challenge to you. So, what we're gonna do is we're gonna look back through this scripture, Deuteronomy 6 again, and ask the question, how do we do this practically? How do we pass on this love and this respect for God, this knowing that He's the center of the universe onto the next generation? Well, the first thing is that I see in this script scripture is we have to teach our children that life is not, you can underline not, life is not all about them. Our kids are born into a world that tells them the exact opposite of this. Our kids are born into a world where they are the center of the universe. And we need to tell them, we need to help them to know and to understand that they are not the center of the universe. The scripture is very clear on this. Hear, O Israel, listen, Israel, the Lord our God is one, as in the one and only. Love the Lord, not love yourself with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. So I just want to say to you guys really quickly here at the start, that we have to help these kids know that life isn't about them. The two questions that we must answer ourselves and help our kids answer are how am I here? And why am I here? Those are your next fill-in-the-blanks. How am I here and why am I here? If we look again to the culture, the culture in our schools, in our education systems, it tells them how they are here. They're here by evolution, like it just random happenstance. They went from one thing to the next, and they just happen to be a scientific kind of experiment that went wrong. You know, like that's that's how they exist. They evolved into being. And the why they are here is they're just here to exist, to be happy, productive, uh, to help humanity. I don't know, that those are the things that are taught, right? And yet God's word, God's scripture tells us that we were created by a loving God. Read Psalms 139 this week. It'll tell you that God knit us together in our mother's womb. I don't know about you, but that sounds much better than evolving to me. It also tells me that he knew every single day I was going to live before I lived one. I don't know about you, but that sounds better than evolution to me too. That's how we are here. The why we are here is for his name and for his glory. I have a purpose for living, and that's found in God. And I need my son, I need my daughters to know that. I need them to know that they have a purpose for living, and that's to bring glory to God. If they think their life is about happiness, they're gonna fall on their face. If they think that life is about being successful, they're gonna fall on their face. And this is why I'm saying to you, they've got to realize that the world is not all about them. Best way I can illustrate this for you guys is to think about a movie. Our kids are told and taught that they are the star of the movie of life, right? If there was a movie called Life, which there probably is, uh, but if there were the star of the movie, if there was a movie, they would be the star. That would be the headline act, the name that comes up in the credits is first. But the truth is, in the movie of life, Jesus is the one whose name is first on the credits. We're an extra. We might be like somebody in just one of the scenes that you could say, hey, there's me. Look, that's the back of my head. Back there. That's who we are in this story. Life is not about us, it's about God. And we have to help our kids see and understand this reality. That's the first thing. I could go on on that, but I'm gonna try and get off my soapbox. Next practical thing that we need to do to help lay the right foundation for the next generation is to connect with God ourselves. This is where we've got to take some ownership. We cannot lead the next generation somewhere we haven't been ourselves, right? We can't tell them to love God and not love God ourselves. Listen to this verse six. I love verse six of this scripture. It says this it's talking about love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength. And then verse six says this these words that I'm giving you today are to be in your heart. This comes before repeating them to your children. And so there's this idea of this concept of personal ownership in that you have to connect with God. And parents, I just want to tell you this morning, this means getting on your knees daily. This means praying daily, this means uh connecting, reading God's word daily. If you want a practical step on how to be a better parent, there it is. Connect with God daily. There's a great first step. I'm talking to myself here too. That's a great first step is to connect with God daily. If he is the author of life, if he is what life is all to be about, if he's the right foundation, connect with him daily. I was uh provoked to think earlier, I guess it was about two or three weeks ago, I heard a guy speaking and he was just talking about how parent being a healthy parent stems from having a healthy marriage and having a healthy Marriage stems from having a healthy relationship with God. There's a flow chart here. And if you connect with God, I really believe this. If you connect with God, the other things really will flow into place as they need to. So, just back to the point, we need to connect with ourselves, with God ourselves daily for us to be able to lead our children to connect with God and to lay that right foundation. The third thing that I point out to you from this scripture is that we need to teach this next generation formally and informally. Let me explain that to you a little. If I look back at this text, it says, repeat them to your children in verse 7. Talk about them when you sit in your house. That sounds pretty formal to me. Hey, we've made a plan, we're going to sit down, we're going to talk about God right now. But then it also goes on to say, when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road. That sounds pretty informal. Hey, we're going along the road and we're going to talk about God. So there's this concept implied in the text that there needs to be both informal and formal learning. Let me explain that a little bit because it sounds really boring like that. What I mean by that, I mean make a plan. Have a plan to point your kids towards Christ. If you don't have a plan, you can't follow through on it. And for each of you, this is going to look different. Each of you have different families, each of you have different rhythms of life. And so I can't get up here and say you need to have at 6 30 every day, you know, you guys need to have an hour of prayer as a family or whatever else. That doesn't work, right? But you need to figure out what that does look like for your family. Maybe, here's a couple of suggestions. Maybe that looks like you guys as a family, before you all scatter to work in the school, you're going to pray together every m every weekday morning. That's just going to be something you do. You're going to pray as a family together before everybody scatters. Or maybe you say, hey, on Fridays, we're going to get together as a family and have a meal. And during that time, we're each going to share something we're thankful for. Maybe that's something you're going to do practically. Maybe you say, hey, in in the evening time, and I really would highly recommend this, we're going to pray with each of our kids before they go to sleep. Something we do in our home and we love doing, getting to pray with our kids before they go to bed. Another thing you could do would be to say, hey, these nights of the week, we're going to get together and read through a psalm. We're going to go through this devotional. There's a ton of resources, but make a plan. Whatever you do, make a plan. Teach them formally. Make sense? The other thing that I'd encourage you to do is to teach them informally. And this means that you're just looking for teachable moments. As those moments arise when there's a situation where you have an opportunity to point your kids towards God, take it. I'll give you an example. I've got some friends in Houston. They live right near 610. And if you don't know what 610 is, it's a big, busy freeway in Houston. It's a loop. And the turn that they always have to make to go back to their house, there's always one or two homeless guys standing there with their sign. And as their kids kind of got above, just up into the toddler age, even, their kids started to ask, hey, who's that man? Why is he standing there? What's his sign say? Asking a lot of questions. And my friends decided, hey, we're going to make this a teachable moment. We're going to talk to our kids about how God loves this man. We're going to start talking to this man. We're going to start making little bags with some food and some water in it and a scripture to give to this man. And so they started, they used that as a teachable moment. It was just a man standing by the road, but it turned into an opportunity to show their kids God loves everybody. And we're called to reach out to those who are in need. Teachable moment. Another teachable moment for you guys may be when something comes on on the television. Just gonna get on a soapbox here for a second. Be careful what you let come into your house, what you watch, what's on your internet, and also like what's happening with like cell phones and all that sort of stuff. You guys need to be vigilant in helping your kids make wise choices in all of those areas. Oh, the other one was in gaming. Like, some of the games, I mean, some of the content in some of the games is horrible. You guys need to watch what comes into your home. That wasn't what I was intending to talk about. But anyway, just be very careful with that. If somebody in student ministry, I know what these kids are watching and seeing in home, and some of it is nasty, okay? And it shouldn't be coming in your home. But say you are watching television, something comes on the show that you're watching that you don't agree with as a family, that's a teachable moment. Put the show on pause or wait till the ad break, mute the ads, and say, hey guys, how is that guy treating that woman in that show? Is that something that we believe? Is that what the Bible teaches us to do? No. Okay. What is the Bible? How are we meant to interact with each other? Use those moments. My dad used to do this all the time, and it drove me nuts, like to the point. Like, I mean, but I'm glad that he did. He made me really start to think about what was coming into my mind. We get to the end of like a movie or something that we watch together, he's like, what were they trying to say with that movie? And I'm like, Dad, I don't want to have this conversation right now. It was just the movie, Dad. But it was great. It really taught me to think and to evaluate what was being fed into my mind. So, teach formally, teach informally. One of the scriptures that Dusty used when they were dedicating Mia last week was this scripture, Proverbs 22, verse 6. Teach a youth or instruct a child about the way he should go. Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. The fourth thing that I'd like to point out to you guys this morning is this concept of, and I wanted to call it show and tell, but that wasn't quite right. So I called it tell and show. I don't know about you guys, but it's way easier to talk than to live, right? It's easier to say something and say, oh, this is the way it should be, and then turn around and not live that way. And so I called it tell and show because I think the showing is harder than the other. If we were to look back at the scripture, it says, bind these things as a sign on your hand, let them be a symbol on your forehead, write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. There's this idea that what we say needs to be symbolized in our lives. It needs to be shown. And I don't know about you, but I'm already figuring out, even though my kids are little, they get way more than I really think that they do. You know what I mean? Like, they can tell if you're faking it, they can tell if you're insincere. They're very smart, they're very perceptive, and so if you say one thing and then live another way, they're gonna catch on to that. What you say, what you teach them, and the way that you live needs to line up. I'm challenged on this one. I mean, this is hard, but there's a scripture that I find very encouraging. Matthew 5, 16 says this let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father who is in heaven. Let me paraphrase this for us and reread it for it for you. Let your light so shine before your children that they may see your good works and glorify our Father who is in heaven. What you do, the way that you show your kids to live, is gonna hugely, hugely influence your children. One of the statistics I always found really interesting when I was working with students specifically, was a statistic that said that teenagers, right even through to late high school, primarily look to their parents, want their parents to give them guidance and wisdom, like on big decisions on the things of life. And as much as our culture will tell you that your kids don't really care about what you think, what you think is hugely important to them. So just know that. And what you tell them and what you show them is hugely, hugely important. The fifth and final thing that I just see in this text this morning that we can do practically to lay this right foundation is to point our children, to point this next generation to God constantly and continually. I don't know about you, but as I read this text, it's pretty obvious on this front. These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children, talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up, bind them as a sign on your hand, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You get the idea. There's this idea that there's to be a constant and continual pointing towards God. And so, my challenge for you, my challenge for myself this morning is that God and the things of God would not just be something in your home that you think about on Sundays. Or maybe Sundays and Wednesdays, you know, whatever day you have life group. God can and should be a part of each and every day of our lives. And our children need to see this. They're not going to grow in a love for God unless you have a love for God that you're passing on to this next generation. This is why I think it's really important that when you guys do get together as a family as you're talking, that your kids would hear you say, Hey, God, in my own time with God this week, he was really reminding me of this. Or I read this scripture this morning. What do you kids think that means? Constantly and continually reminding them that you yourself see this as important, and this is really important for them. Does that make sense? As I look through this list of things, and I'm sure that we could probably spend more time digging out more practical truths on parenting, but as I look through this list this morning, I look at it and I'm like, wow, that's quite a list of things that I can and should be doing as a parent. And I just want to remind you, I want to remind myself this morning, that there is no such thing as a perfect parent. We all struggle, we're all falling short. The Bible tells us that there is nobody who is righteous, not even one. That's saying that there's nobody perfect. And if there's no perfect people, that means there's no perfect parents. Even if you think that Bill Cosby was the perfect parent, he had his issues. And we all have our issues in parenting. But the beautiful thing about that is that as we struggle and as we as we go through difficulties in knowing how to lead and love and discipline our children, is that it drives us to our knees. Our neediness in parenting should lead us back to the cross. It should lead us back to the gospel. It should remind us that we need God badly. And so my hope this morning is as we've talked through these things, you wouldn't feel discouraged, but rather you'd feel encouraged that God's grace is sufficient for your failures, but he's calling you to love and to lead this next generation towards him. I just want to share with you really quickly that in my own life, I've been blessed to have parents that really have, I mean, again, they're not perfect by any stretch, but they've done a great job of leading me and my family towards Christ. And they're great models of this. But the crazy thing about that is that neither of them came from very functional homes. Both of my parents actually came from pretty dysfunctional homes where this stuff wasn't really happening that we've talked about this morning. And it reminds me that any of you, no matter where you're at in the parenting process, have a choice to make a change, have a choice to let God come in and radically affect your parenting. So even if your kids are teenagers or even if your kids are grown, you can start pointing them towards Christ today. I really strongly believe that. And so I just want to encourage you that whatever wherever you're at in this whole parenting process, and even if you're not a parent yet, that God would remind you today of the truths from his word, that way to love him, the foundation in our hearts and the foundation for our kids to know and to understand, is the way to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength. As you struggle and look for an example of what it looks like to be a perfect parent, I just want last fill in the blank here this morning is this is that the perfect example of parenting is found in our perfect Heavenly Father. If you want to know what it looks like to be the perfect parent, look at God. He's a great example, he's the best example of what it looks like to love selflessly, to give completely, to have wisdom in every area. You know what I'm saying? And so I just encourage you to turn to Him here this morning. I'm gonna pray for us, and I want to give you guys some instructions as to some next steps. But I'm just gonna ask you guys to consider this morning here what it is that God's saying to you. Let's pray first, and I'll give you some direction.