A Gospel Understanding of Our Children

What's happening? Well... Say what you want. Say what you want. But yes, he does have an advantage. That's the way it works.

If any of you want to get in on the game, you can. Okay? All right. Let's pray. Father, thanks again for our time together. We pray that this will be profitable in our thinking and in the way we parent our children.

And we pray now that you would just guide us. Help us not just to know this, because a lot of us can know already, but to consciously think about these things as we interact with our children. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, we all have lenses that we use to understand our children. So who provides your lenses?

For many people it's just the experience, the collective experience and the wisdom of people you respect. For others it's the lane of psychology that's come down the road, the lane of school of psychology. Still for others it's the latest book on child rearing that has the answer for raising our kids. But we all operate with a framework by which we understand our children.

There's a frame of reference that we use in order to explain and understand what's going on with them. So where do we go? And I would suggest to you that we need a biblical anthropology. Now I don't want to confuse the theological term with the sociological term here. Anthropology is also a theological term. We're not talking I'm not talking about the origins, the studies of the origins and social relationships of human beings.

We're using the word in its theological sense, which is doctrine of man. It takes two deep words to put together, anthropos and logos, word about man. It's a theological term that essentially asks the question, what is man? What makes him tick? Why does he do the things he does? Who is he?

What is he? And so forth. These are things that are open to revelation more than observation. So we want to begin with a biblical description of our children. And your anthropology is going to have a major effect on the way you deal with your kids How you see your children You say why do they do what they do What makes them tick Those are going to have major influences on the way that you raise your kids and the way you interact with them If a child is basically good, okay, then the problems don't come from him, they come from outside of him.

If a child is the end of the evolutionary process, of course with the scientists in the room here I know there's no such thing as the end of the evolutionary process, but at this point if they're just the highest of animals then conditioning is the answer. If he's motivated by some deep rumblings of a subconscious that's been over socialized by his super ego, I know it's always godly to do that, but that's going to have an effect on how you raise your kids. So a biblical and accurate view of man will have a greater influence on the way that we raise our children.

So here's the first one. I don't think anybody here in this class tonight is going to be surprised by this one. by this one. God says your child is a sinner. Okay? God says your child is a sinner. The idea that children are innocent or basically good or at the very least neutral is foreign to Scripture.

Okay? That is a foreign concept to Scripture. Okay? Scripture indicates that your child is inherently corrupt and guilty. Okay? So, who's all over here?

Alright. Naturally, inherently, corrupt, and guilty. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Why did you automatically go up to defense there? I'm going to wait a minute.

Alright. Let's look at Proverbs 22.15. Someone read for us Proverbs 22.15 and Psalm 51.5. Alright who looked up Psalm 51 Alright Wes and then Proverbs 22 all right Proverbs 22 okay 51.5. Behold, I was lost, and my mother conceived me. All right, now he's not saying that the way of conception was sinful.

He's saying that the moment of conception, I was sinful, okay? Proverbs 22, 15. Folly is bound up in the heart of a child. In other words, a child comes to you fully equipped for folly. All right? Now, folly, by the way, in Proverbs is not talking about silliness.

Folly in Proverbs is a synonym to sinful. It's the idea of a fool lives in the God-created world without reference to God. He's a fool. He's living in rebellion. Whereas the wise man is the one who lives in submission to God. So what it's saying here is they're born with a debt toward evil.

He's not neutral. Here's some real important things. Look at Ephesians 4, 17 through 19. Ephesians 4. And if you were, some of this is going to be a repeat from this morning's Sunday school class. as we were studying the doctrine of total depravity this morning. But this is an interesting passage.

In Ephesians 4, 17-19, he describes what unbelievers are like. He says, Now this I say, testifying the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They have become calloused and given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

Now notice, darkened in their understanding and into the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their heart. And so natural man born into the world distorts and suppresses the truth of God. Romans 1, 18-20 says clearly that nature even though testifies about God and it's clear that he is there, man suppresses that truth.

And so our children are born not just with a bent towards evil, but with their minds, with their thinking, with their reason, are also ready to distort They darkened in their understanding Isn it interesting Not just with children but with adults You look at the unbelieving world and you say how could they be so stupid Well they not stupid They darkened They don get it Okay All right so here a question. Is our child fundamentally deprived or depraved? Is he fundamentally maladjusted or prolific.

Okay? The Bible would say that the issue is not that he's depraved, but that he's depraved. Okay? So here's the boy who hits the teacher at school, steals from his classmates, and he's always picking fights with someone on the playground, right? What is his problem? Well, typically now, okay, with the way people look at mankind now, he's that little boy is going to go to counseling because they want to find out what's wrong.

Now, with this kind of anthropology, we already know what's wrong, okay? But have you ever heard people describe the same boss, right? This boy, this teacher in the classroom, this boy who's always picking fights with children, this boy who steals from his classmates. Have you ever heard this? Well, I know Tommy is having trouble at school. But you know, he really is a good boy at heart.

We've all heard that, right? He's really a good boy at heart. Actually, he's not. Okay? He is not. He is depraved, bent towards evil, and so forth.

And so, what are the implications then for that? Well, the implications are discipline. Hopefully, as we'll see in a few more weeks, discipline to restrain the evil and the gospel pertains the heart. If he's basically depraved, he needs discipline and the work of the gospel. If those are the lenses we use to see our children, then that's the answer. That has to be the answer.

Okay? Let's look at two more passages. Genesis chapter 1 verse 27. All right, Levi. And then we want to look at Colossians chapter 3 verses 9 and 10. Colossians 3, 9 and 10.

All right, Caleb. All right, Genesis This is chapter 1, verse 27. God created man in the image of God, and in the image of God he created man. Male and female, he created them. Alright, God created man in the image of God. Colossians 3, 9 and 10.

Alright, here, pre-fall, post-fall. pre-fall, man's created image of God, post-fall, the gospel is intent on taking that distorted image and restoring it to what it should be. So what's the point? The point is your child is an image bearer. We've got to keep this in mind. He's an image of God. Just like you, he or she is in the image of God.

That means that as a reflection of God, each child has a moral consciousness, he has emotions, she has sovereignty, creativity, intellect, self-reflection. All those are going on in the mind of a child. And a child has all these things as a reflection of God, as an image of God. This is what's happening. Or this is what they're like. They do have a moral consciousness. they do have emotions, sovereignty.

Have you noticed, I think this is part of image bearing, that children, all of us naturally, right, try to create things, right, naturally try to take sovereignty and order things, right? All those things are a reflection of God. Now, that image, although it's present, is marred and distorted. The very definition of a human being is image of God. Now, if that image is eradicated, if it's gone, then we're not human.

Alright, you see what I'm saying? So the Bible says that the image of God has not been destroyed, it's been distorted. Okay? It's still there, but it's marred and distorted. When we were kids, we used to take pennies or coins and put them on the railroad tracks and wait until a train went by. And then we go if we could find it go find that penny right And you see Abraham Lincoln who already had a long face had a real long face now because the penny went from like this to like that Or do you remember, um, Silly Putty?

I remember we wanted Silly Putty so bad, my parents would never get it for us. And finally they did, and the first thing we did for it with it was to take a newspaper, put it on there, get an image out of it, and just do that. Alright, that's what we're talking about. The image of God is marred, it's distorted, and now it's being restored through the gospel.

Okay? Now, again, this is going to have implications for us as our children. For our children. For example, a child is not someone that is merely forced into obedience or conditioned like an animal. It also said this, the child is someone to know. Too often what we do with our kids is we say we want them to toe the line until we make them toe the line.

But that child also has hurts and desires and views of life and circumstances and all all the things that go on as an image there, this is someone to know, not just to boss around. This is someone to know, not just to slap back on the tracks, okay? I need to know this person. I need to know what he or she is thinking. It means that a child's mind, moral consciousness, his creativity, his emotions, all of those things have to be engaged.

Alright, so at least we know this much. Going in, if this is true, then there's more to raising kids than discipline. There's more to raising kids than setting down the rules and saying obey or you get smacked. This is someone who has to be engaged in many ways. Just like another human being, okay? Look at Ephesians chapter 6, verses 1 through 3.

I'm just consider I what behind okay the What behind you okay Ephesians 6 someone read that Who read it? John, come make a prayer to the Lord for this is right. I want to hear Father and Mother. Here's the first commandment of the promise. That it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. Alright, now look at this command.

For one thing, it's interesting to me, the Apostle Paul writes this to the church in Ephesus, and who does he address here? He addresses children directly. Children who are sitting in the congregation are hearing this letter read out loud. Of course, you know, when it first arrived in Ephesus, it didn't arrive in a book. It was a letter. The Apostle Paul is addressing the children directly sitting in that congregation.

He addresses them. He appeals to children. He appeals to them. He doesn't just threaten them. He appeals to them. He even reasons with them, right?

Obey. Why? Listen. Here's a good reason. Your life will be better and you'll live more. So he reasons with them.

We can reason with our children. We can talk to them. We can appeal to them. We're human beings. They're in us there. We need to remember that as we engage them.

Now, all of this may seem simple to you, but frankly I think a lot of us as parents are just too lazy to engage children. We don't talk to them, we don't find out what they're thinking. What we do is we just, you know, make them go alive. And we need that to begin organizing their image barriers. This image has been marred. It can only be renewed through the ministry of the gospel and the spirit.

Remember, part of the ministry of the gospel, we think in terms like this, it's to get people saved. Yeah. But what does that entail? Part of it is making us into the human beings that God always intended. The gospel is building the image, restoring it, taking out the distortions. All right?

That's part of gospel work. And so that has to be part of our work as parents with our children All right Now we also have to see that the Bible says that your child is a product of shaping influences Okay Shaping influences are those events and circumstances in a child developmental stages that prove to be catalysts for making him the person that he is. The The fact that, for example, I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin has influenced me as opposed to if I had grown up in a ghetto in Cleveland somewhere.

Those things do have an influence on us as human beings. The Bible recognizes that. We acknowledge those influences. For example, Deuteronomy 6, verses 6 through 7. Someone read that. Identify the shipping influences here.

The word that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. All right. What kind of influences do you see here? All right.

Parents influence through Scripture. How much exposure to parents here and to that teaching? Yeah, there's this lots of exposure, okay, when they're going to bed, when they're getting up, when you're walking along the way. It has this idea that there is considerable time with parents that are going to influence them, all right? What about Ephesians 6.4?

So I'm going to read Ephesians 6.4 and see what kind of shaping influence is there. Okay, Diana? All right, what is it? There's a warning here. About what? Provoking them, exasperating them, okay?

Don't exasperate them. There's a sense in which Paul is saying here, you can, by how you react and engage with children, exasperate them, provoke them. You can do that. What's Colossians 3.21 say? He's got it. Lives do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.

Lest they become discouraged. Here, in Colossians he has a little different angle. It's kind of, you can almost translate this, fathers don't take the wind out of their sails. Okay? You know, we can be so hard on our kids that they just get totally discouraged and they shrug their shoulders and say, what's the use? No, he gives no use.

There's no pleasing him. There's no pleasing her. Forget it. Okay? So the Bible recognizes these shaping influences. Proverbs 29, 21, this is directly related to the servant, but it says, a commanding hand works his servant from you, feel very in grief at hand.

So there's this idea that the Bible recognizes that there are external influences that help shape us. But here's a caution. The caution is that shaping is not automatic. The way a child responds to those events and circumstances determines the effect they have on them. I think this is really important for us to hear. We live in a culture that says that influences are not, the environment is not influencing, it's determining.

And that's not what we're saying. Okay? The environment can influence but it doesn't determine. Why? Because here's what we have to do. Children are not passive receivers but active responders.

Okay? This is why we need to be aware of shaping influences, but we need to remember they don't determine you. Because you're not working with an inert piece of clay. I do this, I do that, I do some things, and I make this clay into a cup, or I make it into some kind of a statue. But that's assuming the clay just automatically responds to all the pressure.

But that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says that we're not this inert piece of material that automatically is determined by outside forces. You are actually, a child is actually a responder. He responds according to the Godward orientation of his heart. Okay Let me try to explain this a little bit So here a child right There the shaping influence of a structure of family life The traditional family structure Is it traditional family structure How many parents is a child exposed to Do you think it makes a difference whether you grow up in a house your whole life with only two parents as opposed to a house where three-fourths of the time you're in this household and a quarter of the time you're in that household?

Do you think that makes a difference? Sure it would. Sure it will make a difference. How many other children? Or is the family life organized around one child? That would make a difference.

Is he the oldest or maybe the youngest? organized around one child. That would make a difference. Is he the oldest or maybe the youngest? I've got a quote here. I think it's from one of the trip writers who wrote, Sally and her husband come in for marriage counseling, having to make some major adjustments. One of the hardest hurdles for Sally to surmount was that her husband did not organize his life around her.

She'd been an only child with parents who did exactly that. That's going to have an influence. So the family's pressure or family values, the parents, that's going to also have an effect. What's important to the parents? What do you fuss about and what do you let go? Do parents get more stressed over a hole in the child's school pants or the fact that it got in a fight at school.

How does God fit into the family life? What secrets do you keep and what do you tell? All those sorts of things. So family values. Is church important to you or is it not? All those things came to play.

Then there's family roles. What are the roles that each family member plays? Is dad involved in every aspect of life? Is he busy and distant and not just checks in every once in a while? Does mom run things? Does mom rebel against dad?

Or does he quietly do what dad says? Or is he a manipulator? Is he harsh? All those sorts of things come into play. All right here's another one. Family conflict How do you solve problems You know Is dad the kind of guy that walks up to his son and whacks him on the side of the head and says you idiot I going to have to go over this As opposed to someone who sits down and says, son, what's going on?

Do they see parents fighting? Or do they see parents actually sitting down and talking things over, solving problems, taking the Bible out. Our son blow-uppers, our son clam-uppers. What happens when the blow-uppers meet with the clam-uppers? All those sorts of things are shaping the universe. And of course, there's all kinds of other things.

All right? You go to public school. You go to private school. You go to home school. Just all kinds of things. But here's the point.

And this is what I think is really important because I think this is what's happening in a lot of Christian households is they become subject to a crystal determinator. That is to say, they believe, a lot of parents believe that it's all about the shaping influences. It's all about that. That's all that matters. So, what's interesting to me, and I'm not saying homeschool is wrong in this.

Homeschool is good for a lot of folks, okay? But you know what's happening today is we've had a whole generation of homeschoolers, and now, at the end of this homeschool experiment, there's a lot of homeschoolers, homeschool kids, who are just throwing it all over. They don't want anything to do with Christianity. A lot of homeschool leaders are saying, what went wrong?

What happened? I think one of the things that went wrong is that they thought that if we just keep our kids at home, everything will turn out right. Okay? Now, I'm not against homeschooling. We don't school our kids, too. I'm not against that.

But what I'm saying is you have to be careful that you don't buy into the world philosophy that if you got everything just right, and push all the right buttons, and pull all the right strings, get all the right influences, everything will be alright. Because that's assuming that the person that you're working with is not responding. And you're assuming that that's all that matters.

Okay? You make a terrible mistake. If you then conclude that child is nothing more than providing the best possible influences in your child life That's not Christian, that's determinism. Alright? So, the scripture certainly says be aware of the shaping influences. Yes, they do have an influence and you have to be careful and you have to watch.

Now, they're not all, they're as to parenting, but they're important factors that you have to be aware of. You know, our kids, for most of the years, went to public school and we would debrief them just about every night. What did you talk about in school today? What happened? What's going on? Because we knew that that was important.

Those things are are important influences. And we need to be on top of that. Be aware of those things. Okay? Now, let's talk about this next. And that is your child is a product of a God-word orientation.

Let's turn to Romans chapter 1, verses 18 through 20. Someone read that. These are key verses that describe man, natural man. Okay? Romans 1, 18, 3, 20. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of man, and by their unrighteousness suppresses the truth.

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For this invisible, for he is invisible, namely, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made. so they are without excuse alright so every man born into the world has this bent to suppress the truth but what Romans 1 18-20 is saying, talking about that God word orientation, the religious bent of every individual through which all experiences are understood and processed now it's whether it's a good God word orientation or a bad one ok Now, again, I really, really want to labor this point when we're talking about God-rude orientation. You know what Romans 1, 18-20 says?

It says that everyone is essentially religious. Everyone born into the world is a worshipper. One is neutral. He will either worship God or he will worship idols. Okay, so the question is never, is a person a worshiper? To be human is to be a worshiper.

The question is not whether you're a worshiper. The question is what or whom do you worship? I think that's really important because the child is worshiping, serving and growing in his understanding of who God is, and making sense of life's relationships with God in mind, or he's not. Okay? If he's not worshiping God, he's still a worshiper, but as you keep reading through Romans 1, you start worshiping creation rather than the creator.

Okay? Now, your child may not be conscious of a religious commitment, but he's religious nonetheless. He's got a benefit against God. He's got to bend toward idolatry. Okay? So, all those children over there are worshippers.

They're bent towards God or towards idolatry. Okay? Now, whatever the sleeping influences are, the Godward orientation determines responses to them. Okay? What does Proverbs 4.23 say? Proverbs 4.23.

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flows the springs of life. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flows the springs of life. The heart is the center of everything. All right? So if the influence is coming in, into my heart or spine me is what's going to produce the person that I am. Okay?

In Luke chapter 6, verse 45, the good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasures produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth, his feet. Heart is central. Okay? It central to everything Life experiences are filtered through this Godward orientation Alright so let me give you an example Here's a person without God, no categories of God in their thinking, and was molested as a child, okay?

Some would say that person is doomed to a life of depression, victim, victimology, I'm a victim, will have a hard time, let's say, with men, all these things, okay? but can there be a person who's been molested and have a totally different view and be not depressed and not despairing and not having trouble relating to someone else how well you see God as sitting on the throne who wasn't looking the other way who is using that in some way either to draw you Christ or to use it for your good Can God use evil in our lives to produce good? Can he? Sure.

Scripture is clear on that. He can use even evil to achieve good in our lives. And so the person who has those kind of categories can look at the past and say, this is what I've told to some folks that I've talked to in these kind of situations. Right now you can choose to be a victim or a victor. You can make the choice. You've got categories that will help you understand that.

Your past does not determine you. You can live with the identity victim. I am a victim. And go through life as a victim. Or, as a Christian, you have a different identity. I am in Christ.

I am a disciple. I am a child of God. All those things are going to make an incredible difference on how you handle. So you see, that shaping influence has tremendous influence, but it's the God-oriented orientation of the heart that's going to produce, in response to that, that's going to produce the person. So the question you ask is are there lies organized around God as a father shepherd lord sovereign king or do your children live for some sort of pleasure approval acceptance or some other false god Okay Now these can be called here a simple way of thinking about it idols of the heart These are the desires, the ruling principles, the motivations, the expectations.

Okay? Our child will interact with the shaping influences based on what his desires are, what are his ruling principles? What are his motivations? Okay, so, here's Joseph. In the Bible, Joseph, the last chapter is 39 through 50. If you haven't read that story, read that.

Here's Joseph, who is hated by his brothers, okay? From the get-go, the story of Joseph, his Brothers don't like him. Now, part of it is probably he's Dad's favorite, and they don't like that. And I think he knows he's Dad's favorite, and he kind of rides that a little bit. They don't like him. They sell him into slavery.

I don't think we get that. Here he is. His brothers have thrown him in a pit. They hate him that much. They throw him in a pit. They're going to kill him.

One of the brothers says, no, no, no, we can't kill him. Let's kill an animal, put the blood on his coat, go home, lie to dad, and then let's sell him into slavery. You've got to understand that when Joseph is sold into slavery, he's riding on that camel, going over the hill, looking behind him, knowing that he's never, at that point, he's never going to see his father and mother again.

He'll never see his brothers again. He'll never see his homeland again. Life is going to be completely different for him now. He works hard for Potiphar. What does he get for working hard? What happens to him?

Yeah, false accusation and jail. Because he did what was good. He did what was right. He gets thrown in jail. He's in jail for seven years before he comes out and achieves the greatness that he does. Now, here's the question.

What kept him from becoming bitter? why did he not turn out to be an angry bitter vengeful guy what was the difference all right God was What was his thinking like I think the key to Joseph is Genesis 50, verse 20. Because I think he had this view all the way through. This is something that was part of his heart. Alright? He turns to his brothers, when they think he's going to kill them, and he says to them, you meant it for evil, but God intended it for good, the saving of many lives.

He knows that the evil that was perpetrated him all the way through his life, he always had this in his mind. God's up to something. God's up to something for good here. I don't know what it is, but God is up to something here. He had this conscious view that God was working, okay? Now see, all these influences, and man, they're bitter heart influences, but that didn't determine him.

Why? Because there was something. He's not a passive receiver, he's an active responder. Now think of that with their kids. You know, let's think of some examples, okay? Here's the idolatry of the idolatrous lust for approval, okay?

The idolatrous lust for approval. Your child's going to do certain things, not because he wants to please God, but what? I want to be accepted. I want to be accepted. That's the driving thing in my life, and I've got to understand that. So it's not just his peers that are having an influence on him.

It's the fact that he believes that the approval of his peers is essential for a good life. See? Or I've got to be top of the class. I've got to have the best reputation. That's part of it, maybe. Maybe he's playing rather than paying attention to class because he loves pleasure.

Now, maybe he just is not the kind of kid who fits into a box like every other kid. We recognize that as well. But there are still things that we have to see. You know, I get shotgunned. What's the ruling desire there? My comfort, my ease.

I don't care about you guys. You sit in the back seat where it's hot and where you want to throw up. I want the front seat, right? right? What you want doesn't matter to me. Your comfort as absolutely no. value to me. I want what I want.

So, we have to see that it's not just the influences that are part of the shaping influence that make our children what they are. It's also, what am I serving? What am I serving now? Is it God, or is there something else? What am I worshipping? this idol of acceptance or am I worshiping the true and the living God? By the way, you will certainly notice that this is our battle as well, right?

Our battle as well is serving God as opposed to serving some idol. I can tell you what mine is. Mine's people pleasing. I don't like people mad at me. I really hate that. Because of that, I've had to really work hard at keeping from...

I've got to work hard sometimes to say difficult things to people. Like, you're wrong. Like, you repent. Things like that. Because they get mad when I say things like that sometimes. Right?

I've got to really fight that. That's an idol. So, we're talking about our own battle. So, it ought not to be strange to you that your children have the same battle. Okay? Now, this has important implications, of course, for raising our children.

You have to be... You have to provide the most stable shaping influences. You want the structure of your home to furnish the stability and security that's biblical. You want the quality of relationship in your home to reflect the grace of God and mercy for failing sinners that the character of God demonstrates You want punishments moved out so that they give a view that God is holy and hates sin Okay?

You want your values to be scripturally informed. The things that you value should be the things that God says you ought to value. So you ought to be concerned about the sacred influences, but you also ought to be concerned with understanding the particular heart motives of your children. Okay? By the way, all of you, or most of you here, are parents. Have you ever noticed that your children seem to have a certain character from the moment they're born?

I mean, I've noticed that. Okay? Okay? Calvin, right? He's the obsessive kind. Everything has to be lined up a certain way.

Levi argues from the day he was born. Okay? Yance? Yance was funny. He was the funny one. Annie was the dramatic one.

Lydia's the quiet one. Emma's the I'm-going-to-take-the-world-by-the-tail-and-beat-you-if-I-have-to kind of a person. All right? So you can almost, you can start seeing into their hearts a little bit. You can start seeing what's motivating, what's going on there. You can start getting into that.

All right, now the last thing we want to point out is very short, but I think it's important for us to understand. God says your child is a temporary resident. Genesis 2 For this reason a man will leave his mother and his father to be united to his wife and they shall become one flesh The Bible talks about becoming like one person One flesh there I don believe means simply sexual relations It means becoming like one person.

You're to leave, cleave, and leave. We're all familiar with that. And so you have to see that lifelong companionship is not found with children, but with your spouse. he said well I know that yeah but there's a lot of parents that don't know that and they pour their lives into their children I mean they literally just they're running everywhere with the kids they're trying to get everything for their kids and they do this for 21, 22, 23 years given how many children they have and at the end of 20 years they're now living with a stranger that they haven't known for 27 years And then they have 40 more years left.

30 to 40 more years left. And what do we do now? And you think, well, that won't happen to us. It's really easy. It's really easy. I've sat down with people who've done that and their lives are miserable.

Their marriages are a wreck because they've looked for companionship, not with their spouse, but with their children. Okay? Children have to sever their ties with parents and establish a permanent bond with their spouses. I want to teach my kids from the get-go they're leaving. Okay? You're only here for a short time, and then you've got to be on your own.

You've got to set up your own family unit. That's what God wants for you. That's what we want for you. And so we want to raise you so that you're going to be independent of us. And that ought to we talk about this later but that ought to have an effect on the way you parent your kids So it wrong to pour all of your energies time and priorities into your children They don need everything that's out there.

I think one of the best things that happened to Beck and I in our marriages back in 1986 when I went to my first counseling training and I learned this for the first time. I mean, like I didn't know this. And that changed the way we did things at home. We said, we got to be companions. We have to start thinking of the children as not the center of our world.

Okay. And so that helped us on day-to-day decisions. What are we going to do? Kids have to be in bed by eight so we can spend the next two hours alone together because children can just kind of suck up everything, can't they? You've got to make conscious choices in that area, okay? So, question.

Do you see your child as God does? Okay? If you're going to raise your children in the right way, use the lenses that God has given. These are the lenses of how to understand our kids, and this is how we need to start looking at that. All right. It is, I'm sorry, 701.

Okay? So if you want to ask questions, you can, but no one's obligated to stay. All right? Any questions? Okay. Well, I guess that's it.

We'll see you next week.