A Gospel Understanding Of Our Children

Let's pray before we begin tonight, this afternoon. Lord God, we live in a desperate age in which there are so many competing voices. We want to hear your voice in the midst of it all. In fact, we want the competing voices to be silenced so that we can give ourselves entirely to raising godly children with the gospel at the center of all our efforts. And so we pray that you would give us ears that are attuned to the gospel now and hearts that truly seek you and want to understand more about our children, that we might be better equipped to raise servants for yours.

Father, our goal for our children is not just that they are compliant, not just that they obey. our goal is to raise champions for Christ, and so we pray that you would help us now to understand who they are in order for us to know where to begin with them and how we ought to raise them. So again we pray, silence the competing voices and give us the clear voice that we find in your word, and we'll thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.

We all have lenses provided us by which we understand our children. A frame of reference by which we understand people, in particular children. And with those lenses, we seek to understand what they are like, what's their composition, and so forth. And the question is, who provides your lenses? There's a lot of people out there trying to provide us with all kinds of lenses by which to understand our children.

There's our experience or the experience of ages or the experience of our parents, which in itself is not bad, but if that's all we've got to go on, we may be on shaky ground or psychology, not just psychology. I shouldn't put psychology. Quite possibly one of the many psychologies of human behavior have captured your mind, have captured your view so that you are interpreting your children by the many, one of the many or several of the different competing psychologies out there that are trying to tell us what human beings are like.

Maybe it's the latest book or an article you read in Good Housekeeping that you think has given you the key to understand who your children are. But the point is we all operate with some kind of system by which we understand human beings and by that also our children We all wear lenses This isn just with children this is with everything We have a frame of reference by which we interpret reality. That includes human beings, that includes our children.

So what are the lenses that you have, that you use to interpret your children? How about this framework? How about a biblical anthropology? Now, I'm using the term anthropology in its theological way, not in the social studies way that studies the origins and social relations between beings. I'm using the term in its theological sense. Anthropology is a theological term that essentially means doctrine of man.

Everybody operates with the doctrine of man. Whether you're the most atheistic psychologist out there to the most biblical person you have, everybody operates with the doctrine of man. You've got Freudians who believe that you've got this id, ego, super ego, and the id is squashed by the super ego, and the ego has to find expression. That's a doctrine of man.

You've got Rogers out there who is a very influential man who says man is basically good. He has all the resources that he has within himself by which to solve his problems. That's a doctrine of man. Even though these guys may never have picked up a Bible, they're operating with an anthropology. They have a doctrine of man. The point is where are you going to get your doctrine of man?

Anthropology, theologically speaking, tells us who and what man is. What's his competition? What makes him tick? What's he really like? And so we want to begin with a biblical description of our children. Because if we understand what they are like, that's going to have implications in terms of how we relate with them.

If you view them a certain way, if you have a certain way of understanding children, then you're going to relate to them a certain way. Your anthropology is going to determine everything you do with your children. It's going to have a major bearing in how you respond to your children. If a child is basically good and has all the resources within himself to solve his problems, then you're not going to be the kind of parent that gives directions.

You're going to try to get them in touch with those answers within themselves. If you believe that your child is the end of the evolutionary process and just the highest of animals then let not talk about such things as values and those sorts of things Let talk about conditioning all right Let's condition those instincts. If he's motivated by the deep rumblings of a subconscious that's been over-socialized by his parents, then there's another approach to take with him.

Our anthropology is going to determine everything we do with our kids, so a biblical and accurate view of man will have a great influence on the way you parent. And so what we want to do is look at children from the perspective, the lenses of Scripture, and find out what are they like. What is true about children? Okay? All right, let's look at some passages together.

Proverbs 22, verse 15. Okay? This is kind of a quasi-Bible study sort of a thing, so you can read the Scripture references out loud. So volunteers, quickly. Okay? Proverbs 22, 15.

Who's got it? All right. Levi. Proverbs 29.15. Timothy. Psalm 51.5.

Caleb. Psalm 58.3. Mike. All right. All of these, and again, these are just verses here and there, all right? And I want to be very careful about this.

You can proof text everything. So I would challenge you to follow up what I say with a careful reading of the scripture. These are some very key verses, I believe, that helps us understand. Now, there's an idea, essentially, that says children are innocent. They're basically good. Or, at the very least, they're neutral.

Okay? At the very least, they're neutral, but they're basically good. They're basically innocent. And a lot of this comes from the philosophy that formed the culture in which I grew up. It's called modernism. And John Locke was a very influential philosopher.

In fact, he had a tremendous influence on our country in terms of its founding. He was kind of a contemporary of their founding fathers. And John Locke said that man is born tabula rasa, which is a Latin term for a blank slate. Every human being is born a blank slate. That is, he's got nothing. He's just blank.

And what forms him is what written on him by his environment and his parents and what is taught and everything He basically at least for John Locke human beings are basically innocent all right and they affected by everything else And that pretty much a common view today In fact, most would assert that children are basically good. Normally those who don't have children themselves, I think, tend to say that. But scripture would indicate something else, all right?

Proverbs 22.15. Folly is bound up in the heart of the child. The rod of the king of God is the fault of the heart of the child. Folly is bound up in the heart of the child. Now, folly does not mean just foolishness, like they do goofy things, like put on their hats backwards and try to do crazy things to get your attention. Folly is living life without reference to God.

To be a fool in the Proverbs is to be one who lives life without reference to God. That's foolish. Folly, the idea of living life without reference to God, is bound up in the heart of a child. You don't have to teach him that. He's born with that. Proverbs 29.15 Wow, if you just leave a child to himself, guess what?

His depraved nature flowers. You know what? A lot of people think if you want an angry child, beat him. That will produce an angry child. But you know what else you can do if you want an angry child? Don't do anything.

The murder that's bound up already in his heart will find full flower. How about Psalm 51.5? I was conceived in sin. Psalm 58.3, this is a goodie. They go astray from birth speaking lies. You know how to produce a liar?

Have a child. That's what the Bible says. All right? So here's the point. Here's what Scripture says, that children are inherently, naturally corrupt and guilty. They're not nice.

They're not born nice. They're not born innocent. They are born naturally corrupt and guilty. They're born with a bent toward evil. They are not neutral. When they come out of the womb, they are bent toward evil, not toward good.

All right? Look with me, for example, at Ephesians 4. Real quick, Ephesians 4, 17 through 19. Now this I say in 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 the hardness of heart.

They have become calloused and have given themselves up to sensuality, greed, and to practice every kind of impurity. Children will distort and suppress the truth. They are born with the capacity and the willingness to distort the truth. Romans 1, 18-20 says that God is clearly seen in nature, but man, instead of seeing nature and saying there's a creator, then distorts the truth, the Bible says in verse 19 of that chapter, holds down the truth, suppresses the truth, and comes up with a reality on his own.

So every one of our children is born with a capacity and ability and a willingness to distort and suppress the truth. Okay? The question is, is he fundamentally deprived or depraved? Is he maladjusted or malicious? The Bible says he is fundamentally depraved, not deprived. He is fundamentally malicious.

Here's a boy who assaults a teacher, steals from his classmates, and is always picking fights on the playground. What's his problem? Let's send him to counseling to find out what his problem is. Something obviously went wrong in his life. Right? Or that same child, people will say, well, I know Tommy's having trouble at school, but you know, he really is a good kid at heart.

How many of you have said things like that? He's not a good kid at heart. There's no kid that's a good kid at heart. How many of you have ever seen, and our family, you know, our family grew up. I raised my kids with family night every Thursday night. We have pizza and a movie.

Some of you remember those days. And we always watched old movies. I don't trust anything that's not black and white, okay? And so how many of you watch Boys Town? Have you ever seen that movie? No, just all you old people in my family.

Boys Town, where Spencer Tracy plays the priest who starts Boys Town for all these troubled youth, these guys, these kids who are running the streets and are criminals. and the whole thesis of that movie is they're basically good kids. They just need someone to get in touch with that good part of them and the storyline follows a kid who been in trouble and he comes through at the end shining Well, who's the kid? Mickey Rooney comes through at the end shining bright as basically a good kid.

And that all looks good. Oh, is that a wonderful, wholesome movie? No, it's not a wholesome movie. It's giving you a whole view of children that's wrong. You say, wow, this is a fun afternoon, Pastor. All right?

I used to love my kids. What's the implications of that? Discipline is necessary to restrain the depravity, and a work of the gospel must happen to change their hearts. See, that's why the gospel has to be central to our parenting. You can have all the rules you want. It's never going to change a human heart.

And you've got to have rules. We'll talk about that later. You have to have rules. No society, how big or how small, can operate without rules and laws. But we never quite understand why they, I make this rule and they still are selfish. Well, of course they are.

They're born that way. Well, having thought, well, this is a real bummer, let's keep this in mind. Your child is an image bearer. having said having talked about his depravity and so forth understand that he is an image bearer genesis chapter 1 verse 21 who wants to read that genesis 127 all right beth you could read that genesis 127 you yes beth see no one was raising their hands And so I just, if you don't raise your hand, I'll call on you.

All right? Colossians 3, 9 and 10. Okay, Annie. Thank you. Genesis 127. Read it out loud, Beth.

Beth? Yeah. All right? Human beings were created in the image of God. All right? All right, so the first thing that we see, that as a reflection of God, each child has moral consciousness emotions sovereignty creativity intellect self We could spend ten weeks on what the image of God is so I going to summarize it in one sentence There's more to it than that, but like God, we have a moral consciousness.

Like God, we have emotions. We reflect Him. Like God, we have sovereignty. That's part of the image. We're sovereign. Have you ever noticed that children exercise sovereignty?

You know, they have their own little worlds that they exercise their rulership over. All right? That's part of the image. They're creative. They have an intellect. They have self-reflection.

All these are the image of God. Now, Colossians chapter 3, verses 9 and 10 says something very important to us. Annie? Annie? All right. This image, although still present, is marred and distorted by sin.

When sin entered the picture, it did not eradicate the image of God. Because the image of God is the very definition of a human being. What is a human being? He's an image bearer. If you wipe out the image, you've wiped out humanity. Right?

But what happened was that image was distorted. It was marred, okay? You remember Silly Putty? Right? I remember Christmases I just desperately wanted Silly Putty. Finally, my parents bought some.

And the reason why I wanted it was I could go to the comic page and put it on a face and then take that face. It would be imprinted on the Silly Putty and go, you know, make it real long or real fat, you know, just distort it. Or if you were a really bad kid, you would take a penny and put it on the railroad tracks and wait until a train went by and run over the penny.

That way you could look at Lincoln and he would be really distorted. Of course, that was a federal offense to do that, to deface coins. But be that as it may, you might have done that. Probably did because you were depraved, but be that as it may. The image is marred and distorted by sin. It's still there, but it's distorted.

So the most depraved sinner still bears the image of God. He still reflects God. He still is creative. He still has an intellect, self-reflection, moral conscience. All those things are still there, but they've been distorted and marred. They not quite what they ought to be And this verse says so the gospel comes along and restores that image Part of the ministry of the gospel is to restore that image So we become the human beings God intended us to become.

All right? Boy, that's packed with all kinds of implications, isn't it? The gospel isn't just about getting us to heaven. The gospel is about making us the kind of human beings that God always intended us to be and that we will see in glory. Well, that has implications for raising children then, doesn't it? For one thing, a child is not someone that is merely forced into obedience or conditioned like an animal.

All right? Depending on which child psychologist you follow, some will talk about conditioning. You know, it's just about conditioning, rewards and punishments, positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and all that kind of stuff that's going on. And that's because they don't have the right view of human beings. But it also means this. A child is someone to know.

He's in the image of God. He has desires. He has a view of life. He has hurts. He views things a certain way. He's reflective.

He's thinking about things. Now again, Stina's distorted that. Nevertheless, it's there. And that's going to say something about how I respond. And one of them is this. Because all those things are true, I have to engage my children.

It's not a matter of just spanking them enough. It's not a matter of just jawboning them enough so they get the point. I've got to engage them as a human being. I've got to relate to them. I've got to know them. I have to understand them. which is, you know, part of our problem is, and we'll talk about that in a few minutes, we've become Christian determinists.

We've responded to our permissive culture by saying, if you just give them enough spankings, they'll be okay. Now, spankings are necessary. Don't get me wrong. That's not all there is to the story. I've got to engage that child. I've got to engage him.

All right? And guess what? that's going to take time. For example, look at Ephesians 6. Ephesians 6, 1-3. Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. Honor your Father and mother, this is the first commandment with a promise, that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.

Do you see what the Apostle Paul is doing there? He's addressing children. He's addressing children as if they will understand what he's talking about. He tells them about a promise. He tells them about what will happen if they don't. He says, you're morally responsible in this area.

Okay? So he engages them. so all these things have to happen notice that this command addresses children as responsible it appeals to children we have to appeal to our children it reasons with them we can reason with our children we can explain to him the consequences of the behavior we can explain right and wrong we can seek to understand them why they're thinking the way they're thinking and why they're doing what they're doing now since the image has been marred it can only be renewed through the ministry of the gospel and the spirit. That is so important.

Again, the implication is my understanding and the way I operate with my children has to be gospel-driven. It has to be gospel-driven. I must minister the gospel in whatever I do. Remember we said last week, everything you do to your children, with your children, and for your children must be oriented toward the goal of raising a godly, independent disciple who loves God and handles life by handling his word.

Everything I do with and to and for my children is oriented toward that. Well, everything I do to my children, with my children, for my children should be conditioned by the gospel. With the fact that they're sinners, the fact that they need to be regenerated, the fact that their hearts need to be renewed, the fact that all those things have to happen.

All that should be, the gospel should be washing over everything because if he's an image bearer but it's marred, then this is what has to happen. All right? Here's the next thing that we find out. God says that your child is a product of shaping influences, of shaping influence. What do I mean by shaping influence? What we're talking about here is those events and circumstances in a child's developmental stages that prove to be catalysts for making him the person he is.

They catalysts Now I borrowed this terminology from Ted Tripp but the terminology is very important They're shaping influences. They're not determining things. They are shaping things. They have an influence. Okay? Now, the Scriptures acknowledge that.

Let's look at some of these things. Deuteronomy 6, verses 6 and 7. Tina. Ephesians 6.4 Susan Colossians 3.21 Joe Okay Alright, Scripture acknowledges these influences. Deuteronomy 6.6-7 Okay? Now, here it talks about spending a lot of time with your children.

It says, get these things on your hearts. Get those on their hearts. Deuteronomy 6 indicates that children must spend considerable time with parents who teach if they're going to grow up and serve God. It won't happen in a vacuum. Parents need to be with their children for a considerable amount of time and be teaching them. Okay?

Ephesians 6.4. Who did I give that to? Susan. Joe, you've got Colossians 3.21. Go ahead, Susan. Fathers can exasperate their children.

They can provoke them to become angry people. Now, it doesn't mean, well, we'll talk about what that means later. Because some of us right now are sitting there saying, so I don't do anything to make my children angry? No, that's not what it means. It means don't live with them in such a way that they grow up to be angry. Okay, and we'll talk about that later in another lecture.

All right, Colossians 3.21. All right? Don't provoke them lest they become discouraged. That word has the idea lest you take the wind out of their sails You can have an influence on your children Scripture recognizes there are things that influence them Proverbs 29 says If a man pampers his servant from youth, he will bring grief in the end. All right, so there's this idea that there are these influences, but let's have a word of caution here.

Shaping is not automatic. Shaping is not automatic. The way a child responds to those events and circumstances determines the effect they have on him. So in other words, a child is not merely acted upon by circumstances. We can't have this view of a child as this inert substance by which whatever comes his way determines him. What we have to remember is that children are never passive receivers of influence, but they are active responders.

All right, now this is really important, because he's going to respond according to the Godward orientation of his heart. All right, so what we're saying is there's these influences that shape you, that have an influence on you, but they don't determine you, because there's something else going on. A child is not just this inert substance by which these shaping things come. a child also has a heart that's bent a certain way that responds to those.

You see? So he's not just a passive receiver. He's an active responder. All right, well, what kind of influences are there? Okay, what kind of influences are there? Well, there's such things like the structure of family life.

Is it a traditional family structure? How many parents is the child exposed to? Are there other children? Or is family life organized around one child? Is he the oldest or maybe he's the youngest? There's all kinds of influences there.

Sally and her husband come in for marriage counseling. They're 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 was an only child. Her parents did everything for her. Then she gets married and finds out this guy doesn't do everything for her.

Do you think that's going to have an effect? Well, certainly it does. How about family values? What's important to your family? What's important to the parents? What's worth the fuss and what is not?

Worthy noticing Are people more important than things Do parents get more stressed over a hole in your school pants or a fight between your schoolmates Where does God fit into family life What secrets do you keep and what secrets do you not care about? Okay? So those sorts of things have an influence. Then there's family roles that have an influence on children.

What are the roles that each family member plays? Is dad involved in every aspect of life or is he busy and distanced from family activities? Does mom rebel to get her way, or does she manipulate quietly to get what she wants, okay? Ted Tripp writes this story. I know one home in which the children are required to put on their father's socks and shoes because he's fat and finds it uncomfortable.

Since he is cruel and harsh in the way he requires this service, the children are being shaped by powerful statements about their place in family life. You think that's going to have an effect? Certainly it will. Certainly it will. How about family conflict resolution? Does the family know how to talk about their problems?

Do they resolve problems or do they simply walk away? Do members blow up or clam up? And what happens when the blow uppers and the clam uppers meet? Are the problems solved by biblical principle or are they solved by power? See, shaping influences here. I'm thinking about one day in the first couple weeks of marriage.

I remember sitting at breakfast, and I was looking out the window. We lived in a little place on the lake. It was really a sweetheart deal we got. We got this nice little place on a lake and everything, and I was just eating my breakfast quietly and looking out at the pond, and I can still see the ducks swimming by. And all of a sudden, out of this side comes this explosion.

A wife who says, why don't you ever talk? You never talk. You just sit there. You never talk. You just sit there quietly, quietly, quietly. Why don't you ever say anything?

I'm going, whoa, where is this coming from? Like, wow. I'll tell you what happened. This is two different lives, all right? Here's one life over here where you go out and do chores and feed the hogs and everything. You come back and you have about...

How many people? Seven people in the family, and they're all talking and everything about what's going on. Over here, you have a guy who's grown up with a dad who said, don't you ever be crabby in the morning. He got to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning. By the time he was a teenager, he was staying up too late, but had to get up at 6 and was crabby, but made sure his dad didn't know it by keeping his mouth shut.

So, what happens? You've got one over here sitting there, oh, breakfast is a great time, and the guy over here is just saying, you just don't say anything this time of the day. Do you think that had an influence on either one of us? Oh, I'm sorry. Well, sure it did. All right?

Sure it did. So those things shape us, right? There's influences there that you have to be aware of. That's part of what makes our children what they are. And then there's all kinds of other things. Public school, private school, homeschool.

How do you view those things? You know, all kinds of stuff that come in. There are influences. But the thing we have to be careful of is to beware of Christian determinism. Now, shaping influences need not be ignored or denied. They do have an impact on people.

However, you make a terrible mistake if you then conclude that child rearing is nothing more than providing the best shaping influences for your children. I have known families who, because they think the world is so powerful that no child will ever be able to face up to those who say, we're going to homeschool our kids and we're not going to have any contact with the outside world. And I'm not taking on our homeschoolers here because I don't think we have that attitude here.

That's why I can say this with confidence. But I do know families who have been that way. And I know other families who said, you know, you've got to put them out there. They've got to understand what the world is like. And they throw their children to the lions. Alright?

So it's not a determinism that says I've got to do everything to make everything right. Nor do you ignore that and say, ah, it doesn't matter, because it does. Some Christians are determinists. They think that if they provide the best possible influences in childhood, their children are going to turn out alright. Right? Right?

So as a parent be aware of shaping influences Those are important but they not determinative Well then then what gives us the here a fuller picture Because your child is not just a product of shaping influences but their Godward orientation. Now, what do we mean by that? That's the religious bent of every individual through which all experiences are understood and processed.

Okay? They're all understood and processed through that. Now, let's all look at Romans 1, 18 through 20. Romans 1, 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and righteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.

For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in things that have been made. So they are without excuse. And he goes on, for although they knew God, they did not glorify God nor give thanks to him, but instead produced idols. Here's what the Bible teaches. Now listen, every person is essentially at heart religious.

The question is never. Well, he will either worship God or he'll worship idols. Your child is worshiping, serving, and growing in his understanding of who God is and making sense of life in relationship to God. And if he's not worshiping God, he is still a worshiper. But he worships what is not God. The question never is, will he worship?

That's never the question. Human beings are innately beings who worship. The question is, who or what will they worship? It's never a question of, will they worship? it's always a question of who or what will they worship. Your child may not be conscious of his religious commitment, but he is never neutral. He is either, by the grace of God, being renewed, and has a Godward orientation, or he has an idol orientation, if you will.

So, whatever the shaping influences, it's the Godward orientation that determines the response to those influences. Okay? Okay? Proverbs 4 I got it listed there says keep guard over your heart for out of it flow the issues of life Okay Out of it flow the issues of life. Life's experiences, those shaping influences, are filtered through that Godward orientation.

And listen, it could mean this. Let's just take this example. Here's two guys. They grow up in the ghetto. They're brothers. One ends up dying at 22, shot down on the street in a drug deal.

The other turns out to be a doctor. You say, oh, this is the good one, this is the bad one. Not necessarily. They both grow up in the ghetto. Why do they end up in different places? This one has a desire for riches.

This one says, I want to get rich. I want my money now. And so he's into drugs, and he's selling drugs, and he's getting money, and he's getting it fast. And he dies because he makes a lot of enemies. This one is no better. You know what he says?

He says, I'm going to get the best education I can and get out of this place. I'm going to get out of this place, and I'm going to make a lot of money. Even if he doesn't want to make a lot of money. I want a different life than what I got here. Now, neither one wants to serve God, right? But because of their different orientation, they both serve different idols, do they not?

But they end up in different places. The shaping influences do not determine them, but their orientation has a lot of say into how those shaping influences and how that response has produced the person. So let's take it this way then. And I want to say this very carefully. Here's a victim of molestation. Two victims.

This one is angry, bitter, hateful. This one loves people. This one's been regenerated by the grace of God. This one says, those horrible things happened, but God wasn't asleep at the switch. God used those things to bring me to Christ. I now have a different kind of life.

All that's gone. This one doesn't have that. The orientation, that Godward orientation, has determined where that person ends up or has interacted with those shaping influences. All right? Now that Godward orientation The question is are their lives organized around God as Father Shepherd Lord Sovereign King Or do you see them living for some sort of pleasure approval acceptance or some other false god You see, the Godward orientation is part of it.

So this can be identified as idols of the heart, desires, ruling principles, motivations, expectations. Our children interact with the shaping influences based on what his desires are, his ruling principles, his motivations. Either he grows to love and trust the living God, or he turns to various forms of idolatry and self-reliance. Question. Why is it that Joseph became better and not bitter?

Joseph in the book of Genesis. Why did he become better and not bitter? Look at what he went through. I think as you read, and I give this assignment in my counseling all the time. I said, read the story of Joseph, and I want you to tell me. Look for the clues.

After all the horrible things that happened to him, why did he end up not being bitter but loving his brothers and helping them? How did that happen? Look for the clues. And I think the clues are he kept saying this. God's up to something. He's up to something good.

He says that a couple times in that narrative. He believes that. That's why. You see, he believes in a God that's doing something good in the horrible hardships of life. And that's why he ends up where he is. So the things that happened to him didn't determine him.

In fact, how he responded by his Godward orientation. What are some examples? Okay, think of this with your children. Approval of their peers. Do they live for that? I'm going to be top of the class.

I'd rather be playing right now than paying attention in class. It's all about pleasure, right? This is a drag to pay attention in class, so I'm going to do what I want right now because this isn't any fun. Or when you're going somewhere, I get shotgun! You know, that whole deal? You all know what that's all about?

My comfort is more important than serving other people, right? My idol is me and my comfort. My idol is pleasure. My idol is I want people to love me. So, you know, I got this thing. I want people to love me, so I'm going to do crazy things just so I get their attention.

Or maybe it's... pray to people the other way, and I just avoid them altogether. I want the comfort of just, you know, not having to interact. All those things are going on. So what happens is, is you have the Godward orientation, plus or minus, interacting with the shaping influences. That's what produces our children. Okay?

So it's not a one way. It's both. Right? So that's really important to see. That's very important to see. not just influences, that's not determinative, but influences plus responses that honor God or don't honor God. And that produces who we are.

So we have to be concerned with understanding. We have to be concerned with providing the most stable shaping influences. You do want the right shaping influences. You want the quality of relationships in your home to reflect the grace of God and his mercy for failing sinners that the character of God demonstrates. You want punishments meted out to be appropriate to reflect God's view of sin.

You want your values to be scripturally informed. And you have to be concerned with understanding the particular heart motives of each child. If this and this is true, then I need to be concerned about the shaping influences and how they responding What going on in their hearts And we talk about that another time All right last point Your child a temporary resident Genesis 2.24, for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and will cleave to his wife and they'll become one flesh.

The positive goal of independence. Lifelong companionship is not found with children but with your spouse. Okay? So a child, you have to be bringing up a child in a way that he or she will sever the ties with the parents and establish a permanent bond with his spouse. Therefore, it's going to be wrong to pour all of your time, all of your energies, all of your priorities into your children.

There's all kinds of problems in marriages today because that hasn't been learned. All right? I used to think that my wife had a real problem with this. I remember, Becca, one time, I was in this musical. I've only been in one musical in my entire life, right? It was in college, and my girlfriend, who lived in Iowa, said, hey, why don't you come to the musical?

And her response was, well, I can't. My dad thinks that gas is going up. That just costs too much. It would be a waste of money. And I remember thinking, how can you believe this? This girl, is she ever going to break those apron ties?

Is she ever going to break free of her parents Good night What a oh man this is going to be hard And then one time she was visiting at our house and she said to me one time your mother uses too much water when she cooks her potatoes. I was furious. How could she say that about my mother? My mother doesn't use too much water when she cooks her potatoes.

All right? The point is, your children are temporary residents. Don't pour your life into them. Don't pour your life into them as if they're the end all. Because listen, in 20 years, 21, 22, 23 years, they're going to be gone. And you've got another maybe 30 to 40 years with a stranger.

And besides, God has said that you're one flesh with your spouse, not with your children. Folks, this is really important. You've got to treat your children like temporary residents. They're not going to live with you their entire life. And so you've got to remember that. You know, when we first learned this, I can pinpoint it too.

We'd been married nine years before we ever learned this truth, Becca and I did. And so we had to do some things differently in our household. We had to make time for one another. We had to say, no, we're not going to do this because that will mean that we can't spend time together and those children are temporary. This is permanent We got to treat it that way And that had a drastic difference on the way we related to our kids and with one another But that what we have to remember They temporary residents So you got to see your child as God does And if you want to raise your children in this age, you've got to understand your children using the lenses that God provides.

The lenses of interpreting them as human beings. Now we've gone quite a bit to this afternoon. So let me suggest this to you. If you have questions, write them down. Okay? Write them down and stick them in my envelope over there.

You know where my envelope is? All of us deacons, elders, and a few other folks have envelopes over here by that door. Stick them in my envelope and we'll try to cover them because right now we've got to quit. But think about questions you might have. If you want to, sign them. So if I don't understand it, I can say, what did you mean by that?

But if you don't want to sign it, fine. Take the chance that I'll understand it. All right. Okay. Wow. I about wore you out this afternoon.

So let's just pray and then we'll be dismissed. Okay. Father, thank you again for today. And again we pray Father that this isn't just something to fill out some sheets that this would be something that we'd be very careful to do and to think about we ask that you would help us to understand our children in the way that you've told us and we'll thank you in Jesus name, Amen