Surviving Thriving in Parenthood

Well, as a young pastor, I'm still a young pastor, as a younger pastor. There comes a time when you just have to face reality, right? But as a young pastor, I used to be a little intimidated by preaching on parenting. I used to think, you know, what if one of my kids kicks a deacon's shins on the way out of church and just ruins the whole message? So I was always a little bit intimidated with that. And I used to, honestly, I used to dream of a day when my children would be grown and they would be sitting in church because they want to be there, listening to me preach because they love the Lord and they're living for Him and they're rearing our grandchildren in a way that honors Him. Just a dream about a day like that. And today's that day for me, for Genie. All of our children are here. I think it's because they want to be. And it's just a special day for us. So pardon this personal insert into this message. You shouldn't have done that. So thankful that Amy and Matthew and Daniel and Holly can be here today. They've taken a break from the church. They very faithfully serve in to be here this morning because our middle daughter Ruth is here from Chicago, Ruth and our granddaughter Raina. While her husband, who's on staff at Moody Bible Institute, is leading a mission trip for two weeks of Moody students to England, Ruth has come to visit with us for a couple of weeks and Missy, who is grown now with her boyfriend Jake here today. So Genie and I are in Hog Heaven. We've got all the kids, all the grandkids and we're just loving it. And I'm so grateful for this day. I would just like to say very personally to young parents here today, please savor every moment. The years fly by so quickly and they're grown so fast. I would like to say to parents of teenagers here today, and this is going to sound like a cliche, hang in there, do your best and pray a lot. There is smoother water on the other side of the white water you feel like you're in right now. To all parents and children here this morning, I would like to say after 31 years of parenting for Genie and me, take seriously the guidance of the Word of God so that the journey can be as joyful as possible for you. Now I'd be the first to admit parenting has not been easy all the time and I've certainly had my share of failures. Quite honestly, I'm not saying this in any kind of a self-deprecating way. Quite honestly, whatever God has done in the hearts of our children, I owe greatly to my wife, Genie, and to her faithfulness as a mother. So to all of you parents, I have those words to say to everybody else here today, try to stay awake. You might hear something that would even apply to you in this message today. We're in Ephesians chapter 6 and it just so happens in God's Providence and on a day when we come naturally to a passage that has to do with parents and children, I would have the privilege of preaching this to my children and my grandchildren. So I'm grateful for that opportunity. This chapter 6, verses 1 through 4, gives Paul's guidance, God's guidance for us to thrive in parenthood and to thrive in family life. You can see that I began to entitle this message surviving in parenthood and I thought better of that. It really is about thriving in parenthood. Paul talks about both children and parents in this passage and he begins by talking about how to thrive as children. So let's see what verses 1 through 3 says by way of thriving as children. Notice in verse 1, children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Now please notice it does not say parents obey your children. It says children obey your parents. Sometimes we get that backwards in our culture today and we think it's the parents who are supposed to obey the children. I heard about one father who was really upset about having to share the family car with his teenage son and he was complaining to a friend and he said, you know, I am just sick and tired of all the arguing over who's going to use the family car over the use of the family car and I just think next time I want it, I'm going to take it without asking. Sometimes we do get that backwards, don't we? It does not say parents obey your children. It says children obey your parents. Now what does that mean? There's really a lot more in that word obey than may come at first glance because the word obey itself and this phrase obey your parents in the Lord really describes for us the character of obedience. Now notice several things about the character of obedience in this passage. First of all, obedience means to listen. When the Bible says obey your parents, the word obey, the Greek word actually translated obey is a compound word which means to listen under. So the first idea in obedience is listening. There can be no obedience unless there is conscious listening. This starts with conscious listening to your parents. Children need to look their parents in the eye and listen to what they're saying. I don't know if you've ever done this as a parent, you probably have, you may have experienced this as a child, we did this with our children when they were very young. Sometimes we would just take their face very gently and line it up with ours. So we're looking each other in the eye so that we're sure they're listening to us because when you're talking to a child about something very important and they're just all over the place, obedience cannot begin without listening. The word means to listen under. So obedience must start with listening. The second concept in the character of obedience is obedience means not only to listen but it means to submit to authority. Remember the word means to listen under. To listen under. The idea is placing yourself under the authority of your parent, your authority figure, to listen under. To place yourself under their authority. To understand what your parents are saying and to do what they say. Don't be like the teenage boy who was all upset with his dad because they were arguing about his future plans as a son. And the boy looked at his dad and said, nobody will tell me what to do. I'm going to go join the Marines. Well, eventually God's going to get you somewhere where you will be under authority. And if you haven't learned in the home to listen, to live under the authority of your parents, you'll find it out somewhere. If it's in college or if it's in the military or it may be that first job or if you didn't learn it at home, it may be the second, third or fourth job that you finally learn it. But you will learn sometime what it means to be under authority. So obedience means to listen, obedience means to submit to authority. Thirdly, obedience means to be obedient to the Lord. When Paul says children obey your parents in the Lord, that's a very important phrase at the end there in the Lord. Now it does not mean obey your parents only if they know the Lord, if they're safe. That's not what Paul's saying. Paul also is not saying obey your parents only if you are saved as a child. That's not what Paul's saying. Paul is saying obey your parents in the Lord in the sense that your obedience to your parents is a very important element of your obedience to Christ. Your obedience to Christ, your growth in Christ, your walk as a child of God includes obedience to your parents. So the character of obedience is it means to listen, it means to place yourself under their authority and it means to obey them in the Lord as a part of your duty to Christ as his child. But then Paul goes on to give several reasons for obedience. For describing the character of obedience, he gives us three reasons for obedience. Notice the first one in verse 1. He says children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. The first reason for obedience is it is expected. Now when Paul says this is right, he's not talking about it's morally right. He's simply talking about this is the way God has built his universe. This is the law of the universe, his universal law. God has built order into everything he's done in the universe, not anarchy, not chaos. God has built order into the universe. This is just right. This is the way things work under the government of God is for things to have a proper authority structure. So whatever institution God has created, he's created it with an authority structure and order to it that must be followed. Practically every culture and society recognizes this. This is universal law. This is expected. And practically every society and culture understands when this doesn't happen, when children are not under the authority of their parents, then anarchy and rebellion and chaos ensues. It's just expected. In fact the Bible describes that when this doesn't happen society culture is beginning to unravel. There are a couple of descriptions in the Bible about what happens to a society, what happens to a culture or a nation of people. When sin is entered into at the kind of depth and level that God finally says I'm just giving you over to your sin. This chapter one is one of those passages. And in Romans chapter one when Paul's describing the kind of culture that is headlong going into sin, this is part of how he describes it. Look at it on the screen. This kind of culture is full of slanderers, God haters, insolent arrogant and boastful they invent ways of doing evil. They disobey their parents. Very interesting. In that long category of things all of which are pretty bad stuff, disobedience to parents is one of them. In another passage in 2 Timothy chapter 3 Paul describes it this way, but mark this, there will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive. Here it is again. Disobedient to parents. Ungrateful, unholy. The word of God says very clearly that when disobedience to parents becomes a part of what's expected in a culture, that culture is unraveling at the seams. It is coming apart morally. It is full of decadence and decay. And so there's a reason for obedience and that's because it's expected in God's order of things, but not only is it expected it is commanded. Second reason for obedience is it's commanded. Obviously it's commanded in verse 1, but in verse 1 when Paul says obey your parents, he supports that in verses 2 and 3 by referring back to an Old Testament command. It's the fifth of the ten commandments and he quotes it. Look at verse 2, honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise. That's a little aside from Paul and then he begins the quote again in verse 3, that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. Quoting from the ten commandments, Paul says the reason why you should obey your parents is because God commands this, that ought to settle it. When God says something, that ought to settle it for us. It is commanded. God says it, that's enough. So obedience to parents is expected. It is commanded. Thirdly, it is profitable. It's profitable. It's third reason why God says children obey your parents. God's not trying to be tough on you. He's not trying to be mean to you as children. He is saying there are good reasons for this and one of them, and you want to take notice of this, one of them is it is profitable for you to be obedient to your parents. It's included in that command that he quotes from Exodus about honoring your parents. Verse 3 says that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. You see, obedience to parents affects how well and how long you live. How well and how long you live. Now this is more like a proverb than a promise. It's like many verses in the Proverbs that are kind of overall general truth-filled principles about life that have exceptions to them. It's kind of like all else being equal. This will be true. And certainly there are exceptions to this. There are children that die young through various reasons, because of illness, some for other reasons that have nothing to do with this command. But all else being equal, obedience to parents will lead to a good life and a long life. And there are good reasons for that. If you're obedient to your parents, you will listen to their warnings about danger, and it will keep you out of situations that may lead to termination of your life. If you're obedient to your parents, you'll be spared from bad habits and bad influences and bad friends that may tend to ruin and shorten your life. If you're obedient to your parents, you are far more likely to develop healthy character traits that will tend to lead toward a longer life. So with obvious exceptions aside, the general rule of thumb is obedience to parents is profitable for you. It leads to a well and long life, a good and long life. So there are reasons why God commands us to obey our parents. It's expected. It's commanded. It's profitable. But Paul goes on to say there's more to this for children, to thrive as children. There's more than just obedience. We must also honor our parents. And that's included also in the quote from Deuteronomy, from Exodus, in verses 2 and 3. Honor your father and your mother. Now honoring our parents goes beyond obedience. To honor them means that we love them. It means that we respect them because of their position. We show them courtesy and kindness. And even if we disagree with our parents as a child or as an adult, we don't sass, we don't argue, we don't talk back, we respect them for their authority and we treat them kindly and courtesy. That's what it means to honor your parents. Now there will come a day, children here today, there will come a day, children and students, teenagers, when you will outgrow the command to obey your parents. There comes a time when you reach adulthood and you're out on your own and you are in a sense out from under that command to obey your parents, but you will never outgrow the duty to honor your parents. As long as you live and as long as your parents are alive, treat them with courtesy and respect and honor. Do you hear that, girls? They do that well. Respect and honor your parents. For children here today, for teenagers here today, for collegians here today, there is wisdom in these words, there is truth here that you will ignore to your detriment, conscious decision to obey your parents and to honor your parents. We'll lead the blessing in your life. It will change the direction of your life for the better and as long as your parents live, no matter how old they are, always honor them. One of the scourges of our culture today is that sometimes our elderly are forgotten and neglected rather than honored and respected. Their counsel and advice and their wisdom is often shoved to the side. Some cater only to the younger generation. It's wonderful to have a younger generation coming up, but honor our elders. That's a command of the Word of God. So we're to obey our parents, we're to honor our parents and then Paul says, okay, this moved to the parents. In verse four, he's got some guidance for parents as well. How do you thrive as a parent? As a child, it's all wrapped up in obedience and honor. As a parent, thriving as a parent is wrapped up in this one verse which again is chocked full of truth and information about what it means to thrive as a parent. He says, fathers, do not exasperate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. There's a lot of wisdom there about parenting. Some people treat parenting like they do raising fish in an aquarium. You know, you just get a tank, you fill it with water, you dump a few fish in there, you sprinkle a little food on top of you to sit back and watch what happens to those critters. And a lot of people parent that way. Provide food and shelter and just sit back and watch what happens. Paul says there's a lot more to parenting than that. A lot more than just giving them food and shelter and sitting back and seeing what happens. It can be done better than that. And so he says to us, fathers, isn't that interesting? When he moves from the children to the parents, he addresses fathers. Why doesn't he say mothers aren't mothers with the children more, especially in their formative years? Or why doesn't he say both, fathers and mothers? Don't exasperate your children but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Why doesn't he say both? Why does he focus on fathers? Well, it has to do with the role of the father in the home. We saw last week when we were talking about marriage that God has established a certain order in the home. And that is that the father, the husband, is the head of the home. He's responsible for the direction. He's responsible to God for leading his family. And that's something else we kind of get wrong in our culture sometimes. You know, a lot of children grow up thinking the only good their father is is to hand money from time to time. Somebody has defined a father as a man who now carries pictures where he used to carry money and he's wallet. I heard about one father who was sitting in the mall. He was out in one of those benches just sitting there. You know, as you see a lot of men do in the mall, suffering through the whole thing. But they're sitting there. And this dad was sitting there and occasionally as this other person who watched this dad, watched as he had three daughters and they were all over the mall the daughters were and they would come up to him occasionally, you know, and he would hand them money and they would take off to another store. And somebody was watching this for a while and after about an hour, by the way, it wasn't me and my three girls. But after about an hour of watching this guy do this, they saw him get up to go get a soft drink and he had a t-shirt on that said, human ATM. You know, a lot of fathers are only seen as good for hand-in-out cash. God has a much more important role for fathers in leading their families and being the one responsible for the direction of their families and their children. That's why Paul addresses the fathers. It's not that the mothers are not important. They are. Certainly you're important. But fathers, you're to set the tone, you're to take the leadership and so he addresses fathers and he says four things to fathers about surviving or thriving as a parent, being a good parent. The first one is, do not create bitterness for your children. Do not create bitterness for your children. You see it there in verse four, fathers do not exasperate your children. Do not exasperate. You say, what does exasperate me? I'm the one that's exasperated all the time with this deal. What's exasperated me? Why do I exasperate my children? There's a parallel passage. We've looked at this before. Paul wrote collotions at the same time he wrote Ephesians in the same prison cell, about the same time, sent them out at about the same time. There's a lot of similar information in those two letters. There is a parallel passage that runs right along with this part of Ephesians in collotions. Look at collotions 321. It's on the screen for you. Fathers do not imbiter your children or they will become discouraged. So Ephesians, Paul's thinking, do not exasperate your children to the collotions, same thing in his mind, same time he's saying, don't imbiter your children or they will become discouraged. So what he means by exasperating your children is creating bitterness in their hearts, creating frustration and resentment to where they lose heart and they give up. I want to give you this morning four ways that we create sometimes as parents bitterness in the hearts of our children. Where we exasperate them they get discouraged and they want to just give up. Four ways we do that. You can create bitterness in the heart of your child when you are too harsh on your child. Now I believe in discipline, we'll talk about that in a moment, but I believe it's also important to distinguish between willful defiance of your authority and just childish irresponsibility. And some parents come down like a sledgehammer on attack over just childish irresponsibility issues. Two-year-old kid leaves a toy out in the middle of the floor, that's just childish irresponsible, that's part of being a two-year-old. Now yes they have to be trained to learn to put things back in the right place and to pick up and all that, but that's going to take a while, that's part of the training process. I don't think that's part of the discipline process. Discipline is more for willful defiance of your authority and when you come down to harsh on a child you're going to create bitterness in that child's life. When you're too harsh by being unfair or by making too many rules, you know the whole front and both sides of the refrigerator, full of rules for your household, no way a child can keep all of that. You'll create bitterness. So we create bitterness when we're too harsh. Secondly we create bitterness when we are inconsistent with our children. And if you and mom don't agree on what you're going to do with your children, how you're going to discipline, what you're going to discipline for, how you're going to train all those things, when you all don't agree and the kids know it, you're going to create bitterness in their hearts. We're counseling with a young couple this week doing some premarital counseling for a couple that's getting married and was talking about this whole issue of parenting. And we were talking about the fact that if you disagree about what to do with your children, you just agree behind closed doors. Hammer that out between the two of you so that when you come to your children, there's a united front, mom and dad agree about how this is going to be done because if they learn that you disagree and they start playing you one against the other and they abuse your authority that what you'll create bitterness in their lives. So when you're inconsistent, the third thing that will create bitterness in their lives, not only when you're too harsh or when you're inconsistent but you'll create bitterness when you cut off communication from your children, when you cut off communication, you see, I don't believe that parenting is a friendly discussion between equals. I don't believe that. There isn't authority structure and a submission structure in the home between parent and child. However, I also believe and I think the Bible would support this that whenever you just cut off communication from your child, whenever you give them no opportunity to explain what happened, you just know it and you're hammering down on them and they haven't had a chance to explain what happened or why it happened or to express their view. When you just cut off communication like that, then they're going to see the inside that they were treated unfairly and unjustly. So don't cut off communication. Fourthly, when you have a negative attitude toward your child, you'll create bitterness. When you have a negative attitude toward your child, you'll create bitterness. When you never praise them, when you always compare them to someone else, maybe another child or maybe the neighbor's kid, when you ridicule them, you will create bitterness. If you always think and speak negatively of your children, you see especially in the very formative years, children are so fragile. They're like a little flower. They can be crushed easily under your feet or they can be nourished and helped to grow in the proper way. Paul Orphalia was a kid who had dyslexia. Paul Orphalia. This was about 50 years ago before dyslexia was recognized in the educational system for the problem that it is and it's certainly dealt with differently today. I take my hat off to teachers who deal with these kinds of issues so patiently and graciously. But in his day, when he was growing up, it just didn't happen. Paul was always in trouble in school. He had set back a couple of grades. Most of his teachers thought he was just dumb and couldn't learn. One assistant principal told his mother the best thing you can do for this kid is just enrolling in a trade school, helping him to learn to lay carpet or something. He'll never do anything worthwhile with his life. Other kids called him nicknames because he always was in trouble and he just was bigger than the other kids because he was a couple of three years behind him. He had real curly hair and so they called him kinko. Well, Paul Orphalia made it through high school with what he calls a low D average. He did make it through college with about the same kind of academic record and it just seemed like he had nothing going for him. But when he graduated from college in 1970, he set up a little print shop inside a hamburger stand and 30 years later in 2000, he retired as the multi-millionaire CEO of kinkos. He turned a nickname into a successful enterprise. You know what he said about his success and money is not the measure of success. I believe Paul Orphalia also knows the Lord because he talks in his testimony about the Lord's impact on his life and his salvation. But he credits his parents for encouraging through all the adversity of his childhood years. He says, without my parents and their encouragement, I'd be a skid row bum right now. You see, there's a young man who threw out his life when everybody else didn't give him a chance. His parents said, you can do it. You can make it. You can make something of yourself. Here's a kid when everybody else joked about him and ridiculed him. They built him up and they praised him. You see, and they did not create bitterness in a young man's heart for whom there was enough of that coming on him from other sources. So please, do not exasperate your children. Do not create bitterness in your children. Second principle of guidance that God gives to us parents is love your children. You see it there in verse four in these three words, bring them up. Do not exasperate your children. You should bring them up. And I know that maybe when you kind of read through that, you just kind of think it's told, well, I just jerk them up, you know, somehow it would raise them. It's not talking about that. The words bring them up are words which literally have the idea of tenderness in them. Compassion, gentleness. John Calvin actually translated these words, let them be kindly cherished. Let them be kindly cherished in training and instruction. The idea is be tender, be gentle with your children. Now I believe there is a place for instilling toughness in your children. I believe there is a place for letting them learn some lessons, the hard way by experiencing hardship. I believe there's a place for that. But I also believe there is a place for tenderness and hugs and listening to their emotions and understanding what they're going through and being compassionate. Author Robert Fulgum tells the story of his little five-year-old daughter Molly. This is 25 years ago or so and he says, little Molly helped her mother one day fix my lunch, bag lunch to take to work. When she handed me my bag lunch as I was going out the door, she handed me a second bag. And this second bag was kind of put together with duct tape and staples and paper clips and all of that. He said, I just stuck it in my briefcase and went on to work and didn't think much about it. So lunchtime rolled around. He said, I pulled out my bag lunch, ate my sandwich hurriedly and then I noticed that other bag. So I reached down, I picked it up, opened it with all those paper clips and duct tape and all the rest. And he said, inside that paper bag, this is what I found. I found two hair ribbons, three small stones, a plastic dinosaur, stub of a pencil, a tiny seashell, two animal crackers, a marble, a used tube of lipstick, a small doll, two chocolate kisses and 13 pennies. And he said, brought a smile to my face and I kind of laughed about it for a minute, but I didn't have much time. He said, both bags ended up in the trash can. He got home that day. The little Molly came up to him and said, Daddy, did you open my bag at work today? He said, oh yeah, honey, I did. I opened that bag. Daddy, did you bring it home? I'd like to have it back. And he kind of fumbled around for the right words. You know, he's, I left it at the office. She started crying. He said, Daddy, those are my special things. And I thought you might want to play with them at work, but I'd like to play with them now. And so real quick, he said, okay, honey, I think I can get him any jumped in the car and rush back to the office and thankfully was able to salvage them from the trash can before the janitor had gotten there. He took it home. He sat down with little Molly. He said, Molly, explain to me what you've got in this bag and why you put these things in here. Peace by peace. She took them out. Everyone had a story or a dream or a memory attached to it. And he said that happened several more times where she'd put that stuff in a bag and send it off to work with me and I'd open it up at lunch time and I'd remember that time we sat down and talked about that. And he said that went on for a year or two and then one day she'd never asked for it back. He said, I've still, after 20 years, I still have that bag because it reminds me of a time when I almost missed what was important to my little five-year-old. And I didn't with gentleness and tenderness understand what was important to her. For in that's part of bringing them up is to love your children with that kind of tenderness, kindness. To love your children. And then thirdly, if you're going to thrive as a parent, discipline your children. Discipline your children. Here it is in verse four, fathers do not exasperate your children. Instead bring them up in the training. Training. The word is a very strong word. It's a word which literally means discipline or punishment. Pilate used the same word when he was talking about Jesus Christ in Luke 23. This is what he said. Notice the verse on the screen. Luke 23 and verse 36, I believe it is, 16. Therefore he says, I will punish him and then release him. The word punish is the same word translated training here. It has to do literally with punishment or discipline. So it's a very strong word, very strong concept. It's the same word that's used in Hebrews 12 of God chastening us. And the Bible says it's not very nice when it happens. I mean it produces good results but it doesn't feel good when it happens. Same word. The training here, this word has to do with discipline. And we have a lot of trouble understanding this concept in our culture today too, don't we? I mean lots of parents tie up their dog and let their kids run wild. Maybe it needs to be the other way around. No, seriously, discipline of children is not very well understood in the day that we live in. So could I just very briefly give you some, what I think are very important principles about this training, this discipline concept in the word of God. Three things I think are very critically important to proper discipline of children. Number one, we must guard against extremes. We must guard against extremes in discipline. We are talking here about discipline, not abuse. We are talking here about shaping a child's will, not crushing their spirit. We are talking here about disciplining willful defiance, not coming down hard on childish irresponsibility. There is a difference. So first important principle about discipline, we must guard against extremes. Secondly, I believe that as parents we must decide what we expect of our children and what we will discipline them for. You see, I don't think discipline is for every infraction. Again, some of it is just childish irresponsibility. That takes some instruction, some teaching, some training. But discipline needs to be reserved for the very serious things that you want to teach your children. And I think every parent needs to figure out what are those things that we will discipline our children for. Could I give you some idea, and this is not original with me. I found great help years ago in a book by Kent and Barbara Hughes, pastor of college church in Wheaton, Illinois, wrote a book called Common Sense Parenting. And they said there are at least three important principles you want to teach your children. And these are the things you ought to discipline for when they are young. Number one is respect. Your children should treat you with respect and the way they look at you and respond to you and in the words they use of you. If you do not get a handle on that early, they will not respect their teachers, they will not respect law enforcement, they will not respect other people's property. So that is a biggie. You have got to get a handle on respect early. So that is one you discipline for. Second thing they said was honesty. Bedrock character trait, we must teach our children as honesty. So don't tolerate lies, discipline for lies. Because if they don't learn honesty, then that has tentacles that reach into all other kinds of character areas of their lives. Honesty is very, very important. The third thing he said, he and his wife said about this is a non-negotiable, this is what you got to discipline for, is defiance of your authority, willful defiance. Again, when you tell that child to pick up that toy in the middle of the room and they look at you and shake their head or they walk off the other way, that is the place to discipline. Not because they left the child there, but because they willfully defy what you've told them to do about picking it up. That's where the discipline comes in. So every parent needs to decide what are the non-negotiables, what are the rules that we're going to have that we're going to discipline for. It doesn't need to be 600. You pick three or four major things and you'll find they have a lot of areas that they cover. But those three I think are critical for every parent to decide. So we must decide what we expect and what we will discipline for. The third key principle about discipline, this kind of training is this. We must decide how we will discipline our children, how we will discipline our children. Now I believe, and I think Proverbs would support this. I believe there is a place for spanking in discipline. If, now listen to the if, I think there is a place for spanking if the proper instrument is used, not your hand. When our kids were growing up, I could probably ask them right now, what did we use? And they could say it was a wooden spoon. Wooden spoon. My parents used, you know the little paddles that you would buy with that little flimsy rubber string on it and that little ball you'd pat it around, you know. And it would be broken in one day. They knew that. I didn't know that. My sisters didn't know that. They knew the thing would break in one day and they had a paddle. You know, they use that. But I think spanking is a probit if you use a proper instrument, not your hand, if it is applied to the proper place. And God has wonderfully prepared a place in the human body. Where that needs to be applied. You know where it is. It's about halfway down the human body. It's on the backside and it's got extra padding. You know what I'm talking about. That's the proper place, not the arms and legs and head or chest. No. If the proper instrument is used, if the proper place, and if it's reserved for the most serious offenses, like the three I've talked about, not for every infraction, not for every time you get a upset, irritated with child, that's not what spankings are for. There are other means of discipline too. I think sitting in a corner, going up to your room, having privileges taken away, or suffering the consequences of their own disobedience. And sometimes it'll be the most effective discipline. One father sent his two boys, Johnny and Billy to the store before school opened, gave him enough money to buy some new school clothes and said, I want you to buy the clothes you know you need, then meet me at this entrance to the mall at such and such a time. So the father shows up at that time, picks them up. Johnny came back, he was able to buy three pair of pants, four shirts and a new pair of sneakers for school. Billy had one T-shirt and an expensive new skateboard. And his dad looked at him and said, Billy, you got enough clothes for school? Oh yeah, dad, no problem. Before school ever started, he had worn a hole in his old sneakers trying to stop that skateboard. Came to his dad and said, Dad, I need some new sneakers for school. And dad said, come with me son. Took him out to the garage, got the duct tape. Fixed those sneakers, said, now son, until you get enough money in your own allowance to buy your sneakers, you'll have to wear these. Can you imagine the embarrassment of a teenage boy wearing duct tape sneakers? Well maybe you'd like it today, wouldn't you? I guess everything's done with duct tape. But embarrassment of that kid, everybody else knew sneakers and he's got duct tape around the old holes in his sneakers. But he taught his son a lesson. He disciplined him in the right way that was appropriate for that interaction. So decide how you're going to discipline your children. And then finally, Paul says instruct your children. First four, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. The word literally means to place before the mind. It can be teaching. It can be warning. It can be confronting. It's verbal, verbal interaction with your child, instructing them. And I'm not talking about an hour a day sit down in Tence Bible study and tell them what the Greek and Hebrew mean and all that. I'm not talking about that. It's probably not the best way to instruct your children. You know when God was telling Israel how to instruct their children, he said to Moses, you tell them to do it this way. Look at this verse on the screen. Deuteronomy 6 and verse 7. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up. So when you're sitting down at home around the dinner table, when you're putting them to bed at night, when you're driving them to school in the car or going someplace on vacation, or when you get up in the morning, you're around the breakfast table, take those moments, those teachable opportunities to impress truth on your children, to instruct your children. And it's instructing them about their walk with God, yes, but it's also instructing them about how to live, what to do with life. I mean read the book of Proverbs and it talks a lot about what to say and not say in certain situations, how to handle your money, you know, just how to live, instruct your children in those ways. The Bible is very clear on the fact that we are to instruct our children. Parenting is never easy. At best, parenting is never easy. It's tough for all of us and it can seem like an eternity when you're in the middle of it. And then when they're all grown, you wonder, where did the years go? And being a child can seem like forever when you're 12. And then when you hit 30, you look back and say, where did my childhood go? I miss those years. It's never easy. But parents, you are having a greater impact on your children than you realize. Make sure it's an impact for good and for God. I love the movie, October Sky. It's a movie about West Virginia, you know? It's a story about a true story about Homer Hickman, the Rocket Boys down in Coldwood, 1957. The rockets they shot off and did their science fair project based on that, and won a national competition for science fairs. Catapulted them all for in the college and into careers, Homer Hickman Hickman with NASA. It's a wonderful story, true story. But the movie is also deeper than that. It's a story about a father and a son. It's a story about a father who doesn't understand the dreams of his son. It's a story about a father who can't understand why his son would ever want to leave Coldwood. Why can't work in the minds like he did? It's a good living. You provide for your family that way. He can understand the dreams of his son. And it's a story of a son who deep down respects his father and wants to obey him, but they just don't see eye to eye on things. And it's kind of tough in the home. Just after the national science fair when Homer Hickman won first place in his buddies, first place in a national science fair. And afterwards he comes down off the stage and everybody's greeting him and meeting him. And one guy walks by kind of with a German accent and greets him and walks off. It was his, the man he looked up to so much, Werner von Braun, the great German rocket scientist. He's there and he's gone quickly. And Homer comes home to Coldwood. And he's all excited about his medal and winning the competition. And he wants to tell his dad. He wants to share that moment with his dad. What should look at what happens when he tries? I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate what you did for me. I know it wasn't easy for me so. Thank you. I was shooting off our last rocket day at five o'clock so we might come and see. I got a lot of work to do. All right. Why'd you start out asking? Here you met your big hero. You didn't even know it. There. I know you and me don't exactly see eye to eye on certain things. I mean, yeah, we don't see eye to eye on just about anything. But dad, I come to believe that I got it in me to be somebody in this world. And it's not because I'm so different from you either. It's because I'm the same. You know, I can be just as hard-headed and just as tough. I only hope I can be as good a man as you are. Let me sure Dr. Ron Brown's great scientist. But he isn't my hero. Dads, moms. Live so that you can be your kids here. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for the clear and yet difficult instruction of your word. Or do we know that we can't be the kind of parents you would have us to be? Or the kind of children you'd have us to be without your spirit's help. So we ask today, as we close this service for your help by your spirit, to enable us to have the kind of homes that thrive. Rather than just survive. As parents and as children, may we take to heart the guidance of your word and apply it in our own situations with the help of your spirit in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.