Values Driven Parenting

All right, good morning. Good to see everyone here. I’m Matt. I’m the pastor at Eagle Creek Church. And we did have a whole lot of fun having your kids out this week. How many of you had a kid or two that came this week? Show of hands all across the room. Awesome. A ton of you guys. Hey, let’s give one more hand of appreciation to all the workers, the 200 that came out and made the ministry possible.

And every year I hear this from parents. I hear, “Oh my gosh, they will not stop singing the songs. And I’m singing them in my sleep at night. I’m like, stop this song in my head right now.” And I just want to say, you’re welcome. I hope you’re enjoying yourself and you now know the songs, and maybe you even have the motions down and can do it with your kids as well.

But we love doing this. I actually cut my teeth in children’s ministry in East St. Louis doing sidewalk Sunday schools, which meant we would pull up to a housing project. We would let down the side of a big bread truck into a stage, and I would be back there doing puppets and object lessons with a big crowd of kids out front. And then I moved to mid-state Illinois where I met my wife and recruited her to work with me in children’s ministry. And then we went and pioneered in Chicago where she became our children’s pastor. Anyway, children’s ministry has been part of, and now my daughter is our children’s pastor, because she was raised by two children’s pastors. So she knew what in the world she was doing by the time she was 10, and now she’s leading. So exciting for us to be able to invest in your kids and see them serve Christ.

And I’m going to make one more investment today. Today, my message is actually meant to help everyone who is in the process of parenting, grandparenting, or thinking in the future about the process of parenting, trying to figure out, how do you raise a kid that has a deep built-in value for the things of God? And not just like, mom said so, dad said so, but how do they deeply value being a child of God themselves?

Now, whenever I was thinking about this Thursday night, I was just getting ready. We were in worship. By the way, thank you so much, John, for leading us in worship this morning. It was a beautiful morning. I love it. It’s awesome. But I was back in the back wiping all the tears away and all that sort of stuff so I could get myself straightened up, blow my nose, wipe my tears. And yeah, I got it in the right order. I didn’t wipe my, yeah. Anyway, sometimes I say things backwards to get up here and preach.

But I was thinking about that on Thursday night, and thinking about just getting up here, and I was like, but what’s the why? What’s the why? Because for so many of us as Americans today, raising a kid in 2026, what we’re thinking about is like, I hope that they don’t become addicted to something, that they don’t marry the wrong person, that they grow up and get a job and leave my house someday, that they are not violent, that they have maybe a full ride to college somewhere because college is so expensive. So I hope they get really good in something, in the sport or whatever, and get a full ride to college, and I hope that they have good friends. And if they’re talented, and we see them through the lens of so many different things that we hope they could be or wish they could do or think about, their future and all these sort of things.

But there’s two moments in life where we see our children not as the hat that they wear, but as the soul that they are. Two moments in life where a person is seen as a soul. Let me tell you the two moments.

The two moments are the moment they’re born and they hand to you, wrapped up, this little baby. Or mom, they lay them down on your chest there while you’re laying on the bed, and you hold them, and you’re propped up a little, and you get a look down at them, in their face. Do you remember that first moment where they hand them to you? And what do you see in that moment? Do you see, oh, he’s going to get in college on a scholarship in baseball? Or do you look and say, I cannot believe God entrusted me with this little soul. Oh my gracious, God gave me this little baby to raise. They’re so precious. Oh, I hope I don’t drop them.

You’re just like, this is a little soul. That’s the moment when you realize what you’re holding on to is more than a good student, and more than a good parent themselves, and more than a good athlete, but you have a soul to raise now. And suddenly some people feel overwhelmed by it. Did any of you feel that? Like you had a little bit where you’re like, oh my gracious, this is big. This is big. And some of you, maybe you husbands couldn’t breathe right for a week. You’re like, oh man, I better step up my game. I better get my act together. I better stop messing up so much. Any of you feel that way right after you had your first kid? I better get my act together. Because you’re like, this is big. This is important. This is serious. I got to have my stuff together.

The other moment is when you sit by a bedside of someone that you love, just as they’re leaving this life, and you hold their hand, and you don’t see them for all the things that they did for you. You’ll talk about that later at their celebration of life. But in the moment when you hold their hand and they’re leaving this world, you realize this is a soul that is precious to God and is going back to the God who gave it.

In between, we seem to forget. In between, we think we’re raising students and baseball players and good citizens, good citizens of earth. But we’re always raising eternal souls as parents. Amen. We are always raising eternal souls.

And that’s where values-driven parenting comes in. That’s where people begin to say, wait. Everything is a back burner, secondary issue compared to raising an eternal soul. So how do I value this eternal soul and raise that soul to be who God created it to be? And that’s what I want to walk you through and help you to understand how to do today.

I’m going to give you four thoughts. They are in your app, like Sherry said.

Value Christ

My first thought is this. Number one is, value Christ. Everyone say, value Christ.

Okay. Now, this is a priority issue with parenting. It has to be personal for you. Your kids do not buy what you do not believe. Right? They just don’t. It doesn’t work.

Okay? So let’s talk about this. Every time I do a baby dedication ceremony, I share the same words of Moses that he shared with the children of Israel as their kind of spiritual father. He said, this is how our faith endures generation after generation after generation. This is how our faith endures. And it is the same truth today. This is how your faith in God endures to your grandchildren and your grandchildren’s children. How does that happen? This is the way that happens.

And Moses tells us in Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 5. He says, “You.” Everyone say, you. Now, by the way, he’s talking directly, this you. He’s talking specifically to parents. You’re like, oh, it didn’t say parents. It does. A little later, you’ll read it. You’ll be like, oh, it’s specifically to parents.

“You shall love the Lord your God with” how much? You got it. And it’s going to keep going that way. “All your heart and all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.”

The word of God’s in your heart, and you love it. That’s kind of the spirit and the word combination in life. For anyone to mature in their faith, I want to tell you something that’s critically important. You cannot have one without the other. The spirit and the truth must go together. So the heart, soul, passion for God, where you’re connected spiritually to God, must be part of the Christian life. But the word of God must be part of the Christian life.

There’s a lot of people that have no passionate love with all their heart, soul, mind, strength. It’s like they don’t have that, but boy, they can quote the Bible. And there’s people that don’t know the word of God, but they’re all fired up, but they don’t know what right and wrong is to teach it right. They don’t know the word of God. So there’s a both/and right here with the parent. The parent really knows the word of God and really is passionate about God. So we’re going to start right there. All your heart.

“And you shall teach them” what? Diligently. That’s the key word. Diligently to your who? So who is he talking to that’s going to teach them diligently to their children? The parents. You shall love the Lord, mom and dad, with all your heart. Then after you do that, you get the word of God down in your heart, then you’re going to teach them diligently to your children.

Yeah, that word diligently, by the way, it’s the word shanan in the Hebrew. And what it means, it’s an interesting word. It means essentially a thousand etchings, carvings, cuts. The concept is there’s this constant state of carving, etching, shaping, shaping, shaping, shaping that never ends in parenting. How many of you understand that your kids are constantly changing and you’re constantly having to adjust? You’re constantly figuring out again and again and again, diligently, what are you going to do? You’re going to diligently teach them to your children.

“And you shall talk of them when you sit in your house.” Can I suggest that picture of that table right there gets embedded in it? Doesn’t have to be that table. Your table gets embedded into your brain, and you say, so when are we sitting in our house and talking about the Lord? How many of you know that when you’re sitting in front of the TV talking about the Lord, your children are not listening to you. So that’s not working. Sitting in front of the TV talking about the Lord, they’re not listening. How many of you know if you want them to listen, put some food in front of them, take their phones away, and put them close to you looking at you, right? Okay, that’s really effective. So you’re going to sit at your house, probably at the table.

“And when you walk.” By the way, for us, when you jump in your car and you take them to practice and to school, you’re on your way to things. How many of you remember talking to your kids about God, at least looking out and saying, isn’t God an amazing creator? God created that sunset. Have you ever given them just a picture of God in the world as you drove by it? There’s moments where you talk about God on the way.

“And when you lie down.” How many of you have a bedtime routine? Okay. So how many of you understand Moses tells godly parents to have a bedtime routine where God is included? It does. Does that seem like a logical statement that I just made based on the scripture we just read? I don’t think I stretched to say that.

So when you lie down, and when you rise. So maybe a morning devotional time. Sherry was amazing. Up, morning devotional time. I was often out the door before the kids were, and Sherry would be up, and she would either read through all these little books that she had on devotions, and she’d do this little kids Bible book, and this little kids Bible, and this one with the stories. And finally they came out with this YouVersion kids app where you could play it and there would be little stories on there and the kids could tap on it. Mostly for Gabriel, because she’d be driving him to school, and she’s like, I had to rush out the door today and I didn’t get enough time to get the devotion in, because I had to get the others off to school. And then by the time I got, then I had to get him, and so he’s in the back playing and making all these noises, and she’s like, and what was that? And tell me about Jonah, and the whale. And so they would have all these conversations in the morning, on the way, when you rise.

So having a commitment to these basic things. Did we do everything perfect as parents? Of course not. But did we sit at the table most of the year? Probably 350 when they were little, out of 365. We were at the table every night. Did we have a bedtime routine? Yes. Did we talk about God and pray for our kids at bedtime? Yes, we did. Did we have a morning devotional time? Yes, we did. Did we talk about God on the way? A lot of times. Not all the time. In fact, not most of the time, but frequently enough to where it was part of the makeup of our family. Did we get it all right? No. But did we commit to the command of Moses for raising children?

I just want to ask you as parents to commit to the command of Moses. Amen. If we just started right here, commit to the command of Moses, then we would be like, wow, that’s how you pass faith down. That’s how the next generation catches on to what the former generation has held so tightly.

And so just a simple thing, but it is really, really critical. There’s a study by Christian Smith of how teenagers find faith. And they looked at all the sources faith came from to a teenager. When a teenager accepted Christ, they went and factored in what led them to faith in Christ. The questions of, was it that they grew up in church, Sunday school? What was it, a coach that led them, or was it their youth pastor, maybe a children’s pastor that had influence on them? They said, no, it’s their parents. Number one factor in a teenager serving Christ is mom and dad serving Christ. There’s just nothing that comes even close to it. That’s what it is. It’s mom and dad. And so it’s just you saying, I’m going to do this.

Value Transformation

Now, the second one here, let’s go through these values. The second one is, value transformation. Everyone say, value transformation.

Okay, I’m going to walk you through that. You guys know this verse. Many of you do. It’s Romans chapter 12. Let’s go ahead and read. This is what it says. It says, “Do not be conformed.” By the way, when it’s using that word, and I can’t pronounce the Greek word, I tried 10 times and finally I said, forget it. But right here I can tell you what it means. It means to be pressed into the shape of. It’s an external action of pressure onto a human.

It says, “Do not be conformed to” what? To the world. So externally, what does the world do? The world and its value system, which is anti-Christian values, the world pressures your children. YouTube pressures your children. TikTok pressures your children. Some of their classmates pressure them. Sometimes what they’re taught in school can pressure them from the outside to become.

It says, “Do not be conformed to the world, but be” what? Okay. Now I do know that one in the Greek is metamorphoo. And what that means is, it’s an internal transition. So one is, the world is saying you have to be the way we say to be. But what you’re looking for in your child is something internal that’s growing into the life that they will be.

Now, as a parent, you can be very perceptive, and you can look at your child and you can say, do I see a passion and a love for God? Do I see a lean-in at a youth group service? Did I sneak in the back and watch, and did my kid want to go up and worship, or did my kid squirrel around the whole time? When we sat in church together, is my child uncomfortable with the word of God? Is he uncomfortable worshiping?

Every parent should bring every teenager with them to church, just so you can watch and see how they respond to God. Because can I tell you why? Because it’s an instruction moment for the parent, where you say, my child has a cold heart towards God. I need to figure out what I do next. One, I know we’re going to have to pray a lot for this kid, because they don’t seem to have a passion for God. So we got to get praying. Mom and dad, praying for your kid. How many say, number one, just start praying? You want to see internal transformation happen in the heart of your child. Prayer is going to be key, right? So you just start saying, we got to start praying.

It says, “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” So the word of God is a key aspect in that. We talked in Deuteronomy, the command of Moses, you to know these words, to teach them diligently, “that by testing you may discern.” I’m going to finish this, but this word discern is something that so many parents feel, but they don’t respond to. “That by testing you may discern what is the will of God, that is good and acceptable and perfect.” Perfect meaning complete. Not like your kid’s perfect or you’re perfect, but it means you’re attaining to the life that God has for you. You’re being perfected in God’s design, God’s desire.

So when you discern something as a parent, how many of you have ever discerned and thought, boy, that is not right for my daughter, or that girl, my son should be out of that relationship, that is not good, or that kid is a bad influence, or whatever’s going on in school. I don’t know what’s happening to them. I don’t know who they’re hanging out with. I don’t know what’s being said. I don’t know how, but my kid’s personality is changing for the bad. And maybe they’re getting depressed and sad and lonely, or angry or hostile or rejecting or rebellious or whatever, but you’re like, I don’t know what’s going on, but my spirit says something’s wrong. Something’s off, right?

He says by the word of God you can test, you can discern, you can have a sense of that. I believe the Holy Spirit kind of leads parents into a sense of discernment of, like, you better be nervous, right? You better be concerned right now. Now, what a lot of parents do is they say, oh, I’m overreacting and I shouldn’t do anything. And I would just say, pray about it. Let God confirm that. And whenever you feel like this is right, you have to act on things that are big and eventful and kids are going to get angry about, so that you can cooperate with the work of the spirit, which is trying to transform your child’s life, and so that you’re not allowing the world to conform them. Because you’re having a discernment. My child is being conformed to this world. I’m not seeing the transformation. I’m discerning that because God’s spirit is doing this. I should probably do something about this, right? I should probably act on this. I should trust that and do something, and do it in the most gracious and the best way you possibly can. But don’t be afraid to move forward so that your kids are being changed.

And I look at this when you plan on your kids adopting your values. You have to look at it and say, for my kids to adopt my biblical or Christian or godly values, the only thing that’s really going to work in that is if they see parental proof of the value. You’ve heard this phrase, kids don’t follow what you say, they follow what you do. Right? So what does that mean? It means parental proof is incredibly important. They have to look and say, dad says this is how you treat a lady. That’s how dad treats mom. And I see how mom and dad respond to each other. And I see how my friends’ folks act around each other. I want the way mom and dad act. I don’t want the way my friends act. That’s the kind of way I’m going to treat my wife.

Does that make sense? Parental proof means adoption of a value. A lack of parental proof, or a violation of parental proof, means that’s a value they will avoid. That’s a value either they won’t adopt actively because they don’t see any value, or they will avoid because they see it as contradictory and false. You say something, but I look at the way you act. I just reject what you have to say.

And so parental proof becomes incredibly important. It’s just, are mom and dad conformed to this world, or are mom and dad transformed by the renewing of their mind? And if you look and say, well, mom and dad are conformed to this world, then you look at it and say, great, I’ll just adopt being conformed to this world. The world shapes them. The world shapes me. We all live like the world. We all live happily ever after just like the world wants us to live.

Or, I see a transformation deeply spiritually in my parents’ heart that they want and value for me. They’re discerning. They take aggressive steps towards transformation in my life. They step up their game when it’s time to. They value it so much that they will put my relationship with them on the line temporarily. I can be mad at them and kick and scream, but they so value my transformation that they will risk rejection to save me. Those kind of people, I’m seeing who they are. I’m seeing how much they believe in what they believe.

If someone ever said to me, what is the number one thing that you and Sherry did? Now, my kids are preachers’ kids. I never like to create undue pressure on my kids. My kids are not perfect by any stretch. They would all gladly tell you that, and they would all reject any pressure of you guys to make them perfect or make them more than they are. They all would. No question about it. And I would as well. And I don’t want that for me, for my marriage, for my kids. So just as a preacher talking to a church, don’t put that on them. Don’t put that on me.

But I will tell you this. All four of them love God. All four of them have incredibly high biblical values about just about every area of their life. All four of them struggle and have to ask God to forgive them and work through stuff and are imperfect people, just like me, just like you. All four of them love their mom and dad. They haven’t rejected our value set or rejected us, and they love one another. They’re in church and they’re part of making an impact for God in this world.

So we didn’t get it all right, but the outcome is four kids that are passionate about God. I’ve said this several times. I think they’re more conservative in their values than mom and dad are now. At times we’re like, okay, I guess we’re a little too liberal for our kids. And I think I’m like super conservative, and then I’m like, well, I wouldn’t let my kids, and I know you guys did that with us, but I wouldn’t do that. I’m like, okay, I get it. I did it wrong. I should have been better. But it’s always in a more conservative direction than we are.

But here’s the thing. How did that happen? We did not make any of that happen. We were just both personally, passionately in love with Jesus and his word. And biblical values were not something we taught. They were something that were just part of who we were, to the point where they could feel and hear and sense, mom and dad are into this thing. They believe it. They’re passionate about it. And if we missed a day and didn’t do something right and skipped this and didn’t do that right and whatever, they’re like, man, these two are into what they’re into. And man, my kids are into it now.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength, and your kids will just get into it the way you’ve gotten into it. That’s the number one thing I could tell you. There’s nothing better than just your deep, passionate love for everything about God. It infects kids in ways. How many of you ever planned on getting a cold? You just got infected by someone you were close to, right? Okay. Even if you don’t plan everything right for your kids to love God, they will get infected by your passion for him. Amen. So you don’t have to get it all right. Just get passionate about God and let that infect your kids.

Value Discipline

So the third one, I’m taking a little too long on those, so I’ll go through this a little quicker, is value discipline. Value discipline. Everyone say, value discipline.

Okay. So old school discipline, everyone thinks of, oh, corporal punishment, spanking, and is that what he’s going to talk about? I think discipline is much broader than that. I think there’s a very wide understanding of what discipline is.

And I want you to understand this in Ephesians 6:4, talking to parents here, specifically to dads. So for the dads in the room, this would apply to a mother as well, it would equally apply, but it’s addressed to fathers. “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger.”

So you just get into it with them. You get in this back and forth argumentation to where it leads to this big angry spat going on. You’re like, yeah, but if I start talking, they start arguing. That is the culture you established in your home. Right? I didn’t establish a let’s yell and argue with each other culture in my home. I didn’t do that with my wife. I didn’t allow that with my kids. We weren’t yellers. We were going to have open discussion, but we were not going to have a war. And we weren’t going to go toe to toe, because if you went toe to toe, you might lose the door on your bedroom and the keys to your car and your phone and so on and so forth. I could always up the ante. But we were not going to have that relationship in my home.

Okay? So I wasn’t going to provoke them to anger. I was going to create an environment of what? “Bringing them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord.”

And I sped past “bringing them up.” I shouldn’t have sped past that, because that’s really one Greek word, 

. And that one word right there really sums up this whole concept. It’s in the middle. But this word, bring them up, is trepho, which means to nourish them. So you can have a provocation relationship with your children, or you can have a nourishing relationship.

Here’s how it looks. It looks like instruction. It looks like a disciplined fashion. You’re talking about your values and you’re holding them to it. How do you nourish them to become men and women of God? Trepho. How do you nourish them? It’s through conversational, disciplined lifestyle with them. Not through this lifestyle where your home is this provocation, angry back and forth at it.

Do you know who establishes the culture of a home? Parents do. They do it by active enforcement, or by relegating their role to their child. But the parent always establishes the culture of the home. You do it actively or passively, but you establish the culture of your home. So if you’re like, my culture is a culture of provocation and anger, you did that by abdicating your role to your child. Parents, never abdicate your role to your children. Right? Everyone acknowledges parents are the culture setters of homes. Do not abdicate that role to your children. And if you don’t, then you choose a culture of provocation and anger, or trepho, nourishment through instructive discipline.

And this is what it is. So you’re saying, I value discipline. What does that mean? It means I set a culture of disciplined instruction in our home, and not this other culture. It will not win. It will not take over. I won’t let my kids establish that culture with each other either. How many of you know kids will try to establish a culture of provocation? Right? How many of you know that as a parent you shut that down and you say, that is not the culture of this home. It will not happen. You really do. You have to establish culture in your home. Parents are culture setters for homes. It’s incredibly important.

And so this concept of provocation, you’re like, why is that so important? Why is this a big deal to have to say that? Well, science tends to prove the Bible repetitively. And here’s another example of science proving the Bible. Vern Bengtson followed 350 families for 35 years to figure out what the strongest predictor would be that Christian mom and dad would have a Christian child that would grow up to raise their children to follow Christ as well. They looked to see what the strongest predictor was. They discovered it wasn’t church attendance, Bible reading, camps, VBS’s, youth groups, any of that. They said the strongest predictor that a Christian family would raise a Christian child was one word. Warmth.

Warmth. And specifically, the warmth of a father towards his children. When children felt the warmth of their father, they adopted the father’s values. When they felt coldness from a father, they rejected the father’s values specifically.

Now, does that work for women as well? The answer is absolutely 100%, because neither Sherry or I grew up with a Christian father who brought warmth into our relationship. We had mothers that did that. My mom, sitting over here. Sherry’s mom, who was carrying our grandbaby around. We had warmth from them. So does it work for moms? Yes. But it’s even more correlative if it’s a father that has warmth.

So that is literally the opposite of provoking your children to anger, which ensures they probably will not love God. I’m telling you, by golly, you’re getting up and going to church with me, and you’re sitting on the front row, and you want to go at it, buddy. We’ll go at it right here. How many of you know that child’s not getting much out of church that day? That didn’t work. Why’d you do that? That doesn’t work. Yeah, you’re in charge, but boy, you don’t know how to lead. That’s a very different thing.

And so I want to encourage you to just say, you know what, it’s going to be some hard work to shape this kid. I have to pull it together. Dad, if you have an anger issue, get over it. You’re like, I’ve had it all my life. Well, it’s about time to be done with it. You can deal with that. How many of you know there’s a lot of resources? You can find a good book, a good counselor, a good mentor, an accountability partner. You can have to drop 20 bucks in a jar for that kid that you yell at. Every kid you yell at where you raise your voice too much, and the mother gets to be the judge and say, yep, you passed the line. This was the line. You went above it. Drop 20 in for them. How many of you know you could figure out some ways to hold it together, right? You can figure something out. You’re like, I just can’t help it. Well, let’s help you to help it by setting some consequences on the behavior and some accountability and some development and training.

Because how many of you know, soul to soul, birth to death, it matters if the number one thing is parental warmth, and specifically a father’s warmth, that that child will choose faith in Jesus Christ. That you get this right, dad. It matters that you get this right. You have to get this right. No options on this one. You figure it out.

Now, I’m going to tell on myself just a little bit. There’s this old phrase, you know, the phrase, confession is good for the soul but terrible for the reputation. I’m going to give you my terrible-for-the-reputation thing. My brothers, maybe not my sister. So my sister’s in town from Alabama. Hi, Liz. Good to have her here. But my brothers will tell stories about me when we were little kids. And the stories they tell, I’m just going to let the cat out of the bag so they can’t ever tell on me. Because I had an insane temper when I lost it. I’d break, they’re laughing. I would break windows. I hatcheted my brother Steve over the knee with a tomahawk. Not a sharp one. Just one of those little rocks that you get at a gift shop in a stick. You mess with me too long. They would say I had a very slow fuse. I was very calm. I was very polite. I was very gracious. But they would push me and push me, and once you’d push me too far, I would just lose my ever-loving mind. I would.

And then when I got older, that frustration turned, I learned you can’t turn that on people. You can’t turn that on people. So when I’d work on my car and I couldn’t get the brakes off, I could beat a hole in the driveway with a wrench. Any of you know what I’m talking about? Any man in this room, you’re like, I know what you mean. And I would get to where I was like, you know, lose it. My son has a little bit of that in him. We call it hulking out. He’s hulking out right now.

And we had to teach that you can’t turn that towards people. And then we started to say, it’s really uncomfortable for everyone in the room with you. And I learned that when I got married, and I would have one of those moments, and my wife would look at me like, oh my gosh, who did I just marry? And after seeing that a few times, I was like, oh my gosh, who did she just marry? I could see I was as crazy as she thought I was in those moments. I’d be like, I better get it together, because I can’t have all four of my kids running in fear from dad, like, oh no, dad is freaking out.

So listen, guys, I get it. I know it. I understand it. And I do not do that stuff anymore. I do a lot of deep breathing. But the reality is, I had to deal with that when my kids were little, because that could not be the world they grew up in. They could not live in that kind of tension and be healthy. And I knew that. So I didn’t bring that into my parenting. I had to subtract it from my life, from my marriage, and I had to work through it. And I understood that. And I worked through it hard, and now I’m willing to confess it. So hopefully you don’t think too much less of me, but it’s true. That’s what it was. And I had to work through that.

Value Consistency

So whenever we go to this last one, I just want to hit this at the end here. We value consistency. Now, everyone say, value consistency.

In other words, you can’t just be start-stop on this stuff. You can’t be start-stop on church attendance. You can’t be start-stop on devotions. You can’t be start-stop on youth group.

I just want to tell you, kids are always going to throw a fit about you making them do something, like, you have to get up and go to practice. You have to get, I don’t want to go to practice. This is dumb. He’s not even a very good coach, and blah blah blah blah. It’s like, yeah, you’ll be in practice till the end of the season. We could talk about it at the end of the season. But then they don’t value the soul at the same level. You’ll be in youth group until you’re out of high school.

Did you know that all my seniors, when they got to become seniors, every one of my kids wanted to quit youth group? And they’re six years apart. Can I just tell you, that just happens with kids. And my friends go over here and I want to go here. It’s like, we have a church. This is where I go. I get to check up and find out if you’re learning things, and what you’re learning, and if you’re even showing up at your group, or if you just say you’re going with your friends. And then I say, what did they talk about? And you just make something up that happened. You’re like, oh, that happens? Yes, that happens all the time in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. All the time. Way more than you know. Like, I thought they were at church. Well, yeah, of course, because you want to think that, and they know you want to think that. So they give you the pious answer and they did what they wanted to that night. But when they go to your church, they’re like, oh, he’s going to actually talk to the youth pastor on Sunday morning. Pastor Noah and Pastor Emmy know if I was there or not. I guess I have to go anyway. Sideline. Sorry, teenagers. I just ratted you out. Now they know.

Okay. Value consistency. Proverbs 22:6. “Train up a child in the way he should go.” And someone say this next word. “Even when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

It’s always been, and when they’re old, they’ll return to it. Everyone always wanted to say it that way. Like every kid leaves God when they’re 20, and then they come back later on in life. That’s what we want to tell ourselves, because we’re so beating up on ourselves for losing the battle, how it feels like.

But this is saying that there should be a continuity in what’s happening. You’re training, trepho. You’re nourishing them all through their life. And the result of that, and I know it takes mom and dad, warmth, and all these things, but can I just say, it’s okay to have the target of your child always loving God all of their life. Amen. It’s okay for you to desire that, and for you to hope for that, and for you to pray for that.

And it’s okay, if you didn’t hit that, to acknowledge and say, we didn’t do very good at these things, and there was a lot of this kind of rage thing, rage-baiting as it were, provoking our children to anger, that was happening in our home, and it had an effect on them, and they did reject me, and now I got to figure out how to turn that around. And I didn’t get it right then, but maybe God can help me to get it more right now. And you know, I feel like, how do I make up for it?

Not by telling them everything that you did that was wrong. You can go back and apologize. You don’t have to keep doing that, thinking that earns your right for them to listen. Now, what will earn your right for them to listen is when you love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. When they see it consistently over time, they’ll say, oh, God really does change a life. And boy, did my dad need his life changed. Maybe I should lean into what dad’s saying now, because I see what he did in dad. God really does change a mom. My mom never tries to control me. She’s so gracious and so supportive of me. Even when I do dumb stuff, she loves me. Maybe I should lean into what God’s done in her life.

You’re like, how do I do it? I messed up. You let God do something in your life and let your kids see it. That’s the number one thing you could do. And then you pray and you pray and you pray and you pray, because you need the Holy Spirit to bring transformation. You can’t mold them. You want to act like the world with your children, then you mold them and force them and compact them and tell them what the life you ought to live. You can be just like the world with your Christian parenting, or you can be just like Jesus and let there be a seed of truth that they watch grow in you, that grows in them, that you nourish, that seed that’s growing in their life through instruction, through daily discipline, through consistency, through warmth. You let the Son of God’s grace shine through your life on that child, and the seed will grow into a transformed life. The seed will grow into a transformed life in your kid.

Because someday that little kid, it’s going to hold the hand of a soul. It’s yours. And when they see you go and leave this life, they won’t see, they did it all right, they did it all wrong, they were successful in their work, they took us on great vacations. None of that will matter. This is a soul that knows and loves God. And as they let go of this life, and I let go of them, I know their soul matters forever and forever. And I know I’ll see them again. As I hold my grandbabies when they enter this life, I’ll recognize a gift of a soul once again.

All we are is a life lived from soul to soul. How about if we cover the middle ground with raising those souls to serve God? Amen. That’s all they really are for all eternity. Let’s not forget that with the busyness of our sports, with the challenging culture that we live in. Let’s not forget the gift we’ve truly been given and who they truly are. Let’s raise them with values that will make them the men and women of God that they were eternally created to be. Amen.

Let me pray over you. Would you stand with me?

God, we find ourselves in this place of awe, of honor, of respect for who you are and what you’ve given us, the things you’ve entrusted to our care, the children you’ve entrusted to us. I pray that you would use our lives, our love for you, to be the shaping force that your spirit works through, your word works through, to raise children that absolutely love you and follow you all the days of their life. And that there would be multigenerational faith that’s passed down from grandparents to adult children to little children, generation after generation after generation. Lord, heal what’s been broken, restore what’s been lost, forgive where we’ve sinned. We surrender all these things, our own ways of doing things, and we put our energy and our focus on you and your work in their lives. We pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Amen. Amen. How many say God is good?