Grandparents

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

There’s a good chance everyone here tonight has grandparents living or dead, is a grandparent, or will be a grandparent someday. Actually, it’s better than a good chance. It is a fact. It is likely that most of us, when we reach the end of our lives, will hold the title of grandparent or great grandparent. That will be true of most of us.

When that time comes, what will be the measure of a life well spent out of all the accomplishments that might be credited to us which will really stand out and earn us a well-done, thou good and faithful servant from the Lord? What one theme, if it isn’t true at the time of our death, will diminish every other theme that might be said of us. I believe the answer to those questions comes down to two related things. At the time of your death, can it be said that you kept the faith and that you handed it down, that you kept the faith handed down by your fathers and did you pass it on to the next generation? Those two things will help determine if you lived a life worth living and if it will go on beyond you. If that is all that can be said of us at the time of our death, it will surpass in greatness all the combined accomplishments of those who of whom said two things, those surpass the accomplishments of all those who it cannot be said of them. Jesus said, what will it profit a man if he gains the

whole world and yet forfeits his soul? That’s a very sobering question and it should make us passionate about cultivating and imparting faith while we have the opportunity. Grandparents are a very important part of that process.

Psalm 103.17 says, the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him and his righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments. And then in Deuteronomy chapter 7 we read there about Moses reviewing with Israel God’s law and then also reminding them of the blessings that come from obeying it and the curses that come from disobeying it. In verses 9 through 10 we see there that he said, know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandment to a thousand generations and repays to their face those who hate him by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face.” Pretty serious words there. It’s clear from Scripture that existing generations, existing generations, are not meant to be like marbles in a bag that teach up, touch each other only incidentally. Done wrongly, generations

related by blood act like marbles in the bag sharing in their marbleness but their relatedness to each other is limited to only occasionally bumping into each other and often to the irritation of the other marbles in the bag. Love for God and instruction in righteousness is meant to flow from one generation to the next like headwaters feeding a river and this implies a level connectedness between the generations that is not what we normally see today. Proverbs 17 6 paints a picture of the intergenerational connectedness that I’m scratching at. It says grandchildren are the crown of the agent and the glory of children is their fathers. Grandchildren are grandparents crown and fathers are our children’s glory.

Does that describe the way we usually think about these relationships? The usual pattern in our culture is for a couple to marry, raise kids to a certain age, send them off to live their own lives, and then settle into a well-earned retirement.

If the parent-to-child relationship is intact, then the parents can look forward to spending holidays with a family in between golf vacations and spoiling the grandkids on their birthdays. Throw in the occasional overnighter at Grandma and Grandpa and you have the gist of the American experience for older folks. Now I’m being a little bit facetious here, but only a little. Before I get to my main point, here’s a few fun facts about grandparents in America. The baby boomers of which I’m a member have become the grandparent boom. Today about 70 million Americans are grandparents and they have an average of five to six grandkids. That’s 24% more grandparents kicking around than just 20 years ago. 62% of those grandparents live 50 miles or more away from their closest grandchild and 40% of them are actually still in the workforce. This abundance of grandparents won’t last long because the birth rate today is about half of what it was when the baby boomers were being born and they don’t expect that to increase. The fact that so many

grandparents live a good distance away from family already sits the stage for the relational marble effect that I described. We’ve been using our Sunday nights, as you know, these teaching times to talk about the household of God and what the Bible has to say about the various roles within it. We’ve already looked at husbands and wives and fathers and mothers and so tonight we’re going to take a look at the role of grandparents inside of the household of God. And so I have one point, one simple proposition to make to you tonight, and that is when living generations with a common ancestry act like marbles in the bag rather than pearls on a string, they are missing out on God’s intended design for propagating the faith and they risk losing it altogether. In In biblical terms, household responsibility extends beyond the four walls we call home.

Our responsibility encompasses preceding and succeeding generations in our family line. Technically our responsibility is more extensive than that, but for our purposes tonight, I’m just going to focus on our intergenerational responsibilities. Our culture tends to divide life up into three basic seasons of life. Childhood, where we are being prepared for a future. The productive years, where we grow our family and contribute to society. And then finally, the leisure years of retirement were not much as expected of us by others. This model for life is far from scriptural. Psalm 92, 12 through 15 gives us an illustration of what the life of a righteous person is like.

It says, the righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord. They flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age. They are ever full of sap and green to declare that the Lord is upright. He is my rock and there is no unrighteousness in him.” The psalmist here compares the life of a righteous person to a palm tree. Palm trees live for many years and they can produce fruit for up to 150 years. When he says the aged are like palm trees, he’s not inviting them to retire to palm springs. It’s a call to remain fruitful and especially to declare that the Lord is upright.

Now some might argue I’m stretching this intergenerational responsibility too far. After all, doesn’t the Bible say, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh? He’ll leave it in cleav it. Matthew 19.5. Doesn’t this show that a couple’s responsibility to their son ends when he leaves home and takes a life? Yes and no. Clearly the nature of the relationship changes and certain parental responsibilities do come to an end. A man who has started his own family is no longer required to obey his parents but he’s still required to honor them. In addition to that there are scriptural examples of parents ongoing duties to adult children and by extension grandchildren including things like exhorting them to keep the faith. Just two examples I’ll share with you.

The first chapter in the book of Job describes how righteous Job would offer sacrifices to God just in case any of his adult children had sinned and cursed God. He took responsibility for their sin even though he wasn’t personally guilty. He was burdened by his children’s well-being and he acted on their behalf. He took ownership for his kids even though they were adults. An example of failure to take generational responsibility comes from the life of Eli, the temple priest, just prior to Samuel. He had two adult sons, Hophni and Phineas, who were also priests and they were guilty of continuous gross sin. But Eli did not step in and put a firm end to it. Apparently he did say, hey guys not cool but he could have gone further in exercise in his authority and he didn’t. And in 1st Samuel 3 13 we read what God revealed to Samuel that he was about to do to Eli’s family. He said, I declare to him that I am about to punish his house forever for the iniquity that he knew because his sons were blaspheming God and he did not restrain them. That’s God speaking. In

In the following chapters we read how Israel foolishly and superstitiously asked Eli’s sons to bring the Ark to the battlefront against the Philistines, thinking that would somehow give them the upper hand. It doesn’t go well and the two sons are killed along with thousands of other Israelites. The Ark is captured and Eli, when he hears the news, falls off his chair and breaks his neck and dies. These are just two examples where men of God with adult children did or didn’t take their household responsibility seriously. I’ve mentioned in previous sermons the example from Judges 2.10 regarding the generation that came after Joshua’s generation.

This is the group of people so after Joshua and all of his peers, after they all died, It says, and all that generation of Joshua also were gathered to their fathers, and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. That is a shockingly short amount of time for an entire generation to lose the faith handed down to them. What intergenerational failure was going on to let that happen?

What about Deuteronomy 4 9 where the people were explicitly told only take care and keep your soul diligently Lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen unless they depart from your heart all the days of your life Make them known to your children and your children’s children If only they had had the mindset that’s found in Psalm 71 17 through 18 where the Psalmist says oh God from my youth you have taught me and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds So even to old age and gray hairs, oh God do not forsake me until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come. Obviously there are limitations to how far a parent can go to prevent a wavered child or grandchild from sinning, but the principle is that they have a a responsibility to act in whatever way they can. I grew up in an era where religion was considered a private affair. It was important to have religion, but it wasn’t something talked about. Later, as I was raising my own kids, that generation,

that time period, there was a tendency among parents to rely on things like private school or Sunday school to do the heavy lifting when it came to passing on the faith. And then grandparents were still a distant third to all of those resources, if at all. The point I’m making is that there is a significant gap between how important we say faith is and how much effort we put into raising our children and grandchildren in it. It isn’t our hostility to the faith that’s killing its transmission, it’s our passivity.

Gail and I have been blessed over the past nine months to have had one of our sons and his family live with us for five months and now to have our daughter and her family living with us for the foreseeable future and there’s actually a chance that my 14th grandchild will actually be born under my roof in April or May given how fast she delivers. Many mornings I’ll be sitting in my office with my noise canceling headphones on with my eyes closed as I’m praying. And it’s become regular to have one of my grandkids come in and tap me on the arm to see what I’m doing. And I just love pulling them up into my lap and talk to them about what I’m reading in the Bible. And almost always I talked to them about their responsibility to take what their parents and grandparents are teaching them and to make it their own. I tell them that someday they will be responsible to tell their children these things. I just had a date with Chloe, our six-year-old, yesterday over a plate of spaghetti and meatballs and I was

explaining to her righteousness and what that term meant and why our righteousness wasn’t good enough to get us into heaven. So every opportunity we have to impart the faith into them. I have the same conversations with my older grandkids, as well as my adult children. Of course, my walk better matched my talk. Lest hypocrisy drive them away. And Gail and I have been blessed that our kids welcome this input into their household lives. I know not every grandparent here today has that blessing, and I’m going to address that in a few minutes. in a sort of crass way you can think of what I’m describing as drip marketing.

That’s where the marketeers keep dripping ads to you, whatever way they can, in the hopes that you’ll buy from them. In biblical terms, it’s line upon line, precept upon precept. It is believing that God will reward personal righteousness combined with faithful witness by driving faith into the hearts of the next generation. It should be clear that the ability to transmit your faith is predicated on a solid relationship. If you don’t have a relationship where your input is welcome, you have some work to do. One tip I’ll throw out to parents of children who are either out of the home or are getting close to it is respect the fact that they aren’t going to always agree with you on everything.

I’ve seen a lot of parents of adult kids, or soon to be adult kids, make that mistake. They still insist that the kid has to think exactly like them, and that just sets the stage for conflict and animosity. It’s when you finally learn to realize that they have a different way of thinking. Obviously on the essentials of the gospel, you know, die on those hills. There’s a whole lot of things we don’t have to die on that we parents foolishly die on, and we alienate the relationship. If you foolishly die on the wrong hills, you’ll alienate the relationship and seriously impair your ability to speak into their lives when they really need it.

So far, I’ve been discussing the responsibility of the older generation to teach the younger generation. There’s also responsibility for the younger generation to learn from the older. Job 1212 tells us that wisdom generally comes with the age and implies the younger should avail themselves of it. It says wisdom is with the aged and understanding in length of days. Deuteronomy 32.7 explicitly tells the younger to seek out the older for instruction. Remember the days of old. Consider the years of many generations. Ask your father and he will show you your elders and they will tell you. Proverbs 23, 22 makes the same point.

Listen to your father who gave you life and do not despise your mother when she is old. It’s tragic how little knowledge and wisdom is transmitted from one generation to the next. Safe to say, more knowledge and life experience is lost to history than is passed on. It is likely that most present here tonight know almost nothing about their great grandparents and probably very little about their grandparents.

The fault for this situation runs both ways.

The younger generation has little patience to learn from the past and does not realize how often they are repeating the mistakes of the past rather than learning from it. And the older generation buys into the lie that their time is past and it is best to get out of the way and let the next generation quote make their own mistakes. I remember as a young man listening to a man of about 80 years of age stand up in a church meeting and say as much. And I remember thinking to myself, Lord help me to never say that when I’m old. One of the best examples in Scripture describing God’s plan for the propagation of the faith is found in Psalm 78 1 through 8. Listen to how many generations are identified. And this passage also contains a clear command as well as a warning to us. It says starting in 78.1, give ear, O my people, to my teaching. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their

children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might and the wonder that he has done. He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn and arise and tell them to their children so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God. But keep his commandments and that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God. The generations mentioned in this passage extends from the past the fathers to the future, children yet unborn. The command is simple and twofold. First, teach God’s commands and tell of his glorious deeds.

And second, warn the next generation to not be like those ancestors who were unfaithful to God. That last bit about warning generations to not be like those who were unfaithful tells us that everyone has something to offer the next generation, even if it’s a cautionary tale from their own life. There’s sometimes older generations like I blew it, I had too many mistakes, I I don’t have anything to say, yes you do. Tell them about your mistakes and what you learned from it, and warn them to not repeat it. Well, this brings us to the final consideration, which is what do we do if we find ourselves a part of a generational line where the relationships are strained or one of those generations isn’t a part of the faith.

Perhaps you are a grandparent who’s filled with regrets about the past and it has ongoing negative consequences with your children and your grandchildren today. Maybe your parents or grandparents aren’t believers or they’re weak in the faith and so they really aren’t much of a resource when it comes to matters of the faith. If you are the grandparent I just described, one thing you can do is to make sure that you have confessed and repented from any sins that helped create that generational barrier.

If you haven’t had an honest conversation with your children or grandchildren, that might be a place to start. Humbleness on your part might be the thing that God uses to repair a damaged relationship. Sometimes you just need to come and say, son, daughter, I am sorry. Please forgive me. I made so many mistakes, but I would love to be able to build, start building something now. One of the things that has helped strengthen my relationship with my adult children is when they have seen me grow and change my mind, especially on positions they reached before I did. I can remember there were several matters of practice of faith where there truly was biblical freedom, but I was really being pigheaded and stuck on my position and trying to coerce my 19, 20 year olds to see it my way.

And one of them in particular is too much like his father. We both get pretty hot around the collar. And so one of us or both of us would be taking walks around the block trying to cool off after a heated conversation. And it’s when I finally realized that I did not have to pin him down and force him to see it my way, that that actually then set the stage where he and the other siblings actually say, wow, dad was able to learn and change his mind and they actually come to me now. This was when they were 20. Now they’re 35-40 and they’re still coming to me and saying, dad, what do you think? I’m getting my opinion on stuff.

If you are a person without a godly lineage to look back to, then determine to break the pattern and become the first pearl on a string of faithful generations. That’s kind of where I see myself. I came out of a Roman Catholic background. Gail does have a longer line of pearls on her string. But for me personally, I am the first, and I am committed to make sure it’s not the last to do everything that I can. If you haven’t already, begin establishing the pattern of instructing the next generation in matters of faith. Impress upon them the expectation that they will take the baton of faith and pass it on to the next children.

I’m going to look kid, I am going to hand you the baton. You’re either going to run with it or you’re going to drop it, but I am going to pass it on to you. And I’m going to make sure they understand the importance of that. Even if you can’t look to the previous generations for an example of faith, look for what you can be thankful for and express it. If you have tended to hold them, this previous generation at arm’s length, look for ways to establish a better relationship. Perhaps that overture will lead to an opportunity to share your faith with them.

Dave and I are old. We keep trying to get the younger generation to understand the secret. We know that most of you, not all of you, but most of you when you look at us and you say, you’re old enough to be my father or perhaps old enough to be my grandfather, or maybe great grandfather. We look back at you and we say, you’re old enough now to be interesting and actually we can have a relationship and we can have a brother, sister fellowship here. And Dave, I think is famous for saying that he’s, he’s whatever you are, Dave 76 or the, you know, 12 year old trapped in the 76 year old body.

But there’s the opportunity for the relational dynamics are there. Well, if all of this sounds pie in the sky to you and too simplistic, could it be that the problem is your faith? Too many generational lines have settled into familiar ruts. So-and-so is never going to change. It’s always been that way. It isn’t worth the grief to try and change things. The list of excuses we make is endless. What is guaranteed, that is unless we rethink how the generations typically relate to each other today and break out of the norm, we will continue to see very short strands of intergenerational faith. That’s almost a given. Tonight, I’ve only focused on the responsibility of grandparents to pass the faith onto the next generation. There’s a lot more things we could have talked about.

And I’ve sort of slightly touched on the idea that it is hinged on relationship. You’ve got to have relationship. Right now with the little ones, I mentioned the date nights, all of that stuff. Let them know that grandma and grandpa actually are fun, you know, and not grumpy. They have to see us in that light and have good memories. But I’ve hopefully shown that a grandparent’s household extends into subsequent generations There are very real duties that come with that fact. There’s more that could be said about grandparents. It’s a fantastic season of life and an endless source of delight, at least it should be.

And I’ve already mentioned that Gail and I make it a habit, we made it a habit when we were parenting, to go out and date our kids. And we’ve continued that practice with the grandkids, and they just really look forward to it. We found it to be a great way to build relationships that we can leverage as we work to impart the faith to them. One of my granddaughters, for example, lives in Germany, and she recently got an iPad for her 11th birthday. And while my son is still keeping her off of social media, grandma and grandpa got a special account so she can actually call us and contact us. And I just love that we’re 10 hours different.

So usually when she’s crawling into bed, she’ll call me. We’re video chatting. And so whatever an 11 year old German girl wants to just rattle on about her day and it’s all silly 11 year old girl stuff, but I love it. But I always get the opportunity then to talk to her about what are you reading in the Bible? You know, what’s God doing in your life? So just keep drippin’, you know, drippin’, drippin’, drippin’. But having the relationship where she likes talking to grandpa, but then also using that then as a platform to pass the faith on. To the young parents here tonight, let me encourage you to consider that the best time to get ready to be a grandparent is now.

You are establishing patterns and expectations now that will shape what kind of relationship you have with your unborn grandkids, let alone your adult children. If you do it well now, you can look forward to some great years ahead with your children and grandchildren. Gail and I are loving these years. And you can greatly increase the chance that the intergenerational strand of faith in your family will be long and strong. OK, so that’s all I had by way of notes to share with you. Now we’re supposed to go into a Q&A time. I didn’t prepare any questions in particular, so feel free to shoot whatever you want out there.

And anybody else feel free to chime in your responses. So any questions pertaining to grandparents and the household of God? Yeah, Dave. Yeah. Well, you got any tricks to help your sleep? Yeah, so in this day and age where everybody’s moving in far places away, is there any tips or tricks to hiding the kids closer to home? I don’t buy them a house. Yeah, I wish I had an answer for that. That is a curse. I mean, I’ve got Germany, South Carolina, Spokane, and one here in my house. And so that is a reality. I like to think, and I think TEC is starting to break that mold. We hear more and more of our young people saying, they’re thinking, how can I stay in here in Marysville?

That was a big part of our motivation for starting Comfort College was to give them something to do here, not have to go there. So that’s a long-term strategy is to build opportunity here in the community, jobs. We got lots of businessmen here, so there’s gonna be lots of job opportunities. So we’re starting to see, I guess, an opportunity to break that. But if that’s your reality, then you just have to go the extra mile. I mean, for Gale and I, 90% of our vacations are going to go see the kids. Fortunately, they all pick nice places to live so they’re not bad places to visit. And then, like I said, making the extra effort to stay connected through, you know, we’re fortunate that we have, you know, iPads and social media and those kind of tools. So it’s more work to stay connected.

But it really works. Again, I mean, it’s going to be a humble brag here, okay? here, okay, but I told my daughter-in-law two days ago, I’m coming to your house for 14 days, and my daughter-in-law, and I get blasted with all these yippie, emotes, whatever, the little things, happy dance. But again, we’ve worked on those relationships for a long time to where it’s not like, oh boy, here come the in-laws. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it can be done. You can have a meaningful relationship, but it does take that work. And you’re right, there’s a tendency. We get a little late, relationally lazy, and it’s out of sight, out of mind.

And we don’t think about it until our next birthday or holiday rolls around, so you have to… But again, if you’re really thinking, I mean, I am… I’m constantly thinking, I’m going like, you know, when the day comes that I die, I may not have a lot of earthly accomplishments to point back to, but boy, I’m begging God. I’m begging God. Lord, please make all of my children and grandchildren and even the ones that are on board, make them a member of the elect. And I’m just by faith operating on that. I mean, I talked to all my kids and my kids are believers and only a few of my grandkids have made professions of faith.

they’re all very young, but I am talking into their life as if they are Christians. And just saying, look baby, this is part of what it means to be a Martin. You know, we follow Jesus. It’s like I don’t even give them an option. But then I make sure, and one of my pet phrases I use with them is we talk about Christian monkeys. And I say, right now, you’re Christian monkeys. You do what Christians do because that’s what we’re teaching the monkey to do. But at some point, this has to be your faith. You can’t be a Christian monkey forever. At some point, it has to become your reality. Let’s just keep beating that drum.

And then again, hopefully we, Grandma and Grandpa are fun. And they enjoy the relationship. So hopefully God uses all of that together to really make them embrace the faith. Other questions, comments, thoughts, other suggestions? about what up and then start a crash. And Gail and I saw, because we came across the lake, when we changed, it made both sets of grandparents go, oh, what happened here? And it turned out all right, but it took almost a decade to know where you think it was coming from. But if you really relate to your kids, then even if they move away, those phone calls you immediately you get back on the level that you know your own community.

I mean, your grandchildren and your son and daughter all live in Germany, and that way around the world. And yet, you wouldn’t even talk with them. I mean, right away, that’s what’s going to happen. Yeah. Don’t give up. It’s kind of funny to watch the two of my sons who are a little more on the rebellious edge than their teenage years, if turned out to be more conservative than their old man. So we’ll sit on my back deck with our glasses of whiskey and be talking when we were talking about how to respond to the COVID nonsense that they were trying to talk me off the ledge. I was like the crazy, I was the rebellious one, but am I missing any hand waving here?

I just really want to impress guys. I want to really impress, I hope I got the message across. We’ve got to do a lot better job of getting the generations communicating, relating, being connected, not like marbles, valuing what they all bring to the table. If we keep this semi-isolation, you do your thing, I’ll do my thing, we’ll get together on holidays. That’s a formula for disaster for passing on the gospel, let alone having much of a satisfying life, I think. Revah, were you going to say something? Not just, I mean, it’s such a weird, they love the way the kids are. They’re polite and respectful, and so that’s all awesome, but they don’t love the idea of us that our life, the foundation of our life, is the Lord and scripture.

And so it’s really hard to honor. And you know, how do you honor someone who’s saying your things? How do you honor someone who’s saying, you are way watching in children? You know, it’s just, it’s a really hard place to be. And I guess for me, that, and ever so, I guess, something that we struggle with a lot is, And we want to maintain relationships with our parents and how our kids know their grandparents. But there’s so much negativity and the grace of the Lord is that the kids can totally stand up for their beliefs and of course, grandparents are much more receptive to hearing it from them than they did from us.

But all that, we are so thankful for you and Gail, the lights, for all of the families here who are willing to stand in that house. Yeah. So that reality is that reality. Now as believers, you guys continue to let your lights shine and by faith you hope and believe that perhaps someday got Mike. They’ll come to Christ. Meanwhile, you know, Bazin and Xander, you guys are pearl number two on the line. All right? Let’s make it three or four. So, all right? So, you see the contrast. And so, but you have that responsibility to take the faith that your parents are imparting to you and keep it going. You know, and all the other young people here, I could say the same thing.

So like I said, I’m, you know, I got three, we got three pearls on the Martin line. Well, on my side of the line, three pearls. So far, Gail’s got more pearls on her string, but. Also, it shouldn’t be pressure. I mean, the price, there’s price pressure to stay, to try to stay there because everything’s so expensive. And so you could also be super proactive and say, hey, if you want to stay, We want to figure out a way to make this work, whatever that looks like. Because in my head, I would way rather give my kids and my grandkids a blessing when I can see them than what I’m involved in. And so to be thinking ahead of, you know, like, you have teenagers, okay, we’re talking about, like, what are you gonna do when you grow up?

Where do you wanna go? And, like, if you wanna stay here, we need to start playing about, are we gonna get a house together? Those kinds of things, I think those are good conversations. Yeah, I mean, and a hearty amen to that. My daughter, and the reason they’re in our home is they were living in a 900 square foot house in Kenmore with three kids and then number four on the way, and 900 square feet’s a little cozy. And there’s no way they were going to do a contingent purchase of a home. And so we had suggested a year or two ago, sell it, move in, bite the bullet, do the commute to Bellevue. That’s where their church is at and stuff.

And they thought about it for a while. And then their pastor came to them and said, you know, you ought to sell your house and move in with Esther’s parents, which is kind of another funny side story, because now their Bellevue friends are like, your living with Esther’s parents. Are you OK? Do we need to pray for you? To them, it’s like really weird and foreign. But they’re going, oh, no, it’s going great. My son-in-law sat down with me. There today, he said, dad, can we go out to lunch? And I thought, well, what have we done? Don’t know why I went there first in my thinking. But so we had lunch. He says, no, I just want to see how it’s going.

Are we driving you crazy? Is it going OK? I’m saving a lot of money right now. should I be giving you some money? I said, this is just one way for me to pass on generational wealth. Keep your money, save it up for your next house. We’ve actually been talking about maybe generational living with them, but problem is they want Bellevue, we want Marysville, so that’s a problem. But beyond that, any way we can be thinking ahead to help them be able to stay in an expensive area, specifically in the context of us and here and how expensive Puget Sound is, but Philip you’re gonna… Yeah, you understand when I use the term Christian monkey, I make it clear to them, Christian monkeys aren’t Christian, you know, they’re little people that have learned to ape what Christians do.

Yeah, no, but as far as I see it as just a matter of faith, now are they elect, I I don’t know, only God knows, but I am going to not get, when they’re under my household, I’m not gonna give them an alternative. This is my expectation, I’m gonna raise you to these standards at the same time, make sure little Chloe understands righteousness and what that means and that she needs a savior so that then the Holy Spirit at the right time will break her little heart and she’ll realize, you know, that she needs a savior. So it’s premised on faith. It’s all gotta be based on faith and just believing that God will honor that.

Now again, I know there’s people in this room who would say we did that and it did not turn out the way we had hoped and that’s a reality. And so in those cases, you do what you can to keep trying to pour into their life the best you can to the degree they’ll let you. And that’s where I say, If you can go back and see places where you messed up the relationship, then you try to go back and repair that. And then from the solid relationship, you try to begin building upon that, and then you just believe God. And that’s all you can do. He’ll say, well done, good, down, faithful servant, if you were diligent. Ultimately, each person is responsible for God with their choices.

But when they’re little and I have more influence, I guess I make no apology for drilling into their heads that, of course, you’re going to be a Christian. That’s what Martins do. And fully realizing that they may not. Grandpa said this. Yeah. They’re like, yeah, we know Grandpa said that. But we say this. Oh, yeah. Do you think there are things that your kids might a little bit, like not say it directly to you, but your brain gets transmitted. Yeah, your brain says that, but can you say it? Were they might transmitted incorrectly or they’re just… No, no, no, no. Where you say they know that you disagree on this thing.

And you tell them, like, I don’t know, that your daughter and son-in-law, do they believe all the same things that you believe? Oh, I’m sure we have some… I know we have some theological differences, but we’re very careful to wherever we know that they are teaching them something different. We don’t go butt head to head with them. We’ll have those conversations with, yeah, not intentionally. So far, we are very much aligned. We’re 95 percent aligned or better, so it’s not been an issue. But if there was a bigger difference, I would think it’s incumbent on the grandparents to be respectful of the parents. It’s their first duty.

And again, if you really think that they are teaching the kids something that’s not correct, duke it out with the parents, don’t duke it out with the grandkids. Or wait until the grandkids are adulting. Say, you know. I’m not seeing any other hand waving. Oh, Kelly. I mean none of us believe anything without a community that has some sort of gravity around it because if this community was a place where nobody wanted to be, it doesn’t matter how nice your grandparents are. If they’re here and nobody else is acting like they want to be here, then your grandkids are not going to be here. They’re not going to stay. it like even with a practical issue, like how expensive it is to live here, that shouldn’t be the main concern.

If you’re looking at a place you’re like, that community has such gravity, I don’t care that it’s expensive to live here. I don’t care that it’s expensive to live here. I mean, I’m not paying at all my living expenses, but I know that someday I will be, and I want that to be here. because this community has enough gravity to it and it has enough fellowship that it shouldn’t matter how expensive it is. Like we’re trying to get the last grandparent who doesn’t live in Washington to move here. That’s how good it is, at least how we see it. That’s how good it is. And we’re trying to get other people to move here to make their lives.

I mean, it’s disturbing them. It’s making their lives harder because it’s more expensive. but there’s better benefits than just, well, it’s cheap to live there, okay? But are you getting the fellowship you need? And I think this community has enough gravity and it’s gaining more gravity that it shouldn’t matter if it’s expensive. It shouldn’t matter how much of a commitment it is to move across the country. Like, that’s what we should be working for. People just don’t even think about it. They’re like, those are some Christians you want to be with, let’s go over there. That is what we’re doing and that is how you keep your grandkids and your great grandkids in the same spot by making it good enough, making it fellowship centric where I think everybody is like, yeah, that’s where we want to be.

You can’t do that with sort of a, I don’t even know what I want to be. I don’t think we have that kind of thing. It’s like we’ll make it. That’s part of the destination piece is you’ve got other people coming in. I mean, I get to meet your grandkids, but I assume I’ll get to meet your kids. Oh, yeah? One more, in your head. Then, like, if you know, and you can pass it on, and that is something that you can’t complicate in the past. Amen. And your mom’s parents, grandma and grandpa, they’re awesome. If you guys don’t know Russ, Russ is the original Indiana Jones and if you invite him over, he’s got a great slideshow to show you all the stuff they used to do.

But we do, we just lose that kind of history and stuff. All right, well, Jonathan, why don’t you come up and lead us in the doxology and we’ll call the night. Go hug a grandparent. That’s it, right here. Praise God, God bless. Praise God from the…