Learning to Imitate and Relate (Pt 1)

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.

In this session now, this is really the first official part of the seminar, the learning to imitate and relate part one in your booklets. If you’ve been already filling lots of notes there, that’s okay, but you now are officially made it to learning to imitate and relate part one.

In this section, we are going to explore the role the family plays in the parenting process. A family is not a collection of isolated individuals who just happen to share a common address. The family provides an environment wherein each member relates to the other members and influences them for better or worse. And I think we can all identify with Jim Butcher’s quote up there, there’s nothing that makes you more insane than family or more happy or more exasperated or more secure. No wonder we have so many schizophrenic people in the world today. We all were raised in families. But love it or not, that’s the reality.

No other structure in society provides us good and opportunity to shape a person’s view of themselves, others, and life in general. Some individuals have fond memories of the family they were raised in. Others recall their family experiences a child with disappointment. Whatever your case, there is no denying that your family experience played a major role in shaping who you are today. Now, given the significant role that the family plays in defining who we are, it should come as no surprise that the traditional family has come under serious attack in recent decades. In order to be successful at biblical parenting, we must first look at the family unit and see what the Bible says about it.

What constitutes a family? What unique opportunities does the family unit afford us in shaping our children’s lives? What is the proper attitude towards children? How do you build family identity? Those are just some of the topics that we’re going to cover in this section. For those of you that are still waiting with your pants and saying, come on, tell me what to do with Johnny or Susie tomorrow, that’s common. But right now we have to lay some of this foundation speaking about the family. Because guys, believe it or not, if you get what we’re about to discuss on the family and about the husband and wife relationship, if you get those right, You are probably, I would dare say, you’re probably 85-90 percent home free on your parenting.

So all I have to say is that if I could give you a 100 things to go do for your kid, how to get them to behave, and if your home and if your relationship with your spouse is messed up, all bets are off. I’ve told people, I said, unless you fix this problem, I’ll give you a rabbit’s foot and I’ll pray for you, but that’s all I can do for you. Unless you get your home in order and you get your relationship with your spouse, right? There’s nothing I can do to help you fix your parenting problem right now. It’s that critical that important that we understand it So what constitutes a family?

And it’s I mean I wrote this material years ago, and it seems like it’s very applicable today That’s a question our society is grappling with if you were to ask modern-day sociologists to define for you what a family is, they might say something like this, a family is any small group of individuals who choose to live together for the purpose of mutual social economic and or spiritual benefit. Kind of sounds like something you might just get out of a sociology book. Today any group of individuals can declare themselves a family and it becomes incumbent on society to recognize them as such. Have you noticed that? Any random group of people can get together and say we are a family and everybody else is say okay, hi family, but is that right. The traditional family is viewed as just one more choice among many and defining a family. Many couples choose to live together without making a marital commitment. Some of the more radical and public feminists in our society choose to raise children without the benefit of a father. They use their public platform

to extol the virtues of this type of family. The question we need to answer is, does the Bible prescribe for us what constitutes a family or is Is it open to interpretation? If God is the creator of everything, and He is, then He has the right to dictate how we should live. Seems like a fair statement. If God did create everything, then it seems like He made it. It’s His game. He gets to set the rules. In a vain attempt to avoid accountability, carnal man tries hard to either deny or dismiss God. The book of Genesis records for us the creation story. Six times during the creation process, God declares it is good.

This declaration indicated completeness, or completion or completeness. God was done with that part of creation. But on day six, God created the first man, Adam. And Adam’s first job was to name all the other animals. Now this is significant because it demonstrates Adam’s dominion over all the other animals.

is not simply another animal, as some would suggest. God is not yet finished with his creation, though. After declaring, it is good, six consecutive times, we all of a sudden say hear him say, it is not good. We know God doesn’t make mistakes, so the phrase, it is not good, is not the acknowledgement of a mistake, but rather it’s an indication that we’re not done yet. And then in Genesis 2 18, we read, then the Lord God said, it is not good for man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him. God saw that Adam would need a helper, someone to come alongside and assist him in fulfilling God’s purposes. And then Genesis 2 22 God creates the first woman and presents her to Adam and the Lord God fashioned into a woman, the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man. God’s expectation is that a man and a woman will enter into a lifelong commitment together for the purpose of glorifying him. The intended permanence of this relationship is revealed in Genesis 2 24,

where God says, for this cause, a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife and they shall be calm one flesh. And then Jesus just confirms that permanency of marriage over in Matthew where he says what therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. And again, you guys know these principles, you’ve heard these, you had them explain at your weddings probably, but how often do we fail to really think deeply about what does that mean to be that one flesh. The word cleaved using Genesis conveys the idea of a bond so strong that it’s impossible to separate the objects bonded without causing damage to the objects. The idea that you can have no fault divorces that are amiable and have no effect is nonsense.

It’s a lie straight out of the pit and divorce always causes a tearing effect. How we doing? Come on. The Genesis account is the basis for the traditional husband-wife marriage relationship. What about some of the other living arrangements so prevalent today? What about couples living together?

Same-sex unions, so-called open marriages without any commitment to fidelity. The Bible eliminates all of these as possibilities by condemning fornication adultery and homosexuality. See 1 Corinthians 6 9 and Hebrews 13 4. The only biblically supported model for a family is the traditional family unit or in cases where God’s sovereignty has brought about single-parent homes. If you’re a single-parent home right now I don’t want you to go home and feel like you’re second class. If God has allowed that situation in your life you are a family, you’re a biblical family, you have unique challenges and we’ll try to address some of those as we go along, but what we call the traditional family is the only biblically supported model for a family. The push to broaden the definition of a family is in many cases just another attempt to legitimize sin. And again, I really think we as Christians need to not surrender that territory to our secular world who’s trying to tell us now what a family is because we haven’t yet seen and I’m greatly

concerned for the next generation with the way we’ve messed up the definition of family. What will our kids look like in a generation? Well one last comment I want to make under this what constitutes a family is the idea that after God created Adam and Eve and joined them in marriage, he looked upon all of his creation and declared, it is very good. In essence, he was saying his creation was finished. It was perfect in every way. Now, what’s interesting to note, and why I’m camping on this, is that there’s not any children yet. Now, this doesn’t mean that the world would be a better place if there were no kids. Okay, I know what you’re thinking. That’s where you’re What the text indicates is that a husband and a wife constitute a family in God’s eyes before there are any children.

Now children obviously make a welcome addition to a family, but they are not required to constitute a family. And I’ll have more to say about that in the upcoming topics. But let’s go ahead then and move on. And there’s a couple of proper attitudes I want to talk to you now about that we have to have towards children. And again, some of these will fly kind of in the face of what our culture thinks and how it deals with kids. Our culture in many cases takes on kids like you just take on another purchase. And many times the discussions about whether or not to have kids sounds like the same conversation you have if you sign up at the time to buy a new car or not.

But the first principle we’re going to see under this is the topic that children are a gift from God. Psalm 127.3 reads, Behold, children are a gift of the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward. They’re not accidents. They’re not whoops. They’re not oh-noes. They are a gift from God. Can you imagine if God literally came down and said, Here’s a gift. I want to give you a gift. And you have a box. You say, Oh, no, I wasn’t planning on that. What a crazy response. are a gift from the Lord. Down through the age of society’s views of children have changed. Agrarian societies value children partly for the cheap labor they could provide. Centuries ago, large families were a part of a family’s defense strategy. I think the Martin household would have been ready for that. I’m one of 11 kids. There were 13 Martins in my household.

Psalm 127, 4-5 says, Like arrows in the hands of a warrior, so are the children of one’s How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They shall not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate. In today’s modern society we don’t need children for protection from enemies or in most cases to help take care of the farm. Today we live in a time where people have unprecedented leisure time. Whereas in the past most of a person’s time was taken up just trying to survive, now we have lots of amounts of time to pursue pleasures in life. Attitudes about children have shifted from utilitarian thoughts to ones of convenience.

Thoughts of how a child will affect my budget, my lifestyle, my body, my mind, those crowd into our thinking. We do that kind of an analysis. We can easily begin to think of having children in the same way we think about getting a new car, a house, or a boat. Some of these things are appropriate to consider when deciding to have children, but they must not take precedence over the simple truth of what God has said that children are a gift from Him. How we think about children will affect deeply our parenting approach. If in our heart of hearts we fail to deeply appreciate our children as a gift from God, then we’ll rob ourselves of the blessing God wants our children to be to us.

thinking about children has led to an to the ultimate perversion killing them in the womb simply for convenience sake. I both commend and am in horror at a a pro-abortion advocate a woman I can’t remember who she was now but she actually came clean and she said I am saying it is okay for a mother to choose to kill her baby if she thinks that is in her best interest. You know, she at least got rid of all of the euphemisms and all the nice ways of saying that, but she admitted what that position is. And, but the kind of thinking I’m challenging here leads to such an outrageous idea that a mother could say, no, I’m more worried about my career right now.

It’s inconvenient to have a baby, so I think I’m going to kill my child so it doesn’t mess up my career. When you look at your child, what do you see? A burden tying you down or a blessing waiting to unfold. If you’ve been granted children by God, you’ve been given one of the most awesome opportunities, responsibilities a person can ever be given. Everything else you devote so much of your time and energy to will ultimately burn. Your child represents a soul that will live forever and will end up being either a blessing or a curse to God, you, and those around you. You, the parent, play a major role in shaping what kind of a person your child will become.

If I haven’t scared you from being a parent yet, you’re not paying attention. What is your attitude toward your child? Do you need to repent of an attitude of resentment or indifference? Do you rejoice in the gift that God has given you? How about the idea that children actually belong to God? our children belong to God and not us, we must understand that we are stewards who are going to give an account to God. That ought to scare you. Someday you’ll stand before God and he says, okay, I gave you three kids or two kids or whatever kids, eleven kids. What did you do with them? Are we prepared to give him an answer for that? A steward is someone who manages another’s possessions or affairs according to that person’s wishes.

A steward does not seek to accommodate his own interests. All of a steward’s decisions are made with the owner’s intent in mind. Every parenting decision you make should be driven by careful consideration of what best serves God’s purposes for your child.

Parenting decisions motivated by your own personal wants and desires violate the stewardship principle and should be avoided. Every parent naturally has dreams and aspirations for their child. Your child is born and maybe you’re thinking, oh, they’re going to be doctor, they’re going to be a lawyer, they’re going to be a rock star, you know, whatever your aspirations are for them. We must be careful, however, to make sure that our personal goals for our children do not supersede God’s plans. Much parent-child strife has been born out of frustration that arises when the parent and child’s aspirations don’t match. Forcing a child to pursue our dreams for them will likely exasperate the child and lead to alienation. And we’ll talk more later under developing gifts and talents. There is a time and a place for a parent to push a child to try things. You may see some giftedness in them and you’ll push them and they’ll maybe resented and I just want to go kick the soccer ball. So there is a place for pushing but there’s also then

a time to recognize okay God’s wired them differently than I had dreamed for them and you back off and cease pushing on them and let them develop as God has wired them. Another principle is that children are not the center of the family. It’s very common among families to let the child become the central focus. So much time and energy goes into nurturing the child that it’s very easy to let them become the focal point for the parents. And I just want to give you some warning signs of maybe, we call this child centered parenting, but some signings that this might be happening in your home and it’s not a good thing. Letting your children interrupt you at will. If you’ve been in those conversations, you’re talking to a parent and all of a sudden little Johnny comes up and is tugging on the pants, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, and then finding the parent just has to give them attention and you can’t hardly get a conversation going because the child is constantly interrupting and that parent feels compelled that I have to turn around and deal with Johnny and

little Susie immediately. We want to teach our children that they’re not the center of the universe. They’re an important part of the family, but they’re not the center of the universe. So if your child is in that habit of constantly interrupting and demands immediate response, immediate attention, it could be they’re calling for your attention from another room. You don’t respond immediately and they start yelling, mom, mom, dad. Those are the indications that there’s some child centered parenting going on. If you’re responding to that immediately, you need to go and teach the child that, you know what, there’s an appropriate way to interrupt me and just yelling at me or yanking on my skirt is not the way to do it. And then again there’s different ways of doing that. We taught our children and sort of don’t get legalistic you know we taught them to come up and just gently hold our elbow just stand there and we’ll know with them touching our elbow that they’re trying to get our attention and

then when a break in the conversation would occur we would say okay excuse me a minute you know yes what would you like Johnny and deal with the situation. But that was just a cue for us so that we would be aware that they want our attention, but then they were not breaking and interrupting the conversation. Do you spend a little time communicating, interacting with your spouse? How often in a week do you actually get to really sit down and even if it’s for five or ten minutes just have a real good time just interacting with your spouse, even if it’s just catching up on the day. Especially households with little children, the children can be pretty demanding.

You come home, they want all of your attention. comes from work perhaps and the kids just also want his focal his attention and it’s difficult for mom and dad to get some time so again you want to teach them in this idea that they’re not the center of the family so we would recommend things like spending time each day Gail and I would make it a practice that when I’d come home from work you know typically the kids would come and you know dog pile my ankles and you know they want some time and I’d say I could you know pat them on the head and greet them and say okay now I could to go talk to mommy, you know, you guys go play for a few minutes and I’ll be with you.

And so then we would just spend a few minutes catching up with how the day went. And the message I wanted them to get was moms and dads relationship is special. It’s important. It’s something that’s going to take a little bit of priority over my relationship with you. And then once that was done, then we could go spend time, play with them, give them attention. But if you find in your home that again, the children are getting all of that time and energy. And it’s to the point that you can’t remember the last time you had a meaningful conversation with your spouse. That’s an indication that there might be child-centered parenting going on.

Then is your child content to entertain themselves, or do they constantly demand a lot of your time, especially young moms? You know the frustration. The little kids, you just can’t put them down. Can I just please have five minutes just to go to the bathroom? And the kids just constantly calling out or crying or fussing or wanting time.

This is a skill you can teach your kids how to entertain themselves how to be left alone for a period of time Even the little the little three six-month-olds they can be taught how to be put in a playpen and entertain themselves for 10 15 minutes at a time Some moms have talked to me how they can get their kids to go a half an hour 45 minutes. It’s a it’s a discipline It’s a practice. It takes time don’t drop them in or day one expect them to be happy But over time you begin to develop that skill that you know what you don’t need mommy here all with you all the time You can actually amuse yourself No, gail when the kids were young and she needed a little bit of a break time. She just trained them Go pick your favorite book and you’re gonna go upstairs now you don’t have to go you don’t have to go to sleep if you don’t want to but you got to sit on your bed quietly and read your book and They would learn to do that and then I forget now are you getting 30 40 minutes out of it something like that?

And bombs young moms, you know, what could you do with 30 or 40 minutes? We’re little one wasn’t you know demanding your attention But again, something that you have to work. And they begin learning early in life that discipline, that guess what, the world doesn’t revolve around me. There’s the old joke, I think it said, how many teenagers does it take to change a bulb? You know, the answer is one. They hold the bulb and the world revolves around them. But we don’t want to raise kids like that.

It’s very important that we teach our children that they are not the center of the universe.

They need to understand that moms and dad’s relationship comes first. You and your spouse were a family before the children arrived and you’ll be a family after they moved out. A word picture that was given to me early on when I was learning these principles that really I think it’s a very good picture is imagine yourself standing at the altar doing your vows and your face to face you’re holding hands so it’s a closed loop and then you you you you go on into your life and then guess what you get pregnant and you you keep holding one hand and you let one hand open to enlarge the circle and that child is inserted into the circle and that circle will get bigger depending on how many kids you have. But as the kids leave the roost, the circle gets smaller and smaller but guess what, I’ve never let go of my wife with this hand and pretty soon there we are again like where Gail and I are now. We’re back looking at each other face to face holding hands again. And if you have that kind of mental picture, what’s it going

to take to keep that physical connection all the years of raising the kids? A very interesting statistic that I came across was when divorces occur in the timeline of marriages and they found that there’s basically two spikes if you just look you know newly married one year two year three years so forth and so on all sudden about 18 months there’s a spike which makes sense you know people that got married maybe shouldn’t have and after a year and a half they throw in the towel divorce but then all of a sudden it goes like this and all of a sudden 18 years of marriage, boom, another spike in the divorce statistics. Why? Why 18 years?

What sort of life event happens around 18 years into a marriage? Kids are starting to leave home. All of a sudden the husband and wife are sitting there looking at each other saying, who are you? You’re a stranger. And the issues and the relational things, maybe conflicts that have been swept under the carpet while they’ve been dealing with raising kids, masking their marital problems, all of a son, there aren’t kids to distract us anymore, and they’re in trouble. You really have to be, understand the importance of keeping that relationship going all the time. Not only for your own sake, but it’s actually quite beneficial for the children.

I’ll probably talk about that more later, but how many times a misbehaving child can be traced right back to insecurities due to what they see going on between the husband and wife. There’s a very common trap that we must guard against by keeping the husband and wife relationship, the primary focus, this is what I’ve just been describing as a very common trap that we have to guard against. By doing this, we will actually be increasing our child’s sense of security. Children want to know with certainty that mom and dad love each other.

Several times we’ve had parents come to us and say, help, we’re trying to do all the stuff you’re saying and the cut child is just totally misbehaving, they’re climbing the curtains are driving us nuts what’s going on and after we’ve talked to them for a little while we come to realize that the child is feeling insecure about the parents relationship sometimes it’s because there’s overt conflict going on but sometimes it’s just simply that the kids never get to see mom and dad interact with each other mom and dad may actually have a good relationship but because they’re so distracted with the kids the kids never see it and so some of the kids perceived or something wrong and they just act out and they can’t explain it they can’t articulate why so just seeing mom and dad together and united is has a real settling effect on the heart of the child. The next thing we want to talk about under this idea is building a family identity. It is God’s intention that the family unit serve as the main training ground for your

children. Churches, schools, and other institutions can assist but they are not to be the primary source. Too often the family unit functions more like a way station where members occasionally gather to eat and sleep. Largely their lives are happening elsewhere, but home, that’s where I sleep, that’s where I get some food out of the refrigerator, maybe greet a family member now and then. By and large, family is not where it’s happening. My life is happening elsewhere. The family unit also provides one of the best ways of witnessing to neighbors. When the family unit is not functioning properly, it can do great harm to the cause of Christ.

There are a lot of distractions today to building family unity. School, work, sports, TV, computers, video games, to name a few, absorb huge portions of family members’ time. To successfully develop family identity and unity, it will require a conscious effort on the part of the parents.

identity does not just happen. It’s planned for, prayed for, and actively pursued. So let me give you a few principles to consider as you try to help build family identity in your home. First off, send your family around the person of Christ and His word. In the book of Joshua 24 15 we read Joshua saying as for me in my house we will serve the Lord at the time Joshua spoke these words he was near the end of his life he had fought the good fight and now he was reviewing Israel’s history before the people and he reminded them how often God often they had chosen not to follow God in their travels from Egypt to the Promised Land Joshua ends his discourse by challenging the people to decide who they were going to follow as As for Joshua and his family, he made it quite clear that they were going to follow the Lord.

A biblical family will always have as its focal point the Lord Jesus Christ. When Christ is at the center of the family, members become accountable before each other to live a life that pleases Christ. Instead of each family member struggling to exert their own identity in the group, each person adopts an attitude of submission to the lordship of Christ and service to others as they fulfill their roles within the family. And so we would work really hard to help people understand that Jesus Christ was a part of this family. And every action, every thought, every word was held accountable to what would Jesus think?

What would Jesus do in this situation? How would Jesus relate to this family? Would Jesus roam around the house with earbuds on and two not the rest of the family? Would Jesus lose himself in a video game for hours on end and ignore the rest of the family members, would Jesus fight and squabble when it’s time to do the chores, to clean out? When mom says, would you help clean out the dishwasher, would Jesus sit there and gripe and belly ache? We kept taking them back to the example of Jesus. And again, back to that earlier principle that you’re not the final authority. God’s the final authority. I didn’t want the kids first and foremost thinking, what does mom and dad think?

Because they might say, I don’t care what mom and dad thinks. I wanted them at least to have the gall in their own hearts to say, I don’t care what God thinks. That’s a lot bigger statement to make than I don’t care what mom or dad thinks. And so we would just make it clear that as we think and function in the home, you’ve got to have in your mind that this is not just about the Martin household, but this is also about before the eyes of God and what is honoring to the name of Christ. Instead of a me first attitude dominating the home and attitude of mutual submission and service begins to grow. Now, was it always perfect like that in the Martin home? No, we’re all sinners.

So there were many times where sin would interrupt, but we always had a reference point to go back to say hey This is not what a Christ centered home looks like let’s get back on track Wishful thinking about this kind of unity is not going to just happen It will require constant teaching correction and reproof to bring it about And we’ll discuss some of those topics when we get to that section on correction and reproof As you work to build a family identity centered on the person of Jesus Christ Christ, you begin to build a heritage that will extend not just to your own immediate family, but to your descendants as well.

Now that I’m starting to see the next generation, four grandkids and counting, I’m looking forward to see what that will look like. I got a little taste of that just recently. I went on a family vacation. Some of you know I went to Cancun. It was at the invitation of my 30-year-old son who said, I’m going to Cancun to celebrate my 30th birthday. Who do I want to come with me and celebrate my 30th birthday? I know. and dad. You know, what 30 year old does that today? He says, mom and dad, why don’t you come with me to Cancun. And yet we had our family come and had a great time. But it’s that kind of a relationship is what you’re trying to get to.

Now apparently what I’m describing is the kind of home Timothy came from. Paul writing in Timothy, in 2 Timothy 1.5, reminded him of his heritage. He wrote, for I am mindful of sincere faith within you, which first dwelled in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and I’m sure that it’s in you as well. Three generations are represented in that one verse. As you work on making Christ the center of your home, keep asking yourself the question, what am I doing now with my children to maximize the chance that my grandchildren will know and love God?

That was a thought that was constantly in my mind even as a young father. What am I doing with six-year-old Christopher that is going to maximize a chance that his children are going to know and love the Lord. And there’s a lot of things that we can do wrong and we do do wrong that raise the risk that our son is going to reject the faith and let alone our grandkids. So have that long term vision in mind as you’re thinking about building family identity. Another concept that we worked on building is that each family member represents the family unit. Teach your children that they are not an island onto themselves.

What they do and say in public reflects on your entire family and it reflects on how they view God. We live in a culture today where people, again, are so independent minded that they really don’t care what other people think. You see examples of it every day from the gentleman riding down the street with his windows rolled down in his car and the boombox going as loud as he can. He could physically propel your car down the street He took your foot off the brake enjoying his tunes, but oblivious to the fact that maybe not everybody else around him is enjoying that But oblivious what’s going on? Choices in speech dress Entertainment and other areas all communicate something about family values Part of being a mature person is to understand that personal choices usually impact more than just the person making the choice Sometimes this means limiting oneself in the interest of protecting family identity unity.

Had those comments or conversations often, especially as some of the kids were getting into the teenage years, one particular child, I’m trying to get the genders out of here, one particular child, one day said, I think I’m going to dye my hair purple. And I’m like, inside I’m thinking over my dead body you are, but I’m trying to be a cool dad. He said, oh really? You know, so what, why do you think of that? Well, I don’t know. I just woke up today and thought purple hair was a good idea. And I’m thinking, okay, so what’s driving him? What’s going on in his heart? I’m thinking of the friends that he associates with and hangs in.

And I had a pretty good idea that this had more than just to do with just waking up one day and deciding purple hair was a good idea. And so as I probed more and more, you know, then he was getting a little more frustrated because he could tell it and Dad, dad wasn’t going down the road. He wanted but I just used the gender. Sorry They’ve all heard the story so they don’t but As we had that conversation, I was trying to get to the heart of the matter You know as it turns out it was it was I want to be cooler I want to fit in with my cool friends and I think purple hair would be cool And I didn’t think that was an appropriate way to show your coolness and And I said that’s an issue. Why do you feel the need to be cool?

You know with purple hair and so we had the conversation even go away happy But we had forced him to take an honest look at his heart and what was going on there And it wasn’t just simply I woke up today and thought purple hair was a good idea But I have part of the argumentation I gave him was have you considered how it might reflect on the rest of the household And he hadn’t really given out a thought didn’t really care hair, but that’s what you want your children to stop and ask themselves. And I’m not making a comment against purple hair. If you’ve got a legitimate reason to have purple hair and you like purple hair, go for it.

That wouldn’t do me much good. But, you know, the issue is not purple hair. The issue is rarely what it is you want to do unless the Bible gives you a clear command not to. The issue is why do you want to do what you want to do. And that’s what you want to be probing with your kid’s heart. Why are you trying to do what you’re trying to do?

a child will test the boundaries of their freedom. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 10 23, all things are lawful but not all things are profitable. As your child matures in spiritual matters, teach them to examine their personal choices. An immature child typically seeks to push the limits of freedom, putting themselves in a physical or spiritual jeopardy. A wise child learns to deny themselves certain things in order that they might not risk falling into personal sin. I described to them one time, and this God, when we were talking about movies and movie choices, and I said, guys, think of it this way. There’s this circle that God’s defined and in the middle of the circle, we’ve got God’s perfect holiness. But everything else in the circle is biblically allowed. You’re not in sin if you do it.

I said, so you’re asking your desire to go see that movie is living out here on the line. You’re trying to say, dad, I want to live on the edge. I want to live on the line. I don’t want to go into clear, obvious sin, but I want to live on the line. I want to experience as much freedom as I can in Christ. And my conversation always with them was, you know, yes, you can live there, and you’re still in bounds, but where’s your heart? Are you asking yourself, what can I deny myself for the sake of holiness, for the sake of being more pure, for the sake of being more Christ like? Or are you asking yourself, what can I get away with and still be in bounds?

Two fundamentally different questions. And you want to get your kids thinking that way. What am I denying myself in the, in for the sake of pursuing holiness? And I’m not talking about becoming a Pharisee. I’m not talking about, you know, being a monk and beating your chest with a brick, but I’m talking about legitimately saying, Are there things that are grayish? Are there things on the edge that maybe in my best interest It’d be better for me to say no to myself. That’s when you know you have a mature child That’s when you know you’re mature when you can deny yourself Certain things that might be permissible, but not profitable and that’s where you want to get your kids thinking that way Keep keep hitting that but I think I’m always one ahead of myself. That’s okay family relationships should be among the strongest Invariably, moments of conflict will arise within the home.

Two siblings may fight over a toy or some other infringement of their perceived rights. We will talk more about sibling rivalry in a later session. For now, suffice it to say that constant fighting and bickering must not be allowed to go on. It is much easier to train this out of them when they are younger. Set a clear and non-negotiable expectation that your children show each other the same level of care and courtesy that they would show their best friend. Had a, well, I’m not sure, in reflection, I’m not sure if this was a good parenting thing or a bad parenting thing, but when they were fairly young, two of them were really fighting and squabbling, and I got kind of tired of it.

So I was probably a little irritated, so that probably was a bad thing. And I actually went in and I gave them weapons, you know, these big plastic tubes, and I said, go for it. You know, last man standing. They both looked at me like, you have lost your mind. What’s going on? And it just shocked them so bad that they both started crying because they didn’t want to fight anymore. So that’s that. And then I use it as a teaching time. Guys, why are we fighting? And this is unacceptable. Now, on a different occasion, there was another two of them that were going at it. And one of them had gone into the other one’s bedroom and had touched something or picked something up.

And the other one went ballistic. And hey, that’s my stuff. Get your hands off of it. And you’re touching my hand. You can imagine what goes on. That never happens in your homes, I know. In our home, it happens. And I go in and I say, what’s the deal? Oh, they’re touching my toy. And I says, well, wait a minute. Yesterday, your friend Billy Bob was over here. And he was playing with a lot. He was touching a lot. Well, that’s different. He’s my friend. Oh, Billy Bob’s your friend. And what’s your brother? And again, I explained to him, I says, if your brother’s not a friend, then I think we’re going to take a time out from the other friends until your brother’s your friend.

Because your brother, you got your brother for life. Billy Bob might be gone in two years out of your life.

And so we just put down a non-negotiable expectation that they would treat each other with the same kind of respect and kindness that they would treat any other friend in the home. Now I know in saying that you cannot force feelings towards a sibling one way or another, but you can require them to respond in a Christ honoring way. And guess what? In our case, it actually worked. They didn’t always get along. There’s some of them still had a little bit of rivalry going on, even in their teenage years, but now in their adult years, they love spending time with each other. They are definitely in their closest circle of friends. By setting a low tolerance for sibling rivalry and requiring a right response to each other, you greatly increase the chance of your children being true friends in their adolescent and adult years. I mean some of the other ways that we would help try to encourage that and force it. We chose the strategy of always keeping them in bedrooms together. Obviously we had

three boys, one daughter, so Esther, you know, never shared a bedroom with the boys, but she was included in a lot of their activities. But with the boys for quite a while, three of them in one bedroom, they had to figure out how to get along, how to survive. And you know, did it make conflict? Sure, at times. But then we would go in, sort it out, and say, hey, remember, you’re best friends. I mean, we just, we would just declare them best friends, whether they felt like it or They forged their own little club, the armatrons. They came up with their own little sawn and their little secret motto. They had the whole nine yards going, so we are the armatrons.

I don’t know where they came up with that. But it forced them to live together. A lot of parents today say, well, my kids aren’t going to get along, so let’s get them into their separate bedrooms so at least people will be peace and quiet. No, when they’re fighting and squabbling, that’s a better time to throw them together in the bedroom. My recommendation, again, that’s not God doesn’t say, say put them in the same bedroom. I just think it’s a good, wise idea because it forces them to work on their relationships. And then the last principle under Building Family Identity is fail to plan, plan to fail. There is a truism that says that activity will always increase to fill the available time. Activity will always increase to fill the available time. I don’t know about you, but all I have to do to have an extremely busy life is put nothing on my calendar and everybody else fills my calendar up for me.

Never before have families felt more stretched for time. Are you planning your family’s life or is life something that happens to you? Both families will likely be busy but the difference is that the family that plans is going to be more satisfied and more unified because they are busy doing the things that have made a priority. Things that do not plan invariably find that the family members are drifting apart as each one pursues their own interests. And again, how many homes where you just see they’re all in the same home, they may not even eat the same meals together. They’re picky eaters, they want to eat differently and mom decides it’s just easier because there’s a refrigerator to go get something to eat.

One’s over here listening to his tunes with his buns on his ears. Another one’s over there playing his Xbox. Maybe dad is chilling out in the den watching a sports game, but it’s just fragmented moving home. If you are going to achieve building a family identity, then priorities are going to have to be set and followed through on. It’s important to note that all of us have enough time to do what God has called us to do. He never puts too much on our plate. He may stretch us, he may put a lot on our plate, but he never puts too much on our plate.

If it’s true that you are too busy, then you are out of God’s will in some area of your life. Making time to spend together as a family certainly should be a priority. Set aside regular times to play together and to have devotionals together. The kids still talk about a corny game that we invented. It was called steal the dignity and the dignity was a sock tucked into your back pocket and we all got into our big playroom. Some of you see that big playroom and the goal was to steal everybody else’s dignity before they stole yours and the kids loved it and we would just play that for hours on end and just building again sense of family. If you start when your children are young and stay consistent with it you will have fewer protests from your children when they grow older. Really difficult to all the sudden wake up and realize as they’re mid teenagers we haven’t been doing this and just to go home today and say all right henceforth we’re gonna have family unity and we’re gonna spend time. Expect a lot of resistance it’ll take time but if you

start when they’re young. They come to love it, they come to expect it, it’s normal, and then it carries on into the teenage years. It’s much easier to maintain.

In addition to having family times with all the family, you can add one-on-one times with each of the children. I call these date nights with mom or dad. They can really be a lot of fun and help build that family unity. Again, it was a very common practice for us, well on into their teenage years. Date nights, so Gail put a big calendar on the refrigerator, calendar on the refrigerator and we would put date nights, okay, Wednesday night, dad and Chris and then two weeks later it was mom and Jeremy and then it was dad and Jesse and then mom and Esther and then we’d flip-flop and the kids especially when they were young they just loved going up to that calendar and just counting the days they were so excited someone’s gonna be date night and then we just had one simple rule for date night it had to be fun it could never be a time for us to be the bad guy and say well you know we’ve been noticing your homework or even those things or that.

It was always just about fun. They could always trust it that it was going to be a safe time to go. We had those conversations other times. It was a family favorite. But again, it helped really promote the idea of family identity, enjoying being together one with another. How simple is that? When a young dad, you could get away with spending 50 cents down at McDonald’s and buy an Ashcombe Con and they thought up the world of it. So it doesn’t cost a lot of money, doesn’t take a lot of time, but it pays huge dividends. Periodically sit down with your spouse and plan out activities that you want your family to do.

And again, the suggestion would be to make that calendar like we had done. That’s just one way that worked for us. Be careful not to be too rigid in your planning. No one can see the future and God might want to redirect your plans along the way. So again, we’re giving you an idea, but allow God room to rearrange your calendar if he needs to. Nevertheless, planning is a vital part of building family identity and ensuring that you can look back over time with satisfaction that you are accomplishing the things you wish for. Planning won’t remove all the stress that life may bring, but it’ll certainly reduce a lot.

And plus it’ll give you the satisfaction of knowing that you’re not simply burning up the few years of parenting that God has granted to you. In hindsight, I can confirm what everybody else who’s looking backwards like me, that time disappears. I can look at Esther in that first picture I showed you, age three or whatever, and I can literally think, wow, her 22 years since went by like that. It really is that fast. And so part of that planning is I’m glad I’ve got this filled with a lot of memories of time spent with her and the other kids. You and your children are going to be able to look back with fondness on the memories of good times together rather than regretful thoughts of where did all the years go and lost opportunity.

Okay. And now dads, you got to pay particular attention to this next thought. It’s all too common for dads to quote, wean it when it comes to their family. You know, dad’s were sort of we if you’re in the typical home or you’re the guy out primary breadwinner and you’re working if mom tends to be more home based. You’re thinking yourself. I came home. The house isn’t on fire. The dog still alive. The kids aren’t screaming. Life is good. Where’s the newspaper in the channel changer and one’s dinner ready and yay, dad. You’ve been a dad for another day. So much more to it than that. If dads are being good leaders of their homes, they will initiate and be involved in the making of plans for building family identity.

Husbands who leave it up to their wives to do this are not being good leaders. So I know I just made a bunch of men’s lives miserable, but dads, we have to be the ones that say, Dear, get the calendar. We’re going to sit down. We’re going to make a plan what we’re doing with our family. Okay.