Breaking Free
Part 2: Parents with Passion
Pastor Ryan Akers
Starting part 2 of our Breaking Free Series. This is a series about breaking free of the misconceptions that are out there about the church, what it is, what it’s about and what our role as Christians are within it. Last week we talked about the misconception that is out there today that the church is an organization designed to meet the wants of the people rather than the church being a people with a purpose to lives their lives centered on Christ and who use their spiritual gifts to edify the church, preach the Gospel and care for those in need. It was a tense sermon as I wanted to emphasize in your minds and hearts that the church can’t be something you just add to your life but the church has to be our lives. Our walk with Christ and our obedience to him is what matters more than anything. I pray, even if it was hard to hear, that your heart was pierced by the Spirit and you have been challenged to be more and do more for the glory of God.
Today we are going to talk about the 2nd misconception that people have about the church. And being mother’s day it fits perfectly. The second misconception people have is that the church should be the primary vehicle used for the spiritual growth of our kids. The goal of my message this morning is to help us as parents be it single, married or empty nesters break free of that dangerous mindset and take hold of a new passion and a new urgency where we not only want to see our kids grow spiritually in their relationship with Jesus but we, because of our example, prayers, encouragement and first hand involvement begin to play a big part in making that growth a reality.
We might hate to admit it but the programming that the church offers today for our kids, while good, has become in many of our homes the lone spiritual teaching and guidance our kids are receiving. With the chaos of life, both parents working full time, extracurricular activities galore, TV shows to watch (that’s me, way too many) and just being plain tired, family time with God, personal devotion time with God or praying with our kids and going over their Sunday school material with them has taken a back seat to our exhaustion and mostly become a quick prayer before dinner. We’re tired. We have more technology than ever before, more ways to make life easier than ever before and yet we are more tired than probably any time in history. With all that great technology has come more free time and humans, especially Americans, can’t ever just sit still and enjoy the free time. We have always been a people who have worked harder and accomplished more and so our instinct is not to relax or spend that time with our kids in the Word but rather it’s used to accomplish more task. Only in America can we find mowing, gardening or building something relaxing. Never can we just stop and sit for a second.
So, with our busy schedules we have slowly relied more and more on the church to handle the spiritual development of our kids and we have slowly stepped out of that role as the primary vehicle from which our kids get their biblical teaching and real time example of faith. Also because of our busy schedules God more often than we like to admit has taken a back seat to our own spiritual development and now our lack of biblical knowledge has made many of us feel inadequate and awkward when it comes to talking to our kids about God, the bible, Jesus and what scripture actually means because honestly we don’t even know. And this is a real problem because no matter how great the program or how amazing the curriculum or how often our kids come to church nothing can replace the parent as the best example a child has for what it means to live out faith in Jesus in real time. Our kids always turn out like us both in good and bad ways. They follow our examples more than any pastor or Sunday school teacher. I have yet to have a youth parent whose kid was in my ministry call me up and say, “Oh, Pastor Ryan Jonathan is just like you!” It doesn’t happen. We don’t take on the traits of who we aren’t related to we take on the traits of those we are genetically connected to and who are in charge of raising us, the parents be it foster, adoptive or biological.
So when you have a church teaching your kids one thing but the parent, especially a Christian parent, living life in a way that either contradicts what the church is teaching them or at the very least not following up with what the church is teaching then you have a problem because the kid will always do what you do. Since I have become a parent the reality of this truth has become more real than I could imagine. Kobe always wants to be with daddy. No matter where I am or what I’m doing he wants to do what daddy is doing. If I’m playing video games he goes and has to get his controller and sit right next to me and pretend to play video games. If I’m on the computer he goes and gets sissy’s toy computer and sits next to me and pretends he’s on the computer. (Paige won’t try things because Taylor won’t)
They always want to be with us and they are always watching us. When I come home the kids always yell, “Daddy!” followed by “LET’S PLAY!” (say something and hear it repeated in the other room) Our kids are around us more than they are around anyone else in the first 18+ years of their lives so it should be no surprise to anyone that they become just like us in how we speak, how we act, how we treat Jesus, the church other people and our spouses. I think about all the time how my kids watch how I treat Taylor and they watch how she treats me. It’s always in the back of my mind that Paige is watching me because my example of how I treat Taylor is going to be what she uses to find a mate. So if I constantly disrespect and put down my wife that’s what Paige is going to believe a man should be like and that’s what she’ll look for. And Kobe will believe that the proper way to treat women is to put them down and disrespect them and so that’s how he’ll treat women. If Taylor and I constantly fight and have yelling matches then that’s probably how our kids will perceive a marriage is supposed to be. Or they will spend the rest of their lives with the desire to live any other way than how you lived. “I want to give my kids what my parents couldn’t or didn’t give me.” “I see myself being like my mother and I can’t stand it.”
Good or bad our kids grow up to be just like us. The question then is if we already know that and believe it to be true then why, when it comes to spiritual growth and maturity, do we all of a sudden believe that the church, where our kids spend maybe 1-2 hours a week, would have a greater impact on their lives than you would? That just doesn’t make sense. Does the church make a difference? Oh yes, absolutely. But it makes a bigger difference when the parent and the church work together and not against each other and it makes an even bigger difference when the parent is authentically living out the faith that the church is attempting to teach their kids how to have. Now some will say, “Well I wasn’t the greatest parent but my kids turned out okay.” Or you might say the opposite, “I raised my kids in a Christ centered home where prayer and love abounded but my kids are further from God than I ever thought possible.” Ultimately your kids and mine will come to an age where they have to make their own decisions about who they are, what they believe and what they want to become in life and that’s out of our control. Our kids even in their sweetest moments have a sin nature just like us. And just like us they naturally choose sin rather than choose God. That’s why you have to spend so much more time teaching kids obedience because disobedience comes so naturally due to their sin natures just like it does to our sin natures. I never had to teach Paige and Kobe to disobey, get out of bed when they should sleep, throw their food on the floor or touch something when I just said, “Don’t touch that.” But I do have to teach them to play nice, be nice, and share.
And just like us they must one day come to make a choice to either accept Jesus as their savior or reject him. That’s a choice we can’t make for them because of human free will. But, what we can do and have an obligation as Christian parents to do is lay a biblical foundation in our kids lives. We have a great opportunity to give them the best chance to hear the truth of scripture, know the truth of scripture, see the truth of scripture lived out in real time in our own lives and hopefully accept that truth as their own by asking Jesus to become the Savior of their lives. We can’t make that choice for them be we can make sure they can’t use us as their excuse for not believing. 3 ways this morning we can set the right tone in the home, give our kids no excuse, and ensure Jesus is at the center of our families.
1. Be Protective. Exodus 2:1-4. About this time, a man and woman from the tribe of Levi got married. 2 The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She saw that he was a special baby and kept him hidden for three months. 3 But when she could no longer hide him, she got a basket made of papyrus reeds and waterproofed it with tar and pitch. She put the baby in the basket and laid it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile River. 4 The baby’s sister then stood at a distance, watching to see what would happen to him. Moses’ mother, a slave woman living under the ownership of an extremely brutal people. When Pharaoh calls for the new born baby boys to be cast into the river her protective motherly instinct immediately kick in just like any mother’s instincts in here would to protect your child from danger or if it was like this situation the government came along and tried to steal your baby so they could kill it to help control the population. Just thinking of that should make us sick to our stomachs, but it happened. She hides Moses for 3 months. When she no longer could protect him she got desperate and put Moses in the hands of God by placing him in a basket and sending him down the Nile. Moses ended up at the palace where the Pharaoh’s daughter found him and adopted him and by God’s grace and divine intervention Moses’ mother became his nanny and helped raise him. How cool is that?
We also have a protective instinct. Not just the instinct to keep our kids out of physical danger but also an instinct that will keep them out of spiritual danger. This often requires discipline that our kids don’t like but is necessary because we know what’s best for them. I used to get so mad at my parents because of all the rules. Be home at this time, don’t go to this place or this party, and don’t hang out with these people, on and on the list goes. As a teenager you think your parents are just jerks and don’t want you to have fun but the reality is they know the consequences of what will happen if you make certain decisions because they already made the mistakes they’re trying to protect us from. So they put rules in our lives in order to protect us from making those same mistakes. In the moment, we don’t appreciate it but when we mature and have our own kids we finally understand and are thankful for those rules because we realized how our parents kept us safe from physical, emotional and spiritual pain. Proverbs 13:24 (The Message) A refusal to correct is a refusal to love; love your children by disciplining them.
One of the greatest things we can do is to protect our kids through proper discipline. My parent’s protection of me through consistent and loving discipline kept me on the right path. Just as we discipline our children to help them stay on the path so too does God discipline us to keep us on the right path that he knows is best for us. Proverbs 3:11-12 says, “My child, don’t reject the Lord’s discipline, and don’t be upset when he correct you. For the Lord corrects those he loves, just as a father corrects a child in whom he delights.” When we tell our kids yes and never say no we create chaos and a child who expects to always get their way. If we worry too much about being our kids friend and being cool to their friends we are only hurting our kids and putting them in potential danger physically and emotionally. If God said yes to everything we wanted I can’t imagine the chaos that would ensue. So, we must protect our children from physical harm and from themselves and we must do so through proper and consistent discipline but discipline done in love never in anger. We also must remember to not be hypocritical in our discipline. Because our children mirror what we do we have to be careful in how we correct them for doing something they shouldn’t that we ourselves do. If we catch them in a lie but we also lie that’s hypocritical. If we catch them looking at pornography but we watch rated r movies that contain sex and nudity that’s hypocritical. If we tell them to be nice and share but we talk bad about our boss and gossip about our co workers that’s hypocritical. We have to make sure that we are living the path that we desire for our kids and not being hypocritical in our guidance and correction.
We can also protect our children not just with correction but by backing up our correction and discipline with biblical instruction. Proverbs 22:6 says, Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it. Deuteronomy 6:4-9, 4 “Listen, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.[a] 5 And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. 6 And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. 7 Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. 8 Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. 9 Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. This means be consumed with the Word. Let it permeate every fiber of our being, drive every action, be on our lips and in our hearts at all times. God’s Word will transform us, challenge us, shape us, convict us and deliver us from ourselves and sin. When the Word of God is used to back up our correction then the Holy Spirit will always be in our corner revealing truth to our children.
What I mean by this is don’t just tell your child that lying is wrong. Show them it’s wrong because Jesus says so. Don’t just have the sex talk with your kids, go to the word and show them what God says about sex, what he says about cheating, disobedience. When we don’t instruct our kids biblically then truth becomes relative. If I tell my kids lying is wrong but don’t give them a solid source showing them why lying is wrong then lying becomes relative because it has no moral or spiritual foundation. To them it’s wrong solely because I think it’s wrong. Well, what makes me so special that I think I can tell people lying is wrong? It might be wrong for you but it’s not for me. Sex before marriage might be wrong for you but it’s not for me. Cheating, coarse joking, homosexuality, drunkenness, gossip, slander, disrespecting parents, rudeness, disrespect, greed, pride and selfishness might all be wrong to you but without a moral foundation or solid reason as to why they are wrong then it’s all relative and not wrong for me. Are you following me on this? Using the line, “Because I said so” will only last so long. If you aren’t disciplining through biblical instruction and godly correction then eventually kids won’t care what you think because you’ve never given them a good enough reason as to why what they did is really wrong.
See why knowing the Word, reading the Word, being consumed by the Word, memorizing the Word and sharing the Word with our kids is so important now? I hope you do. It’s wrong, not because I say it’s wrong, because I am imperfect and have many faults, shortcomings and make mistakes every single day, but rather it’s wrong because our perfect alpha and omega, creator of all that is good and Father of the perfect son who showed us undeserved kindness and unmerited favor by dying on the cross for our sins says it’s wrong and tells us to not do it. And I, the child, listen and obey not just because my parents told me to but because I know and believe the truth of the scriptures which says to obey my mother and father and which Jesus also says that those who are truly my disciples obey my commandments. If you don’t know the word and aren’t passing it down to your children as we are commanded to in Deuteronomy then all we have is, “because I said so” and if that’s all you got you are in big trouble and all the church programming in the world isn’t going to fix it.
A motherly example of this comes from 2 Timothy 1:5. Paul writing to Timothy who is a pastor says, I remember your genuine faith, for you share the faith that first filled your grandmother Lois and your mother, Eunice. And I know that same faith continues strong in you. Here is a short but amazing example of a grandmother who passed down her faith through instruction and was also a real time example to her daughter of what it means to live out genuine Christ centered Faith. Her daughter believed in Christ and then passed her faith to her son not knowing that her son Timothy would become a preacher who would reach thousands for Jesus. Lois’ example and instruction impacted generations. Don’t just protect your children through discipline but use godly instruction and Christ like love to do so.
2. Be Loyal. John 19:25, “Standing near the cross were Jesus’ mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary (the wife of Clopas), and Mary Magdalene.” Mary was loyal to Jesus till the end. Through the ridicule, criticisms, beating, doubt, persecution and even when her family called him crazy Mary stood by his side. She couldn’t help it. She knew the truth and Jesus was her son. Our kids will do a lot to tick us off on purpose and by accident. They will lie, cheat, sneak out, disobey, curse us, slam doors, say they hate us and wish we would die. Rebel, fight, and resist God as hard as they can. But we must be loyal. Our love for our children demands it. Deep down, no matter how far our children might be from the Lord we still hold out hope they will turn back to God and come back home. It’s a beautiful picture of our relationship with God. We too like our children, rebel, fight, steal, cheat, curse God, hope he dies, and wish we never knew him, but God is unconditionally loyal because he unconditionally loves us. Marriage and parenting is the earthly example of our relationship with God and his son. Just as Christ is loyal to us, died for us, continues to love us and hope we too will live for him we must also because of our love for our children remain loyal to them. So for you who have children far from God I say never give up hope that they will come to know Jesus. Keep praying and keep setting the example of what it means to live out a genuine Christ centered faith.
3. Be Obedient. Parents, our kids see right through us. We can’t expect our kids to be obedient to us when we aren’t obedient to God. We can’t hold them to a standard and expectation that we ourselves aren’t willing to live by.
Another way to say this is our kids will define what being a Christian is by watching how we live out our faith in our daily lives. So if you never read the bible, your kids won’t think it’s important. If you’re willing to skip church at the drop of a hat for school sports, hunting, or because you just want to sleep in then your kids won’t think church is that important either and it’s okay to miss whenever you want. If you only make prayer a meal time activity your kids will also think it’s just a meal time activity. If we aren’t living obedient lives why would our kids live that way. When they are young they won’t think it’s important because we don’t and when they are older they will just see us as hypocrites and fake. James 1:21-25 says, So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls. 22 But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. 23 For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. 24 You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. 25 But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it. If you don’t want your kids to be spiritually lazy then you have to quit being lazy yourself. We can’t want for our kids what we aren’t willing to work for. If we aren’t willing to discipline ourselves why would our kids? If you want your kids to know the creeds then recite them at home. If you want them to know the Lord’s Prayer than teach it to them. If you want them to be confirmed then walk them through the bible and the basics of our faith and talk to them about what it means to be a Christian. We have to quit waiting around for the church to do it for us and we need to have some passion and take that initiative in our kid’s lives. The church should offer discipleship opportunities but it should be in addition to what the parents are already doing not the only thing they are getting. We have no job that is more important than to instruct our kids in the word of God and live out that faith by example. If you don’t think you know enough then open that book and start learning. Learn together. I love hearing about Peggy and Spencer. Every day they open the bible and do devotions together as mother and son. That’s awesome and I have no doubt some girl will fall in love with Spencer because of that.
If you don’t know where to start then just start with prayer. First start with asking the Lord to make you right with him. If you aren’t right with God then everything else becomes meaningless works. Ask him to help you be the dad or mom you need to be then make whatever changes you need to make for that to happen. If that means cancelling Netflix, or your kids play one less sport so it doesn’t interfere with God, or you shorten the hunting trip, or you change around your schedule so be it. Lighten your load so that God can become the biggest priority. Being busy and keeping God on the backburner is exactly what Satan wants from you. Don’t let him win by keeping you busy with everything else but your walk with Christ and your time with kids. This summer we will be offering a 6 weeks small group titled “Raising Children of Faith”. If you don’t know where to start start there. Go to the Christian book store and get a kids bible or a family devotional and then sit down with your kids or your teens and begin the discipline of reading the bible together even for 10 minutes and pray together. Or, start looking at your kids take home papers from Adventure Church and Sunday School. Ask them about what they learned, help them memorize scripture, go over their questions with them before bed.
Or, here’s a great idea! Volunteer! Be a part of the ministries your kids are a part of. Don’t just drop them off like a baby sitting service; join them, make them better, get personally involved in what your kids are being taught. I’ve seen some churches who wouldn’t allow parents to bring their kids to the nursery or children’s ministry unless the parents volunteered. Although that’s very tempting I probably won’t do that but I see how that would help solve 2 problems which are a consistent lack of help and a need for parents to be directly involved in their kids spiritual maturity. We are so willing to be involved in Girl Scouts, boy scouts, drive them all over the country for sports, go to school plays and band recitals yet we want nothing to do with their spiritual growth. How does that make sense? It’s in the same category of weird that trusting God with our eternity but not willing to trust him with our money is.
Closing Thought (Worship Team): The greatest thing a parent can do is to live out the faith the church is attempting to teach their kids how to have. When the parent and the church aren’t on the same page then to the child the parent looks like a hypocrite, Jesus looks like a lie and the church becomes a waste of time. But when the parent is living our their faith, setting right priorities, passing biblical instruction and their faith down to their kids they will see that the parent is faithful and worthy of honor, Jesus is real and changes lives and the church is worth our time and energy because it produces transformed people who are filled with genuine love for God and people.
Don’t wait for the church to do what we should be doing in our homes. Be protective, be loyal, be honest. Keep Christ first, raise up your children in the way they should go and God will honor your home. Ultimately our kids will make their own decisions when it comes to Christ and the church but regardless of what they choose we can feel peace that we gave them no excuses because we lived our lives in an obedient and Christ honoring way.
