1. Wisdom is Needed for Family Life
Proverbs is a great book that gives us wisdom in all sorts of areas in our life and we need wisdom in every area. There's probably not an area that you look at and say I'm good on this area. We really need wisdom when it comes to all of our life. And like you, I love my family. And my family is where most of my pain has come from in my life.
Whether that's parents, marriage, kids, brothers. My family is the place where most of my joy has come from in my life. Being married, having kids, love it just when I was on vacation, hung out with my brothers and their wives. Our family is often the place where our deepest weaknesses come out. Often the place where our deepest strengths come out.
It's often the place where we have the best memories and maybe the worst memories and that's not 100% extensively true. You might have a really bad memory that is just from a neighbor or something like that but a lot of times our family is where the greatest joys and the greatest pains are. Again, when I say family I mean with your kids and with your spouse and with your parents and with your extended family, all of that our family we love and have the greatest highs and often the greatest lows. And it is the context where much of our life gets lived if you're to add up most of the time blocks of your life if you were to add up a lot of your thoughts and your energy and your plans and your goals. The context of much of our life is lived within our marriages and with our kids and with our parents and with our extended family.
Much of our life the context of just who we are and what happens is lived within our family. A lot of life is played out in our family and a lot of life flows out of our family meaning you make decisions together and life flows from there. Meaning that that is what shapes you. That then leads to other things. Much of our life flows out of our relationship with our family and your family is the place marriage, parents, kids, extended.
Your family is the place where you will be most shaped and where you will most shape others. It is the place where you will most have opportunity to grow with God. It's the opportunity. It's a place where you will most have opportunity to live out your faith and the different things that we are called to your family. All those different relationships will be the primary context for much of your life.
And who you are is who you are with your family. Who you are is who you are with your kids. Who you are is who you are with your spouse. Who you are is never disconnected from the family that you are in that you have. You're not one person over here and then with your family, someone completely different.
Who you are in your family is who you are. And we want to build our lives with God's wisdom. We want to, many of us want to and are starting families, want to build strong families as we raise kids. Many of you are starting marriages or have been married for a while and want to build strong marriages. We have parents and we want to build strong relationships with our parents whether we are younger or as they age.
Maybe you have grandkids and want to build strong relationships there. We want God's wisdom in our families. We need God's wisdom. There's a lot of false wisdom when it comes to family, when it comes to parenting and marriage and all sorts of other things. There's a lot of information that we can hear that won't actually help us, that won't actually lead to what it is that we need to have God's wisdom and thriving and joy that he desires for us.
So we need something better. We need to see how God speaks into our family. When we look at the Book of Proverbs there's all sorts of things that we could talk about. But we're just going to focus on marriage and parenting and see how God speaks into those.
2. The Foundational Principle of Family Wisdom
So let's start with this, which is what is the foundational principle of wisdom that we need for family? I was talking with a guy recently that said he was kind of lamenting that the Bible doesn't speak a lot about parenting.
And he was kind of like, man, you know, parenting is hard and there's a lot of things we have to make, a lot of decisions we have to make, a lot of things we have to decide. And it's unfortunate that the Bible doesn't talk a lot about parenting. And you might feel that with all sorts of things in the Bible. It's unfortunate Bible doesn't talk a lot about my job. Or it's unfortunate Bible doesn't talk a lot about marriage.
And we can kind of sometimes feel that way about the Bible, that at times there's the issues that we are most facing that we are most dealing with. And it can sometimes feel like the Bible doesn't speak to these things as much as I would want them to speak to it. And sometimes family might be one of those things that we feel that with and yet that's really not true. It's really not true. At the beginning of Proverbs it says this, it says that at the beginning and then it says that in chapter nine as Proverbs gets into all these various topics, the first nine chapters of Proverbs in some ways are building a foundation.
Then it leads into all sorts of various topics. But it says this the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. So to fear or to be in awe of or to worship or to be in reverence of God is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One of God is understanding. So you want understanding when it comes to family. You want wisdom when it comes to family.
And I could apply this to any topic because that is what Proverbs does as well want you wisdom when it comes to your job, you want wisdom when it comes to what's the beginning of it, what's the foundation of it, how do you have any understanding about these things at all? Proverbs always points us back to your relationship with God, is going to be the foundation, it's going to be the beginning, it's going to be what actually you most need. And so here is the foundational principle of wisdom that we need for life. But as we talk about family. It's true of this as well.
That your relationship with your family flows out of your relationship with God. That your relationship with your kids flows out of your relationship with God. That your relationship with your spouse. Your husband. Your wife will flow out of your relationship with God if you want wisdom when it comes to any of your relationships.
But any of your family relationships. If you want wisdom. What do I do in this situation? What does it look like to build, to have understanding? It will all start with and flow out of first and foremost and ongoing your relationship with God.
There is no wisdom in your marriage, there's no wisdom in your parenting or in your relating to your adult parents. There's no wisdom unless it starts with your relationship with God. That is where it begins. So you can look at the Bible and say I wish it spoke more about parenting or marriage or how I deal with my adult parents or all these different things. And you might not be able to find as many verses as you want, like an encyclopedia or just kind of a marriage book if you were to have but it speaks tons to your relationship with God.
The Bible speaks in many different places about what it looks like to relate to Him and what the life that he is calling us looks like. A couple of examples the Bible talks about the fruit of the spirit, which means the evidence or what happens in our life as we are relating to and connecting with God's spirit in us. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, selfcontrol. So that's not about marriage, that's not about parenting. But don't we need those things in our marriage and in our parenting?
Don't we need those things in all of our relationships? And so our relationship of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, all those things that flows out of that's going to affect your parenting and your marriage. But that starts with you and God. Think about even just as simple. Everybody knows this command that sums up all the commands in the Bible that we are called to do is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, minds and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. If you were to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, that would affect your family, that would affect your marriage.
I remember I heard this one time and it was very helpful. Instead of looking for parenting verses or marriage verses, what if you just said I need to love my neighbor? What's all the things the Bible says about loving my neighbor? Well, these are my little neighbors. If you can introduce your baby here's my new neighbor. That's your neighbor? Yes, and my baby. I don't usually introduce my wife as my neighbor, but I could. So you are to love your neighbor as yourself, which includes your family, includes your spouse.
There's all sorts of things that the Bible doesn't directly say about parenting or about marriage, but that it speaks to just about our relating with God, which then flows out into all of those other things. The foundational principle that we need is that our relationship with our family, our wisdom with our family will flow out of our relationship with God. That is so foundational, so fundamental, that when you think about, OK, God, how do I grow in whatever relationship I have, family or otherwise? We start with not looking in the Bible and saying where does it talk about coworkers? Or where does it talk about marriage? But just what does it mean to live and relate to God and how would that affect everything else? Which listen, this is actually really good news because it means you don't have to be a parenting expert to be able to parent well. It means you don't have to be a marriage counselor, have a marriage and family therapy degree to be able to build a strong marriage. You don't have to have those things. What you need is the wisdom that comes from I'm connected with God.
If you just had all the fruit of the spirit, you'd be great. If we just know and begin to learn and push into what does it mean for me to connect with God? Everything else flows out of that place. The Bible says that you have that we have everything that we need. If you're a Christian, you have everything you need for life and godliness means you have everything you need in your marriage for it to thrive and to experience what it looks like in God's vision and plan. If you are connected to Him, you have everything you need in your family, in your parenting for life and Godliness. That's true because you have the Holy Spirit because God has brought you into his family, because Jesus has died for you. You have everything you need for life. And Godliness means if we want wisdom, the more we seek to connect all of our family life and all of our relationships to Him, the more that we experience what it means to have wisdom.
So with that, that's just kind of the foundational principle. With that, there's a million things that I could say of what that looks like because what I'm hoping to do is expand your vision. That actually the whole Bible is about parenting. The whole Bible is about marriage. The whole Bible is about everything in a lot of ways because it's about us and God and who he is to us and how we relate in the world. And so there's a million things that I could say or that we could talk about then of what that means for your marriage, or what it means for your family, or what it means for how you relate to your parents, or what it means for any of that. There's a million different things if it's bigger than just a handful of verses. But let's just focus on a couple of different things that we see in Proverbs.
3. How does our marriage flow from our relationship with God?
Most of you are married or will be married at some point, or you are at least around people that are married. And part of our responsibility as Christians is to encourage one another in their faith and in their relationship. So hear this as applicable to wherever you are. What is marriage? What is it?
If you just google the question, marriage comes up and a Wikipedia entry says marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognized union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them as well as between them and their children and between them and their inlaws. Maybe you don't like that last part. It establishes all of these different links between husband and wife, between them, between them, between them. That's what marriage is.
That's what we often think about the marriage, is that it is two people love each other, trying to build a happy life together. They're committed together. And often, even as Christians, that's what we think. Marriages, two people relating to one another, obligations, vows, happiness, commitment, etc. But the Bible says that marriage is actually a lot more than that. It's not just this relationship between two people. The Bible says in Proverbs that it's actually a covenant that we have with God. Says here talking about wisdom and how it will keep a man from wandering away from his wife. It says wisdom, it will rescue you from a forbidden woman, from a wayward woman with her flattering talk, who abandons the companion of her youth, her husband, and forgets the covenants of her God.
So it refers to marriage here not just as something between two people, but as a covenant that we have with God. That's very different from the Wikipedia entry that we had that says it's about two people and how those two people relate. Proverbs says actually it's a lot bigger than that. Marriage is a covenant that we have here. It's speaking of the woman, but it's the same for the man, a covenant with God, that when you enter into a marriage, you are covenanting with another person, but you are also entering into a covenant with God. That's a very different understanding of what marriage is. It's not just two people interacting. It's saying us two people are making promises and vows to God. There's something that we are doing that is involving Him, that's bringing Him into it. This is so important and very different from how we often think marriage is not just about a husband and wife. It's not just about spouses. It is about God. It is about a covenant that we make with God.
Oftentimes we think that the strength of our marriage is going to be based on the strength of the relationship with the other person. So we think it's going to be based on how good they are doing. As long as they do these things, I'll be happy, we'll be happy. Or we might think it's based on just the strength of our interaction with one another. So often times people say, what's the number one issue in marriage? People say it's communication. That's not true because what that means is the number one issue is how we relate to one another, how we react with one another, how we treat one another. I'm not saying those things are unimportant, but that's not the foundation. The foundation is it's actually a covenant with God, which means this if you've been married for decades or you're just engaged, the strength of your marriage is tied to your relationship with God. The strength of your marriage is tied to who you see Him to be, how much you see Him. That is what the foundation, the strength, the wisdom principle of your marriage. And when it talks about a covenant, a covenant is talking about two sides.
A covenant says that this person promises things and this person promises things and that bonds them in a relationship. And when we think about the marriage is a covenant with God, you know what that means that God is involved in your marriage. And thus the more you see who God is and what it is that he says in his covenant that ties directly to the strength of your marriage, do you see that God promises to be good to you? Do you see that God promises to be faithful to you? Do you see that God says I am for you? If God makes a covenant with you? That is God saying all of these promises, I am always going to be faithful to you. I am never going to leave you. I am always going to be good to you. I am always thinking how I can love you and serve you and bless you. That's what it means that God has a covenant with us. And the more that we see that, the more that actually leads us to then fulfill our vows in a covenant to God which flows out into our relationship with the other person, the strength of your marriage will be tied to how you see God. Whatever marriage problems you have, whatever marriage difficulties you have, whatever marriage desires you have, where you want to see it be better or changed, it is not just about the other person. The strength of your marriage will be tied to how you see and interact with and receive from God. That is how marriage flows from our relationship with God.
So let me give you a couple few practical things for different groups.
First of all, if you're single, here's what this means you should be looking for someone to marry that you can do that with. You should be looking for someone to marry where that's a shared understanding. Let's covenant to God together. Not let's just most of the time when people talk about getting married, they say, I'm just looking for someone that can make me happy. That's an awful place to start a marriage and it's doomed for failure if you say, I'm looking for someone that we can both covenant to God together and build a covenant with each other and with God. That is a foundation place that you want to start. So I don't know how many boxes there are that you can check that on Eharmony or Tinder or whatever and be like looking for someone to start a covenant with God with. You might get zero swipes and zero hits, I don't know. But that's what the beginning of wisdom is in your relationship.
If you're single second thing for wives, speak to wives and then husbands. Ladies, what's wrong in your marriage? Shout it out. No, I'm just kidding. Please don't. What's wrong in your marriage? Where do you feel pain? Where do you feel that there's things that you want to see change? Where do you feel like there's problems in you or problems in them? Where do you see the pain points? Your growth in marriage your growth in marriage is going to be directly tied once again is going to be directly tied to this. Which means you will never grow as a wife. You'll never grow in whatever desires you have to improve or to more fully live out what God's calling you to or to see different changes in yourself or even in your marriage. You'll never move beyond your relationship with God. Doesn't matter how many blogs you read or people you follow on Instagram or life coaches you get, or you'll never move beyond your relationship with God. I'm not saying there's not practical things you can learn. I'm not saying there's not good advice out there. But you will never move beyond your relationship with God. That will always be the cap of where you are. Here's what Proverbs says. It says, charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord will be praised. This is the very end of Proverbs, second to last verse, Proverbs 31. I don't know if you've ever read it, it's kind of a famous chapter, the Proverbs 31 Woman, that's this excellent woman, it talks about how amazing she is and how she's to be praised and all these different things that she does. And it's great. It's a great model of really what we all should strive for. But it's a great model of, wow, this is an awesome mom, awesome wife. It's great. She's hard working, she fights for justice, she's teaching, she's leading, she's speaking, she's serving all these amazing things. And it ends with, and basically the book of Proverbs ends with, but the description of this woman ends with, she's a woman who fears the Lord. That's the kind of woman that will be praised. That's the kind of woman that is the foundation. Where did all that stuff come from? Where did all that excellent woman's stuff come from? Where did all that excellent mom's stuff come from? It says, she's a woman who fears the Lord.
You will never move beyond your relationship with God. You'll never move further than that, which, again might be discouraging because I'm trying to do all these things I'm trying to work on. But it's also really encouraging because you don't have to have a PhD in wifery or mommery. You need to know and love and rejoice in and reverence and worship God. You'll never move beyond this because it's here in knowing and fearing the Lord, the knowledge of the Holy One, the reverence and the worship of Him. It's there that you have all the resources for so much of what it is that you probably want to grow in or know that you need to grow in or desire to become. It's here that all the research sources for that are you want to be more servanthearted. It says you revere and know the Lord and remember how he has served you. You see how much he has served you and loved you. You see Jesus washing people's feet.
You see how this is the God that you have, that you've received that leads you to then model that towards others. You see how gracious he's been to you when you fear the Lord. That is the shorthand to love God, to know Him, to see Him, to enjoy Him, to be in awe of Him. So when you see the Lord as One that's been gracious to you and every fault you have and every failure you have in every weakness you have, and he's gracious to you when you worship and awe of that. That leads to being gracious towards your husband, towards your children.
When you see his patience with you and you're in awe of it, not just to fear the Lord is an emotional thing, by the way. It's not just an intellectual thing. It is you are in awe of how patient he's been to you, and that moves you and changes you to then be patient with those around you. You see how much that he has accepted you and approved you, adopted you, brought you in, told you that you are his. And you don't have to fight for approval even from your husband and your kids, because you've got a wealth of resources that are yours.
That means even when you're unrecognized or unthinked or unthought of, you know that's not true of Him towards you that he sees see out of the wealth of those resources, probably most of the areas that you want to grow in or that you feel deficient in, it heals those things. It changes those things. You never move beyond this. Everything flows from that place. Husbands or let me just back up before I move to the husbands.
Ladies, wives. Is that your focus? Is that your goal? Is that what you're pouring your direction into is I want to grow and fearing the Lord? I promise you, if you do, you'll see changes.
Husbands, How does your marriage relationship flow from your relationship with God? A couple of verses I'll show you. First is this that says, a man who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. I love that verse. A man who finds a wife finds a good thing. It's almost kind of dumb. It's great for guys. Not that we're dumb, but it's just kind of like, I found good thing. It kind of sounds like that a little bit, but it says, a man who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtain pains favor from the Lord, grace from God. That means husbands Your wife is a gift from God. You might not even know how you got her. That's what this verse also said. Like, where did she come from? I found her. It's a gift from God. Because apart from God, you wouldn't have found her going, Where's a good thing? Where's a good thing? God says. Here you go. Ah, thank you. A man who finds a wife, finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. What if you looked at your wife as a gift? What if that was fresh at one point? You probably thought that. Hopefully you do now. But if you don't, what if it was fresh in your mind, I have a gift from God. This was a gift. I found her. Somehow I have a good thing. Can change your wife's name and your cell phone to good thing. I have a good thing. I have received favor from God. Wouldn't that again that's less just about you and her. It's understanding this is a grace gift from God. It's orienting it to God was involved. God gave this to me, god blessed me. God was thinking of me. God knew. Listen, I could preach for 2 hours just on this. It means also God giving her to you means he knew what you needed. Both the strengths and the weaknesses of her are the strengths and the weaknesses that you need.
I won't go into a bunch of stories because this isn't even in my notes, but I've shared some of this in past marriage classes. But I remember the things that most annoyed me about my wife are the things probably that I most needed when we got married, the things that I was like, oh man. And now there are things even that I cherish and love and that have changed me and have strengthened me and have made me better because of her. And the same thing with her strengths. God knew what you needed and it's from Him. And the more that you understand that, the more that you receive that, the more that you understand this isn't just about me and her. This is God saying, I gave her to you, I knew you needed her, I've blessed you. And also implying there's a gift and a responsibility that we have then to steward that gift that he's given to us. It changes so much just to remember and understand this isn't just some girl that I found. God is involved in this.
And then second verse, Why, my son, would you lose yourself with a forbidden woman or embrace a wayward woman? For a man's, ways are before the Lord's eyes and he considers all his paths. It's saying you should be enjoying your wife and not going after another woman. Why?
Well, there's obviously all sorts of reasons why, but he says this, here's the reason. A man's ways are before the Lord's eyes. He considers all his past. That's saying God is involved. God's present. Again, it's not just you and your wife. God is involved. He is right now, you could just insert your name in here. Caleb's ways that's me are before the Lord's eyes. He is considering all of Caleb's paths. You can put your name in there and say that God right now, all of your ways with your wife, all of the ways you interact, that's all before God. He's involved, he's present, he's observing, he cares what's happening. So he's not just saying be a good husband. He's not just saying, here's what you're supposed to do as a man. He is reminding us of our relationship with God. That changes things.
When we understand that a wife is a gift from God, and we understand that our marriage is actually something that God's heavily invested in, that God is considering that God cares about, that God's involved in it, makes it so they're not just marriage issues, they're you and God issues.
So, husbands, our call, our call towards our wives is to treat them and I don't mean them as in you have plural wives, but our call is to treat our collective wives as God has treated us. Our call is to treat them as a gift from Him and something that he deeply cares about. What if you said, this isn't only my wife, this is God's daughter? How would that change how you interacted with her? What if you said, this isn't only my wife, this is a gift that God has given me to Stewart?
You know the word husband, originally, it's connotation means to cultivate it's like a gardener, which is really what our calling is with our wives. Husbands, it is that your wife, over time with you, should bloom and flower to be more excellent because of you. Is that true? If you were treating her as this is a gift from God and God's involved in all of this and God cares about all of this, if that was our mindset, to the degree that that was true, it would happen that we would be saying, so how do I steward, how am I responsible for her? How do I help her to flourish in all that she is designed to be?
Husbands, that's our call. So when you look at your marriages, is that true? Is your wife flourishing, thriving, treated as this gift? Here's what I want you to commit to me, husbands. Ask her about that today. How are you doing? Are you flourishing in life right now? What are the problems? What are the pain points? How can I help you to flourish as a gift that God has given to me? Ask her about that today. Commit to God, to your wife, to build her up. That's our calling. That flows out of that flows out of your relationship with God, that you understand you're a man responsible before Him, that you understand his grace and blessing you with a gift. It flows out of even your understanding of who he's been to you and how he's been good to you and gracious to you and loved you and served you and is intentional with you to build you up. And the more we see that as men, the more we let that flow into our wives.
So as we see our covenant with Him and as we see that marriage is a covenant with Him, it becomes something that is not just for us or that's between two people, but is something that is focused on God.
4. Second question how does our parenting flow from our relationship with God?
And there's a lot of things that Proverb says about parenting. It's got lots of great stuff that we could talk about. But I just want to focus on one key verse that really stood out to me these last couple of weeks. It says, in the fear of the Lord, one has strong confidence, and his children have a refuge. The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, turning people away from the snares of death. So the context of this verse is implying that there's a lot of things that we might have fear about.
There's a lot of things that we might be afraid of. I don't know what you're afraid of. Might be money issues, might be just fear of the future in general, what's going to happen, might be work issues, might be the economy. It might be your relationship. There's all sorts of things. It might be your health. It may be doubts even in your faith. Maybe it's all I don't know. We go on and on. I don't want to list your mind with too many fears. Often we try to overcome those with learning. If I can learn the right thing, I can overcome this.
If the issue that I'm afraid of is finances, then maybe I can save. Or if the issue is health, okay, how do I fix that? How do I kind of work on my health? Or maybe we try to overcome it with just a deeper confidence in ourself. Here's these things I'm afraid of, but I know I have what it takes. I know I can do it. It's all sorts of things we try to overcome our fears with. But this verse says, a strong confidence is available to you that in the fear of the Lord, one has a strong confidence that there is available to you. A strong confidence that whatever you're facing right now in life, whatever things are in front of you, whatever might incite some sort of fear or anxiety or perplexity or confusion, whatever is kind of there, it says, available to you is a strong confidence. Not a weak confidence, but a strong confidence that is available to you in the fear of the Lord.
Think about how fear works. Maybe you're afraid of something small. Like, we were with some friends on Friday, and their youngest daughter, I think she's five, she saw a spider. Everyone's like, oh, there's a daddy long legs on the wall. And she saw a spider and just screamed really loud like that. The people back there like, what's going on in there? And just screamed, this is daddy long legs, right? So you see something that maybe you're afraid that maybe you don't like spiders, and you're kind of afraid of it. But I guarantee you, if in that same moment, let's say a robber came in with a gun, there'd be a lot more fear. No one would be thinking about the Daddy Long Legs anymore, right, everyone? Our fear would change because there's a smaller fear that is diminished by a greater fear. If in the moment that there was this Daddy Long Legs and the girl was screaming and then someone came in with a gun, there'd be a lot more fear. Sometimes if you're afraid, you scream. But when you're really afraid, you can't even make a noise. And a greater fear diminishes a smaller fear. And what this verse in Proverbs is saying is, in the fear of the Lord, there's a great confidence, a strong confidence, because there might be all sorts of things that you are afraid of or that you're anxious about. But when your attention begins to focus on God, when your focus goes on God, and that produces a greater fear, a greater awe, a greater reverence, a greater he becomes bigger in your mind, which means his will matters more, his wisdom matters more, and you begin to see Him. You're afraid of the future, but then you fear God, and you realize how much he's in control. You're afraid of what people think of you, and you see God, and you realize how much he says about you and his approval of you and his affection for you.
So a greater fear diminishes a lesser fear. When our focus goes on to Him, this creates a strong confidence, because all the lesser fears that we have in our life, all the lesser anxieties and problems and things we're concerned about, when our focus begins to be on God, those things are just Daddy Long Legs. They're nothing. When our focus is on Him, the fear of the Lord gives us a strong confidence.
Now, how does that relate to parenting?
And this verse connects it to parenting because we all want to protect our kids in some way. For those of you that are parents, you want to protect your kids. It starts when they're little babies. You want to protect them. No one just says, hey, I'm going out tonight. Where's your baby? Oh, we just left them home. I think they'll be good. You want to protect your kids. Parents often try to find the balance between, do I let my kid do this because I want them to have freedom and explore, or do I not let them do this because I want to protect them? All right, two year old, go ahead and cross the street. Let's see what happens. Have freedom. You don't do that. You try to protect them. You manage. And you want to make sure that you can keep them safe in some way. You want to provide a refuge in some way for them. And we're always thinking about that. Proverbs uses this idea of the fear of the Lord creating a refuge.
A refuge means that there's something on the outside that might be powerful and strong, but the thing. That you are inside of is stronger. So when we were on vacation, we were in Montana for a little bit, and over the 4 July, we were lighting off fireworks in this big empty parking lot. And my sister in law it's still alleged, so I don't know 100% exactly what it was, but there was glowing eyes in the dark forest, which in Montana probably means five grizzlies or something, right? It's not Denver. There's glowing eyes in Denver. It's like it's a raccoon. Who cares, right? But in Montana, when there's a forest and there's glowing eyes, she thought she saw a cougar. She said, there's a mountain lion. There's a cougar there. And I was like, I don't see it. I can't see it. And then I did see something kind of dart forward, not all the way out of the forest into the parking lot we were in, but kind of darted forward. And I was like, okay, all the kids, get in the car. So all the kids, of all those kids that you just saw, all of them got into my Explorer, packed in there. They didn't even know what was going on. I didn't explain it. Said, get in the car. Shut the doors. That's a refuge, something on the outside. The cougar is not going to be able to come up to the Explorer and open the door and come in. I don't think it's not Jurassic Park, right? It's something on the outside that protects you inside. Because the outside is stronger than the refuge, is stronger than whatever you're facing on the outside.
So here's what proverbs is It says you need to fear the Lord parents. And when you fear the Lord, that creates a strong refuge for your kids. That you fearing the Lord actually creates the protection from all the different dangers that your kids might face. It can protect them from physical dangers, emotional dangers, spiritual dangers, all sorts of things. Because you fearing the Lord is stronger than whatever is on the outside. That's what proverbs gives to us. In the fear of the Lord, one has strong confidence. So you have a strong confidence, and his children have a refuge. So it's not just when your children fear the Lord that they have a strong refuge. That would be true. But it's that as you fear the Lord, your relationship with God, your awe of God protects them and creates a refuge for them. You want to protect your kids. There's a lot of things that we should protect them from, but this is the most important. This is what matters most. There's a lot of help and a lot of protection that you want to probably give to your kids.
You want to teach them certain lessons. You want them to love certain things that you love. You want to help them pick a spouse or pick a job. There's all sorts of things we want to help our kids with, but this is the most important thing that you can do for your kids. Listen, this might change a little. Just tweak a little bit of your thinking. The most important thing that you can do for your kids is not give them a relationship with God. Let me say that again. The most important thing that you can do for your kids is not that you give them a relationship with God. Rather, it's your relationship with God that's the most important thing you can do for your kids. Your relationship with God. Your fear of the Lord creates a strong refuge for them. Let me just show you sociologist Christian Smith. I'm not sure exactly where he is now, but when he was doing these studies, he's very famous sociologist that's done all sorts of religious studies with youth out of Notre Dame. And he says this in one of his key works. He says, the empirical evidence is clear in almost every case, no other institution or program comes close to shaping youth religiously as their parents do not. Religious congregations, youth groups, faith based schools, missions and service trips, summer camps, sunday school, youth ministries, or anything else. Those influences can reinforce the influence of parents, but almost never do they surpass or override it. What makes every other influence pale into virtual insignificance is the importance or not of the religious beliefs and practices of American parents, their beliefs, their practices in their ordinary lives, not only on holy days, but every day, throughout weeks and years. The basic relationship and practices that you have with God parents, that is the most important thing that you can give to your kids that creates a refuge.
So let me ask you this. Parents is that what they're getting from you? If they had your relationship with God, is that what you want for them? Sometimes parents can even think. I know a lot of you are young parents with kids that are toddlers and babies. Sometimes we can think, okay, I'll start that one day. But you won't. If you don't start it now, you won't start it ten years from now. It just gets harder. Is what your kids are receiving from you your relationship with God? Is what your kids are receiving from you? If they had what you have, what you want, that is that what your vision is for their faith? Do they see in you a love for God, a love for His Word, a love for his church, a love for his mission, a love for being generous to other people and serving other people? And do they see in you a fear of the Lord? That's what creates a strong refuge for them. That's what they most need from you. I'm not saying don't teach your kids about God. You very much should. But what they most need from you is your relationship with God. So what needs to change there? What needs to change there? And listen, let me just even back it up if you're married and you don't have kids. I said you don't wait when you have babies. You don't wait when they're ten, you don't wait when they're 15, and you also don't even wait when you have kids. Because the big principle here is that all of your family relationships flow out of your relationship with God, which starts now. Do you fear the Lord? Now parents, what changes would need to be made in your life that there is a fear of the Lord? That is evident by example. What changes need to be made to actually help and teach your kids?
You are the most important influence in your kids life. I'm glad if you bring your kids here and you check them into true life. Kids, I'm glad we want to do everything we can to help, but we've got 45 minutes, 50 minutes a week. You've got all of their life. You matter the most in their life. One specific thing I would encourage you parents to do, if you're not already, is to as much as you can on a nightly basis, however old they are, whether they're in the womb or they're 19 and still living at 25, still living at home, however old they are, is to have a nightly time that you are reading the Bible or good Christian relevant age resources together. Jesus, our father, God, the Holy Spirit as we know God as we know him. That is what all of our relationships will flow out of. God is our great confidence. The more we see Him, the more we have refuge in Him, the more that leads our kids towards that.
5. Remembering His Covenant
So let me just close. We all have family. Much of our life and most of the context of our life is going to be lived within our family. Greatest joys, greatest strengths, greatest weaknesses, greatest sorrows oftentimes is going to be in our family. You know that. You've felt that. So how do we get the wisdom that we need? It flows out of not just focusing on those aspects and those things, but it flows out of our relationship with God. What if your marriage flowed out of a strong relationship with God? What if your parenting flowed out of a strong relationship with God? What if for those of you that are kids and we all are kids, what if our relationship with our parents, whether they're adult parents, or what if it flowed out of our relationship with God? This is what we need for wisdom when we take communion, what we are remembering and if you didn't grab a little cup on the way and you can grab one. When we take communion, what we're remembering is what Proverbs says when it says that wisdom comes from the knowledge of the Holy One. It comes from the fear of the Lord, from knowing Him, understanding who he is. And we take communion, we're remembering who he is. We're saying, this is who the Holy One is. He's the one that gave his body for me and it was broken. He's the one that gave his blood for me and his blood was shed. This is who he is a gracious God that has made a covenant with me, a gracious God that forgives every failure as a husband, as a wife, as a mother, as a father, as a son, as a daughter, as a brother, as a sister. Forgives every failure through his blood on the cross, his covenant with me.
We're reminded who this person is that would serve us and die for us and take on our flesh and understand us. We're reminded and should be in awe of who he is to us. The more that that becomes real to our hearts, the more that we take that in and digest it, the more that our family relationships flow from there. So as you take communion, take a moment, confess where the Holy Spirit has convicted you, rejoice where you see the goodness of God to you as a refuge, as the one that makes a covenant, as the one that forgives all our failures and ask Him to help you to let your relationships flow from this place.
