How parents love children
Philippians 1:9–11
(If you feel this sermon is helpful, you are welcome to visit www.danachau.com for a free online course.)
Dave Stone wrote: Once there was a preacher who had no children, who preached a series of sermons entitled, “Ten Commandments for Child Rearing.” Several years later when he had little children of his own, he preached another series, “Five Suggestions for Child Rearing.” By the time his children were teens, he preached one sermon entitled, “Good Luck on Parenthood.”
Many parents are frustrated when it comes to raising their children. And many children are uninterested when it comes to relating with their parents. Young children and teens have little awareness of the great love their parents have for them.
I didn’t have a lot growing up. I still remember my Dad ordering BBQ pork over rice and giving my sister and me the BBQ pork, and he would eat the white rice. When my Mom asked if I knew why Dad gave me the BBQ pork, I answered, "Because he doesn't like BBQ pork." I was clueless of his act of love.
At a Father’s Day service of the previous church where I served I asked, “If you were crossing the street with your child, and a truck fails to stop, how many of you parents would push your kids away from the truck, even if it means you would get hit by the truck? Stand up if you would do that. Every parent stood up.
There were children through teenagers in the service that morning. You could see their jaws drop. Not because they didn’t believe their parents would sacrifice for them. They just never thought about it.
This morning, I want to talk about how parents love children. Most books on parenting are about behavior modification. Discipline. But loving our children involves more than disciplining our children.
Our text this morning calls us to love. Paul writes in his letter, “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ--to the glory and praise of God (Philippians 1:9-11).”
Paul prays for the Christians in Philippi to have and practice this biblical kind of love. As parents, we need this kind of love for our children. See if you agree.
First, Paul prays we would express an intelligent love. Vs. 9-10
What is intelligent love? From our text and for your notes: “Intelligent love is doing what is best for others with a pure motive.”
So there are two components in this definition of intelligent love: 1) Best for others, and 2) Pure in motive. Applying this to loving our children, intelligent love needs to have the children’s best interest in mind and our pure motive at heart.
The first component of intelligent love is: Best for others. This is not easy to know. For instance, to know what is best for others, we need to know what they need.
When my daughters were young, one of them gave me a coin. I asked what it was for. She said, “It’s for you; so you don’t have to work so hard; so you can play with me.”
Part of my working hard was to provide for her because I loved her. But she needed me to play with her to feel loved.
Here’s what I propose. To express intelligent love, we need to gather intelligence. Gather it from the Bible.
The Bible is not a parenting manual. But it is a book on developing healthy relationships with God and with one another. And that one another includes parents and children. So we can learn from biblical examples and principles having to do with family relationships.
Good examples from the Bible we imitate. Bad examples from the Bible we avoid. For instance, avoid the bad example of Isaac and Rebekah’s playing favorites with their kids. As a result of playing favorites, they made their sons into enemies of one another.
We can also gather intelligence from our own experience. Be a student of your children. Do you know their love languages? Spending time? Hugs? Receiving gifts? Affirming words? Learn from our own experiences with our children.
And there is gathering intelligence from other people’s experience, such as books, seminars and family conferences.
I remember when my younger daughter was four years old, she said, “I’m going to cut your head off and eat it.” You might wonder what kind of pastor’s daughter this was. Luckily at the time I was reading a book about four-year-olds, so I understood they can be quite morbid. I chose not to make a big deal out of that. We did let her know that was not appropriate.
Intelligent love discerns and does what is best for others. Here's what else. Intelligent love discerns and does what is pure in motive.
As broken people, we all have negative experiences from our past that shape our present motives. Our insecurities can make us overprotective parents. Our perfectionistic tendencies can make us overcontrolling parents. Growing up with little luxuries and opportunities can make us overindulging parents. These can blind us to what is truly best for our children.
Here are a few ways I learned to overcome my overprotective, over controlling and over indulging tendencies as a parent. First, whenever possible, move from protecting to preparing our children. We can't protect them all the time, so prepare them early and let go gradually.
Second, whenever possible, move from controlling to compromising to coaching our children . Controlling says you don’t get a vote . Compromising says we both get a vote. Coaching says I don’t get a vote.
And whenever possible, move from indulging to moderation to sharing to earning.
Indulging once in a while is OK. Moderation teaches self-control. Sharing teaches generosity. Earning teaches responsibility.
I don't ask that you agree with or apply what I try to do in my family. I just ask that you don't let the negative experiences from your past control your motives for how you love your children. First, Paul prays we would express an intelligent love.
Second, Paul prays we would experience an intervening God. Vs. 11
Paul says that love not only must be intelligent, but the good outcomes of love, the fruits of righteousness, come from God. Through Jesus Christ. So if we want to love our children, we need to ask God to intervene on behalf of our family.
So how do we experience God’s intervention? At least two ways: Recall Jesus Christ and request needed help.
To recall Jesus Christ means to remember what Jesus did for us on the cross. He loved us unconditionally. He forgave us of our wrong doings.
It’s hard to love our children when they don’t behave or when we are stressed. Where do we get the love to give to our children in those moments? From God, through Jesus Christ. The Bible says, “We love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19).”
How else can we experience God’s intervention? By requesting the help we need from God. Ask God for help daily for your family.
I do this when I give thanks for my lunch. I also pray for my kids. Our family many times close out the day before bed with prayer for our kids as well.
We may have special concerns during the seasons of our children’s lives. They may need special intervention from God. We have had several cases in our family. One I have permission to share dates back to when Hannah was maybe 1 year old and Esther was 4.
For a number of weeks, Esther woke up in the middle of the night crying and screaming. First we thought it was night terror. And then we thought it was demonic influences. We prayed a lot. We even took her to see a child psychologist.
Just when nothing seemed to help, a book titled, loving your child too much, showed up on a pop up window when I was on my computer. I clicked on the ad and bought the book.
It was from that book that I learned about attachment wounds. I applied the book's suggestion of spending 20 to 30 minutes each day playing and reading with Esther. After three days of this daddy and daughter time, the middle of the night crying and screaming stopped.
We learned that Esther wanted our attention because we were busy with baby Hannah during the day. Esther was a compliant child, so she did not compete for attention during the daytime. It was only at night when she was asleep that her inhibition was down and her need for our attention manifested in tears and screaming.
But when she got my attention during the day, she didn’t need to get it during the night. We could not have discovered this without the book, which popped up on my computer screen. I believe this book was from an intervening God.
God loves our children more than we do. And our love for our children should move us to help our children to develop a loving relationship with God. We won’t always be with our children, whether they go off to college or we pass from this life. But God can always be with them.
Jesus taught us how to relate to God. He said, “Our Father in Heaven.” Jesus says the God who made you and me, made Himself to be our Father in Heaven, to guide us and to care for us, if we would trust Him.
(If you feel this sermon is helpful, you are welcome to visit www.danachau.com for a free online course.)
