Life In The Fast Lane
Parenting: Who’s In The Driver’s Seat?
Psalm 127:3-5
Woodlawn Baptist Church
October 17, 2004
Introduction
Since today is Sunday School Teacher appreciation day, I wanted to take a minute to thank our teachers for their labor and faithfulness to the Lord in their classes. I realize that as I give these gifts that I cannot possibly express how grateful we are as a church that you do what you do. We are living in perilous times according to the Scriptures. This is a day when families need as much help as they can get in training up their children in the ways of the Lord, so today as we consider the subject of Parenting, I know that every parent in this room is thankful for the godly teachers the Lord has blessed our church with.
Every conscientious parent knows how hard it is to exercise authority over his children. The delicate balance of being tough and yet tender is not easy to maintain. Many parents intensify a rebellious spirit by being dictatorial and harsh. Others can yield when their authority is tested. When a strong-willed child resists, the pressure to give in for the sake of peace and harmony can become overpowering. I am reminded of the mother who wanted to have the last word but couldn’t handle the hassle that resulted whenever she said “no” to her young son. After an especially trying day, she finally flung up her hands and shouted, “All right Billy! Do whatever you want! No let me see you disobey that!”
There’s a lot of pressure that comes with raising children today. A group of expectant fathers were in a waiting room, while their wives were in the process of delivering babies. A nurse came in and announced to one man that his wife had just given birth to twins. “That’s quite a coincidence” he responded. “I play for the Minnesota Twins!” A few minutes later another nurse came in and announced to another man that he was the father of triplets. “That’s amazing!” he exclaimed. “I work for the 3M company.” At that point, a third man slipped off his chair and laid down on the floor. Somebody asked him if he was feeling ill. “No,” he responded, “I happened to work for the 7-Up company.”
All kidding aside, you don’t have to look far to realize that parents are under tremendous pressure today as they raise their children, but according to the Scriptures, no matter what the times or pressures are, parenting is one of the greatest privileges any parent will ever experience in this life. Read with me what the psalmist said in Psalm 127:3-5.
“Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.”
I want to draw your attention to just a couple of things from these verses. First, “children are an heritage of the Lord.” The word heritage carries the meaning of an inheritance, or a gift. In other words, “children are a gift from the Lord.” I know there are days when they don’t seem like gifts, but that’s what the Bible says. Your kids are gifts from God to you. The second thing I want you to notice there is that children are and should be a great source of happiness or satisfaction in your life. They are not nuisances or an inconvenience; they are not in the way. When God gave you children, He gave them especially to you, for you. So before you hear anything else I want to say to you this morning, you need to get fixed firmly in your minds that no matter how great the pressures might be, no matter how much money they cost you, no matter how much of your time they take up or how they get in the way of your doing what you want with your time, those kids have been placed in your possession by Almighty God as a gift to you.
You Got Me Under Pressure
Before we had kids, Kathy and I talked about whether we wanted to have any. With all the wickedness in the world and things that kids have to face today, we just weren’t sure we wanted to put anyone through it, but then we just couldn’t imagine going through life without the pleasures they were sure to bring. As I thought about the pressures today’s parents face, four in particular came to mind.
Financial Pressures
You can’t talk about the pressures of raising children today without talking about finances. Clothes, food, school supplies, sports, birthdays, Christmas, $5 here and $10 there; it all adds up. According to one study I read this week, the average family spends close to $500 per child, per month. I didn’t put the pencil to it for my home, but that’s probably pretty accurate. Doctor bills, dentist bills and on and on it goes. One week it was elementary school pictures, the next week it was Jr. High school pictures. Then it was Cross Country pictures and church directory pictures. Two t-shirts for one school. A t-shirt for B-Mac. A t-shirt for the Whales hall at B-Mac. A band t-shirt, an athletics t-shirt, and the church t-shirts. I heard someone the other day complaining about $2,000 braces. That’s a bargain – we paid close to six.
Every parent in this sanctuary understands what I’m talking about today. Costs have skyrocketed, but incomes haven’t necessarily. Many expenses can’t be helped. You’ve got to buy groceries and school supplies, but there are many costs that can be cut and budgeted. How often do we see families that have put themselves in binds with credit cards, high car payments, or homes that are way out of their reach?
Time Pressures
Aside from financial pressures, I hear more parents who are frustrated by the demands placed upon their time because of their children. There are many reasons that parents struggle with a lack of time as opposed to parents of other generations. For instance, never before have so many families had two parents in the workplace. In the last 10 to 15 years or so there has also been a tremendous increase in the number of activities available to young people. The more they get involved in, the more running parents must do to get them from one place to the next.
A couple of weeks ago, some of us were talking about starting a new Bible study one night of the week. Without saying it, almost all of us in the conversation were wondering what night we would fit it in. Monday nights are filled right now. Tuesday nights are filled with ball games. Wednesday nights are church nights. You can go right down the week, and every night seems to be filled with some sort of activity.
Social Pressures
Perhaps more difficult to define than financial or time pressures are those that we would call social pressures. Rather than trying to define what they are, let me give you an all too familiar example of one. Have you ever noticed what happens at birthday parties? One year mom and dad will have the party at their house with a few friends, some cake and presents, a few games, then everyone goes home. They attend a party for some other kid, and those parents give small gifts to all the kids that show up. Now you have to do that. The next year you can top last year’s party by going to McDonalds. Then it’s the skating party, the swim party, and on and on it goes. Now one of the most disappointing parties I hear about is the hotel party, where you have the birthday party at a hotel, then have an all night sleepover. The boys get their rooms and the girls get theirs.
If 20 kids came to your son’s birthday party, then you’ve got 20 birthday parties to attend, and 20 birthday presents to buy, and to think you’ve got two or three kids doing it!
You take your kids clothes shopping. “But everybody is wearing it!” they say. You can’t buy a $3 notebook. That’s cheesy. Buy clothes at Wal-Mart? Not when everyone is wearing Old Navy or Hilfiger! Eat school lunches? No way! You don’t let your kids play sports? There must be something wrong with you! Listen, it’s not just the kids. I heard about a woman who traded in a mini-van because it wasn’t cool to drive when all her friends had SUVs.
Moral Pressures
As a pastor, I hear a lot about financial, time, and social pressure. But if there’s one pressure that I don’t hear enough about from parents, it is the moral pressures we face. I say that because most parents are not in tune with what God expects from them morally or they are just ignorant of what their kids are going through. Every parent in this room is going to answer to the Lord for how they raised their children morally. Our kids are bombarded daily with immorality, whether it be of a sexual nature, drugs, divorce, people living together, homosexuality, disrespect to parents and other authority, and on and on it goes, and all too often they are facing it in their own homes.
Never before have Christian parents faced the pressures of raising godly children in an American culture that is as immoral as ours is today. We are navigating uncharted waters in this country, and whether you realize it or not, it is not money or time or peer pressure that is your greatest challenge – it is morality. Did you know that teenage pregnancies rose more than 400% in the last 40 years? Did you know that 1 out of every three teenagers contracts a sexually transmitted disease? Did you know that church attendance is not a deterrent among moral issues such as premarital sex, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, reckless driving and so forth? What does that mean? It means that in almost every instance, the percentage of kids who are falling to immorality is the same for Christian youth and non-Christian youth alike. That tells me that we as parents are falling down on our jobs somewhere.
I realize that some of you have raised your kids in church and did everything the Bible said to do and your kids still went astray. Let me remind you that we as parents will not give an account for what our kids did with our training, but we will give an account for the way we trained them and what we did with God’s Word in the process. More kids are falling from a lack of training than from too much of it.
I’m Depressed, Now What?
So you’re faced with great pressure, now what? If you spend any time at all in God’s Word, then you know that it’s the parents, not the kids, who must be in charge at home. When I was 13, I used to beg my dad to let me drive his truck. After he got off work at his day job, because of the financial pressures my parents were in during the early 80s, he was working an evening job. Each afternoon, we would load up in the old ’64 Chevy pickup and head to a little town about 12 miles from where we lived. I had been wanting to drive, so he would wait until we were out in the country to pull over and let me behind the wheel. It was a three speed on the column, so I would take off and jerk the truck around trying to get used to the clutch, and just as I’d get it going in 3rd gear, he’d have me pull over and do it again. On the way home, he’d let me get about half-way home before he’d take over again. I remember one afternoon I was driving along, and as we came close to a driveway, he pointed and told me to pull over. I thought he told me to pull in, so while I was running about 30 mph, I tried to take that driveway. He grabbed the steering wheel and was pushing away, and I was fighting him trying to turn it in. I didn’t get my foot on the brake or on the clutch, and we cleared an 18” culvert, headed toward the fence when the truck landed solidly in the ditch and stalled out. Needless to say, I didn’t get behind the wheel again for a long time.
When it comes to parenting, there’s a reason God has placed the adults in authority. They are the ones who are supposed to be driving and steering the family in the direction that He would want it to go. God’s plan for the home is for a man to be the father and a woman to be the mother. His plan is for the man to be the head of the home, for the woman to place herself in willing submission to that authority, and for them both to lead their children in the way of the Lord so that they have the opportunity to know Christ as their Savior and to grow spiritually while they are growing physically. In other words, parents must lead in the home.
It grieves God when two adults allow their children to run the home, but many parents do, and when they do, that home is on a collision course for the ditch. Do you have a child that cries and wails and fights and yells until he or she gets his way? That’s a child that is in the driver’s seat. Do you have a child that you are waiting on hand and foot because they are too lazy, too immature, or too spoiled to do it themselves? If you have a normal child, you shouldn’t be picking out their clothes and dressing them or cleaning their rooms for them. If you are, then you’re letting them drive. When you prepare a meal, do you prepare one for you and others in the family, and prepare another for a child because they won’t eat what you eat? Then you are letting them drive. Listen, I could go on and on. Very quickly, let me tell you from God’s Word how you can begin to parent the way God wants you to and lead your children the way they need you to.
Let God’s Word Speak
Does the Bible have much to say about raising children? You bet it does. It tells you to “train them up in the way they should go.” It tells you to “bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” It tells you not to provoke them to wrath, “lest they be discouraged.” The Proverbs tell you to discipline them with corporal punishment. The Bible doesn’t talk about time out – it talks about a belt.
But letting God’s Word speak implies more than just what it says about parenting. It implies you getting in the Word of God in such a way that all of your life is patterned after the Scriptures. Financial pressures? The Bible tells you how to reduce those pressures. Time pressures? The Bible speaks to how you should spend your time. Social pressures? It’s in there. Moral pressures? Every issue of morality that is being discussed in our nation is also discussed in the Bible.
Your kids don’t need to know what you think about abortion. Tell them what God thinks. Who cares what Hollywood is saying about stem cell research; tell them what the Bible says. When they ask you about people living together or about why men are holding hands with men, don’t start spouting off a bunch of hate rhetoric, take them to the Scriptures and show them how God feels about those subjects.
Don’t expect your kids to wake up one day with a desire to get in the Word. You have to lead out in it. Why not turn off the TV for a time each evening, or in the morning, and spend some time together just reading the Scriptures? The best kind of leader is one who will model the behavior he wants. Read the Bible to your young children. Discuss the Bible with your older children and watch the light bulb go off as they discover new truths for themselves.
Encourage Godly Values
I read the other day that for every 1 time parents encourage their children, they criticize them 14 times. I don’t know how accurate that is, but you know as well as I do that we all spend more time criticizing than we do encouraging. As parents, we have got to take the lead in encouraging Godly values.
One way we can do this is again to model those values that we want to see in our children. If we want them to respect authority, then we must respect authority. Do you talk about me in front of your children? Do you talk bad about their teachers in front of them? Do you run down the president? Or politicians? Or police? Every time we run down someone in authority in front of him or her, we undermine that authority.
Whether we’re talking about boys treating girls with respect, or going to church regularly, godly values must be modeled to our children. That’s the greatest way we can encourage those values to them.
Of course the other best way is to praise them when we see godliness manifested in their lives. The apostle Paul did this over and over during his missionary journeys. When a group of believers would put something into practice that he had taught them, he would brag on them for it. If you want to encourage godly values in your children, then you’re going to have to become a student of those children and watch for opportunities to praise them.
Always Be Approachable
Did you ever have a boss or employer that you couldn’t talk to? It’s a frustrating thing to have someone in authority over you who is unapproachable. It’s a tragedy to have parents over you who aren’t approachable. Your kids need to know they can come to you in any situation, with any question, at any time and know that no matter what they say you’re going to be reasonable about it.
A recent survey revealed that only 4.1% of teenage girls in America feel like they can talk to their fathers about serious problems. A study done by USA Today showed that when teens needed help, the most popular choices to turn to were #1 – music, #2 – peers, #3 – TV. Do you know where moms were? #31, and dads were #48.
The results of that kind of behavior are becoming more and more obvious. In another study, 36% of parents believed their children had taken a drink of alcohol. 66% of kids said they had. 14% thought their child had tried cigarettes. 41% had. 5% of parents thought their child had tried drugs, 17% had. Parents are ought of touch with their kids largely because they are unapproachable.
If you want to take the lead in your homes and get in the driver’s seat in parenting your children and raising them to know and love God, then you’re going to have to be more approachable to your children, and its never too late to start.
Demand Obedience
If God in His Word commanded children to obey their parents, then you are hindering them by not making them obey you. “Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord.” “Children, obey your parents, for this is right.” As parents and as leaders in your home, you must demand it, and not accept anything less than obedience. We all fall short – I realize that, but we must all strive to train our children to respond to our leadership with a glad willingness to do what we say to do, and when they do not, then we must respond promptly with correction designed to correct the problem.
As a parent, one of the best things you can do for your children is to quit counting to them. “I’m going to count to 10!” “Boy, when I get to three you’ve had it!” Parents, you’d better quit doing that – you’re teaching them that they don’t have to obey you the first time you say something, and not only that, you’re teaching them they don’t have to obey God the first time He says something. God’s not going to count to 3. He’s not going to count to 10 or 2 or any other number. He says “if you love me, obey me.”
Demand obedience. Kids don’t just need fences; they want fences in their lives. They want to know what the boundaries are, and when you set those boundaries and enforce them you show them that you love them and you earn their respect. Let me share something with you that Bill Cosby has said.
“A parent’s responsibility is not to his child’s happiness; it’s to his character. My father would not have been particularly interested in a book about fathering, although he did like to read. One day when he was reading in the living room, my brother and I decided that we could play basketball without breaking anything. When I took a shot that redesigned the glass table, my mother came in with a stick and said, “So help me, I’ll bust you in half.” Without lifting his head from his book, my father said, “Why would you want twice as many?”
I suspect that Mrs. Cosby still gave that whipping, and judging by the kind of man Bill Cosby is, it was worth every lick. You remember, according to the Word of God, your primary concern is not your child’s happiness, but their character. If you will see to it that they develop godly values, a love for God and the things of God, I promise you that happiness will be a natural by-product of the training you give them.
There is so much I want to share with you today on this subject of parenting, but we have already gone over time. I have said this morning that one of your primary concerns, as a parent, is that your children come to know Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. Do you know Him as your Savior? If you do not, let me say to you that God loves you like a Father loves a child, but God is a holy God, and in His holiness He is unable to accept you in your sin. He is gracious though. The Bible tells us that before He created the earth He looked ahead through time and saw that people like you and me would be lost in our sin and needed a Savior, so in His love and grace He provided that Savior – His only begotten Son. Jesus Christ was offered on the cross of Calvary to pay for our sins, and today what God asks of you is that you recognize what you are, unclean, sinful and unable to do anything about your condition on your own. He wants you to admit that to Him and to yourself, to be sorry for it, and trust Christ’s sacrifice to be the payment for your sin. The Bible says, “Whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Would you be saved today? Would you trust Christ to be the payment for your sin? Would you come to God today through His Son Christ?
