Series: Desperate Households
Message: Desperate Children
CenterPointe Christian Church – 12.4.05
Introduction:
Yakov Smirnoff, the Russian comedian, wrote a book, "Seeing the USA on Six Rubles a Day." In it he tells about being overwhelmed when he first entered an American supermarket & saw the great variety of products there. He just couldn’t believe it.
He wrote, "As I walked down the aisles, the first thing I noticed was powdered milk. ‘Just add water & you get milk.’ Then I saw powdered orange juice. ‘Just add water & you get orange juice.’ Then I saw baby powder, & I thought to myself, ‘What a country!’"
We’ve been in this series entitled – Desperate Households
• First, the couple was married
• Then, we talked to the guys about their role within marriage
• Last week we talked to the ladies.
What’s typically next – the children, babies.
And then life really changes. Have you ever thought about the changes that come with each child you add to your family?
A mother’s wardrobe
• 1st baby: You begin wearing maternity clothes as soon as your doctor
confirms your pregnancy.
• 2nd baby: You wear your regular clothes for as long as possible.
• 3rd baby: Your maternity clothes ARE your regular clothes.
A mom preparing for the Birth
• 1st baby: You practice your breathing religiously.
• 2nd baby: You don’t bother practicing because you remember that last
time, breathing didn’t do a thing.
• 3rd baby: You ask for an epidural in your 8th month.
The Babies Clothing
• 1st baby: You pre-wash your newborn’s clothes, color-coordinate them,
and fold them neatly in the baby’s little bureau.
• 2nd baby: You check to make sure that the clothes are clean and discard only the ones with the darkest stains.
• 3rd baby: Boys can wear pink, can’t they?
Pacifier
• 1st baby: If the pacifier falls on the floor, you put it away until you can go home and wash and boil it.
• 2nd baby: When the pacifier falls on the floor, you squirt it off with some juice from the baby’s bottle.
• 3rd baby: You wipe it off on your shirt and pop it back in.
Diapering
• 1st baby: You change your baby’s diapers every hour, whether they need it or not.
• 2nd baby: You change their diaper every 2 to 3 hours, if needed.
• 3rd baby: You try to change their diaper before others start to
complain about the smell or you see it sagging to their knees.
Going Out
• 1st baby: The first time you leave your baby with a sitter, you call
home 5 times.
• 2nd baby: Just before you walk out the door, you remember to leave a
number where you can be reached.
• 3rd baby: You leave instructions for the sitter to call only if she sees blood.
At Home
• 1st baby: You spend a good bit of every day just gazing at the baby.
• 2nd baby: You spend a bit of every day watching to be sure your older
child isn’t squeezing, poking, or hitting the baby.
• 3rd baby: You spend a little bit of every day hiding from the children.
Life changes so fast.
First you meet.
Then you date.
Marriage arrives quickly
Babies arrive and your style changes from one child to the next
And then…Your children get smart like these children.
For example:
• Patrick, age 10, said, “Never trust a dog to watch your food.”
• Michael, 14, said, “When your dad is mad and asks you, "Do I look stupid?" don’t answer him.”
• Michael, wise man that he was also said, “Never tell your mom her diet’s not working.”
• Randy, 9 years of age said, “Stay away from prunes.” One wonders how he discovered that bit of wisdom.
• Samantha, age 9, said, “Never hold a dust buster and a cat at the same time.”
• Naomi, 15 said, “If you want a kitten, start out by asking for a horse.”
• Lauren, age 9 said, “Felt markers are not good to use as lipstick.”
• Joel, 10 years old, said, “Don’t pick on your sister when she’s holding a baseball bat.”
• Eileen, age 8 said, “Never try to baptize a cat.”
What happens from being cute little babies, to these wise young children?
What happens with our teenagers and the choices they make?
Josh McDowell, Christian author and preacher, wrote a book a few years back called “Right from Wrong” and after reading it you can see that our Christian values/lifestyle is not being passed on to our teens.
Parent’s #1 fear according to George Barna is the fear of raising children.
You can see why when, McDowell states;
• Teen pregnancy has increased over 500% in the past thirty years
• Suicide among young people has jumped 300% in that same period
• Over a thousand teen girls get abortions every day in this country
• Over 4,000 kids a day catch a sexually transmitted disease
WE WORRY – OUR CHILDREN LIVE IN A DESPERATE SITUATION
• we worry that that society is going to seize our kids
• we fear that the culture is going to capture our children
• our kids will soon be making choices, and living lives, and paying the consequences of a value system they’ve picked up from the world around them
• one that rejects the truth of the Bible
• one that mocks Biblical morality
• and glorifies sex and violence
• One that laughs at drunkenness and rudeness
The challenge we face today is how do we pass on our Christian values to our children.
My purpose here this morning and next week is to help you pass on your values to your children. To help you over come the fear parent’s carry.
I want you to know:
• We can transfer our values to the next generation;
• We can pass on Biblical values to our children and teenagers
• We can equip them to live godly lives in the midst of an ungodly world.
The obvious question -- HOW?
• What can we do -- now -- to pass on our values to our kids?
• What can we do to instill biblical concepts of truth and morality within our children and teens?
• What can we do so desperation is not the descriptive term of our family of children?
The answer is in the word of God, in the model He gave to Israel for teaching truth to children.
Look with me Deuteronomy 6:4-7
4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. [a] 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. -- Deuteronomy 6:4-7
This passage gives us a divine model for passing on our faith and values to our children, a model that involves three steps.
#1 Build a Relationship
Passing our values on to our children requires a healthy relationship. God’s model for teaching Biblical truth to young people called, not only for a constant process, but for a relational method as well.
Look at verse 7
Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
His words beg the question, of course, “how can we expect to teach these things to our sons and daughters when we don’t spend any time with them?”
• How can we expect to teach these things to our sons and daughters if we’re never around, if we’re never sitting in our house, if we’re never walking with them by the way, if our kids are in bed by the time we get home and still asleep when we leave for the office?
• A big part of the problem we see all around us in our society is the result of messed up relationships.
• We cannot impart truth apart from honest, meaningful relationships. We are to teach diligently when we sit, walk, lie down, and rise up. In other words, God wants us to teach his truths in every relational interaction with our children -- even the most mundane.
• It’s not about quality time. It’s about quantity time!
Biblical truth and godly values are best understood in the context of a relationship. For example, if I need to correct my children, I have learned to begin by asking a question that appeals to my relationship with them. If the answer to that question is positive, then I can be confident that they will respond to my correction. I ask, "Do you know that I love you?" By asking that question before I offer correction, I appeal to them, not on the basis of my authority, but on the basis of our relationship.
So, the first step in passing our values of faith to our children is building a relationship.
#2 Be an Example
Passing our values on to our children entails example.
Look at verses 5 & 6 of our text.
5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.
Whether you know it or not, you’re being watched. And the things you model - by design or by accident -- powerfully communicate your convictions about right and wrong, about morality and immorality.
I was being watched the other day:
• Kaleb was helping me with wood. Skipping the last step. He skipped the last step.
• Loading wood in one direction. The boys got up in the morning and loaded the wood.
• I fold my pillow in half. Kaleb started folding his pillow in half
If we want to pass on biblical values to our children, we must model those values in our own lives. His words must be on our hearts before we can impress them upon the hearts and minds of our children.
If we wish for our sons and daughters to accept the idea that there are absolute standards of right and wrong, we must let them see that we believe it ourselves.
• Speed limit signs to your speedometer.
• I am not saying that we must live perfect lives before our children -- merely consistent lives, lives that model biblical standards.
• For example, if I truly want to teach my children to value honesty, I must not "forget" to report every cent of income to the I.R.S.
• If I want my kids to flee sexual immorality, I ought to be sure my television viewing reflects that value.
• If I want my kids to talk kind to other people I must talk kind to other people.
• I was driving down the road one day and a lady pulled out in front of me and I yelled, “You stupid Lady!” And from the back of the car I heard, “Daddy, why is she a stupid lady.” From Kaleb. I then had to apologize and explain
• Your children watch you. Do you want your children to pray? Then pray with them?
• Do you want your child to read the Bible? Let them see you read the Bible and read it with them?
• Do you want your sons to treat their wives with love and respect, the gentlemen treat your wife with love and respect.
• Do you want your daughters to love their husbands as we talked about last week by trusting God through submitting to their husbands according to scripture? Then ladies, model this for your daughters
And the last step to passing your values of faith to our children so our family doesn’t live in desperation.
#3 Share the Truth
Passing our values on to our children includes instruction. Instilling biblical values requires a commitment to teach our children consistently, repeatedly, at every opportunity, that there is a standard of right and wrong that transcends human ideas and opinions.
Look at verse 7 one more time.
"You shall TEACH [these things] diligently to your sons (and daughters) and shall TALK of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up."
The way it used to be:
• Several generations ago, fathers and sons spent long hours plowing together and harvesting together;
• mothers and daughters (and grandmothers, as a matter of fact) spent long hours quilting and canning and cooking together.
• Those long hours of being side by side presented opportunities to talk
o for a parent to teach a child
o for a teen to hear a father’s perspective on honesty
o or a mother’s concepts regarding marriage—
Have you seen the comic strip, “Hagar the Horrible”
It depicted, a mother doing her knitting and simultaneously instructing her daughter,
“Soon after your marriage your mother-in-law will come to your house and tell you the difference between right and wrong. . .”
and then in the next panel, the mother concludes her thought,
“She’ll be right and you’ll be wrong.”
Well, in our day and age, those opportunities no longer come easily.
• There’s baseball practice
• art class
• soccer games
• piano lessons
• cheerleading tryouts
• all kinds of things that intervene and interfere and intrude in our daily lives.
So passing on our values to our kids often becomes the last thing on our calendar. But that doesn’t mean we’ve lost the battle. It simply means we have to seize every opportunity to teach Biblical truths and godly values to our kids.
It means:
• using shopping trips to reinforce the Biblical value of honesty
• watching your teens’ favorite TV shows with them in order to discuss prime-time television depictions of love, sex, and romance with them
• helping younger children understand how such simple skills as taking turns, sharing toys, and waiting in line are pleasing to God because HE is fair and just
• trying to "catch" your children doing something good, so you can reward them
• using baseball games, court trials, inspection stickers on gas pumps and merchants’ scales, lines at banks and grocery stores to remind your kids of the value of fairness and justice in our interaction with other people
• pulling out your wedding albums and using them as a way to share your convictions about sexual purity before and during marriage -- and how honoring marriage has resulted in God’s protection and provision in your life.
Most importantly, I want my children to understand the truth that God is the source of all truth.
• "He is the Rock, " Moses said, "his work is perfect. . . a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he" (Deuteronomy 32:4).
• You see, it is God’s nature and character that defines truth.
• He defines what is right for all people, for all times, and for all places.
• I also seek to impress upon my children the concept that truth is not something God decides; it is something He is.
• I don’t want my children to make the mistake of trying to measure right and wrong by their own ideas; I want them to understand that the basis of everything we call moral, the source of every good thing, is the eternal God who is outside us, above us, and beyond us.
• The reason we think that there are such things as "fair" and "unfair" is because our Maker is a just God.
• The reason love is a virtue and hatred a vice is because the God who formed us is a God of love.
• The reason honesty is right and deceit is wrong is because God is true.
• The reason chastity is moral and promiscuity is immoral is because God is pure.
"Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons (and daughters) and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up" (Deuteronomy 6:4-7, NASB).
Are “these things” on your heart?
Is your heart right toward God this morning?
It is time for us who say the Lord is our God -- hear me now, adults -- to act like He is our God.
That means
we must not only say we believe in truth,
we must not only say we believe in right & wrong,
we must act like people who believe in truth,
we must behave like people who believe in right and wrong,
we must walk as children of the light!
I want to close this morning with these few verses.
Test yourselves to make sure you are solid in the faith. Don’t drift along taking everything for granted. Give yourselves regular checkups. You need firsthand evidence, not mere hearsay, that Jesus Christ is in you. Test it out. If you fail the test, do something about it. 2 Corintians 13:5 MSG
6Love means doing what God has commanded us, and he has commanded us to love one another, just as you heard from the beginning. 2 John 1:6 NLT
12Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you teach, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity. 1 Timothy 4:12 NLT
