God's strong resources for biblical parenting, or how in the world can I be such a parent or do these things? A rational parent or a faithful parent, seeing their great responsibilities, cries out, Lord, who is sufficient for these things? It's a sad fact of our culture today that there are many men who go out there, and sadly too many women, who like to have babies, but the idea of actually raising the children is another thing. A mark of your manhood is not how many babies you can procreate, but how many children you actually raise to maturity. Your mark of your womanhood is not how many babies you have, but whether or not you can parent these babies to maturity. And today in our culture, 67, almost 68% of African-American babies are born out of wedlock, two-thirds. 34% of Hispanic babies are born out of wedlock and 29% of Caucasian or white babies are born out of wedlock. That's a killer for society because you have millions of kids being born without their parents. And so it takes a toll and we shouldn't wonder why our culture is the way it is given what people think about parenting. Do you feel the great weight of responsibility of your high calling And thus, censure inadequacy. I can remember self-consciously feeling when you get married, it's like, okay, stand still, we're going to put this yoke upon you, this weight of responsibility. And then with each child, new responsibility is added. As the head of the home, I shouldered this responsibility because now I realized if I goofed up, These people are going to pay the freight on my mistakes. These people are going to pay for my mistakes. So there's a responsibility that I have as the father, as the head of the home, as the husband, to do a good job. And I could feel the weight. Christ Apostle Paul had the responsibility of all of his missionary churches and their members. Paul was a mother and a father to his churches. So if you turn to First Thessalonians chapter two, we'd like to read Paul's description of how he fathered and mothered and pastored his churches. First Thessalonians chapter 2 verses 7 through 12. We've read a couple of these verses earlier in our study, but we'll return to them here. He says in First Thessalonians 2.7, But we prove to be gentle among you as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. So the first analogy he uses, he says, as an apostle, The way I treated you was not unlike the way that a mother who's nursing a child treats that child. And you ever watch a nursing mother with a child? She's very tender, very sensitive. She goes, look, there's a new wrinkle on Reginald's face. And you go, looks like the same kid who was here yesterday. But mothers notice all the nuances, all the wrinkles, every little dimple, every little whatever. Moms can see that. And Paul said, I was like a nursing mother tenderly caring for her own children. having so fond and affection for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you have become very dear to us. A pastor, or in this case an apostle, like a parent, it's not simply imparting truth. It's not like you tell your kids, okay kids, Mom and I are going to teach you how to grow up. We'd like you to show up one day a week. We'll give you some lectures on growing up. You can take notes if you want to, but we're not going to spend any time with you. We're not going to give our lives to you. You couldn't parent your kids that way. And a faithful pastor doesn't simply pastor by giving lectures to his people and then being wholly apart from them the rest of the time. It's, we impart our very lives to you. He says, because you have become very dear to us. Well, how much more a parent with their own children? Paul says, you know, I birthed these churches and I gave my lives to y'all. They were southern churches. I gave my lives to y'all. And he did. Paul, we'll see later, he gave his life for these people. For you recall, brethren, our labor and hardship, working night and day when you were throwing up. No, I mean, isn't that like parenting, working night and day and you're always on call? And tonight, if I got a call at 2 o'clock in the morning, I might be afraid something had happened to one of my children. They're still my children. My baby's 36, but she's still my baby. How working night and day so as not to be a burden to any of you, we proclaim to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and so is God, how devoutly and uprightly and blamelessly we behave toward you believers. Just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each of you as a father would his own children. So now he uses the analogy of a father with his children. He says, yes, I was like a mother in many instances, but other times I was like a father. I was exhorting him, you can do better than this. You've got more in you than you think. You can do this. Encouraging, come on now, let's not settle for mediocrity. Imploring, begging, beseeching, each of you. It's a father who's involved with his children's lives. so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. Paul did all this so these people would live worthy lives as Christians. Parents do all these things so that their children would live worthy lives as children and hopefully Christian children. Now, we don't have the supernatural power to actually change the heart of a child and make the child a Christian. Only God, by the supernatural work of the new birth, can take a stony, dead, unresponsive heart and make it a biblical heart, a spiritual heart. and new heart, but it doesn't mean that we have to wait till our kids are converted to raise them. Rather, we can put all of these things into our kids, and even if they're not converted before they leave our home, we can still set them on a good path to being somewhat successful in the culture, and then if God gives them supernatural grace to be converted, they can take off running. But we don't wait until our kids are converted to start working with them. And in fact, I know some parents who naively think, if I just get my kid converted, that's the big thing. But that's not true because conversion doesn't fix all the problems that this child had because they were never worked with. I've known people who weren't converted until they were in their 20s, for example, or later, and they had dug some huge holes. And there's a construction phrase, you know, you dig a hole and you eventually have to backfill that hole. You can't just leave the hole in the yard. And sometimes if we have too many holes, Then we spend years, decades, fixing those holes, putting things in our life the way they should be. You should be praying for the spouse of your child. Hopefully, you're praying for your child to become a Christian, but when they're married, you're praying for the spouse of that child. Well, conversion just doesn't fix all the problems. We need to pray that not only is your child going to be marrying a Christian child, but a Christian child whose parents worked into the lives of those children. that particular child. So here's Paul saying, you know, I was like a mother with you. I was like a father with you. I gave my life to you. I just didn't simply come and drop doctrinal lessons on you. And yes, I did teach you night and day in some cases. But he said, I was with you. I gave my life to you. That's a good analogy for being a parent. You could say that Paul had a very large spiritual family to care for. His spiritual family included many spiritual children. That is, the young churches at Galatia, Crete, he talks about in Titus 1, Ephesus, Colossae, Philippi, Thessalonica, etc. All these churches and all the people in them, Paul felt a special burden for them. His spiritual family included children that greatly grieved him. Read Galatians chapter 1. Who's deceived you all? Who's stolen your heart? I can't believe you're turning away from the gospel and you can tell Paul is really emotionally upset at what's going on in Galatia. His spiritual family included children that were high-maintenance and difficult. There's 20 problems in the book of 1 Corinthians that Paul tries to address. You know, you can't sit down with a child and go over 20 problems. Maybe with an adult child, maybe if it's only about a letter, but there's 20 problems in 1 Corinthians that Paul has to address with them. And that's taxing if these are people you've given your life to and you see all these problems. Parenting people's souls is hard, taxing, soul-draining work. and 2 Corinthians 11. Did you know, I can give you a tip to understanding the book of 2 Corinthians. Paul's writing to defend the fact that he's a real apostle and that they should be loving him and not rejecting him. Most of us don't read the 2 Corinthians very much because we're not pastors and we're not in the situation of feeling, hey, I'm the real deal. You should appreciate me. You should recognize God's hand in my ministry to you. Paul's pouring out his heart and some of the stuff we don't relate to because we don't think of ourselves as rightly as an apostle or even a pastor But it's kind of like imagine your children were giving you a hard time Well, who are you and imagine adult children giving you a hard time or whatever and Paul's having to deal with bad attitudes on the part of the Corinthians and his own great love for them and his grief at how he's been treated but in 2nd Corinthians 11 23 to 30 he says I Are they servants of Christ? He's speaking about the false apostles, or the other people who would steal the hearts of the ones you love. He said, I speak as if in saying, I more so, in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number. Boy, if I was beaten twice, I'd remember it. But he says, I've been beaten, so I don't remember if it's nine or ten times. I've been beaten up a lot. Whoa. Often in danger of death. Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I have spent in the deep. I've been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers. Did you know every time you came to a river in the old days, you had to ford the river? You had to find a shallow place to wade through, or you had to swim across, or put your stuff in something dry, or you had to find some way to get across, but it wasn't, hey, look, there's a new bridge. Imagine how dangerous that could be. dangers from my countrymen, the Jews, dangers from the Gentiles, that's everybody else who isn't a Jew, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers in the sea, dangers among false brethren. It was tough being an apostle, but there's an analogy here. There's a lot of difficulty in being a parent. I've been in labor and hardship through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. Then Paul goes like this, eh, that ain't nothing. apart from such external things, with a wave of the hand, he goes, this is what was the hardest thing. And you never get away from it. There is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches. What does he mean? Who is weak without my being weak? Who is led into sin without my intense concern? You know, he described some of the physical stuff he'd been through. But there was a finite number of times he'd been beaten up, a finite number of times he'd been beaten with rods, a finite number of times that he'd been 39 lashed. But he says there is the constant inner tearing at your gut concern for how people are doing in the churches. I hear that somebody is weak over there and things aren't going well. He says, that eats at me. Now, having 39 lashes is really painful at the time and for a few weeks afterwards, but it's not constant. But having a burden for people who aren't doing well, that can be a constant. You know, I don't think it's true of anybody here, so I'll use this analogy. If your adult child was living under an overpass in downtown Atlanta, sleeping in a cardboard box, you would probably not have any warm, sunny days. It would be very difficult. It would just eat at you all the time. And I know parents, and I know looking at you, that there are parents here who grieve over the state of where some of their children are at. Hopefully they're not that bad, but they have their issues if they're away from the Lord. And they're making sad choices that are hurting their lives, and they're blind to what is good, and they're blind to the hope, they're blind to the fact that they can have a new life. So, being a parent is not unlike being an apostle. It's hard, and it eats at you, and you're never entirely away from it. So what does this do? It gives you a crushing sense of weight. Paul had to increasingly face his own felt sense of inadequacy. Now Paul is a super competent person. He's really smart. He's high energy. He can endure a lot. So people like that think, I got this. I can do this. No you can't. In 2 Corinthians 2.16, Paul bares his soul to his problem child Corinthians and cries out, who is sufficient for these things? Who thinks they can do this? I've come to learn I can't do this in my own strength. As Paul reasons with the Corinthians about where the resources for adequacy comes from to fulfill a seemingly impossible task, he tells them six verses later in 2 Corinthians 3.5, not that we are sufficient in ourselves, to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency, our adequacy, our ability to pull it off is from God. So he told the Philippians while he was in prison, I can do all things, that is all lawful things that God requires of me. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I've come to grips with my own felt sense of inadequacy, but I've also come to learn of the adequacy of God for whatever he calls me to do. But see, we have to come to that place, because most of the time we go, I got this. I can do this. I'm no dummy. I'm not stupid. I can get this. And the Lord says, no you can't, but I'll help you see you can. There it is in a nutshell. Just as it was beyond us to save ourselves, people say, I'm going to turn over a new leaf. I'm going to make my life better. I'm going to stop doing these bad things and start doing these good things. And they find out it's not that easy. They can't make themselves always do the right things. They can't make themselves not do the wrong things. How am I going to change? Well, God has to do his supernatural work of the new birth to begin with. And then after you're a Christian, he puts you in situations where you have to entrust yourself to him and say, Lord, the adequacy to do this is not up to me. I'm looking to you to do this, to help me, to empower me. By faith, I'm laying hold of your resources. But I'm self-consciously admitting I don't have it in and of myself to do this, and we have to come to that place. Just as it was beyond us to save ourselves, and God's supernatural work was absolutely necessary, So believers need the powerful resources of Almighty God to live out the details of a holy life. Whether it's marriage, marriage will make you come to the place you say, I can't do this. Family, that'll bring you to the place. Work, I can't do it. Or citizenship, I can't live here anymore. Whatever it is, God will bring you to the place and the different responsibilities you have to cry out to Him. Have you learned this lesson? You have to answer that for yourself. You don't have to show me your hand. Your adequacy or sufficiency to complete your God-appointed work as a believer comes from God, through Christ, by the Holy Spirit. Now, what are God's strong resources for biblical parenting? Well, first of all, God the Son gave God the Spirit to you as His divine stand-in. Stand-in is someone who's a substitute, who's taking someone else's place. The context of the marriage doctrine of Ephesians 5, 22-33, that's the longest passage in the New Testament on marriage. The context is being filled with the Spirit in 518. Do not be drunk with wine wherein is excess or dissipation or total wastedness, but be filled with the Spirit. In other words, he's contrasting how when you're drunk or when you're high on drugs, you're controlled by that. When you're filled with the Spirit, the Spirit of God controls you and affects the outcome. Now, he says, as you're filled with the Spirit, it should be showing, first of all, in your attitudes, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks in all things, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. and be submissive to one another. And let's talk about husbands and wives. Let's talk about parents and children. Let's talk about employers and employees. Paul is teaching believers in this way that we cannot do these things in the power of the flesh, but need supernatural resources to live them out. Are you self-consciously relying upon God, the Holy Spirit's enablement to do marriage, to do parenting? Do you self-consciously look to him moment by moment to enable you to obey God's word? You know, to live out the fruit of the Spirit in the home, that's the toughest place. I mean, we do things at home we'd never do to strangers. We say stuff to people in our family we'd never say to strangers or out in public. And if our Christianity isn't working at home, it's not working and we need to stop and take inventory and get help. Do you self-consciously look to Him moment by moment to enable you to obey God's Word? In 2 Timothy 1.7, this might be a good verse, I used to, when I preached regularly, used to pray this verse most times before I preached. God has not given you a spirit of fear, but one of love, power, and self-control. It's just what you need to be a biblical parent, or a pastor, or a husband, or a wife, or an employee, or an employer. God has not left you helpless and hopeless, bereft of the necessary ability to do the job at hand. In Luke 11, 9-13, Jesus tells the disciples, And it shall be given to you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened. If you hard-hearted and sinful men know how to give good gifts to your children, he says, think about it. When your kid asks for you for a gift, you know, Dad, can I have a loaf of bread? Sure, son. Here's a rock. What a nasty dad is that. Can I have an egg? Sure, son. Here's a snake. I mean, he's just saying that's not logical for how normal parents would treat their children. He says, if that's true of normal, sinful beings, how much more is God a good and faithful Father? So I made, by emphasis, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? So, do you regularly ask the Lord for the power of the Holy Spirit to live the Christian life? Say, Lord, I need the power of the Holy Spirit to drive to work today, to be faithful at work. I need the power of the Holy Spirit to evidence the fruit of the Spirit in parenting, in marriage, in doing my job, in commuting, in being a citizen. Are you regularly seeking to have the Holy Spirit's empowerment to display the fruit of the Spirit in your life? What are the fruit of the Spirit? In Galatians 5, Paul's contrasting what comes out of our sinful hearts, the deeds of the flesh that just bubbles over, versus the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, Faithfulness, humility, or better translated meekness, and self-control. These are the fruit of the Spirit. Any home that has that as a regular happening is a really fine home and a great place to be. It's a great culture to grow up in. We need the power of the Holy Spirit and God says you need supernatural enablement and so I'm giving you the Holy Spirit. The third member of the Holy Trinity lives inside each Christian. You've been taught that. You understand in some fashion that God the Holy Spirit lives within you. But for a person to sit down and actually think about that. God the Holy Spirit lives in me. You wouldn't be a Christian if you didn't. That's what gives the new birth. He who gives the new birth. That's what makes you different. That's what keeps propelling your life. That's who unites you to Christ. Your union with Christ. That's who unites you. The fact that you're going to make it to eternity is the fact that God the Holy Spirit is living in you. He will see to it. You know, I think in terms of analogies, but if you ever watched a really a lot of science fiction stuff, you know, someone's flying through space. And whether you look at 50s and early 60s stuff, you go, that's really tacky. You can kind of see the string that's holding up the thing or more recent things with astonishing visual effects. But they're going along and suddenly, we're caught in a tractor beam. That's always a tractor beam. I don't know what that is. It's not a tractor, but it's the kind of beam that once you get stuck in it, you get pulled up to the mother ship no matter how far, how hard you press on the accelerator. We're still caught in the tractor beam. Well, God says, My tractor beam is God. The Holy Spirit is within you. And you will make it to heaven because God, the Holy Spirit, will enable you to make it to heaven. He is the enabler. He's God the Son's stand-in. He's united you to Christ. He's united you to eternity, and you will make it. I will make it. But God's also given us his inspired word for the wisdom you need to function. Boy, don't we as parents need wisdom? Reginald comes home from school, or if you do school at home, and something goes up, and you go, oh man, I don't know what to do about this. And so we need wisdom. Examine Colossians 3.16 and its context. Colossians 3.16 says, Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you. Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. And it goes on. It sounds just like Ephesians 5.18. But instead of saying, Be filled with the Spirit, it says, Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you. But then it says, Here's one and here's the other. And here's the results that follow. And they're identical. in the identical order. Attitude, marriage, family and parenting, work. Being filled with the Spirit and having the Word of Christ richly dwell within you are two sides of the same coin. In Colossians, Paul is teaching that letting the Word of Christ richly dwell within you is absolutely necessary to display the right attitudes and actions of a Christian in marriage, child-rearing and in the workplace. In Ephesians, Paul is teaching that being filled with the Spirit is absolutely necessary to display the right attitudes and actions of a Christian in marriage, child-rearing, and in the workplace. Two things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other. Being filled with God the Holy Spirit is the flip side of letting the Word of Christ richly dwell within you. Who inspired the Word of God? Who breathed this out? God the Holy Spirit. So, here is the mind of the Spirit. I need that. Here is the power of the Spirit living within me. I need both of these to be a biblical parent, to be a biblical Christian, period. We need the eternal wisdom of God to live out our lives in ways which please our Savior. To rely upon our own wisdom as folly, it leads to many a harm. You know, a lot of parents who aren't biblical, they live their lives this way. I inherited so many things I learned growing up in my parents' family. And then I've picked up a few gems at church, and then I was checking out the grocery store, and there's this great article in the magazine there about how so-and-so raised their kids. And then at the beauty parlor or at work, I heard someone else talk about how they raised their kids. And I have this amalgam of stuff that I've kind of put together, which is my half-baked parenting mindset. But the Bible says we can do a lot better than that. Now, the Bible does not have a rulebook, I said, for every conceivable situation. Okay, my child is 14 and picks their nose in public. What can I find here to help with that? There's no versus about that. Thou shalt not pick your nose in public when you're 14. And there's all the teeter-totter. We wouldn't do that. We're better raised than that. Well, I just tried to pick on something ridiculous. Children, if they're smart, will come up with all kinds of excuses. Where does it say in the Bible I can't do that? Children, obey your parents and the Lord. And I told you not to do it. And that's enough. But the Bible isn't a giant rule book. It gives us principles about how to live the Christian life based upon who God is and what He's done for us in Christ. And I need God's wisdom to be the most faithful parent I can be. And if I don't know what to do, what better place to look? Does the Bible have a lot to say about parenting? There's a whole book given over to how to raise kids, called the Book of Proverbs. Son, sit down. I got some things to talk over with you. All this stuff about growing up. And sometimes it's in a form where he's like, there's so many verses there. Well, you can get a commentary in one of the handouts I gave you on resources to help you with family devotions. I think there's some introductory material in the book of Proverbs that you could read and or you could get a concordance. What are all the verses on the tongue? What are all the verses on the kind of women you're not to check out and the kind of woman you should check out? What are the verses on being submissive to authority? All these different subjects you can put together, but the book of Proverbs is a great place to learn wisdom and it says it was written to give wisdom to young people who need it. by parents who need to learn what to do. Prayerfully meditating upon God's Word gives us the wisdom we need to parent our children. Sometimes it's like you have a devotional time that morning and you learn something, and that afternoon or the next day that very thing comes up. But if I'm not in the Word regularly, if I'm not soaking and saturating my mind with the Word, I'm not prepared. Bathing our minds, both husband and wife, in the Word of God renews our minds and makes them more in tune with God's holy wisdom. Okay, this will be a sword drill, but you can't look it up, you have to do it from memory. What does John 17, 17 say? Jesus is praying there. He's praying for the saints. He's praying for you and me. Okay, we have a visitor back here. Very good, sir. Sanctify them in the truth. Thy word is truth. Sanctify them. What does that mean? I'm sorry? Make them holy. Lord, make them holy in the truth. What truth? That word is truth. Okay, what is Romans 12, 2? And strangers only get to answer one question. Sorry, sir. For the old-timers who are here, what is Romans 12, 2? Who said that? Oh, there you are. I couldn't see anybody talking. I thought there was a ventriloquist. Go ahead. Do not let your mind be conformed to this world. Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you might know what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. We need to have our mind renewed. Think of it as a computer, and you've got this old clunky computer with a really bad program on it, and that was your BC life, and all this junk's on the computer. And God says, let me give you a new hard drive. And let me put some new stuff here. I want you to renew your mind. I want you to put new stuff. Unfortunately, a lot of the old stuff is still there. Sometimes God erases a lot of the old stuff, but sometimes he wants you to self-consciously go back and erase a lot of the old stuff and reprogram it with new stuff so that you can, you know, have the right response. One of the first builders of computers had a phrase, GIGO, garbage in, garbage out. Whatever you put into a computer, that's what's going to come out of the computer. So we need to be renewing our minds so that our way of looking at child-rearing, the way of approaching it, is biblical. God said, I've given you the power and I've given you the wisdom. Let's keep on reading here. The third means of grace. God gave us unlimited access to himself through prayer. Most of the prayers of the Bible are either praise, God you are so great and wonderful, or petition. Almighty God, I need your help. Or as Peter put it, Lord, help, when he was sinking in the waves. And sometimes parenting is that Lord, help. You're in the middle of some drama. You're in the middle of some meltdown. You don't want to respond in the flesh. As Bill Cosby used to say, I brought you into this world and I can take you out of this world. You don't want to respond like that. But how do you respond without being fleshly? James 1.5 says, if any of you lacks wisdom, i.e. parents. That's in the Greek. It says that in the Greek. Parents. No, it doesn't. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach. Not you again. I thought you were here yesterday for wisdom. I thought you were here an hour ago for wisdom. Can't you take a break? God never reproaches us if we come to Him all the time. I just don't know what I'm doing. I'm floundering. And what if you come from a non-Christian home? Or what if you're trying to expunge a lot of the home you grew up in? Now, my home was a great place to grow up. I loved my home. I loved my parents. But it wasn't a Christian home, and I realized I had to redo a lot of the stuff that we did in our home. But how would I redo it? Well, I'd have to do it by the Scriptures, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, and by prayer. This verse is given in the context of not knowing what to do in regard to a trial or a problem. I don't know what to do. I just don't know what to do. The Lord says, ask me. Ask me. I won't bad mouth you for it. Raising children means years of wondering what to do in regard to the latest turn of events. You know, parenting is just like, When the door slams, you wonder, OK, what's going to be coming in the door and what's going to be going on? And you find out, it's like, whoa, I have to adjust to this. Prayer is a sweet means of grace, always at our disposal, even in the middle of a conversation, even while you're listening to a person go off on you, even while the person's having a meltdown, even while the drama queen is being a drama queen, or the drama king is being a drama king. You can still be praying. Prayer is a sweet means of grace, always at our disposal, even in the midst of a hard time. The Bible often reasons from the greater to the lesser so that we might think biblically about God. And this is a lead-in to how we ought to pray. One of the things the Bible does is says, think. Stop and think about it. Just calm down and think about it. He who did not spare his own son. What does that mean? Okay. When you were a rebel sinner, As God's going through all the stuff he's got in heaven, he goes through all the cupboards, all the warehouses. He goes, I'll give you all this stuff to deal with you, but I won't give you my most prized possession, my son. No, he who did not spare to spare something as means you can have everything else, but you can't have this. We're going to spare this. He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all. He says, now think, if he gave Christ to us when we should have only expected judgment, what's he going to do for us now that we're his adopted children, his blood-bought, Christ-bought children? Is he going to give us less? Is he going to treat us shabbily now that you're my kid? Lay on the floor. Is that how you think God's like? Did he give Christ for you to redeem you, only to treat you like dirt? It's not logical. It's not biblical. What are you thinking? That's what Paul encourages us to reason. Or the author of Proverbs. Think of the reasoning here from the greater to the lesser. The king's heart is a channel of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever he wills. God's sovereign. In a nation, back in those days especially, up until recent times, the king had absolute power. He was the Supreme Court, the Congress, and the President all rolled into one person. I make the laws. I enforce the laws. If there's any questions, I interpret the laws. So the king was sovereign. So God says, I control the heart of a king and he likens it to an irrigation system in a field where at the end of one row you've got a little lever you can flip and it diverts the water from this row to this row. You flip the switch and it goes. He goes, that's the heart of a king to me. It's no big deal. So how are we supposed to reason? If God controls the heart of a king, he controls everybody lesser than him. Everybody else we meet, God's in control of their heart and their lives. We reason from the greater to the lesser, and so how can I pray, Lord, work in this situation, work in this person's heart. Lord God, you gave this child to us as a gift of your grace. Psalm 127, verse 2, I believe. We now ask for your help in raising this child in the fear and instruction of the Lord. Help us to be faithful and to do it right. We need your wisdom daily. We need to display the fruit of the Spirit daily. Help us for Christ's sake and the testimony to our children. Amen. That's not a model prayer. It's not like, I'm going to cut this out and pray this every day. That's fine. But you can pray a lot more profound and much more on target prayers than that. And for you who have adult children, Parenting 2.0 is called prayer. And that, you know, our adult children make choices, they do things, they don't do things. And we kind of go, why were you doing that? Now, you can be the kind of parent who just blurts things out of family reunions. That was a dumb decision you made last month. Oops, there goes that Thanksgiving. I mean, you and I can say and intervene and do things. And I've certainly made my mistakes in parenting and parenting my adult children. But I know that prayer is something that the Lord hears and I can pray for them. And we looked earlier at parenting adult children. You have to determine when is this one of those rare hills that I'm going to die on. I'm going to speak up and willing to risk conflict. But most of the time, you keep your mouth shut and you pray. Finally, the last means of grace is God gave us the local church as a place to grow families. The New Testament knows nothing of solitary Christianity. There are no Lone Rangers in the New Testament. Even the Apostle Paul. Every New Testament Christian was a member of a local church and under the ministry and authority of a local church. Paul and Barnabas were sent out by the church at Antioch to be missionary church planners. Paul just wasn't his own guy kind of cruising through the New Testament doing whatever he felt like doing and checking in when he felt like checking in. Paul viewed himself as a man under authority. Biblical parents know how much they need the local church as the context for growth. For one thing, for example, is one of the struggles we've come to, and I think this church and the confessional church has a greater strength in this way. Let's say we're in a broad evangelical church that doesn't teach much, so it's every man or woman for themselves. So you have certain standards, hopefully biblical standards, for child rearing. This other couple over here, they have completely different standards. They don't even think about biblical standards for child rearing. The church hasn't emphasized that they haven't gotten there. So your child goes to play at their house and comes back and gives you a story. You did what? You watched what? Whoa, I'm going to go talk to those parents. Well, probably you're not going to go over there and spend the night again any time soon, right? If you've ever been in a broad evangelical church, you can find some mixed bags in terms of what goes for parenting. It's helpful if you can be in a group of people who shares your same conviction. Dad, do you know what they do on the Lord's Day? Well, if you had convictions about the Lord's Day in your typical body of evangelical church who only has nine commandments, if that, who knows what goes on the Lord's Day. But to try to have your own convictions and then be with people who have the same convictions so they can reinforce what you're doing. We gather to worship God and grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ and his finished work. Wise Christians discipline themselves to be under the ministry of the word and sacrament faithfully each Lord's Day. They know that they need the cavalry of the gathered church for help. Now you know what the analogy of the cavalry is. You're watching an old-time movie. The settlers are being attacked by the Indians, their house is about to be burned down, they'll be slaughtered. Suddenly the cavalry rides in, and the Indians flee, and the problem, which was so dire, you get some real help on. A biblical church, a faithful church, can be like the cavalry for you. Faithful attendance means that you get what God has for you that Lord's Day from His Word. You know, even if you're a three-year-old kid and you're getting apparently nothing out of the service, But you know what your kids learn? There's one time a week when my mom and my dad, they don't talk. They sing some songs to the God that I can't see. And they listen when this word is opened and talked to. My parents give it rapt attention. There must be something important about this book. There must be something important about this God I can't see because my parents are very different as we gather here and this is a very sober and joyful time and lots of different emotions, but you're even teaching kids who can't quite understand certain propositions, you're teaching them by example that life is to be lived unto God. We're hearing from God and we're getting our marching orders. God, the Holy Spirit, has not promised to live in the tapes and CDs we produce later. This is not a suggestion that the work that these gentlemen here are doing are unimportant. But oftentimes the attitude is, eh, I won't go today, I'll get the CD later. Well, maybe, but if your attitude is wrong for skipping in the first place, the Holy Spirit isn't bound to show up in the CD just because you didn't want to take advantage of the Lord's Day. In other words, God has given your minister the message for this congregation for this Lord's Day. And so I need to be there, and a biblical Christian after a while comes to see this and recognize this and looks forward to the Lord's Day because it is God's Word to us this Lord's Day. Having the Lord's Supper explained and enacted each Lord's Day drives home the gospel and our need for regular cleansing by the work of Christ. Biblical parents know that they need to be regularly reminded that if I confess my sins, He is faithful and just to forgive me of my sins and cleanse me from all unrighteousness. Christ has done it. Christ has done it. And I, as a biblical parent, I know myself to be a sinner. I know myself to be a sinner who needs cleansing grace and to be reminded of Christ's work on my behalf. The preached Word washes our minds with truth and disciplines our actions by its corrections. Boy, this Sunday the preacher preached, Thou shalt not. And we were shouting it. And he said, You shalt not. So we're not going to shout it anymore. We're going to stop doing this. That's how you learn things. There's a certain disciplinary function of the Word. Each baptism reenacts the death, burial, and resurrection of the Christian with Christ, the power of the new life. As Christ was dead and buried and raised again, so the believer died with Christ, so to speak, was buried with Christ, so to speak, was raised with Christ, so to speak, to new life. With Paul, faithful parents can say, I am what I am by the grace of God, and His grace to me was not in vain. Looking at our lives, we will come to see it's all of grace. Again, we're not looking for perfect parents. This is a fallen world. There are no perfect parents. There are no perfect marriages. There are no perfect kids. But our aim is to be faithful. Holy Father, it's an amazing thing when you intervene in our lives. We may not have been looking for you or we may have been looking for you for years, but suddenly we are found of you. You supernaturally do a work that we can't even describe, but we can say like with the man in the Gospel of John, I was blind, but now I see. Or I was deaf, but now I hear. I get it. You've done this work in me and I can't explain it, but I know it's real. We've experienced the new birth. We've come to know you in a personal way. Our lives are never going to be the same. You have already led us to or you will lead us to the right person for us to marry in Christ. And that's an exhilarating thing to find a person who would want to spend the rest of their life with us, with me, serving you. Instead of just being a me, it will be an us. But then by grace, if it's your choice, you choose to give us children or we adopt children. And we have a responsibility that is Exhilarating, we're shaping the lives of people who are going to live for eternity. But it can be crushingly hard at times, frustrating. We weep tears, we wish we didn't have to. We say things we wish we hadn't said. We do things we wish we hadn't done. Or there's things we never got around to doing, things we never got around to saying that we should have. We are at times deeply anguished about our weaknesses as parents. I pray that you would help us, even as in being Christians, to be faithful. And that we would be able to tell our children, hey, we're not perfect parents, far from it, but we're seeking to be faithful parents and our children would get a glimpse of what it means to be a faithful Christian, to faithfully work at something which is hard and to not give up. Thank you for the resources you've given us. They're not fiddly resources. We've not asked you for a loaf of bread and you've not given us a stone. We've not asked you for a hard boiled egg and got a serpent, but rather we've got the best gift, God, the Holy Spirit and the word that he has inspired and the fellowship of the saints of like minded Christians who have been saved by your grace and are in the battle with us seeking to raise their children or praying for their children and grandchildren. You've given us prayer that we can always bring our request and petitions before you. We are a blessed people. Lord, help us to be faithful, save our children, work in their lives, help them to pinch themselves with wonder that they would have been privileged to grow up in a Christian home, to attend a biblical church. We'll all thank you in Christ's name. Amen.