Good morning everybody. Good morning on a cold crisp morning after such a beautiful snowy morning yesterday. I was out on Friday night in the ice a little bit, got home safely, but it was beautiful. And our kids, imagine if you have children, all your children were outside for a long period of time yesterday. There's something about snow, just a little bit. I was hoping for two or three more inches. How many years has it been? I saw on the news it's been three years since we've had snow. Seems wrong, but maybe we'll head up to the mountains and see a little bit more. It's good to be with you all. We are On lesson seven in our growing to, in our Christian household, Christian home lessons, and I'm going to pick up on two things before I begin lesson seven. Answers to two questions that I did not answer last time. And then we'll pick up with the handout. So just so you get situated, but let's pray together. Father in heaven, we bless your name. We're thankful for your day. Do you think of how You have set before us in Your law Yourself as the only object of our worship? You've taught us how to worship. Lord, You've reminded us that You are holy, holy, holy, and we are to come with reverence and awe. Lord, You've given us a day so that our life is filled with the rhythm drawing near to you. And then you've given us, especially if you've given us children and grandchildren, you've given us as parents the duty to lead our children in that way that leads to life. And we pray that this morning again you would give us the grace to search your Word and to learn better how to do that great task that you've given us. Or that there might be generations that as they rise and fall, generations that continue to point to next, to our Lord Jesus Christ, and that you would be pleased to use our feeble efforts, blessing us before we begin with your spirit, and while we work with your spirit, and then work with your spirit in our children, all to your glory. And we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, I had two questions, and it's a bit dangerous, that I didn't answer last week. Answered, I think, only two. One is corporal discipline, spanking. Sort of the question was, how could you still recommend it? And I still recommend it because the Bible does, I said that, and that's pretty simple, but within bounds. Now somebody asked me another question, actually a number of people asked me a question, they said, Peter, you sounded fairly, what was the word, lenient? Maybe more, someone said to me a few weeks ago, said, I know you're parenting, and I listened to you in class, and maybe you sounded more lenient than you are. That was an interesting question. I think I want to add one thing real quickly to the use of all forms of discipline. I think Laura Lee and I, we do require and we aim for obedience and change in our children. We remember that that's the work of the spirit and the heart, but I would say one thing. There's a sense in which, yes, I am a strict parent. Hopefully not, hopefully never unkind. But I am looking for good order. in our home, and not mayhem, and little people have to learn early that they have to merge with a culture. Maybe the second reason why someone said we find that you use some forms of discipline so little. I think there was something else I was meditating on I wanted to say quickly about that, which was younger children Actually, I noticed it happen this morning on the way out of the house. One of my older children, I said something quite firm to, and Miriam looked up and she was like, oh. They learn in an environment. So if you have your first child, there's no environment, but a family culture develops. And children learn a number of different ways. Anyway, a couple things came to mind once people asked me that question. Yes, I do think that we have to be gentle but firm. And the evidence will be if we are making progress, especially with little ones, if they are ordered and they listen to our simple commands and do so, the Lord willing, cheerfully. So I'm not advocating a disorder in the home or a leniency. but I am advocating a gentleness and a prayerful firmness. It's a very hard balance. I don't always get it right. But maybe saying a little bit about the end helps you understand the beginning. The second one, the third question here was, What do I do if I've let a weed grow a lot in the life of our family or our children? How do you undo the damage? How about with little children? If you have let them go and they do all sorts of things you don't want them to do, you know you need to make a course correction. How can you do this without needing constantly to resort to the rod? Say if verbal reproof does not yield fruit. And I want to say the disclaimer I said yesterday in this question for a moment, the disclaimer was the application of the scriptures in the matter of the correction of children requires biblical wisdom and it's a parental decision. So I don't want anybody in this class just to say, okay, I've got every child in every moment requires prayer, thoughtful wisdom. And you know your children better than I do. So don't come to a class like this. There was an author years ago that wrote some good things, but there's many people, I think, who have blundered badly in this field by saying something like this. Here's my book. If you do these seven things, out will come perfect widget children. It's like a machine. It doesn't work. There's something here, mysterious and supernatural, that's why I always emphasize prayer for the Holy Spirit's work. If someone tells you that, you need to run away. So when I try to give some counsel from the Word here, I want you to be mindful that it's not, there's an important line that I refused to cross where I don't discipline your children, you prayerfully do this work and will answer to God for it. I'm trying to communicate principles that you with prayer for the Lord can put into place. And this all requires for each of us the direct blessing of God for saving mercies. Pray more, read your Bible more, and be a Berean, not a lazy Christian, and search the word. And some of you parents who have older children perhaps understand why I'm saying this now, and maybe when we all started, we didn't understand that so deeply, so before that. I think of a weed, temper tantrums. Actually, I know who sent this question in, and last summer had a long talk with them about some of these things, at least a beginning of a talk. I think when you see something, especially in a younger child's life, that you say, that needs to change, I think what you need to do is be careful to identify what needs to change. What's a sin? Is it a sin? Does it need repentance? Identify it carefully and narrowly. Not just, you've annoyed me again, and I'm going to explode. You've annoyed me, I'm going to explode. That's not helpful. But is there a sin? And then what are the times and the places and circumstances? What is the temperament and character of my child? Mull over the word, what command is violated? Is this actually a sin? That's useful. We're calling someone to repentance. So the first thing is to narrow down the problem, I would say. What is this weed? And then pray over the problem. And if it is a weed that you say, I let fester, you could ask for forgiveness and say, Lord, I haven't done what I should do. And the Lord forgives parents. That's part of the gospel, all of our sins. If it's a weed that you let fester, you need mercy. I remember, actually, I came to this conclusion as a young child. in a very bad way, if there's children here, don't copy this method. My mother used to say to me when I was in the store and I was asking, either carrying on a little bit or asking for a lot of things. Let's say we're at a grocery store, can you buy this, can you buy this? And she said, Peter, you're acting like a spoiled child. In my small mind, I thought to myself, hmm, that's interesting, because sometimes she also said when she saw a child having a temper tantrum, you know, screaming on the floor in a store, she would say, that child's been spoiled by their parents. And I thought, If I'm a spoiled child, then it must be your fault, which is bad. Because she was using the language on me, and then she was saying parents, spoiler, et cetera. I was like, well, then I guess I'm all free with this one. I told her that as well, and that didn't go over as well as you might think. It was in my mind for a long time, and then at last I told her, and it wasn't a good thing to do. But anyway, she's a very loving mother, but it was probably not the most respectful thing to say as a child. If you did not correct as the word commands you, that's on you. And this will help temper your heart with the love of Christ as you've received forgiveness. Then you pray for wisdom, pray for the Spirit's work in your child. Third, aim for the long haul. You know, this happens, someone goes to a parenting class, someone goes to a home where there's a child who, they have a child the same age, and your child just, you know, pulls the tablecloth off and screams the whole visit, and their children are just sitting like ducks in a row. And you think, you ask those parents, what did you do? And then you get home, and between getting home and bedtime, you expect to fix your child. That will never work. Maybe if you haven't done things, that you should do, you should calm down and settle in for the long haul. Rome wasn't built in a day. Pray for the fruit of the spirit in you. Patience, understanding, an understanding spirit. A little child is a little child. And then the biggest mistake often with this is forgetting that repentance has a long arc. The Lord often works on you for a long time. And repentance includes learning a new pattern of life. Learning takes time. Hearts can also be hard, so patience is important. I think probably the thing that my children have most often pointed out in me as a fault is impatience as a parent. And they've asked me to be more patient. And I don't think they were wrong. And so pray for the grace to settle in for the long haul. And I don't mean you just tolerate something. I mean the attitude of your heart is that you're going to use means, but before you use them, you recognize something about what you're doing. It still doesn't mean you wait forever to say a correcting word or act to correct your child, but it means that you think about... The long haul. Fourth, anticipate the problem the best you can and head it off before a massive confrontation is needed. A small correction at the beginning of a sin. I'll give you an example. We've been changing children in worship for a long time. And I think just the other week, my little girl, is she in here? Oh, she's right there. But she doesn't know what I'm saying. She was not happy with something. She whipped her head back and she hit the corner of the pew. And she made a lot of noise. And I think I was preaching. I think I was. And I noticed. I actually usually don't notice if a child makes noise whose child it is. I can never tell you. That's like over the last six months, the only child I can remember is our own. So just comfort your hearts as parents if you wonder. But sitting still in worship, you often can tell, for example, that your child's gonna blow up before they blow up. If the pin's been pulled on the grenade, you have time to think about that, right? The pin's been pulled, you have time to think about it. So maybe small corrections at the beginning of sins that they commit. Rather than a late correction of a larger instance, draw the line earlier, and then it needs a smaller correction. So that's a thought. Don't escalate correction endlessly. After appropriate correction, there's a couple things I do now as a parent that I didn't do earlier. If a child is really mad at the world, and let's say a little child bit another child, and I gave them a spanking, and they won't calm down, I'll just put them in bed, When they calm down, I'll go get them. And I won't keep spanking them. I'll end the cycle of correction very quickly if I needed to even use that. Sometimes I might just redirect. I don't think this is wrong. I took Miriam to the window the other day as she was screaming, and just to talk to her before anything, and she saw our cat, and she was happy. Now, is that discipline? No. Is that a method I would always use? No. But is it a method, can we be gracious, patient? Yes. I actually this time would not have corrected her because I didn't know why she wasn't happy and she can't tell me. Like, so there's no sin I could identify. And so think about reasons. And one of the things I like to do is encourage repentance by giving an obvious path to repentance. Make it easy to repent. Find a path for a little one that's easier to turn away from sin. Be careful at this point not to provoke children. Escalating correction endlessly, I think, is a way to provoke children. I want to go to a Puritan, William Gouge, commenting on Ephesians 6. Parents do not provoke your children to wrath. Sometimes people think the Puritans were harsh. They weren't. Surely you could probably find a harsh one, but they were very thoughtful. He's expositing the phrase, fathers do not provoke your children to wrath. He says the following, the best and nearest definition I can think of is to exasperate. The word indicates an extreme use of authority, even too much austerity and severity, by which children are provoked to wrath. Parents should pay careful attention to their conduct toward their children to give them no reason to be stirred up to anger. That's pretty strong language. Under this word, then, are forbidden all such things as may inflame anger in children. In other words, make it worse. Too much austerity in conduct, be too strict. Sourness in facial expression. Wow, look at that, they're saying be kind, smile to your child, just normal kindness. This is a Puritan in the 1600s. Threatening and insulting words, too hard of handling, a rough grabbing of a child. That's wrong, and again, this is William Gouge. Too severe correction, too much restraint of liberty, too small an allowance of things needed or similar things. I observe that parents must be so watchful over their own conduct that they do not make their children sin in it. And then earlier, Gouge says, of the two things that I'm called to do as a minister of the word, correcting children and correcting parents by the word. Listen to what he says. Ministers ought to be more earnest in urging parents to perform their duty because they are under no such power and authority as their children are. Fear of parents' authority does keep children in much awe, but there is no such thing to keep parents in awe in the home. Interesting language, again, that's a, Pearton commenting on don't provoke, don't escalate correction endlessly. Six, never give in. Oh, now that sounds like escalation, doesn't it? What do I mean by never give in? What I mean is you may not fix a problem Well, you never do by your own strength. You need the Lord's blessing. But what I mean by never give in is, if you see that there's a weed, it still has to be pulled, maybe not all in one day, but don't give up. Continue to use the means. Children are very, very smart. One, two, three, or I will scream, or whatever the ransom note they hand you says. If you give into them, guess what they're gonna do? I'm going to scream. Now you have a screamer. Again, I said earlier with a younger child, some correction off to bed to cool off. But the sin, you're praying for repentance and you're aiming for it and you're not giving up. I often, another thing I do is use humor to remind children of foolishness of their situation. I don't uncommonly use some humor to make them smile when they're trying to be as dour and bitter as possible. I often say to my children, you've lost your smile, where'd it go? Because I'm trying to teach you, I'm not trying to break you, I'm trying to teach you a better way. And humor can communicate kindness. It's the opposite of a parental temper tantrum. If you're able to control yourself, help them turn to repentance. And then finally, reaffirm your love to your children when they turn, even in the smallest of ways. You always love them. Usually they're not listening as well when they're mad at the world. But when they settle again, because no one can scream forever, encourage their hearts. It's not uncommon that for many years in the house that we live in, if I've had to talk to my child about a pattern, especially a little one, I'll follow it up with a little walk in the woods. and we'll make sure that, go for a little walk around the yard and say, I love you. I want you to know that I love you, and return to the joy of fellowship. With obedience comes blessing and a restoration of fellowship. And discipline shouldn't end with correction. It should end with a restoration of fellowship. And you should move towards that and make that, in other words, there's a way out. Correction brings beauty if it's followed. And prayer with your child, a warm embrace, a resolved conflict. Physical touch is important. Words of encouragement. Forgiveness sought and granted. A restoration of peace. And then talk about Christ and his mercy. And have a spiritual conversation. And I hope that helps for a method of dealing with a weed that you let grow. Okay, moving on. Two. A big, big topic that maybe we'll get halfway through today and continue the next week. My lessons are increasingly halfway across weeks and I apologize for that, but this one, that shouldn't be too bad because it's just a list and we can pick it up next week. We're moving on from young children to the reality of the fact that children grow to maturity and that there is a shift in life from childhood to being an adult. And we call the period in between when that change is happening adolescence, or we often think of it as the teenage years. And people say terrible twos and threes, right? People will say to you in parenting, terrible twos and threes, which I don't think exists. Don't consign yourself to a terrible period when children are almost cuter than they could ever be. Now, they get into more trouble than they could ever, you could ever imagine. But there's just an absolute sweetness of a two and three year old that should be, you should thank the Lord for it. There's a delight in little ones. The other one that people complain about is what? Teenagers, right? Terrible twos and threes in teenagers. So kids have like the first year of life, and they got a little period of life where they're under the radar, and these are the two horrible things. I don't think either of them have to be horrible. especially not in a Christian home. Surely there's challenges in both, but neither of them are terrible. That would be a terrible thing to say about our children even. But let me think about this idea of moving from being an adult to a child. It's interesting that the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 says these words. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things. And there in the word, you have a clear indication that there's two categories of life. He was a child, now he's a man, and I thought and acted one way, and now I have put those ways away. I put away childish things. And there is perhaps one verse that you might not think of in parenting, But it tells you that the Bible, the Apostle Paul, surely by the light of nature and also by the scriptures, anticipates a movement from childhood to adulthood that involves him consciously changing his behavior and putting away childish things. I can think of another verse that would give you a sense that there's a movement in life. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother. So getting out of the nest. So there's a goal to leave. Leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they should become one flesh. So there's this movement from living with father and mother to leaving father and mother. From being wholly dependent to beginning a new and separate household. And as Christians we should think about this. I could think of another A book of the Bible that reminds us of these two periods of life. Ecclesiastes 11 verse 9. Rejoice, O young man, in your youth. Let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. Therefore remove sorrow from your heart and put away evil from your flesh. For childhood and youth are vanity. Oh, they're passing quickly. So grow up, young man. You're growing up. that you're moving from one to the other. And then these words, remember now your creator in the days of your youth, before the difficult days come, the years draw nigh when you say I have no pleasure in them. And then he goes on to give that poetic description of being old. And so here we have three things in this passage. We have childhood, which is vanity and passing away. We have a youth that can be instructed by the word. And then we have The youth being pointed to the very end, and he's saying, now you're gonna have to live a certain way. And this idea of growth and maturity and understanding and a trajectory of life is all through the scriptures. I could keep reading more of these, but I'll just pick those for now. There is a great shift from life as a child to life as an adult. Now nature teaches this. We can talk about adolescence, we talk about these differences. Bodies change and strength and intellectual capacity and abilities develop. History teaches this. It's interesting if you, I didn't have, I don't have time to do it, but if you were just to study rites of passage, which are almost gone in our culture. But in high society, still in South Carolina, you can have a transition, a formal transition. from being a child to being introduced to society. Anyone know what it's called? So you have this movement where you were a child, now you're, these actually have deep historical roots. In Jewish tradition, you have a bar mitzvah and you are recognizing that you're moving from being a child to being an adult. And even the most primitive cultures and societies had an idea that there was a moment where you left childhood behind and you embraced this new responsibility of being an adult. Nature teaches us this, the scriptures, nature, history. Our laws reflect this. If a child commits a crime, they can't be tried as an adult. And then a child can't vote. You have to reach a certain age. A child can't drink alcohol to reach a certain age. And we're reflecting the difference between the judgment and ability of a child and an adult. So there's this period in between the teenage years, which are the movement from one to the other. The scriptures elsewhere, more than the passages that we read, assume the same and give, there's special instruction in the Word, especially in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, the passage I just read in Ecclesiastes, that are aimed specifically at this period of time. Proverbs, for example, begins with this language of the Son not forsaking the law of his father and his mother. It's an instruction, and if you read it to clearly an older son, and we know this, for example, from Proverbs 7, 6 and 7, Proverbs 6, my son, keep your father's command, do not forsake the law of your mother, and the rest of it is beware of adultery and prostitutes. I mean, this isn't a child anymore, this is a young man being instructed by the father in a period of life where there's tremendous temptation. And the scriptures are full of instruction for that period of transition, where there's still a father and mother speaking into life, but there is also the capacity to do very significant things. I actually think of another allusion to the same principle in Titus chapter one, where an elder's children are not to be guilty of debauchery or insubordination. And debauchery, A one-year-old cannot be debauched. It's not possible. They're not able to do the sins that come under the category of debauchery, which is basically drunkenness and sexual immorality, a publicly, a flagrantly dissolute life. And so you have, in the expectations of the Holy Spirit for the church and creed, an elder's children will not be doing these things, which means in this period where there's a possibility of doing these things, There's some parental care and oversight that the parents are still responsible for. So you have some adult abilities, but a need for wisdom, and that there's a relationship enough where this does not become the norm in the life of the child. The scriptures are then filled with this language, son and daughter, and wisdom being poured into even older children, and the bond between parents and children commanded in the law, repeated in the book of Ephesians, continues in this period of transition from childhood to adult responsibility. All this normally should lead to the leaving, that we talked about in Genesis 2.25, and the result, a new home. If the gift of singleness is not given, a new home with a husband and wife, each now equipped with the biblical precepts for what it means to be a man and a woman and live in a marriage and have interest in children and life together and work Ephesians 4, Proverbs 31, and enjoy that work and labor, ecclesiastes, all the way to old age. And so the generations roll, and they always roll in this pattern of I was a child, and then leading to a point I put away childish things. And in between is a great period of transition. It's obvious that this is a difficult period of life. Why might it be difficult for parents? There's not many teenagers here, but a few. It's a hard period for your parents. Huge changes are happening in their parenting. They're needing to learn to begin to let go. And some parents are good at this, and other parents are terrible at it. And you need to learn. Inevitably, your children are going to, like, my son is 18, and he lives in Canada. There's no, Miriam's 19 months. I mean, well, actually, she climbed out of bed just the other week, so that's not going to be a good illustration. But until she climbed out of bed, when I put her to bed at night, she couldn't get out of the bed. In other words, she was confined by my decision to put her in this kind of bed. Peter cannot be confined. He's 18 years old. He can walk out four o'clock in the morning. He can go wherever he wants, and he can do whatever he wants. I no longer have the kind of authority and control in his life that I once had. It's gone. If your parents need to realize it, it's going to leave, and you can't hang on to it forever. You're launching your children, and your authority is going to be exercised in new ways, and it's going to have new limits. Again, the child who once slept in a crib and had no choice, One day climb down, or one day climb out into the world, and that is inevitable, and it's nature, and there's no way you're ever going to change that, and you don't want to change it. However, it comes with a lot of challenges. For parents, it's hard to know where the wisdom lines are. It's very hard, and again, if you're children in here, listen, your parents wrestle with, where do I draw that line? What is the right place? And sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong. Be gracious to your parents, but if your parents love Christ, they want you to love Christ, and remember when they're trying to draw lines, they're doing that so that you would keep yourself unspotted from the world and love Christ, James, and respect that. They're not always going to get it right. You are always to respect them. And then talk to them kindly. Don't rebel. Children. And young people, children always deeply desire growing up from their youngest ages. I mean, Naomi's gonna be seven, and she's so excited to be one year older. And I'm this week gonna turn 48, and I'm not that old, but 50's approaching very quickly. And if you're older, your birthday's still reason for Thanksgiving, but it starts to mean a different thing as the years roll on. But for our children, we have to remember, they deeply desire to grow up. They want to be free. They're made for this, but they're still undeveloped in their wisdom and abilities to make it on their own. And our teenagers especially believe that they have the wisdom to make it on their own. Their abilities are fully developed, and they desire to grow up, and here we have some friction every now and then. So much is changing in their life. Life responsibilities, their bodies growing, their friendships, relationship with their parents. Suddenly being asked all sorts of serious questions about life. What are you gonna do with your life? I have no idea. Was I supposed to answer that? And then suddenly they're young adults. And I would argue this, growing up in one of the most complicated times that young adults have ever grown up, especially because of technology. We'll get to that in future weeks. Parents and children, you need much thoughtful reflection and understanding both ways. Ephesians 6, 1 to 4, all of you teenagers need to read it and all of you parents need to read it again for the teenage years. It still applies. And you need to read it and maintain that bond of love and respect as you together work through difficult things. Focus here is on parental duties. And I haven't gotten to my goals yet, but I'll get through a few of them. I want to go to Proverbs again and just read a few verses from Proverbs chapters 1 through 7. I'm just going to pick a few. I just want you to hear the tone and tenor of them. This is an instruction to a reasonable, what I mean by that is not a very small child, a child who can understand the word. My son, hear the instruction of your father. Do not forsake the law of your mother, for it will be a graceful ornament on your head and chains about your neck. My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent. If they say, come with us, let us lie and wait to shed blood. I mean, this language can be transposed to any age and any time. It is the language of a father and mother speaking to a reasonable, growing, young adult who has the capacity to be enticed by sinners in the world. And there is a Holy Spirit-inspired pattern here for that conversation. Proverbs 2, my son, if you receive my words, treasure my commands within you so that you incline your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding. If you cry out for wisdom, see that language, my son. Proverbs 3, my son, do not forget my law. Let your heart keep my commands. For length of days, long life and peace they will add to you. I've actually done this as an exercise with my children over the years, my teenage children, when we get a little bit sideways and I have a view and they have a view. I say, okay, how are we gonna sort this out? Why don't you go to your room or go somewhere, read Proverbs 1 to 7, and just slow down when you read father, mother, and son. And just think over it a little bit and see that conversation and see that you're in it and I'm in it. And then we'll come back and we'll talk again. And by God's grace, it's been helpful. It has been helpful. My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord. For whom the Lord loves, he corrects. Just as a father is a son in whom he delights. There's this great language here. Keep wisdom, my son. Let it not depart from your eyes. And you see that language here. My son, pay attention. Hear my children, the instruction of a father. Give attention to no understanding. I give you good doctrine. Listen to this, do not forsake my law. How many times have you parents said this to teenage children? I can remember being a teenager. Have you ever, sometimes I've said to my children, do you think I have this much memory loss already and I cannot recall being your age? Listen to the writer of Proverbs. When I was my father's son, see that language? I remember. what you're going through. We should use that language. Tender and the only one on the side of my mother, he also taught me and said to me, let your heart retain my words, keep my commands. Little hint there for grandparents that this is, there's a multi-generational instruction happening there that should continue on. So he's saying, listen, I'm telling you what my father told me. My son, give attention to my words, incline your ear to my sayings. My son, pay attention to my wisdom. Here, therefore, my children, do not depart from the words of my mouth. This is a beautiful conversation between parents and children. And if you have teenagers, your parents should go back to Proverbs 1 to 7 and read it and get some of its, pray for its wisdom to enter your heart. But it indicates again and again in the scriptures that there is this period of transition and temptation. And again, Proverbs 6, 20 and 7, 27, a parent addressing a son, common temptation, which couldn't be more timely, by the way, in an era of pornography in your pocket and the sins attendant with it. It is a period of constant parental involvement, prayer and teaching, this point of transition. And what I want to say is a way that maybe the Lord has helped us to think about this, which may help you, is get out of the weeds and begin by thinking, what are my goals? What am I trying to do? On a day when you're calm. and you're praying and you're reflecting on your life, ask yourself, what am I actually trying to accomplish? Because if you're anything like me, this is what you can devolve into. Lots of little skirmishes or fights or tension between parents and children where you're not quite agreeing. And what happens is what takes over your mind is it's just, I'm pushing, someone's not listening. And that starts to escalate and it will just turn into this ugly, angry, bitter discord. Because your child doesn't know what you're aiming for. You don't know what you're aiming for. You know that something's changing and you don't like it. They don't like that you're not changing. And you're not going anywhere. It's just stuck in being sideways. And you are the adult, and you should be thinking beyond these conversations and praying for something. Where are we headed? What is the aim of all of this? So that while you're having that conversation, you can think about how could this one small conversation tend to that greater end, so that I'm not just frustrated with a momentary attitude, or my child is not frustrated with my bad attitude, which happens. How can we look to a higher end? And if we have higher ends and clearer goals, this would help us teach our children. So goal number one, We want our children to walk with Christ. We pray that they would be converted, that they would exercise faith in Him. That's what we want for them. We want them to understand what it means to grow up in a Christian household, be under the covenant of grace, and respond to the promises and terms of the covenant. I want to read you a little section from a book called The Puritan Family. It's actually a very interesting book. Religion and Domestic Relations in 17th Century New England. I've read from it a few times. The New England Puritans had a very distinct, they spent a lot of time thinking about the topic we're talking about today. And they were very, very specific about how the Christian home and family ought to function. But, Let me read a little bit of what their, a summary of their view. The main business of the education and rearing of children was to prepare them for conversion. Now I don't, that language is a little awkward by this author, but the idea is they wanted their children above all to know Jesus Christ and love him. And they would do this by teaching the doctrines and moral precepts of Christianity. Parents who themselves had come to Christ were especially bound to educate their children. God had made a covenant of grace with a believer in his seed. He promised godly parents that he would have mercy on their children. I'm paraphrasing a little bit some sections here. However, when this promise came to children, the promise also called for a personal response. that they would believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, for even a believer's children were conceived and born in sin, and ignorant of true salvation apart from the work of God. The covenant promises did not give them an absolute claim to salvation, but it did give them privileges, and they were to be urged to lay hold of the promises. The holy bringing up of children, this is Peter Bulkley writing, is one special means of conveying the blessings of the covenant of grace to our children. So the holy child rearing is a means that God uses, which is exactly what God says to Abraham in Genesis 18, 19. Thomas Cobbett pointed out, the greatest love and faithfulness which parents as covenanters can show to God and to their children who in and with themselves are joint covenanters with God is to so teach them that what in them lies, the conditions of the covenant may be attended by their children. And so the whole covenant fully affected and the promised mercies of it also to them and to their children. It was by the teaching of the word and the prayer for the Holy Spirit that the believing parents were to pray for the spiritual good of their children. He calls them his, they belong to him by covenant. They have been solemnly consecrated to God. Bring them up for him to whom you have so solemnly consecrated them, your children. And so the children born in our family's reading on are born unto God, And a strict account one day will be required of us. These children God commits to us that we might teach them and that we might show them Christ. So this idea, your children should not want of knowledge and saving wisdom through gross negligence of parents. It's strong language from the New England Puritans. Simply put, God's given us covenant promises. Those promises mean parents are to convey the great doctrines of the covenant of grace. Centrally Jesus Christ, him crucified and risen again, and pray for our children's conversion. Now how could that be a goal, true spiritual life? What ought to be a goal, some parents say, well, I can't do that, so how could it be a goal? No, we aim for a lot of goals that require divine blessing. And we rightly do so, and then we get on our knees and pray. But the number one thing is, in your child rearing, it's not Harvard, and it's not, you know, now $150,000 a year income. It is the knowledge of God, true knowledge of oneself as a sinner, the knowledge of God that comes by knowing Jesus Christ, and this by the Holy Spirit. That's your goal. That's what you're praying for. That supersedes everything else. That is your highest aim as a parent. And don't forget that. And this should temper you when they make mistakes, that you be ready to preach the gospel to them. Maybe I'm gonna stop after goal number one, and then next time we're gonna go through those other goals. I'll stop here for questions. Usually I go too long, so today I'm going to repent of going too long. I'm tempted to keep going. Any questions on this so far? Teenage years. Any questions that you might want answered in the next weeks about teenage years? If you all have the question. A lot of them looking around. Some of you have had teenagers, some of you haven't. Any questions you might have for me about those years? Anything. Translation. All the way in the back. Rhonda. that's the balance of, okay, so shortly before Eileen and Lauren passed away, she and I had a very sweet conversation, and she gave another pearl of wisdom, which was never speak ill of your family, including your husband and your children, to other people, barring seeking help or confiding in a friend about hard situations. So being in the midst of teenage years, When we try to be careful how we speak about our children, I would not want them speaking about my weaknesses to their friends. So the balance between finding good advice and support, et cetera, from those in your circles, but also being careful to protect the privacy of your children. So the question is, Rhonda was remembering, I don't know John if you heard this, that Millie gave her some parenting advice years ago. So, which was to be careful about how you speak about your family, to honor your husband and to honor your children, and that your There should be a love and respect for them that you lift them up and build them up. You don't complain about them. But how do you balance that with sometimes the need for help or advice and counsel? Where is that? I actually think it's a very, very good piece of counsel. It's a very wise piece of counsel, which people in this age hardly seem to abide by. The number of times I hear of husbands and wives complaining about each other to other people. If this is a habit of yours, it's not a godly habit. You need to repent of it. You even need to be careful. Rhonda said, how about if you need counsel? There's times to seek counsel, but sometimes you can just put your gossipy frustration under the heading of I need counsel, and what you're really doing is just justifying your own complaining about your family. That would not be good. Love hopes all things, believes all things, bears all things. I could get into larger catechism on the ninth commandment. We don't spread bad reports. I'm really mindful of this. I'm very mindful of this. You might even notice it sounds crazy, but my 19-month-old daughter who's sitting back there who doesn't know what I'm saying, I'm mindful that she has a dignity that needs to be protected, and so do all of my children. And Laura Lee does. And so one of my duties in love, and if I hope at all to be respected, would be to maintain and lift up that dignity for my whole family and never want to say one bad thing about them. but rather look at them and think through the lens of the gospel with mercy and then speak of them through that same lens. And I don't know if I'm really answering your question. There's times to seek, there's certainly times to seek counsel. I can tell you as a pastor, people come into my study and they are just ready to lob grenades at each other and there's no respect in that relationship. You know, the problems are so deep. One of the ways that godly relationships work are mercy and respect for one another, even at hard moments. So when I see none of that, I know that things are really, really in bad shape. Rhonda, am I answering your question at all? Basically, I'm saying I think Millie gave you some golden advice. Advice that has been lost in our disrespectful and gossipy age. I also think, maybe I'll say one more thing about that. Just imagine if you were willing to complain about somebody that you hadn't prayed for first. You hadn't quietly and privately taken it to the Lord. Here's a good question. How much have you prayed over this? That might tell you something about your heart. But it's not wrong to ask for advice. I think close, trusted friends that will maybe respect your family and not pass it on, and you could say, listen, I've had this happen, and what would you do? Well, you can encourage one another as parents. But I don't ever want to complain about any of my children to anybody, or Laura Lee to anybody. Anyway, some good advice, Mr. Van Boris, from your lovely bride, from whom I received good advice, too. Anything else? When you were talking about recognizing that you had, or I think you had a question about when you let weeds grow, repenting to God, is there a, I would assume at some point you should repent to the people who are affected by your sin. Is there a benefit to preventing the very young children or wait until they're older? Oh, repenting to children. Yeah, when I said if you let a weed grow, yeah, parents are like, I can't believe you're doing that. And back to the bad conversation I had with my mother, I don't think actually to this day, hopefully this isn't proud that I was entirely wrong, parents spoil their children, and we need to be, we need to take responsibility for what is ours. And she probably would just have used different words, she didn't mean that, but. All of us, I mean, actually, it's interesting. If I talk to my mother, my mother will say to us as children something quite remarkable. She feels like, if she looks back, she's very humble, and she doesn't think, oh, I did all these things right. She will say, I can't fully understand how the Lord, what he did, and she still prays for me, I think, the same way. that she did when I was a little child. Because she still doesn't have confidence in her own flesh or in mine, which is good. And it makes no difference that I'm a pastor. She will still, and if she thinks she needs to tell me something I need to hear, she'll still tell me just the same. Let me get back to your question more properly. Yeah, repenting to children is good. It's very hard to repent to a little child. I think the way you repent to a little child In your actions, you don't, your repentance is not being exasperated. You're kinder, more gracious, and more understanding. That's how you repent to little children. Older children, when they understand you've been wrong, you ought to repent to them like you do anyone else. You don't have to tell them where you sinned, you gotta ask them for forgiveness. And that ought to be a pattern of your parenting. I have some lines that I use often. I'll say, there's something that a child can be tempted to do, especially, a child that's a teenager, if you repent, they're like, see, I was right. I never let that, I never let them get away with that one. I'm like, listen, this was my sin, if this was yours, you need to repent of it, and I'm still your dad, and I'm not ashamed of being your dad. God gave me an office, office of father, and my sin didn't take it away, so I still, I have to repent of it, and I have to carry on with my duties. But, so that's, there's a careful balance there. I don't know if that helps, but yes, yes, good. At the end of the day, I mean, last night when we prayed, at the end of a week, I lead in prayer with my family after dinner, and we pray for the forgiveness of our sins, and that's all of us. and anticipating God reminding us of his mercy this morning, all of us. And there's a great equality under God, and we should model that. We should model it as parents. And not be afraid to say that. But then say, God gave me a role in your life, and here's your role in my life. Let's live the way he made us. So, if you haven't done that, parents, Good time to start would be today, and just say, there's ways I haven't been what I should be, and I've asked God for forgiveness, and I ask you, and please forgive me. And it's a good reminder for me. I probably should go home and think if I've made any mistakes today, and ask for mercy. It's a good, it's a very good pattern. I think in times past, parents said don't do that because they thought they would lose their authority. You know what I mean? Oh no, but I think it's a good pattern. It brings us all to the foot of the cross together, which is where we want to be. Okay, one more Darrell. I'm still going to get in trouble. You manage the expectation, particularly with those kids that are more understanding, I have a memo I should have. Here's where I messed up. Here's what it'll look like going forward. Surprises don't tend to work well, particularly with the younger ones who are not thinking as clearly or rationally. So if you just spring discipline for this new thing that you've discovered or grown in the understanding of, you might be trying to get to the right goal, but you are going about it in a sort of reckless manner. Children don't like changes like that either. My parents read a parenting book when I was 17. They were like, wow, we should change some things. My sister's laughing here. She remembers this. So they were like, after dinner, we're going to do this whole new thing. And we all were like, what? We've been doing this for 17 years. We don't like this. Maybe it means some new thing. As a matter of fact, I believe they did not successfully implement some of them because of the momentum of our family traditions. And I think at that time, let's see, my brother, my older brother, he'd be 23. Yeah, when your children are that old, it's like turning a oil tanker. There's a long arc. Be more patient. Anyway, let's pray together. Father in heaven, we are grateful for your mercy. You are our Father and we are all your children. And Lord, you are so great and high and holy and lifted up, and the distance between you, the creator, and we, the creature, is so great. We could not even know you if you did not condescend to us. And we thank, then, God of your fatherhood, that we are able to come to you with that intimacy and nearness as children. Lord, we pray with thanksgiving that your gentleness has made us great and that you chastise us when we need it, that you are loving and perfectly wise. We pray that by your word and spirit and through the ministry of our mediator, Jesus Christ, by that word and spirit, that you would help us to ponder our callings, especially to serve our children as they grow from childhood to adulthood, that in these difficult years, of temptation from the world and strength perhaps beyond wisdom, that you would help us to be faithful and steady guides, pointing the next generation to Jesus Christ and Him crucified and presenting again why he is worthy to be loved and lived for in everything. Lord, we pray also for the grace of repentance, as we've talked at the end, that where we have been wrong, that we would repent, perhaps husbands and wives to each other, perhaps parents to children and children to parents again, that you might bring a restoration of fellowship and communion in our homes. And we pray for these things in Jesus' name, amen.