out on the family and on parenting particularly. I don't know why, but this screen isn't working. It's flashing no signal. I don't have to have it. I'll just use my iPad here. But anyway, just so you know that's happening. And it's working here, right? Yeah. So we are talking here about discipline tonight, about what we would call formative discipline, or really it's going to be dealing with forming the right kind of heart and behavior in our kids. We talked about this last week to some degree, and really communication. How should we communicate with our kids? and what kinds of communications should we have. I think this will be very helpful. Just a brief summary of last week, because I think the two things, this week and last week, they go together. First, just a reminder from last week, we must deal with the problem of the heart, not just behavior. If you remember last week, we talked a lot about that, that we've got to deal with the problem of behavior. It's not that we ignore that problem. but we need to deal with the problem of the heart as well. And in doing so, and I think this is probably the most important part about this, in doing so, it prepares our children to receive the gospel. So it prepares our children to do that. Now, let me ask you a question, just as a recap. Can anybody tell me, from last week, or just in your own thinking, how does it prepare our children to receive the gospel? How does pointing to the heart problem prepare our children to receive the gospel? Any ideas? Yes? You can't fix your own heart. OK. All right. We don't have the ability to fix our heart? Good. What else? Yes? ultimately shows the child that they are in need. Yeah, it exposes our sin. The old adage, you've got to get them lost before you get them saved is actually true. If they don't know they're lost, then they can't be saved. And so our children need to understand that. I mean, there is a way to raise children with just sort of you're dealing with their behavior where they learn that it would be smarter to behave than to not behave, to act up. And kids can learn that over time. Okay, I'm just going to be smarter about this. And then what happens with them usually, if they're smarter about it, what happens is they get sneaky about it. Because the sin nature will still kick in. Their heart will kick in in the wrong way. And so we want to show them. Can I tell you from personal experience, I've been working on this this week with my youngest, particularly. When I go through these things, I think about them myself. OK, were we doing this the way we should? and it's they're great reminders and great things that I'm learning as well going through this and so I've done this particularly this week and it's been a real it's been interesting to watch my youngest so my youngest has, she's like extremely sinful and, you know, she's just like a totally lost pagan person. And I know none of you know what that's like with your kids, but you know, with her, she definitely is. And, and so she gets angry. She's always, she's very defensive about everything. She wants to make sure that everything's fair. It doesn't get away. She gets upset. So I've been pointing out, you know, that shows you have a selfish heart. You know, the fact that you're being defensive about that shows that you have a prideful heart. I've been doing that a lot the last couple weeks. And I will tell you, even it's made her think. She is, she's sort of thinking about it. And what I've seen in her is sort of a humility. It's either humility or Or, like, I better just shut down because my dad lectured me so he quits. I'm not sure which it is. But anyway, it appears that there is sort of a humility there as she begins to understand that this is a heart problem. And it doesn't mean that I don't do other things as well in disciplining her. I do, but I'm really emphasizing that, and I encourage Elizabeth to do the same thing. I can just tell you from personal experience that it's been helping, I think. Anyway, I encourage you to do that. They've got to see that their problem is not a hard problem. In other words, just conformity to our rules, if you learn conformity, that's not enough. that you're learning how to fake it, not to have a heart change. And we want to teach our children to, we want to teach them that God's way is from the inside out, not just conforming the outside. Otherwise, we're raising what? We're raising little Pharisees, actually, who aren't concerned about their hearts. This week we're going to talk about communication. So here are the things we're going to cover. We're going to cover why we communicate, what we communicate, how we communicate, and when and where we communicate. So we're going to look at just this whole idea of communicating with our kids. So let's first ask the question, why we communicate? You say, well, that's a silly question. I mean, what? Of course you've got to communicate with your kids. But you know, not always, not all parents communicate with their kids. Sometimes we take a minimalist approach and we try to communicate with them as little as possible and just try to get them to do what we want them to do and we're not really thinking about how we communicate with them. And one of the major reasons that we ought to communicate is really to reflect God. He is the great communicator. And so it says, for example, in Hosea 6, 6, for I desire mercy and not sacrifice and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. So God says in that passage that I prefer you know me rather than you do things for me. Now he's not saying, God isn't saying don't do things for me. He's saying, out of the two, out of the options, I would rather that you know me. I prefer knowledge of me over doing things for me. Now, what we should be doing is knowing God more and then, as a result, doing more for him because of our relationship with him. We want to serve him because of our knowledge of him and our relationship with him. But God's emphasis is on knowing him. And then doing, and I'm not talking just about academic knowledge, I'm saying to know him and to have a relationship with him, to communicate. God's the great communicator. He communicated 66 books to us, full of himself. He chose to reveal himself to us through his word, and he chose to reveal himself through his spirit and through Christ. Christ is the word. And so, What we do is we get this backwards with God, but we also get it backwards with our kids. So what we do with the Lord is we try to do things for Him, but we don't spend a lot of time getting to know Him. Is that not a temptation for all of us? I'm sure it is. But you know, we can do the same thing with our kids, where we want to do all kinds of things for them. But we're really not communicating knowledge of God and really getting to know them and having them get to know us. We're not doing a lot of communicating. We're just doing things for them. Yeah? What if your communication is more one-sided or one-way and the child's not really responsive or doesn't engage? What do you do at that point? Or what would you suggest? So what does God do with us? I mean, that's kind of the question we would have to ask. I think that there's a sense in which... You know what, let's go through, because some of this might be answered by some of what... That's a great question, but let's... There's different ways to communicate, and we're going to get into all that, but that's a good question to set up some of our answers in. So feel free to bring it up at the end and we can talk more about it, but let's keep going with this. Deuteronomy 6.4 says, But then notice what the commandment is. and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." So scripture is clear that we ought to be instructing, giving knowledge, helping them to understand the truths of God's word. So what do we communicate? Well, There's much we can, so the Bible, two reasons, we emulate God when we communicate with our kids, and it's commanded to do that, that's the two reasons. So what do we communicate? Well, there's much that we can give them that is helpful, but is not really life-giving. But even more than thinking biblically, what do we really want for our kids? That's really a question we need to ask. So in communicating with our kids, there are life lessons we talk about. My dad is kind of one of those jack-of-all-trades guys who knows a little bit about everything and a lot about some things. And he's one that, you know, when we were out working on the car, he'd teach me how to work on the car, and we did an addition on our house, I was right in there with him and he'd teach me how to do that. All those kinds of things, you know, we did together and he would, you know, and they're good practical things to do, don't get me wrong, it's fine. But if that's all we're teaching our kids is just practical nuts and bolts things to do, then we're really missing what God really wants. So, the question that we need to ask ourselves, in order to know what we're going to teach our kids, and what we're going to communicate to our kids, what's the primary goal, what's the primary thing we're going to be teaching or communicating, then we need to decide what our goal is for our kids. So what should be our primary goal for our kids? Okay, love the Lord. So, okay, I'm fine with that. So if we want our kids to love the Lord, then we need to teach them who the Lord is. To know him is to love him, right? Anybody who really knows the Lord is going to love him. So we need to obviously do that. Let's think a little bit more than just loving God. It's not a wrong answer at all. But let's go a little more precisely. What exactly are we looking, what is our primary goal for our kids? Okay, obedience is important. Salvation. Okay, salvation. Okay, why are we saved? What's the reason God saves us? To glorify him. Okay, ultimately to glorify him, so that can't be a wrong answer. We want our kids to ultimately glorify him. How do we glorify him through our salvation? Discipleship. Okay, discipleship. What is the goal of discipleship? No. Sorry. What is the goal of discipleship? I mean, that's what you're doing in discipleship. That's not the goal of discipleship. When someone is a disciple of Christ, what is God's goal for that disciple? Sanctification. What is the goal of sanctification? Thank you, Christ-likeness. Okay, we got there. The goal is to be conformed to the image of Christ. Our future elders got the right answer there. I wouldn't look too much into that because I didn't get it until the very end. Everybody else said so graciously. All right, Romans 8.28, as Christian parents, we must have one supreme objective for our children, that they are conformed, that they're gradually changed into the image of Christ. We're saved to glorify God. How do we glorify God? Well, we're being conformed to the image of Christ. In other words, this goes back to multiple weeks ago, Why were we created? What did God create us in what? In His image, right? To glorify Him. What did sin do? Messed it up. What does salvation do? Salvation is in not only begins the process, but helps us through life in the process of being more conformed to the image of Christ. That's what the goal is of salvation, Christ-likeness. So when we are Christ-like, then we are glorifying God. So that's got to be the goal for our kids. The goal for our kids is Christ-likeness. That's the goal. That's the primary goal. Now, God's given them a specific calling in life, but if our primary goal is Christ-likeness, what should we be communicating to our kids with that in mind? See, this is a little bit different. Let me separate for you a little bit. Sometimes we think in terms of, well, I hope my kid gets saved early. And I would suggest to you that that is a short, that is a goal that's not a bad goal necessarily, but actually that could be a counterproductive goal. I want my kid to be conformed to the image of Christ. Salvation has to happen in order for that to take place. But as children, we want our children to grow in the Gospel, and to realize that the Gospel is something that I need to live out every day of my life. and that ultimately it is the gospel that changes me, even once I'm saved, it changes me day by day into the image of Christ. And so that's what we want to communicate to our kids. Our primary thing we want to communicate is the thing that's going to help us meet what we believe to be our goal for our kids. Now ultimately, do we have control over this? We don't. In fact, that verse actually says that. For whom he did foredo, he also did predestine to become conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he predestined, then he also called. Whom he called, these he justified, and whom he justified, these he also glorified. But the goal is that we are conformed to the image of Christ. Isaiah 55.11 says, So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent. Psalm 119.105, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light unto my path. So if our primary goal is Christ-likeness for our kids, well, how do we reach that goal? Well, we're going to have to teach them the Word. Now, this is all basic, right? Obviously, if they're going to understand what Christ is like, they need to understand the Word of God. I think it's important for us to understand that that has got to be what we primarily teach them. That is what we're trying to communicate, what we want to communicate to them. is the Word of God, and so that it can be a light, a lamp to their feet, and a light to their path. When you look at the book of Deuteronomy, you see this teaching them all the time, as they're walking, walking by the way, as they're sitting down, there's this constant teaching of the Word of God to our kids, and it's clearly in Scripture that way. Hebrews 4.12, for the Word of God is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even the division of soul and spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. There is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open the eyes of Him. to whom we must give account. And this is important, and I think it answers to some degree Josh's question about what happens if it's one direction. Well, God says his word will not return unto him void. That doesn't mean that God's word will always soften someone and cause them to want to follow Christ. Sometimes the word of God actually hardens somebody. But it won't be void, it won't be empty, it won't do nothing. It will do something. It will either soften or it will harden. And so we need to teach our kids the Word of God. 1 Timothy 3.16, all scripture is given is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuke, correction, and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Okay, so we understand what we're supposed to communicate. We understand the goal. I want to teach my children Christ's likeness. I want the goal to be Christ's likeness so that they can glorify the Lord. The way that I'm going to do that is by teaching them the Word of God and training them in the Word of God. But then the question then becomes, how do we communicate that? Because oftentimes we are only thinking, when we think of communicating the Word of God, what do we think of? Just generally, what do we think of? What's that? Okay, well that's not wrong, but as far as the actual communication of it, what do we think of? We think of preaching. Somebody standing up and preaching the Word of God. Is that what you do with your kids? So you have a pulpit in your living room, and you sit them down, and you put them in rows. This is what I do every morning. No, I don't do that. I don't do that. That's not what I do. Preaching is the primary way in God's church that he says to communicate the Word. There's no question about that. But when it comes to how we're to teach our children the Word of God, we have a different emphasis in Scripture. So besides that, what are other ways we communicate God's Word? I'm just curious what you would think of. Example. Okay, by example, good. That's important. Family devotions. Okay, family devotions. Music. Okay, music, good. All right, I want us to think about, is there an example of a father communicating to a son or a child in scripture that we can look at and say, okay, or a parent, a parent, that we can look at and say, okay, that's how to communicate truth or knowledge, or I'll give you a little hint, wisdom. Yeah, prophets. The whole book of Proverbs is a father communicating knowledge to his kids, to his son. So we have an example of that, of how that's done in Proverbs. But is Proverbs all just, let me tell you a bunch of truth, let me tell you a bunch of facts, is it all just instruction? It's not, there's other kinds of communication there. So let's go through this, you'll see what I mean. We often reduce parenting to three elements. Rules, correction, and punishment. And thereby, we reduce parenting to three roles. Lawgiver, cop, and warden. Lawgiver, we give you, children go to bed. We give our children the rules. Cop, you police your children for breaking the rules. Why are you playing with your dress up clothes when I put you in bed? Hopefully that's your little girls. Warden, you enforce the sentence handed out for the infraction. Okay, you didn't do that, now mommy or daddy, we have to discipline you. Sometimes, now I'm not saying any of these are wrong roles for parents. All of these are necessary roles for a parent. Sometimes we reduce our roles to simply that. We're lawgiver, cop, and warden. Some of us are really good at these three, and some of us are not so good at these three. I tend to be pretty good at these three. My wife is not that good at these three. She's good in other areas, like enforcing the rules, and one of us has to have some mercy. So she's the mercy person. I'm like, get in bed. But I've got to be careful that I'm not just, okay, I told you to get in bed, you're not, come down here, you're getting a spanking. I mean, yes, that is all part of it, but I can't just be doing that. That can't be the only thing I'm doing. So in addition to rules, correction, and discipline, we are to do these things. These are all forms of communication. Encouragement, rebuke, entreaty, Instruction, warning, and prayer. These are all found in the Book of Proverbs in one place or another. Some more than others. So let's go through these and kind of flesh these out, what these are. First of all, let's look at rebuke. A rebuke censures behavior. Sometimes a child must experience a sense of alarm, shock, and dismay at what he has said or done. Perhaps your child picks up language outside of the home. The use of that word publicly or anywhere else is not acceptable behavior. Scripture says, don't let unwholesome talk come out of your mouths. So what do you do? Well, there's this sort of, hey, we don't say that here. That would be rebuke. Don't say that. That's not an appropriate thing to say. Now, if the kid had no idea what he was saying or she was saying, then the rebuke, it's still going to be rebuke, but it's going to be a lot softer than if he or she knew what they were saying. But that would be an example of rebuke. I think rebuke is pretty easy for us to get. We get rebuke as far as understanding what that looks like. Somebody does something wrong, you say, that's wrong, don't do that anymore. That's rebuke. But let's go to entreaty. Entreaty is an earnest and intense communication. It can be pleading, urging, and even begging. It is the earnest pleading of a father or mother who, understanding his child in the way of God and the need of the moment, is willing to bear his soul in earnest pleading for his child to act in wisdom and faith. But this is different than just rebuke. You're wrong, I'm right, do what you're supposed to do. Sometimes, entreaty is necessary. It's probably better that my dad's not here, because I'm going to talk about it. It's good, but anyway. I will never forget the time, and my dad does not cry often. I think I've seen my dad cry a couple times in my whole life, maybe three or four times in my whole life. But I'll never forget the time where I was just hard-nosed rebellious. And it was like, I was about, I was young, I was about 10 years old or so. And he actually read the passage of scripture in Proverbs, where it says, he read it to me, he says, the passage we're talking about being stiff-necked, being often rebuked, will suddenly be destroyed, and that would outrun that passage. So he was reading that to me. And I was just there, and I just stone cold, I was just stubborn, I wasn't going to budge. And he just wept. And he didn't get angry, and he just cried. And he said, I am really concerned. You're going the wrong direction. It's going to hurt you. and God's going to have to deal with you if you don't go the right direction. So this is an entreaty. I'm going to beg you to do the right thing. This is not I'm angry or I'm warning you. All of that's happening. But entreaty should be something that doesn't happen very often. This is occasionally when something is very significant and very severe that we really just, this is weighty and we're really concerned, so we just earnestly plead for our kids to go the right direction. So that's another way of communication. So we've got rebuke, we've got entreaty, Here's another one, instruction or teaching. Now this is the one we probably most commonly think of, and here's the truth. The truth is, entreaty shouldn't be used often, because entreaty needs to be entirely sincere. You try to do that by faking it, your kids are gonna figure that out real quick. So this is something you are heartfelt, really concerned about and it comes out. But sometimes, here's what we men do, we feel really grieved about something and it's so hard for us to communicate that it comes out in anger. You know what I'm talking about, men? And so it comes out in a different way than really it should come out. And we get really mad because it's easier to feel mad than to feel hurt. and then we lash out at our kids. Where what we should do is this entreaty and we plead with our kids when we see that they're going the wrong direction. So, entreaty is one. But that should be used rarely. On the other hand, instruction should be used all the time. Instruction and teaching should be the way of life for our families. This should be our culture as a family. This is the process of providing a lesson, a precept, or information that will help your children to understand the function of their world. As a parent, you are the main means by which God is going to move your children from complete ignorance to knowledge of the world and the wisdom of God." So you see, the majority of what you see, and it's not exclusive, the majority of communication you see in Proverbs is instruction. Constantly, Solomon says, hear my instruction, listen to the instruction of a wise son who listens to his father's instruction. Which ends up being a little bit more pleading and warning and other things as well, but there's a lot of instruction in there. The culture of our families should be biblical instruction. That should be the culture of our families. Because that's the knowledge of the Word of God which is going to change the heart and communicate the gospel and ultimately get us to our goal of conformity to the image of Christ. Warning is the next one. So you see this in Proverbs as well. Warnings put our children on guard against a probable danger. A warning is not a threat when best used. It is merciful speech. It's the equivalent of posting a sign informing drivers of a bridge that is out. And you find this in Proverbs. So let's look at an example. For example, Proverbs 14.23 says, All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty. That's an example of a warning. And there's lots of those in Proverbs as well. You're going to end up in calamity if you do this. Foolishness, you're going to end up this way if you continue that. And so do you suppose we ought to be warning our kids sometimes? I mean, sometimes the right kind of communication is actually warning. It's not necessarily instruction, they've been told before, but I'm gonna warn you. So sometimes if you said the same thing over and over again as far as instruction, to add a warning and say, look, you need to understand what's gonna happen, not what I'm gonna do to you, but what's gonna happen in your life if you keep going down this road. If you keep going down the road of laziness, and you don't learn to be diligent, If you don't learn to do what you don't want to do in life, you know what happens to people that never learn to do what they don't want to do in life? They don't do anything in life. Okay. All right. And they end up becoming very lazy, selfish, gratifying people. And sometimes they just, they end up really crashing, crashing and breaking. So to warn our kids about that is something that we, sometimes that's the right approach. And we have to be wise with what kind of communication we are giving to our kids based upon the situation that we're dealing with and the person that we're dealing with and all those kinds of things. The normal mode should be instruction. That's the culture, but then sometimes we need to adjust to one of these others' rebuke or warning or entreaty. Example of a helpful warning, we ask our children to stay in their bed and try to sleep during nap time. So we sometimes say, sweetheart, you've gotten out of your bed yesterday during nap time. If you get out of your bed again today, I'm going to have to discipline you. So you're just saying, look, you did this last time, if you do it again, I'm gonna have to discipline you. So that's a helpful warning as a young child, what you might be telling your kids. A harmful or problematic warning is this, do you want a spanking? That's a problematic warning. That's a rhetorical question if there's ever been one. Don't ask a kid if he wants a spanking. Because it's a dumb question or it's a rhetorical question. So that kind of warning is going to really kind of incite a sort of a, it's not a genuine question. And so that kind of thing is not good. Now, you could say you're going to get a spanking. That's fine. My dad used to say, you're cruising for a bruising. He used to say that all the time. I have it in my head. It will always be there. Did I say that? Did I say that to you guys? Not like now, but have I said that to you? Yeah, a little bit. Okay. Anyway, so I don't know that it's necessarily wrong to warn a child that if you keep going down this direction, you are going to get spanked if you keep doing this. Another example, I'm going to count to 10. This is not a good one. I'm going to count to 10, and if you're not in here by the time I reach 10, you'll get a spanking. So the problem with this is that you've just taught the kid that delayed obedience is fine. You've got 10 seconds to come in here, that kind of a thing. So try to avoid that kind of thing. prayer. Prayer is the last kind of communication we'll talk about. Yes? Even without counting though, there is a level of delay sometimes. So do you discipline immediately upon not following? So if you say come here and they don't, whether you're here by a count of ten or not, they're still predisposed to procrastinate in their response sometimes. Yeah, so I would discipline immediately. You know, what we would say is when we say, hey, come here, and they're not coming or whatever, they say, OK, hold on a minute. I would reply back without hesitation or without delay is obedience. Yeah. My dad used to say, delay to obedience is disobedience. So they would either respond now or they're going to get a looker. Yeah. Yeah, so that's how we've done it and that's how I was raised basically as well. Delayed obedience is disobedience. I would hear that all the time growing up. Delayed obedience is disobedience. And of course you can't always discipline right on the spot, but you're going to say, you will get a discipline when you get home. And we all know what a discipline is. I knew what a discipline was. Anyway. Or whatever else you want to say, but you tell them right away, you are going to, when you get home, that's going to happen. I know when my kids were really young and couldn't, so when they're really young, to wait until you get home is somewhat problematic because they won't necessarily make the connection. The next one is prayer. Prayer is not communication with a child, but with God. But it is a very important part of communication in the family. It is a central element of communication between the parent and the child. Understanding what and how our children pray is often a window into their souls, and vice versa. A child can see the parent's heart as he or she entreats their holy God. So praying with your children, praying in front of your children, allowing your children to pray some as well, if they can do it seriously, those kinds of things. Prayer is an important aspect of communication as well. Well, any other questions about communicating the word? Summary, you've heard the line, if the only tool you have in your belt is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. So be careful about that. It's not just one monolithic way of thinking about communication. As parents, we need to develop a rich tool belt that God has given us in communication. We need to avoid being merely lawgiver, cop, and warden. And we want to be coach, encourager, challenger, leader, teacher, and prayer partner. So we need to think in those kind of terms as far as communication. parenting, this is also something I want to mention. It's a giant act of faith. This communication in the biblical manner of the truths of Scripture is seed sowing. We wait to see what comes up, and by faith we wait and pray and trust. This is a daily week-by-week, day-by-day, year-by-year, seed-sowing process that we're doing in our kids' lives, and we are hoping that it comes out the right way. And we have no guarantees that it's coming out the right way. We're just trusting that the Word of God will do its work in their lives. Let me encourage you this way. Even if it sometimes looks like it's not going to, you don't know what the final result is going to be. I can think of a man by the name of Adoniram Judson. Some of you know him. He's a missionary to Burma. He graduated from college at 19, I believe, Brown University. He got caught up with the wrong friends and ended up going the wrong direction. But the Lord, through his parents' prayers and the teaching that he had, he testified to this, that the teaching that he had in his early life brought him back to a place where he finally was in a place of repentance, becoming one of the greatest missionaries of modern church history, and missionary to Burma, and God really worked in his life. So God's word doesn't return to his void, but I'll just, as we learned on Sunday, God's, God's ways are not our ways, and he's not in a hurry, and a lot of times things take way longer than we want them to take in our kids' lives. So this is something to keep in mind. We're instructing, we're communicating the word, and then we're trusting the Lord to do what only he can do in the lives of our kids. And none of this is a, okay, a formula where you'll definitely get this result, because you have this thing called the heart, and you have this thing called the Gospel, and the Spirit of God, who is the only one that can apply the Gospel to the heart. We can't do that. The only thing we can do is communicate. So we want to be the best communicators of the Word of God that we possibly can. Any questions about the subject of communicating as parents? Did I answer your question? Sort of? I think I would chalk it up to the last statement is that at the end, the Lord's going to get the glory based on what you're... You don't have to have necessarily a reply or engaged interaction in order for God's work to be accomplished. Sure. Visualizing, if they're seeing, if there's communication, God still can do what God will do. God will do what God does. Yeah, I agree. I think the only thing I would add to that is that sometimes when when instruction isn't working, to look at the other options of communication and to say, OK, well, is there a warning I need to express here? Or is there an entreaty here? Or is there something else I need to express here besides just instruction? It took a long time. People, me, I want immediacies, I want recognition, I want you to understand, and so maybe it's something more about me and not them. God's delays often are to do something more in us. It's often why he delays things. Yes? I think of that verse, you know, where it says fathers, and I'm sure it means any parent, don't provoke your children to anger at God. At any point in your opinion, do you feel like instruction can go awry and push your child further away from God if you push too hard? Or do you feel that always press the instruction as long as your intention is the biblical learning? Or is there a time you should back off and kind of let them? Yeah, probably, you probably could. Yeah, that could be a danger, I think. It's my opinion. I think you instruct scripturally to not provoke our children to wrath. It says, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. So it seems, though, it seems that the opposite of of instruction is to provoke them to wrath in that passage. But I suppose you probably can... I mean, I think you definitely can warn when you should instruct. Or you can rebuke when you really should just be instructing or warning. So I definitely think the manner in which you do it has a lot to do with it. The timing in how you do it. So the thing that you want to evaluate, I think, partially is how they have the ability to receive the truth that you're giving them. So for me to give really in-depth instruction to a two-year-old, I can, but I'm not sure it would make sense. So I think you have to factor some of those in. Jeff? You were mentioning earlier that the word would have some effect, whether it's hardening or softening. If it's hardening, is that a sign that you're using the wrong method, or are there times where hardening is appropriate? No, I think there's times where hardening... So, what we see in Scripture is that God sometimes has to harden before He breaks people. And it's a hard, man, I'd rather just not go through that personally, but no, I think the word, I don't, my point was that you have to instruct with the word of God, and it will do what it's supposed to do, and that might include hardening, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. Hardening might happen for a while, and then God will have to work in their heart, you know, they have a stiff necked heart, they're stiff necked, and God will have to break them in His time. So yeah, I wouldn't say necessarily that, but I think that's different. than provoking your children to wrath, where you're frustrating them. That's what the word means, provoke to wrath, and usually that has to do, and actually it can apply to both parents, you're right, but fathers tend to be more inclined to frustrating their kids because, and you can frustrate your kids by giving them things to do that they can't get done, they're just frustrated. So you want to try to avoid frustrating your kids. Changing the rules, by the way, frustrates. Like if I got a law one day and things change the next day, if things just keep changing all the time, that would frustrate. So that would be an example. I just thought on that frustration part, it's not necessarily, I wouldn't put it on the auspice of like in our family we do X, Y, and Z and other families might do Y so our child's upset because he'd rather do Y versus X, Y, and Z. You don't want to weigh that into the whole, well, I'm causing my child to laugh. And so that's important. But also I think that on that same note, I think that one thing that makes me nervous is all get out is I feel as if I'm not constantly giving instruction or correction or training or whatever discipline or concept, whatever it might be. And I do say, okay, well, then my hands are off and I give it to God. I get nervous. because God, yes, he's just, yes, he's right, but yes, he will bring, he can bring really strong correction, which makes me super nervous of letting go like that. Is that fair to say? Yeah. But I mean, sometimes that's what it takes. I mean, um, you know, God said to in first Corinthians five, or yeah, first Corinthians five with the unrepentant center, turn them over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh and God's going to deal with them directly. And sometimes that's what it takes. I do want to mention also, that is a very common thing, extremely, especially as the kids get older, there's constant comparing, well, their family does this, and my friends do this, and all of that, and I say to my kids all of the time, our family is our family, we will do what we, I am not going to stand accountable for what your friends do. before the Lord, I'll stand accountable for what I allow you to do. That's not what it's talking about when it's provoking your children to rap. I know that before the Lord, I'm going to have to stand before Him. I don't have to judge. Well, some things are straight biblical, and no family should be doing it, frankly. I don't have to say, well, that family's wrong and I'm right. All I have to simply say is that I'm doing the best I can with what God's given me for the direction of my family, and my kids have to understand that. And there are many times I will say, the Ganam family doesn't do that. We just don't. And that's not provoking your children around. That's not what I'm talking about. Okay, teens you can be dismissed.