Every one of you men has some particular talent, ability. Every one of you men has, you know, strong points. Where'd you get them? You got them from a designer, a creator. You got them from God. If you have mechanical ability, it came from God. If you have technological ability, you can sit at a computer and figure things out. If you're a book person, if you're a hands-on person, whatever you are, you have that from God. And God made you to differ from other people, but everything you have, you got from God. Guess what? Everything your children have came from God. And they're different than you are. And one of the great, can I say, mistakes that we as dads make is trying to make our kids like us. We talked in our first session about being conformed to the image of Christ. We're all brought to the same image. And the key here is that you don't, for me, to make little farnumlings. That's not the issue here. The issue is to try in every way that I know and to pray and seek to get Christ into my children so they will be Christ-like. the measurement of our children, and we measure our children based upon what God did or did not give them. You know, we all, as dads, we all claim, I don't have any favorites. Well, you'd probably lie about other things. It's very, very difficult to be objective with our children. Now, the minute we're around other people, our kids can do no wrong. But when we are in the confines of our home and marriage, there are things about our kids that just rub us wrong. Why does God let our children do that? Because He wants us to see ourselves. And the thing about one of your children that rubs you wrong is probably something about you that rubs somebody else wrong. The way we measure our children, in the United States of America, we measure our children by academic advancement, what they have up here. We measure our children that way. We measure our children by athletic achievement, what they can do. Oh, basketball, football, baseball, tennis, soccer, athletics. And we measure our children by aesthetic attainment. How handsome, how he-man-ish, how much my son can bench press, and my daughter, boy, she's got the banner for 14 beauty pageants. Wow. We are setting our children up for untold damage when we measure them based on something that they should never take credit for. Do you know if your child is intelligent and you just build up that intelligence, you know what you're going to do? You're going to make a proud child. God hates pride, and he has to break it out before he can use that child. You know, if we have a child who happens to be athletically endowed, you know, I tell people, I'm about as coordinated as a pregnant cow. I mean, I'm just not, okay? I can spill a brick of cheese. I just, I'm sorry. Well, hey, you know. And you know what a metaphor is, a place for grazing cows. So what's a metaphor? Yeah. So anyway, when we, OK, you got that? You wake up in the morning. You wake up in the morning, it'll dawn on you. So anyway. We measure our children by some athletic... I want to ask you, just in an honest question, where do we see athletic ability really contributing to the Christian life in the Bible? I'm not against games, but it has become idolatry in our country. Why do we call them music idols, sports idols, movie idols? Why do they call themselves that? The word idol is not a mistake. It's who they see themselves as. And our kids, I'm sorry, our children are growing up in a culture that fawns after that. And someday down the line when your child is 19, 20, 21, you're saying, you know, I would just wish you'd be like Jesus. And they're like, huh? When did you change? Because Dad, all my life you've told me what a great football player I am. Or how gorgeous I am. Or how this or how that. Now you want me to change that? What happened to you? Measuring our children by things that are not to their credit creates pride. You know, when we Make our girls the object of the ogling eyes of wicked men. We are damaging them. The Bible says a lot about that. A lot. If you study the first sin of man over and over and over in the conversation between God and Adam, the word naked. That's not anything about what God asked. God didn't ask, Adam, are you naked? But Adam kept talking about that. Now I wonder why. Because he was bothered. And we are in a culture that glorifies nakedness and glorifies immodesty, and we are destroying our daughters in this country. We're destroying them. by teaching them, if you got it, flaunt it. It's destroying. And then we don't even see it until it's too late. Measure it based on what they've done with what God gave them. or what God did not give them is much more important. Measure your children godliness with contentment is great gain. You know what? You may have one daughter who's beautiful and another daughter who isn't. What are you gonna do for the Leah in your family? If you're always boasting about Rachel. What are you gonna do for the boy in your family that's slight built? doesn't have biceps the size of my thighs. When you're always talking about the football players that you see, what are we doing with our kids? You know what we need to do? We need to look at each of our children and measure each of them not by what they have, because they got it from God, but by what they're doing with what they have. Let your conversation be without covetousness and be content with such things as you have. Contentment with what God gave your child academically, athletically, or aesthetically. Teach your son, you know what, son? Be content with what you have. Teach your daughter, be content with the girl you want. We're not talking about, okay, so we don't ever try to improve. No, I'm not talking about that. I've already devoted a session to that. But you know what? I can't do anything about this face. Abraham Lincoln said, every man is responsible for his own face after the age of 40. So, there you are. But you know what? I can't do anything. My mother was unsaved. Never trusted the Lord to my knowledge. My mother... up on what Brother Wilson said. She was very good with a metaphor. And I have a brother who's tall and slender, and he had all these talents and abilities, and here am I. And here's what my mother said to me. She said, Jeffrey, you're built like a brick outhouse, square at the shoulder and straight to the ground. I was in counseling till last week about that. I finally got over it. It couldn't have been a phone booth. It had to be a brick outhouse, OK? And I'm paraphrasing because my mother was not very genteel, and it wasn't an outhouse that she said. Do you know what? This is who I am in the physical realm. I can't change that. I have the abilities I have. So what I have to learn to be is to become, and if you have a child who is a C student, You need to teach that child that you're not disappointed because he's not an A student. And if you have a child who never makes it to the A team, you have to teach that child to be content to be on the B team. And if you have a child that's, you know, you got a kid, he's got a big nose, his ears stick out, everyone thinks he's a geek, he gets picked on, You need to teach that child how to live with that. What are you going to do with what God gave you? Because who maketh thee to differ from another? Who made your son? Who made your daughter? Who did that? God did that. You and I did not do that. And when we measure our children, not by what God gave them, but by what they do with what God We're helping. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. I think that might be a little cut off of what Brother Kuhl asked me earlier. There's nothing wrong with having a skill and honing it. There's nothing wrong with a youth pastor saying, you know, I had a youth conference and things went well, but I want them to go better next year. And we seek, you know, why do we go to school? We hopefully learn more as we go. Why do we send somebody to, say, trade school to learn mechanics? Because the kid has a mechanical ability, but OK, so he can fix a lawnmower. He wants to be able to fix a car. OK. But is my identity oratory? Is that my identity? Or is my identity in the prayer closet as a sinner saved by grace who's accepted in the beloved? And our children see so much of the world. It's everywhere. It's neon lights. It's blaring at them all the time. And they subconsciously get the idea that I have to be like her or him in order to be accepted. And we need to bring our children back to your identity as Jesus Christ. And learn to be accepted in him. Because you are accepted in him. See, self-esteem is a big lie of the devil. And most of us agree with that, but we're not sure where to go from there. OK? Now, I'm going to pick on Brother Swem here. Just give me an approximate value of the outfit you're wearing, the shirt, the pants, the shoes. All right. So he's cheap. He paid $50 for it. Let me ask you, would you have paid $1,000 for that outfit? Why not? Oh, not worth it? What did Jesus pay for your children? What did he pay? Blood. That's their worth. And if you and I and your son and your daughter and your wife are worth Jesus' blood, it doesn't matter what the world thinks they're worth. And quite honestly, it doesn't matter what you as dads think they were. Maybe that helps. Okay? Because our children are vulnerable. We're vulnerable. You and I are vulnerable. Even at 62 years of age, if I'm not walking with God today, I'm going to start looking for approval out in the world. Because that's where I live. Who doesn't want to pat on the back? So we have to get into the prayer closet with God to understand. And I dare say, I dare say, that some of you had dads who tried to live out their lost childhoods through you. Don't repeat that. Do not look back on your childhood and say, you know, something I never got to do, so I'm going to somehow make sure my son does it so I can watch him and take comfort. Because we do that. We're faulty fathers. Okay? We're not the heavenly father. We're the father on earth and we have our flaws. Teach your children to be content. Not discontent. Not content in the sense they never try to improve in quality. Content with who God created them to be. We start when they're little, training them to be humanistic. And here's how we do that. Well, what do you want to be when you grow up? Doesn't matter what they want to be. Here's the question, what does God want you to be when you grow up? That takes it off from, I get to choose whatever, this is my life. No, you're not your own, you're bought with a price. And we try to tell them that when they start making bad decisions as teenagers. We need to train them from the ground up that you are not your own. You're not even mine. Oh, you happen to live at my house. God gave you to me to be a steward over you. You happen to call me dad or papa or whatever title, but listen, you are gods and you belong to him. Lock, stock and barrel, he bought you. He shed his blood for you. That's how much he thought you were worth. That's how much he valued you. And he was not just willing to pay, but he was able. You know what? Going back to the $1,000, I might see a Hart, Schaffner, and Mark suit for $1,000 and say, wow, wouldn't that look good on Jeff Farnham? You start looking like this at my age, anything looks good on you. But I'm not able to pay that. I might be willing, but I'm not able. Jesus was both. So go ahead. It can be. Yeah, it can be. Now, every little boy wants to be a fireman and every little girl wants to be a princess. Okay, let little children have their dreams, but begin to teach them that it's not about that. It is about that God created you for His school. And so, you know, you need to start praying. I know you're only six years old, but I want to teach you to pray, Lord, show me thy will for my life. What do you want me to do? What was the first question out of Saul's mouth when he hit the ground? What was the first question? Who art thou, Lord? Vance Havner used to say, if you say not so, Lord, He's not Lord. And if He's Lord, you don't say not so. What was the second question out of Paul's? What do you want me to do? Not why did you do this to me? And that is what's happening with our young people. Our girls stand in front of the mirror. Why did you make me ugly? Now, we think they're gorgeous because they're our daughters. They don't think they're pretty. They're all tied up in some Hollywood woman or Hollywood idol or some rock music star or some cheerleader somewhere who has, in some way, why do we have all this problem with anorexia and bulimia, whatever you say, that ridiculous word. You know, I'm glad I grew up in a generation that didn't have all these weird problems. And the benefit of it, we didn't have all this junk flashed in front of us all the time. Contentment with what God... Consecration to God of what He gave them academically, or athletically, or aesthetically. Teach your children, not just be contented with it, but consecrate it to God. Say, Father, here I am. Take me and use me. You know, God can use me. That's a marvel to me. I grew up on a dairy farm. Listen, I tell people, it's this clean freak generation. Where are we going with that? Everybody's washing his hands all the time. Drives me crazy. I walk into church. Half the people don't want to shake hands anymore. Oh, I have a cold. I don't care. I want to shake your hand. I want to give you the right hand of fellowship. And you know what? I tell people this. I grew up on a dairy farm. I have literally, no exaggeration, had worse things in my mouth than you've ever had on your hands. So just shake my hand. I survived it. I was a farm boy. I've had manure on me. I've had manure everywhere you can imagine. I've wiped it out of my eyes. I've dug it out of my ears. I'm not trying to be gross. It absolutely awes me that God can use me. I didn't have some flashy beginning. I didn't. I grew up throwing hay bales and pitching silage and throwing other stuff around. I didn't have a Christian upbringing. I didn't grow up with God, anything other than a cuss word. And I've written some books, and God's using them, and it awes me. And I want you to understand, we've lost our sense of awe. Nothing really grabs us. And that's sad when God doesn't grab you. and it's even sadder when He doesn't grab our children. Teach them to be content with what God gave them academically, athletically, aesthetically. Teach them to consecrate it to the Lord. Teach them that whatever God gave me, I need to give back to Him. And then teach them to have confidence in what God gave them, not self-confidence. You know what self-confidence is? It's a five-letter word. I don't know how many times a Christian couple, a Christian dad, a Christian mom has come to my office over these years and sat down and said, preacher, I'm really concerned about my son. He doesn't have any self-confidence. You know what I tell them? Good. Because self-confidence is pride. We need them to have God confidence. We need to teach our children that you know what? If you don't have what that girl has or what that guy has, if you don't have that ability, if you don't have that talent, if you don't look like that, if you don't think that way, if you don't make A's without even staying awake in class, you know what? I love you anyway. We're going to consecrate who you are to God. You just have confidence that God's going to use you. Because He created you. He knows what you need in order to serve Him. Why do we have all this gender identity crisis in our country today? And I don't want to be a prophet of doom, but don't think it can't happen in your family. There's a lot of things that happen between the age of 12 and the age of 20. And not all of them are fun to deal with. Some of them will absolutely break you in half. And I've been through some of that. And it is crushing. And I can look back, and I'm giving you things today that sadly I learned in hindsight. If I can help you prevent a problem, I'll be doing a whole lot more than I will if someday you call me up and I help you cure it. So I've just been transparent and vulnerable. I hope you won't hold it against me. Teach your children to have confidence in God. He knew what he was doing when he created Your son, your daughter, your wife. Our wives struggle because, let's face it, they're being pressured from every side to be anything but a wife. I mean, who wants to just be a wife? Who wants to be a mother? I'm dealing with a young couple right now. They have two of the most gorgeous little kids you've ever seen. And she's decided she doesn't want to be a mother anymore. Now, she misses the kids, so she calls her husband, who is working a job, farming his kids out to his parents, and she says, can I FaceTime the kids? I just want to see them. Well, come home and be a mom. You can see them. What is wrong with these people? I'll tell you a part of it is they're not confident in what God gave them. And they think they're something. Just like Eve, they think God's depriving them of something. Well, why didn't God create me as beautiful as that movie star? First of all, it's all photoshopped. They don't look like that. They don't wake up with their hair perfectly combed. And they have bad breath when they get up in the morning. You know, they don't look like, the guys don't look like that. I tell people there's no such thing as the Marlboro Man and the Hollywood Woman. They don't exist. Don't let your kids fall in that. Modeling. I mean, measuring our children. Measuring. Learn to measure your children by God's standards. Measure them by this book. Sit down with your children and deal with them on character. It's one thing to accomplish something. So if you praise the accomplishment, you will breed pride into them. So instead, talk to them about what brought about the accomplishment. You know what? You were diligent. That's character. You were diligent. You know what? You were faithful. You know what? You prayed, and you prayed, and you prayed. You were faithful. Now that young kid is saved. Or now that, you know, you know what? You were helpful. And this is the result of it. Deal with their character rather than their attainments and their achievements. Because achievement. is a bad way to measure, because you're always going to find someone that can achieve more. And then what's your kid going to do? You see, your kids in these churches that we're pastoring, you know what? They're big fish in little ponds. And then they go out into life, and they're little fish in a big pond. And they can't deal with the fact that I used to be the best, and now I'm number 47. But if you measure them by the Bible, they'll never have a problem. We just make the measurement of our children so, so, so important. I want to take, that clock is right behind the light. Is that 140? Who designed this building anyway? I want to go to molding our children based on the world as opposed to based on the scripture, and it follows in here. The molding of our children. And I don't know what kind of discipline you use in your home. So I'm just this kind of shotgun, because I don't really have a laser to put in, because I know all of your problems. I don't. I've met some of you for the first time today. But some of us in the molding of our children use entertainment to distract our children from disobedience. Some of us use excuse making to dismiss their disobedience. Some of us use education to disguise their disobedience. Now let me deal with those. Entertainment to distract from disobedience. We talk about the obedient Christian life. And where does that begin? That begins with when you tell your child to pick up that toy, he picks up that toy. And when you say, now look, We're in church. You're going to sit quietly. The child sits quiet. It begins. You know what we're doing? We're entertaining our children to distract them from disobedience when we need to train them to be obedient. I am not against children's church. We have children's church at our church. I'm totally not against it, okay? I don't want you to think I'm against all children's programs. I'm totally for it. But if children's church is nothing but an entertainment, then guess what they're gonna do when they graduate from children's church? They're gonna say church isn't fun, and we'll never see them in the church again. That's one of the reasons we're losing our children. Because we taught them that it's about entertainment. And in the home, I have been in so many homes where people want, oh, here, you don't want to do that. Oh, well, hang on. You know, I grew up in an unsaved home. But I'll tell you what, I feared my dad. My dad was not violent. My dad was not a child abuser. We got thrashed when we needed it. My dad was a dairy farmer. My hands are fairly good size for me. I have a picture of my dad's hand next to mine. When I took my wife to the farm the first time, I said, now, honey, there's something you're going to notice about my dad. He has enormous hands. Don't stare at them. The first night we're home and my dad sits down at the table and put one hand on the table, my wife is like, My dad's little finger was bigger around and longer than my thumb. I have a picture with my hand next to his. He had huge hands. When he took his hand to thrash us, it covered everything. And what didn't get hit the first time got hit the second time. But I feared my dad. I remember the night I called him a liar. We were sitting at the kitchen table. My mother had one of those old ringer washers off in the corner of our kitchen. And I just called that a liar. I was a rebel teenager, probably 15. My dad gave me one backhand, whop, knocked me over in my chair. And I slid right out of that chair. And I woke up looking straight up to the bottom of that washing machine. That's the only time my dad ever hit me anywhere but on the back side. And I deserved it. I feared my father, and I learned to obey, and it has been one of the greatest things of my life. Don't let your children get by with disobedience. We have made excuses. Oh, he has not his nap. What are you going to say when he's 12 and he's still sassing mom? You know what? Nap or no nap, sassing's wrong. You can have a little bit of leeway, you can have a little understanding, but don't excuse it. We have educated our culture to the point that we disguise disobedience, we rename it. Now, we get all wrinkled up about the renaming of sins in our culture. We don't like it when homosexuality or sodomy is called the gay lifestyle. And I hear, you know, Independent, they are not gay. It's not gay. Gay means happy and free. And it's not a gay lifestyle. It's anything but. Okay, I agree with that. But that's what the world's doing. And your shacked up partner is your significant other. And we get a little irritated with that. But you know, if we're not careful, we're doing the same thing in our home. We just rename things. Sassing Mom is still Sassing Mom. And it shouldn't be tolerated. We didn't do a lot of spanking in our house. But there were certain things that earned a spanking. Sassing Mom was one of them. Direct disobedience was one of them. Now maybe it was something our kids didn't know. Okay, we didn't spank them if they didn't know. We didn't spank for mistakes. You know, you're sitting around the table and somebody passes the peas and overgoes the water or the milk or whatever's in the glass. You don't spank for that. Because guess what? We do it as adults. Who spanks us when we do it? And your kids will notice that. direct disobedience, sassing mom, and what we call flagrant violations. There were certain things, you know what, you're getting a spanking. They're like, yep, it's time out, we need to go into the other room and deal with this. But you know what, we didn't do a lot of spanking, we did a lot of talking. And dad had a look, and so did Katherine. And the kids knew, We need to get back to that. Mold your children. Mold them based on the Bible. Discipleship that motivates obedience. You know where to raise them up or bring them up? In the nurture and admonition. Nurture and admonition are two sides of the same coin. They're not the same thing. The nurture is giving them discipleship that motivates obedience. Admonition is discipline that motivates obedience. And discipleship and discipline have the same root word, but they're different. Discipleship is the work within. Discipline is the outward. Right? Yeah. And you want to give them both to motivate obedience because they are in your home for a very short period. You may think some days child rearing is forever. No, it isn't. It comes and goes. And I want to give you a visual here. I don't have an actual graph. But when your child is born, if the vertical axis represents your control, your authority, it's at 100. When your child is a baby, you are 100% in control. You know where that goes from the day that child is born? It starts going downhill. And I'm going to say this from experience. There comes a day when you have no control. None. Zero. You can talk to your blue in the face. They're going to do what they're going to do. You say, well, this is a Christian home. I don't care what kind of home it is. They make decisions. I hate to disappoint you, there is no formula that guarantees good kids. And so we want to train them in the nurture. We want them to develop a discipleship where they are not just concerned with pleasing dad and mom, but they're concerned with pleasing God. Because when your power wanes from 100 down to 0, you want God to have that power. And their ability, their control, their decisions start at 0 and climb. And somewhere at the age of 10 or 11 or 12, those intersect. You see that graph now that I've drawn for you up here? And the day comes when you're not making the decisions anymore. They are. It's different when they're 16. Our youngest son, Nathan, was born with a very rare condition called Chiari malformation. Basically, he had just had too much. There wasn't room inside his skull for his cerebellum, the lower part of the brain. And therefore, it was scrunched up, and it was putting pressure on his brain stem. He had horrible headaches. He had terrible things happening. And at the age of 15, we took him and had him diagnosed at CS Mott in Ann Arbor. The doctor that was dealing with him said, I have done this surgery. I developed the surgery, and I've done 600 of them. She said, on a scale of 1 to 10, your son is a 9 to 9.5. He is in danger. Within two years, he'll either be a vegetable or dead, because his brainstem was being destroyed. She did a surgery. But you see, he was 15 years old. And when we finally got the surgery scheduled, he was 16. And I sat down with Nathan, and I said, look, I can make a decision, but you have to make this decision. You're 16. I don't ever want to look at you and have you say, Dad, why did you do this? I want to be able to talk man to man right now. You have a decision to make that most 16-year-olds don't have to make. You know what she said can happen in the surgery. You could die on the table. You may end up blind. You may end up paralyzed. or you may come out, okay. You've heard what she said. You've listened to the worst case scenarios. What do you want to do? He said, Dad, I want the surgery. He said, I have no chance without it. I have a great chance. I said, then Nathan, your mom and I back you up 100%. And we did. He came through the surgery just fine. Just fine. That was a lesson to me, because we weren't at this. He was well into making his decisions, and I was way down low. And I want to give you that picture, the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Discipleship, disciple your children. There's nothing more important than your children understand how important it is that they love God. What is the greatest commandment, by the way? Love God with all your heart and soul and all your strength. You know what that is? I tell people, love Him most, love Him first, love Him best. First, most, and best. That covers it. That's discipleship. Teach them to fear the Lord. That's discipline. It's inner and outer. And generally what's inside is what comes out. So if they are disciples, they will be disciplined. And a lot of times our children don't, our teenagers, none of you have them yet, our teenagers don't cause as many problems as they do. The problems we see in teenagers were already there. They're just coming out. Because the crisscross is in the past. And now they're making decisions. And we're reacting to them. So it's very important that you sit down with your children. It's very important that you, your sons and your daughters, and we work with our wives. We are the leaders. And it's very important that we work with our wives because you don't want to live the second half of your life regretting the first half. Amen? You want to live the second half reaping blessings. Now, I haven't done everything right as a husband. I don't want you to think I think I'm some model. I have done some boneheaded things as a man. And my wife is queen of forbearance and forgiveness, amen. But I will tell you this, we are having the time of our lives. in spite of our problems, in spite of difficulties, in spite of things that we look back on and say, you know, I wish we'd handled that a little differently. You know why? Because we have worked together. And not only did I nurture my children, but I've nurtured my wife in the things of God, the Scriptures. So I want to encourage that.