together as our last word, so to speak. We started last week a little bit with this idea of the teen years as being the age of opportunity as Paul. trip said, not to be endured, but to be engaged. And with communication, learning how to listen, ask good questions, so on and so forth. And then the second thing was trying to help our children as they're growing up to think in terms of the long game. What I mean by that is that life is in many ways it's long and many ways it's short, and how to teach that sort of the paradox of those two things. The Proverbs talk a lot about preparation, talked a lot about doing something now that you may not necessarily see the benefit of right this minute, but that will reap rewards down the line. So that's a long view of life, the importance of working and so forth. Proverbs 19, 20. I apologize, last week I was a little bit I didn't have my verses down the way I ought to have had, but Psalm 19 and verse 20 is just an example. Proverbs 19, 20, listen to advice and accept instruction that you may gain wisdom, when? In the future. So this gaining wisdom, gaining instruction, so forth, that a young person's life is really a life of learning. It's a life of growing. There's even a verse that talks about discipline and instruction that is ongoing as well. I think one of the best things we can try to work into our children when they are young is a love of learning, is that there's a great big world out there, and it doesn't revolve around you. It revolves around God and His glory, and you can learn about that. You can learn about His world, different subjects, history. The world didn't begin yesterday. It began a long time ago. There are things that have happened that in the past that affect our present and will affect our future. And so to think of a young person's life as really being a life of learning. and preparation and training and so forth. That doesn't mean it has to be dull. And it doesn't mean it has to be just, you know, school, school, school. But the idea that the world's a big place and my life is not just today. I'm meant to look forward to it. And the idea, too, of delayed gratification of our culture is a very present culture. It's like what you do now means is important. You know, even the commercials that say you can have it your way. Well, not all the time. In fact, it's rare that I may have it my way. But that's learning and having that sense of the length of life. Proverbs 24. good one, Proverbs 24 and verse 30. This also has to do of course with work, but it is work for the future. I passed by the field of a sluggard, by the vineyard of a man lacking sense. And behold, it was all overgrown with thorns, the ground was covered with nettles, its stone wall was broken down. Now that is an agricultural picture and we don't Very few of us live in an agricultural setting, so that's a picture that's to be taken and put into our own present circumstances. So what is it talking about? It's talking about working, it's talking about learning, it's talking about doing something now that prepares for then. That's the picture. Then I saw and considered it, I looked and received instruction. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber and want like an armed man. So it's working hard now, for sort of something that's gonna happen in the future, okay? So it's sort of the idea of delayed gratification. 19 and verse 23. I'm sorry, 18. 18 and 15. An intelligent heart acquires knowledge in the year of the wise seeks knowledge. That's the idea of I'm continually learning, I'm making my way, I'm preparing. That my youthful age is really a time of preparation, okay? And so I'm taking the long view. But at the same time, at the same time, we're also teaching that life is short. that life is short and that life could actually end at any moment. And so it's a view of a linear progression that has a point of determination and a point of judgment. Well, 2 Corinthians 5.10, we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. That's not gonna happen necessarily when I'm 35 or 55 or 85, anytime, could happen anytime. And so the sense that I live in God's world and that there's going to be an accounting of my life. before the Lord, and it's going to come. It's a reality. I think our More and more, we're sort of taught to believe that life is just kind of circular. Things repeat themselves and it goes on and on. That's the view of the cynic in 2 Peter chapter three. Things just go on and on. Where is the promise of his coming? Where is the day of judgment? Things just go on and on in sort of a circular pattern. And no, we must teach, no, life is linear, time is linear, It began at a certain point, and at a certain point, time as we know it will end, and when the Lord returns, okay? So it's a sense that life in a sense is long, and there's preparation for the future, but it's also in another sense, it's short, it's short. and that God will hold every word, every deed to an account. It's the idea of the fear of the Lord. I live with this, it's not a sense of dread and foreboding, I mean it might be if I'm not a Christian, but it's a sense of, that I live in God's world and he has determined the boundaries of beginning and end. And I must live in that world, I must think in terms of that world. Does that make sense? I wanted to say a little bit about, I was asked to do this as though I somehow would know something about this, I don't know, but of relating to adult children. I guess it's because I have adult children. How do you relate to them? Not very well. How do you relate to adult children? Well, I want to go back and just think of this, that in all of our parenting, it seems to me that the goal of our parenting is that they be adults. In other words, I don't think of them just as children. We can do that. We can think, oh, that this will never end. We could think of it that way, oh, it'll never end. But I mean, in some ways, we can think, I want them to be children. I want them to be dependent upon me. That's a grave mistake. We must seek for them to be independent. That's the goal, is that they don't need us. Right? They need him, but they don't need us. Right? I think I heard somebody say, independently dependent upon Jesus Christ. We want to raise our children by God's grace so that they are not dependent upon us, that they live their own lives. They're free in a sense from us. and dependent upon the Lord. And of course, the Lord has a whole lot to do with that, but we're continuously pointing them in that direction. And that goal really begins when they're quite young. So that, you know, if we're thinking about relating to adult children, we can't wait until they're adults. We have to think about that as they're growing up and allowing them to do things. you know, like chores, chores around the house and so forth. Becky has a saying, don't do for a child what a child can do for himself. So if they can dress themselves, that's what they do. If they can fix their lunches, that's what they do. If they can wash their clothes, that's what they do. The more we can give them to do that is independent of us, I think the better off they're gonna be in the long run. We don't want them leaving the house and going, how do you wash clothes? What do I do? Well, that's something to be learned when you're young. And I'm just using that as a, as a funny example, but it goes in a lot of different ways. That they have a sense that they're part of the household, they're useful in the household, they have jobs to do, they have responsibilities, and I'm not going to be running after them all the time and making sure that they do those things. When they get in trouble in school, I'm not going to go rescue. That's very hard. We ran into that two or three times where because I was a teacher, the other teachers, they would call if so-and-so was having trouble in a class and didn't turn in his assignment, they would give me a heads up. We said, no, we're just going to play this like everybody else would play it and let him take the feel the consequences of that mistake. Because if I just entered in every time, you know, what would that be teaching? It would be teaching I don't really, I'm not really responsible, okay? And I'm not learning that sense of responsibility. So I think relating to them as adults begins when they're younger to begin to relate to them as independent, you know, independent of us. Just a second. They will begin to do that when they're, it varies, but 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, they're going to begin to think of themselves as independent. That's the line that we walk. In a sense, we ought to be saying or ought to be thinking, this is a good thing, And it needs boundaries, it needs instruction, it needs communication so that they're growing into this, you know, independent person. And it's not going to happen, okay, they turn 18, boom, now I'm independent. No, it needs to start gradually working toward that so that when they, you know, reach those age, and I'm going to say a little bit more about that sort of arbitrary, cutoff point at 18, which is not biblical, in a little bit. But the preparing for that. Yeah. I was just thinking when you were using that example, there were even a couple of times where because we let our kids make their own lunches for school when they got to a certain age, because it helped them get ready. your lunch is your last thing you do. So if you dawdle and you don't get it all prepared, then you end up without your lunch. And that's hard to let them go without a lunch or to fail an assignment. It is. It's because it's, you know, we don't like seeing our kids suffer. And really, a couple of those missed assignments had some really pretty heavy consequences, but it is sort of remembering the bigger picture, you know, that it, because, you know, the grade will drop, and there are some consequences, but they're not as, once you keep going and you move, you realize they're not as dire as you thought they were, so maybe, they end up with a B instead of an A. But what they've learned is this was my responsibility and my parents trusted me with it. So they must think I can do it. They must think I can handle this. And that it is my responsibility and it's not their. So there are truths you're communicating that stick with them for a long time, rather than that. And I doubt, I don't know, maybe my kids might forget they're going without lunch, but, you know, I think they've forgotten that phrase. Right, right. Not that important. Yep, yep. The second, round of applause for the Wangs and the new baby. So happy to see you all. Okay. And then the second thing on that, we talked a little bit about the last session about communicating and, you know, communicating with teenagers, drawing them out and so forth. Well, that pays real dividends, you know, as they grow into adulthood. And to sort of shift from the, you know, how we talked about the whole duty of the child is obedience. Well, as an adult, it's not obedience anymore. It's influence maybe, it's advice. But if I'm desiring them to be independent adults, I've got to respect that. I've got to respect that independence. Now, think of it this way too. How do we relate to other adults who are not part of our family? And that sort of governs, I think, how we relate to adult children. If my brother sins, what do I do? I go to him, right? So it's the same way, you know, with an adult child who sins, who falls into sin. I go to him. I don't just say, well, that's them, you know. No, I go to them, just like I would any other, hopefully, I would any other of my friends. So begin to think of them in that way. And again, you kind of go back to the preparation for that is communicating and having these open lines of communication as they grow into adulthood. We see them as budding adults, and so we want to communicate with them like that. And somebody mentioned last week, and this is so important, because there are going to be opportunities. There are opportunities for instruction and influence, but there are also opportunities for confession and repentance, particularly in this communicating thing, you know, where we speak to them in ways that are not good. We might lose our temper. We might become angry, we might speak in anger. I know you all would never do that, but it happens. And so that's a good time, see, for confession and repentance and a humbling of ourselves before them. That's hard, you know, but the shoe is on the other foot, you know, we're the ones that are instructing and now we're the ones that we've got to humble ourselves before them and confess. But you know what that does? It communicates that Christianity is actually real. That we believe the things we've taught, we believe them and we recognize that all our words are not going to be good, they're not always going to be but said in a way that can be pleasing and instructive. And so, you know, we have opportunities to confess our sins before them and repent. And I'm going to just tell you that that's, you know, we do it because it's right. We do it because it's right. We don't do it because it's going to pay some benefit. but it does pay benefits. The Lord blesses, I think, in ways that we just can't fathom when we are willing to confess our sins and to repent of them. Thoughts, Sam? Yeah. Yeah. This is a double standard going on here. This happened a few weeks ago and I had just not acted right in front of Allison and Johnny. and it was something she was doing anyway, and I was frustrated, just the whole business. So the next day, I wasn't going to see her, so I called her up and I went through the thing and I told her, I said, would you please forgive me? She said, Mom, she said, I knew you were going to call and repent from that. But it meant something to me because she, I thought, okay, she really, that meant something to her. Apparently she had thought about it, and so God gave me grace to call her. I knew you were going to call. I knew that for so long. That's great, that's great. Isn't it for an adult, maybe for the father, I don't know, or husband, that there is to do is to go and humble yourself before the Lord and then go and confess and ask for forgiveness. And that truly is modeling what adulthood as a Christian is all about. That's what I heard. It's funny, when kids are small, they really think we never do anything wrong. You know what I mean? the exception to that probably, but as they grow older, you know, reality begins to set in, you know, and they know and they see. And so if we're, you know, willing to, you know, confess our sins and repent, there's just a Christian reality in the home. And I think it just communicates very much to our kids. Okay, we have Dean and then Becky and then Eric. Go ahead. I remember particular times when I would repent before my children that it was not only addressing whatever was happening immediately, but it was reminding them of a picture painted for them of what that life would look like after the transition of them becoming adults. Even though they're children and I'm their parent, what they're seeing is a time to come. They're seeing that time, it's a reminder that I'm subject to Christ, they're subject to Christ in the same way, as equals, kind of, in the same manner. This, what I'm doing right now with painting before you and confessing to you now, is just painting that picture of what it's going to look like in the future. What part will remain, even after you grow up, the part that's going to remain is, I will continue to do this, you will continue to do this. Independently dependent upon Jesus Christ. Everybody is. I mean that's just where we all are. Let's see. Eric? It's kind of parallel to what Dean was saying. You said that the whole duty of the child is obedience. The whole duty of the adult is obedience to the Lord. And that's what we need to do. you're to obey me while you're learning how to obey the Lord to where you get to the point where you're a way for me, but your whole duty is still to obey. Yep. Becky and then Shane. Go ahead. I was just going to say Christianity is not about perfection. I think if we're trying to communicate, I think we want to communicate to our children that We're on a path towards Christ, but we're going to stumble and fall off of it. If we can teach them about humility and faithfulness, that really means that we still love the Lord and He loves us, but we will stumble right along with them. Oh yeah. Yeah, we are able to create this picture of, I don't know, a sort of legal righteousness, but not a gospel holiness, you know. To show your children, I'm as messed up as you are. Praise the Lord and your Savior. That's really, that's the way we can truly be a leader and a picture for them. But if we're showing forth that what's expected of you and my expectation of myself as perfection, then they're never going to reach it and they're always going to fail. Give some encouragement for those of us who only can think about all those ways that we did not do the right thing. Well, I was going to actually speak to that a little bit. There's a situation right now that I need to work through with one of my grown adult children. And that really is the beauty of the Christian life, is that we can go back to them and we can say, When you were doing this or that or the other thing, this was my attitude toward you, and that was wrong. Would you forgive me for that? And it's kind of like, you know, I think we undervalue just how powerful that confession and repentance really is. It opens up whole different vistas in our life. We don't want to sin, obviously. We want to do things right, but we're not. We're not gonna do things, and it may be that we, I think of people who come to Christ late in life, and they've really done a lot of bad things. Does the Lord forgive them? And if they make it a practice to go back to those people that they have harmed in humility, the Lord is able to do a great work with that. So I'm encouraging you with what I see in the scriptures and what the Lord encourages me to do as well with our adult children. I think it's a good thing for us to look back and see those things. It's not like we're going every day, but there are things that we come to understand late and we didn't understand it so well perhaps when they were coming along. But that's, again, that's the beauty of being a Christian is that the Lord is able, what does it say in Joel 2, one of my favorite verses, the Lord is able to give back the years the locusts have eaten. He doesn't say days or weeks or months. He says years. There were years the locusts had eaten. And the Lord is able to give those years back. That's an amazing promise. And we can take advantage of that. I want to encourage all of us to, you know, to just kind of think through that a little bit. Are there things that we ought to go back and talk about, you know, with our children? And it does. It pays, you know, again, we don't do it because it's going to pay a dividend. We do it because it is right and because the Lord has commanded us to do it. The Lord is faithful to His promises and He does give back the years the loaves have eaten. I mean, it's an amazing promise of our God. Dean. that God redeemed and allowed us to get back what the locust took, but He only allowed the locust to have so much in the first place. That God, in His providence and in His sovereignty, works out all things according to His purpose. That even while you're actually walking through life and raising children, that it's not just that God has the opportunity to be reactionary and come back around. and clean stuff up afterwards, but that God was in charge of every single day during that process, and when things were not going according to how He's called us to, and we're not parenting as He's called us to perfectly, or anyone close to it, He still was in the midst of it, and only allowed things to go to a certain degree, and even that, for His purposes, Even that for what He was working in you, working in the children. If they grew up in an absolute perfect life, they wouldn't have God to think about, God to go to, and Jesus to rest on. But even the struggles, the hard times, even the imperfect parents that our children have, are a blessing to them to a certain degree. Teaching them forward. that sound right or not? Yeah, I agree with that. He doesn't give us what our sins deserve, and he doesn't give them what our sins deserve. I think that's true. There have been times where Becky's gone back, or we've gone back, and they said, well, I hadn't really thought about that. You know, that wasn't something I was really concerned about. Okay, you know, sometimes it is, you know, but we, again, we want to go back and seek to make things right, you know, as they come to, you know, as they come to mind, as we think of them and remember settings and so forth, is to go back, you know. And we want to do that with one another, don't we? I mean, you know, if we've offended, if we've said something and we think about it, we kind of go, yeah, I shouldn't have said that. That was wrong. We want to go back to them. That's how the bonds of unity, you know, in a church. That's how those bonds are established and that's how they grow. It's not so much with just the righteousness that we do toward one another, the love that we do, but the confession that we do before each other, you know, that brings us together. What would you do, go first to God, go first to man? So what do you recommend? Well, that's a great question. All sin is against God. So he's the primary one. The fact that he has reminded me of a horizontal sin is that he's also reminded me of a vertical sin. I do, I go to Him first. You always want to confess sin, we're on this topic, confess sin in the arena in which it was committed. So God is always in the arena. He's in every arena. So He's the first one. But then it's whoever, You know, I spoke sharply and angrily to my son, and my daughter was in the room. So who do I go to? I go to both of them. You see, I go to God first, but I go to both of them. I sinned against him, but she heard it. So yeah, and it's just like anything else. When we sin in a public way, well, we go public. We go public. But that's a very good question. Thoughts, Mike? No, it's all right. Would it be appropriate for me to ask my kids, has there been ways that I have sinned against you that I might repent of? Would that be appropriate? Yeah, because we're often blind to those things. I've got more years than you, so I forget real easily. And that's a great thing, it really is. And again, I don't wanna just talk about the effects, but there are effects. The bonds just, particularly if they're believers, the bonds of Christian unity surpass family, but they do, it works in family as well. to bring us together. So, yeah. go to your child and say, you know, all those years I wasn't the best parent. Sorry. That kind of covers all the years. Be specific. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. One thing I will say is that, well Elizabeth made me think of this, is that I think I never sympathize with my own mother as much as when I had my children. I think you do see this is not easy. It's not easy. It has been sweet to just talk to my girls and they know, they understand the Christian life. That it's one of stumbling, You know, all of these things, asking for forgiveness. Yeah, I mean, I do think the older they get, the more they live life, you know, the Lord's working in their hearts to show them their own sin. So, you know, if they're believers, they're hopefully are kind of sympathetic with ours. As a son, the last week, Juliana and I have been going through in the premarital counseling book to reflect our relationship to our parents. And it's been a very sobering but sweet time because I'm reminded that in spite of the failures that my parents have committed, that God saw fit to use them personally in bringing me to Christ. Without the young years of my mom teaching me God's Word, and memorizing scripture, God's word was in my mind even though I was a hater of God and wanted nothing to do with Him. Even in college, wanting to get far away from everyone, the Lord still constantly reminded me of those things. And He was pleased to use my dad. Amen. I want to just say one last thing, and that is, I can't go chapter and verse on this, so just bear with me. I do think our culture doesn't really do kids justice in terms of speaking to them about their youth, their young years. It kind of reinforces the notion of, okay, my teenage years, I can waste time, do whatever, and then boom, at 18, I'm an adult, I'm gonna throw off all, you know, family ties, you know, parents and so forth. I'm automatically an adult at 18. And the Bible doesn't really talk that way. I think of this, it doesn't say a lot, I think the Proverbs do speak to young men, Okay, it does speak to young men. And in the Hebrews, a young man was someone between about 12 and 30. And always looked at him in those years as being a time of preparation. It's Lamentations 3. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. That doesn't mean when he's 10. That means when he's 20, 25, 30. In other words, those are years of preparation, of training, of really entering full force into the adult world, which the Hebrews would have said is in his 30s, basically. We need to try to help our kids, I think, think in that way, that the state or the government has said, when you're 18, there's this. The Bible doesn't really speak that way, but you're in this time of training, of transitioning, of growing independence. but not a sort of arbitrary cutoff, okay? When the Bible speaks about maturity, it speaks about spiritual maturity, gaining wisdom, understanding, knowledge, that doesn't come when you hit your 18th birthday. Hopefully it comes before then, but it may come after then as well. But just thinking in terms of, you know, length of days and this growing, budding, mature person. Now, I'm not saying that a 28-year-old ought to be living at home with his parents. I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is that the idea of growing adulthood happens a lot. There's a lot of change and a lot of transition that happens, I think, with a young person in their 20s. And they don't need to be separated from the people of God, you know, even their parents older. The Titus talks about older women teaching younger women, okay, and older men teaching younger men. So there's this sense of, I need to be As I'm growing up, I need to be around the people of God. I need to be around older people because I'm learning. That's the way the Bible thinks about growing up. It's not this sort of automatic independence, but it's a growing independence in community with God's people. Does that make sense? Yeah, again, I think our culture tends to sort of make these arbitrary cutoffs, you know. certain ages, and we need to teach our kids, I think, you're in this growing relationship with other people, and particularly adults. You know, you want to be around older people. That's how you're going to grow and mature and so forth, and not sort of be separated. I think that's a cultural error that we need to kind of fight against as God's people. Rehoboam, Solomon's son, who listened to the youth, the young men that he was brought up with, and it was the ruin of his reign. He didn't listen to the older counselors who were telling him wisdom. What does it say, 1 Peter chapter 5, young men, you know, pay attention to your elders. I mean, it's the wisdom of the older, if you are a young person. And, you know, it's just something to be aware of as our kids are getting older. It's hard to clamp that down on them, but to encourage their being around older people. And that's kind of counter-cultural, I think. And by the same token, we who are older, what do we want to do? We want to engage our younger adults, budding adults. We want to engage them. and make them to feel as though they're a part of the community, you know, and so that they have this easy kind of transition into adulthood, adult years. Okay, well let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the instruction of your word. Help us, Lord, to be good parents, whatever age we happen to be in, whatever the ages of our children happen to be. Help us to be good counselors and good communicators with them, good questioners. For your honor, Lord, and for your glory, help us to be good confessors and repenters as a lifelong skill before you, living before you. And we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.