needing to look through a bunch of papers because one of our kids needed some paperwork. And so I ended up looking in different places and in the process ran across a bunch of other papers that had gotten tucked away and forgotten. And somewhere in there, there was a little stack of Mother's Day cards. that had been saved through the years from when our kids were young. And I found one here. I can embarrass our kids because none of them is here today. But this was from one of them and it's called Happy Mother's Day Coupon Book. At the cover, on the cover it says, If I can read it, basically, happy Mother's Day, I love you, Mom. But as a reflection of that sentiment, you go through and there are different things that this child was promising to do for his mother. So, and I don't know that he ever did. But it says, redeem this coupon and I'll take the trash out 10 times. Redeem this coupon and I'll feed our pets 80 times. Redeem this coupon and I'll help in the kitchen 19 times. Redeem this coupon and I'll clean my room 11 times. I'm not sure where those numbers came from. But then in the back there was a couple blank pages where they could come up with their own ideas. And this one says, give me $28 and I will multiply the coupons. And the last one says, I will make my bed 20 more times if you give me money. So, I doubt he ever did those jobs or got his money, but at any rate, the thought was right. This is really a great opportunity to show our mothers in some concrete way our love for them and our appreciation for them and all that they do in our lives, how the Lord uses them. And the fact is that there are not too many passages in the Bible that are to the specific idea of what we want to bring out today. I have preached on some of these famous ones through the years. And I had this on my mind recently as I was reading through 2 Corinthians and the Lord directed my thoughts to bring some things together along these lines. And as we come to this subject of mothers and Mother's Day and the role of mothers, I want us to consider an intriguing feature of the ministry of the Apostle Paul. And that is that with some frequency Paul compares his ministry efforts as he was working with Christians in these early churches, he quite a bit of times compares his ministry to those people with the role of parents in the life of a child. He really viewed himself as having a parental role in the lives of these early Christians. And I'll give you the examples here. For one, he calls various men that he discipled, he calls them his sons. They weren't just converts. They weren't just disciples. He actually viewed them as sons. And I've got a list of a half a dozen references here where he talks about Timothy that way. And another verse where he talks about Titus that way. And even Onesimus is described in the same terms as a son of the apostle Paul. So Paul could look at individual Christians and say, I'm kind of your parent spiritually. But he looked at churches at large in the same way. Here's a statement that was actually one of incredible burden on his heart when he wrote to the Galatians in chapter 4 verse 19 of that letter, My little children for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you." And you mothers especially can appreciate the angst of his feeling at that point. That metaphor is developed in some detail in another letter, and this is in 1 Thessalonians 2. And Paul's looking back on his time of reaching the Thessalonians with the gospel and kind of getting that church off the ground. And he says, but we were gentle among you like a nursing mother. taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us." And so, there was an aspect of his ministry to those people that was like the ministry of a mother. And yet a couple verses later, he takes it in a different direction when he says, for you know how like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. So he says, part of my ministry toward you was the ministry of a father. We see the same sort of thing in the Corinthian epistles, and I read you here from 1 Corinthians 4, verses 14 to 16. I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel, I urge you then be imitators of me." And there again is the father metaphor. And it's not a surprise that that same idea shows up several times in 2 Corinthians. You may know that 2 Corinthians is commonly called the most personal epistle of the Apostle Paul where he really opens up his heart in an unparalleled way about his heart toward the people that he served and as he was dealing with problems that had cropped up. He describes his ministry in 2 Corinthians in those same parental terms. So if you're in chapter 6, look down at verses 12 to 13. He says, you are not restricted by us but you are restricted in your own affections. In return, I speak as to children, widen your hearts also. Open up your heart, listen, receive my love and the admonition that the love leads to and be willing to receive this as children ought to receive from their father. You can jump ahead briefly to chapter 11 and verse 2, and you see a different sort of a fatherly aspect. Those of us who've had the privilege of giving away our daughters, especially in marriage, have a sense of what he's getting at here. 2 Corinthians 11 2, for I feel a divine jealousy for you. Since I, in that fatherly role, betrothed you to one husband, so I gave you away, as it were, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. And he brings that up in a context where, the way he describes it, they were being tempted to go away from Christ and their devotion to him, what he had helped them launch is just like a father giving a pure daughter over to the new husband. And you can just flip the page maybe and go to chapter 12 and verse 14. And he comes to this again. Chapter 12, verse 14. Here for the third time, I am ready to come to you. And I will not be a burden, for I seek not what is yours, but you. For children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children." And he's speaking there of his tender care and really working with them as children, kind of comparing them to young children. And the fact that there's a heavy load on him and that he's really trying to be faithful about that. And again, urging them to receive it. Those are the passages that I've been able to find on this particular connection between Paul's ministry and the ministry of parents. Maybe there are some others that I have missed along the way. But given that the Apostle Paul does present his ministry a number of times as a parent-like ministry, it seems to me reasonable to expect that there will be a lot of truths about Paul's ministry that have an application to parenting. And that is reasonable because what is gospel ministry about? What is a gospel minister trying to do? And what are parents, Christian parents, ultimately trying to do? I would argue biblically, they're actually trying to do the same thing. And one way to describe it is with the word discipleship. We're agreed on that, right? That the goal of parenting is not just to have a warm and supportive relationship with your children as they grow, nor is it to help them be successful in earthly terms. Paul himself describes our calling as parents in this way, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. He says that's the core of it, that's the reason that they've been brought into your home as you're a believer to then pass the truth of the gospel on to the next generation and rear them up in these things. Well, how would Paul describe his own ministry, even though he wasn't a dad? And as he was going around preaching and making disciples and whatever else, how would he describe what he is doing? It actually parallels what he says about parents. And I give you one example. In Colossians 1.28, he says that Christ we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ. That's really the same idea as bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Yes, Paul's specific role in discipleship was different from the specific and in-depth kind of role that parents tend to play with their children. But the goal is really the same. And that is, it is God himself works in the hearts of our children. We desire to lead them to Jesus Christ and to help them grow in Christ-likeness. And that's why I'm saying that there's a lot that we can learn as parents and the job that God has given us to do from looking at what the Apostle Paul did in carrying out his calling. We look at his example and there are many ways in which the practices and the principles of his own ministry have an application to the discipling work that goes on in the Christian home. And with that in mind, the title of the message this morning is this, Pauline Patterns for Parenting. Pauline Patterns for Parenting. We're going to be focusing particularly on what Paul says about his ministry in 2 Corinthians and making applications of his example to the issue of parenting. And in fact, as I thought about this, there is so much here that I couldn't get through it in one message. So I'm going to actually do part one on Mother's Day, and we're going to cover four of these patterns. And Lord willing, in about a month, we'll come back on Father's Day and we'll pick up the rest of these patterns. Now, the first of the patterns for today is, unfortunately, a negative point. It's a bit of a heavy point. And preachers commonly are taught to deal with their negative point, if they have one, to deal with it first. Now, in this case, I'm going to do that, and it's not just because a sermon is usually more uplifting if you end on a positive note. It is because actually the negative point often provides the context for the other points that we need to consider the more positive ones. And what is the negative point that we see again and again Paul describing in this letter as he talks about his ministry to these people that then becomes an example for us. The point is this, anticipate the difficulties of discipleship. Anticipate the difficulties of discipleship. This is not an easy thing that God has called us to do, to make and mature disciples, and in general that's not easy, and it's not easy in the home specifically. I have often been struck with something about the ministry of the Apostle Paul. you if you could sort of put yourself without being irreverent in kind of the the role of God coming out of the ascension of Jesus Christ and the Lord wants to launch what we call the Church of Jesus Christ and here he is founding a religious movement that his plan is for this to have an impact all over the world And let's suppose you're making that decision and you have divine power to help this thing succeed. And you pick out a handful of people to kind of get it going. What sort of people would you probably choose if you're thinking about how life normally works in the human race? The disciples that Jesus picked were not the most likely candidates to found a worldwide movement that to this point has lasted over 2,000 years. If I were God, probably, I would make my men men just like super polished people, highly educated, with a lot of business savvy, really good communicators, people that would have been impressive to the world and really got people's attention. I would have kept those people in perfect health. I would have worked in the hearts of the leadership of the world at the time, to where they just automatically were drawn to these individuals and just very naturally loved them and supported them. I would have given them a bunch of money. and I would have made their lives as smooth and trouble-free as possible. That would all seem to make sense. If you were starting a business or if you were wanting to popularize some philosophy, if you were wanting to have an impact all over the world with some new idea, it seems pretty logical to be selecting people like that, to be sort of the spearhead of this thing to guide and found this movement. But that is not how the Lord chose to work, and it wasn't how the Lord chose to work even with the Apostle Paul. What we find in 2 Corinthians is that the Apostle Paul had a ton of problems. A bunch of things going against him personally, and a bunch of things in terms of interacting with people that he was trying to minister to. And we don't have time to do a whole study of this letter, but at the very beginning of the letter, he talks about sharing abundantly in Christ's sufferings. Chapter 1, verse 5. Not just a little bit of suffering, but he says, this has been abundant in my life. In fact, a few verses later, he's describing some of the experiences he had in Asia Minor, and he says, we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. Have you ever found yourself? in whatever role you might have or responsibility, but particularly in terms of parenting, something like what he says here, utterly burdened beyond your strength. Utterly burdened beyond your strength. And despairing of life itself. That's probably a more common sentiment than we might want to admit when it comes to parenting. And that's just one example. You go to chapter 11, we won't take the time to read that either, but Paul gives a whole litany of experiences of suffering and rejection and persecution and overwhelming problems. And it wasn't just physical persecution. This letter was written largely because some false teachers had begun to influence the Corinthians away from Paul and his teaching. And Paul's having to go to some length to basically defend himself before these people that he loves so much. And he describes the opposition in chapter 11 verse 13 as false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. So that was a whole other layer of problems he had. He had just kind of the general persecution from the world, He had people creeping up within the church, deceiving believers away from the truth that he had taught them. And yet even that wasn't the most painful of his experiences. It would seem to be that what hurt Paul the most were the tensions that he experienced with the Corinthian people themselves. And he talks about that, for example, in chapter 2. He says there about one of the issues, for I made up my mind not to make another painful visit to you. For if I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have pained? And I wrote as I did, so that when I came, I might not suffer pain from those who should have made me rejoice. For I felt sure of all of you that my joy would be the joy of all of you. For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart with many tears, not to cause you pain, but to let you know the abundant love I have for you." Pain, anguish, affliction, many tears. And he is talking about the people that he had poured his life into, taught the Word of God, discipled, preached to, encouraged, counseled. He says, I should have received joy from you, but even to write you a letter, to visit you in this circumstance is just deeply painful for me. Now, thankfully, the problem he's describing there did get resolved, but there were still problems with some of the church members at Corinth, and here's what he says about them in chapter 11. as he's kind of sarcastically describing their sort of jumping on board with the false teachers. He says, for you gladly bear with fools, being wise yourselves, for you bear it if someone makes slaves of you, or devours you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or strikes you in the face. You would rather follow those people than somebody who has a proven track record of really loving you and trying to help you. These are some of the experiences that this man faced in his parent-like experience. One of the parenting verses that I read at the outset was chapter 12, verse 14, and following up on that, he says in verse 15, I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. If I love you more, am I to be loved less? Can't you just hear the broken heart? of a father who is being rejected by some of these people. Folks, when we read about all these problems, remember we are talking about the great Apostle Paul. This man faced all manner of setbacks and discouragements in his discipleship efforts. And the hardest part was that some of the very people that he had invested his life into were now beginning to turn away from what he had taught them and were rejecting him personally, following the lead of those apostles of Satan that Paul talks about. Well, that's pretty discouraging, but I actually find it oddly encouraging in that it matches up to the realities that we often face in our discipleship efforts of whatever kind, but including our efforts with our children. We live in a fallen world, and we are fallen, and our children are fallen, and stuff is going to happen. A book like this just rubs off the idealism that we have if we just bring our kids to church and teach them the Bible, everything is just going to be hunky-dory and this is all going to work out great. It might, it might not. It didn't work out so well even for the Apostle Paul. We are going to encounter problems, disappointments, and failures, and sometimes they are going to be overwhelming. In fact, some people, even Christian people, actually avoid having children for that very reason. They know how burdensome and frustrating it can be. We do not want to have that kind of unbiblical, that kind of selfish attitude. And yet we have to be honest and acknowledge that parental discipleship is not going to follow some kind of neat and clean and pain-free formula. Well, so much for the negative. How are we going to cope with that? How are we going to deal with that? What about the positive points? Well, Paul himself tells us in this letter a number of times one of the great reasons that God ordains problems in discipleship. And that brings us to our next, our second pattern in discipleship and in parenting. How is it that Paul copes with those difficulties and disappointments in his ministry? And I just put it simply to you in these terms, not only that we are to expect those difficulties, but that we are to learn to rely on God's grace. And in fact, it is one of the grand purposes of God for ordaining the difficulties to push us to that posture to the Lord of relying upon his grace alone. Several times in this letter, Paul tells us how he is able to persevere in his ministry as a spiritual father. I read a little bit from chapter one about all of his persecutions. And the fact that he felt this sentence of death, but right away, what does he say? You remember this passage? Why would God have me live under the cloud of a sentence of death and my ministry be not just kind of stuck, but actually my life being threatened as all I'm trying to do is serve God, right? Why would God let this happen? He says, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. He says, I feel like I've got the sense of death and that was sometimes literally true for him. He says, God put you in that spot to cause you to rely on the God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. You also must help us by prayer so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. And so the Apostle Paul's problem were not some kind of fluke. They were not somehow out of God's control to change. God actively ordained that these things should happen in order specifically to push Paul to depend on the God of the resurrection. And he makes the point that the power of that God of resurrection, specifically how we rely on grace, is through prayer. And I would imagine that there are few things that drive you to your knees than waking up one day and realizing the responsibility you have before the Lord to pass on the truth of God to the next generation. And this is not a blank slate sitting in front of you. This is a sinner. And it is your calling, empowered by the Spirit, to communicate the truth, to live out the truth. You cannot do that consistently, and you certainly cannot change their hearts. This is a divine work. And enough stuff happens in our parenting to bring us to the point of humility of just throwing up our hands, not like as in giving up, but in saying, God, I just, I'm hopeless. I can't do this. This is a human being just like I am, and for all the input that I give them from you, it's just gonna bounce back if you don't choose to have favor on them, to show them your grace, and to open their hearts to this. That's the spirit of the Apostle Paul in this passage. In fact, listen to how he describes his ministry in chapter 4, verses 7 to 12. He says, talking about the message of the gospel, we have this treasure in jars of clay. to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. We have a little name to summarize what he just said in those verses. And we studied this sometime back in Sunday school. That's the J curve, folks. Those verses are the J curve. He says we live sort of rehearsing the death of Jesus in all these ministry experiences and getting almost to the point of dying, but it's in that lowest point that God renews us and gives us new life and hope to continue. And then it happens again tomorrow, and it happens the next day. You're down in the bottom of that J, feeling like you're dead and can't go on. And God just gives you enough that day to say, you're sovereign, you're good, you're gracious, I'm going to continue. And he gives you new life. And it's through our daily experience of that process over and over again that then he ends up using that to minister life to other people. And here's one more example, probably the most famous in St. Corinthians, and that's where chapter 12 talks about the thorn in the flesh. He says it comes from God, that God could have taken away, but at the same time he calls it a messenger of Satan. Somehow, your problems in life can be both from God and also from Satan. An affliction from Satan to make you suffer and to try to make you fail and not stay at it. But at the same time, it's a teaching tool in the hands of God. At one and the same time. And he says in verse 8, the three times he went to the Lord just pled with them to take it away. And the Lord says to him, my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness. There's another paradox. God's power is made perfect as in fully comes out. You experience it completely when you feel your weakness. Therefore, he says, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses. so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, calamities, for when I am weak, then I am strong. That, again, is not the way the world thinks. That is counterintuitive, but this is the way of Christ, humbling us through weakness and causing us to experience his strength. Now that is a very specific testimony that apparently had to do with a physical malady Paul suffered. But we end up in the same place as we've seen in these other passages. The burdens of life and ministry drove this man to a profound dependence on God for the endurance that he needed to move on. And apparently that was the only way that he could get to that level of dependence. Now, surely that pattern bears application to parenting as well. Mothers especially, does the word weakness resonate with you? Think about all of the things that bring you to the end of yourself as a mother. I mean, to begin with, there is the physical pain you suffered to carry and to give birth to your children to begin with. And we know that that's a part of the curse. So it's not supposed to be an enjoyable thing. By definition, that is painful, hard to bear. And that's just the beginning. There's the exhaustion of caring for infants night and day. There is the daily grind of meal prep and cleaning and laundry and homework, the challenge of figuring out effective child discipline, and the endurance needed to stick it out day after day. The wisdom and the patience that it takes to help your kids through their own problems, whether they're big problems or small ones. There is the extra heavy and complicated responsibility of those whose children have special needs. And then there is the burden that you carry for the long-term spiritual direction of your children the older they get. And along with that, there is as well the anguish that you feel when a child makes wrong choices. I'm sure I could continue the list of things that make you feel weak as a parent. If you listen to a list like that and you say, who is sufficient for these things? Who is sufficient for these things? Please know there is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with you. In fact, that is exactly how Paul felt about his own parent-like ministry. Those are the words he uses in 2 Corinthians 2, verse 16. And his point is that God wanted him to feel that way. because that is how he came to have such a reliance on the grace and power of Christ to keep going forward, to keep discipling, to keep ministering anyway. You may not understand what God is doing in your child's life, but you can know something of what he's doing, at least in your life, right? You do have an answer to that question. He is growing your dependence on him through these things. He is sanctifying you. Your struggles in this area of parenting are a divine tool to shape you into a more humble and a more Christ-like servant. And that brings us to the third of these Pauline patterns for parenting. Number three, Paul would urge us in all of our discipleship efforts to foreground, to put front and center, to foreground the gospel of Jesus Christ. And what I'm getting at here is the core of how Paul went about discipling the Corinthians. Even in the midst of problems swirling around, maybe especially in the midst of problems swirling around, in one way or another in these letters, he keeps somehow connecting these issues back to the gospel and using the gospel as the solution to the issues that these people were struggling with. Were there, for example, these challenges to his apostolic authority? People saying, you know, where do you get off teaching this? Or how do I know I can trust you? Well, read chapter three. He says, are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need letters of recommendation? He says, no, you are our letters. And this is something going on in the heart, and that launches him into this big theological discussion about how he's a minister of the new covenant, right? He says, God has called me to minister this covenant that is not about commands on a block of stone, but it's about the Holy Spirit changing people's hearts. And if you would just grasp what the new covenant is and that this is the message, the gospel that I've been preaching to you, that would actually establish my authority and resolve that issue here, right? That's one way that he approaches. Does Paul need endurance to persevere in all the self-sacrifice that's involved in his work? Well, how does he talk about his motivation in 2 Corinthians chapter 5? You could probably quote these verses. For the love of Christ, the love of Christ controls us. Because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died. And he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised. So here, Paul and then parents regularly are having to say no to themselves and no to what they feel like and no to what they want to do. And how do you get the strength and the motivation to do that? He says, think about your savior. What was he about? He was about giving up short-term comfort, dying to himself in that moment, and if this is the one that you have been saved by, then why would you expect your life would be anything else? He actually did that so that those who live by his work would then go on and live lives of self-denial as well. This is part of what it means to be a Christian. You read on in this letter, and there's another set of misunderstandings about a financial collection, and he's having to motivate the Corinthians to get behind this offering that he's taken, that he's gonna take, and how does he motivate them at that point? 2 Corinthians 8, 9. Here's the motivation. Forgiving, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, that you through his poverty might be made rich. It's another gospel motivation, like no matter what subject he's talking about, taking up the offering, dying to self, challenges to his authority, and that's just a few of them, somehow he always comes back to the cross and the work of Christ as the solution, as the way to deal with things. Read this book of 2 Corinthians and you will discover this again and again. Paul always finds the core of the solution in applying the gospel to the situation at hand. There's something about the grace of God, or something about the cross, or something about the resurrection, or something about the illuminating work of the Spirit, or the nature of repentance, or the effects of regeneration, or the privilege of being sons of God, or the glory of heaven. Somehow, he's able to take these weighty gospel doctrines and say, now that is the antidote to this problem that we're having in this discipleship relationship. His ministry kept bringing people back to the gospel in its many dimensions. And I would then, by way of application, say moms and dads, that is our calling also. When we use this phrase, preach the gospel to yourself, we are not saying only, just keep reminding yourself, God loves me, my sins are forgiven, and I'm righteous in Christ. That's not all that we mean. Those are wonderful truths, and that is a part of what we mean. But there are so many more facets to the gospel. and so many more implications to the gospel. And there is truth there that has extensive application to every need and every problem and every temptation that we face in life. And our role as parents is to help our children to see those connections. It is for ourselves, but it is for our children also. If I could put it this way, discipleship is not about behavior modification. The most unregenerate person can change their behavior if they put their mind to it. That doesn't mean anything. By God's grace, discipleship is about nurturing love for Jesus in our children. And it is about helping them connect the gospel to all of life. If you are going to do that faithfully, we are going to have to know the gospel for ourselves and be experiencing this in our own lives. And that brings me to the fourth pattern for today. And that is be an example of gospel perseverance. Be an example of gospel perseverance. So much of the discipleship of Paul, especially in this letter, is by way of his own example. He models for these people how it is that a Christian because of all of these aspects of the work of Christ, is actually able to get the strength, the direction he needs to persevere through all the burdens and the challenges of life in a fallen world. This man shows them what it looks like to rely on the grace of God. This man demonstrates from his own experience how to apply the gospel to whatever problem is before you. Just to give you one example, and this will be our last passage, we had read earlier from chapter six, and now a little bit more from some other verses in chapter six. And as I read these, just think about the idea of gospel perseverance. Here's Paul under all of these attacks and crushing burdens, but how can he keep going on? He says, and here's his example, verse three, we put no obstacle in anyone's way so that no fault may be found with our ministry. But as servants of God, we, listen to this, we commend ourselves in every way. That's incredible. that this man had reached with the Lord's grace the point of maturity where he says, look, I'm an open book, you can examine me and all the experiences I have and you're going to see that God commends me to you in every way. What do you want to talk about? Endurance, afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labor, sleepless nights, hunger, On and on he goes for another half dozen verses. He actually is deliberately presenting himself as a model of the very things he's talking to them about. And he's saying, the Lord has helped me endure all these things, and my endurance through all these things is commending my ministry. It is making it feasible in your sight It is making it look like actually you can live this way yourself, like this is real and not just words. If you will give yourself to this Christ, you will actually be able to flesh this out in your own circumstances. You can look at me as a pattern that commends itself to you as what a gospel life looks like. Parents, you and I cannot make our kids love Christ or live for him. But by Christ's own power, we can do what Paul just said, of commending to our children the reality and the power of the gospel through our own Christ-dependent perseverance. Negatively, part of what that means is what he says in verse 3. He says, I don't want to put any obstacle in your way, and I haven't. And what he means by that is not that he never sinned or was totally perfect. What he means by that is that he's not been a hypocrite. He's not been dishonest. He says, you can examine my life. And I am not preaching to you or requiring from you anything that by the grace of God, I'm not striving to live out myself. That's a commitment we ought to have as well, not to put an obstacle in the way of our children through our hypocrisy. It doesn't mean we never fail. What it means is we actually own up to our failures. We don't deny them. We don't minimize them. We don't shove them under the carpet and pretend like they're not there. We own up to them, and we seek the solution of the gospel to them, and we keep fighting the flesh by the power of the Spirit. So that's kind of the negative side. Don't put an obstacle in front of them through your hypocrisy. But the positive side is this idea of commending yourselves to them as servants of God. The goal is not to have them have such an elevated view of you that they would never be able to arrive at that. What they ought to be seeing is the kind of humility that we have observed in the Apostle Paul of relying on God's grace and through his grace persevering in our sanctification and in our efforts to disciple. That kind of endurance is what they're going to need if they're going to be disciples of Christ and stay faithful to him through their lives. And seeing the reality of that in our own lives is one of the chief things that God uses to work in them. We'll come back on Father's Day and continue our study here in 2 Corinthians, but for the day and for mothers especially, I trust that you will be encouraged and instructed by Paul's parent-like ministry. What are the patterns we've seen here? Number one, anticipate that this is going to be hard. There are going to be all kinds of challenges in the process. Number two, learn to rely on God's grace. Number three, foreground the gospel of Jesus Christ. And number four, through that gospel, be an example of perseverance. We're going to end our service by singing a prayer to the Lord, where we are asking him to do this kind of work. And it is hymn number 731 in the Red Hymnal, so you can turn there.