There was a few things left that I wanted to give you and I and
rather than try to cram all of those in, I decided to give them
to you tonight instead. And so Ephesians chapter 6, just
to bring us back into what we've been talking about.
The Bible says this in verse number one.
Children, obey your parents and the Lord for this is right.
Honor thy father and thy mother. Honor thy father and mother,
which is the first commandment with promise.
Now, obviously, that's two children, right?
And the obedience to your parents, I think that's
especially when you're younger. But the honor thy father and thy
mother, that is, they're always going to be your father and
mother. That's never going to go away,
right? And I think many times as
parents get older and they start doing things that don't make a
whole lot of sense sometimes. But I'm not saying that from my
own experience, but I've been around long enough to understand
that there are times when you get really frustrated with your
parents, right? That they don't do the things
that you think would be the best thing for them to do.
And maybe it's because they're getting old enough that they've
lost a little bit of what they used to have and they're not as
sharp as they used to be. And it is easy to get
frustrated. It's very easy to dishonor your
parents, but they're your parents and you still should
honor them. And I think that's one of those
things that you'll be thankful that you did.
But that's the first commandment that comes with a promise is
what the Bible is saying, that it may be well with thee and
that thou mayest live long on the earth.
That's another promise that comes along with it.
But verse #4 then says, And you fathers, provoke not your
children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and the
admonition of the Lord. And we've talked a lot about
that over the last few years. Bring them up in the nurture and
the admonition of the Lord. That's the responsibility of the
Father. And that means then that the
wife, the mother is supposed to follow the husband's leadership,
follow her husband's leadership and do what he has set as the
standards in their home and, and follow that leadership that he
that that he's established in the home.
If you expect that the home is going to go the way that it
should, because everybody has a defined biblical role to follow.
Husband leads, wife follows the husband, children obey the
parents. Everything goes just the way
that God planned for it to go. But all children have moments or
seasons when they struggle with obedience just like their
parents. By the way, many times we're
very hard on our children when they disobey and then we turn
around and do the exact same thing to God.
I think if we were willing to give our children the same grace
that we give ourselves, we would not bring our children up in
wrath. We would not provoke our
children to wrath as the Bible says not to do.
But some children, I think, particularly in the teenage
years, become defiant. They become overtly
disrespectful and you wonder why, why, why is this happening
now #1 it starts way back when they're little kids, starts way
back when they're little kids. But there are some things that
you can do, especially as they get older and start to show some
of those signs of rebellion. There's a lot of contributing
reasons for why kids act that way, I think, including the free
will of every person of to follow the Lord or not follow
the Lord, right? Sometimes kids, you could do
everything right, and they're just going to do their thing.
They're just going to do it their way.
They're just not going to follow.
And especially you have kids that as they grow up and they,
they get out on their own and they marry somebody and they go
straight for a while. And then they start to deviate
because they get into a church that's not strong or they, they
start to get away from the Lord because the situation that they
found themselves in that they don't have some accountability
or something like that. And so they just start to stray.
And the next thing you know, they've made the decision to not
even be in church or whatever that happens to be, right?
It doesn't necessarily reflect that you raised them the wrong
way. It reflects that they had a free
will and they could choose what they wanted to do with their
life. But I want to give you 7 things
tonight that are common factors for why teenagers rebel, why any
young person rebels. Whatever amount of of discipline
and example you do give, if you're participating in any of
these seven things, then you're undermining your own influence.
You're undermining your own authority and you're you're
almost teaching your children to be disrespectful.
So here are seven ways tonight that parents undermine their own
influence. Let's pray and then we'll jump
into these things tonight. Father, again, we thank you so
much for your goodness to us. We thank you for the opportunity
to be here together. Pray that it would be a help to
us. And again, we thank you for all
that you do for us in Jesus name, Amen.
Number one is this when when they hear their parents
criticize authority, you're undermining your own influence.
When your children hear, you undermine and criticize
authority. If every night you come home
from work talking about how worthless your boss is and
saying all the things that you would not say to your boss's
face, you're undermining your own authority.
If every Sunday at lunch you talk about all the mistakes that
the pastor is making, you're undermining your own authority.
You're teaching them that it's OK to not respect the authority
that's in their life. And it sounds very subtle.
It may not be a, it may not seem like a big thing, but when you
are tearing down authority in front of them, you are also
tearing down your own authority because you are telling them
it's OK to tear down authority as long as there's a reason to
tear that authority down. And I'm not saying that you have
to agree with everything that your boss does.
I'm not saying that you have to agree with everything that the
pastor does. Talk about it in private.
Have a conversation with your wife in private.
You're talking you, you do this criticizing in front of your
children. You are tearing down your own
authority. Same thing when it comes to your
children's teachers or coaches or whatever it happens to be
when you disrespect them in front of your children, you are
also disrespecting your own authority.
You're tearing your own authority down and it's going to
hurt you in the long run. And it may be that it happens
when, when your kids are in first, second, third, 4th grade,
but they see that and they know exactly what's going on.
And by the time they get into 7th, 8th, 9th grade, when they
start feeling a little bit of their Wheaties and they're not a
little kid anymore, they're going to disrespect your
authority because you've taught them to do that by criticizing
the authority in your life. Here's number 2.
When they see their parents violating scripture, you are
tearing down your own authority. You are undermining your own
influence when you violate scripture.
Now, none of us are perfect. We're always going to fall short
in some way or another. But when your children see you
flagrantly disobeying God's Word, you are undermining your
own influence. Especially if you're in a church
like this. You hear it preached over and
over and over, especially about the things that you watch on
television and the things that you spend your time doing and
the things that you know are wrong.
And then you go and participate in those things, and your
children are sitting there watching those things with you.
They know that you should not be watching that.
They know that they shouldn't be watching it listening to music
that is displeasing to the Lord, and you're sitting there
listening to that music together.
They know that they shouldn't be listening to that.
They know that you shouldn't be listening to that, and yet
you're doing it anyway. When you violate scripture, they
know that that that is not right and you are tearing down your
own authority, but you're also tearing down your influence
because how can you then turn around and tell your kid don't
do that. You know better than that when
you were literally doing the exact same thing.
Well, I'll tell you what happens.
Most of the time the parents don't do that because they know
they're doing things that they shouldn't be doing.
So they just don't correct their children at all.
And now the kids can go on and do whatever they want to do and
live the life that they want to live because the parents want to
do the exact same thing. And you're undermining your
influence when you're doing those things.
And, and they know that you don't really believe that the
things that you're teaching them, that they know that you
don't really believe the things that you're teaching them.
And you're going to lose that respect.
You can sit down and have devotions every single night.
You can come to church every single time the doors are open.
And you can listen to all the different things that you should
be doing and here and, and, and knowing all the, all the
different things that you should be doing in your life.
And your kids know all those things.
And then you get up there and do the exact opposite of that.
It doesn't matter what you're doing.
They're, they're watching your life and they're watching your
example and you are undermining that example #3 and we've
already kind of touched on this. And I'll be honest, a lot of
these things are just kind of a summary of a lot of things that
we've talked about already. But #3 when they feel that their
parents don't love one another, you're undermining your
influence. When they feel that the parents
don't love one another, it could be that you do and you get along
fine, but you're constantly bickering and arguing and
fighting and then you, you know, you, you, you go back into the
room by yourself and everything's perfectly fine.
You have a great time, but then you come out and you're
bickering and arguing and fighting.
Then you go back into the bedroom and everything's
perfectly fine, and then you're arguing and fighting.
When your kids, when your kids perceive that the parents don't
love each other, then you're undermining your own influence.
The seeds of that insecurity that's shown in a young person's
heart when they feel that their parents don't love each other
run very deep. If you have difficulties in your
marriage, you need to determine together that you're going to
work through them. Now, I would think that
everybody that's in here is in a position where divorce is not an
option for you. You're going to stick together
no matter what. You're going to fight through
those things no matter what. But many times marriages like
that are miserable because you don't want to be together.
But you have to be together because you can't get divorced.
And so instead of getting it fixed and figuring out what you
can do to make the marriage better, you just both live in
misery. That's no way to live.
That's no way to be an example to your children, right?
Ask for pastoral counseling, get individual counseling if you
have to, right? There's there are things that
you can do to help get your marriage on more of a solid
footing, but you've got to get your marriage right if you're
going to have a family. That's right.
The marriage is the foundation of everything I mentioned this
last week. You know, how can you live for
30 years together, married and then get a divorce after you've
been married for 30 years? It's because you're not spending
that time pursuing each other. You need to pursue each other.
Hey, didn't you do you do that before you got married?
All right, all the love notes and all these different things
that I'm going to do for you because I'm trying to win your
heart. And then you get married and
it's like, all right, the old lady is, you know, doing this
tonight. You know, whatever it happens to
be, you stop pursuing each other.
And that's when the marriage starts to degrade from day one.
And then you have kids and and they get frustrating sometimes
and there's a lot of responsibility with children.
You can't just pick up and go to Waffle House at one O clock in
the morning because that's what you feel like doing, right?
Everything changes when you have children and it changes the
dynamic of your relationship because now you got something
that you got to take care of or it's going to die, right?
Remember those little pocket animals that people had?
Remember that? I think it was probably in like
the mid 2000s, you know, 2006, seven, 8:00 somewhere in there,
everybody's walking around with these little animals in their
pocket that you had to keep alive.
And if you didn't push the button and feed them, they died,
right? But then what happens?
Well, you just go buy another one, right?
Well, I figured this out. You can't do that with kids.
They die. You're done, right?
And and I'm not, I'm not trying to be morbid, but that's exactly
what it is. You got to keep them alive,
right? You have, they have, you have to
take care of their needs and everything else.
And what happens is if you are not purposely pursuing each
other in your marriage, then you're going to let those things
take over, right? And, and your kids are going to
be gone someday. Your spouse and is, is not
right, 18 years, 20 years, 25 years depends on how many kids
you have and how long they're in the house.
They're right. Eventually you're going to be
back on your own. It's just going to be the two of
you. And if you live a normal life,
you're going to have 20 or 30 years with just the two of you
again, right? You started off that way.
You're going to end that way. It's what you do in that in
between time, especially when you have those the, the
children. It's it's what you do with those
in between times that are going to determine how your marriage
is going to go, right? And you've got to make sure
you've got to prioritize those things.
Well, I can't because my kids are too young.
We can't go out to eat. We can't do this.
Listen, there's a whole church full of people that will watch
your kids for you if you want to go out, right?
There's a lot of people who are retired that would love to watch
your kids and spank them for you while you're gone.
I'm just kidding. Please let me watch your
children. No, I'm just kidding.
But listen, there's a lot of people that would do that.
You've got to prioritize spending time together.
All right? It's it's we're at a great stage
in our marriage because my kids are old enough that I can just
leave them home and we can go out and, you know, go to dinner
or do whatever, right? When the kids are at school,
it's a great opportunity. They're at school and we can go
out for lunch or different things.
We do it at least once a week, sometimes more when we have the
opportunity to do that because I'm not I, I, I don't want to be
one of those ones that I don't know my wife when my kids are
gone. I'm, I want to continue to
pursue that relationship now the same way that I pursue now.
The, the structure is a little bit different, right?
I already got her. She can't leave now.
I'm not trying to, to win her over, but I want to keep her.
I want to have my wife's heart, right?
And I want her to have mine. And, and that that does not come
by accident. If you are struggling in your
marriage, you've got to get help with that.
You've got to get that marriage on the right foundation.
No matter how many times you tell your kids that it's not
their fault that we're struggling in our marriage,
they're never going to believe you.
And they're always going to think it's because of me.
It's my fault. Something's wrong with me.
And that's why my parents are are having problems in their
relationship. And you can tell them it's not
and many and sometimes it is. It is not the kids, it is the
parents that just can't get along.
But the kids aren't going to see it that way.
And it's going to undermine your influence #4 you undermine your
own influence when your children are not disciplined for
disobedience. This all comes down to one word,
and that word is consistency. You have to be consistent in
your discipline, right? It's the same way that that the
law works. And one of the reasons why the
law doesn't work very well is because the justice system is
very inconsistent, right? Somebody can, somebody can
murder somebody and they get 10 years in prison.
Another person can murder somebody and they get 4 life
sentences, right? There's just, there's no,
there's no consistency to it. So I got 10 years.
Now I'm going to go kill somebody else.
I'm probably only going to get 10 years again, right?
And it happens. I mean, it happens more often
than you think, but when you're you're kids, you know,
especially as they get a little bit older and they have a little
bit more freedom, maybe they break the curfew that you
established. You learn that they've been
hanging out with kids that you told them not to hang out with.
This is as they get older, obviously, you know, and there's
no consequences. They're going to learn not to
respect what you say because it doesn't matter if you say this
is what's going to happen. If you do this and you don't do
it, then why would they ever? And by the way, I said this at
the beginning, it all starts from there.
Very little. If you tell your kid don't touch
that or you're going to get a spanking and they touch it and
you say, I said don't touch that or you're going to get a
spanking and they touch it again.
And you say, I'm telling you, you're going to get a spanking
if you touch that again, right? Why wouldn't they touch it?
Because the next time you tell them something, they're going to
say, well, this is probably another one of those times where
I'm going to get another warning before I get in trouble and then
I'm probably going to get another warning before I get in
trouble. If you say it, you better back
it up. Don't touch that or you're going
to get spanked. They touch it.
All right, let's go. All right.
And there's battles sometimes back and forth and they last a
while. You're not trying to break your
children's spirit, but you are trying to break their will the
same way that that it happens with God, right?
I don't want to, I don't want to beat my children to the point
where they're just, you know, a BLOB of me that, that I can just
fling around and do whatever with, right?
But at the same time, they've got to understand that your will
has to become subservient to the will of the parents the same way
that our will has to become subservient to God's will,
right? You want your children to do
what God wants them to do with their lives.
Don't expect that that's going to happen if you've never
brought their will under your will, right?
God gave you them so that you could teach them and raise them
to into something that God can use.
And if you don't do that, God's not going to be able to use them
either. If you raise a rebellious young
person, if you raise a young person that doesn't have any
desire to follow what you what, what do you think the Bible says
in in Proverbs, my son, give me thine heart.
What do you think that means? That means bring your will under
my will, right? This is what I want.
I've been around a while. I don't know everything, but
I've been around a lot longer than my kids have, right?
I was there once. I know the dumb things that kids
do. I know the mistakes that kids
make, and I don't want them to make the same mistakes.
By the way, kids, when the Bible says children obey your parents,
that's exactly what it's talking about.
You bring your will under their will so that one day they can
transfer that over to God and you can bring your will under
God's will. But this, the whole idea there
is that when you know, it's if you're not consistent in your
discipline, you're teaching your kids to just do whatever they
want to do whenever they want to do it and hope that this is the
time that the hope that this is not the time when you finally
decided to follow through with it.
And by the way, that's what leads, that's what leads to a
parent losing their temper and just going off on their children
and actually moving into child abuse.
Spanking a kid is not child abuse, but losing your temper on
your kids is child abuse, right? How do you keep that from
happening? Hey, I said, no, let's go.
It's just as simple as that. That's the that's the rule,
that's the law, right? That's what we've laid down in
here. You disobeyed, you're in
trouble. What happens is I said don't do
that. I said don't do that.
How many times do I tell you not to do that?
Get in here, right? And that's when you whip the
belt off and you start whipping them everywhere, right?
That's what happens when you, when you're not consistent, you
lose your temper and you lose, you lose control of the entire
situation. You're not in control, your kids
are. And you undermine your influence
when that happens #5 you undermine your influence as a
parent when they're rewarded materially in spite of bad
behavior. A parent that thinks, well, I'll
just, I'll just keep giving stuff to my kid.
He's really going to love me if I just keep giving him things or
if I refuse to buy him what he's asking for, then we're going to
lose our relationship. That's being lazy.
The truth is your, your, your kid, your teenager especially,
he's not going to love you more for what you buy him.
He's going to enjoy what you buy him, right?
If he's begging you nonstop for some kind of whatever these game
stations are and you buy it for him and he wants this game and
you buy it for him and that game and you buy it for him and a
phone and you buy it for him and this and you buy it for him,
he's going to enjoy it. But he's not going to, he's not,
it's not going to build your relationship.
He's going to lose that respect for you when he knows that you
won't ever tell him no. And I think maybe this is one of
those things that comes later on when they're 19202122 years old
and they realized my parents didn't give me everything that I
wanted. I'm glad for that, but I'm very
thankful for that. Now there was things that I
asked my parents if I could do it.
My dad said no. And I was like, why not?
Why? Well, give me a good reason.
And then I never would have said that to him, right?
I thought it. I thought it.
But looking back, I'm saying, you know what?
I'm glad he said no. I'm glad he said no.
That proves that my dad was willing because he knew that I
did. I wasn't going to like it,
right? But he was willing to do the
hard thing, to do what was the best thing for me.
And when all you do is buy your kids everything they want and
all you do is just cater to whatever your kid wants and you
make their life just a bed of flowers so that they don't have
to struggle a day in their lives.
And they want to go hang out with these friends And you don't
want to tell them no because then they're not going to like
me. So go hang out with those
friends. And look, I've heard it from
teenagers, teenagers that that had parents who let them do
anything they wanted to do. They didn't like it, they didn't
like it. I've heard them say, I wish my
parents would tell me no sometimes because I know it's
not good for me. But I asked them and they say
yes. And what happens is, you know,
eventually when a parent never says no, they, they just stop
asking and they just start doing whatever they want to anyway.
They're the ones that are sneaking out of the house in the
middle of the night and going and hanging out with friends and
doing whatever they want to do, right?
Because the parents are not going to tell them no anyway.
So why not? I just don't want them to know
that I'm doing it. And that's what happens, number
six, when they're compensated materially by parents who pity
them. You're undermining your own
influence. Give your children gifts.
Yes, there's nothing wrong with that.
Buy them something for their birthday.
Buy them things for Christmas. I'm not saying don't ever buy
anything for your children. But if if your teenager
particularly is always asking for money, but it's not willing
to work, not willing to budget, you keep giving them money,
they're going to lose respect for you.
Give give your kids things freely because you're their
parents, that's one thing. But financially bailing them out
of every situation and every time they need money, you just
you just throw it at them. That's not helping them at all.
Make them work. Go go get a job, even even if
it's just going next door and raking leaves for somebody and
earning some money. All right, Learn what it means
to, to, to not only, not only are you undermining your
influence, but you're teaching them very, very bad habits of,
of financial stability. There's nobody there that's
going to bail you out when you don't have money to buy
groceries, right? Nobody's there.
Well, the government is, but do you want them to be dependent on
the government their entire lives, right?
Do you want them to, to, to be constantly sticking their hands
out and, and asking for everything, right?
Make them work, make them go, make them go make their own
money, right? Make them learn the value of a
dollar, right? If your kids want to go buy the
latest basketball shoes and they're 150 bucks and you just
like, well, whatever, here's $150.00, they're not going to
take care of them. My dad when I got into 7th
grade, he said, I'm going to, I'm going to give you a place to
live. I'm going to put food on the
table and I'm going to give you, you know, a place to sleep.
You want anything else, you're paying for it.
And you know what I did? I had, we had basketball season
come up and I went to Kmart and I bought AI didn't even know
they made these. I've never seen them since.
I went to Kmart and I bought a pair of Warner Brothers
basketball shoes for $15 in the clearance rack.
And those shoes lasted me for three years because I paid for
them. If my dad gave me $150.00 pair
of shoes, guess what? Whatever.
He'll give me $150.00 next year after I tear these things up.
I didn't wear them anywhere except on the basketball court.
I wore tennis shoes to practice. I put tennis shoes back on after
I left practice. I I bought tennis shoes at
Payless Shoes. I don't even know if Payless is
still around anymore. Is it?
But they were the ones that had those plastic bottoms on them.
When you go running across the gym and you try to stop, you
skid another 5 feet before you can turn around and take off
running the other direction, you know, and, and middle of winter
when the, when the shoes get cold, the bottoms cracked on
them and I had a line across the bottom of my shoes.
Some of you know what I'm talking about.
But guess what? I took care of them.
I didn't leave my clothes laying all over the place because I was
going to, I was going to have to buy something to replace it if I
didn't, right? I shopped at Goodwill.
I learned what it was like to be frugal with my money because I
had to pay for it. And I'm not saying that you have
to do that with everything that your kids have, right?
But at the same time, if all you do is just give, give, give,
give, give, they're never going to learn the value of a dollar.
And it's not going to mean anything to them when they need
something for 150 bucks and they just come with a handout.
Dad, I need money. Dad, I need money.
Dad, give me, give me, give me. You're undermining your own
influence when you do that. They're going to learn to see
you as a financial source to manipulate rather than a loving
provider and a teacher. And can I add to that, that when
you baby your children because you pity them, you're not only
not helping them, you're hurting them, right?
Well, he gets bullied at school, so I'm going to give him
anything he wants because I feel so bad for him, right?
Listen, there's the time to stand up for your kids.
There's a time to go get some things taken care of and get
some things right if that's the case.
But being bullied actually makes you tougher, makes you stronger.
And if all you do is baby your children, then they're just
going to come running home to Mama every time something bad
happens in their life, right? A difficult situation that they
deal with. And so mama's going to make his
life a better roses just because I feel bad for him, right?
I say Mama because most of the times dad don't dads don't do
that. They don't care.
Go go deal with it. But Mamas do that often, right?
It's a it's a it's a natural desire.
You want to you want to make your kids life better than your
life was. You want to make your kids life
easier than your life was. But, but in a lot of ways, it
made you what you are. Having to deal with the
difficulties that you dealt with in your life made you who you
are. Could you imagine what your life
would be like without those difficulties that you had to
face? Could you imagine what your life
would be like if your parents made all of your problems just
go away, never had to deal with anything?
No, you need that. You need those difficulties.
You need those things because they make you who you are.
And if all you do is bail your kids out and make their life so
easy because you pity them for whatever reason, you're
undermining your influence in your children's life #7 The last
one is this. When they're allowed to
participate in activities which they were told they would not
enjoy unless they obeyed. Teenagers need you to hold firm
boundaries. They need you to do what you
said you were going to do. There may be occasions for
mercy. You told your kids that this was
going to happen if they did this or this was going to happen if
they did not do this and the day comes and they didn't do it, or
the day comes and they did do it.
There are times when you can use that as a lesson and you can
allow them to do something that you said they were not going to
be able to do because you give them mercy.
But if you regularly go back and all the conditions that you
established for your children to participate in events that they
enjoy, your child's not going to respect you.
And don't expect that the next time you say if you do this,
you're not going to do that. Or if you don't do this, then
you can't go here. And every time they don't do it
and you let them go there anyway, they are never going to
listen to what you said they should not do or they should do.
There's no reason for them to do that because there's there's no
consequences for not doing that. I can promise you this.
If you say, well, you can go on this activity or you can go do
this thing or whatever else it is that you want to do.
If you get this done and they don't get it done and you tell
them they can't go, guess what they're going to do the next
time. OK, they're serious about this.
I better get that done if I want to do that right?
Again, it all comes back to that one word, consistency.
If you're not consistent, they're going to learn how to
manipulate you and you're going to wonder why you're being
manipulated and why you can't just tell your kid no.
And they accept it because you taught them how to do that.
You taught them to manipulate you because you weren't
consistent and you didn't follow through with the things that you
said you were going to do. Even the times that you do hold
the line become a wedge in the relationship if you don't always
hold the line. You see, I say don't do this or
let's just use this example. Do this and then you can do that
and they don't do it. Well, fine.
Do you just just make sure you get it done.
You can go, right, do this or you're not going to go.
They didn't do it. I told you that you couldn't
fine, just go, just go, right? And now the day comes when you
say do this or you can't do that and they didn't do it and you
say you're not going and they think that you're going to ha
ha, OK, I'm going to go. My parents are going to let me
go. And then they, they hold you
hold the line and you say no, you're not going to do that.
Then guess what, it's not going to be like, wow, my parents are,
you know, they're serious about discipline.
I didn't do it. So that no, they're going to get
mad. And that's what turns into the
rebellion and everything else because you're not consistent,
right? So how do you start being
consistent? Just start being consistent,
right? Start today.
If you haven't been doing it, it's it's, I mean, you're behind
the 8 ball, but start doing it, right?
Start doing it today. Sit down with your kids and say,
listen, I've made mistakes, right?
Sometimes that's what really is necessary, a little bit
humility. I've made mistakes.
I've done things wrong. But this is what we're going to
change. This is what we're going to fix.
And then start doing it and let them understand that you turned
the corner, that you made some decisions, that you changed.
They're not going to lose that respect for you.
They're going to gain respect for you because they understand
that you're willing to admit when you're wrong.
They understand that you're willing to admit that you need
to do things better. They understand that you're
willing to say we need to do things better as a family.
They're not going to lose respect because, oh, I thought
my dad was perfect. They know you're not perfect.
But then you make those changes.
You don't undermine your own authority.
You build it. Years of a, of a child's life
that we most commonly associate with disrespect.
The teenage years are often not the beginning of the disrespect.
It usually starts way before that.
But you dismissed it when they're six or seven years old
and they, you know, they usually feel a lot more dependent on
their parents. And so they're less likely to
show that overt rebellion, even though the seeds of that
disrespect have probably already been sowed.
And they're growing in there and they're getting deep.
And then they're 89101112 years old and those things are just
getting deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper.
And then at 131415 that little fruit starts to grow up.
And then at 161718 it's a full blown tree and you can't do
anything about it because you miss the opportunity.
At least you can't do anything about it without some serious
digging and some serious plowing and all of those things.
That's why it's so vital to cultivate that respect in your
children's heart when they're young.
That's what I've been talking about all along these last
couple weeks. And it is true that the concept
of respect is unraveling in our society today.
The, the, the, the lack of respect is so prevalent in
schools with law enforcement. I mean, in, in the, in the
workplace, the guy that tells his boss off is the big man, you
know, never used to be that way. We're losing that respect in our
society. But may there be a new
generation of Christian young people that grow up learning how
to respect their parents, grow up learning how to respect
authority, grow up learning how to respect God's authority in
their life. That's ultimately what we're
trying to do, is teach them how to follow the Lord with all of
their heart, right? But it starts by teaching your
children to give you their heart.
My son Solomon said in Proverbs, give me thine heart, right?
And he tells fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but
bring them up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord.
We have a responsibility to teach that to our kids, and it's
a very serious responsibility, not just the idea of respect.
It starts there, but not just that idea of respect, but the
idea that I've got to follow God with all of my heart.
I've got to follow His will for my life with everything that I
have. And that's what I'm trying to
teach my children. But it starts with respect.
And I don't want to undermine my own influence in my children's
life. I want to have all of the
influence that I can have. Because here's what's happening
right now. If your kids are young right
now, you have authority, all right?
You can tell your kids go do this and they better go do it.
You have authority right now, but one of these days, all that
you're going to be left with is influence.
You're not going to have authority in your children's
life forever. You are building that influence
right now so that someday when your kids are 2120220530 years
old and you come to them and you can say, hey, I think this is
something that you need to really seriously consider.
Guess what they'll do. You've got that influence and
they're really seriously considerate.
You can't tell them don't do that because you're not the
authority in their life anymore. You have authority now, but
you're building influence for later.
And when you tear down your respect for authority, when you
tear down respect for authority, you, you ruin your own
authority. When you do all of these
different things that I talked about tonight, you lose the
influence that you can have later on.
You can have influence while your kids are young, but you
have authority right now. Your kids better do it or else.
But there's going to come a day when you don't have that
authority. All you have is influence and
you're building that influence right now.
So what kind of influence are you building for later?
What kind of what kind of respect for authority and for
your authority are you teaching in your home right now?
Because it's on you to bring them up in the nurture and the
admonition of the Lord. Are you doing it, or are there
things that you need to change, things that you need to fix,
some things that you need to stop doing so that you're not
undermining the very influence that you're trying to build in
your children's life so you can direct them to where God wants
them to be? There's no point in going one
step forward and two steps back. You might be taking a step
forward by doing the things that you should be doing, but then
then you go and undermine your own influence and your own
authority and you're taking 2 steps back and that's not
helping anything. So what are you doing in your
family that you need to change so that you can have the
influence that you need to direct your children to follow
the Lord with all their heart as they get older?
That's that's the question, and that's what I want you to think
about tonight. Let's pray.
Father, again, we thank you so much for your goodness to us and
for an opportunity that we've had to spend some time here
together. I pray that it would be a help
to us, God, and I pray that you'd help all of us to have
families that grow up and live for you.
I pray that we would not lose one single young person to the
world. God, I pray that every single
one of these young people that's in this room tonight would grow
up and live for you with their hearts and with their souls and
with their their minds and with everything that they have.
I pray that you'd help us as parents to follow through with
these things that'll help us to get our children to the point
where they need to be. Help us to have the influence
that we need to have, to direct them to what you want them to do
and where we need to make changes.
God, I pray that you'd help us to do that.
Thank you again for all you do for us in Jesus name, Amen.
If you would stand at your seats with your heads bowed and your
eyes closed and we'd give you opportunity to respond to the
message tonight. I know it's mostly for parents,
but it's not unuseful for the kids either.
You are commanded to obey your parents and to honor and respect
your parents. And maybe you're just not giving
it to them. Maybe they don't make, maybe
they don't do everything right. Maybe they do make mistakes here
and there that does not give you a right to disobey or dishonor
your parents. Maybe you need to get some
things right with the Lord tonight too, so that you can get
some things right with your parents.
I don't know. But I think especially for
parents, we need to make sure that we are doing things right
in our own home so that we can direct our children to honor and
respect and obey the way that they should so that God can use
them. However, God's worked on your
heart tonight. You respond as the piano plays
the invitations open. You can come.