What up? Crossing family?
Today we are beginning a four week sermon series on the power
of family. Jerry and I are going to be
taking turns going through this series answering some of the
questions that many of us have rolling around in the back of
our minds. For instance, questions like how
do I train my children in the Lord?
How do I love my children? Well, how do I protect them from
the things that are happening all around them?
We believe, believe that today is not just another day.
We believe that the decisions we make today will indeed influence
our tomorrow and their tomorrow. And waiting until tomorrow to
make the changes simply will not do.
We believe, and we believe that you believe this too, that our
families deserve better. And so we believe that the
change should start today and shouldn't wait till tomorrow.
I want to to welcome all of our different locations, those of
you watching online and those of you who are a part of the
crossing inside. And I want to wish a special
welcome and would you guys help me welcome all the people that
are new here to the crossing this weekend?
We love you. Our goal as a church is to help
people find an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
And I have really good news. You can begin that relationship
today. Why this series?
I'll tell you, perhaps one of the hardest things to do is to
raise a godly family. If you were to flip through the
pages of the Bibles, those of you who are doing like a year in
the Bible thing, you'll be hard pressed to find a normal,
healthy family dynamic. So if your family is jacked up,
I got good news for you. So are the people in the Bible.
God designed the family to be a spiritual powerhouse that would
launch children fully equipped not just into adulthood, but
fully equipped to glorify Him and to love others well.
The problem is that since the family has so much power and
potential, it has an enemy, Satan, and he attacks it
regularly. Satan desires to create chaos
and conflict. Raise your hand if there's ever
been chaos in your home. Yeah.
Raise your hand if there's ever been conflict.
OK, this will be a great series for you.
Satan loves anger. Have you ever heard rumors of
people getting angry in their home?
Raise your hand. You.
This isn't. You don't have to identify.
The neighbors had their windows open and you just heard it.
Resentment. He takes joy in overreaction
over correction, and he lures us into complacency.
Your family has an enemy. And just like everything that
God created has a plan and a purpose, God has a plan and a
purpose for your family. Did you know that your family is
one of the ways in which God blesses you?
You might be going, I don't know if I like that blessing.
Psalm 127 says this. Children are a heritage from the
Lord, offspring a reward from him.
Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in
one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver
is full of them. Much of the Christian life is
stewardship of God's blessings. Maturity in Christ is being a
good stewards of the blessings of God.
For instance, we are to be good stewards of the gospel, which is
a blessing, and try to make sure that we seek to advance it.
We are to be good stewards of our lives, which are a blessing
from God, and we are to use them for the glory of God.
You and I are to be good stewards of our resources, which
are a blessing from God, and to steward them for the sake of the
mission. We are to steward our witness so
that way other people can find what we have found in Jesus.
So when it comes to the blessing in the form of our family, our
role is to be a good steward of it.
So what does that look like? Proverbs chapter 22 gives us
some insight into this. Start children off on the way
they should go, and even when they are old, they will not turn
from it. Some of you, you grew up in
church and you remember this being said a different way.
Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is older
he will not stray from it. Both of these translations are
trying to capture the word and unpack the Hebrew word hanak.
Turn to your neighbor and say Hanak.
You've learned Hebrew. Hanak means to dedicate to
narrow. For instance, hanak is used in
the dedication of a house in Deuteronomy chapter 20, the
dedication of a temple in First Kings 8, and the dedication of
an altar in Numbers Chapter 7. There is this setting aside this
narrowing of focus. For instance, how many of you,
you live in a house or you grew up in a house that had plates?
How many of you grew up in a house that had the good plates?
They had been ha knocked. They had been set aside.
Recently, my wife bought all new plates for our house and I got
one of the plates out of the cupboard.
What? What is it?
Is it called a cupboard cabinet? Yeah, we got that too.
And we put it on. I put it on the counter and I
began to cut with it. And she says you can't, you
can't cut on that plate. I said, OK, well, which, which,
which plate can I can I cut on? She goes none of them.
I just just say I'm fat and get me some Styrofoam because this
is ridiculous. There's been this setting aside,
you guys have heard me talk about the holy towel in our
house. This towel that Jennifer has set
aside. It's the one that hangs either
on the oven handle. And that towel, although it has
all the the ability to absorb liquids, it's just for people to
look at. Like, we're so poor we decorate
with towels and like, a college dorm room, that's what we have.
And recently this week, kid you not, my one of my sons fell into
a pond and had algae and Moss all over his shoes.
And guess which towel he got to use?
Yeah. And he didn't get in nearly as
much trouble as I did for cutting on a plate because it's
been narrowed. It's been set aside for
something special, something divine.
We are to hanak our children. We are to set them aside,
dedicate them, prepare them for their future responsibilities.
We are to hanak them for adulthood.
We are to instruct them into what is right and what is wrong.
And did you notice what the text said in the way that they should
go, not the way they want to go? I hear a lot of people this,
this is a Coach Clayton moment and Coach Clayton doesn't
respond to emails. So keep it to yourself.
When you complain about the behavior of your kids, you are
saying more about you and your parenting than you are about
your kids because your responsibility is to train them
in the way that they should go. Your kids are super
disrespectful. That is because you tolerate
disrespect. Adults are a gift.
Parents are a gift to their kids.
Because we have perspective, we can think long term.
Kids can't do that. That's why God gave them you.
And we are to use this gift of perspective.
We see things that they don't see.
We know what's coming. We know what's at stake, and our
job is to prepare them. Now, I'm going to stress you out
for just a second. OK, in love.
So everybody take a deep breath. Here's just some questions that
should be bouncing around in your head.
What kind of money manager do I want my kid to be when he gets
older? Do you want my kid to learn how
to order less, live on less, show restraint?
How to sacrifice? How to save?
What kind of spouse am I training in my home?
How are they going to speak to their future spouse?
It will be very similar to how they speak to you or your
spouse. What kind of person are they
going to be around the house? Do they know how to empty the
dishwasher, sort the laundry, know how to make their clothes
match? I have 0 abilities when it comes
to matching clothes. OK, this was not something that
I learned from anybody in my I have.
I might as well be color blind. I have no fashion sense.
In fact, you have never seen me in an outfit that I'm 42 that my
wife has not picked out and said you can wear that one.
If you don't like this, you can e-mail her at
jerry.harris@thecrossing.net. What kind of spouse do you want
to raise? Do you want to raise someone who
looks to help around the house? Who looks to sacrifice?
Do you want your kids to know how to apologize because do you
think they're going to have to know how to do that in their
marriage? When are they going to learn
that before they have a family or after?
What kind of provider do you want your kid to be?
What kind of work ethic do you want them to have?
Do you want them to have any marketable skills?
Can they cook? What would they be like as an
employee? Would you hire them?
And if you wouldn't hire them, why would anybody else?
Are they honest? You feel the stress?
You're like, Oh my goodness, we should have started 37 years ago
on this sermon series. So how do I do all of this?
If this is a responsibility from God, how do I do this?
And I know there's some of you right now.
You're going, but I don't have kids yet.
You will. And when you do, you are to
start them in the way they are to go.
Deuteronomy chapter 6 gives us insight into how God does this
Here, O Israel, the Lord, our God.
The Lord is one. I'm going to circle back on that
if I remember it. Love the Lord your God with all
your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
These commandments that I give you today are to be on your
hearts. Impress them on your children.
Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the
road, when you lie down and when you get up.
Tie them as symbols on your hands.
Bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of
your houses and on your gates. There are three things to notice
here. One the priority, the most
important thing you will ever do is train your children in the
Lord. I made a very big commitment
early on before I had kids that if I was in town I was always
going to be the one who took my kids to school for one reason
and one reason only. I wanted to everyday pray out
loud over my kids and I have prayed the exact same prayer
every day. Here's the prayer if you guys
want a cheater prayer for you to have for yourself.
It's going to sound very familiar to all the scripture
that we use here at a church like every month.
Ready, Heavenly Father, I just asked that my kids would grow up
to love you with all of their heart, mind, soul, and strength.
That they'd embrace the Great Commission and make disciples of
all nations. May they be a leader of others
and a follower of you and help them to find a spouse who will
love you and love them well. Do you want to know why I pray
the same prayer and that prayer only it's because it's the only
one I care if he ever answers. I want them to be right with the
Lord and committed to the Lord and fall in love with somebody
who is also committed to the Lord.
I have if I'm in town, I travel a lot, but if I'm in town, that
is my job. That is what I do.
I have never met someone to talk to them about Jesus before 8:30
in the morning because my first priority is to my kids.
Your kids are going to learn a lot from you.
Make sure that they learn Jesus. First Timothy chapter 4 verse 8
has this to say for physical training is of some value, but
godliness has value for all things holding promise for both
the present life and the life to come.
I love sports and I love kid sports.
Turn to your neighbor and say Clayton loves kid sports.
If you are a kid sport parent, I love it.
I love that you are fully invested in making memories with
your kids in athletic arenas. I love it.
I just need you to know it has value, but not as much value as
training your kids in righteousness.
I I'll talk to people on the phone and they'll talk about how
awesome their kid is doing in a particular sport and I love it.
I just would love in the future, like one day I get a phone call
and someone is not bragging about how well their kid did at
a thing. They're bragging that their kid
memorized Scripture, that their kid invited someone to church,
something that has more value. And I'll tell you why Parents
just, you know, Coach Clayton, for just a second, I've done a
lot of marriage counseling, and I've never been in a marriage
counseling. And they were just kind of
talking about how they went through this dark valley.
And then he is sitting there and he's like, yeah, things were
just going really bad. And she goes, yeah.
But then things totally turned around because he showed me that
he could hit a curveball. And then I was like, Oh my
goodness, my 42 year old husband can hit a curveball.
We don't have problems anymore. I've never heard that testimony,
not once. I've never been talking to a
couple and they're just having a really hard time.
And then he says, listen, we were in free fall as a couple.
But then she started talking to me about how good she was at
volleyball and how she could bump, set, spike it.
And I was like, I guess we're good.
I guess as long as our entire marriage is volleyballs being
thrown at your face, we're going to be fine.
It has some value, but not nearly as much as training
somebody in righteousness. The first one's priority.
The second one is consistency. Consistency.
How consistent are you as a parent?
Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 7 through 9.
Let's look at it again. Look at how they develop
consistency. Impress them on your children.
Talk about them when you sit at home, when you walk along the
road, when you lie down, when you get up.
Tie them as symbols on your hands.
Bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of
your houses and on your gates. This is to be a regular
occurrence when you drive around and when you're getting up in
the morning and before they go to bed at night.
These are things you are to do over and over again.
You want to know why? Because the only things that you
are good at are the things that you have done over and over and
over again. If you are good at sports, at
instruments, at drama, at finance, if you're mechanically
inclined, you got that way because you consistently engaged
in that direction. That means that if you want your
kids to be great at life, at adulting, at parenting, at
following Jesus, you need to consistently invest.
If I could be honest with you, the area where I struggle the
most as a parent is in the area of consistency.
My kids will go from almost no rules to lots of rules to I'm
not that that much doesn't bother me all that much to this
bothers me a lot to you know you can do this for a little bit
too. You're grounded for a month.
The pendulum in my parenting swings way too much.
And you know what this does in your kids?
It creates a ton of confusion. What matters to mom and dad
today is a lot harder place to learn than what matters to mom
and dad and mom and dad's. If you are not on the same page
in your parenting, you are creating confusion for your
kids. I said I'd circle back to this
says here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is 1.
They are united in what they want for you.
Now you guys have heard me talk a lot about our golden dummy,
Suge. Now Suge is a tremendously
obedient dog. Well, come here, Suge, come
here, come here, bud, come here, come here.
Now listen, you don't, don't. I'll send him home with you.
Listen, if you ever want to know how to get a dog to just
absolutely love you, be the person in the house who hates
him because this dog loves me. All right?
Now come here. Nope.
Come here. Come here.
Get up here. No, get up here.
Good boy. Now, Suge.
Oh, my goodness. You do love me place.
Now Suge is a Hey. No.
Suge is a tremendously obedient dog.
Heal Suge. Down tremendously obedient dog.
He does exact down. He does exactly what I want him
to do, for the most part, whenever I want him to.
I can go on walks anywhere I don't have my dog pulling me
around on a leash. Sugar will do exactly what I
asked him to do. Place.
Hurry up. Now for as obedient as Suge is,
come here, come here, sit. For as obedient as he is, there
is one behavior we have not been able to fix in our house is that
is if you get anywhere close to my house, he comes running for
the front door. Down, down.
Stay. He will come to the front door
and try to go through the front door and the down and then when
you come in he will jump on you non-stop place.
And do you want to know why Sugar is like this?
Because he got consistent coaching from me in all the
areas that you're down, all the areas of our house except for
this. Because I would come home and
make Suge stay back and be calm, but my kids would come to the
front door. Oh my goodness.
Hi, sugar. Sugar.
And so Suge did not understand what actually matters in our
home. And now he's 3 and we can't
break the cycle. And do you want to know why Suge
is up here? Because Suge is the most
obedient person in my house, because Suge has received the
most consistent parenting and coaching.
Would you guys give Suge a big round of applause?
Get out of here, bud. Go now.
Some of you, you're going, Oh my goodness, we're going to go home
and we're going to be like, kids come to the kitchen table, we're
going for it. And what I would tell you, don't
do that because you'll be swinging the pendulum again #3
parenting is my responsibility, not somebody else's.
Training your kid for the future is not somebody else's job, it's
your job. You don't get to outsource this.
Teachers, we love you. We're super thankful for you.
Enjoy your break. You deserve it.
But parents hear me. Teachers are your partner in the
development of your kids, not a substitute for it.
Coaches are awesome, wonderful, super thankful for them.
They are a resource, not a substitute for your engagement
and your participation. We have an incredible team of
pastors and staff here at The Crossing and they are a
tremendous asset for the spiritual development of your
kids and helping you on your parenting journey.
But hear me, they are not a substitute for your presence and
your coaching. You will be judged for how you
led your home. We will be judged for how we LED
our home. We will not be judged for how
your kids turned out. You will be.
Now let's put this in perspective.
Churches get about 40 hours a year with your kids and you get
3000. I'm going to show you in a
different graphic that will really stress you out.
We get the black dots, you get the red ones.
Recently, I was convicted about this in a pretty big way because
I was thinking about all the things that my kids have learned
from me. And I was, I made a list and I'm
not going to share all of it, but I mean, my kids learned how
to throw a ball from me, how to dribble, how to ride a bike, how
to swim, how to mow, how to use a leaf blower, how to change
mower blades, how to shoot a layup, how to read a defense,
how to chip near the green. And then I started thinking,
what are things that they really need to learn from me and what
are the things that I want them to only learn from me?
Like, for instance, there's there's people that will teach
my kids, neighbor kids will teach your kids something.
I don't know if I want neighbor kids to teach my kids certain
things. I want them to hear that from
me. We are great neighbor kids in my
neighborhood. But there's certain things I'm
like, no, I think I'm going to be first and I'm going to be the
loudest on these particular issues.
And then I said, what is the most important thing that my
kids could ever learn from me? My kids already get prayed for
on a regular basis, but what is something I really need to make
sure that they learn? And this is what I wrote at the
top of the list. I want them to learn how to open
the word of God, read it and obey it.
I want them to learn how to apply it to their lives.
Remember, every morning I pray with my kids and I pray over my
kids and I, I take my kids to church pretty regularly.
Sometimes my kids are going to church 156 * a year.
I'm doing a pretty good job on that front.
But then I realized I was outsourcing something that was
my responsibility. I prioritize and I fund
spiritual experiences for my kids.
But that was me outsourcing instead of participating.
So at the Hensel house, we started a family Bible study
called DBSA Discovery Bible Study.
And I'm just going to tell you kind of what it looks like.
We read a passage of Scripture. I read it, Zane reads it, Maddox
reads it, Jennifer reads it. We read it in different
translations. I'll just so you know, parents,
you're going to love hearing your kids read the Bible.
It's one of the coolest things you'll ever hear.
And then what we do is we just kind of go through what we call
the spec SPEC. So S is a sin to avoid.
I want my kids to get used to reading the Bible, noticing a
bad behavior, a sinful activity, and go, I don't want to do that.
I would much rather my kids get used to seeing sin when it's
across the street than when it's in their own life.
Does that make sense? How many of you would like your
kids to sin less if you didn't raise your hand?
You you got a rough 1 coming. OK, we want our kids to sin
less. How do I teach my kids about
what sin is? Read the Bible.
I want them to have a promise to claim.
I want to have a sin to avoid, but I want them to have promises
to claim. Some of them they can grab onto.
How many of you know that life gets difficult at times?
How many of you have ever had to walk through a a difficult
season? Navigate a dark valley.
When you're in those moments, you are going to reach for
something. I want my kids to reach and
cling to a promise of God. And how can they reach for a
promise of God if they don't know the promises of God?
So I want them to have a sin to avoid and a promise to claim.
I want them to have an example to follow.
They have all kinds of examples. They have coaches, they have
teachers, they have friends. They have all kinds of examples,
all kinds. They have people they watch on
YouTube, they have people they watch on TikTok.
They have tons of examples to follow.
I just want to give them some examples that are following
Jesus. And so I want them to have some
spiritual heroes in the Bible and #4 CA command to obey.
I want my kids to get used to seeing the Word of God, reading
the Word of God, and obeying the Word of God.
Why? Because spiritual maturity is
faith and obedience. And then there's two other
questions we asked. What are you going to do in
light of what we just read? And who do you need to tell?
Because I want my kids to be a follower of Jesus and an
evangelist for Jesus. And if I could tell you
anything, I would say if you have to cut one, cut The Who are
you going to tell? Because sometimes that can
introduce so much anxiety that they don't enjoy the other part,
depending on how they're hard wired.
Now I'm going to tell you something super depressing.
Full disclosure, this we do this.
We haven't been as consistent as I had hoped.
We've probably been doing it about every other week, OK,
because some of you are going, man, I can't wait to go home.
We're going to start this in my home.
I just want you to hear me say this.
This is the hardest hour of my week.
I don't want you thinking that my family gets around the
kitchen table and we start reading our Bible and I love it
when they're reading it and I hear it.
I don't want you thinking that might we get done.
And my kids are like, can we can we just sing an A song right now
as a family? Can we just hold hands?
Pray longer, father, pray longer, Mom, read another verse.
OK, I need you to know that is not how it goes.
There's frustrations. There's moments of tension.
It is the hardest hour of my week.
And do you want to know why? Because it's the hour of the
week that I am under attack. Because it is the one hour a
week I can be completely certain that I am being who God called
me to be in my home. Our goal is not to just make
this another day, but to leverage each and every single
day we have with our kids, with our grandkids, for the Kingdom
of God and for His glory. I'm going to stress you out a
little bit. 75% of the time that you will spend with your kids
will be spent by age 12. Raise your hand if you have a
kid over the age of 12, you are now managing the remaining 25%.
So how you and I start training for godliness today will matter.
And I promise you, one day your kids will thank you in the
future. We're moving to a time of
decision. OK, There are some of you that
are listening this term. You're like, man, this sounds
great, but I need to level a level with you.
If you don't have an intimate personal relationship with Jesus
Christ, you can't give your kids an intimate personal
relationship with Jesus Christ because you can't give what you
don't have. And until your life is
surrendered to Christ, you can't teach your kids how to
surrender. And so there's some of you,
you're going, you know what? I I want to be who God called me
to be. And I want you to hear me say
this. You can't be the parent God
called or created you to be until you have turned your life
over to Him. Impossible.
And so today, some of you, you might need to go.
You know what, I've been putting it off for way too long.
Maybe today the Holy Spirit has prompted you in the middle of
this message to go, You know what?
It's time for me to get my relationship with Jesus Christ,
right? I know there's some of you.
Anytime you start talking about family, you start going, yeah, I
had a pretty bad dad. And so when you talk about God
as a father, I'm starting to go that that that's more of a
trigger. That's more trauma than it is
help. And on some level, I want you to
hear me say this. I get it.
Having a bad earthly experience with your dad could definitely
cloud on some level, but I need you to know that your bad dad is
nothing like our good father. When the Bible talks about God,
it says that He is His love endures forever, that He is
gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, that he rescues and
redeems, that He pours out grace and mercy, that He hides us
under His wings. He is our strong tower, our
shelter. He is all of those things on
your behalf, if you will let Him.
So don't let a bad experience with your dad keeping you from
the experience you were designed for with your Heavenly Father.
How many of you, before you got married, you dated a crazy
person? Yeah.
I didn't write off all women.
I just knew I hadn't found the right kind of crazy.
I'm sorry I didn't see Maddox was in here.
Your mom and I kiss. And just because things haven't
gone right here doesn't mean that like all of a sudden you
get to put all of that baggage on God.
God loves you so much that he sent his one and only Son to die
on the cross. And Romans chapter 5, verse 8
says that he made this move on your behalf before you did
anything right. And so today, before you can do
anything else right, you need to come into a right relationship
with Jesus. And so in just a few moments,
the people around you are going to stand and sing and some of
them are going to come to the steps and pray.
And I want to encourage you to talk to somebody maybe right up
there underneath that screen next to the baptistry about how
you can start the relationship with Jesus Christ that you
desperately need to the rest of you in the room.
To those of you who are parents and grandparents, how you and I
leverage our today's will impact their tomorrow.
So I want you to think, pray about what are the changes that
need to be made? I'm not wanting you to go home
and start swinging the pendulum. I actually want you to begin
going. All right.
How do I turn the heat up in my home, in the area of
righteousness, in discipline, in training, turn it up overtime?
Not a huge pendulum swing, but God revealed to me what are the
steps that I need to make today? Maybe you want to come up to the
steps and pray and steal the prayer that I pray over my kids.
Maybe you want to just pray over your spouse or your ex-spouse
and go, how do I lead and leverage the environments that
I'm in for your Kingdom and for your glory?
Would you guys stand with me? God, I know that every person in
here that's a parent or a grandparent carries a heavy
burden. We're trying to do it right, and
rarely do we ever feel like we are.
And so, God, I ask that you would show us the path that you
want us to walk. Show us the things that you want
us to do, and give us the courage and the consistency to
do it. God, help us to be godly
examples, to show them what it's like to do it right.
And God, when we do it wrong, give us the courage and the
humility to own it and apologize for it.
God, stir something up in our hearts to pursue you, to trust
you. In your name I pray.
Amen.