Families Are Forever IV, Riding the Rapids of Adolescence

Years and has learned some things and he would be the first to say he's not all the way through but he I think represents very powerfully The kind of outcome that most of us as parents would desire for our kids He's currently a junior at Grove City College And it's by the way, it's tough to come up here and share if you've never given a testimony in the stage It's kind of intimidating. So would you make Andrew tell feel very welcome give him a warm welcome as it comes Andrew I Say thank you for staying for two services. I know that's a sacrifice Adolescents don't need a Christian life merit badge from the boy and girl scouts on their best What they need is a working relationship with Jesus Christ Before I was 10, I prayed with my father as he was talking me into bed and claimed Christ's sacrifice And asked for forgiveness for my sins But it's been a longer-term process going through the process and the continual work of salvation Leading up to my teens my dad my mom Let me be part of church in whatever capacity Whatever capacity I wanted to My earliest memories of North Way funny have absolutely nothing to do with the teachings nothing to do with the lessons but what I do remember though is Rushing to the donut table after the end of the service and having far more than I should have. I Remember asking to stay for two services instead of going home so that I could play in the hallway and run around with my friends My parents would let me do that and then they would come back and get me I remember Playing hockey on the retreats with the youth group, but not a single thing about what the teachings were All these memories are a value though. Why? Why I learned that the church is a fun place. It's a safe place. It's a comfortable place It's not boring at all And the accumulation of these things has molded my willingness to be at church and throughout those junior and senior high years was Valuable Isaiah 40 verses 27 to 31 Why do you say Oh Jacob and speak? Oh Israel. My way is hid from the Lord Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God the creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary His understanding is unsearchable He gives power to the faint and to him who has no might he increases strength Even the youths shall faint and grow weary and young men shall fall exhausted But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They'll mount up with wings like Eagles They shall run and grow not grow weary. They shall walk and not be faint At home I learned from my parents example through those hard years I used to come down To breakfast before school and would know that my parents had just been praying for me as they sat together on the sofa. I Would see my dad's Bible in his office beside a devotional. I would see my mom's Bible beside the bed Every time I saw it a little bit more sank in They committed themselves to his guidance and found that the Lord does not fail The Lord is their strength I Thought myself stronger than I was but I'm seeing the foolishness of trusting in my own self My own abilities in the family because of that constant contact its importance of parents Live out the things they desire for their children. My parents raised me in the knowledge that God is more worried about our heart Than he is our dress or appearance or any other external I Was a skateboarder and I liked having wild haircuts and I wore excessively large clothes I've had I've had long hair and I've had no hair I've had dreadlocks Not the braids the knots that don't come out with superglue in the end and I've had colored hair In fact, it was pastor Scott's wife who first dyed my hair blonde But you know hair isn't important. It's not For me it was only a season it was a thing to do. So my parents left it alone and avoided that unnecessary conflict. I See now more how they looked at The real issues in my life look deeper to see the source of all the things they saw With all these things in place the breakthrough in my life came when I found a place to serve I was asked to work with the junior high youth group and agreed of my own accord In fact, it was largely because of the way I looked at the youth league invited me See, I had a connection with so many people that he did Empathy is a strong thing Also builds trust. I was useful. I felt needed. I felt affirmed And now at Grove City College, I serve and I lead But what is important is not that merit badge. Remember But that I love my Lord Jesus Christ So parents of adolescence, please think long-term Correct the problems not the indicators Christ's love was compassionate and was available for those teachable moments parents of younger children. Let your kids have fun in church Let them be or hang out and all parents. Please pray for your children And please let them know and let them see you praying together and reading the word so people my age Find a place to serve that's simple and Adolescence if you guys are in junior and senior high forgive mom and dad If they don't understand Make sure they're actually wrong before you criticize them Yeah, they make mistakes But probably less often than you think do you not know have you not heard? Jesus loves you and understands I don't know if you realize how much effort and energy I'm sure most of you do go into praying and planning for every service and part of what makes a worship experience What we pray it will be is that which brings God's Glory to this place and you're a big part of that and I want to give you just a reminder Pastoral reminder of the ABC's of a positive worship experience the first is arrive on time Now that collective groan was the fact that there were eight people here at 1115 folks this really does make it difficult When you miss two three four of the initial worship songs or choruses of praise or whatever It's just difficult for you to engage. I got to exhort you. I have to encourage you Just get a little bit earlier start and getting over here, you know In your mind, just tell yourself we're starting at 11 and you'll get here. It'll be just right It helps a great deal letter B The best seats are friends. I know what I mean by that. Well Until we get all of our sound taken care of and the lighting and so on It's still best if you can come forward and get as close as possible I really appreciate this morning that most of you have really done that It really helps our ushers so if you'll move forward and take these seats so that folks who do come in late don't have to climb over you and see If you need to leave for some reason, I mean once the message begins I really pray you won't get up and go out and get a drink of water But if you really feel like you must leave for a personal reason sit near the back when you come in We have seven exit doors There's plenty of ways you can slip out and come back in But don't go out and come back in the front and have everyone look at you It's just too distracting. It kind of breaks that sense of worshipfulness that we're trying To see God build amongst us. So there's a little ABCs there. I hope you all understand It's just to help one another have the best experience possible. I believe that's what we're here for. All right Okay, let's just pop that away. Let's take our Bibles and also get your outline and we're gonna look this morning at a very challenging subject for Parents and students alike. One of the things I loved about being in youth ministry were the perks And Paul's down here this morning. He'll nod his head Affirmatively, one of the great perks of youth ministry are all the trips you get to take with the students You get to you know You go rock climbing or caving or one of my favorite things to do was to go whitewater rafting and we'd pile the kids in the vans or the bus and head down to the Akigane River and Try to you know, just pray for a hot day in the middle of July or August and We go down to whatever wilderness outfitters or whatever they were and you know, it's just a day full of the unexpected and you get down there and You're introduced to your guide and they sit down and have this really serious talk with you and everyone's just kind of yeah Yeah, I know I know you get your life jacket and you get on the old raft and you head down The Akigane River and as I recall it's been a few years since I've done this The first 20 minutes or 25 minutes on that water is just kind of you know routine Everyone's there's a little bit of nervous laughter, but everyone's having a pretty good time and then there's this sound It's kind of fainted first and then it picks up And you realize that there's some serious water coming down and the guy gets a little more serious He's okay You know get your oars ready and the whole thing and everyone gets their place and as the speed picks up and the noise picks up and you go through this first few channels and the boat starts to go this way and water splashes in and the faint of heart starts screaming and they Let go of their oars and drop down on the side. And I mean and then all of a sudden you're through it's just real fast And everyone cheers and wow, that was so cool. And everyone is real excited about and and then the guy says hey That was a lot. That was a level two There's level threes and fours on this river And if it's a particularly high time in the river He said when we come down to those double hydraulics here could be in deep trouble and everyone goes You know, it's funny how dry your mouth can be in all that water when he tells you about that There's somehow you manage to get through every once in a while There'll be a disaster when the boat will go upside down and people will float down the river We never lost anybody but we had some bumped heads and a few bruises and Invariably if you used to make it down at least in my experience I know this true for you Paul if I made it down without dumping my raft I got pulled in that's just the way the kids always sort of initiated things as I thought about parenting It's a lot like going through Those adolescent years a lot like whitewater rafting I mean, it's the scariest and to some degree the most exciting years of your life I want to talk to you today just for a little bit about what makes this happen and how Can you hopefully navigate those times so that you won't dump your boat? you know you come through those early years the ones when the kids are little and they're so cute and adorable and Many of you have those those little cuddly ones and and if you if you're predictable and established routines You're fine. And then you get into those early childhood years the elementary School years I should say when the kids are in that mode of sort of discovering New things and it's all fine. And you know all this All this explanation goes on and if you do those three things I talked about two weeks ago you know if you show them unconditional love and You set limits for them that they know that they can't cross without some consequences and you give them lots of learning Opportunities where they they discover who they are and what God's made them to do. Those are great times In fact, they can be so great when the kids are five and eight and so on that you wonder how parents really ever have Problems. I mean And then all of a sudden Around age 10, I think it is approximately this strange intruder finds its way into your household and Attaches itself usually to the girls before the boys That upsets everything I mean the speed of all the activities increases the communication all of a sudden gets complex activities come from everywhere Physical changes are about to begin that are so monumental that every single day little Sarah or Johnny wonder What am I going to turn out to be like? And will I make it through this thing called puberty? Johnny Johnny can suddenly grow six inches in four months Or worse not grow at all and wonder why? His voice can drop an octave or worse Get real squeaky Sarah who once looked like a little girl now becomes a young lady And even gets predictably moody at times And all of this seemingly happens overnight Hormones start to kick in moods come and go Sexuality and all those feelings start to develop You find yourself as a parent riding the first rapids of the whitewater of adolescence And you know that this is just level one or two The best is yet to come Huge relational changes begin Sarah and Johnny decide that it's time To trade in the 70 years of collective wisdom of mom and dad for a new source of truth a new guy that they call their friends their friends who really know a lot more about life than you do mom or dad and they Are no and no uncertain terms clear to tell you that they're gonna check with their friends before they follow what you're telling them to do Changes everywhere and as you go through the 13 14 15 16 year old phases the whitewater can become unbelievably unpredictable Even level four or five rapids occasionally a family will make it through just level two and everything I mean for some reason some kids just go right through and it's no big deal Other times they'll hit a major double hydraulic and the boat will go upside down And the whole family will get washed down the river quite a ways before they put things back together. You just don't know Unpredictable things can happen even when you think things are under control Caroline had gone away for a little R&R this was a few years ago now and We've been gone for a few days On a Friday night. I called in just to see how things were going at home and David answered the phone He said dad. I can't talk right now. I said why not? He said the police are here Why are you at and he hangs up the phone? So I called the neighbor I say What you know and he goes over well I'm 2,000 miles away and the police are my house Turns out that one of our neighbors Thought that our kids were playing their stereo too loud They had some friends over and so it wasn't any of the neighbors to go to this church But interestingly the police officer that came to check out the situation did go to this church I made it and it wasn't anything. Nothing was really wrong It wasn't anything going on except the music was just too loud and the neighbor complained But when you're far away wondering what in the world's happening where the police and that's not a normal occurrence in those house Adolescence is a challenge to everyone because not only are the students going through change Themselves and discovering themselves but you as parents are going through a change in your understanding of them and they have you and This is how it should be. I mean, it's you're going through a process of watching this little child develop into an adult human being These little ones who've been so lovingly Directable now become just a little bit questioning now and then about the things you're telling them to do And that's as it should be even though those are awkward and tumultuous times those little ones need to discover their wings They need to discover how to make decisions because parents listen the goal of our parenting is to raise a self-sufficient God-honoring Capable young man or woman, isn't it? And sometimes if we could just back up out of the heat of the furnace of those adolescent years Put our eyes back in that goal. It might change the way we do some of our parenting In order that for that to happen parents need to be flexible I'm going to talk in a few moments about how to adapt your style For the particular segment of life that the kids are in Interestingly in Scripture, we don't see much about Jesus growing up years. But one thing that we see apparently when he started I Mean from all that we know Mary and Joseph provided a secure home for him. I mean he was you know, just a good little Jewish boy And they told him what to eat and you know when to go out and watch out for the cherries in the street and all that kind of stuff and we don't know much more until he was about age 12 and Then something interesting happened. You can read about it in Luke In fact, I think we have the overhead of this text If you had your Bible you could turn there. What is the text? Let's drop it down Luke 2 46. Here's where Jesus appears in the temple And I like this translation because I think it kind of captures What the parents were feeling at the time that this took place it says You see they had gone Mary and Joseph had gone with the family caravan and they were moving their location leaving Jerusalem Here's what says the next day they found him in the temple seated among the teachers Listening to them and asking questions The teachers were all quite taken with him impressed with the sharpness of his answers, but his parents were not impressed They were upset and hurt his mother said young man, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been half out of our minds looking for you parents you relate to that Jesus said why were you looking for me? Didn't you know that I had to be here? Dealing with the things of my father But they had no idea what he was talking about you know, see Jesus is beginning the process of Of separating himself from his parents direct control to listening to his heavenly father He's beginning the process of discovering his destiny and friends That's something that's going to happen in every adolescence life. It's something that we need to commend next thing we know Jesus has a Full-blown adult earthly ministry. He's aged 30 and the final thing that we discover about him is now when he's on the cross He looks down at the Apostle John and he says he looks over at his mother Mary. He says to John what? Behold your mother. He's saying to John now that I'm going to be taken away and most scholars believe Joseph had passed away That Jesus is saying take care of my mother You become almost a parent to your parents in a sense in some cases when they get very elderly And so we see that then scripture even Jesus went through this kind of phase now Let me give you some you're saying well, I know that this has to happen. But what are some handles? Let me give you just five quickly that I think based on scripture and our own experience and the collective wisdom of a number of people here today will help you if you have an Adolescent or you have a friend or a a son or daughter who has adolescence number one You need to be continually building the self-esteem of your student You know believe it or not even though you may have done an outstanding job in the early years of your child's formation you might have been really good at Pointing out the things that they were doing well and affirming the qualities of their of their up in those upbringing years You might have been very protective of the times that they were being criticized unfairly and so on When they become an adolescent is not the time to withdraw that reinforcement Why well, there's just one reason there's a new force that's entered into the lives of your little adolescent This is an intruder so powerful that many teens reorient their entire lives around it It's a power so great that it brings about and some students Cataclysmic changes of how they see themselves and that power Is simply called peer pressure They don't feel it when they're six But when they're 13 peer pressure can be the dominant influence in their lives Most of you have heard of author James Dobson And I was reading his book and the courage To be parents and here's what he said I have concluded that peer pressure is a far more dominant factor in shaping teenage behavior than parental influence The experts with whom I've checked Supported my notion I'm not suggesting that parental training and role models mean nothing What I'm saying is that in our present-day culture what teenagers peers think of him or her carries more weight At times than what the parents say and So parents we need to understand the tremendous power that's going on to shape our kids And we've got to step up and do a whole lot more than we had done previously I had Paul do a little survey for me of the middle schoolers about a week ago. It's just a two-question survey the first thing is What do you need from your parents the most and the second thing was what's the greatest challenge that you're facing? 26 of the 35 students that responded said the greatest challenge they're facing is peer pressure and friends How am I going to get through this? What do they think of me? Do I have value and worth in their eyes? Now friends are not as not very likely to be affirming and edifying and strengthening of the esteem of little Sarah Johnny In fact, they can tend to be the nastiest cruelest most critical judgmental people You've ever seen when one junior higher sets out to tear down another one. They're like, you know a wounded animal They're nasty I've seen it and heard it with my own eyes and ears Parents this is a time that you've got to do a few things to help just reaffirm your student number one or letter a really It's learn to listen a Lot of kids would say that the thing that their parents do the worst is listen to them I can't talk to my mom or dad They won't listen to me One of the things that draws them to a youth ministry is they feel like at least there's an adult that will listen Every time I talk to my parents we end up in a fight The trouble is students listen, it's not all that easy sometimes to talk to you, you know that I Mean, it's really kind of weird when your little eight-year-old is so talkative and jubilant and easy to get along with and now they're 13 And they've gone through this thing called vocabulary reduction And now they're down to like nine or ten monosyllabic words that they answer every question that you ask like You're asking more questions one of these answers. I don't know Okay, no, uh-huh Whatever. Yeah, maybe I'll later he did it. I mean those are the nine or ten thing that you ever hear about and When students do tend, you know to get up the courage to put together enough phrases to make a sentence. It's usually something Pretty inflammatory like, you know, I don't know which body part. I'm gonna have pierced this week. I Or I'm staying over at PJ's tonight Okay. Well, who's PJ? Well, he's just a friend. Well, like where does he live? I'm not sure Well, are his parents gonna be there? Well, I don't know and Then you get in the I don't know. Nope. Yeah, maybe things and then boy it gets frustrating right end of conversation Friends this takes a lot of work on both sides Proverbs 20 verse 5 says That the purposes of a man's heart are deep waters But a man of understanding draws not what we've got to do is draw out From our adolescence the kind of thing that they're kind of dealing with at that time and that requires some face-to-face eyeball-to-eyeball attention and some very careful listening and this may happen at times when you least want it to One of the things Carol wanted me to be sure to tell you was something we experienced with Particularly our oldest son David was that we had to be available to talk to him when he wanted to talk And for he was not a morning person. I mean, no, you know breakfast for him was a grunt You want cereal? Yeah Well, how was your night? What? I'm tired and that was you know, but at nighttime He'd come home you know if this curfew was 11 or 12 or ever was that's when he'd want to talk and Carol would come in to me and she said I think David's in his chatty time And he just start talking and he'd go on for an hour about well, man This is the cool thing we did and my friends want to do this and you know I've been thinking about this and that's when we learned to plug in likewise While peers are out there so often exposing every weakness and flaw of our kids parents We've got to be about the business of affirming Some of the things that they're doing right and I don't just mean grades which we tend to push as achievement And I don't just mean sports and music and the kinds of skills that they have. I also mean things like character Like making wise decisions. I know I remember one time that one of my kids. I won't mention which one Was about they were about 14 and a half or so And they called they had gone to a friend's home to do something and they called and said hey dad All my friends are going over to so-and-so's house And I know that there's going to be drinking going on over there and some other stuff And I think I ought to come home. Would you come get me? And I remember picking this child up and saying, you know, I know that was not an easy thing. I'm sure You probably wonder what your friends were gonna think And he said yeah, they gave me a lot of hassle, but you know what I said to him That was a good decision. You made the right one and we need to take the time to affirm those things number two spend time Strategically with your adolescent if you're to provide that affirmation and that listening ear You've got to learn how to set up scenarios When those transmissions can take place And this also again those of you with younger ones you think well, I mean my kids around all the time What's the big deal when they get to be middle schoolers and high schoolers what you're gonna find is they're not home that much in fact most Kids in that stage are doing one of three things. They're out with their friends They're planning on the phone to go out with their friends or they're getting over getting out with their friends I mean, that's about it. And so you've got to make some time You've got to get into their world if you're to find a time to communicate with them Communicating is a great challenge And if you just try to slap something down there and say hey we're gonna do this many times you get resistance I mean if you go to your to your adolescence Hey, we're planning a neat family dinner out next week on Friday night at King's and then we're gonna come home and play Monopoly It happens to be that I have a football game and a dance That's a losing idea. Okay, I Mean you're gonna get a lot of grief about something like that We discovered it was best to give the kids some options about things to do And so we'd say things like a next Saturday afternoon We're gonna take you know, a couple hours and go down to North Park and you know Do some hiking and ride some bikes or whatever or on Sunday, you can help us clean the basement garage Your choice Some families use camping and Music, I mean tennis or golf Whatever you works for you as a family That's what you need to plug into some dads get into coaching teams now dads. You don't get into this kind of hyper Vicarious sort of craziness about it. It's a good thing to get Sports or music or whatever? One thing we used to do we went to all the kids away games Jonathan played football we go, you know, sometimes the two area codes it seemed away I remember we would follow David around in basketball and sometimes He'd ask his coach if he could ride home with us rather than take the bus all the way back And those were great times he talked about how he was feeling about losing the game Or in some cases they win and those are the times he was much more talkative Sometimes he didn't say anything and we get all the way home after a 45-minute ride and we think wow, that was a Bomb, but you know what? It was just being there and making that effort that I felt good about Parents you need to adjust your schedules. Oh, can I say to the dads and moms that travel? Try to be home at dinnertime Try to make it when the kids are going to be there in the weekends Make room for them in your schedule and don't get angry with them Please don't get angry with them. If you feel like you're losing the battle of their friends I mean, I know many times I wanted to throw my hands I can't compete with all your friends and all the stuff you're doing and their getaways and parties and neat things that they do And you're right. You really can't compete But one very important word of counsel. Some of you need to hear this more than anything else I'm going to say I strongly recommend you get to know the friends of your children And if you have real difficulties with some of their friends You need to take some steps to make sure changes take place. Why? Because scripture says that bad morals Can corrupt good character and I have seen that happen Have the kids over to your house once and I'll get to know them interface with them Doesn't mean you control them, but you can give input. Number three go to war Very selectively If you sense rebellion on the rise Ephesians 6 4 says fathers don't provoke your children to wrath So if you sense rebellions on the rise one thing you need to ask yourself Am I causing that? Am I doing something that's provoking my son or daughter to want to rebel? Over the years, as I said parents, you need to modify your style of parenting Let me explain this. When they are little as I said two weeks ago, it takes strong direction It takes some very clear boundaries and some tight guidelines And it takes some dealing with that strong-willed child to make things happen to help them be multiple But if you use the same style when the kid is 5 as you do when they're 15 You're gonna be in a lot of trouble We made a little continuum here This is just a little rough draft of what I would think a parent would want to do to adapt their parenting style When they're little it's directive When they get to around age 9 or 10 you start that transitional Well some direction but a little more feedback and a little more flexibility And then you get to around the adolescent years of 12 and 13 and so and that's when you become more of a coach or a mentor to them when it's kind of feeding back and forth and Respecting their opinions and listening to their objections and so on and when they get of course older then it's eyeball to eyeball mutual respect adult to adult That's very very important Because most parents err in one of two ways They stay down at the low end and I've seen dads Turn down the screws because their kid got a little bit out of hand and they just got down so tight on them that the Kid blew up. I mean he had no choice, but to rebel and on the other side of things. I've seen the parent just say hey Do what you want to do come home when you want to come home go out with him you want to go out with And can I say if that's what you're tempted to do parents you are heading into some very deep trouble because Students who are 15 and 16 aren't prepared to make all-life decisions at that stage And unfortunately a lot of parents who give up on their kids and give up any sense of input Often find themselves in some kind of recovery group Helping their kid put their life back together again. I pray that won't happen to you and so parents Remember to change your style, but to stay involved You know a very interesting thing at first Samuel to Eli the priest who had served the Lord faithfully was chastened by God very severely Because he did one thing wrong. You know what it was his two sons were Nasty boys and They used to rip off the offerings that came in those kind of things and God had it up to here And he looked at Eli, and he said you've allowed your two sons to desecrate my temple You blew it as a parent Eli and as a result you know what happened The two kids died and Eli lost his priesthood God takes this whole thing very seriously parents stay involved in their lives and As I said, it's not always easy, but it's worth the effort Carol and I made some Choices along the way and Andrew. I think hit those pretty accurately in his family as well There were some things. We just weren't going to fight about we weren't going to go to the wall over things like you know The condition of the floor in their rooms You know every once in a while we go to try to open the door of the room We're able to do that enough to get our head around to see that there was about a Foot and a half of clothes and books and stuff piled up in the floor and that for me. This was like where what? who could live like this you know and But we didn't make a big deal about it We just said clean up your room and that but if it didn't happen that we let it go for a while until Living things started to come out of the room, then we said Get in there. You're grounded to get your room cleaned up, but and that's and it seemed to work fashion items and Stuff that were you know a little different things here, and there was no big deal even the music that they played I mean They knew what we preferred, but I don't expect them to like what we like And with I mean there are some music obviously there's some music. That's