Families Are Forever VI, Essential Family Values

Some of our leaders will be there to pray with you. After every service, there are people there. Some of the folks gather before the service for a time called Healing Hands, come a little bit early and you can receive ministry up in the prayer chapel. We believe in ministry in this church, primarily person to person, not one or two super saints to the rest of you, but person to person, and that's how God meets us. Well, take your notes and outline out, and you'll notice that we heard many of you say you didn't like the outline being in the folded pages, so we made it separate this week. We're going to use that and continue to do it that way. And turn in your Bibles to Ephesians, chapter 5, Ephesians 5. This is the last message in this six-week series on the family, and I want to thank those of you who sent me little notes or told me personally how much you appreciated this series and it's helped you in different ways, and I'm always honored to hear that. Pastor Dave and I appreciate your prayers in that. Some of you are very glad this series is over. You don't have a family, you're not interested in all these different things as much, and I want to say beginning next week, we're going to start a new series about the character of God that we're calling Upsizing God, and I'm going to be looking at the characteristics of God that maybe have shrunken down in our lives, and we've lost sight of what God wants, how He wants to reveal Himself, and I'm excited about that, we'll start that next week. But today I felt a strong leading from the Spirit of the Lord to be sure that we do something very significant today, and that is that I want to drive some steaks into the ground, and I brought a, I guess it's a vegetable kind of steak, just as a prop here this morning. You know, if you want to grow a strong tomato plant, it starts as a little seedling, and it'll survive for a while, but eventually what do you have to do, right? I mean, you've got to put a steak in the ground and give it something to support it, or you can use the analogy of putting up a tent, I mean, you can put up all the different cords and strings and so on and ropes, but if you don't have steaks down there to keep it taut when the storms come and the wind blows, as Jesus said, you're in serious trouble if you haven't laid your steaks in the ground. And I want to talk about this today because I'm concerned that a few of us may have heard a lot of different things over the last five weeks, but we haven't put the steaks down. We haven't said, hey, I'm buying into this. This is where we're going. And friends, this is something that's very, very significant right now, and I want to challenge you with it just a bit today. I mean, I'm going to be a little bit more, you know, in your face, a little less kind and sweet as I usually am. And I picked up, don't laugh about that, that was meant to be a joke. Newsweek and U.S. News, both this week, I thought it interesting in their cover story about parenting, the myth of quality time, how we're cheating our kids and what you can do about it. And the second one is, the lies parents tell about work, kids, money, daycare, and ambition. And nothing in my message today is designed to heap guilt on you, so don't worry about that. It's designed to help you decide what's really important and what you're going to do about it. And I think it's very consistent with what many Americans are dealing with these days, even believers in Christ. Now, my guess is, as you were growing up, there were different values that were held up in your home. Some of you maybe grew up in a home where the value of doing everything together was the highest value. I mean, it doesn't matter, if we went on a picnic, everybody went on a picnic. Some of you grew up in a home where the highest value was just hard work. I mean, when it was yard day, everybody worked in the yard, hard work. You got a job when you were nine, and you worked all the time. Let's just find out. Share with somebody, and not your spouse, because your spouse already knows. In your home, what was one value that was raised up real high? The home you grew up in, what was one value in that household? When you think of one thing, you say, well, if our house had one value, this was it, okay? Share with somebody. Go ahead. Everyone, take 30 seconds. One value really high in my house was ... go ahead, share with somebody. Okay, help me out, just give me a couple of responses. What were they? Eating. First service, someone said, going out to eat was a high family value. I kind of knew who said that one, probably in the household. Give me another one. Honesty. Kindness. Very good, okay. Well, I'm sure that if you thought about it, there was something that stuck out in your mind. I want to give you four that I would recommend that you consider ... no, no, four that you need to have in your home. Maybe not in a particular order to you, maybe some of these are already there, but I just want to encourage you to write these down as values to hold up in your home. Number one, and this should be no surprise, honor the Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength, Mark 12 30 says. This is very consistent with that spiritual value. Honor the Lord in your home. In church, I don't just share this because I'm in church and I want you to have a spiritual understanding of things. Here's why I share it. Listen carefully. I believe that children desperately need to have answers to the big questions in life. The big questions they tend to ask at a very little age like, Mommy, why am I here? Where did I come from? Where am I going? What about death? What's heaven like? You know, some kids have a capacity to handle questions like life and death and take them pretty unemotionally and deal with them quite easily, and other kids don't. Years ago, about 12 years ago or so, one of our cats died, and Amy and Carol really had a difficult time with that. They cried a lot. David and I, on the other hand, found it a rather happy day. And I remember that Amy wouldn't go near the dead cat. She wouldn't even go near it. But David walked right over to it, picked it up, and threw it in the trash bag and tossed it over his shoulders. Hey, let's go bury this thing, Dad. See, for him, it was just no big deal to talk about the cat dying and that whole deal. But for Amy, it was like this mysterious thing, and she had this emotional problem dealing with that. Well, that's the way it is. Some kids can process it some ways, and others have a difficult time. But friends, if you can't answer the biggies for your children, if you can't help them lay down a clear understanding of where they came from and why they're here and why they're here, you know something? As they get a little older, as they head out, as you said a few weeks ago, into that vast arena of pure life, they're going to start hearing all other kinds of ideas about where they came from and what they're all about. And you know what? If you've not laid that foundation, they're going to have a difficult time. The earlier you tend to teach your child that they're made in God's image by a loving Creator, that they have a destiny that's on their lives, that they're going to find a way, they're going to begin to mark their lives with certain things. Kids need to know at a very early age that God has given them designer genes, that they're loved and chosen and special to God, and He's got a plan for their life like no one else. And parents need to reaffirm in their kids that they're not cosmic accidents emerging from some primordial ooze, but they've been chosen by God. I can't tell you the impact. Every time I go into the mall, and I went to the mall again yesterday, which is a big mistake if you were down on McKnight Road, but how many kids strike me as being just sort of lost? I mean, I don't mean evil. I mean, they just don't, they're looking for some way to make sense of what life is about. What is life about? Where am I going? And it starts at an early age. They start wondering about these questions, and the mystery of life, the wonder of life, the awe of it all. I remember when Jonathan was about three, and we had been somewhere together as a family, got out of the car at the very, about 10 o'clock at the end of the evening, and it was a rather cool but very clear night in the summer, and stars were everywhere. There was no moon, and I remember Jonathan looked up and he said, Dad, look how bright that star is. Well, I had had an astronomy class in college, and I knew some things, and I said, well, Jonathan, this is not a big deal. I said, but that's not a star. That's a planet. That's the planet Venus. That's like the Earth. It's just a little closer to the sun. And he said, wow, it's really bright. They must have all their lights on. And in his mind, you see, he just was putting a little frame of reference about the mystery of all that, and, well, there must be people up there, and they have all their lights on. And I go all the way back to those initial establishing times of who God is in the lives of our kids. That is so important. And honoring God, you see, will also help you to cement in your children's mind what a true family is about. I don't know what it does to you, but I find it fascinating that very bright, educated, professional people are having serious debates these days about whether or not a family should consist of two parents of the same sex. And our kids are being influenced by that mindset as a viable alternative in our culture. And they're being forced to deal with the issues, well, should mommy and daddy, you know, what if they should separate? Should I just go ahead and get a new mommy and daddy? And sometimes that happens with so little attempt to even salvage the relationship. And it's not to condemn those of you who've been through the agony of a divorce, but today it just seems that so many are giving up so easily. And some kids wonder, I'm sure, what about this whole thing I hear about? What is the word? Have you ever had your child ask you, what is an abortion, mommy? And the debate that continues to rake, that divides Americans apparently right down the middle about whether or not a child should be able to have safe passage throughout a nine-month period in his or her mother's womb and not be snuffed out prematurely by some circumstance or trouble that the mom has. Well, when we choose to embrace the value of honoring God and our families and honoring his word, then we make boundaries that our kids can get a hold of and define family for them in a world that's constantly trying to change what the family is. And as Jesus said, you either build your convictions on the rock of revelation or on the shifting sands of personal opinion and cultural moiré. It's up to you. You choose. If cultural relativism is the way you want to go, then that's fine. But you know what? In five years it'll change again and your child will be kind of left, well, maybe it's okay to go ahead and live together for a while. Let's just give it a try, not knowing all the things that can potentially produce in a relationship. You've got to choose. And you need to reinforce those choices by doing some things. Let me suggest three on your notes. Number one, pray together. Pray together. Parents, do you have any idea what happens when you initiate prayer with your children? When you say, hey, we're going to take a minute right now and pray together. And it doesn't just have to be over mealtime, although that's a great time. In fact, in just maybe an hour or less, many of you are going to be around a lunch table somewhere with your mom. And I want to suggest that you join hands and you pray thankfully. And I want to suggest that you dads lead that prayer time. Pray for your family and with your family. Dads, pray with your kids in moments when you know they're facing something difficult. Pray with them when they're going off to school. Pray with them when they're going to bed at night. Pray with them. It leaves a mark. Another thing I'll suggest is study or read the Bible with them. When our kids were really little, we got the thing they called the comic book Bible. And we'd look at the pictures more than anything, but it started to leave a mark in them. And as they grew, they wanted to read the Bible. And they had a heart for that. I remember when my mom used to take me to some Bible studies that she was part of. I don't remember what they said, but I met the people. And I remember that the people loved me and were friendly and they prayed for me. And it just left a mark in my life. Parents, when is the last time you read Scripture with your kids? What happens in kids' ministry is just to reinforce what you're doing at home. It doesn't have to be long or fancy. Just showing your kid that that's of value is very important. And a third one is the regular practice of piling into your car and coming to worship together. This is unbelievably important. Do you know what this does? When week by week your kids know that it's time to get up and we're going to go to church together, it sets in their minds that being with God is a priority. And being with God's family is important. And that we're going to hear something today from God for our lives. And kids begin to value that. And many, many times they've told me, as people have come up to me, like Mark and Debbie, something was set off in their life early on that later was fitted together. And I want to ask you, what else do you do as a family that's uniquely designed to hold the family together? What else can you do as a family that's committed to keeping you as a unit? Most of the things that families do, divide them. It doesn't unite them. And so I want to encourage you, don't get casual about this. Summer is coming and we all tend to say, well, you know what, it's sunny, it's such a beautiful day, let's just sit on our deck and we don't really need to go. We need to be very committed to this value of worshiping together. We can't afford not to do it. Our kids need us to set that example. Because it will become the glue that holds you together when the world begins to fall apart. Just one more thing. One more thing about driving a stake in the ground. You know, if heaven is what we say it is, and we say it's eternal life with God through Jesus Christ, we say it's spending eternity in God's presence, and if hell is what we say the Bible says it is, which is separated from God forever, it didn't take me a real long time to come to a firm conviction about the fact that when I stood before God, if by His grace I ended up in heaven, I didn't want to end up there without my kids. Moms and dads, you need to think about that for just an extra minute. Is your life ordered in such a way that no matter what happens, you'll be able to say before God, I did my best to bring my kids with me into heaven? You can't guarantee it. None of us can. God has given every one of our children free will. But you can make important choices. We did the calculation real early, and Caroline decided no matter what happened at North Way, we weren't going to sacrifice our kids for this. And you need to make that same decision about your career. And it doesn't mean you can't work. It just means you need to have the priorities down and very strategically reinforced. What I just shared with you, you can have a job and do easily if you just make the time to do it. Moms and dads, make it a priority. Because we want to spend eternity with our kids. And I know every one of you have that as a desire. And by the way, may I say, I'm not just talking about little kids. God really prompted me that some of you who have teenagers, you need to get back to some of these things. Because you've gotten too loose. You've given up too early. Set the tone, okay? Number two. These will go more quickly. Honor one another. The second stake I want to challenge you to drive in is that of learning to love and honor one another. The second great commandment was love one another as yourself, as it says in Mark 12, 31. Now honoring somebody is simply just practicing the law of love to them. Interestingly, I didn't hear anyone say that the highest value in your home growing up was that of love. And it's not a common thing to hear. Most of us would not necessarily describe love as the primary value, even though it was demonstrated in some specific ways. And yet, I want to talk about how valuable this is. Do you know that in our culture today, civility and respect are at an all-time low? I mean, I hear and see things that just, they so affect me. U.S. News recently did a cover article on, it was called In Your Face, about how defiant we are with one another in today's culture. And it's a direct result of the fact that in homes, kids are not taught to love. They're not taught to honor one another. People lock their doors and they stay off streets and they isolate themselves from one another. Families have got to learn the value of people. God created us in His image, and every person, you've never looked into the eyes of a person that God doesn't love, that He didn't create as a special human being. And it begins, dear ones, by learning to honor your parents. And here I want to say, young people in this service, honor your parents. And I want to say, those of us who are even adults, we need to honor our parents as well. Do you know the Bible says seven times, I only listed four here, seven times it says, honor your father and mother. And Nancy's going to help us. The word to honor, look at this, this is what it means. It means to respect the person and to give him or her appropriate attention, obedience, and support. To give weight to them. Now that doesn't mean to put pounds on. It means that you respect them as an authority in your life. No matter whether or not you like what they're saying or doing, they are still your parent. And they are called by God to receive your honor. And we need to teach our children this, friends. This is so important. I see kids who are very disrespectful toward older people. And you need to speak to that early on. Teach them to honor their elders and particularly you as parents. It will serve them well. And by the way, that's one of the few promises of God where the Bible specifically says, if you do this, you will live a long life. So if you want to live to be like our dear sister here, a mom for almost 70 years, then you can do that. Letter B, we need to teach our children to live with golden rule glasses. How many of you have picked up a set of these 3D glasses lately for the TV shows? A lot of the kids have. Have you seen these things? How many of you remember when the movies used to come out and you'd buy those little funny things? Well, they're doing that with some TV shows now. And all that does, it adds another dimension to your vision of what's going on on the screen. And as it says here, the golden rule, of course, Matthew 7, 12, do for others what you want them to do for you. Well, this is simply saying we need to teach our kids that a high value is to do to someone else what you want them to do to you, not the opposite. It's interesting to me, if I mention the name Stephen Covey, a lot of you would recognize him as a very highly recognized business consultant who's written the book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, that's sold millions of copies. And if you read that book, which I did several years ago, and I've heard him speak in person, he basically, he tells you basically to do the golden rule. In fact, one of his seven habits is, seek first to understand, then to be understood. It's just the golden rule. And he's getting millions of dollars for telling people to do the golden rule. It's just kind of interesting. Yet, this is so difficult for us in our homes, isn't it? How many of you find that sibling rivalry is one of your biggest problems in your home, huh? I remember when we were growing, our kids were growing up, I mean, daily there'd be some kind of competition, some kind of thing going on with our kids. I mean, it was a big deal. Golden rule glasses teach us that we can look to give to others, and do to them what we want them to do to us, and then God will work in their lives if it's not going the way we want it to. Letter C, discover the power of kindness. Someone mentioned this as a value. What would it be like if the primary value that we presented to people was one of kindness and compassion, rather than defensiveness or arrogance, which so often seems to be the case? I was checking out of a Kmart not too long ago, I think it was a Kmart, and they had three lines going through, and they should have had about six, and we were backed up. And I did my normal thing of surveying which line was going to move fastest, got into it, and it went into a dead stop. Lines started moving on both sides of me, and I was, of course, just, you know, I know God, it's more character development, go ahead, you know, just beat me up. But, as we drew a little closer, and about seven or eight minutes, I mean, it was quite a long time, the guy, two people ahead of me, got up to the checkout gal, and he started to really berate this young gal. She was just out of high school, and he was just complaining about this and that, and when I finally got up there, I handed her my little basket of stuff, and I could see she had a little tear in her eye, and there was a little button on her lapel that said, please be patient, this is my first day. And I was just, you know, I was thankful for that guy that was two people ahead of me. Because I realized, my attitude growing up was one of like, less than being kind. And yet, this guy, you know, he used it just as an opportunity to vent on this person who really couldn't, I mean, she was doing the best she could. And I was thankful when I got there, I said, you know, Lord, remind me of that. I don't know what that person is going through. I don't know what kind of day that flight attendant had. I don't know what the person, you know, two cubicles down went through. I need to come to them with kindness and understanding, first of all. It's very, very important. You know, and where else do kids learn that, but in our homes. If they don't learn kindness and patience and compassion in the home, where are they going to learn it? And it's not easy when kids start, you know, they go at it. And if you have more than one kid, and you don't have some sibling rivalry, you're a miracle parent. I mean, it generally just comes with the territory. I remember when David and Jonathan were, you know, in that competitive age, like, you know, nine and ten, they were really going, and we were trying to plan a family night event. Okay, where are we going to go for family night? And they disagreed. You know, one of them wanted to go have pizza, and the other one wanted to go to McDonald's, or whatever. And they were starting to battle about this thing. And so family night, that was supposed to be this fun night together, started to be this battle about where we're going to be going out. And I'm listening to this, and they're going back, and I said, now cool it, guys. And they just kept going at it. And I finally said, and I could just feel, you know, my pulse going up, and my face getting, and I said, stop it right now. This isn't acceptable. We're going to do something fun. This is family night. And then I could hear our dog going down the steps. And that's something our dog, every time I'd lose my temper, the dog would go down the steps. And then when we heard the dog go down the steps, everyone turned, and we kind of all laughed, because what had happened was, you know, we'd gotten the whole thing out of proportion. We need to teach kindness in our homes. Number three, honor. Honor our calling. Let me just touch on this one. Friends, this is so important, because what I see, you know, we serve a God who is loved, but we also serve a God that the Bible says loved us so much that he gave his only son. We serve a God of purpose. And as I look around the congregation today, I'm aware of the fact that many of you have kids who really don't know what they're supposed to do with their life. And you know, this is so important. It's so important that we help our children at an early age discover, well, what does God really have for you? I've struggled with this, because we don't want to control our children. We don't want to say, well, you need to do this if you really want to be successful. But on the other hand, we do need to give them direction. Because if we don't give them some direction, kids can wander around endlessly. And this is a very big thing. I mean, what fulfillment is about, what one's calling is about is very big. This week on Good Morning America, I just caught a little glimpse of two women who were being interviewed on a morning segment. One of them had written a book called Surrendering to Motherhood. She had been in the marketplace and then left her job to become a full-time mom, as a calling. And she was kind of being interviewed, juxtaposed to another woman who was a very successful upper management person with a company out in Chicago. And what they wanted to have said was, well, they wanted the one woman to say, well, this is my calling, and the other woman to say, no, I can do that and this, and this is just as valid. And it was just kind of this whole debate that I referenced before. What I appreciated about the woman who wrote the book was this. She said, well, you know, I looked in the mirror one day and realized that what I was seeing was a frenzied, fractured, torn-up person. And there was no way that kind of person was going to raise a healthy child. So I needed to make a change. And she said, and she looked at this other woman, she said, and, you know, so-and-so, well, she's in an unusual circumstance where she can take her child to work and leave when she wants to and all that kind of stuff. She said, most people don't have that. And so what you need to do is look in the mirror and just decide, what am I called to do? And friends, there's nothing wrong with being called to being a mom. And in fact, I would say it may be the highest calling. On the other hand, we need to help our kids find their calling and most of you know that our kids learn by experimentation and we need to give them the tools to do that. Give them the opportunities to experiment and discover and not compare them with each other and to protect them, you know, from dead-end street kind of careers like, you know, pro-skyboard surfing. Did you know there's such a thing as that? I was flipping an ESPN and I came on this pro, pro, not amateur, pro-skyboard surfing. I think that's what it was. Where the guys jump out of airplanes on the boards and do flips. I mean, I can see someone doing that now and then, but how do you become a pro at that? Do you get a PhD in pro-skyboard surfing? Anyhow, it's just... That's not the career I would expect most kids would go into. How can you help your kids find what God has crafted them to do? You know, my dad, I'll never forget, just after I went through the process of sensing God's call to seminary, my dad came down and met with me. Dad and mom came down and they said, Are you really sure you want to do this? Because it's a big change. And, you know, I just so thanked my dad for... Dad and mom both said, You know, if that's really what you know God wants you to do, then go do it. But realize it's going to cost you a lot of other things in your life. And they were right. But I'm glad they gave me that encouragement. Sometimes it involves releasing your dreams of what you want your child to be. And parents, that's a tough one. Some of us want our kids to do this and maybe they want to do this. We need to give them the blessing to do what God's created them to do. Parents, you can do that. And when you do that and you drive a stake down and you say to your kids, In our home, we're going to honor your calling, whatever it is, whatever your hands or whatever your head or whatever your heart is to do. That's big. And that blesses your child. And finally, number four. Drive a stake in the principle of good stewardship. You say, Now how did this one make the top four? Well, look what the Bible says. You see, the Lord knows that we have to understand the principles of trust with material things before he'll trust us with spiritual things. Look at the second verse. Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with very much. Why would I include this? Well, for the simple reason that most conflict in the home today revolves around the pressures associated with money. Did you know that? The family psychologists will tell you that the number one cause of stress in the home today are money battles that are brought about when parents create some kind of artificial standard of living that they need to create for themselves to validate who they are. And in order to maintain that, you either have to work multiple jobs or work longer and harder hours than they really are prepared to so that they can live in a house that they can't afford or drive a car that's too expensive or keep the credit card going. Friends, that's not God's plan. Because what happens during all that is that the most important thing goes down the drain and that is the family that you say that you're doing all of this for. You know, I just, I wish this could get through because it's so prevalent in today's culture. Money has become such an object of our pursuit. And it's caused the crash of so many homes. So much conflict has been brought about. You know, every time there's an airplane crash, they send out investigators from the FAA, Federal Aviation Authority, and nobody can get near the scene until they get there and determine what caused the crash. And then they write up a report and hopefully find out what it was so they don't have those same crashes again. Well, we need an FFA, you know, a Family Fall Out Association or something like that. Well, we can go and, if you did that and examined why families break out, you'd find more often than not it had something to do with the pressures associated with money management. The Bible teaches us that God desires for us to be blessed. Make no mistake, I'm not talking about, you know, giving up everything and living somewhere on, you know, on nuts and berries. I'm talking about living in God's blessing but according to His principles. And let me just touch the four of them. Four principles of good stewardship. Number one, in your family, learn to tithe. You know, at an early age, if you're giving your child an allowance, you should tell them the first tenth of their allowance should go to the Lord. We used to take a dime and ten pennies and we'd say to our kids, well, here's a dime, it's ten pennies. One penny goes to the Lord. And I remember so clearly one of our kids saying, Dad, does God need my penny? No. But you need to trust God with those resources. Teach your children and model the whole issue of giving to the Lord faithfully and consistently. It's a big thing if kids learn that at an early age. Number two, learn to live within your means. Don't spend more than you have. Learn to say no to things that seem to be so important. It's amazing how many times we would say no to our kids to something that they said everyone was getting and how a few weeks later it wasn't a big deal anymore. You can learn to live without having all those things that you think you have to have. Number three, cultivate contentment. It's sort of the same issue, a different side. I have never found a one-to-one correlation between soul satisfaction and the amount of money that I had. And in fact, I might say to you, I've found more often than not an inverse relationship. Many times the wealthiest people I know are the least satisfied in their soul. That's why Jesus said it's impossible for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Apart from the miracle of God. Jesus also said that life never consisted in what we possess. We read nothing of God. Think about it. Tell me one thing Jesus possessed. Possessions to the Lord were so unimportant we don't have no reference. And yet it's everything to us. We need to help our kids realize that contentment comes from the heart, from the inside. That's why doing things like these shoeboxes that we do every fall, doing a project where