Real Families I, Growing A Healthy Family

Take out your notes. And I want to say, sort of introductorily, even though the message today is entitled Growing a Healthy Family, the things I'm going to be sharing with you will be relevant even for those of you who maybe don't have kids in your household. Maybe you're a single person. Maybe your kids are already grown. I think if you'll listen, you will pick up some things that will be helpful in any relationship. And that's my intent, as I wrote on the cover of the notes. Even though, I will tell you, that these next several weeks are really geared to helping families become all that God wants them to be. Let's pray. Lord, we want to bring to you our thoughts right now, which I know are just so easily distracted. I want to ask you, Lord, to begin to speak to our hearts through your word. We thank you that this eternal truth has stood the test of time and has, through the generations, Lord, created families that have been God-honoring. May that be so today, even as we listen to your word. Help us to identify what we need to take away with us, in Jesus' name. Have you noticed the last, say, almost week, not quite a week or so, how green things are starting to become? Notice grass is starting to get green, little leaves are popping out, and it's springtime. I noticed in my lawn, it's green. Actually, it's greener in some spots than others, and that's explainable by our little pooch, who's making his own presence known all over our lawn. But, question for those of you who are somewhat horticultural. If I just let things go over the next three months in the yard, if I just let sunshine like yesterday and showers like today do their thing for the next three months, what will I have at the end of three months? Will I have a beautiful lawn with plush grass? Will I have lovely, fragrant, colorful flower gardens? And will I have sculptured shrubs and fruitful, leafy trees? Whoever said yes, you need to just let that happen once. You'll have a yard like mine. You'll have a mess. You'll have weeds everywhere. You'll have grass growing so thick you can't cut it with a lawn mower. You'll have weeds that'll climb their way and choke out the life of the plants. You'll have, in three months, promise you, you'll have a major mess in your yard. Right? Hello? Does that just happen to me? If you just let things go, does it come up perfectly? No. It's the second law of thermodynamics, actually, is what's going on. Here's the funny thing. Unfortunately, parents today seem to take the approach of, hey, just let the sun shine on the kids and let it rain now and then and it'll all work out. It's kind of like the Beatles' philosophy of parenting. All you need is love. What's the next line of that song? No, no, no, no, no. It doesn't work, huh? It doesn't work. All you need isn't love. I can tell you straight up, it doesn't work that way. I have three children. Most of you know. 23, 21, and 20. Two of them are here today. And I can tell you with certainty that it takes more than love. It takes wisdom. Look at the first verse in your outline. It takes wisdom to have a good family and it takes understanding to make it strong. Circle the word wisdom. Healthy families are not an accident. And by the way, friends, neither are healthy Christians. They are a result of wise actions, wise decisions, wise choices by wise parents. Now, some parents are more intuitive about this thing of child raising than others. Some of you were blessed with great role models. Your parents were solid models for you and you're just kind of duplicating what you saw. But a number of us today did not grow up in a healthy family. And we have to learn just about everything there is to do with parenting. For all of us, however, it takes work, commitment, and understanding. And how many of you would agree with me that there's no more demanding job in the planet than being a good parent? If you don't think that's true, you take them for a while and see what you do with them. Now, there are four things I want to share with you. I don't know that I'll get through them all this morning because I have, as you'll see, some very important things to share just a little later. So what I don't finish today, I'll pick up next week. But four things to help you build a healthy family. Notice I said healthy, not perfect. As long as that little child in your life that God put in there, as long as he or she was born with a sinful nature, they're always going to be little sinners. You know that? They can be redeemed sinners, but they're still going to be sinners. So your family will never be perfect. And let me tell you something else. You're not perfect either. So your family will be, but it can be healthy. And that's what I want to talk about today. All right, number one. First thing you need to impart in your family is that a family is a place for preparation. Preparation for life, for living. Where else do you learn about the essential things of life if not in the home? Important things. I mean, the home is a learning center for things like, you know, dogs don't eat peas, so quit giving them yours. Clothes look better if you hang them up before you wear them the next day rather than lifting them up off the floor. Or like, we all live here, so we'll all take part in cleaning up the place. Those kinds of things. Where do kids learn life's most important and basic lessons? Like how to walk, how to talk, how to dress, how to eat, how to use the TV remote. All those vitally important things for becoming prepared for life. Look at Luke 2.52. Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and with man. What a great verse. That's talking about his childhood. Four things there. I didn't note them, but you might want to just circle each one. He grew in wisdom. What is that? That is, he grew in mental capacity. He grew in stature. What is that? Physical capacity. He grew in favor with God. What is that? Spiritual capacity. And he grew in favor with man. What is that? Social capacity. And friends, I wrote in the margin of my notes, that's balanced growth. Jesus grew up maturing in a balanced kind of way. And I want to say a word to dads today. Dads, we have a tendency, and I've watched this as I was growing up with my kids. There are a lot of dads here that take a great deal of pride. In fact, a lot of dads who aren't here today because they're taking so much pride in this point, that what they really invest in their kids is the physical thing. There are dads who are sports fanatics with their kids and just as soon as the little one can toddle, they got a bat or a club or something in their hands to start with sports. Little soccer ball, whatever it is. And they'll make any investment of time and resources. They'll buy a huge SUV to take the whole team out. They'll be at all the practices. They'll take coaching lessons. They'll do whatever they can to help their little one become the best, you know, t-ball player or golfer or soccer player or basketball, whatever it is. Because that physical thing, that's where the dad really has to come through. And I see dads that are fanatics about this. Hours they'll make up, but they won't even talk to their kid. About spiritual things. They don't even know how to broach the conversation. And they leave the mental thing. Well, mom will help with their homework and they'll leave the social. Well, you know, I so appreciate a dad every once in a while who'll take the little five or six-year-old and teach them how to shake your hand and look you in the eye and say, nice to meet you, sir, rather than just sort of, you know, fall all over you blubbering as they say, ooh, that's kind of cute, and make a big mess on the floor. That isn't cute. Okay? Dads, take some responsibility to grow your kids up in every one of those four areas. That's what God's called you to do. Notice what it says. Look at the next verse. You must teach these commandments to your children and talk about them when you're at home and out for a walk at bedtime and the first thing in the morning. In other words, life is a learning opportunity. And notice what it says. You must teach them. When you took part in conception, friends, you got a new job description. Who's primarily responsible to teach your kids? The government? Some people like to think so. No. Childcare? No. Preschool? No. Grade school? No. Private school? No. Clubs? No. Not even the church is primarily responsible. You are primarily responsible to teach your children about life. Notice the next word. You must. The word must. It isn't something you do when you just kind of feel like you have a little extra energy. It's something you're called to do. You say, well, I don't have the right tools. Well, if you must teach them, then you need to pursue having the right tools to do so. And notice this. It says teach. Now, that's where some people get hung up. They say, well, I'm not a teacher. I mean, and I'm not really equipped to sit down and go through all the stuff of the Bible. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about imparting to your kids about what life is about. Demonstrating, modeling, exampling the things that really matter. And you know what? Our kids learn way more from what we do than what we say. Way more. Here are three specific areas that you teach, parents. Three that I think are critical. There's a lot more that I could have talked about. Here's three. The first one is relationships. Now, we rarely identify this as being critical, but listen to what I'm about to say and see if you agree. In all of life, in all the skills that you might acquire, in all the education that you might... Listen to me now. In all the things that you might pursue in terms of degrees and skills and whatever... If you learn how to relate well to people, generally speaking, you will be happy in life. And if you don't learn how to relate to people, no matter how many skills, no matter how accomplished you might become, generally speaking, you will not be happy in life. Relationships are at the core of what life is about. And yet, who teaches people how to relate? Where do you pick up these skills? In the home. Now, how many of you say your home is a model of flowing communication and love? Oh, boy. I hope he doesn't come by my house this week. Well, relax, because I know what my house was like. This isn't talking about... Again, we're not talking about perfect homes here. I mean, most of us fall in one side of the continuum or another. Either, you know, when something happens in a communication network at home, one of us is prone to blow up and the other one is prone to clam up. One turns up the lip and one zips the lip, and that's kind of the way things go in most homes. But if you don't learn how to relate in the home, then when you step out into society, you're in deep trouble. Because out there, people are just... Even little ones. How many know kids can be sinister? I mean, they can, at an early age, undermine the esteem of another little child. And you know what? Relational skills. Good relationships don't just happen. They don't... You just don't sit there and suddenly, oh, let's relate. It's just like a group. A good small group doesn't just happen. If you join a beta group and you show up, you're not going to get grouped, okay? You have to relate to that group. You have to associate with it. You have to give something of yourself to make it happen. And if you don't, then you're just going to mimic whatever it was you grew up with. We were meeting with a young couple a few weeks ago, and I was talking to a young man in his early 20s about how he resolved conflict in his home. And he said, well, you know what? In my home, when things got bad, my dad just turned around and said, I'm out of here. And he left, sometimes for days and weeks. And mom just kept things going. Now, unless he learns a new way of relating, what do you think is going to happen when he marries this woman and they get into a big battle six months down the road? A battle they can't imagine they'd ever have right now because it's just so sweet, you know? It's so loving. And six months, you know, when she comes home or he comes home and there's no dinner and he blows up, what's going to happen? How's he going to relate? He's going to mimic what his father did, and he's going to have a blow-up and he's going to walk out the door. So teach your children about relationships. Talk to them about how God intends for us to get along. Second thing is character. Character is very, very important. If you don't fashion character in the home, where are they going to get it? By the way, character definition that I came up here, just jot this down. It's the sum total of your desires, choices, and habits. That's what character is. You make... There's a little proverb, you know, it's sow an attitude and reap an act, sow an act, reap a habit, sow a habit, reap a character, and sow a character, reap a... What's the last word? An eternity. And your character is just the sum total of your choices and habits. No amount of sweet-talking will ever replace a faulty character, despite what may have been sort of broadcast about in our national landscape over the last year or so. Character is fashioned in the home. That's where you intervene in the lives of your kids and help them to see what's right and what's wrong and the consequences of their choices or what Dr. Lehman calls reality discipline. That's what forms character in our kids. The third thing that you are responsible to teach is values. What's really important in life? That's what a value is. Kids are always watching you to say, you know what, I know what mom and dad think is really important. You can say, this is really important, but if you do something else... You know what, that little kid is so smart. I want you to decide that little three-year-old is really smart. Smart enough to get your goat sometime? Smart enough to sort of cause you to look in the mirror and realize, man, I'm not even fooling him, let alone anybody else. You can say whatever you want, but kids realize that two things speak louder than your words, and that's your time and your money. We can say, oh yeah, grandma is a really important part of the family, but we can't see her this year. We've got too much going on. Yeah, church is really important, but Sundays, well, we've got soccer, and we've got this, and we've got to shop, so we only get to church once a month, but it's really important to us. Values are things that kids have to learn early on. Values about work, and time, and money, and recreation, and how we treat other people, and other races, and other situations, and society, and God. And values, you see, are passed down. Look at that next verse. One generation makes known your faithfulness to the next. You know, on two different tables in my home right now is this biography that we came across several years ago from my great-great-great-grandfather. A biography that tells about his early spiritual journey and how he found the Lord, and then began to serve God, and then established the hospital, and different things that bear his name, and many other things that don't. And I watch my kids every once in a while sit down and flip through that, and realize that what a heritage they have. What a blessing I had, and they have, to be able to see God's faithfulness through the generations is passed down. And I wonder today, friends, even if you don't have anything like that, you can start it. Hear what I'm saying. You can be the first one in your family to pass down a godly heritage to your kids. Instead, what's happening in most homes in America isn't that. What they're getting passed down is more and more stuff. Faster computers, and dish networks, and People magazine, and shallow things that aren't going to matter at all. That's not the stuff of life. And that's why children today aren't accepting the values that really count. The values they're going to get are values from their peer group, and values from, well, what's the number one value broker in America? Television, that's right. Television. People say, well, you know, I don't want to impose my values on my kids. I mean, I don't want to force what I believe on them. There's a theological word for that. You know what it is? Baloney. Baloney. Your kids need to know what you believe and what you value. Because if you don't impart it to them, who's going to? Their peer group will be very happy to, and I'm going to promise you, it won't be what you hold out. And the school systems have their hands tied. And so it is the media, it is television, where most kids get a lot of their values today. Recently I read this. Television, before a child reaches the age of 18, he or she has witnessed 100,000 sexual liaisons on television. 90% of which are portrayed as taking place outside of marriage. Now, if you don't talk to your child about the value of abstinence, what do you think he or she is going to believe about sexuality? If you watch television, and if you listen to your peer group, well, isn't that what you do? And yet, you know, statistics say that only 10% of adult dads will talk to their sons or daughters about sexuality. 10%. We're giving it up. And then we wonder why the Christian statistics about sexual involvement are just as high as the non-Christian. We've got to take this seriously. All I'm saying, parents, is commit yourself to making your home a place where kids are comfortable and talking about the real issues of life. I call this Real Families because I want us to talk about the real things of life, about where kids live today. Because they live in a very, very difficult place. You know, if you don't talk about it at home, they're just going to absorb what they hear all around. And what does that end up? Well, it ends up being unbelievably difficult. If you've not walked in a high school campus someday, you ought to. Just hang out in the parking lot after school one day and listen to what kids talk about. Pull your hat down over your head and just listen to kids. It'll blow your mind. The students that are here know that what I'm talking about is true. Parents, try this. I put my little scale there, my little rate yourself thing. One to 10, how are you at talking to your kid about what's really important? If it's something that you're pretty open about and do pretty easily, give yourself an eight or a nine or a 10. If it's something that you need to work on and just raise it. No one's going to look at this. This is just for you. But you can make this a point of prayer and a point of growth in your life. All right? Second thing I want to touch on this morning is that your family is to be a place of protection. How many parents have prayed the prayer that Carol and I did, Lord, please watch over, and then you name your kids, and keep them from harm, keep them from injury, keep them from the storms of life. How many parents prayed that? All of us do, because we would do anything to keep our kids from getting hurt. I mean, it's just in us. We want to protect them. But how many of you have discovered, as I have, is that you just can't be the little bubble that goes around your kid all the time. And as much as you might want to try, your kids, they're going to face difficulty. They're going to face storms. You can't protect them, but you can provide for them shelter in the middle of the storms that they face. Life is full of them. Every kid's going to face battles, and bruises, and struggles. But they all need a place to come home to. Look at Proverbs 14, 26. Reverence for the Lord gives a man deep strength. His children have a place of refuge and security. Home is to be a safe place. How many of you play board games now and then? You know, on a rainy day, you pull out Sorry or Monopoly. And what is home? Home is that place you try to get to, you know, because it's safe, because that's the place where no one else can get you. That's what home is supposed to be. And there's so many storms that are out there that want to beat up on our families. Here's just three that I see that you might not think about. One of them is the storm of change. Do you know how many changes our kids are facing all the time? School changes, redistricting, relational changes, job changes, living changes. I mean, it's all the time. Kids are going through this upheaval. Many, many kids get moved more times than they can really deal with. You seen the little ad on TV recently? There's this two relatively young, you know, maybe middle teenage years kids, and they're sitting on the front porch of this home, and they're saying, oh, I'm going to miss you so much, and it's going to be so hard when you go. And they're kind of, and he says, well, yeah, well, you still have to sell the house, so we'll probably be here all summer. She says, oh, really? And then they stick up, you know, like it's Better Homes and Gardens or something. And that's the sign at the real estate, and they see the sign, and then they start crying, and they're like, oh, no, I'm never going to see you again. And the whole, and it's a great ad, because it's basically saying the house is going to sell tomorrow, because that's the real estate thing. And I thought, you know, I watched that, and it's funny, on the one hand. On the other hand, kids go through that. I wish I could tell you how many kids have told our youth team, man, I wish my mom and dad didn't feel like we had to move again, but I guess we'll do it. And parents, all I can ask you to do is, you know, consider your kid before the job offer is a done deal. Is it the right time to make a move? They're adaptable, but they're not supernatural. Alvin Toffler said this, we need islands of security in a sea of change. Kids need that. They need that stability, that predictability. And if things are always changing in their world, it makes it difficult for them to know where to turn. You remember, I remember way back when, how many of you are going through this right now, on a lazy Saturday morning when mom and dad maybe don't have to go to work, and the kids got up before you got up, where did the kids like to plop as soon as they could, huh? Right up in the bed, right in between mom and dad. Now our dog does that now. He comes right over, plants himself down there, and that's where he likes to be for about five seconds. But how many of you find that your kids like to just plop up in there, huh? Why is that? Because they innately know there's security between mom and dad. And dad's saying, get the heck out of here, come on, you know. And yet, the kid says, man, this is, this is the safest place in all the world, right between mom and dad. And by the way, friends, that's why it's so tragic for kids when parents get divorced. It's so hard for them because the security that they once knew now is torn up. And I don't say that to add any guilt to those of you who've been through a divorce. I'm just saying, do everything you can to stay married. The second thing is failure, the storm of failure. Nobody wins every time. You don't always make the team. You're not always asked to the prom. You're not always you don't get included in every honors group. You don't always make an A in a test. Sometimes you even fail the test. Failure is a fact of life. But it's more bearable if you know that you're coming home, if you know that at home somebody's there who's going to take care of you. And you know what? It's a neat thing to watch how kids learn to do that for each other. Not that long ago, just a couple years ago now, Carol and I were unable to meet one of the, the real apparently duties that we had. Jonathan was a senior in high school at that time playing football and it was senior night. And it's a big deal in high school football is the senior night is when the seniors walk down and their mom on one side and dad on the other side and they're real proud about their accomplishments and playing on the team and all that kind of stuff. And well, Carol and I happened to be in Israel. So Jonathan said, way to go mom and dad. Way to really love me. I'm just going to walk down by myself, John passed, my parents didn't care enough to come and he was the only one. But what was really neat about that was David drove up from his school in Virginia and Amy came down from Grove City and so Jonathan had his brother and sister walk down with him on senior night. And it was kind of cool. And you know what has really been fascinating to me to watch is there's a few pictures of that in our home and that picture, a lot of other pictures have been put away but that picture stayed up because to them that was a very special night. They'll never forget. Why? It demonstrated that there was a bond. There was affirmation and acceptance in the home. Look at Ecclesiastes says, two are better than one. If one of them falls down the other can help them up. That should be Ecclesiastes 4, 9 and 10. The third storm I see is the storm of rejection. And how many of you remember that storm starts as soon as your kid walks out the door and plays with his friends? Huh? How many of you remember the first time you were rejected and didn't get picked up on the team? I remember when I started playing baseball I just didn't have it. You know, it is hard when you go, okay I'll take this one and I'll take that and then you're the one standing there like any other guys remember that? Come on guys. You know, I can look at you Ron. I mean come on man. Huh? Never happened to you. Okay. Well, most of us went through the crisis of rejection once or twice at least in our history. Okay? I mean kids can be brutal, right? They can be, I mean they can pick out the, look at that. You know, he's got a crooked tooth. Look at the cheap clothes they have on. Where did you get those cheap clothes? You know, and then you, and they go on that one for a while. Well, our kids need to know that when they come home they're going to be affirmed and accepted and loved. They're going to be celebrated just for who they are. And you want to know the saddest thing of all is that the very place that should be a place of refuge and a place of affirmation, a place of, of security in the midst of the storm is the very center of the storm itself. The worst and saddest thing is when the home is the point of greatest conflict. And more and more in America that's the case. God help us when our homes are a place our kids don't want to go to because they don't want to hear mom and dad fighting again. Look what Mark 3.25 says, A home filled with strife and division destroys itself. Circle the word destroys. Parents, if you're fighting, get it worked out because your kids need you. They need their home to be the primary source of acceptance, not the primary source of rejection. What do you do? Well, I just call it the four H's. Every time your kid comes in the door, four things. Hear them. Listen to them. They don't need you to tell them how to fix it. Just listen to them. Dad said, Well, that's hard for me to do. I've got so much on my mind. Well, you can make some time. Put the paper down. Turn off the TV and just listen a little bit. Second thing is hug them. Now you say, Well, my son's bigger than I am. Should I hug him? Absolutely. Because I hugged him when he was a little guy. Now he's as big as I am. He comes home and he hugs me. Next thing, hope. Impart into your child the fact that, Hey, even if they've got a bad day going, there's going to be a better day ahead. And that home becomes a place where you impart some hope. And finally, help. Give whatever you can. Give whatever you can do to help that child believe that they can make it. Only healthy families deny the real issues. They deny that they need some help. You need to be willing to do that. Again, rate yourself in that, would you? If you're really a place where your kids want to be when the storms strike, give an 8, 9 or a 10. If you find your kids aren't coming home very often, and by the way, if they're not coming home when they're kids, just don't be surprised if they don't come home when they're adults either. Put a 3 or a 4 down there and say, You know what? I need to work on that one. And I want you to draw a line now right through your notes after that point because I'm going to stop right there. I'm going to pick it up next week and I'm talking about the next two and add to it just a little bit because that's as far as I think the Lord wants us to go this morning. I want to take a moment and shift gears right now.