109 Sermon Illustrations on Parenting

It was like turning the clock back 20 years when I entered Sparky’s Cafe located in Anoka, Minnesota. My little grandson escorted me into the small restaurant, with chrome legged tables and chairs. The floor was covered with worn linoleum and the lights were fairly dim. However, we were hard pressed to find a seat anywhere and finally two seats opened up at the counter for Logan (4 years old) and his “first-time visitor” grandpa.

As we motored to Sparky’s Logan knew just where to turn. Sparky’s Cafe is situated by the bridge in the old downtown area with its back to the Mississippi River. I doubt if the decor has changed since the doors opened, but when you walk through the doors, you know it is a special place. Minnesotans from the area called “locals”, flock to Sparky’s, trusted for its great food, reasonable prices, good quantities and lots of fellowship. The famous pancakes are so large, they actually lap over the sides of the big plates they are served on. The menu features “Sparky’s Breakfast” which consists of one huge pancake, 3 strips of bacon or sausage and lots of toast. The price? Only $ 3.99. Or, how ‘bout “The Old Standby” which consists of 2 eggs (any way you like them), some hash browns or American fries and your choice of toast all for only $3.39. What a bargain!

Mr. Sparks, known as “Sparky” is usually by the grill along with several other short order cooks going through dozens of fresh farm eggs. He always wears a Christian witness-wear Tee-shirt. Everyone knows Sparky and respects his stance for the Lord. Most of the staff are “believers” too. Sparky provides a nice atmosphere for his customers and many employees. Several teen agers work there, who attend local high schools, Christian schools and alternative schools. You will always get a friendly smile and greeting from people like Nora, Christi or busboys like Sam (who met Sparky at his church).

My son Lance and Logan, frequent Sparky’s Cafe practically every Saturday morning. It’s one of their special times together. There, you see other dads with their children who also have a standing date at Sparky’s. Can’t you imagine, as Lance is saying good night to Logan and saying their prayers on Friday night, a little voice gleefully asking, “Daddy, are we going to Sparky’s in the morning?” He knows if they go early, there is always a good chance that he and his dad will get two of the three stools up by the cash register that next day.

Well, what if Lance would say “Yes, we are going to Sparky’s in the morning” and soon after receives a late phone call from an old college hockey buddy saying, “Lance, we need a defenseman for tomorrow morning. We are short one player and we really need you. By the way, we will be playing at the Mariucci Center (where the U. of Minnesota Hockey team plays).” Well, what would you do? What about your commitment to your son to go on your regular standing date? Well, I can say the answer better be – “I’m sorry – I am busy.” That little Logan needs to know he can trust his dad to keep his word. Since Lance travels out of town quite often, he needs to commit to his son for this special time – and he does.

After a big breakfast at Sparky’s, Logan and I wanted to do something special just like he and his dad so often do on Saturday morning. My wife and I were staying with our two grandchildren who live in Minnesota, while their parents were out of town. Logan and I decided to do some sledding. While there wasn’t a lot of snow on the ground, we found a perfect spot on a neighbors yard that had a long and gradual slope. Craig and his little daughter Greta joined us for some fun. Craig, a young dad stood down by the street as I assisted the two little ones onto the plastic sled. Craig said, “don’t worry, I will stop you before you go into the street”, a place where cars drive occasionally sometimes at a pretty good speed. After a gentle nudge to get them started, the sled catapulted down the hill. Time after time, the kids went merrily down the slope, and every time, Craig grabbed the sled with both hands and spun them around in a small circle as they stopped. Logan and Greta trusted him to make sure they would be safe.

Children are trusting by nature. They trust adults, and through that trust their capacity to trust God grows. Parents and adults (including FCA staff) who influence young children are held accountable by God for how they affect little ones’ ability to trust. Jesus warned that anyone who turns little children away from faith will receive severe punishment. (Read Matthew 18:6)

Growing Kids God’s Way – a book and study on Biblical ethics for parenting, states that the average father spends less than 7 minutes a day with his children. Living in a complex society, we have become a nation of slaves to the clock when it comes to raising our children. You may ask if your children really Trust you for Trust is the foundation on which any good relationships are built.

If you prove your trustworthiness during vulnerable moments in the early years (like fulfilling your promises) your children will come to you when they’re older and facing life’s challenges. Keeping your promises is essential in building trust between you and your children.

Fathers are reminded to be encouragers. It’s your very presence, smile, and expression that communicates encouragement. Encouragement builds trust. Write a little note to your child, something simple, encouraging and end with 3 little words – “I love you” occasionally. Put it in their lunch box – or on their mirror in the bathroom.

Final Thought: The need for trust in any relationship is basic. Trust starts and ends with God. Trust cannot be separated from truth. Jesus said, “Thy word is truth.” John 17:17. Don’t build your house upon the sand. Matthew 7:24-27. For when the storms of life come to pound on your relationship, will anything be left after they pass? The preservation of your family starts with understanding God’s devine plan for salvation. >From salvation comes sanctification, which is divine empowerment to minister to your family and others. Without biblical truth, the family has no ultimate meaning or direction. Who are you trusting this morning? Read Proverbs 3: 5-6.

On Monday, I led our church’s Mom-to-Mom group through a Bible study on the helicopter mom of the Bible. Guess who?

No, not Rebekah, the mother of Esau and Jacob — she sure helicoptered, but she also was so dysfunctional with her strong preference for one son and scheming against the other that I didn’t think she was very helpful.

In my humble opinion, the helicopter mom of the Bible is (drum roll please. . .) Salome, the mother of the disciples James and John, the wife of a prosperous fisherman, Zebedee, and (some think) the sister of Mary, Jesus’s mom.

Salome, with two strapping fishers-of-men by her side, strides to Jesus, kneels down and asks him a favor.

Jesus asks, “What is it you want?”

“When you come into your glory, would you please put one of my boys at your right and the other at your left hand side?”

When I go before Jesus on behalf of my kids and he asks, “What is it you want?” how do I answer?

Right now I want one child to respectfully ask me to help obtain “Annie Get Your Gun” costumes and props rather than handing me a piece of paper and saying, “Here’s your list.”

I want another child to break through shyness, make deep friendships and overcome math and a math teacher who doesn’t seem to teach.

And I want yet another child to obsess less about make-up, clothes and thinking she’ll have the perfect life if she gets into HYP (Harvard-Yale-Princeton as she calls it).

I want all three to flourish, to discover and use their gifts on behalf of a broken world, to love and be loved.

But most of all, I don’t want them to suffer. And that’s what I think is at the heart of the hovering helicopter parenting style.

Fear that our children will suffer.

We fear that if we don’t:

Follow Sears, Brazelton, Ezzo, or whoever the latest parenting guru’s advice to the nth degree our kids won’t attach, have healthy self-esteem, or grow up God’s way.

Set up the right playdates, or socialize with the right moms, or get our kids in the right social groups our kids won’t find the right friends and will end up bullied or ostracized.

Get our kids into the right schools or activities, they won’t get into the right college, where they won’t meet their right spouse, or get prepared for the right job, where they can’t afford to live in the right suburb which will lead to the right pain-free life.

Jesus says to Salome’s request, “You don’t know what you’re asking — can you drink from the cup I’m going to drink?”

“We can!” all three reply.

Jesus looks at them with sadness, “You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.”

The cup Jesus talks about is the cup of suffering. The same cup Jesus begs God three times to take away in the garden of Gethsemane before he goes to the cross.

He knows Salome, James and John will all drink from that cup of suffering. In the gospels, Salome shows up again at the foot of the cross watching Jesus die, and then at the tomb bringing spices to anoint Jesus’s body. James will be the first disciple to be martyred. John will be the last disciple to die after seeing all his friends martyred first.

Jesus came into his glory and kingdom while hanging on the cross. And two nameless thieves hung on his right and left side.

Isn’t that a bummer? When we go to Jesus on behalf of our children, ultimately asking that they won’t suffer, his answer is NO. They’re going to suffer and there’s nothing we can do to prevent that. It’s a dangerous world out there, and all the hovering I do won’t keep my kids safe.

Yet ironically, our kids are safest by Jesus’s side. So somehow teaching our kids how to suffer well, how to transform their pain rather than transmit it, how to forgive or turn the other cheek may actually be one of the most central tasks of our parenting.

There are a couple things Salome did well.

1. She followed Jesus herself

2. She released her kids to follow him also

She released her kids to leave the family business to follow Jesus. She released them to a whole new mission in life. She released them to suffering and death, but through their suffering the world was never the same again.

What do you say if God asks you, “What do you want?”

What do you fear?

How do you release your kids to the future they’re called to?

New York Times columnist David Brooks made waves recently with an essay published in the Atlantic. Brooks’ point is simple: What we call “the nuclear family,” a mother, a father, and their 2.5 children, often in a suburban home with a single income, is an invention of the 20th century. It’s not what the family looked like for most of history.

Instead, writes Brooks, humans have typically existed in multi-generational networks of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins supporting one another. The “extended family,” he argues, is the natural family.

The key here is context. Brooks admits the nuclear family has always existed, but without an extended circle of relatives, he thinks it’s unstable. History seems to back him up. The 1950s, he writes, were the “high water mark” of the nuclear family. But as the 50s economy and mass unionization became things of the past, nuclear families fragmented into ever smaller forms, with single-parent homes now being the most common.

Among the important points made by Brooks is that, certainly by the time American culture had absorbed the full impact of the sexual revolution, the American family had already been substantially transformed by industrialization and other forces of modernity, not least of which is the widespread separation of work from home.

Unfortunately, the title of Brooks’ essay is, well, terrible. To lead with “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake” muddies the waters. Even muddier is Brooks’ suggestion that alternative forms of kinship, which he calls “chosen families,” are legitimate replacements for the nuclear family, with the only criteria for their success being that they are chosen.

And so, he praises networks of shared parenting in such places as African-American neighborhoods with low rates of fatherhood, same-sex and polyamorous arrangements in LGBTQ communities, and even groups of friends living together to support one another.

What Brooks misses is that all of these things are attempts to mitigate the situations caused when families break. They are not replacements. As noble as some of these attempts are, the outcomes for those involved in “chosen families,” especially outcomes related to the long-term health and well-being of children, are consistently worse than they are for those in nuclear families.

Critiquing Brooks’ essay at The Bulwark, Mona Charen reminds us that family, including extended families, are still built on marriage. A family is more than a mere social construct. It cannot be whatever we want it to be. It’s founded, she writes, on human nature and biology, including “the unique bond that ties parents and children.”

In a symposium at the Institute for Family Studies, others point out that the “chosen families” Brooks praises are often less stable than even the isolated nuclear family that he’s critiquing. In particular, the statistics on abuse and neglect in these contexts is alarming.

Where Brooks is right is that a mom, a dad, and a couple of kids are not the family most people throughout history have known, and that the forces of modernity have isolated the “nuclear” family arrangement away from extended families and other social networks that were once normal and that can support them. Another way to say this is marriage is hard. Parenting is hard. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and other extended family members are really helpful. Their presence was far more common in the past than it is now.

Andrew Walker’s response to Brooks’ essay makes the very important point that what Brooks is looking for in so-called “chosen families,” already exists in another institution that’s been around for a couple thousand years: the local church. Jesus didn’t start the Church to replace biological families, and what other social institution offers the love, support, and community that can help hold a household together? The reality to which Brooks points is a marvelous opportunity for the church to be the agent of restoration Christ has saved it to be.

Still, Brooks is wrong to suggest that love can dispense with biology. The natural family is built around the biological realities of male and female and procreation, and it’s therefore as irreplaceable as gravity. As books like Mary Eberstadt’s “Primal Screams” clearly document, the last several decades of ignoring this design has brought devastating consequences.

________

Resources

"The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake," by David Brooks, The Atlantic, March 2020 Issue.

"Don’t Nuke the Nuclear Family: A Reply to David Brooks," by Mona Charen, The Bulwark, February 18, 2020.

“What Would You Say?” Video: Doesn’t Love Make a Family? .

________

Copyright (c) 2020 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

1. My hands are small; please don't expect perfection whenever I make a bed, draw a picture, or throw a ball. My legs are short; please slow down so that I can keep up with you.

2. My eyes have not seen the world as yours have; please let me explore safely: don't restrict me unnecessarily.

3. Housework will always be there. I'm only little for such a short time-please take this time to explain things to me about this wonderful world, and do so willingly.

4. My feelings are tender; please be sensitive to my needs; don't nag me all day long. (You wouldn't want to be nagged for your inquisitiveness.) Treat me as you would like to be treated.

5. I am a special gift from God; please treasure me as God intended you to do, holding me accountable for my actions, giving me guidelines to live by, and disciplining me in a loving manner.

6. I need your encouragement, but not your praise, to grow. Please go easy on the criticism; remember, you can criticize the things I do without criticizing me.

7. Please give me the freedom to make decisions concerning myself.

Permit me to fail; so that I can learn from my mistakes. Then someday I'll be prepared to make the kind of decisions life requires of me.

8. Please don't do things over for me. Somehow that makes me feel that my efforts didn't quite measure up to your expectations. I know it's hard, but please don't try to compare me with my brother or my sister.

9. Please don't be afraid to leave for the weekend together. Kids need vacations from parents, just as parents need vacations from kids.

Besides, it's a great way to show us kids that your marriage is very special.

10. Please take me to Sunday school and church regularly, setting a good example for me to follow. I enjoy learning more about God.

We’ve all watched the culture change at warp speed. Christians are confronted with questions everywhere – from media, from skeptics, from friends and neighbors, even from our own children and grandchildren ... Too many Christians have no idea what to think, much less know what to say.

What would your answer be to one of the most common things we hear in our culture today: “Doesn’t Love Make a Family?”

“When someone says, ‘love makes a family,” what they typically mean is that when it comes to marriage or parenting, things like gender, marital status, and biological connections are less important than simply being loved.

It’s a nice sentiment. After all, many of our closest and most important relationships are with people we aren’t related to. But is it true about families?

Sociologists have been studying family structure for decades. They overwhelmingly agree that by far the best situation for children is being raised in a home with their married mother and father.

That means three things: Gender matters, biology matters, and marriage matters.

First, Gender matters. So different are the ways that men and women interact with children, that many sociologists say there’s no such thing as parenting. There are only mothering and fathering.

From the way they communicate, to the way they play, to how they discipline, men and women offer distinct and complementary benefits to children.

There are heroic single parents out there. They face major challenges because the other parent is gone. When one parent is missing, the father for example, children fall into almost-predictable negative patterns.

Fathering encourages independence, mothering encourages emotional security. Men don’t mother. Women don’t father. Kids need both.”

“When it comes to what’s best for children,” love matters, “but that’s not all that matters.”

Gender matters. Biology matters. Marriage matters.

________

Copyright (c) 2019 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.