Grace and Parenting

Father God, we just thank you for today. We thank you for your goodness to us, Lord. We thank you for that song, Eternal Father.

There is no one that was before you and there's no one going to be after you, Lord, you are supreme. And God, we just lift up these prayer requests. We think of this Arlene Miller case, the court case.

God, as these people have put out reports and you see it all, you see the inside from the outside, you see every detail. And I just lift up this case before you, Lord, and I pray, Lord, that your presence would rest upon Arlene and her family and Lord, what your will would be done and you would be glorified through this whole experience. And I pray, Lord, that the truth will be revealed and God, you have all kinds of ways to reveal truth when men just don't want to see it and I just pray, Lord, for a working of your hand and a miracle.

I pray for brother Jeremy, Lord. I pray, Lord, that you would anoint him, fill him with your spirit. May your presence surround him, Lord.

And I pray, Lord, that you would guide his tongue, his thoughts, help him to speak those things which you'd have him speak, Lord, and that he would not fear man and, Lord, just preach your word. You know, Lord Jonah, he just preached a very short message and, Lord, this is the grandest revival that ever hit this globe and, God, it just shows that you can use a man even though their heart isn't right and, Lord, we have it all wrong, but you can just work a miracle far above and beyond what we can even think and we are just men here, Lord, that love you and that want to see your will accomplished and your kingdom grown in this world. Help us to be lights in this dark world.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Good morning.

In the name of Jesus. We sang that song and actually a lot of the songs, I don't know, maybe when you preach all the songs, just minister to your heart more because you've been thinking about it and you're like, oh, there's that and there's that, but as we were singing that, I was thinking about this thought about God and his spirit being in us and that's what the song is trying to convey, like with the third verse said, you make your temple day by day and you dwell in this house of clay. How do you do that? Why do you do that? The awesomeness of God that the whole point of the new covenant was that Jesus would come and he would break the power of Satan.

He would forgive our sins. And then by rising from the dead, he would receive. It says he became a life giving spirit.

He would receive the spirit and come back into us and say, you know, the Holy spirit's with you right now, but he will be in you. And, uh, we watched these men who walked with Jesus and who three years of schooling, you know, they were these carnal men. And they're still at the very end, still fighting about who's going to be the greatest man's logic as brother Carl was showing us this morning.

And yen, when on the day of Pentecost, when that Holy spirit came into him, how different they were. And, and, and that's what this verse says. The last verse, it says, bless Trinity whom alone, all things created, move arrest high in the heavens.

Thou hast thy throne. Thou hast thy throne within my breast. Like what an amazing concept.

If we could just get that picture, right. It's easy to come here and sing about it and get the picture for the moment, but we're in the midst of that person or trial. That's vexing us.

That's hard to remember that God's right here to help us through that. And that's what I want to talk about this morning. Um, now brother Glenn, he, uh, preached that I wouldn't have the fear of men or he, he preached through his prayer.

Um, and I have a little struggle this morning. I'm a little nervous because I, I'm going to do a little something different that I don't normally do. I generally like to be ready and have outlines and have all my backup plans in place and, you know, feel comfortable and safe, but this morning I don't have an outline.

Um, I wanted to share some things that I've read in the past two, three months. And I, honestly, my wife came to me and says, what I, you know, I love my wife. I can go to her and say, I don't even know what to say.

She says, well, what's your burden? What is your burden? I said, well, my burden is, and it has been for several years now. And I sound like I get so repetitive about the thing, but that, you know, it's kind of like Israel. They were, they were traveling around in the wilderness of sin.

They had doubts, they had confusions, they had their discouragements and, and, and they kept wandering and wandering and God wanted them to cross over. He wanted them to go to the promised land, but because of their doubts and little faith, they couldn't do that. And finally, till they all died off, they finally made it in to the promised land.

But that wasn't the end of the story. They got into the promised land and, oh, now they have these battles to fight. And these battles aren't by man's logic.

I mean, who would ever think of the idea that you need to march around a city so many times every day. And then on the, this day is where we march seven times around and blow some horns and the walls would fall. How is that? I mean, can you imagine like the commander of the United States army coming up with that plan? Uh, no.

So, and God's teaching them as they go through how to depend on him, how it's his way, not by might nor by power. And then they find out they have sin in the camp. They got to get rid of the sin in the camp.

And they, and this lesson keeps going on. And then by the end of Joshua and judges, you see that they've gotten lazy and they haven't driven out all the giants. They haven't driven out all the Canaanites and the parasites and the Jebusites and they've gotten tired and they've just allowed them to stay.

And it's this whole, this whole thing called a journey. And we're all there. I don't know where we all are, but every one of us, especially those who have committed their lives to God or somewhere in that journey, right? You might be still wandering around and sin and trying to find Christ and you've made this commitment, but you just don't seem to find it.

You might be just getting ready to cross over. You might be over on the other land. Now you're in a battle, you know, and sometimes it feels like we do this, right? Sometimes it feels like we go back over the Jordan and come back over and man, that's my burden.

Where are we? Let's keep going. Let's keep our eyes on what it is all about. Let's get a broad picture.

And so, um, of course, in my mind, when I think about what is this all about, it comes immediately to, it's about God. It's about depending on him. It's about none of ourselves and all about him.

It's about dying, right? Isn't the gospel of Jesus Christ about dying? Like unless the seed dies, it cannot bring forth any fruit. Isn't that what Jesus taught us and showed us through his whole life? He said, I can do nothing of myself. That's what the Christian walk is about.

It's about learning to empty ourself, but you know, it's not an easy task. It is not an easy task to empty ourself and to come to the end of ourselves. And as brother Mike was talking this morning to the children, when that child hits the one child and the other child hits back and all the children said it was the first child's fault, you know, we naturally think that way and we naturally think that way all the time.

In fact, I'd venture to guess maybe many of us thought that way some way this week, how easy it when that child or that person or that trial vexes you. Is it to think if they would just be there, I wouldn't have done that. If they would have just stayed in their bed, if they would have just not made me mad, if they, and we think that way, if they wouldn't have done this, I would have been just fine in my holiness instead of thinking that's just revealing who I am, right? That's just revealing who is in me, this hideous, nasty, disgusting monster.

And that's the concept of the new covenant is we embrace trials because it reveals who's really in us. You know, it reveals the impurities in our heart and that we haven't completely died to ourself, but it's so hard for us to really believe that. It's so hard for us to embrace that.

So I debated, I've been reading two books. One is by a man from the 1800s called Andrew Murray, and he wrote a book on humility and I was, it's amazing sometimes to read back from the 1800s and think, wow, this guy was reading the Bible, like he found some amazing truths too, like that's amazing. I know it's a really selfish thought, but like to think that this, you know, you think people in the 1800s were all stoic and they, you know, they couldn't figure anything out, you know, except how to do things traditionally.

And, but yet this guy, he found some amazing truths. Now, brother Gary Miller says we've all become a little dumb. So when we read, I mean, I'm serious.

When you, if I were to read this thing to you, I think within the first couple of paragraphs, a lot of us would be swimming. Uh, this guy will read, he will go through, uh, section, comma, section, comma, section, comma, section, before you ever get to a period. It's like a whole paragraph, one run on sentence, and you're supposed to remember the beginning to the end.

And so I've been debating to read from that. And I went through and highlighted it. But what I think I'm going to do this morning is read from a different book, one from our century, but that communicates the same concepts.

And what I want us to do is this book is about parenting. And I know a lot of you are thinking, um, well, I'm not a parent. Well, okay.

But the, the, the, uh, principles are the same. So before we start reading, I want every one of you to stop and think about that person or group of people or situation that really vexes you that just when you go to it, you think this thing is the thing that constantly brings out that impurity in me, that, that constantly gets my soul twisted and upset. And I want you to think about that because if you think about that, and then as I read these things, you think about the principles that are behind them and how, uh, we are to humble ourselves to these things, you will get the message and it'll help you much.

When you become a parent, I just think that maybe parenting, um, at least in my life, let's just say this when I started stepping, I got married, you know, I thought I was going to be the perfect parent. I, I mean, I'm not joking. I really did.

I remember having the thoughts. I remember reading Michael Pearl's book. I remember reading, uh, I think it's Ted trips book about shepherding your heart.

I mean, there's a whole list of books I read and I felt ready and I had, I mean, I remember the pride I had when I had Timothy, wherever he is, is he going, um, Oh, there he is. He could memorize this whole thing and do it with all these hand motions. And I felt so proud that my little boy could memorize all these verses and do all these things.

And, and I just thought for sure my family was going to just, we, I was going to be a perfect parent. And, um, and the Lord uses parenting to reveal things in our hearts. And that's a hard thing to grasp because at first you think, you think if only this wouldn't happen, I would be the perfect parent, but if you really are humbling yourself to these situations, you start to see that God is using this in my life to, to, to, um, purify me and to make me glorify him and to be able to comfort others.

So this guy, he wrote a book years ago about parenting and he put it out to all these people and he got and did homeschool conferences and all these things. And people would come up and say, Oh, I love this about your book. It was so great.

And he would think, that's not what I was hoping they'd get from the book. And the next person would come and I love this about your book. And he would think, that's not what I was hoping they would get from the book.

And, and then of course, I think there's a little bit of him making a lot of mistakes himself. You know, he probably wrote that book because he confesses in here that he thought he'd be the perfect parent. And he probably wrote that from there.

And now he's coming back realizing, okay, there was a whole lot to it. And so he's writing this book as he's an older man. Now, looking back an older man, we can let, if we had the opportunity to listen to this man and have him come stand here and preach, let's imagine for a minute.

That's what we're doing. And he's, he's writing a book about 14 gospel principles that can radically change our families. We don't have time to go through all 14 this morning, but I want to look at a couple.

So, and I'll read you just really quick in the midst of folding laundry, coordinating carpool schedules, breaking up fights, many parents get lost. Feeling pressured to do everything right and raise up good children. It's easy to lose sight of our ultimate purpose as parents in the quest for practical tips and guaranteed formulas.

Now, if you're not a parent, put yourself in this position in the midst of all your schedules, all your things, you want to do it right, but it's easy to get lost in it. All right. So I'm going to, I'm going to start off here.

We're going to read a little bit. Your house is noisy and not as clean as you'd like it to be. And your husband hasn't been out.

You haven't been out with your husband together for a long time. The laundry is piled up. Once again, you just discovered there's nothing to pack for lunch.

You've just broken up another fight. The schedule for the week looks impossible. You seem to have more expenses than money.

None of the people around seem satisfied and you feel exhausted and unappreciated. In the middle of all this endless parenting activities, many parents get lost. They are doing lots of things, lots of good things, but they don't know why.

They've been swallowed up into the daily grind of parenting, but they lose sight. And what it is that they're working for or building toward. They don't understand why these ones that they love have the power to pull such irritation and frustration out of them.

The menial tasks that they have to do day after day gets reduced to an endless catalog of unattractive duties that seem to have, to not have any overarching vision that holds them all together. As I have traveled the world talking about parenting, I've had thousands of exhausted parents ask me for more efficient strategies for this or that. When what they really need is a bigger picture of parent, a bigger picture of parent or parenting worldview that can explain, guide, and motivate all the things that God calls them to do as parents.

The big picture starts with knowing who you are as a parent and who you are as non-parents, I'm afraid that parenting confusion and dysfunction often begins with parenting and let's say older siblings. Let's put you here having an ownership, an ownership view of parenting, or we'll say being a sibling. It is seldom expressed and often unconscious, but it operates on this perspective of parenting.

These children belong to me so I can parent them in the way I see fit. Now, no parent actually says that, but it tends to be the perspective that most of us fall into. In the press of overwhelming responsibilities and a frantic schedule, we lose sight of what parenting is really about.

We look at our children as belonging to us and we end up doing things that are short sighted. Ownership parenting is motivated and shaped by what parents want for their children and from their children. It is driven by a vision of what we want our children to be and what we want our children to give us in return.

It seems right. You know, it seems right as a parent and it seems right as an older sibling, maybe the things you're doing and demanding. It feels right and it does many good things, but it's foundationally misguided and misdirected and will not produce what God has intended in the lives that he has entrusted to our care.

Good parenting, which does what God intends it to do, begins with this radical and humbling recognition that our children don't actually belong to us. Rather, every child in every home, everywhere on the globe belongs to the one who created him or her. Children are God's purpose, possession for his purpose.

I thought about that for a minute. I thought, what would it be like if Roger Hertzler left me his children for a week? How much would I treat them differently than my own children? These are Roger's children, not mine. Would I, would your father want you to do that? You know, how would I act differently? The world that the Bible uses for this position that we should be operating in is, is ambassadors.

The only thing an ambassador does, think about this older brothers and sisters. This is the only thing you do too, is he's interested in keeping his, if he's interested in keeping his job as an ambassador is to faithfully represent the message, methods, and character of the leader who has sent him. That's our jobs.

That's our jobs as parents is just to be faithful. To be an ambassador for God, to faithfully represent the message that he has given us. He is not free to think or speak or act independently.

Everything he does, every decision he makes in every interaction he has must be shaped by this one question. What is the will and the plan of the one who sent me? The ambassador does not represent his own interests, his own perspective or his own power. He does everything as an ambassador.

Parent parenting is ambassadorial work from the beginning to the end. It is not to be shaped and directed by your personal interests, your personal needs, or your cultural perspective. Every parent everywhere is to recognize that they have been put on earth at a particular time in a particular location to do the one thing in the lives of their children.

And what is that one thing? It is God's will. Here's what this means at a street level talk. Parenting is not first about what we want for our children or from our children, but about what God in grace has planned to do through us in our children.

To lose sight of this is to end up with a relationship with our children that at the foundational level is neither Christian nor true parenting because it has become more about our will and our way than about the will and way of our savior and sovereign King. I want to say right here and now that I am a very bad and what I, that I am very bad and what I am now writing about. I like sovereignty.

I like ownership and I like having my will done on earth as God's will is done in heaven. How many of us is that the case? We like having our will done as God's will is done in heaven. I often treated my four children who are now grown as if they were my possessions.

I often suffered from ambassadorial schizophrenia. How many of us are that? You know, one minute we're ambassadors and we get the picture. We hear a good sermon, we hear a good story, whatever.

And the next minute we're back to ownership parenting. At moments losing my mind, taking my parenting into my own hands and doing things that I shouldn't have done. I was often a very poor example of a joyful submission to God's law.

I was often a very poor representative of God's grace. I was more propelled by fear than I was by faith. I often wanted short term gain than long term transformation.

There were moments when I forgot who I was, lost my mind and did things that really didn't make any sense, or at least weren't very helpful. I'm going to ask you right now to be honest and admit that you're like me. You lose your way and forget who you are in the middle of the endless repetitive tasks of parenting the children entrusted to your care.

There are moments when you lose your mind. There are times when you're saying, and just, there are times when what you're saying and doing just isn't helpful and definitely not ambassadorial. Here's an example.

He gives, you just sat down 15 minutes ago after giving your five times a day lecture on loving your neighbor, brother Mike, as you just did and are feeling momentarily good about how it went. Now you're back in the room with your phone. Before you have a chance to hit the button for your favorite app, you hear angry voices floating down the hallway from the very room you were just in.

You can't believe it. You're tired. And it feels personal.

You want to throw your phone through the window, but you know, doing so would break both. You wish the insanity would stop so you could enjoy just one sane, personal moment. You don't regret that you have children, but at this point you kind of wish they weren't your children.

You're angry and you're about to lose your mind, forgetting who you are and what you've been called to do. Emotion is propelling you down the hallway. And that emotion is not love.

An agenda is motivating. And that agenda is not grace. You were in the room and yelling before you even realized you've left your family room chair.

You're talking, but you're not thinking. You're reacting, but you're doing, but you're not doing parenting. You're netting out a catalog of punishments, which are later going to have to enforce.

You threaten worse. If you have to come down that hallway again, you leave the room mumbling something about how you would have never thought of acting that way. When you were their age, you throw yourself in the chair, grab your phone and open the app, but you're not paying attention because your emotions are raging.

What do I have to do to get them to listen, to get them to obey for once? You ask yourself as your emotions calm, you feel a bit guilty. And because you do, you try to convince yourself that your kids deserved it. How many times, maybe siblings, you felt this way in a little different perspective, but try to put yourself in the same shoes towards that younger sibling who is annoying you.

Who of us hasn't been there? What parent can look back on the days, the weeks, the month, and the years that he has had with his children with no regret whatsoever. It is so important to humbly recognize how counterintuitive ambassadorial parenting is and seek the rescue and the power to remember that only God and his amazing grace can provide. Sin makes us all more natural owners than ambassadors.

Sin makes us all more demanding than patient. Sin causes us to find punishment more natural than grace. Sin makes us all more able to see and be distressed by the sin, weakness and failure of others than we do about our own.

Sin makes it easiest for us to talk at other people rather than to listen. Here's what all of this means. The thing that constantly gets in the way of our ambassador calling as parents is us humbly confessing.

This is the first step in our ambassadorship. Perhaps you're thinking at this point, Paul, I don't, I don't think I treat my children like they're my possession. I think I try to serve God in the lives of my children, but I'm not sure.

Well, I want you, I want to help you. Maybe the place to begin with is to observe the few parents. Maybe the place to begin with is to observe that few parents conduct themselves like total owners or total ambassadors.

You know, how many of us are all the way over? We're all ambassador all the time or all owner all the time. I think for most of us, ownership, parenting, and ambassadorial parenting represents a daily battle that is fought on the turf of our hearts. We are constantly torn between what we want and what God wants for all honest.

Aren't we all torn between that all day long, what we want and what God wants. We are constantly pulled one way by what we think is the best. And the other way by what God says is the best.

Sometimes we just want our children to behave. So our lives could be easier while at other moments, we accept the fact that parenting is spiritual warfare. We're going to jump ahead into another chapter here called grace.

The principle is this. God never calls you to a task without giving you what you need to do it. He never sends you without going with you.

We sing that song yield, not to temptation for yielding his sin. But then the chorus goes, ask the savior to help you. He will comfort and guide you.

He is willing to aid you. He will carry you through many, many fathers and mothers carry a particular problem into their parenting and they don't know it. It affects the way they think about the task that has been assigned to them.

It affects the way they view their children. It shapes the responses in all the hard moments that parents face. It determines what they will say to themselves as they begin their day, or as they crumble into their bed, exhausted.

Once again, it leaves many parents feeling unprepared, unable, and discouraged. It causes many parents to wish they could just quit when they know. In fact, they can't.

It tempts people to look over the fence and wish they could have it this way that other family has it. It makes parents give into the temptation to say and do things that they know in their hearts that they shouldn't say. And they shouldn't do.

What is this silent, but deadly problem that affects so many parents? Why too many Christian parents have a great, big troubling gap in their understanding celebration of a reliance upon God's grace. What an interesting concept that he comes to. He paints this whole picture of they have this huge gap, this huge problem.

And what is it? They don't understand God's grace. Let me say it now, because it will be a theme that will be in some way in every chapter of this book. There is nothing more important to consistent, faithful, patient, loving, and effective parenting than to understand what God has given you in the grace of his son, the Lord Jesus.

You know, we read that. Eternal father, you make your heart my breast. And, and this is what he's saying, but do we get, do we, do we really believe it? You know, what really shows me, believe it as we go to it in that moment, in that hard moment, we go to that eternal father.

That's in our best. We believe it in that moment. Most Christian parents have a fairly good understanding of past grace.

We can all say the Lord has forgiven us. He's he's he's, he's died that we can have grace to be forgiven. That is the forgiveness.

Uh, they have received because of the life, death, and resurrection. And they have even a decent, decent graphs of future grace. We all understand eternity.

That is a place in it here that is guaranteeing them as a child of God. But the problem is, is they have a little understanding of present grace, the right here, the right now benefits of the work of God for all of us living between the already past and the not yet. That's where we're at right now.

Right? Especially all those who have committed their lives to Christ. They've already, they have the already past of being forgiven. They have the hope of heaven, but what about right now? Vast numbers of parents think that the phrase, the gospel of grace has nothing to do with the exhaustion.

They can't seem to shake the anger. They can't seem to defeat or the street level wisdom. They feel the lack of, or the need for that break.

They never seem to get, they hear sermons about God's grace. They sing about God's grace, but these don't seem to address their struggles as parents. In fact, it seems that they're get what they're getting is anything but grace.

So it needs to be said and then explain that as a child of God, you have been given not only glorious past and future grace, but an amazing present grace as well, and that's, that is my burden that we all find that I just never want to stop talking about until we find it is that present grace right now, this grace reaches you in the darkest parenting moments. This grace addresses your feeling of inability. This grace touches you when you feel as you are at the end of your wisdom.

This grace is yours for the taking. When you're walking down the hallway and you know, you've blown it. The grace reaches you when your child seems rebellious and hardhearted and you don't know what to do.

This grace touches you in moments of deep parental regret. It gives you a reason to get up in the morning to be able to sleep at night. And no matter what you're facing at the moment, if you had asked me, what is the most important thing that God has given you as a parent, I wouldn't say the wisdom principles of his word.

I would say his grace. Let me explain why. Like everything else, God calls people.

God doesn't call people to be parents because they are able. God doesn't call us because we're able. If we read your Bible carefully, you will understand that God doesn't call people that are able to do important things.

Abraham wasn't able. Moses wasn't able. Gideon wasn't able.

David wasn't able. The disciples weren't able. And the story goes on.

The reason for this is that they are, there are no able people out there. They just don't exist. And they surely don't exist as parents.

God did not create human beings to be independently able. He designed us to be dependent. It is not a sign of personal weakness or failure or character to feel unable as a parent.

The reason you feel this is because it's true. Isn't that the truth? Let's just admit it. The reason we feel unable as parents is because it's true.

The field is the reason you feel unable as older brothers, older sisters to handle that child that's vexing you to handle that situation is because we're not able. It's true. None of us have the natural storehouse of wisdom, strength, patience, mercy, and perseverance that every parent needs in order to do his job.

Well, independent ability, like independent righteousness is a delusion. God didn't save you and said, now you're independently able and you're independently righteous. So quit beating yourself up because you feel inadequate.

You feel that way because it's true. Why would a God, a perfect, perfect wisdom ask inadequate people to do such important jobs? The answer is so important to grass. God calls on a people, unable people to do important things because ultimately what he's working on is not your immediate success, but that you would come to know him, to love him, to rest in his grace and to live for his glory.

Let me put it in a different way. God calls unable people to do important things that he will get the glory and not them. He isn't working so that your life as a parent would be easy, predictable, and free from struggle.

He calls you to do the impossible so that in your search for help, you would find more than help. You would find him. Inability doesn't mean that God has made a massive mistake giving you children that somehow he got the wrong address and your children would be better off somewhere else rather than your, rather than your ability being in the way of God's plan.

It is part of his plan. This is how God grows us. He plans it this way.

He knows that parents who admit that they are inadequate and run to God make the best parents. You see, he doesn't ask you to be able. He asks you to be willing.

If you are willing, he will meet you in your weakness and change you. And as he changes you, he will work good things through you into the hearts and the lives of your children. But there's something more.

No child really wants to be parented by parents who think they're able. Able parents tend to be proud and self-assured because they are proud of their ability. They act too quickly and with much self-confidence and because they do, they lack patience and they lack understanding.

Able parents tend to assume that their children should be able to, so they tend to fail to be tender when the weakness of their children get exposed. Able parents who pride themselves in keeping the law tend to give their children more law than grace and are quicker to judge than to understand. And able parents tend to want their children to be their trophies.

A public demonstration of their ability. It's hard to live with people who deny weakness because people who deny weakness tend not to be patient, loving and understanding with people who are weak. Your inability is not the destruction of your parenting because God meets people who humbly admit their weakness and run to him for help.

But your judgment of parental ability may be the very reason you find yourself at odds with children who never seem to measure up to your expectation. Able parents seem to be upset when children demonstrate over and over again that what they need is to be parented. If you walk down the hallway mad because your children need correction again, you're mad at the moment.

You're mad because at that moment they need what every human being constantly needs of parents care. But if you walk down that hallway confessing your need of the father's care, it is more likely that you will embrace the need of your children for the same care and you'll be tender as you give it. God never calls us to do a task without giving us what we need to do it.

God never sends you into anything without going with you. He never tells you to do something without giving you what you need to do it. This is the story of the entire Bible.

This is why God sent his son to earth. There is only one hero of the Bible. Every character is flawed in some way.

God is the hero of every story in the Bible. In fact, the Bible is not a collection of stories, but one big story with lots of chapters. It's a story of how God meets weak and failing people with his powerful grace.

What does this have to do with parenting everything? It means that if you're God's child, it is impossible for you to be left to your own limited package of resources. It's impossible for you to be relegated to whatever is the size of your strength and wisdom. And here's what you need to remind yourself every day.

God's greatest and most wonderful gift to you as a parent is himself. Remember that right there? The last I thrown within my bread is God's greatest gift that he's given to every one of you as a parent and everyone of your sibling is himself. That's the whole difference of the new covenant and the old.

They didn't have him in them. He knows how hard your task is. He knows that it drives you beyond the borders of your patient and wisdom.

He knows that there are times when you feel that you have no clue of what you are doing. He knows there are moments when you wish you could quit and walk away. He knows that there are moments when anger grips you.

He knows that your children care can get under your skin. He knows that every piece of your struggle would be as a parent. So he knew that the only way he could help you would be himself.

Read these words carefully. This is taken out of Ephesians three. It says now to him who is able to do far abundantly than all we ask or think according to the power at work within us to him be glory in the church and in Jesus Christ through all generations.

Here is the single redemptive reality right here right now that makes parenting possible. God in you, you read it right. The Apostle Paul says that you really don't understand who you are and what you've been given until you understand this amazing thing that God knew that our calling would be so huge and our weakness so deep that the only thing that would help us was himself.

So in an act of incredible grace, he unbuttoned us and got inside of us. Now think about that as a parent, this God who has the ability to do things that are way beyond your ability to conceive, who has perfect wisdom and a limited strength right now lives in you. That means that God is with you in the morning when you dread getting out of bed and facing another hard parenting day.

He is with you when you have to break up the 17th squabble of the morning. He is with you when you have an opening for an important talk. He is with you when your children are in the face in your face and disrespectful.

He is with you when you fall into bed with a combination of exhaustion and regret. He gives you with his presence. He really does live inside you.

You really aren't left to yourself and he will not turn his back on you until what he called you to do as a parent is complete. What do you have as a Christian parent? You have the best thing ever, and with it, you have hope. You have God in every moment of every day.

The question is, the question is, will you remember that you do? God's grace works to open your eyes to see yourself as a parent accurately. I have to confess that I started out my parenting days as a self-assured, self-righteous parent. I thought I was more mature than I actually was.

I saw myself as consistent law keeper and not a law breaker. I had no idea as I began what a negative effect self-righteousness had on my relationship with my children. And the way I handled their weaknesses and failures.

If you fall into thinking that you keep God's law perfectly, although a few people consciously say that to themselves, then you expect the people around you to do the same. Self-righteous people find it all too easy to judge and condemn people who are not measuring up to the standard that they assess they are keeping. So here's what God does in all of our lives.

He uses things. This is critical. Here's what God does in our lives.

He uses things like our marriages and our parenting. And I'll add one more thing, our sibling relationships or any other relationship that vexes you or any trial that vexes you. He uses those to do what? To expose our hearts to us.

If we could just get that picture. You know, it talks about counted all joy when you fall into diverse temptations and it talks about the trying of our faith works patience. It talks about as we we boil the metal, the as we heat up the metal, the impurities come out.

And those are all great principles. They're great thoughts. But in the moment when that person hits us like Brother Mike says, it's so all too easy to go.

It's because of you. It's not because of what's down deep here. You know, and I think he says this later, but I'm just going to say it.

And I think one of our children's lesson was this one way. If you had a bowl of water and you shook it, you'd say water came out, right? But if you had milk in there, you couldn't say water came out. I think, I think, did you do that one time with like mud, dirty water? And then you said, anyway, it's a picture of our heart.

And when we get shook, it's not the person's fault when nasty stuff comes out. It's only revealing what's in us. So if you shake that bowl and water comes out, you can't say that it's the fault.

Uh, if it was milk was in there, you could have shook it all day long. The water would never come out. He says, he says, I used to be in this terrible parenting thing.

And he says, uh, my marriage and my parenting has exposed my heart. He used to parent, he used parenting to expose thoughts, attitudes, and desires in my heart that I had previously denied were there. You know, if we can get that picture, we're thankful that God is bringing this to show us who we are deep down there.

It's like this hidden thing down in there. And you don't even know it's there. It'd be like a hidden disease.

And if somebody came along and said, I have a way to show you that disease, I gotta do some pain cut into you, but I can show if you have this disease. And then he showed it and you were able to cure it. Wouldn't you be thankful to go through that pain? That's what it's like.

It was my, he says, I had previously denied it was there, but it was because of these things that it exposed my thoughts, my attitudes, and the desires of my heart. It was my struggle with irritation, impatience, anger, and lack of gentleness and joy as a dad that God used to show me how far I still fell beneath his standard and how much I still needed his forgiving and transforming grace. Here's the humbling conclusion, the humbling conclusion that God in his grace led me to.

I now get this, and this is the theme through the whole book. I am more like my children than unlike them. Think about that.

You know, when, when that little boy comes up against your siblings and he's making you mad, just think I right now am actually more like him than I'm like God, you know, and mom and dad is, I am actually more like my children in this moment than I'm being like God. The reality is there are few struggles in the lives of my children that are in my life as well. Materialism, relationships, wanting my own way, attractions to the world, subtle idolatries.

We see that in our children maybe, and we come against it, but then how much of it is my own life? This admission transformed my parenting. Instead of approaching them with self-righteous outrage, I moved toward them as a sinner in need of grace, needing to confront a sinner in need of grace. God's plan is to make his invisible grace visible to my children by sending parents of grace to give grace to children who need grace.

And so is everyone's job here. We are ambassadors. We have been given, if you're, if you're claiming to be a Christian this morning, your job as a Christian is to be ambassadors of a person who is receiving grace to help others receive grace.

You can't fight fire with fire. You can't flesh fight flesh with flesh. Satan can't cast out Satan's own kingdom.

But when we come with grace and show our children, they then can have grace. They can learn to go to God for grace, the present here and now grace we're talking about. God's plan is to make his invisible grace.

Okay, I already read that. So God's grace frees you from having to deny your weakness. Isn't this an amazing, I just marveled at this about the gospel.

You know, we don't have to come here every Sunday and act this hypocritical role and act like we're all these holy people that did it all on our own. And in need of no grace, we can come here and humbly admit that we have struggles here and there and grow in this grace. He says, God's grace frees you from having to deny your weakness.

I love the fact that biblical faith never requires that you deny reality in the gospel. God wants you to deny that you are weak. Paul said, what I'm weak, that I'm strong.

He wants you to get to the end of yourself and find him. If you have to deny reality to feel good about your life, you may have temporary peace, but you're not exercising biblical faith. The Bible is a shockingly honest book that shows us the blood, the dirt and the smoke of life in a fallen world.

Yet the Bible is the most hopeful of any book ever written because of the transformative power of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Here's what this means for you as a parent. God never asks you to act as a parent as if you're something that you're not.

God never asks you to act as a parent as if you're something that you're not. In fact, he does just the opposite. God welcomes you to look at yourself in the heart and life exposing mirror of his word to see yourself as you really are and to be willing to confess your faults to those around you.

It never works as a mom or a dad to act as if you're more righteous than you are. Think about that. It never works to act as if you're more righteous than you are.

The fact of the matter is that your children will get to know you really well. They will come to see your spiritual and character weaknesses, and if you deny these, you will embitter your children. But if you are a parent who quickly confesses wrong to your children, you will endear yourself to them and present yourself as someone who will be approachable when they have failed.

Humble, confessing parents encourage their children to be humble and confess to. And the result of that, they have more opportunities to talk about the rescuing love of Jesus. God's grace rescues you from you.

When you are frustrated, mad, discouraged, unkind, abusive, bitter, joyless, vengeful or irritated as a parent, you don't so much need to be rescued from your children. You need to be rescued from you. Pretend that I have a bowl of water.

Here it is in my hands and I shake it vigorously and water splashes out of the bowl. And suppose I ask you why the water spit out of the bowl and you answer that it spilled because I shook it. It all sounds pretty logical, doesn't it? But the answer is only partially correct.

Why did water splash out of the bowl? Because water was in the bowl. If the bowl had been filled with milk, you could shake it for an eternity and water would never spill out of it in the same way. It's very important for parents to understand and humbly admit that when we are shaken by the sins and the weaknesses and rebellion and foolishness and failures of our children, what comes out of us with our words and our actions and our attitudes is what's already inside of us.

As I would say, get this and get this good. It's what's in us, right? Don't blame them. It's what's in us.

And the sooner we confess that that is disgusting, I can't believe that was in me. The sooner we'll get help. This means that my biggest ongoing problem as a dad is not my children, it's me.

My children don't cause me to do and say what I do and say, no, the cause of my action is found inside my own heart. My children aren't simply the occasion where my heart reveals itself in words and actions. So I need much more than just rescue and relief from my children.

I need rescue from me. That is why Jesus came to provide us with the rescue that we all need, but that we cannot provide for ourselves. If you blame your children for your bad attitudes and your actions and brothers and sisters, if you blame your brothers and sisters, well, he just did this to me.

He's just being mean. He's just this. If you blame.

Not only will you embitter them, and I've seen this happen so many times. You're making these you're blaming these guys, these guys no longer respect you, and it's just like like Brother Michael saying hit, hit, hit, hit, hit. You will embitter them, but in blaming them, you will fail one other thing.

You will fail to reach out for the help that is yours in the rescuing. See, as long as we point the finger. We're never going to get any help for this inside.

God brought this into our life to show us what's in us, and we just go blame somebody. And then he says. And because you shift the blame, you will fail to grow as a parent and you will repeat the same pattern over and over again.

But when you are willing to confess that the biggest problem in your parenting. That you are the biggest problem in your parenting. You are on the road to a very good thing in you and in the work of your lives of your children.

God's grace grows and changes as you as a parent. I hinted at this above, but I want to say it more because you and I always do our parenting between the already of our conversion and the not yet member of the past grace in the future. Grace are of our final destination.

We parent in the middle of our own sanctification. Have you ever wished that? Like, could I just get myself fixed first and then be a parent? But we're parenting right in the middle of our sanctification. But that's how God sanctifies us.

Remember the gospel, although the power of sin has been broken in the beautifying, justing mercies of Jesus Christ, the presence of stin still remains with us. So God's present zeal is to progressively. Or I could use the word incrementally.

Deliver us from the remaining hole that sin has hold on us. This means that he will use this is what he'll use to incrementally change us and to sanctify us. He will use pressure, opportunities, hassles, burdens, griefs, temptations, and joys to grow and to change us.

Think about how beautiful this is, and every moment as you are parenting your children, the heavenly father is parenting you. If we could get that picture like this is for OK, I left the home of my my father, mother, their parenting, you know, I've left right and I go and have children. Now I'm in a relationship where my father, my heavenly father is parenting me.

And how does he do it? He parented these through trials and opportunities and all these things. Sorry, the book changed. As you are lovingly confronting your children with the hope that they would confess their need and commit to change, the heavenly father is confronting you as you seek to encourage your children toward what is right.

Your heavenly father is working to grow the desires for right in you. In all these moments, when you intervene to protect your children from their own foolish choices, the great father is protecting you from you. Here's what you and I should never forget.

As we seek to parent our children, the heavenly father is parenting everyone in the room like our children. We need to grow and mature like our children. We haven't progressed beyond the need for a father's care like our children.

We need a parent who will not turn his back on us even though we stumble and fall again and again. God hasn't just sent you to do his work in the lives of your children, he will use the lives of your children to advance his work in you. How about being a parent who admits the need to be a parent, to be parented? I'll read that again.

How about being a parent who admits the need to be parented? Thankfully, the Bible promises as a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him in Psalms. Just a little bit more and we'll be done. God's grace works to make your heart tender.

You think of that song, Amazing Grace, and he says it was your grace that taught my heart to fear and it was your grace that my fears relieved. Do you think about, speak to, and act toward your children out of a tender heart? Let's all think back this week in that person who vexed you, whoever you've thought about. Have you spoke to him and act toward them out of that tender place in your heart? Sibling or child or even spouse.

If your children could describe you accurately, would tenderness be one of the terms they would use? It's a convicting question. Has parenting pushed you toward patient gentleness or has it pushed you towards impatient harshness? Remember, your words and your actions are always an accurate reflection of the true condition of your heart. The things you do and say always tells you more about yourself than whoever you're speaking to or responding.

He says, I'm deeply persuaded that there are many hard-hearted parents who have no idea that they parent out of a hard heart. Think of the word picture of a hard heart. If you had a stone in your hand and you squeezed it with all your might, what would happen? The answer is nothing.

Stone is hard and therefore resistant to change. It is not malleable. You can press it again and again and it will not change.

Hard-hearted parents think that they are right and OK, and because they do, they don't feel the need to change. So they need to repeat the same bad patterns again and again. This sets up unnecessary tension with their children because they are requiring their children to change and they're not holding themselves to the same standard.

They want their children to change, but they're not growing with their heavenly father. So they'll yell at their children to stop yelling. Have you ever been there in the middle of yelling at them to stop yelling? I'm realizing I'm yelling at them.

Hmm. Or they will fail to confess that they yell when they shouldn't. They they'll demand that their children stop fighting, but they'll fight with their children about things that aren't important.

They'll require their children to be kind while they permit themselves to speak and act toward their children in a way that is not kind. Children begin to lose respect for the parent who is content with a do what I say and not as I do relationship. God will use the hammer of his grace.

Think about grace in that way as a hammer to tenderize us. All these situations that come in our life is like a hammer. It's his grace and he's bringing it in to break us down, to humble us so that we will be part of what he is seeking to do in our children and not stand in the way of it.

The difficulty you face as a parent is not signs that God has forgotten you, but are the tenderizing mercies of a loving and faithful father. You know, you're in that moment and you think like, what is God just left me to this thing? Has he forgotten me? No, this is actually God sanctifying you. He is softening your heart so you can be a tool of heart change in the lives of those he placed in your care.

I'm going to skip a little bit here. He talks about failures and, you know, it's we can look back and just sit in the prison of regret and look back at our parenting time and just never get up. But the Bible says a just man gets up seven times.

He falls and he gets back up. He falls and he gets back up. And so he says we don't want to be in that place where we're just living in a prison of regret.

Sure, regret is a sign of a humble heart, but it's dangerous to stay there. So I'm going to jump out here and he's going to continue the thought. He says this means that we can boldly come to him in our failure, receive his forgiveness, just deposit our regret at his feet and move on to the new and better ways of doing what he has called us to do as a parent.

The issue here is not whether you remember the mistakes of your past days of parenting. The issue is this. Are you emotionally and spiritually paralyzed by them in a way that makes it hard for you to do what God is calling you to do in the present? Are you all these things you remember your past days, are you putting them behind you and asking God and change, getting a heart from him, or are you still operating in all of the past regret and treating them in that way and holding a list of wrongs? God's grace welcomes you to learn from your past to confess your faults, receive forgiveness, lay down your burden of guilt and shame, and with new hope and courage, give yourself with joy to what God is calling you to do as a parent right here, right now.

God has called you to be a parent. How does he give you what you need for this calling? He gives you what you need by giving you himself and giving you himself. He shows you his amazing, forgiving, rescuing, transforming, empowering and wisdom, giving grace down on you.

As you parent today, you are invited to remember that you are not alone in your house with your children. Someone else walks the hallways and stands in the family room with you. Someone else rides in the van with you on the way to yet another scary trip with your kids.

Someone walks with you as you enter your teenager's room to confront him about something he did. Someone is with you as you relive the events of the day before you fall asleep, preparing to face another parenting day. Someone is with you as you get up already exhausted, as usual, before the sun rises.

The one who called you to this very important job is with you, and because he is, there's hope. Sure, there will be times when you find yourself at the end of your rope, but fight fear and discouragement with expectancy. Your savior's rope never ends and he will never leave you alone.

So the principle of that was God never calls you to a task without giving you what you need to do. He never sends you without going with you. We had lots more time, I would read the next chapter, which is about law.

The principle is your children needs God's laws, but you cannot ask the law to do what only grace can accomplish. If we just keep going down the road of trying to force our children and think that the laws and the rules will change them, it's got to be the work of God in their hearts. We have to be ambassadors that have found this source, this grace of God living in us, and we have to show them how to do it.

We have to be seeing people with blind people and saying, let me show you the secret. It's God. And so just going back to what my burden was is that.

Just like that wilderness of sin and crossing over into over the Jordan and into the promised land, let's push forward, let's push forward into this idea. If it's if it's one of you guys with your brothers, if it's one of you with your your husband or your wife, if it's with your children, let's embrace these things as God sanctifying us. Let's embrace these things that this is how we're going to get over the Jordan.

This is how we're going to get to the to the to the Jericho battle. God's using these things to bring us there. Let's not blame as Brother Mike was showing in the children's lesson.

Let's realize it's showing who we are. Let's embrace it. Let's admit that we're more like our children, you know, than we think, you know, we you know, how many times is it when we're mad at them? Just stop and analyze this.

Is it that prayer? He said, my will be done as yours is in heaven. Is it because God's law is being broken? Is it because my peace is being robbed when you're mad at your brother or your sister? Is it because you just want some peace and quiet? You just don't want them here making that noise, or is it because they're going against God? How many times is it that it's just because me, my laws, my peace, my rest, my ideas of what life should look like? Let's drop those and let's learn to walk in God's grace. Thank you for listening.