Children and parenting

Father, we thank Thee for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank Thee that we can say we have found a friend and such a friend as no one has ever known, the one who gave his life for us. We thank Thee for Thine own willingness to send the Lord Jesus into the world.

The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. We thank Thee that we have come into the blessing of that when we think of so many around us, neighbors and friends and relatives, and they're still in their sins, and Thou hast opened our eyes and done a work of grace in our experience. We thank Thee for this.

Now we do look to Thee for the work of grace in other places where the gospel is being preached tonight. We think of our brethren in various places and pray for Thy blessing upon them. We think of the need here and we need the Holy Spirit of God to guide, and we thank Thee that we can have confidence that He will do this.

It is His delight to unfold from His Word that He has inspired the things that make our lives worthwhile and different from those that are around about us. And so we do pray for Thy blessing upon Thy Word as we would open it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Now I want to read with you, first of all, a couple of things that I thought afterwards really do need to be stated from our reading last night. And so we'll look at 1 Timothy chapter 5 and verse 8. We could also read in Ephesians 5, but that passage is well known that the man is the head of the wife, even as Christ is head of the church. The one that I want to read is the headship of our sisters, because that's not so well known.

So we'll read in 1 Timothy chapter 5, and maybe we'll just take time to read verse 14. I will therefore that the younger women marry their children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully. Now I mentioned last night that the word guide the house, really it's one word in the original language, and it is the idea of a house mistress, just like Luke chapter 13, the master of the house.

This is the feminine form of it. It is the mistress of the house. And I mentioned that there are two headships in Scripture in the home, and that is the man is the head of the wife, but the wife really has her headship in the home.

Now one thing I didn't mention last night that to me is vital, it is that the Lord gave us those responsibilities, the headship of the man and the headship of the woman. With that in mind, He never relinquishes that, so that every other responsibility that you and I have in life must never override that responsibility. And there are many ways that can be done.

For example, in our brethren, there can be, sometimes by the way it's necessary to work overtime, but that can become an obsession and so that the home is neglected. It can be on the part of a brother, could be on a sister, but more likely on the part of a brother that he's interested in some hobby or some sport or something that takes up his time, so he neglects his responsibility as the head of his wife and doesn't take care of her the way he should. And God never wants us to give up the work that He has given us.

When it comes to our sisters, there could be various things. There are hobbies that sometimes our sisters have, like scrapbooking, and I'm not anti-scrapbooking, but I've known of some women and their whole life seems to surround that, and the children can go wild as long as they get their hobby looked after. Or even these modern days, you can be on Facebook all day long and just too tired even to be bothered with your responsibilities as head of the home.

You can think of a thousand ways, I don't need to dwell on them, but we must remember that our first responsibility is a God-given one, and we're not free to let go of that. When our children were little, naturally, you get pulled on in the work of the Lord. I was with a preacher, a young man one time, and he was just killing himself, and I said, while we were together, I said, I'm going to teach you the most important word you will ever say in your life in the work of the Lord.

And he said, what's that? I said, repeat after me. He said, okay, no. And I said, now say it again.

He looked at me, I said, say no. And he said, no. I said, learn to say that lots, because otherwise, you're going to wear yourself out.

When our children were little, on some Saturdays, not all of them, but some Saturdays, I put in on the calendar that was a day for them, but I didn't put in a day for the family. I put in booked, because if you put in a day for the family, people think, oh, well, that can be set aside, but I put in booked. Well, one time I got a panic call from an assembly.

Brother Jim, you know what? The preacher that was supposed to come to speak to our Sunday school picnic, he can't come. This was on a Friday. Can you come tomorrow? I said, I'll look on my calendar.

And I looked on the calendar, and it said booked. I didn't tell him what was booked for. I said, I'm sorry, it is booked.

And that was the end of it. And somebody asked me afterwards, well, how did they make out? Not my problem. I was booked.

And we went off on our own picnic and had a great day. And I don't know how they made out. I never asked.

But I had to learn to book time for the family, or I could have been busy all the time. So you have to decide, if God has given you a job, you can't neglect it. You can't resign.

I remember one time, when one of the children was having a rough life, meaning having trouble behaving, I said to the individual, I said, you know, I don't like telling you what to do. But I said, God has made me responsible, and I'm not sure where you hand in your resignation letter so that you don't have to be the parent anymore until I find out you will do what you're told. I said it, and can you say that in a kindly way? I think I did, as kindly as possible.

But that's the responsibility. So that's something to keep in mind. Whatever life throws at you or me, first for the men, head of the wife.

Then for our sisters, if you're married, it is head of the home, and don't ever neglect that for anything else. Some people love to learn, and I do too. So they like education, and even that can become an addiction.

About four years ago now, I guess it would be, four years ago, I decided that I'd like to relearn a little bit of Hebrew that I'd learned. The problem was that they were offering a double semester in one because the students of the winter semester, I was going to be there in the fall, they needed the Hebrew for the next semester. So they gave us two semesters in one, two credits, which I didn't need anyway, but it was, I want to tell you, it was tremendously busy.

Outside of class, I spent 50 hours a week, about 600 hours during that fall season trying to learn the Hebrew. And I came into class one day, and a lady a bit younger than me, she looked at me and she said, Jim, welcome to the death chamber. That's the way she felt about it because it was so busy.

Sometimes I was up all night getting ready for the next class. But here's the point I want to make. Before I started that class, that fall semester, I said to Joyce, how do you feel about it? She said, well, it's going to be really busy.

And I said, yeah, and I don't want to neglect you, so you make the decision. Is it okay if I go ahead with it? Because I can't relinquish my responsibility to my wife just because I'm interested in taking some language course. And she said it was fine.

But we worked together on it, and she knew it would be busy. She said I'm willing to let some things go for the next three months or so, so you can get it. And then again, I took it two years ago as same thing, just as busy.

But again, it was with her okay, because she would be the one who would suffer if I was very busy. So what I'm saying again is, on either side, you never involve yourself in something that will diminish your responsibility toward the Lord, whether it's a career or anything else. One other place I want to take you, and then we'll have to move on.

Titus chapter two. Verse three, Paul is instructing Titus about the aged women in Titus two verse three. And he says, the aged women, likewise, that they may be in behaviors, become of holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things.

Now, the word teachers here is not the same exactly as brethren being teachers. This is to do with actually teaching in the home, and the responsibility of our older sisters to help younger sisters have a viable home, a home that's wholesome, and that accomplishes God's purpose. And of course, that will take us into child rearing.

But there is a work that our older sisters can do. And I would say younger sisters, be willing to hear what older sisters have to offer you in the way of suggestions and help from the word of God, of course. But this is domestic teaching that is in view in Titus chapter two.

Now let's go to Psalm 127. Psalm 127. I've slightly changed the order of the way I want to look at things tonight.

Not much, but a little bit from your outline. But everything is included. It's just incorporated slightly differently.

Psalm 127 and verse one. Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.

Now, I want to just look at these verses quickly as we go through them. Again, it stresses what we've stressed in Deuteronomy chapter six. And that is that a household parenting has to be based upon the principles of the word of God.

But the wonderful thing is that this is a book that is full of wonderful ideas and guidance for home life. And as I mentioned before, it's not wrong to get ideas from the outside world, but you want to make sure that you can confirm those in the scriptures themselves. Because anything that works in human life is within the covers of this book.

And I am amazed at the wonder of scripture about these very things. I was messaging with the family back at home in the last few days. And yesterday, one of the girls said, this is what comes to my mind.

I can't think of the scripture, but dad will know what the scripture is. And right away, I had been trying to stay out of some of this because it gets busy as they message back and forth. But I pulled up the script and put it in and send it off so they would have the scripture in front of them because there's a scripture for every need in this book.

When you get an appliance, you're supposed to read the manual. I always read them after things go wrong, but that's not the way you're really supposed to do it. But God has given us, he sent an appliance called human beings and he gave us a manual to go with it.

And it really works. And it should be read before things go wrong, not the way I do it. And so, unless the Lord builds a house, it's not going to work.

Verse two, it says, It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows, for so he giveth his beloved sleep. And so the idea is, don't be over anxious. It's worrying all the time.

As I've mentioned before, no one is perfect and we will make mistakes. But children are very resilient and it's amazing to me how they can roll with the punches that sometimes we give them. And so it's encouraging the believers, the Old Testament believers here, not to be overly anxious.

Verse three, children are an heritage of the Lord and the fruit of the womb is his reward. It is vital that we remember that children are given to us as a blessing if we have children. They are given to us as a blessing and you should look at children, if you're a parent, you should look at your children and say, thank God for his blessings.

It saddens me when I see sometimes in a mall and you see a mother or father or both and they're just chewing the child out and oh, oh, you know, they're lost for words, but they're making that child feel that it's just a big mistake that they were ever born. And that is not what the Lord says here. He says they're a heritage and they're a reward.

Verse four tells us that as arrows are in the hand of the mighty man, so are children of the youth. Now, what I see in that is when a man has an arrow, he has a target and children are to be directed and parents should have a goal for their child. Now, again, you have to be careful that you don't want to do what we call ego projection.

Maybe somebody didn't have much education and that bothers them all the time. So they're determined that their child is going to be the most brilliant person since Einstein passed away. I remember standing at a checkout counter in a grocery store and without even thinking, I looked at one of the magazines and I said, the Lord preserve us.

And it said, front cover, how to make your child into an Einstein. What does that matter? It doesn't matter. What matters is that children will glorify God.

Now, I remember the time when people said to me when our children were young, they said, do you have any thoughts of what you'd like Paul to be? And I said, well, I don't care if he's a garbage collector, as long as he lives for God. But the time came that it looked like he was going to be a garbage collector and I wasn't so sure about that. But he's done fine.

That was just a stage he was going through. But really what matters is living for God, nothing else. Because when we get out into eternity, not that I despise education, I love it, I love to learn, but that's all going to be secondary and what glorifies God is going to last for all eternity.

And that's the thing that we want for our children. And then it says in verse five, happy is the man that has his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.

And it's the idea that these children have turned out well and they are glorifying God and therefore even the enemies will be astounded and maybe dumbstruck when they see the blessing that God has brought to the nation of Israel through the heritage that he has given them. Now turn with me. We're going to get very practical shortly, but I just want to get the scriptures out before us.

Turn to Psalm 144. Now both of these words, grown up and polished, are in the Hebrew intensive, passive. That is, it's something that is done to them.

It's not active. It's not something they are doing themselves, but it is passive. They have been caused to grow up and they have been caused to be polished, but it's not only that, it's the intensive passive.

In other words, there has been energy involved in this. There is a normal Hebrew verb form that simply would mean grown up, but then there is the intensified form and that's what is here as well as polished. And it means that there's been energy put into this.

And so every day, a husband, a wife, of course it would be a mother and a father, if there are both, they will have to put energy in. Children will not just grow up on their own accidentally. Now there's one thing I've appreciated here, by the way, and I'm going to say it while I think of it.

Some places I've gone and I've taken up church truth and the children are really wild. I haven't seen that here, so if you think your children have been wild, I haven't seen it, so this is not something I'm saying to you. But I've been to some places and I've said, I want you to look at that wall and I want you to look at this wall and I want you to look back.

It's all right to turn around, look back and then look behind me. I said, I want to ask you a question, does this look like a playground? And of course they're wondering, what do you mean? Well, then I said, don't treat it like a playground. I see older sisters and these rockets go between their legs and almost knock them over and children are all over the pulpit and they're preaching away and that can happen.

But I see the parents standing around talking like everything's peace and calm and they're the only ones that think that way. But teach children responsibility and to be respectful. That's part of the responsibility that we have and here it's so that they might grow up.

Now the idea of growing up in this verse is not the idea of just a physical maturity. In fact, it's not that at all. It's the idea that as they guide children, they actually see an expansive development emotionally and spiritually in the children so that they really are developing into manhood.

And young womanhood. Now I'm going to take you over to Proverbs 22. We're going to keep moving so that I get through to the end.

Chapter 22 and we're going to read it. Proverbs 22 verse 6. Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Now that's likely one of the best known verses about children in the Proverbs.

And it's one of the most misunderstood. First of all, let me say this. The book of Proverbs on the whole is not a book of promises.

It's a book of principles. In other words, generally it is true, even taking the way most of us take it. We'll talk about that in a minute.

Even taking the way most of us take it, it does not mean that if you raise a child in the way that they ought to go, it's guaranteed they will not depart from it. It's not saying that. It's a principle that it's generally so.

And the reason I say that is because this verse has caused so much guilt on the part of so many believers, excuse me, whose children have not followed spiritual things. And so they feel, well, what did I do wrong? Because if I trained up that child in the way he should have gone, he wouldn't have departed from it. It's just a general principle.

But secondly, the interesting thing is the expression, the way he should go. The last three words of that, he should go, are simply one pronoun in the Hebrew language. Just one simple pronoun.

And really the Hebrew reads, train up a child in his way. So it's his is really the only Hebrew expression there, and it's his way. So that gives us two possibilities, at least.

One is, and this is the way my Hebrew professor taught it, it's an ironic statement. Let a child have his way. Don't discipline him.

Let him please himself. Do what he wants. And when he's old, he'll keep doing that.

Now that's the opposite to what we normally think. I lean that way. I'm not saying absolutely that's what it is.

But that certainly is a fair translation and interpretation of that verse because it simply says, train up a child in his way, his way, as we say, or the highway, he may want his way. So that can be the meaning of it. The other way that people take it, and I like this as well, is look at the child, see what his bent is, what we call in his DNA, and direct him that way because that way he will be able to function that way.

If a child can't add two and two all the way through school, you're not going to send them to the university where it's math and sciences. What you want to do is say, well, he works with his hands and he could be a plumber, an electrician, a mechanic, or whatever. And by the way, those are not second rate.

What really matters for any of us is to be what God wants us to be. When I was a teenager, we had this beautiful hymn that we used to sing, only to be what he wants me to be every moment of every day. Just to be clay in the potter's hands, doing whatever his will commands, only to be what he wants me to be every moment of every day.

That's the goal. Train up a child, look at the child, see what their interests are. If they tend to be artsy, you may have to send them that direction.

If they like to fix things, then they might be something else. If they're always breaking things, maybe they're going to be a demolition expert. You just never know.

But don't try to make them what is against the bent of their life. And so again, what this requires is insight. And that requires work.

And that will take lots of time and lots of patience. I know of a man, and I'm almost certain that his goal was a certain thing for his boys, and they have followed that. But I think of one of them as he sat in his basement of his house and asked to see me and wept and did not want to be in the career that he was in.

I don't know if he's got over that as the years have gone by. He does a marvelous job in that career. But I really felt that he was being molded according to the wishes of his father rather than what he may have desired for himself.

So keep that in mind. There's different ways, like I say, of looking at it. Now, we did touch this the other night, but I want to go back there to Deuteronomy chapter 6 just one more time to the end, near the end of the chapter.

Verse 20. Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verse 20. And when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean the testimonies and statutes and the judgments which the Lord our God hath commanded you? Then thou shalt say unto thy son, We were Pharaoh's bambin in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.

And the Lord showed signs and wonders great and sore upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household before our eyes. Then going on to verse 24. And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God for our good always, that he might preserve us alive as it is this day.

As children grow up, it is important that we give them reasons for what we do. Now, keep in mind that when children are very little, they have to learn to obey. I see people reasoning in a grocery store with a two-year-old while that child is reaching for everything that's on the shelves.

And they're saying, you know, that's really not good for you. And I think, you know, you're starting too soon. But whenever you can sense with a child that they're able to take in something rationally, then pass it on.

Because the goal is not just obedience, but maturity, which involves having them have the skills within themselves to make wise decisions. And so, it looks funny on a lady's t-shirt, but it doesn't make much sense. I'm the mommy, that's why.

That'll only last for so long. And here, God is telling them, when they ask, tell them why. Explain to them why.

Even in assembly life, why do we do what we do? It's important that we teach so that people understand that there is a rationale for the things that we do. And so, the idea is here to make sure that things are taught to give a foundation for life practices. Now, the question, let me take you to another verse.

Back to Proverbs, chapter 23. I'll read it before I say anything about it. Proverbs, chapter 23, and verse 13.

Withhold not correction from the child, for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell. Now, the question is asked, is it alright to spank a child? Well, according to Proverbs, it is.

However, here's what I have written down. I have written down that when you go through the book of Proverbs, and see the number of times that you have the word wisdom, understanding, instruction, and similar words, they are there dozens and dozens and dozens of times, and at the most, I can find not even quite, but maybe five or six times where physical contact with a child is given. So, the idea of instruction of any kind and teaching far outweighs the physical contact.

And maybe when they're young, a little tap might be a help to them, but that is not the main thing. And especially, let me say this, if a child is especially stubborn, you might as well give up, than keep doing it and doing it and getting nowhere. We had practices that we found worked, but we insisted that we were fair in what we did.

For example, I hear sometimes, not in the homes where I stay, but I hear people say, you know, sorry we're late for a meeting tonight, and that's okay by the way, I didn't notice if anybody was, so again, no guilt, but sorry I was late, but you can't get those children to get dressed soon enough. You know what we did? I think I've told someone this already. We found the same problem.

So, we made a rule. My watch is the timer clock, so set all the clocks in the house that you use to figure out what time it is by my watch. Whether my watch is right or wrong, it is the standard.

And, we set times that they had to be in the car. So, our meeting was 8 o'clock some nights, so you have to be in the car by 7.25. Not 7.25 and one second. Now, that sounds tough, but we found if you gave any leeway, it didn't work.

And not 7.25, two seconds. When my watch said 7.25, you had to be sitting in the car. That's it.

And, if you're not sitting in the car, you're going to buy all of us a pizza. And, that way, I just went and sat in the car, kept an eye on my watch, and waited to see if I could get a pizza. There was only one time we ever bought a pizza once we made that rule, and I was the one that had to buy it.

And, I still to this day don't think it's fair, but we talked about it recently, and they still argue with me that it was. But, we did that when we went to the mall. At such and such a time, giving you enough time that you do all that you want to do, you're going to be standing here when my watch turns to a certain time.

Well, I was there early, and in the men's clothing, I saw something 10 feet away, and I thought the circumference was big enough. And, when they all came back and stood right on the spot, they looked at me and said, pizza. And, I never could get them to change their mind.

But, you think of the hassle that takes out of it? It became fun. Now, when it came to the children's rooms, and I want to be practical now because time is going to move quickly. When it came to the children's rooms, you know whose room our daughter's room was? It was her room.

So, she cleans it up. You know whose toys they were? When the children were growing up, I didn't play with toys. She likely figured that out.

So, I didn't go around tidying up the toys. They're not mine. I've gone to some homes, and there's the mother, and she's tidying up the toys.

And, I said to her, you play with these? Oh, no. I said, whose toys are they? They're children. Well, I said, why are you picking them up? They're toys.

They pick them up. But, sometimes that's hard to get children to do. So, here's what our daughter did with the rooms.

I had never thought of this. It was a great idea. She got the children, and just wait a minute.

It doesn't sound as bad as it might sound at first. She put a big piece of paper down. She got them to lie down on it.

And then, she drew an outline of them. And, she tacked it on the wall. And, she cut into squares.

And, every time they did some good thing, they could take a crayon or a marker, and they could fill in that square. And, when they got all the squares filled in, they got a prize. See, you can make it positive.

You don't have to make it negative. All we did is we paid our children a few pennies to clean up their room. And, one of them, and I'm not going to name the person, became a neat freak just because of doing that.

So, there are positive ways of helping children move toward maturity. And, that was one of the ways we did it. So, again, going back to the whole idea of wisdom.

That's throughout the whole book. And, we need wisdom and need to incorporate wisdom in them. One other thing that I want to address before I forget.

Luke chapter 15. Luke chapter 15. And, we'll just read two or three verses here.

Verse 11. Verse 11. Now, most of us know what happened.

He went on his way. He spent everything. He made a mess.

And, then he came back. Natural consequences for choices we make. That is not when the children are really tiny.

But, as they get older, natural consequences are best. Let them learn by their own mistakes. Don't be shielding them and enabling them by protecting them.

I remember, I don't think Paul will mind me telling you this. One day, he was late for school. By the way, that's another little story and I might as well tell you that.

We told the children to be down at breakfast for 7. And, when they came down at 7.01, I said to them, you're late. Well, yeah, just a minute. I said, breakfast is at 7. It's not at 7.01. You'd be down at 7. And, when it came to the school bus, you can miss the school bus.

It doesn't bother mom. Because, from the time the school bus, we see it going off without you, that we see it coming back, you're going to do housework. Vacuuming and dusting.

And, it didn't take long for them to prefer schoolwork over housework. Now, let me give you another side in case you think I was really a taskmaster. Every morning, we sat around the piano, or Joyce did and the rest of us stood.

And, we let them pick out one hymn and one verse, unless the other person wanted the same hymn and the second verse. And, we sang around the piano. I remember going off to school, and maybe we've all had this experience as a child, unhappy because there was an upset in the house.

And, all day long, all I could think of is how I started the day. And, we determined our children would always leave the house happy, so they had a good day. And so, we sang around the piano.

And, I can think of days when I would look at the children and the tears running down their face of the beautiful hymn that they were singing. And, they left happy to go off to school. That was my goal.

I really did not like going off to school unhappy and said it will never happen in our house. And, we had happy, happy times as they left for school each day. And, if we could sense anything that was troubling them, we would take them aside and say, something bothering you today? I have this or that at school.

And, we would try to settle it for them before they left the house. But, going back to staying home, missing the bus. One day, Paul missed the bus.

And, I do not believe in enabling people. So, next morning, he said, Dad, I'll need a note for school. They were, it was a tough principal.

She demanded you send, bring a note from your parents. So, I said, sure. So, I wrote out a note.

And, I hand it to Paul and he starts to read. He said, Dad, I can't take this. I said, really? Did I misspell something? He said, no.

I said, what's wrong with it? I wrote on the note, Paul missed school yesterday. There is no excuse for it. I said, that's the only note you get.

Because, that's the truth. There was no reason. So, he took it, I don't know if he handed it in.

He was always good at getting around people. So, maybe he didn't even show them a note. But, you don't enable children.

Let them feel the results of their consequences. Now, if they're going to walk out onto the throughway, make an exception for that. Don't do that.

But, you know what I mean? Within reason, if the consequences don't look too bad, they learn better from their mistakes than from you holding them back from them. Now, let me go on to one or two other things. One other thing, really.

People have asked me about Christian schools versus homeschooling. Let me take you to John Chapter 17. John Chapter 17 and Verse 13.

The Lord Jesus is praying and he said, And now I come to thee, and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy word, and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Now, notice Verse 15.

I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil. Now, based on Verse 15, we did not take our children out of the school system because the Lord Jesus is saying here that God's children are going to be in the world and they're going to be kept from the evil that is there. There are dangers in the public school system.

Those are very clear. But we felt that we would be able, with God's help, to guide our children and teach them and expose them little by little to the world in their young years so that as they grew up, they would be acclimatized to it and immunized against it. That was our thought based on this.

However, some places are very bad and some believers feel that they should homeschool or send their children to a Christian school. There are dangers in every situation, whether it's public or homeschooling or Christian schooling, and I would not tell other people what to do. In some ways, I'm very concerned about Christian schooling because it exposes children to denominational principles, and that worries me.

And also, if they get their friends in these places, will it lead them to denominational relationships and other things? So that has to be considered. When it comes to homeschooling, I get concerned lest there's a lack of socialization and learning how to say no in the world that later on they will have to live in. And a young man in Ontario, Canada, told me when I asked him how he liked it when he left either homeschooling or Christian schooling to go into the regular normal world, he said it was a real shock to his system.

And so that's something to keep in mind. All I can say is based on verse 15 of John 17, the Lord's principle is not that He takes people out of the world, but He keeps them from the evil that is in the world. Now let me give you just some final general guidelines just to be of help.

And I'm just going to run over these. I'm not going to take you from scripture to scripture. I'll just give you some ideas that may be of help to you.

One is, whatever you do, be consistent so that your children know that you're trustworthy. Titus chapter 1 speaks of the God who cannot lie. Children should know that when we say something, we really can be trusted.

I think of a man and he promised something really big to his son and the son was all excited and fulfilled the obligations. But during that time period, he did something wrong. But it wasn't part of the obligation.

And when he mentioned to his dad about it, he said, well, you did that, so I'm not doing it now. Is it any wonder that that father has no relationship with his children because he couldn't be trusted? So you have to be consistent. And don't say, even when it comes to discipline, don't say, if you ever do that again, and then you've got this terrible thing you're going to do to them, and they do it again, and you put your arms around them.

Consistency is a big thing. Now, let me, I think I'll leave that, and I want to take you to something else that I do want to make sure we cover, and that is in Genesis chapter 1. I'm having to pick and choose a little bit here, but that's fine. Genesis chapter 1. And we have read this before.

Verse 26. God said, let us make man in our image. God made man in his image.

And when you come to Ephesians, we won't take time to look at it, but chapter 3, where Paul has a second prayer, he says he bows his knee to the father of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. And in the Greek, it says every fatherhood. So I'm settled that a father particularly is the mediating person to convey the image of God.

And if a father does not convey what God is like, it can be damaging for a lifetime to children. I remember sitting with a young lady that had been a big burden to many, many Christians where she lived, and years went on, and she wasn't saved, and said she wanted to be. I first met her when she was around 16, and I forget how old she was when she was saved, but I spent a lot of time with her.

And one day we were talking about salvation, and without thinking, I said, well, you know, God is really like a father. And I saw a look come over her face, and I thought, oh, no, because I knew what her father was like. I don't know if you can ever tell, if there's such a thing as a person almost getting saved.

I'm not sure about that. But I remember after that day, because I thought she was going to be saved that day the way she seemed to be going, a few years later, when she was saved, I said to her, you remember that day, and I described where we were? She said, yeah. I said, were you almost saved that day? She said, yeah.

I said, what held you back? She said, I thought about my father. That's what held her back. And so I would say to fathers or fathers-to-be, and maybe just let me say this to single moms, you will have to convey that image if there's no father around, and God can give you wisdom to do it.

But to the fathers or fathers-to-be, I would say, make sure you seek to project the love of God and the kindness of God and the fatherly image. I think of my favorite psalm, where it says, in Psalm 103, As a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame, and he remembereth that we are dust.

And so, don't have unrealistic expectations for children. Be fair. And learn to help them overcome their fears so that they can trust you.

I think of another thing that comes to my mind. Teach them that failure is okay. You may find this hard to believe, but when we had the children do really poorly in a test, and they brought that test home, we went out and we bought pop and ice cream and chips and celebrated.

We celebrated an F, or a zero, or whatever it was. Because we wanted the children to know that failure is okay. That's the world we live in.

I remember one day, I was standing outside working at the house, and I saw Ruth get off the bus, and I could tell from a distance she was really upset. And she was one of the ones that almost never failed anything. The other two didn't have that problem so much.

And so, as she came to me, she started to cry. I said, dear, what's the problem? She said, I failed the test. And I grabbed her arms, and we danced around the grass.

I said, that's wonderful. And we started dancing until she started laughing. She said, dad, I don't understand.

The tears were gone by this time. I said, anybody can be happy when they succeed. If you can handle failure, that's a test of character.

That's what it's all about, learning how to handle the disappointments. And so, we have to try to convey the principles of scripture. Every one of us here fail from time to time.

And we need to be loved more at a time like that than we ever have been. Why? When you do well, it's not hard to be loved. But when you fail, and so even in the home, all the principles of God need to be brought to bear upon our children's lives so that they develop in a wholesome way and be healthy in their emotional as well as the physical.

But the physical will come. But emotionally, we have to, and spiritually, we have to work hard at developing them so that later on, they look back and they thank God for the home in which they were raised. And I can tell you for myself, I thank God for my parents.

I really do. And they had one goal in life. That was to live for God.

And I respect that so much. And it'd be wonderful if everyone here is respected as parents by their children later on, saying, I had a good dad. I had a good mom.

And those that are older here tonight, and maybe you weren't a perfect mother or father, don't worry about it. That's over with. And I've seen people come out of the worst homes and turn out to be wonderful people.

So it doesn't all lean on us because children make choices, and their choices do not always reflect the upbringing that they've had. We live in a world where nobody takes responsibility for anything. There was a man on a plane going out of Toronto down to the Bahamas recently, and he said he had a bomb on him.

So the fighter jets from the U.S., because they were already over the U.S., came alongside them and escorted them back to Toronto, to the airport. I saw a Twitter feed by the father a couple of days later and he said it was the policeman's fault. Can you imagine? And I said to the children, because we were talking about something like that, you know, I said, those policemen should be in jail because the bomb was their problem.

The son, he was fine. That's the attitude of the world. But brothers and sisters, no matter what you do with children, they have a mind of their own.

And don't let us leave this meeting tonight, especially those of us who have raised our children, who are gone, go away with a guilt trip. You likely just did fine, but human beings are human beings and make choices. Let's pray.

Father, we thank thee for this time together and thank thee for thy word that is so practical and so helpful and so we would pray that we may take it home with us and above all, that every one of us, whether we're parents or not, whether we're married or not, would reflect something of thy glory to those around us and even those who move amongst us so that they might see the glory of God in our lives so that they might long to have a relationship with thyself. Now we just commend ourselves to thee as we part in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.