Session 2 parenting through crises
Well, hello everybody. All my friends, say hi to Bentley family. You want to say hi to everybody? Oh, what a good boy. Anyway, Bentley didn't greet everybody yesterday, but I thought I'd bring him in today and let him say hello.
He loves it when I do FaceTime or Facebook live and loves to come and say hello. Anyway, I've been having a problem getting these things to start. I'm not sure why, but whenever I schedule a Facebook live, it seems to want to hang up and I have to go back and restart it all over again. So I'm hoping this is coming through for you guys and the entire session will be online even after I'm done and you're welcome to go back and review it then. But this is an important session, guys.
I want to continue the conversation we started the other day. In fact, it's probably going to turn into three sessions. So this will be session two. But in this session and the next session, we really want to unpack some ideas that have to do with parenting and our families and our children, especially. As I was praying this morning, I have some thoughts I want to begin with and share with you guys because I think we're really in a very, very important time right now.
Years ago, I brought a message to a megachurch here in Colorado Springs. The title of the message was Time Out. The illustration that I used in the message was that of a sports team, maybe a basketball team in the middle of a game. For most of the game, the teams do well. They're hitting their passes, they're scoring, they seem to be ahead in the whole thing.
And then what happens is toward the end of the game, they're starting to look a little bit disheveled. They're not hitting their passes, they look confused, they look out of sorts, they're going the wrong direction, they look exhausted. The game plan ain't working. Well, we all know what happened. What does the coach do?
Time out. Time out. Well, I used that illustration to suggest that could it be that the Lord is wanting to call a time out to the church in America for all of those same reasons? The game plan, guys, listen, ain't working. And instead of coming to the bench, we're still trying to play the game.
We're still trying to use the old things that we learned before. And what the coach is wanting to do is call us in and say, hey, guys, I need to remind you of a few things. I remember Vince Lombardi years ago, after his team got trounced in a game, he sat them all down in a locker room, and in the famous scene, he held up a football. And he says, gentlemen, this is a football. And it was his way of saying, we look so pathetic.
We're not really hitting on all cylinders, guys. We need to go back to the fundamentals. We need to go back to the basics. And you know what's interesting, guys? Look at this.
What's the timeout? The timeout is a cross. It's a T, okay? But it's a cross. And in this session that I brought years ago, I actually held up the cross.
And I said, you know, friends, this is a cross. These are the fundamentals that God wants us to get back to if we're going to win the game. If we're going to really be all that we want to be for him and all that he desires us to be for him, we've got to get back to the fundamentals, guys. Could it be in that same game, that same basketball team, the team won't come to the bench? What happens if the lights go out, guys?
If the lights go out, guess what? The game stops. They got to go to the bench. Well, in a very real sense, and I'm not saying God did this, okay? I don't know where God is and all of the things that are going on right now.
But listen, friends, the lights are out. The lights are out. And could it be that God is trying to get us in this time out right now to rethink what we've been doing, to rethink our values and all the things that we held as things that were very, very dear to us, and to look at new ways that God wants us to move forward? I especially think this is true, guys, for those of us who have children, grandchildren, that God wants us, these precious little ones, he wants us to look at this in a whole new light. So that's what this is all about.
I mentioned in the last session that the old quote that it's easier to build a child than it is to repair an adult. And I believe that's true. And I'm going to share some statistics with you here in just a few moments to kind of illustrate where we are today in our culture. But in a study that was done, this was probably, this is not a recent study, it was done probably about 20 years ago. The study searched for what were the main qualities of a strong family.
And by the way, this was not a Christian study. This was done across the board for all people that were in families. And they found six characteristics of what they determined to be a strong family. You may want to take some notes, or you can go back and review this recording later. But here are the six things and you can write them down.
The first is that they are committed to the family, that each member has a strong commitment to all the other members of the family. Number two, they spend time together. Guys, there's no, I mean, spending time together is so important. It's kind of like we talk about with spending time with the Lord. We always say you cannot give, you cannot out give God with your time or your money.
There's nothing to substitute for spending time. That's how you establish strong bonds and strong relationships. We spend time together. Number three, they have good communication. They communicate well with each other.
They understand each other. They know where they're coming from. They're clear about things when they communicate. Number four, they express appreciation toward each other. They encourage each other.
They lift each other up. Now we can unpack these things later on, but these are very, very important characteristics of a strong family. Number five, they have a spiritual commitment. Again, this was not a Christian study, but what they mean by that is whether they're Christian, whether they're Buddhist, whether they're Muslim, whatever they might be, they have some kind of strong spiritual commitment. They understand there's something bigger than themselves.
And then number six, and this is important, they're able to solve problems in a crisis. I believe because of the other five, the crisis one is almost an automatic derivative. We are in a time of crisis right now. You might ask yourself in all these areas, how do you think your family is doing? How do you think you're doing at being there for each other and resolving things in a time of crisis?
Those are some things that they found in healthy families. But as a follower of Christ, how are we to navigate in our families, particularly with our children? Now I'm addressing people, as I mentioned the other day, that have school-age children. And I encouraged you the other day with a pretty controversial idea. The idea was the educational system in our country today is deliberately and purposely designed to destroy everything that you have attempted to put into your children for whatever age they are.
Our educational system is designed deliberately to destroy it. And my encouragement was should we during this time out be reconsidering what we're exposing our children to? Should we, dear moms and dads that are homeschooling right now, where you never thought you would be homeschooling, should you be looking at that and praying about that and seeing if maybe God might not want you to continue to do that rather than send your kids back into an environment that is very, very unhealthy? These are things that I think God wants us to consider during a time like this. What's our responsibility?
I want to turn your attention to Deuteronomy 4, 9, and then 6, 6 to 7. And here is what it says. The first responsibility that we have for our children is to teach them, which is what many of you are doing right now. But this context, it's teaching them about God, biblical truths. Here's what it says.
Only be careful and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Listen, teach them to your children and to their children after them. In other words, your grandchildren. My wife is right now having an amazing Bible study with one of our grandsons, and they get together every now and then over the phone, over FaceTime. They're having a Bible study together.
It's so, so cool. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk to them when you sit at home, which many of us are doing right now, and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up. In other words, how often?
All the time, guys. That's what we're called to do. The two main things we're called to do with our children, by the way, is to teach and to provide for. Now the verses for provide for are found in 2 Corinthians 12, 14. It says, children are not responsible to save up for their parents, okay, but parents for their children were to provide for them.
1 Timothy 5, 8 says, if you do not provide for your own, especially for those of your own household, you have denied the faith and are worse than an unbeliever. So in these areas, though, how do you think we're doing? As a nation, how do you think we're doing? Let me give you some statistics. And by the way, these are old statistics, so these numbers are probably way higher today.
But when these statistics were brought forth, there was over, I think now it's up to around 2 million kids on the streets of America today. Gangs are rampant. And by the way, all a gang represents to a young person is family. As sad as that is, it's family to them. All young people are looking to belong.
And if the gangs are able to give them that sense of comfort by belonging to them, that's where they're going to go. What does that say about what's happening in their own families? Suicide today is at an epidemic level. We seem to be the most enlightened society ever. We've got more stuff than we ever have before, but yet suicides are so high.
Why? It's because of the relational components that are missing in families today. Drugs, alcohol, sexual confusion, anorexic disorders, mental problems. In a survey that was done recently, there is about 85% of teenagers are found to be depressed or discouraged about their lives. Dr.
Paul Warren says he has a continuous stream of angry young people coming into his office because, listen, their fathers won't talk with them. They're willing to spend $75 an hour for somebody else to talk to them. How sad is that? How sad is that? I want to share with you, there are six things I want to share with you.
I want to share three of them now and three of them as we conclude on Wednesday morning, by the way, at 10 a.m. I'm going to do the last session in these three sessions on parenting, but I'm going to share these three now, how to be a loving and committed parent. The first one, total commitment. You saw that in the list I read earlier. How important total commitment, unconditional love, totally being committed, having the right attitude about our children.
James, too, 15 and 16, suppose a brother or sister without clothes and daily food, if one of you says, damn, go, I wish you well, keep warm and well fit, but there's nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? Words are not enough. In other words, total commitment also means being able to commit to taking care of their needs, anything that they need, but it also means being committed to them in terms of your attitude. You know, in psychology, there's something called the Pygmalion effect. The Pygmalion effect suggests that my attitude and assumptions about people, especially, can actually be the reason why they are the way they are.
And unconsciously, I behave differently because of my attitude toward them. They did a study years ago, it took a fifth grade class, 20 children, and they tested the children to determine their learning ability. Now, back in those days, this was back in like the 40s and 50s, okay, they tested them, and they did not tell the teacher who the children were at first, but they tested them and they determined that out of these 20 kids, five of them were gifted learners. Their tests were off the charts. They were way beyond the other 15 in the class.
Well, they identified these five gifted kids to the teacher, and they gave her the class for the entire year. At the end of the year, they retested all 20 children to determine what they had learned during that school year, and they discovered that in fact, these five kids that they identified were again off the charts. They learned like 30% more on average than all of the other children in the class. Then they broke the news to the teacher. You see, they never tested any of the children the first time.
They just simply picked out five kids at random and told the teacher that they were gifted. Whoa. You know what happened. I often say, gee, I wonder what it would be like, guys, if every teacher thought every kid was gifted. I wonder what it would be like if every parent saw the uniqueness and the beauty in every single child.
We'll talk more about that in the next session about the uniqueness of our children. So total commitment, positive attitude, number one. Number two, scheduled availability. This is so important. Now, guys, we're being forced into being available right now, and for many of you, this may be a struggle.
Maybe it's a struggle because you don't have the right attitude. There's not good patterns of communication in your family right now. This is an opportunity for you to work on that, but I would venture to say for many of you, this is also a fun time. You're finding that you're getting to know each other at a much deeper level. Scheduled availability.
Right now, again, it's being forced, but in the future, when it's not being forced, maybe this ought to be a lesson to us that we should schedule it, make a place for it, but we tend to be in a hurry and we're always running around. Someone once said that we're in the rat race, and the rats are winning, by the way, so we have to be careful. The questions you ask, I remember a CEO I worked for one time really challenged me about my work ethic, and he says, do you work to live or do you live to work? And I said, well, I work to live. I work to live.
Well, that can be suicide in a corporate structure, of course, but a lot of people live to work. It's all about their work. No, man, that's not the right attitude. I'm living because I'm to be everything that I can be, first of all, to my family, the closest people around me, and then beyond. That's the reason I want to work.
How would you answer that question? Do you live to work or do you work to live? And then number three, and we'll close with this one, tender treatment. Ephesians 432 says, be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ, God forgave you. And listen, nothing closes the spirit of a child more than harshness.
Nothing closes the spirit of a child. Gary Smalley, in The Key to Your Child's Heart, by the way, I highly recommend that book, The Keys to Your Child's Heart by Gary Smalley, was written a long time ago. He talks about children and how they develop closed spirits and how we open their little spirits. And tender touch is just one of them. Tender treatment, I should say, is just one of them.
The words that we speak and how we can begin to open their little spirits up by the way we treat them. And the next three will unpack this even a little bit more for you. So tender treatment, being kind, and sometimes it's hard because we're angry and we're not expressing ourselves in the right way. And by the way, guys, we live in a world today where everything we're viewing on television is modeling something that's very, very dysfunctional. People are so opinionated, they're so angry with each other, and we have to be careful that we insulate ourselves from those things.
Watch things on television that are wholesome, that are not violent, that are not always angry and aggressive, so that you don't, you know, communicate that pattern of behavior to your family and to your children. So the first one was total commitment, scheduled availability, and tender treatment. Now on Wednesday, we're going to unpack three more. Meaningful touch, being a student of your children. This is a very important one, worth the time just for that one.
You know, the old proverbs that says train up a child in the way he should go. I'm going to unpack that for you because it's a scripted verse that is very, very misunderstood. But I'll unpack that for you on Wednesday. And then also positive communication. We'll talk more about the communication piece when we get back together on Wednesday.
Wednesday at 10 a.m. I look forward to talking to you guys again. I don't want to go any longer with this one. I'm trying to keep them as short as I can. But in between now and then, may God richly bless you.
Listen guys, be safe, be smart, but be intentional about this time out that we're in right now. And ask God, Lord, what are you trying to teach me? What are the things that you want us as a family to take from this experience and to perhaps do differently as we move forward? And again, on Wednesday, I will really drill down even more on the possibility of maybe rethinking the way your kids are being educated. But until then, may God richly bless you, Lord.
I just pray a blessing, or wherever you've been watching today, just be with them, guide them through this process and help them, Lord, to really consider what your Holy Spirit is revealing to them about them and their family. In Jesus' name I pray. And all God's kids said, amen. Love you guys. We'll see you on Wednesday.