Session 3 parenting through crisis

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Well, hello friends. I am having a little difficulty with my Facebook live and I'm not sure why. I scheduled a live event and for some reason it does not start at the time I scheduled it to start, so I have to go back and I have to do it manual, so I'm the work on that. You also notice I've got a little set of earplugs in here that has a microphone attached to it, which I'm trying to use to get a little better sound quality. Since I'm making a decision to start doing these things every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10 a.m., at least during the pandemic season and probably beyond, I want to start to build my studio a little bit and get some better quality stuff in here to make the presentations a little bit more quality for you guys.

So welcome. Those of you who have been joining us, welcome back. For those of you who are new, please let me know you're here. Leave a comment at the bottom. I'd love to see your name come across the screen.

This is the third and final session dealing with parenting through this current crisis. It's designed for parents and grandparents of school-aged children. We'll get to it in just a moment, but if you've missed some of the other broadcasts, you can scroll down in our feed and find a number of them that we began putting together probably three, four weeks ago. And some of them are just good devotional thoughts. Some of them are some teaching dealing with fear.

And I would encourage you to do that. I also encourage you to go to our website, otm.co, just.co. I'll mention that again later in this session, because I want to encourage you to go there for a different reason, having to do with our natural gift test. But go there and explore. Also explore our Facebook page.

Scroll down. We can also be found on YouTube. We have our own channel. I would welcome you to go there as well. The other day, session two, I shared with you, I concluded by sharing three of the six things I wanted to communicate dealing with how to be a loving parent.

This is all in the context now of understanding that for many of us, we're at home, we're being forced into a situation with our children that we never thought we'd have before. In fact, I'll close again today by talking about the importance of being serious about the kind of things that our kids are being exposed to in the public education arena. And an encouragement to many of you who may not have thought about homeschooling in the past, who are serious about making sure your kids maintain their relationship with the Lord, which is the most important thing in life, to really reconsider even sending your kids back into that arena. And perhaps during this season, you've discovered that it isn't as difficult as you first thought. And I know for many of you, it's not possible.

It's not possible financially. I get that. But I'm also trying to encourage a lot of churches to step up and to help us because to me, the most important thing that a church can provide is help in educating the next generation of children. We're in the place we are in our nation today, guys, because we failed to watch closely what was happening to our kids for the last three or four generations. And sadly, we're paying a price for that today.

So anyway, the first three that I shared last week were total commitment, having a total commitment to your child. And we talked about the Pygmalion effect, which gets into our attitude about our children believing the best about them, all of those sorts of things. The second was to make sure that we have scheduled availability that was that we're scheduling times, meaningful times to be alone with our children. Now, of course, now, we're being forced into that. But in the future, what I don't want to see happen is for us to go through this pandemic and be in a situation where we're doing all the right things only to forget about them when the pandemic is over and go back to the to normal.

And because by the way, guys, normal ain't working. We this is one thing this pandemic may be teaching us is that we need to reconsider what was normal before and what our values were before. And the third area was a tender treatment, be kind and compassionate, it says in Ephesians 432, considering one another to one another, forgiving each other, justice in Christ guide for gave you. Let me just share the last three and then conclude. The fourth one is meaningful touch, meaningful touch, touching our children.

Now Mark 3637, it talks about Jesus, he took a little child and had him stand among them, taking him taking him in his arms. He took the little child in his arms, and he said to them, to them, whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name, welcomes me and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me. He physically touched the children, you know, there's a physiological things that happen with touch. There's been so many tests that have been done. It's tests, UCLA did a test that says touching lowers blood pressure.

It suggests a correlation, by the way, with physical growth, kids that are being touched versus not being touched. Most, by the way, sexually disoriented children lacked some kind of physical touch with their moms and dads, especially dads. I remember I was in church one day, and I was sitting in a in the in a nursery room or was a room for young children. I was sitting on a bench watching what was happening and a little boy, I'm guessing he was probably seven or eight years old. He was sitting next to me about two or three feet away.

And as I sat there, he kept getting closer to me, he kept moving over and moving over. It was like, it was weird. And I thought, you know, what is he what's he doing? And actually, I moved over, because I thought maybe he needed more room. But he didn't need more room.

He kept getting closer and closer. And finally, he got close enough to where he actually touched me. He his hip came right alongside, he touched me. And I'm looking at him. And I'm thinking, what is going on?

There was all kinds of room on the bench. And so I just looked at him. And I said, Hi, sweetheart. And I, I put my arm around him. And he just melted.

There's a kid doesn't even know. And he's reaching out for some attention. He's reaching out for someone to physically touch him. I remember some dear friends of mine, Stephen and Linda Tavani, they do a lot of concerts in the parks with where gang bangers live. And they'll roll off a big semi truck and, and in the in the side of the truck falls down, they do a complete concert.

Linda used to be peaches with peaches and herb years ago. And she married Stephen Tavani is a friend of mine. And Linda was in the in the back one day just rocking one of her kids in a rocking chair. And a 13 year old little girl who was a gang banger who was in the crowd out front was standing there watching her. And Linda looked over and said, Hi, honey, can I do something for you?

And the little girl, the 13 year old girl says, will you rock me? Oh, my gosh, Linda gave someone her baby, her baby, and took this 13 year old kid and began to rock her. And Linda said a line formed with a whole bunch of other young kids, then all they wanted to do was be touched and be rocked. Now when they do concerts, she says they go to nursing homes and get some of the elderly to come out and they buy a whole bunch of rocking chairs and they just rock kids. Oh, man, guys, our kids need this meaningful touch.

And then the fifth one is being a student of your child being a student, understanding how God made your children uniquely. Listen, guys, this is extremely important. Proverbs 22 six says this, train up a child in the way he should go. And the amplified version, it has a little bracket there and it says, and in keeping with his individual gift or bent. Okay, but that's not in other translations.

It's in the amplified, which is suggesting this is what this verse is really saying. Let me finish it. Train up a child in the way she go. And even when he they are old, they will not depart from it. Now, I don't know if you've ever done a study on that verse.

Let me tell you about that. First of all, let me tell you what that verse is not saying. It is not saying your job parent is to train up a child in a good generic way. It certainly implies that what that what that verse is literally saying is this, your job is to determine how I wired that little girl or that little boy uniquely, listen, and train them up in that way. Whoa.

I want to tell you something. I don't know about you, but I was not exposed to that kind of upbringing. I would venture to say most people are not exposed to that kind of upbringing. I remember talking to John Trent one day. He used to use a psychologist used to work with Gary Smalley.

And he he said his mom has books on her bookshelf to this day for the three boys that she had. And each boy followed a different career path. She has books on her shelf about the different career paths of all those boys. She studied those boys and encouraged them in the way they were naturally built. Now, what do we mean by naturally built?

Well, again, on our get on our website, if you go to our website right there on the first page, you can click a little button that says free natural gift test. You can go there and there's seven natural gifts that are found in Romans, the perceiver, teacher, administration, giving, exhorting, mercy, seven natural gifts. These are not the power gifts or the controversial gifts. These are your natural DNA. If you're if you're an administratively oriented person, you were that way when you were a little boy or little girl.

If you were a softer mercy sided person, chances are you were that way when you were a little boy or little girl. So these different gifts, you can take that gift test and it will give you feedback as to the way God wired your children. And I want to encourage you to do that. I want you to become a student of your kids and encourage them and motivate them in a direction that is consistent with the with the way God wired them. Because here's what happens, guys.

We don't typically get that as kids. And then we get into the educational system. Do you think that they care about how we're wired? No, nor should they. They don't have the time.

They're not paid to do that. They're paid to give you a generic education. And then when you get into the higher levels of education, they simply ask you, what do you want to be? They don't care whether you're wired for that. What do you want to be?

And then, okay, if you want to do that, this is what you need to know. And so they give you information to help you become the doctor, the lawyer, whatever it might be. And then what happens is because no one took the time to kind of encourage us in the natural area of giftedness that God gave us, we end up getting into the work world and we suffer from what I call vocational confusion. Vocational confusion happens when the work that I'm involved with does not line up with my natural bent and I'm frustrated and I really don't know why. And so in a way, the way to avoid that with children is to really encourage them in the way God wired them and not force them into areas that you think are the best for them, but consistent with the way God made them.

And then the sixth one is positive communication. By the way, if you want to see the other three and go back even further, the two sessions before this will unpack all of this, all of this that we're doing in these three sessions dealing with parenting through this crisis. Positive communication. Did you know for every 10 positive words that are spoken, for every one positive thing that's spoken, there are 10 negatives. 10 to 1.

We tend, and today it's getting worse. Everything seems to be negative. Colossians 321, listen to this, fathers, do not embitter your children or they will become discouraged, which is where a lot of kids are today, guys. That's where they are. It's the greatest need of our children from their fathers right now is encouragement.

You don't want to embitter your children, shower them with encouragement. The two greatest things that our kids need to hear and they can't hear it enough, come on, you guys know what it is. The two greatest things they need to hear, I love you and I'm proud of you. You can't say those two things enough. How old do you have to be before you don't need to hear those things?

Dead. And even then, your heavenly father is going to say the same thing. I love you. Listen, where's our model for this? What did our heavenly father say about his own son?

He said, listen, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. I think that's a pretty good pattern. I think that's a pretty good model. Proverbs 16, 24 said, pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. Physiologically, in science, we're learning today the power of words and the chemicals that are released in our body by just encouraging people.

Okay? And so I want to encourage you to do that with your children. Keep looking at the positive things that they're doing and encourage them and rethink and now that you're shut in, rethink a lot of the things that you used to do before. I remember when our kids, we had the red plate. We had a special plate that we bought for special occasions and when it was somebody's birthday, we brought out the red plate and we set a table up or when one of our kids did something really super good, there was time for the red plate and they looked forward to that because they were being honored at the dinner table that night.

There's a lot of little things that you can do about that. Anyway, right now, as I said before, we're being forced into a situation where our children are at home. I want to kind of conclude here with an encouragement to you to think about all the things that we've been sharing and to seriously pray about whether or not you should do more than what you've been doing with your children and their education and what you're exposing them to. I know, listen guys, we're all over the street. There are some of you that are single moms or even single dads.

You don't have a choice. There's no way you can homeschool, but what I would encourage you to do is to make sure that your kids are in the kind of school that's going to be honoring and uplifting the things that you're sowing into them because believe me, our educational system, our public educational system, as I said before, is deliberately designed to destroy any spiritual input you put into your children. They're deliberately designed to do it. They're anti anything to do with God. If you don't see that happening in our culture today, my friend, then you're missing it.

You really are. We need to make sure that our eyes are wide open when it comes to what our kids are being exposed to. But you might say, well, Vince, I don't have any choice, man. I got to send my kid to public school. I can't afford private school.

I would encourage you to pray about that and see if there may be somebody out there, maybe your own church that could help you and help fund a way to get your kids in an atmosphere and environment where it's healthy. But for those of you, maybe that are the mom and dad are home and there's a possibility maybe you could cut back hours for one of you and begin to homeschool your kids. Let me encourage you. If there's any way that you can do that, please consider doing so. Please consider maybe this is a that time out we talked about that God is sending for us to reevaluate what's happening in our families and take a different course coming out the other end and think what is important.

My kids are important. I want to conclude with a true story. The story of Dr. Phil Littleford. This was many, many years ago.

Phil had a 12 year old son named Mark. On this particular occasion, he decided to take Mark for his 12th birthday on a fishing expedition up into Alaska. They flew to Alaska and they rented a float plane with two guides. They flew back into the back country, landed the plane, brought it over near the shoreline, got out, and went upriver for a couple of hours to fish for salmon. They caught their fill and they came back to the boat later in the evening, but they got back later than they wanted to.

What they discovered was that the float plane had been grounded. It was on the rocks and it wasn't on water anymore. They didn't know what to do. The temperature was going to go way below zero that night. They had no accommodations, no tents, nothing.

They would have froze to death had they not come up with an ingenious plan. They decided to get all four of them into the little cabin of this float plane and to huddle up in there, seal the doors as best possible. They loaded everything up, got in there, and they figured the next morning when the tide came back in, it would raise the float plane, they would wake up, and their body heat would have kept them alive, and they'd just go ahead and take off. Well, the plan worked. The next morning, the plane apparently floated and they went to take off.

What happened is they did not realize that one of the floats had been punctured by the rocks and had taken on water as it was being raised up. They didn't know that. When they went to take off, the added weight of the water in the pontoon and the gear and the extra stuff that they had in the plane was too much for the plane to get airborne. It actually took off and it did a little bank and came back down and crashed in the middle of this inlet, in the middle of this bay, and all four of these men were in the water. The two guides were strong swimmers.

They were able to swim to a little jetty that was sticking out and just before the tide would have taken them out into the ocean because that's what was happening. The tide was going out. They made it barely to the rocks. When finally help arrived, they found the two guides and they were questioning them. They said, well, what happened to Dr.

Littleford and his little boy? They said, well, the last we saw of Dr. Littleford and his son was his son was in his arms. Apparently, Mark could not swim. The scene was that Mark had his son in his arms and they were floating out to sea.

That's the last that they saw them. The best that they could determine is because of the temperature of the water, his son Mark would have died within an hour of hypothermia and his dad not long after that. So his dad would have actually seen his little boy dying in his arms. Listen, there is not a person right now in the sound of my voice that would not be willing to die for your kids. Here's my challenge.

Are you willing to live for them? Lord, thank you. Thank you for these sessions. Thank you, Lord, for what you're doing in our midst right now, what you're teaching us in the middle of this difficult trial. I pray that only the words that are anointed by your Holy Spirit that I've been speaking over these sessions would be the ones that would land and take root in these precious friends of ours that are watching right now.

I pray that you would season them, that you would water them, and Lord you would speak to each and every individual parent and grandparent and help them understand the things that they need to consider and that they need to do to protect our precious little ones and to raise them up, God, in the way you intended. And Lord, I look forward with great anticipation, not only of what you're teaching us, but Lord how this is going to be sustained as we come and draw nearer to you, how you're going to help us sustain the things that you're teaching us right now on the other end of this pandemic. And we thank you, Lord. We love you. We honor you.

And it's in Jesus' name that we pray. And all God's kids said, Amen. Listen guys, thank you so much for tuning in. It's been such a pleasure to deal with this subject over these days. This coming Friday, two days from now, 10 o'clock, again, Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays at 10 o'clock in the morning, I'm going to be coming on and doing a Facebook live session.

And we're going to continue that for the foreseeable future, guys. It'll be posted on Facebook. They'll be uploaded to YouTube and maybe other platforms. This is an opportunity for us to continue to minister to people through this medium. And we want to take advantage of that.

Thank you so much for joining us. May God richly bless you and be safe. Bye-bye for now.