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Parenting | Keith Olree | Week 10 · Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies

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  Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us online@madisonchurch.org be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast. Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
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  Speaker B: Tonight we're going to talk a little bit about where we're entering our fourth part of this series on parenting, and that's having to do with navigating the outside world. So a lot of the things we've talked about so far have been how do we care for our children in the home and things that we teach them and things that we help them with. But we're going to look some tonight at school, school and friends and extended family. How do we deal with those relationships? You know, as parents, we're called to raise our children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, but we know that they're not going to grow up in a vacuum. They're going to be influenced by other people and they're shaped by their teachers, their classmates, friends, and our extended family members. So the question is, you know, how are they going to deal with those when they, when they meet them and whether there be a good influence for good or an influence for bad, we want to equip them to be ready to engage with these people and to remain faithful to God in those things. So our goal is to prepare them as Jesus prayed, to be in the world, but not of the world. So that's what we're going to look at tonight. The next three lessons. The first one tonight is school, friends and extended family. Next week the plan is to talk about media and technology. I believe Brent's got that one. And then I'll be back, Lord willing to talk about world proofing our children. And following that, we plan to have a Q and A for one week. So Brent has left an envelope on the very back here on the bulletin board. If you want to write down any questions that you have, you can leave them there in that envelope and we will try to prepare for those and be able to answer hopefully so Angie and I have three sons. They're ages 27, 24, and 22, so don't have experience raising daughters, but do have some experience raising some sons. I wanted to start by echoing some sentiments that have already been expressed by some others. First of all, as Mark Hester said, mistakes were made. None of us are perfect parents. I'm certainly far from a perfect parent. I'm generally pretty even tempered, but parenting, I lost my temper a few times. It's one of those situations where even if you are pretty even tempered, you can lose your temper sometimes with your children. But hopefully we improve over time. Maybe the later children that we have, hopefully we're better parents as we go along, but no matter what, it's not an easy task. Second of all, I feel like relationship is more important than techniques that we apply. As we care for our children, we show them that we have their best interest at heart, and we demonstrate our love for them, our care for them helps build their trust in us. And of course, our desire is to point them to God, and that will be evident in them. You know, if we just have techniques in the absence of that relationship, it's probably going to look more like manipulation than it is real parenting, true parenting. And so that relationship, it starts perhaps stronger with mothers than it does with fathers, at least in our case. I got Angie's permission to tell this story. But when we left the hospital the first time with our firstborn son, I said, this seems strange to me to take a whole new person home to our house. And she says, it doesn't seem strange to me at all. I've been carrying him around for nine months already. I said, well, I guess you're right about that. But anyway, that relationship that we build with our parent, with our children over time grows stronger, hopefully over time as we go. Third, our example is more important than our words. Kids are going to see what we do, they're going to do what we do, probably more than likely more so than they're going to do what we say. And they will certainly be able to tell if we are sincere in what we're doing or not. And lastly, each child is unique. So what works with one child may not work with another. And if you have a child that's very easy to parent, you may feel like, well, parenting is not that hard, or they pretty much do what I want them to do. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you have it figured out. It may be that your child is just easy to parent. Some are that way more so than others. And so I think there's a danger in thinking we understand all of parenting when we have a child. I grew up in a family where we had six children. We had two sets of twins in my family and then two singles. So my mother, she used to talk a lot about us, and she's like, every child's different. She's like, they're all different. And she said when I had. I have a twin sister, actually. So she said, I knew when I saw you and your sister. Boys and girls are completely different. She's like your sister. She'd be, you know, setting up a tea party or combing a doll's hair or something. I'd be more likely to come in and knock it over. And she said, and she'd talk to her toys and stuff, and you just make truck noises and stuff like that. So it's like she said, I could tell then that each child is different. And even within a single gender, boys, you know, all our boys are different one from another, and girls are the same. So each child is unique. So don't think that any technique that you might learn might always be effective with every child. There is a difference in each child. So when we think about the Bible and the topic we have tonight, we're talking about schools and friends or peers and extended family. I wanted to go through just a few examples that I thought of from the Bible. We might not have exactly correlation to schools like we have today and things like that, but I thought about some characters that we have, say Moses, you remember his story, how his mother hid him in the reeds and his sister watched over him, and they took him into Egypt, and he was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. And yet his. His mother was there with him part of that time, right? She trained him and was able to be with him. So even in the midst of a school, a school that was not related to the Israelites, he still became a great leader for God through that, even though he was educated in a way that perhaps was against God. What about Daniel? You think about him being taken into captivity. He and the other young men that were of royalty were taken into captivity, and they taught him in a completely new culture. He learned a new language. He learned. They gave him different food or tried to give him different food to eat. And so he was exposed to all these different things. But what was his commitment through that? He said, I'm not going to eat the. I'm not going to defile myself with the king's food. So he stayed strong, and so he must have been trained well in order to do that. The folks that were with him there, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, even though they were in this same culture, they refused to bow down to the golden statues. They must have been trained well to go in and survive and to thrive in this environment. You know, I think about Samuel. You know the story how Hannah prayed for a child and she was given Samuel and then she brought him to Eli to raise. But the Bible tells us that Eli's sons were useless men that they did not have. They were participating in evil acts and corrupt behavior. And so Samuel, I expect, was exposed to those things and was in a situation that perhaps almost like an extended family, that wouldn't have been good for him. And yet he became a great prophet of God also. And we can think about Rehoboam. I don't know if you remember, but when he became king, he went to the older men who were the advisors to his father, and he said, should I make the taxes harder on people? And he said, no, you shouldn't do that. That's what the first advisors told him. And then he went to his peers, his friend group, and they said, you tell them that your little finger is thicker than your father's waist, meaning make it really hard on him, show him who's boss, basically. And that ended up leading to the division of the kingdom. So he was evidently subject to peer pressure from his friend group. In that case, I don't know if you have others that you think of. Do you think of other characters from the Bible that were either raised in school or a school type situation, or extended family or anything that comes to mind? Talking about extended family, you can think about. Timothy was another one I thought about. He was raised by both his mother and his grandmother. Apparently a little bit of a divided family, it seems like, because his father was a Greek. So anyway, there's lots of examples there that we could talk about. One thing I wanted to mention is that I feel like throughout Scripture we talk about us as children of God, right? And so God is really, I think, the perfect parent. And throughout the ages it's been that way. When you think about the patriarchs, beginning even with Adam and Eve, what did he do for them that was in the way a parent would do? He provided for them, right? He gave them the garden. He gave them plenty of food to eat. He gave them purpose and direction. He told them what they should be doing right and told them the thing that they shouldn't do. He communicated with them and so God was growing his family at this time. You get down to the nation of Israel. What was God to them? He was their guardian, right? He took care of them, he protected them. He was a lawgiver. He gave protection to them, blessings. He said, this is my chosen nation. And he gave his commandments to them for them to follow. And we get down to the Christian age. What do we see about God that's like a parent. He gave the ultimate sacrifice right for us and he adopted us as his sons. So he demonstrates his unconditional love. His love is not dependent on us doing something good. Rather, he died while we were yet sinners. He shows his grace to us and he restores that relationship to us. So God of course, is the perfect example for us. And the ways that we emulate God to that extent, we become a better parent. I think one verse that came to mind is here in Matthew 23:37 where it says, jerusalem, Jerusalem who kills the prophets and stones those who have been sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. And you were unwilling. So you know, even God deals with children that will not follow him or those that he wants to protect. That's his desire, that we have relationship with Him. And yet they were unwilling to follow God. So God is certainly the perfect parent, I think for us. I wanted to look here at some verses that talk about external influences. First of all, from peers. I think most of us are familiar with First Corinthians 15:33, do not be deceived. Bad company corrupts good morals, right? So there's this peer pressure. So it points out, there is something we need to be concerned about with our children's peers, right? What influence they may have on them. Proverbs 13:21. Who walks with wise people will be wise, but a companion of fools will suffer harm. Proverbs 1:10. My son, if sinners entice, you do not consent. So we have to worry about are the peers that our children are with, are they going to entice them to do evil? And how do we prepare them to be ready for that? Proverbs 22, 24 and 25. Do not make friends with a person given to anger, or go with a hot tempered person, or you will learn his ways and find a snare for yourself. Certainly peers can be a big factor in how our children behave as well, if we're not careful. The Bible also gives us some warnings about false education and worldly philosophies. Colossians 2:8 says, See to it that there is no one who takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception in accordance with human tradition, in accordance with the elementary principles of the world, rather than in accordance with Christ. You know, we have to think about the education that our children are experiencing. Are things being taught that are in accordance with what God's will is, in accordance with truth? Or are there things that are harmful to them? Secondly, first Timothy 6, 2021 says, Timothy, protect what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge which some have professed and thereby have gone astray from the faith. Grace be with you, Paul here warning Timothy to be careful about what he listens to and what he trusts to be knowledge. First Corinthians 3:19 says, for the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the sight of God, for it is written, he is the one who catches the wise by their craftiness. So certainly schools and the like can be difficult places for our children. God even gives warnings about families. In Matthew 10:36 and 37 it says, and a person's enemies will be the members of his household. The one who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and the one who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. So as we think about extended families, there can be a problem there as well, right? If we have our children in an extended family that is a bad influence on them, or if that extended family doesn't want them to do what's right and we want them to do what's right, there's going to be conflict there. So God has addressed some of these things in warnings like this. I want to talk, first of all, I guess, about educational choice. And I'm sure in this room we have folks that have chosen different things about whether to homeschool their kids or to send them to a private, say, Christian school or a public school. And first of all, I want to say, you know, I don't think. I think any can work. Any can be a good solution. But there's a lot of factors that go into that. And we may have some time for discussion here if you want to point out some pros and cons of different things. But my father worked at Harding, and I grew up there in Searcy. He was the athletic director and the chairman of Physical Education Department the whole time that I was living there. And so a Christian education to him was a pretty top priority. He was a big believer in Christian education. You know, to the point that he told us, if we want to go to college, if you want to go to Christian school, he says, I'll help you pay for it. If you want to go somewhere else, go somewhere else. But, you know, he was a big believer in Christian education. So I grew up going to a Christian school there, associated with the university. Angie, on the other hand, she grew up in Mississippi, and there wasn't a Christian school nearby. She came very good family. Father was an elder in the church and mother was church secretary. So very dedicated, but she didn't have that opportunity. So she grew up attending a public school. And I think some of our biggest discussions were between, well, where are we going to send our kids? And I think she felt like, well, I went to a public school and it worked fine for me, so that's good. That's what we should do, too. And I felt like, well, I grew up in a private school, so, you know, let's do that. And we kind of ended up compromising. They ended up going to public elementary school, and then we moved them over to Christian school as they got older. So I don't think there's necessarily one right answer. You know, homeschool definitely would provide much more time with the parent. Hopefully that gives you time to build that relationship with your child. But if you don't get along well with your child, you know, it could lead to additional conflict as well, I suppose, you know, Christian schools, perhaps you have more control over who their peers are going to be in general. They're probably going to be people that have the same type of values that you do, but don't feel like that a Christian school is going to be free of evil influences either, because they're not. And no place is. No place is perfect. No place is free of bad influences. So we can't assume they won't be influenced just because or influenced for bad just because they're in a Christian school. In public schools, I know there's many examples of children that do very well in public school, and I think a lot of it may come down to your child in particular. How mature are they? How grounded are they? What kind of connection do they have to you? And do they trust you first of all, or are they going to be susceptible to these peers if they're put in that type of situation? So what is the maturity level of the child? I think, is a big factor. And each family, I think, needs to evaluate and decide what they feel like is best for them. And, you know, for homeschooling, for example, you know, that could be even different answers for different children. You could have multiple children, and you say, well, this one needs to be homeschooled, and this one needs to be somewhere else. Are you prepared and qualified to serve as that educator? What resources are available? You know, the cost of private education can be expensive. What facilities do you have, you know, and what are your other commitments? Or you have other commitments that would prevent you from doing that type of thing? So, anyway, I certainly don't want to say that there's only one way to do this. Let's talk a little bit about peer relationships. And I tried to put down some things here that I thought would be helpful in dealing with our children's peers. The first thing I think, you know, the parental relationship needs to be stronger than the peer relationship. They need to trust you as their parent and know that they can come to you and get good information from you. I heard an illustration where it talked about if you were lost and you found somebody that said, hey, I'm a good guy. I know where I'm going. You're probably going to latch onto that person if you're lost, right? And you're not sure where to go, you might as well follow them if you're lost yourself. And our children need to see us as that guide and not their peers. Right. If they follow their peers, they don't have that unconditional love for them, probably. Right. They don't have the maturity to make the right decisions. Your child may decide, well, I just want to be like my peers. And then you have kind of the blind leading the blind in that way. So we need to work to make sure that our children trust us, that we're the trusted source of information for them, and that we present it to them in the right times and in the right way. I think we need to make time for our children. And whenever they need you, not necessarily just when you're ready to show time to them. Right? If we are available to them and willing to listen to them, you know, we want to be available whenever they want to talk to us so that they will bring their issues to us and help us to understand them. And so we want to be available for them. If a parent is absent, either emotionally or physically, what else is the child going to do? They're going to find somebody, right, to be their peers, to help them. So that's a very important thing. And obviously, I'm probably preaching to the choir here. You wouldn't be here in a parenting class if you. You weren't Interested in doing that for your child in the first place? I would recommend that you get to know your children's friends. Do you know who they are, what type of people they are, what are their parents like? Maybe, maybe you get to know them. You can have them into your home, right, and talk to them and say, hey, I'm glad you've got a new friend, I'd like to meet them. Can they come over and eat with us one night or something? And maybe just making that connection will help your child to see. Well, they are concerned about me and my friends and they are concerned about my situation and they even want to get to know my friends. I think that can strengthen the relationship that you have with your child. But you probably don't want your child to spend all their time with their friends, right? You want them to have friends. But you may need to plan some time when you can get away with that child. Just to talk to them and talk to them about what's going on in your life, what are the things that you're dealing with, what are your friends like, you know, and hopefully have some time for them to express their concerns and desires with you about what they're dealing with. Alright, we'll talk a little bit about extended family and other relationships. You know, I think here in Huntsville, it's a little bit of a melting pot because of the economic and different types of opportunities, all the engineering firms and things, the different job opportunities, careers that there are here. So I grew up in Arkansas and Angie grew up in Mississippi. And so we came here and didn't really have any extended family to speak of here in this area. But you know, I would encourage you to leverage your extended family if you have, and most people probably do. It's like, can you watch the kids kind of deal. But more than that, we want to create strong bonds right across generations where we can. We talked earlier about Timothy. He had his mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois, right. And so they helped to raise him. And for those of us that are fortunate enough to have like multi generational faith, we have grandparents and parents and children. If we can show them that, you know, this is our faith, this is our the way that we follow God and it's been that way throughout time, that's a great blessing that we can share with them, show how God has blessed our family through the years and how important God is to our family, we can show them that God wants them to live throughout their entire lives following him. So I think that's important. So that's A blessing when we have extended families nearby that can be an example to our children. I think even if you don't have extended family nearby, you can look at the importance of intergenerational connections. You know, I think we've heard from the pulpit a few times that they talk about some surveys that have been done that those who have five or more adult mentors at church are significantly more likely to remain faithful to the church. So I would encourage you to try to get your children to know different people. You know, we're doing these minor profit trading cards right now to help people make connection with children. I know MKC has their grandfriends program where they bring in folks to come in and read to the children and spend time with them. I know our youth group has FAM groups and you grow up knowing these children throughout their youth and hopefully make a good connection and give them somebody that they can rely on, that they can go to and talk to and have conversations with and also see what it's like to live as a Christian. So, you know, you want to encourage your children to get to know these adults, these adults that you trust and that they can serve them and serve as advisors for them as they do these things. What do we do when we have family members that may be poor examples to our children? You know, it could be that a family member uses language we don't want our children to use or they, they smoke or they drink or things that we don't want our children to see. How do you deal with that type of situation? You know, I think the first step would be to go in to talk to them, right, and say, hey, I understand you do those things, but if my children is going to, if my child is going to be in your presence, I would ask, you know, that you not do those things when they're there, try to work with them that way and hopefully they're receptive. If they're not, you know, you may need to limit the exposure of the child to that person, but it could be a source of problems for you being in the presence of somebody that doesn't share your values or doesn't share the type of environment that you want your child to be a part of. Yeah. And I think, you know, we need to, in an age appropriate way, try to explain what it is that maybe we don't agree with and that we want to pray for, you know, uncle so and so or whoever it is, to try to get them to live their life in the way that God wants them to as well. And what about the extended family might sometimes have a clash with parental authority. You know, if you have set down certain things for your child that you want your child to eat certain things or behave a certain way or do certain things, how do you deal with a grandparent that perhaps says, well, when they come to my house, they get candy, that's the way it is, or whatever. And maybe it's more serious than that. But something you've got to think about the way you want to raise your child, depending on how that works out with the people that they're dealing with, if that's harming that relationship, then yes, I agree. All right, close out here with just a few things that I thought of a kind of practical guidance. First of all, if we can develop a respect for the Word with our children. So we study and we talk about, well, what is your friend doing at school or what is their family doing? You know, we talk about these circumstances because they're probably going to come home with questions about, well, why do they do that? Or why don't they go to church or what are these things? Study with them. Let them know that as Christians, we're to be in the world, but we're not of the world. So it's okay if you're different from your friends. And that's the way God wants us to be. If they're not doing what they should do, that we are to be lights that are shining in a dark world and not to be like the world. So talk to them about what God wants for them and that it's okay to be different in that way. Second, you know, encourage communication. If our children get to a point where they're dealing with something they don't know how to work through, then we want a place where they can know that they can come to us and that we're going to love them, even if they have failed in some way, even if they haven't been able to overcome the way they wanted to. We want them to be able to come to us and talk to us without fear of judgment, that they'll come and seek guidance from us. And so, you know, make conversation as much as you can, a daily thing, and have an open door practice where they can come talk to you at any time and give them your undivided attention. I know sometimes it feels like, oh, you want to talk now, but I'm in the middle of this. And so I would encourage you to try to do that as much as you can to give them your undivided attention as well. We talked about God as the perfect parent and that he has unconditional love for us. We need to have unconditional love for our children. We need to ensure that they know they're loved whether they succeed or whether they fail, whether they've acted the way we wanted them to, or they've acted in a way we didn't want them to. And let them know that our correction of them is because we love them and we want what's best for them. Finally, I'd encourage you to pray for and with your children. You know, thinking about Hannah and Samuel, she came and prayed for a son, and then God gave her a son and she eventually brought him back to God. In Mark 19:13, 15 it says, Then some children were brought to him so that he would lay his hands on them and pray. And the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, leave the children alone and do not forbid them to come to me, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. And after laying his hands on them, he departed from there. You know, pray for specific situations. Here it says that even Jesus, when he was on the earth, he prayed with the children. So he prayed for these children. And so we need to make sure that our children understand that prayer is an important part of the Christian walk and that we are there to guide them. We want to pray for them. As we said, we want to pray for extended family, we want to pray for their peers and help them through all of these different things. Alright, let's close in prayer and then we'll dismiss our dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day that you've given to us and the beauty of it. We thank you for the measure of health that we have to be here and to study your word. And we're grateful for the desire that each member of this class has to be a good parent and to seek out ways to lead their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And pray that you would give us wisdom as we take on this task, that we might do things that are most helpful to our children, that we will guide them and correct them and help them in any way that we can. That we would be available to them and willing to help them with their problems. Father, especially as we look at schools and their friends and extended family, we ask that you would help us to use discernment and to know what would be best for our children. We thank you for the blessing that they are to us. And we pray that you would forgive us when we, when we sin or fall. Short of your will and our leadership of them. And we pray that you would help us to continue on and to be strong and to be patient and to be long suffering and help us to continue on with the difficult tasks that parenting is. And we thank you so much for the blessing that our children are to us. And we pray all these things through your son's name, Amen.