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Family Life Chapter 2 - Family Relationships · Passing On The Faith

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Discipleship may conjure up a lot of different things in people's minds.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: But it is better to think of it in biblical terms.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: 1.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Biblical discipleship takes place in a context or an atmosphere where the word of Christ predominates podcast generations.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Every week is women in God's and Bible business webinars where the teaching of Jesus Christ help you build a strong biblical foundation for your family on a constant basis.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: This week's episode is a chapter from our audiobook, Family Life, entitled Family Relationships, written by Kevin Swanson.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 2.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Family Relationships And you, Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 6 4.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: This chapter will focus upon the discipleship vision inculcated in Ephesians 6 4.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: The time has never been better for the Christian Church to realize this important principle.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: As of 2014, only 27% of the millennial generation, 18 to 38 years of age, were attending church.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: That represents a decrease of 51% from the church attendance rate of the silent generation.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Only 19% of younger millennials call themselves evangelicals, down from 30% for the silent generation.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Church attendance is not the only indication of faithful adherence to God's Word.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Recent surveys have found that 44% of American evangelical millennials support homosexual marriage, what the Apostle Paul describes as the radically unnatural use of sexuality.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: This means that participation in conservative evangelicalism has declined to roughly 10% of the American population.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Unless there is something of a revival in this country, Christianity is on the same trajectory as England, Scotland, Sweden, and Germany.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: The faith is slowly disappearing from these once Christian nations.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: It is a generational leak that began with the baby boom generation and carried into the Gen Xers and then to the Millennials.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Why the steady drift away from the faith, generation by generation?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: It is a question of discipleship.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Ordinarily, I would argue that Christian families should expect to see continuity in the faith from generation to generation.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is the essential message of Malachi 4 6.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of John the Baptist and the exciting introduction of the Messiah, Malachi says, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Malachi 4.5-6.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Notice that the turning of the hearts to the faith of the fathers is the means by which the curse is averted.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Malachi is speaking of the powerful work of the Holy Spirit of God in the New Testament era.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: The prophet Joel also speaks of the Holy Spirit poured out upon our sons and daughters.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: How then does this comport with the terrible lapse in faithfulness, generation by generation, seen over the last fifty years?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: While we do not want to ignore in any way God's sovereign hand over all things, there must be some modern phenomenon that contributes to this.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: What has changed in the discipleship of children over these last four to five generations?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Several things come to mind.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: 1.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: The state has aggressively promoted its secular education in China and the Western countries.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: This statist, humanist approach is relatively new in the history of the Western world, and it must be taken into account when considering the reasons for this generational apostasy.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: In many nations, like China, Sweden, Norway, and Germany, parents and churches would be breaking the law if they attempted to provide any religious instruction to children under 18 years of age.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: This was the catalyst for much of the major Christian persecutions of the 20th and 21st centuries.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: 2.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Powerful cultural influences arose during the 20th century that never existed previously in the history of the world.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Almost every teenager in America who owns a smartphone with internet access is plugged into the Hollywood and Nashville worldviews.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: These powerful influences dictate ideologies, manners, cultures, and preferences in a very monolithic form.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: This mass media holds a thousand times more influence over the average teenage child than it did in 1900.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: 3.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Daily parental discipleship was marginalized in the homes of many Christians, due to the rise of a professional class of teachers in the church who were expected to provide the religious instruction.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: To the reasoning of some Christian parents, these traditions may very well have made the commandment of God of no effect.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew 15 6b It is the combination of the above factors that created the problem.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: When our young teens are immersed in 30 hours of a secular, godless education, enforced by government fiat, mixed with 30 hours of contact with pop culture, along with a few hours of peer influence in a church youth group once a week, they will almost certainly align themselves with the ideals of pop culture and school.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is even more so the case if there is little or no contact with Christ in the home throughout the week.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Luke 6.40.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thus, Christ would pose this question to every parent as a follow-up.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Who have you assigned as the persons to disciple your children throughout the week?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: No doubt, most parents haven't even considered this question.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And herein lies the problem.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: By default, the system used to disciple most children, and their parents have hardly noticed, will be Lady Gaga, Charles Darwin, and Stephen Spielberg.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Responsibilities.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Biblically speaking, the primary responsibility for the discipleship of children lies with the Father, as indicated in Ephesians 6.4.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Naturally, the Father may delegate some of it to others.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: From passages like Proverbs 31, it is clear that mothers also play an important role in the discipleship of their sons and daughters.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: The ultimate responsibility, however, still rests with the father.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: When the general manager of a company delegates a project to a middle manager, he will hold him responsible for the project.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Should the man report back to him that the project is incomplete, because of some lapse among his employees, the general manager is not going to take it up with the other employees.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: He will face the middle manager to whom he assigned the project with his failure and discipline him accordingly.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Plainly, God has assigned the child raising department of the home to the father, and he will hold the man responsible.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: If there is a problem, he will not call mother in to the front office.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Nor will he call up the Sunday school teacher.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: He will refer his concerns to the father.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: We should not reject the contributions of the church or the preaching of the word by the church, for all of that is important in the life of the child.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it is the responsibility of the father to make sure his family is hearing the preaching of the word.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: If discipleship is a matter of contact hours and daily interaction, then the primary disciplers will be those in contact with the disciple on a daily basis.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Ordinarily, this discipleship would fall under fathers and mothers, unless peers, pop culture, and public schools have somehow displaced parents in the equation.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: When parents abdicate their Ephesians 6-4 responsibilities and turn them over to more powerful influences throughout the week, a 30-minute Sunday school instruction cannot possibly compensate.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Can we honestly call this Christian education or Christian discipleship of our children?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Half-hearted efforts show a lack of commitment, either in the parents or the church leadership, or both.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: As I was raised on the mission field in Japan, church was an everyday event for us.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: For one thing, our tiny church met in our home on Sundays, and it was an all-day affair.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: From morning until evening, we were in the Word, in fellowship or in prayer, with services in Japanese and English.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout the week, my father would gather us together in the mornings to read the Bible, sing hymns and psalms, memorize verses and catechisms, and even listen to sermons on occasion.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: My mother would read to us from great Christian writers like John Bunyan and George Whitfield.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: This daily discipleship formed the six of us children more than the formal academic courses our parents assigned for us, which were also part of our education.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: My father was doggedly consistent in this discipleship.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember ever skipping daily time in the word during these growing up years.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Even while on an overnight ferry trip to the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, I can remember Dad officiating a time of family devotions.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Dad wasn't always highly inspirational or emotionally connective in his discipleship.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: But he was self-controlled, disciplined, steady, and relentlessly consistent.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: After many years, I find my father to be the most frugal and generous man I've ever known.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: He loaded each of us with a library of the best Christian books money can buy before we left his home to start our own families.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And, though I don't think his income ever topped the federal poverty threshold, I'm sure he has given away more money than he ever spent.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Today, Dad is in his 80s, and he still heats his home with wood he cuts and splits himself.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Biblical discipleship.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Discipleship may conjure up a lot of different things in people's minds, but it is better to think of it in biblical terms.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: 1.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Biblical discipleship takes place in a context or an atmosphere where the Word of Christ predominates.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: In our homes, we want to see our children swimming in God's forgiveness and God's goodness, where the teachings of Jesus Christ are presumed, mentioned, acted upon, and realized on a constant basis.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Ephesians 5, 18 20.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Colossians three sixteen to seventeen The phenomenon described in Acts two forty one to forty seven must not be seen as exceptional, that is only belonging to the New Testament Church.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: It is normative to the Church of Jesus Christ from AD thirty three to the present, wherever the bona fide church has survived.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: The Christian family should be characterized by daily gladness, unity, praising of God, and continuing steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and prayers.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Given that these people in Acts 2 were baptized, and given that our children are baptized and committed to discipleship, we should continue in the discipleship program Jesus instituted in the Great Commission.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is the default position for Christian life and discipleship.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Notice that corporate singing of psalms and hymns and the teachings of Christ are preeminent.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is what will create the right atmosphere of discipleship in the home.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Biblical discipleship and Christian living will integrate God's word into the fabric of life.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is the idea so beautifully conveyed through Deuteronomy 6 7-9.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Again, the context is the home and the family.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: You shall write them on the doorposts of your house, and on your gates.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: The key is integration.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: God's word should be as a frontlet, or a constant inscribed reminder, that hangs between the eyes of the child.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: It is integrated into every bodily position the child finds himself in, sitting, walking, lying down, and rising up.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Every way the child turns, he is confronted with the true and living God, his Christ, and his word.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: This discipleship involves intentional times of teaching, where God's word is written on the doorposts and the walls, and extemporaneous opportunities, where we speak of these things as we walk by the way.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: God's word must run in the bloodstream of the home, always and ever.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: We pray without ceasing.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: It should go without saying that we would not want to place our children anywhere that extemporaneous prayer is illegal.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Unless, of course, we were in a prison camp where we had no control over our children's raising.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: There is hardly any more obvious application to the mandate.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: We ought to obey God rather than men.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: A young Christian lady was babysitting a four-year-old child from another Christian home.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: When something delightful occurred, the young lady suggested they thank the Lord for it.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: The little child replied, We only do that on Sundays.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is one small anecdote that illustrates a powerfully ingrained mindset.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Many professing Christians today share this view of faith in that their faith is not integrated into life.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: It is a highly compartmentalized faith, largely irrelevant to life, and to that extent, non-existent.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is the major cause for the dying of the faith in the West.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Each successive generation eventually gets the message.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: The faith is unimportant, irrelevant, and lifeless.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: There are many different ways to integrate God's word into the day.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Our family utilizes these practical examples, and more.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: I sit down at the piano spontaneously throughout the day and play well-known hymns, singing and making melody to the Lord.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Several of my children usually end up joining me.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: We sing together before almost every meal, usually one of five different songs that make up our family liturgy.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Typically, we revert to Psalm 89, Psalm 23.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is the day the Lord has made, Ephesians 4.32.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: To God be the glory, and it is well with my soul.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Every conflict is an opportunity for humility, confession, forgiveness, and prayer.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: I try to seize these opportunities as often as they arise.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Without exception, we find spiritual growth and great peace come out of it.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: References to God and prayers giving glory to God are few and far between in most science textbooks written for Christian homeschools.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Christian parents must improvise as they teach these subjects.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: While helping my daughter with her physics lessons, I burst out into prayer on occasion, praising God for his amazing creation.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: When we watch a video together, our family will always insert commentary, biblical truths, and reproof for any unfruitful works of darkness.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: One of the reasons why I developed the worldview in five minutes, and trained my daughters to write and edit these segments for the radio broadcast was so that I could teach them to interpret news and world events by a biblical worldview.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted them to see all of life through the interpretive lens of Scripture, which defines reality by the sovereignty of God, and by the revealed laws of God that determine our ethics.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: They need to see that these world events are not primarily effects of random causes in a materialist universe or even man-caused forces.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: They are the very acts of God.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: To further define biblical discipleship.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: 2.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: In any form of discipleship, more is caught than taught.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Back in 2015, the Generation's Ministry released a study on the present apostasy of an entire generation, an apostasy unprecedented in the history of this nation.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: This study is reviewed in the appendix of this book.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Our team studied the phenomenon through an extensive survey of four influences in a young person's life parental relationships, education methodology, church, and popular culture.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Of the hundreds of metrics our data analysts looked at, the most dramatic correlation was seen between the apostasy of the child and the hypocrisy of the parents.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: We were asking young people the question: Do your parents' lives and actions make you more likely to adopt their religious standard and specific beliefs?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: When parents say one thing and do another, their children will most often take note of it and reject the things they say, especially if it bears anything of a Christian character.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: In effect, their children are only living out a more consistent life of apostasy than that which their parents held to.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: As each successive generation of faith since 1930 has grown weaker in this country, church-going parents often initiate the apostasy while their children complete it.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Parents, therefore, would do well to make their calling and election sure, 2 Peter 110, and confirm that their love is without hypocrisy, Romans 12.9.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, consider areas of inconsistency and assess your true priorities by the actual use of your time and resources.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Have you cultivated an external religion, having a form but denying the power thereof?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: When you see sinful tendencies arise in your children's lives, you should double check to see if the seed of that sin was first rooted in your life.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: When a father is given to pornography and self-gratification, he should not be surprised to see homosexuality in the life of his son or daughter.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: The father that cannot submit to church leadership, as evidenced by church hopping and general rebellion, will most likely see rebellion surface in his own children.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Parents who speak dishonorably of their own parents will more than likely find their children treating them the same way.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Bursts of anger, simmering bitterness, and wrathful, controlling fathers and mothers may even see see their own children committing murder.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Parents who are given to the idolatrous use of food, entertainment and sensuality should not be surprised when they discover their children are addicted to drugs and alcohol.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Faithless talk, constant anxiety, and prayerlessness among parents would naturally lead to doubt and all-out skepticism in their children.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes our children's sin appears more pronounced, and this can serve well as a magnifying glass to reveal the real issues that lie under the surface in our own lives.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thankfully, this is never the end of the story.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: God brings these crises into our lives to wake us up to our further need for Christ.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: We will never pass on a generational heritage of sinless perfection to our children.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: There is no better generational vision than that of a father and mother who fears God and passes on a heritage of humble repentance to their children.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Our children need to see a brokenness in us.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: They need to hear us confessing our sin before God and others around us.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: As the Word of God impacts us, we undergo a radical change of perspective towards ourselves, towards sin, righteousness, God, and Christ's tremendous work.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: If they see greater transparency in us, and a greater openness to exhortation from others in the church body, they are likely to follow our example.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: There have been periods of hardness of heart in my home, but I thank God there are also times of refreshing.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Hearts break and tears pour out, as heartfelt confessions come from dad, mom, and the children.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is the only hope for a sinful home.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Relationship versus love.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Relationship is a new buzzword that shows up everywhere in Christian as well as non-Christian contexts.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Christian churches say they want to be all about relationship.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: Family ministries abound in this country, organized for the stated purpose of strengthening relationships.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: As used by many modern systems of education and scientific fields, words become slippery things, and they can obscure the truth rather than reveal it.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Varying connotations come attached to the word relationship, and it takes on a sentimental value that helps when marketing a ministry.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, the word relationship doesn't really mean much.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: If we're talking human sociology, relationship is only a context in which human beings come into contact with each other.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: It bears no real ethical value, because two humans may be in a good relationship or a bad relationship.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: But then, one is still left with distinguishing good and bad.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: It is much better to use biblical terms that are given biblical definition, revealed by God to us, so we don't get lost in our human-derived psycho babble.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, the Bible encourages us to love, and then God provides in clear terms what that love will look like.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Homosexuals say they have great relationships, and they speak of love.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Increasingly, families who claim good relationships fall into incest.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Rudyard Kipling spoke of the one who started by loving his neighbor and ended by loving his wife.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: That is, his neighbor's wife.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: It seems that we do need biblical definitions to help us here.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: God's commandments show us what loving our neighbor looks like.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet, and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Love does no harm to a neighbor.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 13, 8-10.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: People like to speak of love and relationships in nebulous terms, but they usually wind up destroying their relationships when they do so.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: An overfocus on the relational context is usually self-oriented.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: We're thinking about ourselves when we are gauging how close we are to this person or that person.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: If we status the relationship by how well we know each other, this gives us very little data as to the true state of that relationship.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Mere intention to build relationship and community sets us up for disappointment and defrauding.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: We set up expectations and then crush them.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: While we may insist that we love in some superficial sense, God's word gives us a metric by which to measure the genuineness of that love.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Did we love to the point of sacrifice?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Did love seek its own at all yesterday?
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Did love suffer long?
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: Was our love rude and insensitive even a little?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Did love bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: An honest assessment of our love by the 1 Corinthians 13 standard on a regular basis is the best gauge of the state of our family relationships.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: This love cannot be truly lived out by anybody short of them receiving the love of God.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: When I meet children that exhibit extraordinary love towards their friends at church or school, I think to myself, I would sure like to meet their parents.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: What sort of loving parents would have taught a child like this to love?
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Only those who have received the profoundest love can share that love with anybody else.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Merely witnessing that love at a distance is not enough.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be a recipient of that love in the family of God, to exhibit the supernatural love of God.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is what John tells us in his first epistle.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: In this is love.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: No one has seen God at any time.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love has been perfected in us.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: Families and church communities that desire closeness will often construct community and relationship before they have learned to love.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: They expect that love will fill that capacity for relationship.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: They may assume they are the greatest of lovers, but they fail to define love biblically.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: There are three elements that test our love proximity of other people, time, and conflict, or suffering.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: Isolation from other people truly does exempt us from the call for love, and this is the problem of modern man.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: He holds himself away in a hermetically sealed container, so there is little contact with other people.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: In the words of the great existentialist, Jean-Paul Sartre, hell is other people.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thus, every individual in the home plugs himself into his own iPod, iPhone, and iLife.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: The children are shuffled into daycare, preschool, and other anonymous forms of life sans relationship.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody gets along reasonably well as long as they don't run into each other in the hallway.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: Given the context of relationship, sufficient time and opportunity for conflicts or suffering, love will either express itself or it will not.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: If love does not show up on the scene, then estrangement, divorce, disownment, and emancipation will be the inevitable result.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: The world does its level best to avoid true relationships through transience or constant relocation, through isolation, and through recurrent breaking of relationship.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: Conflict in the home and the church is the best test of true Christian love and true Christian forgiveness.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: While biblical conflict resolution, peacemaking, and forgiveness is fairly foreign to postmodern life, these things will occasionally be found in a Christian home or a Christian church.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: We must be careful not to manufacture a relational context merely for the sake of the context, without the love to reside there.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: Some parents, not given to self-sacrificial love, humility, and forgiveness, believe they have close relationships with their children.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: They attempt to micromanage the lives of their teens, or maintain tight control of their children's dating and courtship.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: The results are almost inevitably catastrophic.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: They misinterpret their close relationships to be filled with love.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: In point of fact, they have constructed a context for love, but love never really showed up.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, they ruined more relationships by attempting closeness, accountability, and community without love.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: It might have been better if they had let their kids date and remained relatively uninvolved in their children's relationships, given the lack of love within their family.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: We must be brutally honest in our assessment of our own love.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we want sufficient love to fill the relationship context of our home and our covenant family.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: These are redemptive contexts for love, context for kingdom work, and contexts for discipleship.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: We want Christ to completely fill our relationships.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, honesty and humility are most essential in our relationships.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: Let's admit it, we are not the greatest lovers in the world.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: When we come into contact with each other, we soon discover our true condition by nature, and it is not a pretty picture.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: That is where we see our need for Christ.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Humans are very good at creating wonderful facades and what appear on the outside to be well-ordered families that love each other.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: However, the most mature Christian families can turn out to be the most judgmental, violating Matthew 7 1-5, the most divisive and the least loving at the end of the day.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: They may have created their relational contexts, attended seminars on courtship, led marriage workshops, and joined a family integrated church that was all about family discipleship and family worship.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: But these turn out to be nothing but empty shells and facades where there is no love.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what the Apostle Paul would tell them.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Though I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians 13, 1-4.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Here are some practical steps towards creating a sincere love without hypocrisy.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 12 9.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: In the home.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Test your own selflessness in the relationship.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: Have you pressed for closeness in the relationship, but failed to love selflessly all along?
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: According to the 1 Corinthians 13 model.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: Closeness and relationship should naturally follow the presence of love.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: Also, 1 Corinthians 13 teaches us that love is not rude.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Biblical love does not create expectations it cannot fulfill.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: Some homeschooling families, for example, discover that the mother-son dynamic can be counterproductive to healthy relationships, especially through the teen years.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: Fathers and husbands should be sensitive to this.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: It can be an unloving thing to force a mother and son together for seven, twenty four-hour days for 18 years straight.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: 2.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: Keeping God's commandments is more important than form and context.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible does not command a certain regimen for the introduction of young people into marriage.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Numbers 30 allows a father vow veto power.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: But the text does not require some particular minimum level of involvement for a father in the courtship of his daughter.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: In some cases, the father chooses not to get involved, and his daughter doesn't really want his involvement.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: These are not essential matters.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: What really matters is this.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: Are we keeping the commandments of God?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Here are several commands that tie into this preparation and introduction into marriage.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: Flee fornication.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: Love your neighbor, your daughter, as yourself.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: Honor your father and mother.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Provoke not your daughter to wrath.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: Walk in the light.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: Judge not that ye be not judged.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: Too seldom are the commandments of God reviewed when Christian families think about marriage.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: They are so busy working out their fences, their chaperones, and their own rules.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or, they just ignore every rule altogether and default to the decayed morals of the day.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: Different families and cultures maintain different traditions, and we should allow liberty for various approaches to courtship, dating, etc.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: However, when it comes to extra-biblical systems and human traditions, Paul reminds us to keep the commandments of God before our eyes, first and foremost.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: Was anyone called while circumcised?
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let him not become uncircumcised.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: Was anyone called while uncircumcised?
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: Let him not be circumcised.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is what matters.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: Christian families will apply God's principles in a myriad of ways, and we should allow for these differences in the way we think about each other.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: The same thing applies to education, family culture, etc.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: What matters most of all is that we are loving God, loving our neighbor as ourselves, and obeying the commandments of God.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: 3.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: Most importantly, a sincere love for one another begins with a true love for God.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: Where there is no love for God, there cannot be true love for the others in the home.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: Why do Christian parents fail to teach their children God's word, in accordance with Deuteronomy 6 7, on a daily basis?
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: Taking in the context for this passage, we read, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: You shall teach them diligently to your children.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: The quintessential demonstration of our love for God, according to this passage, is the communication of it from the heart of the parent to the children.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: First, however, a father must know the love that God has shown him in the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: If he has received that love, then of course he will love God, and share the one that he loves above everything else to the children he loves.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is the basis for love and discipleship in the home.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: How we want to characterize our family relationships.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like, of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: Against such there is no law, Galatians 5, 19 to 23.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: The difference between a Christian family and a non Christian family should be obvious, or easily evident, as the above text says.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that characterizes our homes?
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: If we are Christians, all of us have the Spirit of God.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his Romans eight nine.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: Should a non Christian be reading this and find that verses nineteen to twenty one characterize his life more than verses twenty two and twenty three, I encourage him or her to be honest about the absence of grace.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: Be honest about the sin that dominates your life, and sincerely cry out to God for mercy.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who saves you from the wretched condition of sin, and you will be saved, and your household.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: Acts 1631.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: A mother that loves her children will want to lead them to Jesus, especially when she sees behavioral issues arise in them.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: She treats her children with kindness and gentleness, and she does not give way to sinful anger.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: A father that loves his sons and daughters will get into the habit of sacrificing time and energy for them.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: He will find ways to show affection and affirmation to his teen daughters, even when they are pushing him away.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: He will write letters to them.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: He will quietly and thoughtfully counsel them through their emotional struggles.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: He will affirm them with affectionate words and show them appropriate affection.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: He will pray for his children, sometimes for hours at a time.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: He refuses to respond in kind to hurtful words that come from his own wife or one of his children.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: These are examples of how the fruit of love reveals itself in the home.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Loving a two-year-old will be very different from loving a sixteen-year-old.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thus, I find that I must relearn love every ten years or so.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: In God's incomprehensible yet beautiful purposes, he rewrites the lessons so as to better teach us to love one another.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: He breaks us out of our comfort zone, which is typically a self-oriented frame of thinking.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: We must learn new ways to communicate, and to communicate love.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: When I was having a hard time communicating with one of my daughters, I took up playing tennis with her, by praising her serves and her returns, and talking through the entire practice session, I found that I could speak my heart and she would listen to me.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: Every father must learn how to cross the communication barriers and speak love to his sons and daughters.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: Our relationships are characterized by joy because we see our children walking in the truth.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: Every indication of the Spirit's work is cause for celebration.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Unless our grace antennas are well calibrated to sense any work of grace, our homes will not be characterized by gratefulness and joy.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: If all we see is the devil's work, sinful behavior, and a failure to meet our own expectations, we will not sense the grace of God when He is working in our children's lives.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: The Christian home is a peaceful home, where there is more peacemaking than peacebreaking.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: Conflict is inevitable at some level.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: However, the overriding atmosphere of the home is peaceful.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: Peacemakers, Jesus' followers, desire peace and seek peace.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: We do not let the sun go down upon our wrath, Ephesians 426.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: Where fathers and husbands, and mothers and wives confess sin to the family, and to God in prayer, there will be an atmosphere of peace.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: Families that interact with other families within the church fellowship will particularly find more opportunities to forgive others, and to demonstrate the peaceable fruit of righteousness.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: As Christians, we are almost always treated badly by the world, and by professing Christians too.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: When we respond graciously, without bitterness or gossip, Jesus Christ shines through us, and our families become even more peaceful and gracious.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thus, the Christian home must be a humble home.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: The defensiveness, self-justifications, emotional manipulation, blame shifting, rivalries, and judgmentalism that make so many families contentious today all come from pride.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: Pride is an inaccurate perspective of oneself in reference to God.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: The problem with modern man is not lack of self-esteem, it is a lack of God esteem.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: Once we have secured a more accurate esteem for God, then we will retain a more appropriate esteem for ourselves and others.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: When we see God's standard of holiness and see our low and pitiful condition in reference to God, we can hardly compare ourselves to each other anymore.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: If there is a single gift from God that is always the foundation of a happy home, I think it is humility.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: One popular music artist from the 1960s wrote a song that identified the problem with many a marriage in the present day.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: Quote, It's my belief, pride is the chief cause in the decline in the number of husbands and wives.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: A humble father will be careful not to hold his son or daughter to a standard he would never have held to himself at the same age or under similar circumstances.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: He becomes a good listener, slow to speak, quick to hear, and slow to anger.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: He is correctable himself, especially when the elders of the The church comes for a home visit.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: Mothers set a beautiful example of meekness when they submit themselves to their husbands with cheerfulness, instead of grumbling, arguing, nitpicking, and sniping.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: These are true fruits of the Spirit of God in the life of the Christian family.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: To be long suffering is to maintain a good attitude while suffering for a very long time.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's really that simple, but it's not easy.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: When we suffer, whether it be from disease or persecution from family members or friends, we learn to respond as Jesus responded to his sufferings.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: The life of Christ shines through us, and our children see it.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: They hear us repeating the words of Jesus, O Father, not my will, but thine be done.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: They hear us crying out.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: Of all the lessons we teach our children, I think this is the most powerful.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: The way my father reacted to suffering, especially when he lost almost half of his missionary support in the mid-1970s, impacted his children for a lifetime.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: My mother would always commend my father's steadfast, grateful, uncomplaining attitude during those years.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: He found a way to purchase bread crusts from bakeries in Japan for cents on the dollar during those tight years.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: Typically, the Japanese would not eat the bread crusts, what they called the ears of the loaves.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we had plenty to eat, as long as we were willing to thank the Lord for the provision of bread crusts.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: It is a father's attitude when he faces a job loss or other difficult trial that speaks the loudest to his children.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: Our homes should be characterized by kindness.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: Our family's favorite song is taken word for word from Ephesians 432.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: Be ye kind, one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: We have sung this chorus in our home almost every day for twenty five years.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you would like the tune for it, just call our home and one of the children will sing it for you.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: Singing a song ten thousand times will not necessarily produce kindness, but it does remind us of the kindness and forgiveness of Jesus.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: It sets a tone for our home.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: It brings us back to what our home is all about, the kindness of Jesus Christ.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: Love is not rude, and it should be sensitive to that which might offend our brothers and sisters in the home and the church.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: Even so, we cannot say, I didn't mean to offend your sensitivities.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: We have an obligation to know the things that may or may not offend others around us.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: But this doesn't preclude loving admonitions and rebukes if somebody is habitually falling into sin.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: However, our day-to-day interactions with each other should not be characterized by harshness, sarcasm, teasing, or demeaning jokes.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: Relationships obligate us to know something of each other before we speak in certain ways.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: What some might take as kindness and consideration, others might receive as an insult.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: All of these fruits serve as real tests of the quality of a spirit-filled life in the home.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: It turns out that the family is the best test of that spirit life.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: It forces us to be honest with ourselves.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a work of grace in our lives or not?
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: We live in a day where false fronts and false professions are so common that we are pressed to seek an honest answer to this question.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, what have we learned?
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: 1.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: How is the curse reverted, according to Malachi 4.6?
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: Who are the fathers mentioned here?
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: 2.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_00: What modern phenomenon has contributed to the serious generational downgrade in the faith?
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: 3.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: To whom specifically does the Bible delegate the discipleship of children?
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: Reference the key passages.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: 4.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_00: What is the Acts 2 vision for the Christian community?
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: How were the early Christians spending their days?
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_00: 5.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: How does Deuteronomy 6 7 to 9 describe the integration of God's Word into life?
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: 6.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: What is the difference between relationship and love?
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: 7.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: What are the key passages in Scripture that describe love in clear terms?
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: 8.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: What are the specific commandments of God that are relevant to courtship and dating?
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: 9.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: What is the true motive for Deuteronomy 6.7 discipleship?
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: As laid out in Deuteronomy 6.4.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: 10.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: Which of the fruits of the Spirit are best seen as they operate within the context of relationships, especially family relationships?
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: 11.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: Which of the fruits of the Spirit are best manifested during times of trial and affliction?
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: So.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: How are the fruits of the Spirit manifesting themselves in your home or your living situation?
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: At the very least, try to address love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, and humility.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: 2.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: What is the difference between loving a two year old child versus loving an 18 year old young man or young woman or an 85 year old grandmother?
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: This has been a production of the Generations Media Network.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: For more information, go to generations.orgslashmedia.