With practical parenting guidance from Scripture, parents can raise children who learn the value of gratitude, responsibility, self-control and humility. These are characteristics Matt wants engraved on the hearts of his kids before they leave his home.
This Sunday we learn how to shape the character of our kids.
Next Steps:
- I will read Parenting with Love and Logic by Cline & Fay.
- I will help my children develop responsibility and self-control.
- I will set clear boundaries for my children and discipline when those are crossed.
- I will help my children manage their anger in a way that honors God.
- I will ask for forgiveness from my children when I make mistakes.
Full Sermon Script:
One thing I know about all of the parents in this room, and for those of you who want to be parents one day…
You want to raise children who are healthy
You want to raise children who are confident
Children who are full of life
You want to raise children who have strong character and love God
Every parent wants that for their children.
But we live in a day with so much advice on parenting that parents seem to be pushed in one of two extreme directions that are concerning at best, and destructive at worst.
Some parents want to control every aspect of their child’s life, and protect them from reality and culture and media… anything of the world.
Other parents want to be their kids’ friend so bad that they don’t control anything and let the kids do whatever they want.
||
A friend of mine told me he heard a dad of a newborn, maybe a 3-month-old infant, say:
“When our baby cries, we never go into his room. We go in there when we say it’s time to go in his room, not when he wants us to come, because if you start catering to their whining now, you reinforce their manipulative behavior. This is a cry of an egocentric, sinful narcissist, and we’ve got to break his will.”
This is a 3-month-old, crying infant, and that’s what his dad said.
||
On the other hand, I was at a restaurant recently where a five year old was screaming at the top of his lungs and the parents didn’t do anything to correct that behavior.
His parents didn’t say a word, didn’t do a thing.
Everyone in the restaurant wanted to discipline that child except for the parents.
||
I’ve seen families where children are never allowed to watch TV — ever.
And when they go to their friends house, they watch TV like little heroin addicts.
||
I’ve seen other families where everyone in the family has a TV in their bedroom, so there are like six TVs in the house. And there’s no supervision, or limits, or restrictions on what kids watch.
||
I think we desperately need wisdom from God on parenting so that we all can drive a stake in the ground and say, “This is how I’m going to parent. And with God’s help I will raise my children in a way that honors God.”
||
Today I want to talk about some character issues. I want to look at some key values and attitudes I want to instill in my children before they leave our home.
||
And I need to tell you up front. I’m not an expert at parenting.
I used to be an exert on parenting… and then I had children.
Parenting was easy when we had pets. We could just squirt them with a squirt bottle when they were disobedient.
||
Now I know that when I talk about parenting and how to raise kids, you’re going to watch my kids… and you’re going to realize at times that I don’t know what I’m talking about.
I am not an expert on parenting! I have a 13 year old daughter, a 9 year old daughter and an 8 year old son… and I’m very aware of the imperfections that I have as a dad.
||
What I’m going to share with you today are values that come right out of the Bible.
||
These values are written about very directly by the writers of Scripture.
And As we walk through them, I want to encourage you to write them down. I’ll tell you why I’m asking you to do that at the end of this message.
||
So here are the values that I want my kids to have engraved on their hearts before they
leave our house.
The first one is:
Gratitude
I want my children to be thankful and appreciate all that they have… and I want them to be generous.
The apostle Paul writes about this:
Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:18
Part of the problem we face is that much of our culture, and most of our economy, is built on making people feel entitled to what they want but don’t already have. We’re built on that.
||
A little girl in church said to her dad, “If God wants us to be happy all the time, why doesn’t he just give us everything we want?”
||
Think about this: if you want to develop a child with the capacity for gratitude, is it a good parenting strategy to make sure they always get everything they want? Is that a good idea?
In the short term, getting what they want will produces moments of gratification… so it may seem like a good thing.
But in the long run, if I always gratify every desire, it will inevitably lead to selfishness and a sense of entitlement, and it will destroy the very capacity for gratitude that I want so much to build.
||
A psychologist writes that this sense of entitlement in our culture has gotten so strong that it has led, among other things, to a proliferation of lawsuits, because when people don’t get something they want, they want to sue someone.
These things have actually happened, and he writes about them.
A Pennsylvania nursing student failed a course twice and sued the school for not helping with her anxiety.
A Florida woman sued FedEx because she tripped over a package left on her doorstep.
The San Francisco Giants were sued for passing out Father’s Day gifts to men only.
A psychology professor was sued for sexual harassment because someone hung mistletoe at a Christmas party.
A psychic was awarded—didn’t just sue; was awarded—$986,000 when a doctor’s CT scan impaired her psychic abilities.
Now, my question is, shouldn’t she have known not to go to the doctor in the first place?
||
We live in a day when lawsuits like this are epidemic.
Character qualities like gratitude, appreciation, and generosity of spirit will never be developed in a child if the parent thinks it’s his or her job to make sure all of the child’s desires get gratified.
That’s not your job.
||
Parents who are too busy often feel guilty about their busyness, and then they try to compensate by giving more money and more things to their kids. This is a deadly combination.
||
We’re raising a generation that’s wrestling with what I’ll call, “enriched deprivation.”
Kids are given way too much stuff that they don’t need and that’s not good for them, and not nearly enough of what they desperately need.
||
Now, we have to teach our kids wisely about this.
Some time ago, one of my kids wanted something. Financially, I could have said yes. It wouldn’t have been that big of a stretch… but it would not have been a good thing for this child’s character development, would not have reinforced the right stuff.
What was interesting in this moment for me… the biggest barrier to saying no was that I knew if I said yes, I’d be the hero for a moment.
And I love to give to my kids — not just because I’m altruistic, but also — because when I do, I get a burst of gratitude and joy. And who doesn’t like that? Who doesn’t want to be Santa Claus?
So saying no to my child meant also saying no to me.
But I have to put the long-range character development of my kids ahead of my own short-term gratification.
||
Another problem in this category that I hear from parents is that kids will ask for something that costs some money, and the parents will say they can’t afford it.
Now if the kid is smart at all, he’ll start to argue with you about why you can afford it; like, you could do without food or shelter or other things.
Usually the issue is not that I can’t afford it. The issue is not that I don’t have enough money in the bank.
Usually the issue is not affordability. The issue is I’m choosing not to buy it and I’m choosing not to for good reason.
Because what I prize most and desire most for my child, far more than any particular thing, is the development of a really good character and a really grateful heart and a capacity to go through life with a sense of wonder and appreciation, and not to be a slave to the spirit of entitlement that is a plague in our day.
The issue is the development of character, not financial affordability.
||
Parents, we have got to be utterly clear and unapologetic about this. Of course it’s not going to feel good in the moment; it never does.
||
I have to ask questions like, is this child developing a good work ethic, appropriate to their age?
Do they have appropriate chores to do around the house, and are those being monitored well? Am I doing that?
Is this child increasingly more characterized by a sense of gratitude or by a sense of entitlement?
Is this child growing in servanthood? Do they notice and serve the needs of other people?
Sometimes, that’s the toughest around the house. But I want this engraved in my kids’ hearts. I want them to have the capacity to go through life as grateful people… because to go through life with a sense of entitlement is a miserable way to live.
And it is not God’s will for any human being.
||
Alright, second value that is real important is:
Responsibility
I want my children to take responsibility for their own life.
At birth, the dependency factor for a human being is 100 percent; and the responsibility factor starts out at zero.
As a parent, my goal every year is to help the dependency factor go down and help the responsibility factor go up. And I’ve got to be thinking about that a lot.
I’ve got to be asking myself what kind of messages are my kids receiving from other sources about the need for them to own responsibility for their own life.
||
When my daughters were at the age where they loved princess stories — We read princess stories. We watch princess movies.
One day when I was reading Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with them, I realized this is a horrible model that my daughters are hearing.
Here’s a woman hiding from her stepmother because she feels helpless and afraid.
She takes a job doing menial labor for seven short, cranky guys because she’s afraid she could never find more fulfilling work.
And she’s sitting around, passively waiting to get rescued by someone… and singing, “Some day, my prince will come.”
||
I want my little daughters to know: Don’t ever do that. If you’re ever in this situation, you confront your stepmother face to face. Tell her to come to grips with the aging process, and tell her that you have no intention of being the fall guy because of her neurotic insecurities about fading sexual attractiveness. Tell her to find a good therapist.
||
And tell the seven short, cranky guys to get a life. If they can’t handle basic challenges of personal hygiene and housekeeping, for crying out loud, they’ll have to find some other co-dependent enabler to enable their domestic passivity.
||
And stop waiting for some prince to come and rescue you. Build deep relationships. Find meaningful work. Serve the poor. And when it’s time to choose a prince, let Daddy decide who the prince is going to be.
||
When children don’t learn and develop responsibility, they become handicapped.
When they develop responsibility, they learn to own their life and problems.
||
Paul writes about this in Galatians 6:5. To the church at Galatia, he says:
Each of you should carry your own load.
Each of us has got to own our own life… or we’re going to be miserable.
||
Parents, you can’t wait until your child turns 18 to start teaching this lesson.
||
I want to share with you an example that will often occur.
A child will say to a parent, I’m bored. Do you ever hear that one? I’m bored.
My youngest daughter told me this week, “I’m bored.”
I asked her what that means.
She said, “That means I don’t like what I’m doing. When I don’t like what I’m doing… I’m bored.”
Okay.
Often what will happen when a child says, “I’m bored” is that a parent will be tempted to take that on as their problem.
So, for instance, I might start generating ideas. “Well, why don’t you go outside and play?”
No, that’s too boring.
“Well, why don’t you go to a friends house?”
No, no one is home.
And then parents take it as her job to keep pitching ideas.
Well, why don’t you draw a picture?
Write a letter.
Do a science experiment.
Memorize a chapter of the Bible.
Read War and Peace.
No. No. No. No. No What else you got?
||
If you just keep pitching them, the kid will just keep hitting them out.
||
What’s the child learning in this?
The child is learning: My boredom is your problem; it’s your job to keep me entertained.
And if that’s what they learn, they will go through their life waiting for someone else to come along and make their life interesting, fulfilling, easier, more comfortable, more workable.
And that’s a miserable way to live.
On the boredom deal, the correct response, if a kid comes to you with that one, is to say: “You know, boredom is a real problem, and I am confident you’ll be able to come up with a really good solution.”
And then, you walk away.
||
You walk away because they need to learn this is their life.
||
Now again, you’re starting at zero on the responsibility factor, so you have to gauge it appropriately for whatever their age is; but, man, that responsibility factor better keep going up.
||
I see parents who take responsibility for all of their kid’s difficulties, problems, questions, concerns. And someday, when the kids hit 18 or 22 or whenever it is that they’re going to leave, they’re going to be in for a rude awakening if parents haven’t taught them what it is Paul wrote a couple thousand years ago: “Each should carry his or her own load.”
||
Alright, the next value that I hope is engraved real deeply in my kids is:
Self-control
This is the capacity to set aside the immediate gratification of personal desires for the sake of a long-term good.
In Galatians 5, Paul writes about this too, to that same church at Galatia. He talks about what he calls the fruit of the Spirit, the indicators that the Spirit of God is at work in someone’s life.
He has a list of nine of them, and the final one is self-control.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Galatians 5:22-23
An indication that God is at work in someone’s life is that they are no longer a victim at the mercy of whatever impulse grabs them.
Now, this is not true when they first enter the world.
When a human being is born, he or she is a bundle of appetites and impulses.
A hungry child wants to be fed.
A scared child wants to be held.
A hurt child wants to hurt someone back.
And these tendencies don’t go away by themselves. Someone needs to set boundaries. Someone needs to teach a child: Here’s what’s acceptable when you have an impulse like that, and here’s what’s not acceptable.
And here are the consequences if you engage in behavior that is not acceptable. These are the boundaries.
And when children cross over the boundaries — and they will cross over the boundaries. That’s part of a child’s job. Part of the way they learn is to test limits and cross boundaries. They will do that. And when they do cross over the boundaries — part of the parent’s job is to provide an appropriate level of discomfort or problems so that the child starts to know and internalize the boundaries.
And when they struggle with this, when they just want to give vent to their impulse — and they will — it’s not enough just to say no.
Parents have to help the child find ways to deal with those impulses, emotions, feelings, and desires.
||
Let me give you an example — video game usage.
We can help kids develop self-control by giving them the opportunity to set their own limits.
||
Brain science teaches us that kids who spend more than 30 minutes a day playing video games are actually doing damage to their brain growth and development.
That explains a lot for some of our kids, doesn’t it?
||
Kids who spend their time doing things become doers. Kids who spend their time watching things become watchers. That’s just how the brain grows.
||
So knowing this, my wife and I have decided to limit video game use for our kids to 3 hours per week.
The way we help them develop self-control is by allowing them to decide when they want to use those 3 hours.
Our kids have a Nintendo Switch and we’re able to monitor their use with the Nintendo Switch app.
They don’t have to ask us if they can play video games. They know they have 3 hours a week that they can use whenever they want. The only stipulation is — it can’t interfere with homework, dinnertime or bedtime.
They can also choose to go over their allotted 3 hours if they want… but it will cost them twice as much time the following week.
Last week one of our kids wanted to play with a friend for an hour and a half over the three hours and decided it was worth it to give up 3 hours this week to do that. That was fine with us because it was her decision.
||
What we don’t have in our house is conversations about playing video games. Our kids never ask us if they can play video games. We’re not constantly saying no to our kids.
And they’re developing self-control. Because they have to decide — if they want to be able to play everyday, they need to restrict their use to 30 minutes a day.
||
Side note here — if you find yourself saying no a lot to your kids for the same thing, that’s probably an indication that you need to help your kids develop self-control in an area of their life.
||
We do this with treats as well. A treat for us is anything that has a lot of sugar in it — desserts, ice cream, candy, or soda for example.
Our kids have 4 treats per week and they can use them on whatever they want whenever they want.
They can eat all 4 treats on Monday if they want.
They can eat all 4 treats in one sitting and get sick if they want. It’s their decision.
||
We need to help our kids develop self-control.
It’s important to get this right, because our kids will need these skills when making choices regarding the use of the car, substance abuse and sexual activity in their teenage years.
And they’ll need these skills when they’re on their own in college so they don’t flunk out of school because they can’t control their video game use.
||
Let me give you another example — Anger. This is a huge issue.
I would say this single impulsive issue will mean more problems than anything else.
||
The writers of Scripture have a lot to say about anger.
This is from Proverbs 16:32.
He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit, than he who captures a city.
That’s a remarkable statement.
Who’s a hero?
Look at our society. Who’s a hero in our society.
Think of movie heroes in our society. Who are they?
The Rock, Thor, Jason Borne
These are not poster boys for anger management. Our movies are mostly of angry heroes chasing angry villains.
The Bible says, put a great warrior who can capture a city on one side and a person who’s developed patience and can deal well with anger on the other.
Ask who the hero is and it’s no contest.
Taming a hostile city is nothing compared with taming a hostile spirit.
The true hero is one who can subdue and rule her or his temper. That’s heroism.
||
The Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 4:26:
In your anger do not sin.
In other words, it’s possible to experience anger, but not the sin and the expression
of it.
But it’s also very difficult because it’s such explosive stuff.
||
One other statement about anger that relates specifically to parents.
In the first century almost all authority resided in the father. We could include moms in this statement also.
Colossians 3:21
Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart.
Or it can be translated, “Don’t provoke them to wrath. Don’t trip them up in the anger category.”
Now, it is not uncommon for there to be a couple of times in a child’s life when anger issues kind of spike.
A child is born, and fairly soon — around the age of two or so — these issues, temper tantrums and so on, sometimes come up.
This is sometimes called the “terrible twos.”
What’s a two-year-old’s favorite word? “No.”
And often this is not the parent’s favorite word when the kid learns that this is their
favorite word.
But I’ll tell you something. The development of a strong “no” is very important to the growth of a human being, because the day is going to come where they’re going to need a real strong “no” —
When someone offers them drugs
When an older boyfriend starts pressuring his teenage girlfriend. “If you really love me, you’ll get involved sexually because that’s what people do when they’re in love.”
When they first get a job and someone tries to get them to cut ethical corners.
When someone else wants to dominate or manipulate them.
All through life, your kids and mine are going to need a real strong “no.”
So when they’re real little, we have to help them develop that.
Now sometimes, they may say it in inappropriate ways. We’ve got to deal with that.
But sometimes it’s a good thing just to ask them questions that they can say no to.
If you’re having dinner together, just say something goofy like, “Is it okay if I eat your
dessert?” and then let them say, “No!” Let them say it strong, and let that be OK.
Then don’t eat their dessert.
||
It’s a good thing for a human being to say “no.” That’s a good thing.
That can be real counterintuitive for parents. Again, it needs not to be mismanaged. You’ve got to put limits to it. But you want them to develop a strong “no.”
||
So around the age of two, anger issues tend to surface in a way that they weren’t there
before. They normally last a year or so — a little longer or a little shorter.
Things generally calm back down.
Then again anger issues tend to spike sometime around the age of 11, 12, 13 or so.
How long does this era tend to last?
About 30 years.
||
No. It comes back down again.
||
But I want to say something about what’s going on, because there’s very interesting research in this area.
There are enormous, not just physiological and hormonal, but also neurological changes that human beings are going through in that era.
||
There’s an award-winning book by Dr. Michael Bradley. He discusses a ten-year longitudinal study at UCLA.
It involved neurologists using MRIs to study thousands of kids, the development of the brain, between the ages of 3 and 18.
And there is some very interesting stuff in this.
This is what he wrote:
“What the researchers found was astonishing, and completely rewrote our understanding of the adolescent brain. Previously, neurologists believed that the human brain was essentially formed by the age of five.”
They used to think once a kid was five, your brain was about done.
“Now they have discovered that the prefrontal cortex, which is the home of emotional control, impulse restraint, rational decision making — sometimes called the seat of
civilization — the prefrontal cortex does not do the bulk of its maturation until between the ages of 13 and 20. That’s when the brain is still, to a large extent, being formed in the most sensitive and adult of areas.
“In other words,” Bradley writes — I’m quoting him directly right now — “what used to be
a sad, quiet joke between Mom and Dad is now being accepted more and more as
neurological fact: Adolescents are temporarily brain damaged.”
That’s what he writes.
||
Now, that doesn’t mean that they’re bad. They’re wonderful. And they’re very exciting and life giving to be around.
What it means is there are real good neurological reasons why adolescence will often be a time of enormous mood swings and radical inconsistencies.
At one time you think it’s a child, and then it seems an adult.
And there will be what appear to be multiple personalities going on in the same body.
There are good reasons for all that. And it will require patience on the part of parents, because there are things going on in the body and neurologically that haven’t finished yet.
So with all this going on, as a parent, do you let kids get mad? Do you let them get mad
at each other? Do you let them get mad at you?
Of course you do. Of course.
That’s a critical part of growing up.
||
Every time there’s an argument or a conflict between me and one of my children, it is an opportunity to teach them about anger management. It’s an important moment. When they get it right — when they’re angry and they express it in appropriate ways.
When they’re, as Paul says, “angry, but they don’t sin,” then you’ve got to affirm them for that. You’ve got to come back to them sometime, after things have calmed down, and say, “Great job!”
Any of you ever say something that makes one of your kids mad and they just roll their eyes? Kids at that age are often professional eye rollers.
Well if, instead of doing that sometime, they get mad, but they look you in the eye.
They stay in the room and they talk to you appropriately, directly about what’s making
them angry, you’ve got to come to them afterwards and say, “That was really good how you handled your anger back there.”
||
Often it’s obvious to us when they do something that makes us feel good — when
they achieve something, get good grades or something like that. Then it’s an obvious
thing to affirm them.
Very often, kids go through their whole lives, and when it comes to anger management, sometimes they get it horribly wrong.
Sometimes, they get it right.
And parents, sometimes, never say a word about when they’re getting it right. Too many parents get so caught up in winning arguments that they forget, “Part of my job is to teach my kid how to be angry in a healthy, God-honoring way. It’s not just about trying to impose my will and win an argument.”
||
Do you ever let kids hit each other? No. Not ever.
Once children are verbal — once they’re old enough to use and understand words — they have to learn that the physical expression of anger is not acceptable. It’s just not.
And we live in a world where exposure to violence is epidemic. And if there’s any going on in your house, it needs to stop. And whatever help you need to get to make it stop, get that help.
||
Do you let kids express anger in disrespectful ways? No.
I’m in settings too often where kids will address their parents with a level of sarcasm, put-downs, name-calling, hostility and outright contempt that is just demeaning, that is appalling.
And that goes on and the parent says nothing. They don’t stop it. They don’t challenge it. They don’t rebuke it. They don’t correct it.
That’s unacceptable.
||
As a parent, I don’t want universal agreement from my kids. I want them to build a strong “no.”
But as a parent, I need to demand consistent civility and courtesy and respect and honor.
The biblical writers are real clear about this. “Honor your father and your mother.”
So let’s at least set the bar there.
I need to coach my kids in this. And I need to treat them in a respectful way.
||
This is sobering, but the single most important way that you or I teach our kids about anger management is by what they see us doing when we get mad.
So during a conflict, especially with your kids, you cannot afford to get into a shouting
match. You cannot afford to spew rage. You’re the parent.
If the temperature starts to get too high and you need to take a time out, take a time out.
If they’re starting to get out of control, and they need to stop it, then you identify that and you stop the conversation.
And you say, “This is a real important subject. We’re going to continue it, but we’re
going to do it when we can discuss it in a calm, respectful way.”
You have to be the one to do that. They’re not going to. They’re not the parent. That’s
you.
One thing my wife says a lot is, “I love you to much to argue with you. Let’s talk about it when you’re not angry.”
Make it your goal to help your child manage this very powerful emotion of anger in
a way that honors and pleases God and sets them up for a life of relational health when
they leave your home.
||
Alright, the next attitude I want to have real clear for my kids is:
Humility
I want my kids to know that they are not perfect.
Writing to the church at Rome, Paul says in Romans 12:3:
Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment.
||
One of our daughters has difficulty telling the truth all the time. My wife and I will often talk to her about telling the truth and how important it is.
One time she asked me, “Daddy do you always tell the truth?”
Instinctively, I responded, “Yes, mommy and daddy always tell the truth.” I wanted her to know that she should follow our example in telling the truth.
It wasn’t until later that I realized I’m violating this value that I want to instill in our kids.
What I should have said was, “Of course I lie. I lie. Your mother lies; that’s for sure. Everyone I’ve ever known lies — every human being that’s ever walked the face of this earth. The most famous story about lying in American history: George Washington cut down the cherry tree. His father asked, ‘Who cut down this tree?’ And George said, ‘I cannot tell a lie. It was me.’ That was in a biography of Washington written by a guy named Parson Weems in 19th century. He made the story up. The most famous story about not lying in American history was a lie.
“Anybody who says they never lie, they’re lying.
“Most of the time your mommy and I tell the truth. But absolutely, we lie and so do you.”
||
I need my children to know that I’m a sinner capable of really messing up? And they are too.
Now, I want them also to know they’re worthy of being valued and celebrated and cherished and encouraged and loved. But they’re not perfect. And neither am I.
||
One reason why this is so important is that if I under-emphasize my child’s propensity to sin, if I pretend like there is no real darkness in them — which can be tempting for me to do because it’s just more pleasant that way — if I pretend like there is no real darkness in them… they know it’s there, and inside, eventually, they’ll begin to think, “If Dad knew the real truth about me, he wouldn’t love me.” And they will learn how to hide.
I have to help these children, whom I love and want to cheer on, to learn the same sin and darkness that plagues the rest of this sorry world is a part of their fallenness, as well as mine, too.
||
And one of the best ways you teach your children that you’re a fallen human being… is by apologizing and asking their forgiveness when you do something wrong.
||
I was disciplining my kids recently for being disrespectful to their mom.
To be honest, I didn’t know the best thing to say in that moment, so I probably said things that I shouldn’t have said.
Later I talked to them and said, “You know, sometimes I don’t know the right thing to say when I want to correct your behavior. I want you to respect and honor your mom. That’s really important to me. But I don’t want to hurt you in the process of helping you learn that. Will you forgive me?”
||
Now, when you do this, don’t over-dramatize it. Don’t make it a melodramatic thing.
Just give a simple, sincere, heartfelt apology: “I’m sorry; please forgive me.”
||
Maybe the single greatest way a child learns to say they’re not perfect is when they have a parent who can appropriately confess and repent.
||
I’ll say one more thing here: Some of you need to do that today. There are some of you sitting in this room, and there’s something wrong between you and one of your children.
You need to go make it right. Make the decision now that you’re going to do it today.
||
Some of you have adult children and you feel like you could do a do-over in some areas of your parenting. Well this is one thing you can do today. Tell your child, “I’m sorry.”
||
Well, those are some of the things that I’d like to have engraved on my kids’ hearts before they leave my house.
And you’ve got to decide about yours.
||
Here’s the assignment that I want to give you.
If you’re a parent and married, do this with your spouse for about ten minutes.
If you’re a single parent — and those of you that are face heroic challenges — I’d invite you to get together with a friend and spend ten minutes on the next steps in your bulletin and ask yourself, “Which of these things do I most need to go after? Which one do I really need to work on?”
Then start pursuing it this week.
Alright let’s pray as the band comes to lead us in a closing song.
