Michigan Camp Meeting 2018: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Parenting in Today's Culture

Alane Waters

Tom Waters

Follow the Leader

Father in heaven, we are thankful for the blessing of a new day, the blessings you've already given us before we got here.

We pray that as we share together in this seminar, that your Holy Spirit would give us direction as we share, that you give us clarity, that we can make the principles come through clearly may you bless each listener as well and these things can be applied to our hearts as parents and grandparents or people contemplating being parents and we thank you in Jesus name Amen.

Okay so today we're going to be talking about follow the leader.

You think it's important to have some leadership in our parenting?

And whether we realize it or not, we are always providing an influence, an example.

And sometimes as we look back, we realize that that may not have been the best or the most intentional parenting.

But we're gonna be sharing this morning to open this up.

Normally what we do is we ask for volunteers of the young people to come up.

We don't have enough because we need about 10 or 12 to do that this morning.

So instead of doing that and letting you see the results of that experiment, we're gonna share with you the results and how it affects our parenting.

So the topic is follow the leader and obviously we invite the children forward.

This is what we do at our family retreats, and we get a whole stage full of children.

And we make it very clear to them that I am the designated leader for the children.

And we ask them, have you ever played Follow the Leader before?

And almost all of them have, and they're all excited because now they think we're going to have a lot of fun, right?

And so anyway, I said, OK, I'm your leader, and I stand there like this with my hands on my hips, but I don't say a word.

And then I turn around, I look at all of them, and then I turn back around, and we wait probably 45 seconds to a minute.

And it's interesting that the majority, probably 90% of the children just stand there looking at me like this.

So in the second thing we're we're asking them to follow instructions and I remind them this is your leader I'm going to give you instructions as to what you need to do.

And then we reiterate who's their leader?

So I say to them, what you need to do is raise your right hand.

Now, you're sitting backwards from me, but you're adult, so you know I've got the wrong hand up.

What do you think most of the children are doing behind me?

Which hand do you think is up in the air?

Because they will tend to follow example more by visually seeing what we do than just, you've heard the old adage, do as I say and not as I do.

Now how many parents really want to live that way?

But that's the way many of us unfortunately live our lives.

We want our children to be very good Christians.

We want them to be God honoring and honoring their parents.

And then the example we often set goes exactly the opposite.

So instead of raising their right hand, and it's interesting to watch the confusion, because when you have the 8, 9, 10, 11 year olds up there, as soon as she says, or I say, okay, raise your right hand, those older children, they immediately do it.

And that is often the kind of parenting that we do.

We say things like this, Don't yell at your brother!

Now, we laugh because we know how human we are, okay?

Or we tell them, you know, children, this is, you cannot, you cannot talk back this way when we ask you to do something.

And then they hear dad come home for supper, and he says something, and mom says, what?

And there we go, mom's negotiating with dad, and the children are going, huh.

Now depending on their age, it's confusing, because I get in trouble when I do that with my sister or if I do that with mom.

But now here's mom and dad, they're actually in an argument.

And unfortunately, that happens all too often.

And then the last example we give with a whole stage full of children behind us is to take their index fingers and I hold up my index fingers, even the little Tiny ones, 3 and 4 years old, point the finger.

They may not know the name, but they see my finger up.

And we have given an example that meets the instruction, and we have 100% cooperation.

So the message this morning is parenting styles.

The first 1 is my husband, or as I mentioned, we just give instructions kind of like follow the leader, you know, I'm the leader and then we don't say anything else.

We assume that because I'm mom or he's dad that they're just going to do what they're supposed to do.

Or the second 1, which is probably more frequent, is we give instruction but do the opposite.

Both of those first 2 styles in parenting bring confusion.

And the confusion happens, and then the levels of stress go up and the levels of irritation rise and then we find more conflict in the home.

So we want to, we're talking about parenting this week in the context of the culture we live in.

And everything in our culture, as you well understand, at least as parents here and grandparents, is that the culture is working against right parenting principles.

And it's not by accident, it's by intention.

And you may not know that as well as we have learned that because we're doing seminars all over the world and this is our life, this ministry of Restoration International that deals with the family, we try to keep abreast of what's happening in the world.

And right now there is an agenda in the United States of America that many people know about that is actively seeking to destroy the marriage and the family.

It is not just that the world is deteriorating, it's doing that too.

It is that there is an intentional design to disrupt the family and create an alternative view of what makes the family.

So in our culture today, parenting principles where we actually give a right example and give right instruction, which would be based on biblical principles, is very unpopular.

And it is very difficult now for parents today to be, the term is politically correct in the lifestyle we live because in our culture today there's the hands-off parenting which we talked about a little bit yesterday and there's also the the idea that we try to do everything possible as parents to make our children happy.

Because that gets interpreted in real life in our culture as you give them whatever they cry for, you give them whatever they whine for, you give them whatever they want, and you give it to them now.

And if you don't, they will throw a fit, which is embarrassing, at Walmart.

But now it's becoming much more acceptable to do that.

You can walk in any store and hear the screaming, right?

I mean, any store where there's moms or parents and kids, if you're in there long enough, you're going to hear 1 of them go off, right?

So this is the culture we live in today, and it goes against The parenting principle, which was number 3, and that is that we give them clear instructions.

Most of what's happening today is happening often by default.

And it's parents that are hoping that their children will do what's right.

But it's not happening because the example isn't being set.

And the child sees, well, I can get away with stuff in Walmart, or I can get away with stuff at Grandma and Grandpa's that I can't get away with other places and they keep testing the boundaries.

So as we look at following the leader, obviously the leader we want to follow is the Lord Jesus Christ, right?

And his word is the foundation of true parenting.

ABCs

Father in heaven, we're thankful for the opportunity to be together here.

We're thankful for the promise that your spirit will guide us and where 2 or 3 are gathered in your name that you will be among us.

We ask for your blessing as we share some more important parenting principles in Jesus' name.

So what do you think of when you think of the ABCs?

Okay, so what do you think the A might stand for in parenting?

Always, see now there's no wrong answers to this, but the ones that we have on the paper are the ones we're going to talk about.

So always, that's good, always being there.

Something that's very necessary in everyday parenting.

So we're not gonna spend a lot of time with this guessing game, but anybody else have an A that might really be important and not always so comfortable in parenting?

Attitude, well that's very good and that's very true.

We're gonna be talking about accountability for the A, okay?

So B, what might be something important for the letter B?

That's not what we have on our paper, but we're going to be talking about it.

Bedtime, though, that's very important, too.

Okay, so we're going to be talking about boundaries.

But we're going to be looking at the ABCs in this topic today because it's very foundational.

And This is an area that in the culture of today, parenting culture of today, is almost non-existent.

Accountability, boundaries and consequences, it's like, Where did that come from?

Well, we're going to go back to the scriptures.

We're going to look at what God says at the beginning of creation, really, and we're going to see how in a perfect environment, with a perfect parent and perfect children, the ABCs were in place.

So, you know, early on in our parenting experience, I would have never imagined that Genesis could be so full of parenting principles.

It's 1 of the reasons that we keep going back and we're doing it again.

This year, Elaine and I are going back and we're reading the Bible through again, along with the inspired commentaries.

And our focus this time is to try to place ourselves as much as possible in that setting.

Okay, now, we'd love to be in the Garden of Eden.

But we're talking about trying to put ourselves, what was this like?

Okay, What was it really like for Abraham to have to wake his son up and take him on a three-day journey?

You know, his only son, and God said, the son that you love, your only son.

And So we want to enter in this morning with some very basic principles.

And these are the best principles because these are between God and His children.

So we're going to be looking at Genesis 2.

So here's the Lord God who is the parent.

And the Lord God commanded the man, who is the man?

The Lord God commanded the man saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat.

And in verse 17, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not eat of it.

So what is this that God has established right here at the beginning?

It's a boundary, it's a clear boundary, isn't it?

You have this entire garden filled with scrumptious fruit, right?

And some we have never probably imagined.

And maybe some we've never encountered, right?

And then he says, you can eat freely of them, anything you want, it's at your choosing, except there's only 1, only 1 tree.

Can you imagine the other options that they had, right?

Only of this 1, I do not want you to eat of it.

There is a clear boundary before There's any wandering around, looking around, doing things, because so often we as parents never establish boundaries, and then we try to enforce boundaries that have never been understood.

So here we see a clear boundary, in a perfect environment and a perfect family.

So then we continue in verse 17, for in the day that you eat thereof, you shall surely what?

So the boundary has been given and before the boundary has been broken, there is a clear consequence that's going to be the natural result of crossing the boundary.

That sounded pretty hard because what is death, right?

I mean, We understand death, but they didn't understand death.

But they understood God, and they understood his direction for them.

If the boundaries broke, then the consequence would be clear.

I wish we had time to go through the whole story, but there's not time for that.

But we're going to jump over to verse 8 now of Genesis 3.

And they heard the voice of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

God the Father in this picture, the parent, if you will, or Christ parenting.

What was something that happened every day in the cool of the evening?

That's right, we're not talking about family time today, but every day, this is something that God did for his new family.

And so on this particular day, he comes in the cool of the evening, and then it says in verse 9, the Lord God called to Adam and said, where are you?

Did God have to do that the other times that he came?

Isn't it interesting, 1 of the first parenting principles we picked up in this was God ask a question.

You know what we do as parents sometimes?

I know what you did and you are in trouble now, right?

I mean, I'm sure nobody else has ever spoken that way to their child, but I have, okay?

Reaching the Heart

So reaching the heart of our young people is vitally important.

We kind of save this till later in the series because it's sort of, of course we need to reach the hearts of our young people, but are we really doing it and how are we going about it?

And so we think of what God asks us to do and it's amazing when he says, my son, give me thine hearts, okay?

He's asking us to trust him enough to have that kind of heart connection that we want with our children.

And God doesn't ask us to do something before he's done something.

He's given everything of value in heaven to redeem us.

And now he's saying to us, I want your heart.

Because if God doesn't have our hearts as parents, it is not possible to give to them the desire for them to give their hearts to us and to God.

Because we cannot give what we do not possess.

If all we have is intellectual knowledge, then it's not enough.

It needs to be a connected experience, and thus it needs to be for our children if we want to bind our hearts to our children and have them trust us enough to be able to have their hearts.

So we've covered several areas already the purpose of parenting right we have to have a goal in mind and we see their steps So some of the things we may say today may sound like, well we heard a little bit about that already, but we're going to reiterate it and strengthen it, okay, as we go through.

Then we talked about follow the leader, you know, we need to be not only being a good example but giving good direction to our children.

And then yesterday we had the ABCs, right?

But anyway, as we talk about reaching the heart, we want to look at 3 areas because on Tuesday's message, Follow the Leader, 1 of the things that we're told in that little paragraph we read was that we were to give love to our children.

And that is naturally spontaneous from us, to our children, to our grandchildren.

But now we want to look at that 1 part and we're going to narrow it down today in this presentation, what does love look like?

We gave several words, several adjectives of what that looked like the other day, but we want to look at that.

Love is time, Love is interest, love is understanding, enthusiasm with our children.

You know, giving our time to our children in today's culture, we keep referring to parenting in today's culture.

We have more time consumed in other relationships outside the home than at any other time in the world's history.

Our phones, which I took mine off and set it over there, our phones, our devices, our tablets, our whatever, have made us so available all the time.

We are so accessible to everyone else in the world all the time.

And yes, these are a tool, and we're not here to disparage devices because they have their place.

But if It robs us of the most important things, and that is giving time to our Heavenly Father and that relationship, seeking first the Kingdom of God, and then seeking to develop and strengthen our marriages and our family.

If it's robbiness at that time, it's got to be dealt with.

So, I'm going to take you back to our daughter, our oldest daughter, Allison.

She got the invitation from our church to lead the youth.

She had a lot of influence upon the other young people in the church.

And so she said, yeah, I'll be the youth leader.

And so I can remember 1 day, I just, this is very vividly in my mind because of what we're talking about here.

My daughter comes to me at my desk and she's all excited about what's been happening in her youth Sabbath school program, okay?

Now I'm just gonna play this out for you very simply and I'm not proud of this but she stands, comes to the side of my desk and I'm in the middle of doing something like I'm always in the middle of doing something and she said, Father I want to tell you about the things that are happening in the youth Sabbath school.

And she's talking to me, I'm not tuning into her, but I'm saying, yeah, you know, I'm interested.

I mean, aren't we interested in those things?

But we were, so I'm in the middle of something.

And she's talking and She suddenly, I mean, she becomes very aware.

Because our oldest daughter, this is how she is, okay?

Each of our, we have 3 children, each of them is different, just as yours are all different.

And my daughter can always tell when I have time for her.

And so I'm trying to do this divided task of listening to her enthusiastically share, and I start to notice that the enthusiasm is kind of going down, okay?

And then the spirit called to me, and this is not an audible voice, but every 1 of us here knows what this is like.

The spirit calls to me and said, give her your full attention.

Just a little bit of a reproof in that tone there, okay?

And I laid down my pen and I turned my chair around and I gave her my undivided attention.

I wished there could have been a video of that part.

I don't want you seeing a video of the first part, okay?

But I wish there could have been a video of that part.

When I gave her my undivided attention, how much time do you think it took?

I tell you, I was inspired By what she shared with me.

I was motivated I was encouraged and she was encouraged because I listened 5 minutes of undivided attention I Mean, that's not rocket science.

But it is Because today it is very difficult to give other things outside of our time and space the real attention that we need and that is a part of real love.

So the expressing love through time and he's particularly talking about time to listen.

So that's an older example but our children need to be listened to when they're young too.

They love to come and tell us all about what's going on.

And so often we listen like my husband illustrated here, he first started to listen.

We continue our tasks, we don't pay any attention, we just kind of go, uh-huh, that's nice, and we just keep, and then we wonder why as they get older they don't listen to us.

We expect them to have their full attention when we're giving them direction or instruction, but we have modeled something different.

So when we talk about showing them love through time, we're talking of 1 of the areas of time we give them is time to listen.

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Series

Parenting in Today's Culture

Follow the Leader

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Follow the Leader

1h 1m

ABCs

58m

Reaching the Heart

59m

God’s Word, the Parent’s Guide

59m

Sound Doctrine