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

ABCs

Reaching the Heart

God’s Word, the Parent’s Guide

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?

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Parenting in Today's Culture

ABCs

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