Michigan Camp Meeting 2019: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Teach Them Diligently

Cinda Osterman

Teach Them Diligently - Part 1: Morning Time with Jesus

Teach Them Diligently - Part 2: Learning the Joy of Obedience

Teach Them Diligently - Part 3: Each Thought Counts

Teach Them Diligently - Part 4: Chores Done with Heavenly Zeal

Teach Them Diligently - Part 5: Changing the Selfish Heart

Lord, please give us a, just encourage us and inspire us to be diligent to do your work and to go where you command us to go.

And Lord, as speakers, help us to speak the things that you want us to say that would light a fire in the homes of our of our friends and our family here.

And I pray, Father, that you would be glorified, not only now, but in our children as the years go by, that we would see the fruit and that we would have all of our family in the kingdom.

Now, as parents, we all have experienced what we call the joy of obedience.

It usually comes after 1 of those intense struggles that we had.

The Lord has called us to surrender, and we know we should, but we just are having a hard time.

At the end of the battle, when we surrender to Him, we always have that joy of obedience.

And that's the type of joy we want our children to have, and it's always going to be experienced with battles.

So you have to know that for them to have that joy of obedience, there's going to be a battle first.

But once they experience it, they will understand the joy of it as well.

Many parents are not seeing this type of obedience.

Instead, they're seeing a lot of disobedience, defiance, and they're wondering why.

I watch other people and their children seem to obey.

For me, I felt like it was because I did not really understand Proverbs 22, 6, when it says, train up a child.

I understood the way that the child should go, and that was in the character of Christ, but the training I was lacking.

So I always look for mentors in my church and when I didn't see them I got on my knees and I just said, Lord train me, teach me.

I want to have righteous girls, so just show me what it is I need to do.

And that's what I'm sharing with you is what God has showed me and each 1 of us are sharing that we're the same people.

We get on our knees and we just ask God to show us we are not better than any of you.

We have our same struggles that you have, but we just know and all of you have the same thing.

We have a God that's mighty and powerful and he's able to change us and change our children.

In Fundamentals of Education, there's a statement that talks about the 2 phases of child training.

It says there's a time for training children and a time for educating youth.

The training which Solomon enjoins is to direct or instruct.

And I color-coded this so it would be a little bit easier to follow.

So directing and instructing happens during the time that we're training our children.

Educate and teach, this is happening at the time that we're going to be educating our youth.

And we want development, the cultivation of God's character in the lives of our children.

And this can happen during the child training stage and in the educating our youth stage.

So what age is considered a child or youth?

Among the Jews, the 12th year was the dividing line between childhood and youth, desire of age of 75.

So training children is the ages of 0 to 12, So the intensity of your child training is going to be the strongest at 0 to 12.

You're still going to have some training as they move into the teens, but not like you're going to have in those child ages 0 to 12.

And then we move into the intensity of education, and that's going to be between those 13 and 20-year-olds.

And that's where we still have some of the training, but a lot of education has taken place here.

So what does training and educating phases really look like?

1 of the first lessons a child needs to learn is the lesson of obedience.

Before he's old enough to reason, he may be taught to obey by gentle, persistent effort the habit should be established.

So this training session time is for obedience until it becomes a habit.

And the educating youth part, it says as soon as he's capable of understanding, his reason should be enlisted on the side of obedience.

So in education, we want to enlist the child's will that they choose obedience and because it's right.

And if you want to go into depth, but I don't have time here, I'm actually on Vimeo.

You can just type in my name, and I have several videos on there you can watch on how to enlist the child's will.

There's 3 ways that I use when I was working with my children.

But we are, I am there so you can find me if you want to go into, because this is a little beyond our scope here.

So in the training session at this stage, the child is learning obedience.

Not the whys of obedience, just obedience.

So we're going to be directing and regulating the child, telling the child what to do, and it's going to be by gentle, persistent effort and earnest effort to teach them to obey, obey, obey, like I said, until it becomes a habit.

So in this stage, lots and lots of parenting control.

So we're helping the child to learn to obey.

Once we have obedience, we can move into the stage of educating our youth, and this is where we're going to start bringing the reason of that child into our child training.

And that's why I had children that would come to me and say, I have sinned, would you discipline me?

It's because I have brought them to that point where I have enlisted their will into this obedience.

So it's explained the why's, it's obedience is developed by educating.

Now we can start education if a child has not first learned to obey.

Education is for the purpose of knowledge, how those cause and effects work so our child can apply this information in other areas of their life.

And if you train them right, and they have these principles, they will use them all their lives.

And as we go through, and we give those practical illustrations of how to do these things, you'll see how that actually works.

Now in the education phase, our children are starting having their own self-control.

We're supposed to be self-controlled Christians, that we can come to the Lord and make changes in our heart because of the way the Lord works through us.

And that's what we're going to take our children through.

1 day they leave our home and our children need to learn how to be righteous.

And I always look at it as a pyramid that if we're faithful and we do lots and lots of training in this child phase, then our children will really experience that joy of obedience.

And then we can move into that education phase where we can spend a lot of time reasoning and educating and telling them why.

And when we do it right, this is 1 of the most exciting stages at all because a lot of that discipline you've been doing constant and constant and constant lifts up.

And then you get to enjoy your children when you think, is this ever going to get better?

If not, there is something you will reap from it.

But when we are at this stage and we really, our children are doing this, we have the hearts of our children and our children's goal is always to please the Lord.

That's what they want to do and please the Lord.

There's a statement that somebody I found years ago.

And it's from Moments Together for Living What You Believe.

And it says, some boys were tempting a young lad to pull a prank with them.

They said, oh, you're just afraid because if your father finds out, he might hurt you.

And the boy looked back at the others and he said, no, I'm afraid if he finds out, it'll hurt him.

And that's what we want from our children, that sin is something they don't want because it's hurting us and it's hurting their heavenly father.

Many families are not training children and educating youth.

Series

Teach Them Diligently

Teach Them Diligently - Part 2: Learning the Joy of Obedience

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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The Sanctuary

01 The Sanctuary: Designed for Eternity

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Stop Worrying, Begin Living

3 - Squabbles and Emotional Quiet

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