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South Bay SDA Church

Dan Towar

Patsy Towar

God Fearing Families

Diana Grakov

Parenting with a Purpose

Parenting with an Eternal Purpose

Keith Detwieler

Social Me Me Media

Let's start with Ephesians 5 21 to 25 submitting to one another in the fear of God. Why submit to your own husband? Ask the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife as also Christ ahead of the church and he is the savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the ones be their own husbands and everything. Husbands loved your wives as justice Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her Eess secrets 20 and 33. So of men to love their wives as their own boys. He that love his wife, love himself at 30, nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself and the wife. See that she reverends her husband. Amen. He, he six three children, your parents and the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise that it may be well with you and you may live long on the Earth. Five through seven slaves of be your earth to master with respect and fear. And part that as you would be Christ, obey them not only to win their favor when their to win their favor, when their eye is on you, but like slave of Christ, you in the will of God from your heart. Serve all part as if you are serving the Lord. Not where you can see the authority that Paul has outlined there. It's somewhat uncomfortable words for modern day pop population. And I just wanna say that if it is to work under God, the husbands have to be willing to love their wives. Even as Christ also love the church. That's the condition upon which they can claim the headship in the family. The husband is to represent Jesus and be like him to his wife and to his children. So he's not to be an boulder Lord or a dictator. And when that is taking place, wives genuinely I believe like that. And if it's not place, then they genuinely think that they have to step it up. And then you have a lot of wives who provide this spiritual leadership for, for their family. My mother provide the spiritual leadership for my family. I didn't live up, live, grow up with a father that who mentored me in the Lord. It was my mother that did it and I'm glad she did. But we are called as men to be that kind of person. When I was young in ministry, maybe I'll film miss down cause the next picture is easier to see. But when I was young in ministry, I would work Clay just out a necessity to have bible studies to be a present board meetings in Patsy. Early on she tried to stay up for me, but she was still getting up very early and she had to make a choice. And so she decided to go to bed early, which was really the spiritual choice for her to make so she could get up early enough to have devotions and she would be ready for the children. And it's a good thing you did that. Yeah, pastors keep later hours. I didn't keep early eight hours, but I'd get home after a while and she would already be in bed. I understood why and no problem with that cuz I knew she'd get up early and have devotions and I knew the children were getting up very early and I'd get up early, but not, not quite as early as that. So it works out. I'll let you take the, So our goal in our home was to love Jesus first, the two of us. That was our priority. And then our other thing was to raise our children to love the Lord and to love the Adventist lifestyle. To love the standards that our church sets up and to love God's word. And so I'm just gonna share with you just a foundation this that we had in our home standards. We, we didn't have a TV in our home. We did in the beginning cause someone gave it to us, but we found it controlled our lives. So we got rid of it. Dan was ru making his ministry kind of around it so he could see the news at six 30. So we decided not to get rid of it. And we had a piano. So, and we, we played a lot of hymns in our home. That was the music. If toys come into our home, and I'm just sharing with some of the standards there, the toys did not have jewelry on 'em, you know, either Barbie dolls. And so we made sure that the Barbie dolls, we don't, we didn't want anything influencing them in a negative way and take them down the wrong path. We also did not have a deck of cards in our home. We, I'm talking about bar cards. We did have things like Uno or you know, cards like that. But we really tried to make everything as spiritually go to keep them on track. We loved, we every time there was a church function, it's not because we were pastor's family, we would've done this with her without that. But we loved going to prayer meeting. We took our kids to prayer meeting. We took them in gathering. Do you guys still in gather down here? Christmas caroling in gathering. We took them to that. We took 'em to every evangelistic meeting we did everything. And where there was places where they themselves could be involved actually doing something, we volunteered them. So do special music, read scripture, whatever it took. They were very much involved up front. And then, you know, so they got comfortable with that. And by the way, we had lots of hugs and kisses and we're very close to one another. It wasn't just what I call moving around. But as they got older, we took them on mission trips. We went to Romania, Central America. Every time the church had one, we would do our best to ministry was family, family was ministry. We homeschooled them until the age of 10. We read that in Ellen White's writings at it's best to keep it home until the age of 10. I know some our, our grandkids have, have went longer, but we, we truly got called into the conference office because we were home for little kids. They wanted them in school. So we, you know what I mean? We blazed a trail. At that point it was kind of a new thing. Now it's, it's accepted, but we and our, you know, it's just the way it was. We, we just did all kind of things that brought them closer to Jesus Christ. We prayed, prayed, prayed, we listened, we listened and we listened and we kept the communication lines open. It's the same thing in a church. Family do the same thing. You communicate. If you work together as a teeth, you pray for each other and you listen a lot. And then there's this togetherness. The kids learn piano. We wanted to, we didn't want rock music to come into our home. So we took an aggressive part of action. They both play the piano, one place violin, one place flute. They both played guitar. And it's being carried on into the next generation of grandchildren. So it is a DNA can be changed. We both come from a divided homes. We did not want our home to be divided, so we had to work extra hard. But just the two of us, when you come from a broken home and then to present, to break that generational curse, is that what it's called? So that it can go forward and be, you know, a witness to the Lord and our kids today reflect by God's grace, that kind of of lifestyle. So thank you Paty. We, we have three secrets about this. One big secret that really changed our children from, from early on so we wouldn't have to fight so hard, so to speak. One is that we need to personalize our own and prioritize our own devotional life every day. I guess it was the last class you mentioned about SAB school, maybe you've mentioned it already, but this keeps you on a daily basis. If you follow that, the SAB school lesson, the sad school lesson, it keeps you regular in your own study. Whatever it takes. Just be consistent in your own study. And you'll not only be blessed Sabbath morning like you were today, but you need it day by day. And we all need it. And the pastor needs it too. Not just to prepare for his sermons, which I do a lot of, a lot of, but I need something other than that just to keep me going too. So let's see where the second that personalized. Yeah, the second step is having morning and evening worship. And it gets busy when you have kids. If you have to do it at the table, maybe you're, maybe you're going to work, maybe just the two of you know kids, but you're, everybody's going different directions. You get up early enough so you can spend that that time as, as a couple, especially as a family raising children. Make sure that there's morning worship and evening worship. Our children, my Bible first it comes from this, from this locale. We love it. We just got finished being with our grandkids for two weeks and we learned six new songs, Birds, every single verse, you know, we knew 'em already, but now we know every single verse because this comes from the Nelson's my Bible. First they have visualized songs. This is our grandson Elijah. We did the same thing with our kids, Micah. We did the same thing with our kids. And now we're seeing it repeated. And our grandkids, our our grand, our kids think this is great. We're gonna raise our kids the same way. And so we sing, we read a lesson, we do a memory verse, we have prayer and, and and our own personal, we always have a spirit of prophecy book that we are reading along with the staff school lesson. So that is, that keeps the joy going into the next generation. And there's a beautiful simple secret. Don't bypass this as saying, Oh, that's so simple, how could that do anything? But it has worked for two generations now we've seen it with our own eyes and other people picked it up from Patsy and they, they give us the same report. It is what happened. My story is at five 30 in the morning, I would strive to get up and have my own personal oceans. 20 minutes later the kids are out of their bedrooms ready for the day. I said, Lord, I want an hour. I don't want 20 minutes, I want an hour. And he never, he never corrected that. So I thought, well, I'm gonna have to do something. So I have a Bible I think that you have over there. And what I did is I bought the kids a large print Bible and I had them. Did you realize that in the book of Genesis, there the word God is all over the book. All over that book. I mean God, God, God, God created God bless God saying goodbye. And so I gave the Bible, and this is when they were four and five years old, when they could just make a circle and they circled the word God in the Book of Genesis. And I thought, wow, they're done. I better find something else. So I went to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Sean, and that's my grandson circling in, in my Bible. It's cool to just look back on it. But in the, in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Jesus, Oh, Jesus healed Jesus. Blessed Jesus. Oh, it's all there. And then you go to first, second, and third John. And the word love is just flashed all over those three books. So they, they are circling the word Jesus, circling the word God and circling the word love. Do you think they thought God was pretty good? Oh yeah. And the book, the Bible had those things in it. So that was their first introduction to personal devotions, their first introduction to really learning about Jesus. And they would circle for about five to seven minutes and I would teach them how to pray to hash Jesus into their heart. And then they go on with their day and I can finish my hours worth of devotions. It was a beautiful experience. And it's, and when, when we go to visit our grandkids and I, I sh cut myself short my devotions so I can play with the grandkids. My children, my 44 year old children will say to me, Mom, did you have your personal devotions yet? Okay, I'll get right to that. You know, so they, they, they keep me accountable. But it is, it's well worth it to see it being carried on. Our 14 year old grandson comes up to our bedroom with his Bible and his lesson quarterly and a spirit of proxy book. I have a table, man, I am ready for it. I've got my devotions. And him and his sister sit there and do their devotions right next to me. And we talk about what they have read in the study. You know what, That's what heaven is. That's what heaven is to see the commitment to Jesus Christ. And I, it's, it's beautiful. Yeah. Elijah and Mariah, our oldest 14 and 12 Elijah's preached already. So I think he may be thinking about ministry, but they've given their heart to Jesus. That's the most important part. And it's very beautiful to see. We do a lot of family things together. Here's ASI from a couple months ago. Our oldest daughter, Heidi, is at the piano. Her husband Christian was the junior leader at ASI this year. Of course you can see him at on Wake up with Hope seven o'clock on Hope Channel Monday through Friday. Have you heard of Hope Channel? Wake Up The hope You have to, you have to watch. It's beautiful. You can get on the internet and watch it any time. And we're, you're just about then I won't leave I any questions, but encourage your children to think big about their careers. This is our tree house in the back, our property. And we have a little hum vehicle that Kane is in and Mike is up there. You know, they just love, you know that they, they have an imagination that won't quit. But basically the secret is make a personal ear devotions. Secondly, have morning and evening worship. And the third secret, while they're young getting their own Bible, have them, if they can't even read, have 'em circle the word, the name God and Jesus and love. And they, they identify with the Bible that way. It's the first book they ever read even before they can read their law. Walk With God is, is beautiful from the very start that way. And dream big yourself too. Patsy mentors about a hundred people that want to lose weight and get more healthy. Maybe that's what I should say. And it's really rewarding. And we both working on books. Excuse me, one thing I can say. As a teenager we ran into a lot more challenges. You know, when the kids wanted Be Independent. And one such time happened when Heidi decided that she wanted to have a boyfriend. And we had been teaching the children all along to be in groups to, when you have socialization, you don't couple off. And she kind of rebelled against that. Or she started to, and we said, you're at the age where you could get a driver's license, but if you cannot be matured in your relationships, there will be no driver's license. Heidi loved drive. This is a powwow time. This was a powwow time. And she immediately went back to just group friendships. So there is, there is ways to work through these difficult situations and come out because now they thank us for it. Thank you. That guy was trying to touch my leg in the wrong place, you know? And so just know that, and maybe you've challenged, been challenged to do this. If you have children of your own to to be ill strict and straight at the times when you have to be. You're not a friend, you're a parent. And when you're a parent, you still have to discipline. And our kids come back and they say to us, What do I do in this situation? Which shall I do in this situation? They're asking us for pointers on how to raise their children. So praise God, that's the way it's supposed to be. As we work as a team to raise our children and grandchildren, that's a good, given their heart to Jesus from the time there's three and having worship like that, it just, it does make a difference. This media was brought to you by Audio verse, a website dedicated to spreading God's word through free sermon, audio, and much more. 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