Making God’s Word practical in our parenting

<p>Making God’s Word practical in our parenting</p>

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Restoration International

Parenting ~ Heart to Heart

Alane Waters

Tom Waters

Parenting with a Purpose

God’s Word the Parent’s Guide

Reaching the Heart

ABC’s

Developing Independence

Counting the Cost

It's been such a blessed Sabbath day for so many reasons.

Tonight we want to close this beautiful Sabbath talking about something that is very important to us as parents and important to everyone here, whether you're a parent or a child, a grandparent.

You know, there's an interesting thing that there were many years in my life that I would have said amen to that, because How could you say anything else but that?

It was not guiding me through the difficulties of our early parenting.

You know, we say we are people of the Word.

Because we need the Word of God to guide us in the things that we need to do as parents.

And that's what we want to talk about tonight.

Do you really go to the Word of God to find the answers to the perplexities that you face?

Or in reality, do you do what we used to do?

And that is that we go to the authors that have supposedly gone to the Word of God and we try to glean from what these authors have learned on modern parenting principles.

Where do we go for the answers, for the things that we face in daily life?

Are we going to the popular counselors and leaders of our day in our churches.

I was at a women's retreat listening to a very popular Christian leader.

She was sharing with all the women there, all of us mothers in the audience, the challenges she faced in parenting.

We understand challenges, don't we, as parents?

Things just don't run smooth when they come out of the womb.

We find out very quickly that there's 2 individuals that need to be dealt with, our child and ourself.

And as she began to share some of the challenges that she faced with lying and stealing and depression in her young people as they grew up into their teen years.

She was expressing to the people that they had all these rules in their home and these standards in their home, but their children and their youth kept hitting against them and hitting against them and hitting against them until they were so frustrated as parents.

They finally decided that what they would do was go to a new parenting method.

They decided they would give their children 3 basic rules.

As long as you don't smoke, as long as you don't drink, and as long as you don't commit fornication, the rest is up to you and the Lord.

And I tell you, as I sat there and I heard those words, for those mothers in the audience whose hearts were aching for encouragement on how to face the challenges we have as parents, as mothers, I felt how empty.

We've just discarded the word of God and we've given a superficial, even kind of a, somewhat of a worldly freedom.

And those poor mothers left with nothing solid that they could go back to.

So we need to be careful where we're getting our wisdom and our encouragement.

You know, some people say, and I can remember hearing this more than once, Oh, did you know my child does this?

And of course it's something you don't want your child to do.

And then another mother who also has a child of a similar issues, well my child does the same thing.

This just must be normal childhood behavior.

It is a child who is not in the Lord Jesus Christ.

But God has given us something so much more, and that is through His power, we can raise our children from infancy to adulthood.

Not to be normal children by societal standards, but to be children and youth who have principles, who have a relationship with Jesus Christ, and who put him first in life so that they can have so much more and they can truly experience joy and peace that passes all understanding.

You know 1 of the things that we began to recognize and over the years we've listened to people share and we've observed that many times the problem that's happening in parenting is that life is so busy, and everybody can relate to that, okay?

Life is so busy that we really don't have time to be parenting from the Word of God.

That really what's ended up happening is that, and this is not how it is for us today, but it's how it used to be, especially in the early years of our parenting.

Life was so pushed and there was so much going on that all we did is try to maintain and put fires out as they happened.

That when a crisis arose in the family, we deal with it.

We had to deal with it because the children got loud enough, they got whatever enough, that we had to deal with it because it was right there face to face with us.

This is not what God is calling us to do.

Today our children, for many years, our children have been so important to us that they have had the first place under God in our marriage.

And not that we haven't made many mistakes, and not that we haven't had to struggle with our own busyness and the push of life, But we recognize that we couldn't just let our children grow up like weeds in a garden.

How much work do you put into growing your weeds in your garden?

Anybody here have a really tough time with it?

The weeds just come up and you have to work and pray and cultivate those other things to come up that you want to come up right?

We don't want our children to just happen and all of a sudden like many people that I talked to today, they've grown up and they're not ready, They're not prepared.

I wish I would have taken more time for them.

I wish I would have put more energy into them.

So If you find yourself today just letting your children grow up, just meeting the challenges when they happen, and then the rest is just maintenance, please don't.

You can make a commitment to God that that is going to change and God will give you the grace to change it.

So tonight we want to challenge you as we ourselves have been challenged and we want to encourage you as we have been encouraged that there is only 1 source that we can count on for wisdom and direction in life, and that's the word of God.

It has the answers to every problem we face.

Especially if that praying wife goes inside the cover of this book.

There's 2 verses that we'd like to share with you kind of to begin this evening.

Isaiah 40, chapter 40 and verse 8, it says, the Word of God standeth forever.

That means the Word of God is never outdated.

Everything that's written, whether it's in the book of Genesis or the book of Revelation, every page in between, is current for our needs today as parents.

Every word that's there is there to guide us, to encourage us, to direct us, to help us to understand how we can raise our children for the Kingdom of God.

And then the words of Christ himself in Matthew 24, verse 35, he says, heaven and earth will pass away.

Those things are temporary, but my word shall not pass away.

Because It's not really what's happening today in Christianity.

And I don't know how it is in the church where you're attending, but I tell you there are many people today that are facing a crisis in Christianity.

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Series

Parenting ~ Heart to Heart

God’s Word the Parent’s Guide

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

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1h 15m

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1h 4m

The Church of the Living God

39m

Hid in My Heart

Hid in My Heart- Part 2

45m

Jessica Trinh Weekend

The Desire of Ages

39m

Help From Above

1h

Restoration 2025: Revelation Speaks Life

Prevailing in Prayer: Lessons from Bold Prayers with Dramatic Answers

52m

Seeking His Face: Without the Veil

38m

Filled by God's Spirit

01 Filled by God’s Spirit

50m

The Blame Game

50m

Sound Doctrine