Parenting ~ Heart to Heart

Alane Waters

Tom Waters

Restoration International

God’s Word the Parent’s Guide

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.

Parenting with a Purpose

Tonight, we're going to talk about parenting with a purpose.

Sounds like a starting place, doesn't it?

What comes to your mind when you think of parenting with a purpose?

What kind of purpose do you think of when you think of parenting with a purpose?

That is preparatory for heaven, isn't it?

Because there will be no heaven without that.

We have any purposes for our children here?

If that is happening, if we're really doing that kind of parenting with that kind of purpose.

If they're ready to meet Jesus when he comes, then they'll be revealing Jesus along the way.

But now I want to ask you another question.

And I always like to say this when I'm asking people questions.

I don't ask you questions that I haven't asked myself and we haven't asked ourselves or that the Lord has not challenged us on personally.

So if these are our purposes and they're very worthwhile purposes, then do you go through the day thinking of these purposes in your day-to-day parenting experience?

Because there are a lot of things that take up our mental space during the day.

But if we're going to parent with a purpose, then we need to take these goals or these motives that are in our hearts and we need to start making them a part of our daily life in practical ways, don't we?

If you wanna have a business, don't you have to have some kind of business plan?

You can have the most wonderful business plan in the world, but if you don't start making some practical steps towards accomplishing it in real life, it'll just be a nice plan, won't it?

We need to have these purposes brought into our daily experience because without that conscious plan, it'll be a desire.

And we can go through our lives saying, I sure want my child in the kingdom of heaven.

I'd like to have him ready for the kingdom of heaven.

He's bigger than I am now, and I sure want him to be in the kingdom of heaven.

If there's not a daily working out, a conscious working together with God For this purpose, it won't happen, because the devil will see to it that it gets put off 1 more day.

So we want to talk this evening about parenting with a purpose.

When we were not cognizant, when we were not focused on keeping that purpose in the forefront of our minds, we, like many of you, just found ourselves getting through and surviving day by day.

And it was interesting how many things would come in to take up our time.

And it wasn't just all those things that other people were wanting us to do, or our work commitments or responsibility, or the outreach we had in the church and that responsibility.

I created a lot of wasted time and opportunities because I didn't have a clear purpose in mind.

Yes, we had our children, we want them to be in the kingdom of God, but we never gave it a thought.

And when our children were little, our days and my days at home with them were just chaos.

We covered the basics, you know, but I filled that time and that space with so many other things.

I mean just something to fill time because I mean after all you're just at home with the children and so you Not really a lot to do.

Dad's off to work and he's not going to be home until 4 or 5 in the afternoon.

And you know it's only 10 o'clock in the morning.

And what are you going to do to fill all that space?

Well, let's just go out and see what's on sale.

Thinking of things to do to fill time and space, because the purpose was not clearly in the forefront of our mind.

Well, that's how we started our parenting, by default, not intentionally, but just because it wasn't a clear vision to us.

So we had Allison and we had Emily and they were growing up and we found out that we had a lot of challenges with 2 little infant and toddler that was incredible to us how they could have such strong wills and independence and a resistive spirit.

We talked about it, you know, out there somewhere, on those emotional moments, but we came to find out.

And for many years, once God brought it to the forefront of our mind in a very powerful and impactive way on a Friday evening when the chaos was put to a stop for the sacred hours of the Sabbath to enter.

That evening, God began to change the direction of our parenting Because the reality of coming to realize that the direction we're going, our children are never going to see the kingdom of God.

They're going to know their memory verses and they're going to be pretty good, but they have no Christ-likeness, was a startling reality to us as parents.

And we began at that night to be on our knees humbly before the Lord and asking Him to begin to change who we were and how we parented with our children.

And we can go back to that very evening and at that night say, that is where a very clear direction for parenting with a purpose began.

Now we've had a lot of dips since then, but we've never lost that in our vision.

It has always been there and it continues to be there at the ages of our young people.

And it's been that desire, that hope and that purpose clear in our minds that has brought us through some of the most trying and difficult circumstances in parenting with our own children, through the most trying and difficult circumstances between my husband and I in our marriage, and through some of the most trying and difficult circumstances with others, and the criticism of us for the odd ways that we were not conforming to the standards of the Christian Church of today.

But when we keep God first and we keep the desire, remember that opening text?

1 thing have I desired of the Lord and what?

It is a very clear desire that we are focused on seeking after God, then we begin to see incredible changes in our lives, in the lives of our children, and it has been forever in the forefront of our mind as parents.

So we want to encourage you that tonight, we as parents, and most of us are parents here tonight, keep that purpose clearly before us.

You have your Bibles open to Deuteronomy, the sixth chapter and the fifth verse.

Here is our purpose and this purpose continues to be opening to our hearts as our young people get older and older in their young adult lives.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

Love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, with all of thy soul, and with all of thy might.

That's his whole desire in redeeming us is that we could be restored.

The Book of Romans

Chester Clark

Dalton SDA Church

Romans 9-The Calling

You know, it's been said that the only thing more impressive than absolute power is when absolute power allows freedom of choice.

It reminds me of a story I heard when Jane and I were visiting Amish country.

We were reading about how they were committed to sort of non-violence.

They were non-combatants when drafted and so forth.

And yet sometimes they struggle with this position, you know, of non-violence, particularly with the question of protecting themselves and their property and their homes and their families.

1 Amish gentleman resolved his convictions about nonviolence with his need to protect his family thus.

When an intruder broke into his home, he raised the shotgun, pointing it at the intruder and said the following, 5 seconds hereafter I shall pull this trigger.

I give thee the choice, therefore, whether thou shalt be in the path of this bullet." You see, my friends, today we're going to be looking at Romans chapter 9.

And if Romans chapter 9 is known for anything, it's known for being a chapter where it appears, at least many people see in this chapter, it appears that God, by His own volition, apart from any human choices or decisions, makes arbitrary decisions, even impacting the salvation of souls.

And we find here a number of verses that seem very problematic.

If we just scan through the chapter, we see a section here where it talks about Esau and Jacob, and God choosing Jacob over Esau, even though Jacob was not born first, God said to his mother, the elder shall serve the younger, before he was even born, before he could have had any choices.

God arbitrarily made this decision and as he quotes again here from the book of Genesis, Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated.

This picture of God is picked up by many and I want to be very careful here because I want to be respectful to those, my brothers and sisters in the Christian faith, who read the Bible differently than I do.

I went to seminary in Michigan and there you basically have most of the Protestants in that part of the country are Calvinist or Lutheran.

They're going to be either of the Reformed faith or the Lutheran faith.

And so I had plenty of opportunity to speak with those who believe in the doctrine of predestination.

But those who read this see a picture of God that's different than I see.

They see a picture of God that says, I decide before a person is even born whether they're of the elect or of the damned, whether they're going to be saved or whether they can be lost, whether they're going to suffer for eternity or enjoy heaven for eternity.

We see here also, Paul appeals to the story of Pharaoh and his experience in Egypt.

We see He appeals to the potter and the clay, the symbol of the potter and the clay.

Has not the potter the power to decide what he's going to make of his vessel, whether it will be a vessel unto honor or unto dishonor?

And so These passages have puzzled many people who see in the Bible, it seems, that God gives us freedom of choice, and yet they see in these passages, it seems, that God predestines or pre-elects or chooses who's going to be saved or who's going to be lost.

So that's what we're talking about today.

That's what we're going to be discussing as we study God's Word together.

Let's just bow our heads for an additional word of prayer before we begin.

Father in heaven, today we recognize that our minds are finite and feeble.

Your truth is beyond our comprehension, and yet you say that you would send your Spirit to lead us and to guide us into all truth.

So today, Father, we just confess our need and we claim your promise that you would do as you have said and we ask this in Jesus' name, amen.

Before we begin looking in depth at Romans chapter 9, I want us to discuss something that is I believe very related.

It's a subject which many people probably don't understand very clearly, I want us to look briefly at the subject of the church.

Will you take a few minutes with me, indulge me to talk about the church for just a few minutes?

There are many different words, there are many different meanings to the word church.

When some people use the word church, they're talking about a physical structure.

We are in a church, aren't we, today, a church building.

We might also speak about a congregation, a local congregation, which is a part of a local community of faith.

We are a part of a church here, the church in Dalton, the Seventh-day Adventist church in Dalton.

We might also talk about a worldwide family or community, a denomination perhaps, when we talk about the word church.

We also could be talking about just the idea of the church at large, all the denominations, all the Christian church in a general sense.

So there's many different meanings to the word church.

And I wanna just look at 2 perspectives of the word church with you today for a brief moment.

I want us to think about the 2 perspectives of the word church.

I want us to think of the church as being both a visible body as well as what?

I want you to see this from God's Word today, but I want you to understand the church not only as a spiritual body or not just as a visible body, but as both.

And in 1 sense, under the visible body, we have representation.

Basically, God's visible people, God's visible body, is the group of people God has given the message for that time to give to the world.

Do you realize that in every age there's always been present truth?

In Noah's day, there was a message to take to the world, wasn't there?

In Jesus' day, in the apostles' day, in the reformers' day, in our day, there's a particular message and we can trace that, particularly when we get to the books of Daniel and Revelation talking about our day.

We recognize there's a special prophetic message in the last days to go to the world.

The visible church then, the visible body, is that group of people to whom God has entrusted the message for the hour.

We're going to explore that in a greater detail as we go on.

The spiritual body, on the other hand, is much more intimate.

The spiritual body is actually where we find salvation.

Now which is more important, truth or salvation?

That may sound like a trick question, but I think it's salvation, okay?

I believe that salvation is the most important thing, knowing Jesus.

Knowing Jesus is the most important thing.

But as in the spiritual body, the body of Christ, to become a part of the spiritual body of Christ, we enter salvation.

To enter the visible body, now this is what we can find in the New Testament when people were convicted by the Holy Spirit, they were baptized and in Acts chapter 2 it says that they were baptized and the Lord added daily such as should be saved and the church continued to grow.

Now that's the visible body, the Christian church in Acts chapter 2, they joined through baptism, right?

Now did that mean that every single person who became a part of the Christian church was necessarily converted and a part of the spiritual body of Christ?

Don't We see some New Testament examples of those who are part of the visible body who we have a pretty good evidence were not part of the spiritual body.

You think of Ananias and Sapphira for example.

You think of the situation in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, where Paul says among the church there were sins being committed that weren't even named among the Gentiles.

So clearly to be a part of the physical body, the visible body, does not necessarily mean that we're a part of the spiritual body.

The spiritual body, we become a part of the spiritual body of Christ by the new birth of conversion, birth by the Spirit, born by water and born by the Spirit.

If you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, 2 things are important.

You'd be born again of water and of the Spirit.

So we enter the visible body through birth by water and baptism.

We enter the spiritual body of Christ through entrance by birth in the Spirit through conversion of heart.

Now let's look at some of these verses here.

I want us to just turn to them, so let's look at and see if we can find in God's Word what I'm talking about here.

1 Corinthians 1 and verse 2, we'll begin with that 1.

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All Teachings

God’s Word the Parent’s Guide

59m

Parenting with a Purpose

1h

Romans 9-The Calling

1h

Romans 8 - Living by the Spirit

53m

Romans 7 - Freedom from the Law

52m

Orderliness, Diligence, Faithfulness & Generosity

55m

Patience, Perseverance, Initiative & Mercy

1h 1m

Honesty, Courage, Kindness & Meekness

59m

Self-respect, Purity, Reverence & Gratitude

29m

Cultivating Obedience & Self-Control

1h

The Gardener

59m

Turning Strangers Into Friends

41m

Sound Doctrine