Seven Points for Child Rearing

Mr. Darris McNeely

Sermon Transcript

February 9, 2002

Seven Points for Child Rearing

You have all probably heard the story of the minister who when he was young and just starting out without a family said that he gave a sermon, and he had seven points on child rearing, but no children. The same minister years later changed that sermon around after he had seven children, and he said he had seven children and no points on child rearing. I was like that at one time. My wife and I went on to have children. We didn’t have seven, we only had two. Two boys. One is now 26, the other is 23, and both grown. When I was young I did have seven points on child rearing and no children. Today I still have seven points on child rearing but only two children. So what I would like to do with you this afternoon in my time is to talk about some lessons I have learned about rearing children, and working with children over the years in the ministry. Because I still have seven points, and if time permits I will get through all seven of them her this afternoon. But I have titled this sermon, "Seven Things I Wish I Had I Had Understood Before I Had Children."

I realize this is always an interesting topic to get into. It can be kind of like a swamp. You can walk into it and you can get stuck in the mud. Alligators are in the swamps as well, and alligators can clamp down on you and kind of grab you by the ankle land drag you under as well. So I realize you can really open yourself up in this particular way. But I am going to plunge in anyway where some fear to tread and give a sermon here to you on some of the things I have learned over the years.

You have probably heard some of the sayings about children and comments that people have that reflect certain attitudes. One saying goes, the only perfect parents are those with no children. And I have met a few of those over the years. They have all the answers, but they haven’t the practical experience. And you know there are only two ways to travel, first class and with children. When you have had that experience you understand what I am talking about as well.

One of the things that I wish I had understood before I had children which I think would have made a big difference in a lot of things is this first point. With children, brethren, we are only custodians. I wish I had fully understood that the way that I might understand it today. We all know what a custodian happens to be. Someone who cares for property, a building — something that really isn’t his. A custodian takes care of something for someone else. And when it comes to children, if we understand that, it changes our whole frame of reference. With children, we are really custodians. Because when it all is understood, children are not really ours.

Now turn, if you will, over to Psalm 127. Let me illustrate or back that statement up with what God tells us in Psalm 127. This is a psalm that I know at one time we used to sing in one of our hymns. I don’t know if we have it in our hymnal today. I don’t believe we do. But we have sung this as it was put to music at one time in the past. Psalm 127, beginning in verse 3. It says, Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord. They come from God. They are a heritage, or as we used to sing, I believe, children are a gift from God, the eternal. The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed. They shall speak with their enemies in the gate.

Here we are told a very important principle. Very simple, yet profound in the way it alters and should structure our outlook when it comes to children, the children that we have, that we bear. That is, that they come from God. They are a heritage from the Lord. God gives us children. And if we understand that brethren, if we start from that point of understanding, it changes many ways and things that we say, things that we do, and the way that we approach our children. You see, God designed humanity. God designed marriage. God designed sex within marriage to procreate and to express the deepest feelings of love and affection between a man and a woman. The children that come as a result of all of those are also a part of the process of God’s creation. And if we frame our reference in that, we will take great care how we treat our children, how we treat those that God has given to us. We will have them when we are ready. We will have them in their proper time. Think about that. If everyone approaching the idea of having children would recognize that they are a gift from God to be given within the proper restraints, the proper confines, the proper configurations of God’s plan, i.e., marriage between two adults, between a man and a woman within a committed relationship that has been sealed and set before God. At a time when two people are emotionally, and hopefully even financially prepared to take on the responsibility of children. All of those things are so important to prepare one for the responsibility. But having that as a framework sets a philosophy toward family and life that really is God-centered. I have come to appreciate that over the years. I have come to understand that. My children, my two sons, are grown. They are young adults at this point in life. But I wish I had understood that a little better before I had my children. I think it would have probably prompted me to be a bit more diligent in certain areas, more circumspect in some of the things that I said and the way that I handled certain situations, perhaps a bit more diligent, and hopefully even a better parent that what I might have been and the way that we were. I think brethren if we can all appreciate that children are a gift from God, and we are merely custodians, and when the time comes that children reach the age that it is time for them to leave the house, to go to school, to start their own family, to go off and to have their own career, we will have laid the foundation, we will have prepared them to enter adulthood responsibly, maturely, at the right time, without certain dependencies, without certain quirks or other problems perhaps that are a part of some of the family situations that we might have as well. But I wish I had known that they were to be something that was considered as a gift from God. That might have helped a great deal. It certainly is something that we should all understand when it comes to dealing with our children.

A second point that I wish I had understood of children before I had them, and if I say before I had them, understand that I recognize brethren fully that my wife had the children. I don’t want to have to deal with that later on. I give her full credit, so understand if I speak in that sense that I fully recognize that she went through the pain of childbirth, and she had the children, but together we did our best to raise our children as well.

Point number two. I wish I had understood that you never really stop raising your children. You never stop raising your children. This is something a very wise member told me, maybe 15 years ago in one of my congregations that I pastured. This gentleman had raised his family, and had grandchildren and great grandchildren at that point, and was considered a wise member of our congregation. We were talking about families one day, and he made that statement to me as he was talking about his own children. He said, you really never stop raising your children. And I have always remembered that. And understanding it from his perspective, I recognize the truth of that statement. Now children grow up, they become young adults, they leave home, and they start their own families. That is true. And there is a time, as every parent recognizes, when children come to a point where you do not necessarily control their life as you did when they were younger. They become older, hopefully mature, but we all recognize at some point, sometimes we are maybe a little bit behind the curve as a parent and we try to exert ourselves with them past the time and we are maybe brought up short. But we all recognize there comes a time when they are adults. And no matter what we say, they are going to do what they want to do. They are going to have their mind, they are going to go on with it, and the sooner we recognize that, back off, give them their space, recognize it, the better probably the relationship is going to be. But that doesn’t mean that we have stopped raising our children. That means merely that they have grown to a point where they are becoming independent entities away from the home, maybe out at college, or out in their own life and responsible for themselves in so many other ways, and we are not supervising their daily activities and their comings and goings. And we learn by wisdom that it is better to just hold back what we might say. We go through all of that and we cycle into a different phase of life. But the reality still is there that we are their parent. We are their mother, their father. And in a sense, we are still exerting some influence whether we realize it or not. And we still have an involvement in their life. We are going to be setting continued examples for them. And though we may think, and they may say even that they are not listening to us. Or that in reality maybe we have done all the bulk of our child rearing, if there is a relationship there, as long as we live we are going to teach them by example. And in one way or the other, they are going to still be looking at us, watching us, and hopefully even learning certain things from us as we go through and into different phases, become grandparents, go through other situations and other issues of life. Maybe illnesses, and changes. And how we handle those is still setting an example, is still teaching them. Our role as parents continues on. And that is something that is very important. We continue as a parent to impact our children as long as we live. And I think if we have that understanding and have that approach, and it is something that Debbie and I have talked about and realize that we still, though our children are both out of the house, they have their own families, they have their own lives now, we recognize it is still important that we are involved in their life. That we pick up the phone and call them. That we have them into the house, that we visit with them. And fortunately we are still able to do that because they live near our home, and we are still involved. One of our sons attends with us there in the United Indianapolis congregation. And the relationships go on. There are different levels. But we recognize how we handle their decisions and react to what is going on in their life is still a part of parenting. Is still a part of the whole process that we began when we brought them into the world and had them as children. And we continue to grow and exercise those responsibilities. There is something about that.

In 2 Peter 3, we go to this verse and we talk about it in regard to our development as Christians. 2 Peter 3:18, Peter ends the second letter by exhorting his people, and for all of us, Grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and forever. Growing in grace and in knowledge is a continual part of our Christian life. Apply that to your role as a parent, and continue to grow as a parent, continue to develop as a parent. Hopefully a good parent will continue to grow even after we have made our mistakes. You know I, Debbie and I, just like so many of you, we can all look back at how we raised our children and wish we had maybe done this at this particular age, or wish I had handled this a little bit better. We all have our regrets. I don’t care how effective and good a job we have done, everyone has their regrets. But the point to this is to not languish over anything from the past, but to learn from that. And to recognize that there are still opportunities to impact and to influence and to have a relationship and to work with our children. I think a good parent continues to grow in understanding of that relationship and of the dynamics that are there. Hopefully you can become a source of wisdom when they begin to raise your grandchildren, as so many of us have that opportunity these days for whatever reasons, we tend to have a very much of a hands on opportunity with grandchildren and can learn certain things, and perhaps do things a little bit better, or whatever, as grandparents. But you never stop raising your children. And with your young children you recognize that as you move on through the various phases of life.

Another [third] point that I wish that I had understood better as a parent starting out in life is that despite my best intentions I would repeat some of the mistakes that my parents made with me. You know, there is an old saying. The river rises no higher than its source. And applied to life that is true in many areas. On some things, however, that is not true. And I do think that the calling that God gives us, the knowledge that he opens our minds to understand once we are a part of the Church of God, as it affects all parts of our life, gives us all the opportunities to rise a little higher, perhaps, than our source and looking at it in our families. I think that is what conversion and overcoming is all about, the chance to make a better life and to learn from mistakes. And I know that many of us have. But you know, on the other hand, as I say despite my best intentions, I would repeat some of the mistakes that my parents made. How many of you have found yourselves at some point in your lives — usually it is us men, we get this pointed out to us by our wives — we find ourselves after some issue or some episode in the family, and the wife will say, "You sound just like your dad."

Sometimes we might say to the wife, "That reminds me of something your mother would have said." We have all probably experienced that. I knew my father and we had a relationship, and my mother and all. And yet I have gone through all of that in my own life. And I have recognized that despite my best intentions I have made some of the same mistakes with my sons that my dad made with me. On the other hand, I also made some of the positive contributions that he made with me as well.

My father was a mechanic. For a number of years as I was growing up he ran a Texaco service station. We called them service stations back in those days. You had full service, you washed the windshield, checked the oil, added air pressure to the tires, and whatever else was asked by the customer. It was a couple of blocks from our home, and so I grew up more in the environment of my dad’s service station there than anyplace else. And to this day, I am not a mechanic. I can change the oil, I can change the tires on the car if it is flat, and things like that. But I couldn’t tear an engine apart and put it back together to save my life. I didn’t learn some of the finer points of mechanics. One reason was I wasn’t that inclined. Another reason was, just to be honest, my dad was not a very good teacher of some of those things. Now we would work together on various jobs at the station. My dad knew what to do and he could do it. But he had a very low tolerance level for teaching and making mistakes. In some of my fumbling and bumbling I might make a mistake, or frustrate him. Or he might make a mistake himself. And he just wasn’t a very good teacher. He would kind of just throw the wrench down and get up and walk away if a mistake was made. It would end in kind of a frustration there in some ways. And so I learned to stick to pumping gas, wash the cars, change the oil, those things that were pretty simple, and if it was beyond that whatever I wanted to pick up was available, but not much else. To this day in our family there is a joke that the McNeely boys are not very good mechanics. They learned how to change a tire the hard way, and other things that I didn’t necessarily pass on and teach them because of some of the same proclivities that were there as well. My dad was not very good at practical craft-type things around the house. Nor was I. Enough to get by in one sense. But those things were not a part of his particular interests, and it kind of passed on to me, and I see that as we kind of passed on certain habits and traits to my own sons. On the other hand, on the positive side, my dad had a really strong work ethic. He was out the door before six every morning to open the doors, to take care of the early customers that needed their trucks and vehicles gassed up on the way to their work. He would work late. He would work seven days a week to build a business like he had, and into the night. My aunts tell me that I have the gait or the walk like my dad did. Whenever a customer would drive onto our lot, he would kind of half run to wait on them. He was right there, in other words. I tend to have the same thing. He had a very strong work ethic, and he passed that on to me. And on the positive side, we passed that on to our children as well. We tried to set that example as well.

So you get the good and the bad in many ways. And again, in spite of your best intentions, we all repeat as parents some of the mistakes that our parents made with us as we were growing up. That just seems to be one of the frustrating inevitabilities of life. And we have to understand that and appreciate it. And despite whatever it might be that we are talking about in terms of habits, personalities, or characteristics, or whatever, one of the biggest things for us to learn is to eventually choose to look at our past, and to glean the good from our relationships and the type of upbringing we had and also passed on, and for the most part for most of us I believe there is a lot of good. And it is always much healthier to look at those positive things, to dwell on those, because they make us better people. They give us a more positive outlook to our life, to our own situation, to our past, and to the future we are building and making within our own families. And it makes us better people. And when we can do that we can move on.

It follows the principle that the apostle Paul said here in Philippians 3, as he talked about letting go of the past and moving forward with a positive approach toward the future. Philippians 3:13. Paul writes, Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended. But one thing I do, forgetting those things that are behind, and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Just apply that in a sense to some of the ways that we look at our past, and especially in our family situations. Sometimes there are some bad situations that we may come from. And at some point we have to accept responsibility for our life and where we are and our actions, and stop being affected by the events and the people of the past. That is part of maturity. That is a whole other subject, I recognize. There is a time to let it go, there is a time to move on. There may be some type of crisis or situation that will help us go through that period. But by and large, brethren, it is far better to forget those things which are behind and to move ahead. And so we all have our images and our memories of our past. The past we didn’t have so much control over, let’s say, in the homes in which we were raised. And we all have our memories of the homes that we created for our children, especially those of us who are older whose children are now gone. And we remember the good things, and hopefully we dwell more on the positive things. But it is far better, I think, to remember it that way and to move ahead. And then take responsibility always for setting a positive example and doing the right things with ourselves, with our children, and then with our families on into the future. When we can recognize that we have learned a very important principle of human dynamics, human behavior, and I think rooted firmly in what Paul is talking about here in letting the things from the past go and moving forward.

Another [fourth] point that I wish I had understood before we had children was the true cost of raising a child. I wish that we had understood the true cost of having children. Now I am not talking about the financial costs. My, had I understood that we would have never had children. You can never afford children. You can’t afford to get married. Sometimes you can’t afford to breathe. I am not necessarily talking about he monetary costs. We had some friends that we went to college with, and they married a year or two before we did, and they moved out to an area, and interestingly we followed and our first assignment in the ministry was in the same church area. And we continued the friendship. I remember we knew them there for a couple of years, two or three years at that time. And he was in to his career, and she wanted children, and he wanted to get the house paid for. He wanted to get the cars paid for, and get his boat paid for, and do all of these things before they had children. And I can remember I could see that being a source of frustration that was building. We eventually separated as you do over the years, and this has been 27-28 years ago. Debbie and I have always wondered, whatever happened to those two? I wonder if they ever had children. Because from his point of view they couldn’t afford children during those early years that we knew them. And she desperately wanted children. And we have always wondered if they ever had them. As long as you approach it that way, you may never come to that point.

I remember a few years ago seeing some study that tried to estimate the cost of children over a lifetime of raising them, and it was something like $180,000, or whatever the cost of a child was. I don’t know how the figures are arrived at sometimes. It is a lot of money. If you have two, three, or four children, pretty soon you are talking about serious money that is going to be going out the door for children. But that is not the true cost.

The real cost is time, your time as a parent. And I understood that, because I had read the books, and I had heard the sermons on child rearing. And I understood it. But I didn’t really understand it, as probably most of us don’t really. I wish I had understood the cost of time. Children require our presence, our attention. They require us to be, as Dr. Laura Schlessinger is fond of saying, our kid’s parent. So many women say, I am my mother’s kid. We are the parents of our kids, nobody else. They need us. They need our time.

In Isaiah 64 there is a reference that God makes to his working with us as children in a spiritual sense. It is instructive. Isaiah 64. The example that God uses here of working with us as a father, verse 8, and he says, you are the clay. Isaiah 64:8. It says, Now O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, and you are a potter. And all we are the work of your hand.

A few years ago in one of our publications they did an article, the author went through a potter’s shed. Some of you may remember this years ago. And the whole article was built around how a potter works to make pottery, to build on this analogy and illustration of how God works with us spiritually. One of the points I remember from that article is that it is very important for the potter as he worked with a wet lump of clay he would put it down on the wheel that turns that lump of clay through the process, and the potter had to put his hands on that lump of clay to shape it into the bowl, the vase, whatever it was it was going to become. And as that wheel turned at a very high rate of speed, if you have seen the pictures you know it is going around quite fast, the point was that the potter had to always keep his hand on the clay in shaping it to the point that he wanted it. If he took his hand off, the speed at which that wheel was turning would just throw that clay off in various directions, misshapen, and just throw it eventually off the wheel itself. The potter had to keep his hands on it to work it and shape it into what he wanted. The principle being that God works with us. Tie it to a child, and our role as a parent working with our children is a completely hands on duty and job. All the time, our hands, because those hands are shaping the clay. Your hands are shaping your son and daughter’s minds. And if somebody else’s hands go on, they are going to shape it too. If it is a babysitter, if it is the grandparents, if it is some detached daycare person, they are going to be shaping that child. That is inevitable. I recognize the issues, and I can hear the stories, and I know the reasonings that we go through, and that parents do go through today to justify a child being raised by someone else. I am not going there this afternoon. All I am illustrating is that it is a hands on job. And in those formative years, they are being shaped by somebody. They need to be shaped by the parents. And it is a high cost, high-impact duty and responsibility.

Being a human does not automatically qualify us to be a parent. We can produce a child, but it takes a dedicated effort to become a good parent. We have to work at that. We will make our mistakes, but we have to work at becoming a good parent. And that is something in some cases we will find ourselves working against a large tide of culture in today’s world.

In 2 Timothy 3 the apostle Paul described our time and our age. In 2 Timothy 3 he uttered a pointed prophecy here in verse 2. Speaking in verse 1 of the last days, perilous times shall come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters…and he goes on. But just look at the first phrase. Men will be lovers of themselves.

This would be a characteristic of the time, the last days, as he says. Is that a characteristic of our period and our time today? Do we focus on the self? Are we encouraged to take care of our own interests, our own needs? So much of the time we are, and it is so much a part of our culture. In the seventies I can remember that being more of a blatant part of the cultural medium that we grew up in. It is still here. It may have been softened by other trends and other issues that have come and gone. But it is still very much a part of our times, being a lover of our own selves. And when we bring a child into the world and we become a parent, that requires the biggest commitment in our life to someone else. And the true cost is of our self. The true cost is of our time and our life and of our self, in subjugating that to the interest and to the needs of another entity that we have created. And to a second one, and perhaps a third one that comes along. And that is a challenge for some. It requires a great deal of effort. I know, brethren, one of the reasons I gave this sermon in my congregation and I share it with you here this afternoon, is just seeing a need for us to focus on these principles, this concept from a Godly perspective again, to blow the dust off of some of these concepts, and to refresh them in our minds, to think about them and to talk about them is an ongoing need. To understand this again from God’s perspective, and what the true costs are. Truly effective parenting requires us to give up a part of ourselves. And that is a challenge, to learn how to do it wisely and effectively.

We had a young couple in our congregation at one point and one time. They had their first child, and they just doted on this boy. They loved this boy. And he was the center of their life, as so often is the case. And I remember talking with him one time, and as we do, you inevitably come up with the question, well, when are you going to have another child? It was a part of the conversation. And I remember that bringing him up real short. And he kind of looked at me, and he said, oh, my wife and I cannot even think of having another child. Not because biologically they couldn’t. But because they had made a decision that this was the only child they could love. And they couldn’t begin to think in their mind of loving, and taking the love they had for this one child, and dividing it with another child, or a third child. They just couldn’t conceive in their mind, they had so much love. And I thought about that. I thought, that’s a bit strange. I never thought that way when we had the second child. I had never heard anybody else talking like that, that you could only love one child. You had so much love for a child that you couldn’t think of loving a second or a third child. I have come to think and realize over the years that really the love they had was a selfish love. It was more on themselves than it was on the one child. And it was turned around, it was mixed up. Loving a new creation compels us to turn our attention to the other. And as we recognize, a child requires enormous amounts of focused attention. More than a lot of us are able to give. And it is so important to be able to do that. Raising a child, as they say about old age, is not for sissies. It takes a dedicated commitment. And it is so important that we go through the effort to do that. Sometimes even making sure that we get our own vanity and our own self out of the way. To make sure that what we want our children to be, if we want them to be something that we are proud of, we need to be sure our motivation is not just for our own self to have something that we can be proud of, but because it is what is going to be best for that child, and best serve that child’s interest as they mature and develop into individuals, not just to be kind of a trophy for ourselves. Sometimes an approach to child rearing is that we are kind of raising trophies to hang on the wall to make us proud. We need to be careful when we have that approach, certainly we want to be pleased with their behavior, and be well pleased with them. But pride can sometimes trick us. And it might be focusing more back on what we want rather than what is best for the child. But the true cost of raising a child, brethren, is far more than the monetary aspect. Although certainly in today’s age and world we want to be able to afford the children that we do have, and not have more children than we can truly afford. But the ultimate cost is in time. And we need to be sure that we count the cost and are willing to give that as we move through those areas.

I understood that again academically, and like everyone else I had my jobs and work in the ministry. I wish I had taken more time to do certain things than I did. But again those are things that you look back on in hindsight.

Another [fifth] point that I wish I had understood was how challenging it would be to pass on the truth of God. I wish that I had understood how challenging it is to pass on the truth of God in today’s world. Now again, I had been raised in the church. My wife had as well. We both knew from our own experiences the challenges of accepting the truth, going against the tide of peer pressure, and the difficulties of the teenage years. We lived through those ourselves, so we knew them firsthand ourselves. When we began to have a family and to teach them, we recognized it was going to be a challenge. As two parents in the church, we wanted our children to follow in our footsteps in the faith that we believe. And so we did all that we could. We read them the Bible stories, talked to them about the Bible, etc. And when they are young you have got a captive audience. And you begin to see as they grow older that other interests and other things begin to come in, and you have got a lot of things that you are working with.

Here in Deuteronomy 6 we always go back to this verse as a foundation of our scriptural teaching of our children and recognize the mandate God has given to us as a church, as families, to pass on to the next generation the truth of God. It is rooted right here in what God says in Deuteronomy 6, beginning in verse 4. We could read here from verse 4 through verse 9 in this section. God says, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, you soul, with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house, and on your gates. This is the foundational scriptural area for us to go to understand how God expects us to pass on the truth. Very powerful verse. Notice in this that the duty is primarily upon the parents. In your house, when you sit in your house teach them diligently…when you walk by the way…when you lie down…when you rise up. The duty is on the parents, the ultimate responsibility. The church has a place to provide its role as well. But I hope we all understand, brethren, that is merely an assistance role. The primary duty is with the parents, it puts the responsibility there. We must truly live it at home, when we sit around the table, when we are there. I have had people tell me, and even since I have given this sermon I have had people tell me how growing up in the church, the family because of the dynamics and the structure and the way it was, was taught to be one way at church and a different way at home. They had the church face, smiles, diligence, everybody sitting in a row dressed up, whatever, but when they got home it was a different life. It was just a different life. And the confusion that that sends, confusing signals to the children, has an impact. Now some of the children who tell me that are now adults with their own children in the church. It took them awhile to sort through that and to work through that. God calls even in spite of our situations. God is the one who is really calling and working with us, and it is interesting to think about that sometimes. He may not be calling one generation. He may be calling somebody out of the succeeding generation, or maybe even the third generation. The ways of God in some of these things are far beyond our own ability to understand exactly what he may be doing. But looking back at this verse, brethren, the children that we are working with, if we are sincere in our efforts to teach them the truth of God, they must know just how important the Bible is to you. As you read them the stories, it is important to talk about the examples of the scriptures, and to make that a part of your life, to make those real. Those stories from the Bible need to be as real as any story that they will hear or read from today’s media, from the culture, from literature, whether it is fantasy, science fiction, or whatever.

I still maintain, brethren, that the reason fantasy and science fiction is so popular is one, they draw on Biblical themes of good versus evil, of immortality. There are other Biblical truths, but they tell them in a far more interesting manner than we can at times. Or have been told by others. And they are wrapped in lies. They are wrapped in other fantastical stories, or as I say, science fiction. They are hitting at spiritual truths that are important to life, but they are wrapping them in other ways. And that can be more interesting for a generation. Our children need to see us read the Bible. Our children need to see us pray. They need to barge into your private place, your bedroom, your study, a basement corner, or whatever it may be that you pray. They need to barge in sometime and catch you on your knees praying. That’s okay. Because it tells them, oh, Mom and Dad pray. And you may choose to use that as a time to teach them something. And they may learn from that point on when the door is closed don’t go barging in. Or when they know you are downstairs that may be for your own time. They need to see you doing these things. That is what is meant by, "as you walk in your house, and as you sit in your house" in that way. Our children are consecrated to God. There is so much about this. Children don’t get Satan’s attitude all at once. That is something that encroaches upon them as they absorb it, as they go out into schools and into the world, and watch the media, and television, and so many things.

I was talking recently with a grandmother in our congregation who was talking about her grandchild of less than a year, and how when the mother would set the child in front of the television the child was just so fascinated by what they were seeing, and the noises and the sounds, and the colors on television, and this grandmother was just talking with delight about the reaction of the grandchild in front of the television. I was listening, I didn’t say anything, but I thought to myself, how sad. What she was telling me was that already a few months old the habits of putting down the child in front of the television to make the TV a babysitter to distract it so that other things could be done, or whatever, was already becoming a habit in the family. And while the grandmother was excited about the reaction of the grandchildren, it was really over the wrong thing. It was over a habit that was going to have a tremendous impact over the coming years. I just thought, how sad! We have to be diligent about what influences a child. There is so much to say about that in one sense. Brethren, we must all understand just how challenging it is to pass on the truth of God and make that an ongoing part of our efforts as parents, and as a church, to counteract that and to make sure that we present the truth of God in our life, in our teachings, in a way that is interesting, is challenging, and hopefully will shape the values and the understanding in the world view of our young people, of our children.

I wish I had also had a better understanding of the balance between love and discipline. This is point number six, for those of you that are counting, which means I'm getting close to the end. I wish I had understood the balance between love and discipline. This is a big subject, and I can only touch on it briefly here.

Ephesians 6:1 talks about the examples, teaching, and even the admonition, or the elements of discipline that we will do with our children. There is a time to love, there is a time to hug our children. There is a time to spank. There is a time to discipline. There is a time not to spank. There is a time to apply discipline perhaps in a measured or a lenient way as well. Ephesians 6:1-4 have always been a very key part of our child rearing spiritual arsenal as well. Children obey your parents in 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, that you may live long on the earth. And you fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord.

Society I have watched over the years, as you have, has swung so many different ways when it comes to child rearing and the discipline aspects of child rearing. I have watched that in the church. I have seen some who were raised in a very, say, strict church family, grow up and have their own families in the church and go to a very lenient approach to training as well as discipline, perhaps because they had an example of it when they were younger of being a little bit too hard, and too harsh. And so, I have seen people go from one ditch to the other, as so often can be the case. We can’t ever be afraid to set standards, to have and to hold to those standards as a parent. To train, there’s the training aspect, and to discipline in a right way, at the right time, when those standards may not be adhered to. I have come to learn over the years, and even still seeing it as a camp director for our youth program in the church, that children want standards. They do want standards. The trick is to teach those and apply those in the right way, to train up a child in the way that they should go. Sometimes I see parents who are too afraid of their own children, to set standards and to hold to those standards. Again, I often see it by parents who have been raised in the church and perhaps overreact in other ways to what they experienced themselves. But there is a balance. And I wish I had understood that balance a little bit better. I think we certainly loved our children and continue to love them. We disciplined them. And at times we had the balance, and perhaps at times we didn’t, as any parent would. But that is something that you learn and you develop with as you move along.

One last [seventh] point, and that is I wish that I had understood the importance of the young formative years of a child’s life. Those early years, that is where the foundation of adolescence and the teen years are laid. I remember reading when I was a young parent that the first two years of a child’s or infant’s life were the most critical. That they learn more in the first two years of life than they would learn throughout the rest of their life. And these were from studies, and psychologists, child psychologists, etc., who came out with this. I have no doubt that it is true, and no doubt still a very important matter to understand. But those are the years to lay down a foundation of love, affection, protection, security, and to wrap your children with the parental authority and prepare them in the way that they should go. Shelter them from the cares of adult life for as long as you can, so that we prevent our children from being robbed of a childhood. We can rush children into adulthood before they are ready for it. That is another trend in life, and in our times, through again so many aspects of our popular culture is to rush a child to experiences and things in adult matters, long before they are ready for it. That is one of the greatest injustices that can probably be laid upon a child, to rob them of childhood. A lot of books have been written on that subject. "Saving Childhood" is one that I have on my bookshelf by Michael Medved that is a very good one as he addresses that particular point and that particular issue. But the importance of the young, formative years of a child’s life are important for every parent to understand. I understood it perhaps academically. I wish I had understood it a whole lot better. Maybe it would have affected some of the things we did or did not do with our children.

I have gone through seven points here, seven things brethren that we wish we had understood before we ever had children. You may have your own list. I could probably go on and add eight, nine, or ten if I wanted to. But in the Church of God you only stop with seven points. You must have seven. I speak somewhat facetiously there. I don’t want to leave you here this afternoon with any misperceptions about my wife’s and my child rearing habits in our family situation. I give this sermon today as an introduction to the topic, not as a form of self-analysis or some guilt-ridden angst that we are going through in our lives. We don’t. We don’t have any major areas of guilt in this area that plague us. We don’t worry about that. We have enjoyed our sons, we had fun with them, we loved every minute of it and continue to in our relationships. We recognize our strong points, and we recognize our mistakes that we made. We don’t agonize over the problems, perhaps. As I said, we choose to go on. So I don’t give this to you in some way as a personal type of therapy, but to help us all to address some of these matters and to understand that. Our children a couple of years probably gave us one of the best compliments that any parent could ever have. We were sitting around talking, and our sons said when they have children, they don’t have any children yet so we are not grandparents, but they said when we have children, we are going to bring them to you and let you raise them the way we were raised. And that made us feel really good. That was said out of true sincerity. This was after a night of kind of talking and laughing about all of the things that we went through in our families, the habits and ways that made up our family. And that really made us feel good, that our sons could sincerely say to us, I couldn’t think of any greater compliment that a child could give, than to tell their parents that we want you to raise our children, your grandchildren, the way you raised us. So that made us feel real good. But I can tell you one thing. We’re not going to take them up on that offer.