Basic Principles of Child Rearing

I don't think that there's any rational person who would argue with the fact that there's cause and effect in the physical realm. Take a gun, point it at your leg, pull the trigger. You've got problems. And we know that there was cause, pull the trigger, that was a gun, and you shot yourself. Last month, Norm and I flew to Denver.

We were about 30,000 plus feet up in the air on American Airlines. What if I opened the door of the airplane while we were flying and decided to fly to Denver on my own? What would happen? I could jump out the exit door, flap my arms, and in other words, I would try to fly like a bird to Colorado. How many of you would think that I'd be able to accomplish that? I don't think too many of you would. What if I jumped out the exit door and began to float like a bird?

You try to float with a breeze and think, well, I'll just catch the wind and go in the right direction. What if I jumped out the exit door and waited suspended in the air for the next airplane to come by, and then try to hitchhike home? Would that work? Actually, I could have jumped out of the airline and plunged to the Earth and have been pulverized when I hit the ground.

That's what would happen. So which of the above scenarios would actually happen? I could fly, I could float, I could hitchhike, or I could fall and be pulverized. Well, I think we all know. Now, why would you think that's what would happen to me? Because I've yet to learn how to suspend gravity. And I don't know if you've learned how to suspend gravity yet. Because of gravity, gravity is a law. You don't break the law. The law breaks you. Gravity pulls you down. You may doubt that the law of gravity is real, but I'll guarantee you that it is real.

You can't jump off a mountain-tall building or whatever without getting hurt. Now, we respect the physical laws such as gravity, and we comply with them in order to progress and in order to live. We recognize that there are many physical things that we do that are governed by laws. And that's perfectly obvious. The fly of an airplane? There are laws and principles concerning good health. The medical profession knows that there are. Such as smoking will harm your health.

We know that. Exercise can help you improve your health. It is a greater understanding of those physical laws that govern the physical that lead to many of the modern inventions of the 20th century. Such as electricity. Discovering electricity and how it functions, how it works. And if it's not handled properly, it'll kill you. That's why you have wires that are coated. And you don't just touch the bare wire.

This is how we get computers. We develop microchips and all kinds of modern gadgets. All human relationships are built on spiritual laws. Our spiritual principles. Now, we know that there are physical laws that govern physical things, don't we? You want to call them physical laws? I think they're more spiritual in nature. They just govern the physical realm.

But there's a problem with human relationships. Husband-wife, parents' children, labor union, political parties, nations getting along. You know, people competing with one another. Man is able to equate cause and effect in the physical realm in dealing with laws that govern the physical around them. But when it comes to the spirit realm and laws that govern human conduct, man does not really see the connection between cause and effect. So, somebody's got a miserable marriage. They don't see, well, there's a cause for this. They think the cause is, I just married a woman. And if I hadn't married a woman, I'd gotten a good wife or mate or whoever it might have been.

We would be perfectly fine. But, you know, this is the approach. Man fails to see the connection between broken law and marriage and laws that God established to govern marriage. We don't even know what marriage is today, do we? Now, we do, but I'm talking about society. Is marriage something that should be between a male and a female? A male and a male? Female, female? Man and an animal?

What is marriage? You find that man today doesn't, quote-unquote, even know. He doesn't even believe that there are laws that govern marriage. Because, you know, if he believed that there were laws that govern marriage, guess what? He would have to keep those laws! That's exactly what he would have to do.

But, if there aren't any laws, it's just a matter of, you've got a bad limit. It's like a car. You trade it back in, get another one. Mankind fails to see that there are spiritual principles that govern relationships between parents and children, between everyone. Let's go back to John chapter 1, verse 1 in our Bibles. John 1.1.

And let's notice something.

John chapter 1, verse 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.

And the Word was God. So, you have the one being that we know as the Father, the Word, the God here, I should say.

The one who became Jesus Christ, the Word.

They were in the beginning. It wasn't anything else, these two beings. He was in the beginning with God. So, you have the Word, and you have this calling, Almighty God.

All things were made through Him, and without Him, nothing was made that was made. So, in the beginning there only existed the God family, the Word and the Almighty God. They existed before anything was created, anything was made. They've always existed. They're co-eternal. And we find that God created all things through Jesus Christ, who did it by the power of the Holy Spirit. He created all things, as the Bible says, visible and invisible. Everything that you can see, sense, know through the five senses, and everything you can't see and know, was created.

Let's go back to Hebrews chapter 1, and notice in Hebrews 1 that the writer of Hebrews tells us a little more about this beginning in verse 1, Hebrews chapter 1.1.

God, who at various times, in various ways, spoken times past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed heir of all things.

All things, that's an expression meaning the universe. Jesus Christ has inherited the whole universe, all things, through whom also he made the worlds. So Almighty God made the worlds to his son, who, being in the brightness of his glory, in the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power. So Christ sustains, upholds all things, keeps it running, operating by the word of his power when he had by himself purged our sins, he sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.

So he keeps all things going. He upholds. Word means to bear up or keep from failing.

Notice the new Revised Standard Version of verse 3 here. He has a reflection of God's glory, the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.

So he's able to sustain everything.

Now you and I have trouble sustaining our cars, don't we? We have to have the brakes fixed, transmission goes bad, we have to keep it clean, polished, vacuumed, whatever it might be. Well, think about everything in the universe. That's the word. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, sustains all of that. Everything that has been created is sustained by the power of God. It's upheld by the power of God. Now James tells us, go over here to the next book, James 4, verse 12.

James 4, 12 says, There is one lawgiver who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another?

So there are laws that God has set in motion and governs all that he has created. God is not a God of confusion.

He's not a God of Babylon. Everything runs according to order as he is created.

You know, again, we sometimes refer to physical laws and spiritual laws, but you don't see gravity. It's a physical or spiritual law, which is it. All laws are spiritual in the sense that they're invisible. They're upheld by the very power of God. God has set them in motion. He keeps them functioning, but they regulate the physical realm.

One day, the physical will cease as we know it. The laws that govern them will no longer be necessary. The power to sustain them will still be there, and the principle will cease to function.

Once the Great White Throne Judgment is over, everybody's had a chance to be in God's kingdom. We're either been burned up or we're spirit beings.

Gravity will have no effect upon it. Has no effect upon a spirit being.

You know, you're not subject to it. You can actually live in a different dimension. That's the spirit world. As opposed to the physical dimension. So the laws, though, that govern spirit relationships, are based upon something that is permanent.

Do you know what that is?

There are laws that govern relationships. All relationships. Husband, wife, parents, children. Today, we want to focus more on children. The evidence of Scripture, to carry this one step further, is that angels were created before the physical creation.

Each angel apparently was an individual creation.

When the physical creation was made, you might remember back in the book of Job, Job 38, it says, all the sons of God shouted for joy. So this indicates that the angels had not yet revealed when God created the physical creation. And he brought the physical into being.

At that time, there was only one standard, or one way of life to go by.

That was God's way. The way that God lived. God's way of life. It's called the way. Christ said, I am the way.

Now, God in the Logos, or the Word, had always lived a certain way of life, for all eternity. Why? Because it's God's very nature to do so. You might remember back here in John 4, John 1 John 4, I should say.

And I believe it's in verse 8, 1 John 4, 8.

It says, He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

See, this is what God is. It doesn't say God loves, or is a loving person. It says, God is! That's His very nature. That's who He is. He is love. All that He does is motivated by love.

This is His very nature. So, only God's standard was practiced, to begin with, the way of love.

The way of dealing with people, from that perspective. The angels were created as spirit beings, but apparently their creation, their final character, had not been set.

You know why?

They had to choose, just as you and I have to choose. They had to choose to follow God, their own free volition. Their character was not like God, in that God was set He is love. That's the way He is. That's the way He lives. That's His very nature. He cannot go any other way.

God shared His way of life with them, taught them. This is the way that leads to happiness. This is the way to have everything in unity and harmony. And we know that some of the angels sin. The Bible tells us. In 2 Peter chapter 2, 2 Peter 2, 4, notice, it says, For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell, or to Tartarus, or Tartarus, and deliver them in the chains of darkness to be reserved for judgment. So, they were cast down. They did sin. Apparently, one-third of the angels under Lucifer rebelled against God. They chose to go another way.

Now, when they sinned, what law did they break?

What is sin?

Well, 1 John 3, 4, sin is the transgression of the law. There had to be principles, laws, values that they transgressed in order to sin. Sin is missing the mark. It's going the wrong way. It is not going the way of God. Satan and his demons have introduced a competing way of life in the universe that could be summarized by one word. Lawlessness, the way of lawlessness, the way of death, the way of putting the self first.

We're not going to get into this as much today, but next Sabbath, I hope to speak on that particular topic.

The righteous angels continued to live the way of God. They were faithful. They knew that God's way was right. When they saw Lucifer and his angels rebel, they chose to go God's way. They clearly made the right choice. Lucifer and his angels chose poorly. They didn't choose the right way.

So, there were two ways of life, then. There were extended in the universe. The way of God that has always existed, the way of love, and the way of sin that Lucifer introduced into the universe. A way of lawlessness was introduced.

When God created man, you might remember, he placed him in the Garden of Eden. Genesis chapter 2, there were two trees in the garden.

One pictured the way of God, the tree of life. That if Adam and Eve had partaken of that tree, God would have given them his spirit, worked with them. Doesn't mean they would not have sinned, but they would be going the way of life. They chose what?

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

So, it's a mixture of good and evil. Not totally depraved, but evil mixed in with it.

Man had a choice. He could choose the way of life, if he wanted to go that way, or the way of God, or the way of Satan.

Think of the two trees from this perspective.

The two trees show how man was going to relate to God and to one another. How they were going to relate to God and to one another. The tree of life pictures how to relate to God, and to mankind in the right way.

Way of love. Obedience. The tree of knowledge of good and evil. Shows how to relate to God in mankind in the wrong manner. Everybody deciding for himself, under the influence of Satan the devil. A wrong way, a hurtful way, a selfish way, a getting way. Those ways have been put for the last 6,000 years.

So the basic question comes down to this.

Who establishes the standard for what is right and what is wrong?

Satan. Humans are God.

Who establishes what is right? And the Bible clearly shows that it is God who is the source of all correct knowledge.

Of all true wisdom and understanding. And God has revealed that to us through his word, the proper standard in the right way. There are fundamental principles that God ordained that cover how we get along. And especially how parents should relate to their children.

And how children should relate to their parents. Vice versa. These principles are based upon spiritual values. Which are based upon God's very nature.

Now today, in society, we see all kinds of ideas floating around as to, well, this is how someone should deal or train their children. You know, this is what you should train them or not train them. And vice versa. And you'll find that unless those principles are based upon the Bible, you've got to be extremely wary of them. And yet, I find that over the years in the church, we've gone from one ditch to the other ditch. We're ditchers.

Over here, too strict. And then we come over here and we're just too liberal. And there's nothing. Everything goes. Well, these principles are based upon God's nature.

God's relationship with man is based upon love.

And it is demonstrated through His grace and His forgiveness and His mercy. God tells us what? To love Him with all of our hearts, all of our soul, all of our might, and with all of our mind.

All of our being to love our neighbors, ourself. You know, it says all of the law hangs on these two. These are principles that we will live by for all eternity.

All eternity. We will always put God first.

And we will always treat everyone in the family of God as ourselves.

These are principles that must be applied also to the whole and how a family functions and how you deal with the family. So I want to cover some of these basic principles that cover our relationship in a family.

I'm not saying that if somebody does this, there's an absolute 100 percent guarantee that your children will stay in the church, will never go astray, you'll never deviate. But I will guarantee you, you will increase your odds on bringing them up and going in the right way.

What is eternal is the way that God has made us to deal with each other. Those are eternal principles, and they will last.

Let's look at some of the fundamental principles today. We're going to cover three. The God has created an apparent and children relationship.

One of the fundamental things that children must know, that they must know that they are loved, that they are cherished, that they are important, and truly special in the right way. Now, we've got all this crazy modern psychology where parents go around and say, well, you're great, you're this, you're that. And in many cases, they're lying to their children. Yes, all of our children are special to us individually, but it's carried to an extreme. How does a child learn that you love them, you cherish them, that they're important to you?

It has to be conveyed to them, doesn't it? And it has to be conveyed to them as a teenager, and it has to be conveyed to them when they're 40 and 50 and 60.

The process is called bonding.

If you want to describe it as a process.

We see children today hurting one another, killing one another. We were coming down in the car and listening to Fox News, and they were talking about a 12-year-old being arrested by police for bullying.

And the person this 12-year-old was being bullied toward was thinking about committing suicide. And we find that people are bullied on Facebook. They're bullied through Twitter. They're bullied through the computer. And they're bullied emotionally and mentally and physically.

And you find that children grow up with no compunction, no conscience today. Take the example of Jeffrey Bailey, a 9-year-old, who decided to throw a 3-year-old in the deep end of a swimming pool. You see what it was like to see somebody drown.

And he just sat there and watched the 3-year-old drown.

This is the type of thing that we see going on today in too many cases in our society. In the book, High Risk Children Without a Conscience, Dr. Ken Maggett and Carol McKeelvey describe children growing up without a conscience.

And talk about psychopaths.

Sad to say, we see psychopaths in politics today.

Children who grow up who show no remorse.

Kids who kill kids.

And they ask the question, what's gone wrong?

You know, why do we see such things today? Today we see young people committing crimes and violence, taking drugs, all mixed up. What about some of the mass murderers? What about young children? We'll call them children. Young teenagers who walk into a high school with a rifle or a gun and just start indiscriminately shooting others. You know, we read about this all the time. In 2 Timothy chapter 3, the Bible describes the times that we live in. 2 Timothy 3, beginning in verse 1, says, You must understand this. I'm reading the New Revised Standard Version. You must understand this in the last days distressing times will come.

For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, propagates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding an outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid them.

The word brute means not tame, savage, fierce.

Why do we see young people today growing up with our conscience, anti-social behavior, no remorse? Why do we see adults today who seem to be desensitized without feeling our proper emotion? What are the factors that have impacted parents and children as they grow up?

We want to take a look at some of that today. One factor the book recognizes is the lack of bonding and attachment of children at an early age. When we talk about bonding and attachment, trust, love, sexual identity, bonding, all occur during the early period of a child's life within the first year to three years, generally at the most. Psychological damage can occur that can break and can set patterns in a child from the time of a very early age. Now, in the Bible in Titus chapter 2, beginning in verse 3, God tells us, Love your children. We're to love our children. Children need our love and attention at a very early age. We must spend time with them during this period when so much of their identity and their emotional state is being developed. Realize this, the identity, the sexual gender, the emotional state of a child is developed within its first couple of years.

That's why it's extremely important to make sure that there is a bonding process that goes on. Proverbs 29 and verse 15 tells us this, When I'm talking about bonding, bonding is where a child becomes attached in the proper way to a caregiver. Generally, this would be the parents, mom and dad, as a caregiver.

An example of what I'm talking about is when a mother nurses her baby, she sits there, talks to the baby, cuddles the baby, coos with the baby, talks to the baby, rubs the baby, touches the baby, and the baby begins to develop this bond. Dad comes home and tells my little chickadee, and he's playing with the baby, talking to the baby, throwing it up in the air, whatever might be going on. What we see happening today in our western society, especially, not so much in some of the other societies, but certainly true in the western society, we have women who go to work almost immediately after they have children. A month or two, they're back at work. And who's rearing the children? Too often, strangers are putting daycare centers. No longer have the enlarged family around like we used to, where grandparents, both grandparents, lived in the neighborhood, uncles, aunts, and other siblings, maybe older children, are there. And today, people think it's necessary that everybody go off to work. If you have young children, it is absolutely important that there's at least one parent who's there with them all the time that can relate to them. We have the feminist movement today. And with the feminists, the idea is that children just grow up. Mothers need to go out and prove they're just as good as men are. And so, you have also a lack of supportive fathers today. Fathers, many times, are absent. They don't care about the children. They don't talk to the children. They don't interrelate with the children. We see so many divorces going on today where families break up. Children are taken away many times from their chief caregiver, but in a foster home, orphans and abuse in families take place. You know, there's abuse that can take place, and it's the ultimate betrayal in a family of a child. The one person, or the persons that he should be putting his trust in, his faith in, his confidence in, his parents. They come along and abuse him, misuse him, seek advantage of him. And that abuse can be physical, can be psychological, can be sexual, emotional. Any type of disruption, warfare, illness, famine, proper binding will help a child to become well-adjusted, responsive as adults, loving and trusting as teenagers and as adults. Bonding is of utmost importance for the complete health of a child, for their complete development. It will also determine whether they're able to express love to others and affection when they grow up, because it all starts back here, and patterns are set at a very early age. Now, attachment goes right along with bonding. The sexual identity of a child is shaped in the first years of a child. That's where attachment comes in. A few years ago, Dr. Joseph Neakosi spoke to the Council of Elders on the subject of homosexuality. He exposed a number of the myths surrounding what is commonly accepted today, as he explained that homosexuality is not generally genetically determined. There might be one person in 200, let's say 20, 25,000 who were born with some physical problem, but generally genetically that's not true, not born that way. We're all born edriosexually. Some have sometimes homosexual feelings, and they don't know how to deal with maybe having an attraction for same sex, but they can be taught, and they'll have the example of their parents. Gender nonconformity in childhood may be the single most common observable fact associated with homosexuality. Now, what do I mean by that? Simply this, that it is absolutely vital, totally important, for a child to have a warm, loving relationship with the same sex parent.

For as a boy with his dad, a girl with her mom. Now that doesn't negate the fact that as girls grow up they need to be close to their dads. Also, I'm not saying that they need to be close to both parents, but how is a boy going to learn to be a boy and then a man except by the example? We've all heard the statement of, he's the spitting image of his dad. I've mentioned this before. Doesn't mean splitting image, spitting image. He spits like his dad spits, walks like his dad walks, talks like his dad talks. And so, you know, who's going to teach him to play ball? Who's going to teach him, you know, skills and talents? This is why young people grow up and say, well, I was born a homosexual because their gender identity is established before they can even remember anything when they're very young. This is why solid marriages, solid families, husband, wife are extremely vital, where both of them are there relating. And a boy grows up and sees his mother, sees dad, mom, and how they relate. And he learns how a man should treat a woman, how a woman should respond to a man. And so, you've got it going in both ways. So, this helps to shape his sexual identity or her sexual identity. The child must grow up having a proper relationship with his own gender. One of the things in some of these societies, like Exodus, that have helped people come out of homosexuality, do, which is just the opposite of what most people would think you should do, is for that individual, as a homosexual, to begin to have proper relationships with those of his own gender. Not somebody who's going to take advantage of him sexually, but to interact with a family. Whether it's a husband, wife, you know, he can see somebody's not going to, you know, be influenced by him. So, any young person, preteen or teen, who has identifiable factors such as these are risk orientated. And that's why, when there's a divorce, just look at the black community today. All of the children being born out of wedlock, where there's not a father there, maybe the mother is not there, has to work, a grandparent trying to rear them, and you have a total disruption of a proper family relationship. This is the key to attachment and the shaping of the identity of the child. So, what are some of the fundamental principles, again, as we look at them, that youth need to learn as they mature? Well, one of the major principles is what the Bible says, honor is a foundation of all healthy relationship.

Honor and respect. Mutual respect is essential in any family relationship, whether it's a physical family or our spiritual family. Here we have our spiritual family, and to have that honor and respect, we all have the power to choose, to honor others. This requires humility, doesn't it? It requires humility on your part, not thinking you're so great that everybody should bow down to you. No, we show respect to others. The power to choose has been with us since the Garden of Eden, when God set the two trees there. Sadly, Adam and Eve chose poorly. They actually were the first to break the commandments to honor your parents. God was their parent. They didn't listen to Him. They didn't listen to what He had to say. They dishonored God. They listened to Satan the devil. The result was suffering and ultimate death. Unless you are a little infant and mentally incompetent, you have the power to choose your response to any given situation. Somebody comes up, kicks you.

You can go get your gun and shoot them. You got that choice.

You can take your fists and punch them in the nose. You have that choice.

Or you can turn around and walk away. You've got that choice. See, people have choices. How do we react toward one another? Our children are not predetermined.

Yes, they have heredity. And I know heredity has a major influence on us. But they're not pre-programmed like robots in the sense that they can't make decisions. Character is making the right decision. Character is knowing what is right and choosing to go that way and to do it. We all have free moral agency. We are free moral agents. How you choose today will determine future choices that you make. When you choose poorly now, you're faced with bad choices in the future. A child who decides not to go to school or not to go, you know, receive some type of further training is going to pay for it down the road when it comes to perhaps getting a competent job. There's an important principle. Good decisions made today often permit good choices to be available in the future. Now, as a child is learning to make proper decisions, who has to guide him in those decisions? Who has to show him how to make proper decisions? Well, you and I do. You as parents, as the older generation. Bad decisions made today often make good choices in our future. Limited, or they limit them, and generally somebody ends up choosing between the lesser of two evils. Not the best of the best. Infants do not have the power to choose. Have you ever noticed that? We say they are reactive rather than proactive. They react immediately to stimulate what's going on around them. As an example, at night, 3 a.m. in the morning, baby wakes up, baby's hungry, baby's wet. Baby says, mom had a hard day.

She doesn't need to get up. I'm going to let her sleep. I'm not going to cry. I'm just going to lay here, wet, hungry, for three more hours. Then I'll wake her up. Is that what the baby thinks? No, the baby is going to wah! You know, as loud as they can scream, and you come in, either mom or dad, and in our family, I wasn't really hooked up properly to nurse, not until later. So, but you know, we would share, you know, whose time is it? It's your time. So, you know, you get up, you go change the baby, but I would bring the baby into my wife, and she could nurse the baby. So, you know, babies don't think that way. They haven't developed to that point.

They're totally self-absorbed and reactive. Nothing wrong with that until they begin to grow. But after a very short period of time, children begin to develop the capacity to choose. They begin to know. Often that happens before parents are fully aware of it.

I've seen parents who've told me, well, I'm not going to discipline my children until they're able to talk, which is somewhere between two and three. And so the child grows up with all of these, you know, ways that are set. And the parents think that they're good parents. I'll guarantee you somewhere between six months and a year, they know exactly what's going on, and they're working you. And you've got to be aware of it. Many times we underestimate the capacity of a young child in emphasizing or exercising independent choice. Now, there are some parents who, very early on, begin to give their children too many choices, big and small. You know, what do you want to wear today? You know, what do you want to eat today? You know, do you want to go do this? Do you want to do that? And, you know, so the child begins to grow up thinking that they really know what to do when they're not really old enough to know.

How do you know when your child has reached the age when he can choose? One very simple way. When a child begins to tell you no, they have the power to choose. If you say, put your toys up, no.

Okay, what just happened? They chose not to do what you told them to do. So, now you know that they know what they're doing. I mean, they can choose. They have the power to choose. And so, you have to deal with them. And, you know, you've got to show them the right way. At this point, the responsibility is on the parents to begin to teach the way of humility, the way of respect, the way of honor to their children. We must teach the way of honor. I don't know how many of us ever stop to think about, well, here's a commandment, honor your father and your mother. So, do we teach our children to honor adults? Do you ever take them to a nursing home? Or perhaps they get acquainted with the elderly, and they learn to respect, maybe bring gifts, bring food, bring some candy, something of this nature. Where they begin to learn how to show respect and honor to them.

If you do, it will affect their ability to relate to others for the rest of their life. When a child talks back, shows defiance, refuses to follow clear, specific instructions from the parents, that is dishonoring their parents, and that's disobeying God's commandment. You might remember in Exodus 20, verse 12, Exodus 20, says, Exodus 2012 says, You want your children to live long? Teach them to honor. Ephesians 6, verse 1, Ephesians chapter 6, verse 1, Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and your mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth. The ability and power to choose a response, yes or no, that considers more than the self, is an important aspect of maturity. A child is beginning to mature when, let's say there's a pile of toys, a couple of them playing, and you say, share your toy with the other baby. No, they want to grab them all. Well, that's an opportunity for you to teach them to share. If they don't want to, you take the toys, give them to the other person, deal with the attitude. See, you always deal with the attitude. It's the attitude you're looking at. To get a mature response, and you begin to teach them how to share.

Now, as they grow older, they become more accountable for their actions.

Children are constantly, need to be worked with, to honor their parents, to be humble, considerate, respectful, serving, and to get away from the selfishness and being rude. If you've got a child who's rude, always talking back, you need to be very careful. You need to work with that child. Developing consideration for others and honoring others is a very important part of the emotional maturing process. You know, consideration of others is a fundamental principle of godliness, of godly character. All of us here have an example. You know, many of you may say, well, I'm not. You know, I don't have any children. My children are all grown up, but you may have grandchildren. There are other children in the congregation, and what do they see from their example that you said? Do they see by your example a person who is a god-fearing, obedient type of individual? Many times children and parents will grow up and make excuses for their children, and they teach children to have a victim mentality. You know, a child doesn't want to do something. Maybe there's six or seven. Oh, he's just tired. He had a bad day. You know, he's this way or he's that way. And they grow up, and they begin to, you know, think, well, if I come up with some type of an excuse, then I can get away with it. Immature people will blame everybody else for their problems. They blame genetics. They blame their parents. They blame the school system. They blame their teacher. They blame their mate. They blame the government. They blame the economy. They blame the church. They blame the minister. They even blame God, and you know, in the long run, people will begin to blame others instead of reacting in the right and positive way.

So, brethren, think of it from this point of view, and I've only started scratching the surface here, this topic of, you know, dealing with one another as well as dealing with our children. Remember this, all human relationships are based upon spiritual values and principles. We've only covered three things today that are essential to proper development of a child. Bonding, that's where their trust is developed. That's where their ability to show love comes from, because if they're loved and they're able to show love back to their parents, they will grow up being able to show love. Their attachment or their gender identification is also established during these early years.

And honor and respect. Realize that these are basic principles that will go on forever. You and I are to bond to God. We are to learn to put our absolute trust in God, are we not? We're to learn to love God with all our heart, all our soul, all of our might, our minds. We look to Him totally for guidance, just like a child totally relies upon his parents. We look to God spiritually for guidance and help. There's an attachment to God likewise, that nothing can separate us from God, that we know the right way, that we know what the right thing is to do, and we're going to do that. And then we honor God. We respect God. We respect His laws, His commandments, His way of life. We respect the family of God. We respect all human beings. And there's going to be this respect for God and the family of God for all eternity. So these principles will continue to go on forever. So these principles apply to how we treat one another, how we rear our children now. They apply to the family of God that we have here now. And they apply to how the family of God will live and relate to one another for all eternity.