Order of Operations - Week 2

I want to I want to continue with our series today order of operations.

So let's see if you learned anything last week, Jeremy, Let's let's let's

try this out again. Show me that. Okay, last week I ask

you to solve this problem. Let's see if you paid attention and if you

memorized it. How many here believe that the answer to this problem is thirty

two? Raise your hand, all right, put your handswer how many of

you believe that the answer to this problem is fifty? Raise your hand.

The answer to this problem today, same numbers, different answer. The answer

to it today is fifty because the order of operations has changed. We added

parentheses to the same set of numbers, and you get a different answer because

you do things in different order. And God has an order of opera ration

for everything that we do in life. And today I want to talk to

you about the order of operations in your family. But now I listen.

I need you to hear me. So everybody pay attention, to stop what

you're doing and look at me for just to say, because you're gonna get

lost if you don't listen to me. Right now. Today I'm preaching to

you, say me Okay, you didn't sound convinced. Say me, you're

not applying this to other people. If you apply this to other people,

you're gonna not get the point of what I'm trying to say today. Okay,

so this is not corrective to your husband. Come on, somebody.

This is not corrective to your parents. It's not corrective to your children.

This is about you and how the order of operations works, and through our

lives. The order of operations change in our alignment with our families, because

it doesn't stay consistent as we move through the different stages of life. If

you got a Bible, go to Matthew chapter six, verse thirty three,

and we're gonna start there, because it all starts here Matthew chapter six,

verse thirty three. But seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness,

and all these things shall be added to you. Took an entire, an

entire worship experience last week to set that godly foundation that's seeking Him and right

standing in his contractual agreement we call Salvation is the platform or the foundation for

everything we do. Always the first in the order of operations is our relationship

with Jesus. Always everything is first our relationship with Jesus. Just for emphasis,

let me say it again. The foundation and the most important thing in

every life, no matter what life stage you're in, is a loving,

foundational relationship with Jesus. Now go to Phesians chapter six. Phesians chapter six,

starting in verse one, Children, obey your parents and the Lord,

for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first

commandment, with promise that it may be well with you and you may live

long on the earth. Let's pray, Father, we thank you for your

word. We thank you that it's the only change agent on the face of

the planet. And I pray that your word takes residence, that that seed

is planet at the very foundation of our being, and that it brings a

harvest of life. Today, Father, this is the beginning of a germination

process that changes the way we've ordered our lives and allows it to line up

with your Kingdom values in Jesus name. Amen. Now I'm speaking to uh,

I'm speaking to children, and let me define what that is pre marriage.

See, we have this this idea, especially here in America, that

we stop being a child magically when we turn eighteen. And legally that might

be true, but spiritually We don't have that in scripture. Nowhere did Jesus

say you're eighteen, you've grown Amen. That's that's just it's just not there.

I wish it was, because at least that would set some kind of

hard standard. Now, listen, you can go and do whatever you want

to at eighteen. That is your legal right as an a American system,

as an American citizen. But from a kingdom standpoint, from a kingdom,

there is no age in which you move from childhood to adulthood. There is

an event that carries you from childhood to adulthood, and we're gonna get there

in just a moment. But we're talking to children, and it says,

listen, here's the thing. You should obey your parents for. This is

right. Let me say it again, obey your parents for this is right.

It's just the it's the right thing to do. Now, I'm going

to transparency our number one core value here. I want to show of hands.

How many of you wake up every morning, or you've woken up any

morning in the last two weeks and said, today, bless God, I'm

gonna be wrong. Raise your hand. I don't think we ever set the

goal of waking up and just deciding today, I know what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna be wrong. I'm gonna find a way. It's gonna be

hard, but I'm gonna find a way. Now, we don't want to

be wrong, But yet it's the natural inclination and tendency many times of children

to rebel and push against the authority of parenthood. It's trying to create that

identity in that space. After all, all we see in media and social

media is how you should have your own privacy and your own life and your

own identity. But there is safety in understanding obedience to those who have lived

a little bit more life than you have, even obedience to those who have

lived a little more life than you have that might not have gotten everything right,

but they've learned a few things along the way. Come on, somebody,

listen your parents. Listen, young people. I don't care how your

parents are not going to get everything right. There if you're the first child,

especially, they're learning and figuring things out on the fly, and sometimes

they're gonna miss it. I look back over my parenting and there have times

when I have punished my children, and I shouldn't have. There are times

I should have punished my children and I didn't. There are times where I

just simply got it wrong. Maybe once I'm just kidding. You're gonna have

to move off the front row. God has invested in relationships. He desired

relationship with each one of us, and the model he built for us to

see how relationship works is the family. That's how God has chosen to model

that supernatural principle in the natural. You are not the pre eminent relationship.

Child. Listen to me. You are not the pre eminent relationship in your

family. As much as you want to be, you are not. God

created the pre eminent relationship to be between the husband and the wife. Our

relationship with God, then our relationship with our spouse. And as a child,

it's hard to understand because we have it yet stepped into that relationship,

and a lot of times we may look at the way things happen and we

think to ourselves, well, my mom or my dad, they just love

each other more than they love me. And it's not about loving more.

It's about the fact that the priority of relationship, the order of operations have

to be right, and they have to have that relationship set first. I

don't know how many, how many families, marriages and lives I've seen absolutely

ruined when the children get up to an age in which they're not dependent upon

the parents anymore, and those marriages fall apart because the marriage was all about

the child rather than one another. Stop jockeying for position with your parents.

They love you. It is not your role as the pre eminent relationship in

that family unit. Let me just say it. Plain just understanding. You

come second, really third, But we're just understanding that everybody has God first.

But children you're second. You're second to mom, you're second to dad.

You're second. Say second. That's not a bad thing. It's a

God thing because he's training you to be in the pre eminent relationship. Because

when we leave childhood now, let's shift gears a little bit and we move

into the role of not being a child anymore, but being a spouse now.

And when we transition from that role. Met me, let me start

reading and then we'll because I'm gonna step on toes here too. Ephesians chapter

five, verse thirty one. For this reason, a man shall leave his

father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become

one flesh. Two becomes one. It is the pre eminent relationship in life.

When we move into that spouse role, that the other is valued and

is the everything. Just listen to me. People get nervous to say things

like this. I don't get nervous to say things like this second and a

very close second under God. God doesn't mind that spouse relationship being very close

to the relationship you have with Him. He designed it that way, as

long as it's not equal to or above. He doesn't mind it being really,

really close. And the closer that relationship is, the closer that relationship

between spouses looks to the relationship with God, the healthier the marriage is.

So we move from child to spouse, and when we move into that role,

the two become one us. Look how this lives out even inside this

spousal relationship. In Ephesians chapter five, verse twenty two, it says,

wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. Wow. Usually all

the men say amen when I read that passage of scripture, y'all are sleeping

on me. Today, wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.

For the husband as head of the wife, also as also Christ is

the head of the church and he is the savior of the body. Therefore,

just as the church is subject to Christ, so let wives. So

let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your

wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. Huh.

So the husband is the head and the wife everything else. Well,

let's let's let's put it. I mean, let's let's proportion this properly.

Right, The husband's the head, but the wife is the heart. I'm

just saying. The hands, the feet say everything. So you may be

the head, but the head don't go nowhere without the body. So he

says, listen, submit to your husbands. But then the qualifier comes.

Husbands love your wives, not as you see modeled on TV or some weird

version of love that you read somewhere, but as Christ loved the church and

gave himself for her. So wives submit to the one who lays down everything

for you. Is what that? Oh, let me say that again.

Wives submit to the one who lays down his life for you. You know,

there's another qualifier here that we don't read a whole lot. But let's

jump on down to Ephesians five thirty three. It says, nevertheless, let

each one of you, in particular, so love his own wife as himself,

and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Live in such

a way that she sees that she can have respect for you. Listen,

it's not godly for you to demand submission. If you're not earning respect.

I'm gonna get emails. It's okay. Send them to Gary at Sea Stone

dot TV. And that's where those emails go, and I'll get you whipped

into shape. You have to earn the respect for submission to happen. Let

me go ahead and let me back up a little bit before to pre marriage,

just a little bit. If he hasn't earned your respect, don't marry

him. If you think later he's gonna learn to respect you, he ain't.

Ain't gonna happen. Make him earn your respect before you marry him,

and you'll stop struggling with this weird thing that says I love him and that's

why I'm going to marry him. We have made love and I don't have

time for this, but we've made love such a perverted, weird, wishy

wash emotional feeling that it's not what God ever intended it to be. Love

is simply me choosing to put you above me. That's love. Nothing mystical,

nothing feeling about it. I just choose to put you above me.

That's love. Amen. Am I plain enough for you today? And the

Bible never said to marry the person you love. It says to love the

person you marry different, different thing, different thing. So as a spouse,

that relationship becomes the pre eminent thing. It can't be your job.

Listen, I'm gonna get here in just a second. I gotta go fast.

Let me just gonna tell you I'm not gonna finish this today, So

we're gonna finish next week because next week we're gonna talk about beginning of life

and end of life and how to prioritize those things when you're in the middle

generation between those things. Because most people struggle with that. Love your spouse

above anything, that is the pre eminent relationship. Listen to me, because

I believe this is a word for somebody, not your mama or your daddy.

If you were torn between whether you love your husband or your mama more,

or your husband or your dad more. The same goes for your wife.

That's a relationship that's not acting according to the order of operations. Once

you move from child to spouse, that is the pre eminent relationship in your

life. Then we move from spouse to parent. I'm gonna go quick here

Proverbs chapter twenty two, verse six. Train up a child and the way

he should go, and when he's old, he'll not depart from it.

To literally get involved in your child's life as a parent. The pre eminent

relationship is your spouse. But then you begin to do the hard work of

parenting. The hardest work you will ever do in your life is be a

parent. Because it is twenty four seven three sixty five. If you take

a day off, it will cost you dearly. God did not call the

TV to raise your child the God. God did not call the school system

to raise your child. God did not call the church to raise your child.

God called you to raise your child, and that you spend time in

their lives, learning and understanding their natural giftedness, the things they're drawn to,

their aptitudes, and you helped nudge them in the direction towards those things.

And each child is different. If you buy a book that says this

is how you parent, throw it away. I have two girls, night

and day. Early in life, I have one. I had one that

was training to be mother Teresa and the other one training to be a cage

fighter. Come on, somebody, when I say night and day, I

mean the lightest of days and the darkest of nights, completely opposite. And

you parent those children differently, and you do the hard work of parenting.

And when you do the hard work of parenting, it's God, spouse,

child, everything else. That's why you may call me I pastor this church.

You may call me and say, Pastor, I need you or I

have this going on. Can you talk? And I may say I'm gonna

have to call you back or I'll be there tomorrow. Because that is not

the pre eminent relationship in my life. My vocation as a pastor is not

God. Me being a pastor has nothing to do It does have something to

do with me being saved. I'm sorry that almost came out wrong. Me

being a pastor has nothing to do with my relationship with God. It's my

vocation, just like you may work at a bank, or you may drive

a truck or all the other plethora of jobs that are here. That's your

vocation. And your vocation never rises above your spouse or your child, emphasis

and order of operations to be successful at Kingdom living. Come on, somebody,

and when we're a parent, we spend an exhaustive amount of time pouring

into our children because that is our legacy and our heritage. It's not the

companies we build, it's not the sermons we preach or the songs we write.

It is the children we pour into and we craft and we shape to

help them become the next generation of successful Kingdom citizens. I am a subpar

pastor, I'm a mediocre preacher, but I feel like i'm a pretty elite

father. I think I got that one right, and I can live with

all the rest as long as I get that one right. And they can't

fire me. Come on, somebody can't do it. Can't do it now,

this relationship, and let me go quickly here because we've got to just

just one other thing we have to do today. It's what makes blended families

very difficult. The definition the picture of family in the world today has shifted

to an encompass a lot of different things. It used to be a picture

of a man and a woman and a boy and a girl behind a white

picket fence, and they had a dog and a cat that got along.

That's not the picture of family anymore. And although blended families come with challenges,

it doesn't mean that they can't be successful. And part of the reason

is because there are multiple influences, especially into this role of parenting, that

don't always mesh, and they don't always and they don't always jive with one

another. The greatest thing you can do to be a successful blended family everybody

looked. If you're in this situation or moving into this situation, you need

to listen to me. I want to invest this into your life. I

love to encourage and lift you up. And here's the moment. Get over

yourself and stop trying to be the one that's right and be the one that

partners with whoever has influence in that parenting relationship to find what's best for those

children, to discover the giftedness, to discover the desires and the passions that

are in those children and help craft them and to model kingdom citizens, because

that is more important than being right right now. Blended families are tough because

people are selfish. Because in the midst of one family unit ending in another

beginning, there's all kinds of traumas and hurts and insecurities and fears and all

of those things that have to be dealt with. But you deal with those

just like you do everything else by parenting through them. I'm gonna go ahead

and ask answer this question. Then we're gonna we're gonna wrap this up.

Go ahead, answer this question. I get asked this more by parents than

anything else. Should my children be allowed to watch or listen to or play

the game fill in the blank? As if I have an exhaustive information base

of how your child is gifted to equip with life. I don't. So

here's the thing. Stop asking for a universal answer and parent through things.

You know your child. Is your child easily influenced, then keep them away

from the things that influence them. Is your child a pretty stable, forward

thinking child, then part them through things because they're going to experience those things.

They're going to encounter those things, whether they do it as you can

help them through it or apart from you, separated from you, is the

question you have to answer. You may just want the easy ticket and say

let them do whatever they want to do when they're away at college. Maybe

they'll live through it, or you can help bring them through it right there

at home. So instead of telling them what they can't watch, at least

tell them why, or sit down and work through it with them. So

when the questions come, you can answer the questions and you can have kingdom

discussions about certain things. Listen, Shielding your children is not always the answer.

Parenting your children is always the answer. Being involved in their lives.

Know who they talk to. Parents. Quit letting your child say you're invading

my privacy. Stop you from parenting. If you pay for the phone,

look at the text message. If they do something wrong, take it away

from him. Don't hesitate. Nobody needs a video game to be successful in

life, unless you're a gamer. But for two months, they're gonna be

fine. Invest and do the hard job of parenting. Because you know,

our father in heaven does the hard job of parenting. He never takes a

moment off, he never takes a day's rest. He's involved with every decision

and everything that we do. He watches over us and invests in our lives,

and he calls out the greatness on the inside of each and every one

of us. He never leaves us, he never foresakens, he never forsakes

us. He's never abandoned us, but he's very present, and he's right

there, always speaking and pouring and nudging and calling. And that's the role

of a parent. And we take that model from our heavenly Father. And

today you may be here and you feel like you've been alone for a long

time. You may feel like there's something something missing and broken because you haven't

had that relationship with a parent. You feel abandoned, almost like an orphan.

But I want you to know you've never been alone, and you're not

alone right now, in this moment, the Lord is here to comfort you

and to heal you and to pick you up. If you would right now,

in this moment, if everybody would bow their heads and close their eyes

the way we come into this relationship with our heavenly Father, that he's there

to lead us into to care for us and comfort us. That we just

simply ask his son Jesus to wash us clean of our sin, to repent,

we accept him as our lord and savior. If you're here today and

you've never asked Jesus to forgive you of your sins to be your lord,

but today you want to meet your heavenly Father and have a love that you've

never experienced before. If that's you, slip up your hand and say that's

me, Pastor, pray for me. I want to I want to give

my heart in my life to Jesus today. I want to EXPI rience my

heavenly Father in a way that I never have. Just put your hand up

and put it right back down. If that's you today, Amen, give

it just another few seconds. Amen. Amen, everybody pray this prayer.

Will me say, Father, God, thank you for never leaving me.

You are a parent that models parenthood. Now today I come to you forgive

me of my sin, that thing that separated us, wash me clean.

I trust you as my Lord and my savior. I thank you and I

praise you in Jesus name. Amen. If you prayed that for the very

first time in your heart and you've said it with your mouth, the Bible

says you've met the conditions for being saved. Now we teach that if you

confess him before men, he'll confess you before his Father in heaven. So

Pastor Gary waved for me one more time. Over here. This is this

is Pastor Gary. This is the best pastorally gifted individual on the planet Earth.

He's laughing, but I mean it. There's not a more gifted pastor

than this man right here. He has loved some of the hardest to love

people I've ever seen. Some of them are here today. Please go to

him, if you prayed that prayer for the very first time, and tell

him that you prayed it. He won't He has a gift for He wants

to resource you with a Bible. He wants to resource you with some things.

So please go and see him and make sure that that that you take

that next step, that you're equipped to take that next