Training Worshipper and Warriors Part 2 - Ephesians: Born for War

Hey, I'm Steve Holt, the senior pastor of The Road at Chapel Hills.

This is the Road Podcast.

Thanks for joining us.

My heart is to empower you to change the world.

I hope this message impacts you.

Alright, guys.

So turning your Bibles to Ephesians 6, and I want to talk about training worshipers and warriors in the home, making your home a training center.

This is the last message of three that I wanted to do on parenting.

And I'll just say that some of you are parents, some of you are not, some of you are actually grandparents.

I pray that these translate into wherever you're at, because most of us in this room who are single are going to be parents.

Most of you will be parents.

Most of you are not called to be nuns and monks.

So you probably will find someone you fall in love with that you're supposed to be married to for the rest of your life.

Some of you are divorced and you don't care to be married again, but you might have kids.

Doesn't matter.

Wherever we are in our journey, I think what I'm trying to communicate through these messages translates into anything.

So you're spiritual, you're spiritual parents too.

Right, Cher?

I mean, Cher's been a spiritual parent to my kids, every one of them, by just being in the church.

And I think Cher would say that in some way she's had more opportunity to be a parent to my kids than even her own kids, because they're gone.

They're out and about in other parts of the country.

So some of you are gonna be like that.

You're gonna be, you might even be concerned that you weren't good parents when you were biological parents.

And I say, you know, you've got to drop that guilt thing.

You've got to get away from that condemnation and start taking even some of these principles we're gonna talk about and start parenting some young people in our church.

Mentor them.

I think men should be mentoring men and women should be mentoring women.

And some of you are called by God to open up your home to people you meet here that need a home.

Maybe they don't have a great home, or maybe they have a good home, but you're gonna be a second parent to them.

I think that's good.

I don't know what my family would be like if it weren't for so many of you.

I could go through the list of at least two or three dozen people who had significant impact in every one of our kids because we were committed to the local church.

So look at Ephesians 6.4, the last part, Ephesians 6.4, B.

It says, bring them up, meaning children, in the training and admonition of the Lord.

So I'm entitling today, Training Worshipers and Warriors, Forging Future Leaders.

Forging future leaders.

That's our job.

I am not interested in forging future followers.

There's plenty of those.

Most people are followers.

Um, but I want to challenge everyone in this room if you're a leader.

You're a leader in some way, shape, or form.

You lead someone in your life.

You are a leader.

If you start thinking, I'm a leader, I'm a leader, it changes the way you live.

It changes uh the way you speak.

It changes if you start holding your chest up just a little bit higher and put your shoulders back a little bit more and start thinking, I am a Christ follower who is a leader.

You start dressing different, you start looking different, and with that, people start to notice a new kind of, I'm gonna call it spirit-filled confidence.

I'm not interested in self-confidence, I'm interested in spirit-filled confidence.

There's a lot of self-confident Christians that I would like to keep as far away from me as possible.

They're really religious, they're arrogant, they're prideful, they're it's kind of their way or the highway.

I don't have time for that.

I like humble, joyful, authentic leaders who can readily admit when they've made a mistake, say they're sorry, and apologize.

And um, and that's a that's a spirit-filled confident leader.

That's most of this church, if not almost all of this church, because I think we, I hope that we're growing together to understand that God opens doors to humility and God actually closes doors to pride.

So um the world tells you to be prideful, the world tells you to be self-confident.

That's what all the motivational speakers talk about.

Um and but I want to be a biblical motivational speaker and to say to every one of you guys in this room, you can be a leader.

Uh, but be a Jesus follower first, be a Jesus follower leader.

And that's what we're forging with our kids.

And I said this last week, and I'll just repeat it.

The church, the church isn't gonna do it.

We're limited in what we can do.

The schools aren't gonna do it, they're limited in what they can do, but you as parents are the key.

And I think it's very interesting that many studies have been done, and you know, we we get all upset, and it's and it's okay to get upset about this, about the the impact of culture and social media on our kids, and you should be concerned about that.

But all the studies show, and I think it's like 85% of the people that our kids want to either emulate the most or they want to um be noticed the most by is mom and dad.

They do.

And so God has God is already, he's already working with you on that.

In other words, he's already put that in the DNA of a kid that they want to support their parents.

They want to be there.

And so you may say, well, you don't know my kid.

You know, I know I don't know your kid, but I'm telling you there's hope.

That's my point.

That wherever they are, how how distant they've gotten, you know, as you start to love them and bless them and be there for them, they just keep coming back because they don't go back to their principal.

They don't go, I mean, their friends, I mean, especially their druggie friends and stuff.

I mean, as soon as they graduate from high school, they never see them again most of the time.

I went to one high school reunion, and I was the man, you know, in high school.

But I didn't care.

I mean, I didn't have any close relationships really.

It was all kind of faky in high school.

And so I went to the 30-year anniversary, and man, that was an interesting looking group.

I had to um I had to seriously look at the annual um right before we got there to try to memorize what people look like, and I still couldn't recognize people.

They had changed a lot physically.

Um there, there'd been a movement southward in their bodies.

Um, look at uh Psalm 127, Psalm 127.

So my point is that all these people are gonna come and go, but you're still in their life, so keep loving them, keep blessing them, even if you've made mistakes, because everybody's made them.

Um Psalm 127, I'm gonna repeat this.

I shared it last week.

Unless the Lord builds a house, they labor in vain who build it.

Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.

It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows, and so he gives his beloved sleep.

Which, if you have little kids, that's really important to remember, because you don't get a lot of it.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, 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 a man who has a quiver full of them, they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with their enemies in the gate.

Now, let's just let's just make an addendum to verses four and five.

It has been taught in certain circles, like, have as many kids as you can have, so your quiver will be full of them, so you'll not be ashamed in the gate.

I would challenge that and say what it's saying is if they're not arrows in the bow of the warrior, then something was missing, right?

So, in that sense, I think what he's trying to say is there you're not ashamed if they're walking with God.

And so that's why we want to have a training center.

We want to build training centers.

So Liz and I felt from the very beginning, and that's all I can speak from, is personal experience.

So I'm not trying to elevate us.

I'm just saying that's the only experience I have.

And as we look at what we tried to do, I'm gonna try to explain today.

But here's the first three stones that I talked about last week.

Let me repeat them again about building your house on the Lord.

The first was build on Jesus Christ.

The second stone was build on the Bible, and the third was build on church community.

I think those are the best three stones.

I really do.

I thought about it later this week and I went, you know, that is the best group.

That's the best grouping.

Jesus, okay, Bible, and church.

And I've seen people have two out of three and miss it because they they love the Bible and they love Jesus, but they're never involved in the church, and they're missing out on that part.

I mean, and I just think that's so important.

I know people who are building on church, but they never open the Bible at home.

That's a big mistake.

You know, our kids need to see uh modeling of what our convictions are.

And then last week I talked about six practical pointers, and I'm not gonna go over those again, but six you can go back and listen to the message online and see what I said.

So here's the thing the Bible, the Bible's so cool.

I love the Bible.

It's about young leaders.

Have you noticed that?

There's a lot of young leaders that God uses in the Bible.

And here's what's amazing: in the culture of that time, youth was looked down upon and age was revered.

And yet, God chose David, who was 13 years old, when he took on Goliath.

He used Daniel, who was probably 17 years old when he came into Nebuchadnezzar's court.

King Josiah was eight years old when he became king.

How would you like to be ruled by an eight-year-old?

Now, just to give you a little bit of history on that, he it would appear that he had a whole group of people that were helping uh foster and mentor him.

But still, God raised him up, and Josiah was mightily used to bring a revival into Israel.

Jesus was 30 years old when he began his public ministry, and Timothy was probably in his late teens or early twenties.

So God's in the business of looking for young people who have a heart after him and beginning to use them at a very young age.

So, how do we train worshippers and warriors?

I want to give you a practical thought.

Number one today is build an entrepreneur.

Build an entrepreneur, train producers, not consumers.

Train producers, not consumers.

Build an entrepreneur.

The schools won't do it, the church isn't gonna do it, you've got to do it.

You have to build them.

And I think the most important thing is a spiritual entrepreneur.

Build a spiritual entrepreneur.

So all our kids, by the time they were junior in high school, had to have a ministry.

They had to have a Bible study or evangelism or something going on, usually with our youth group, and we supported that.

So almost all our kids had youth Bible studies at our house.

So we had a day of the week, and that was, you know, I remember when Isaac did it.

Isaac did it with his baseball team.

So nobody on his baseball team was a Christian.

Okay, by the time he left, I think five guys had accepted the Lord.

So as the baseball team at Discovery Canyon, he had them over, and it was like two at first.

And there were some interesting conversations around the fire out back.

Okay, but then it was three, and then it was four, and then it was five.

And so he he just stayed with it.

But it wouldn't have happened if we hadn't pushed it, if we hadn't kind of made it happen.

And then Deborah, Deborah is much more evangelistic than any of our kids, and so she was out on the streets with a group from the youth group.

About 20 of them would go and share Christ at Chapel Hills Mall.

And we had parents there around to just make sure they're okay.

They actually went down to the UCCS campus and preached the gospel down there.

And she's 16, you know?

And so everybody's been different, but Bill, the spiritual entrepreneur, by beginning to talk about at an early age, hey, you know, we want to see you start a Bible study.

Why don't you talk to Pastor Ryan?

Why don't you talk to your youth group pastor?

You can use our house anytime you want to do something and you help guide that.

Um, also build future leaders by developing them with money.

So all our kids, you think, man, this is like a Gestapo at the Holt House.

It kind of was.

But uh we felt like they needed to have a business by the time they were a junior in high school, also.

So they had to have a business.

So I just wrote down, Anna made greeting cards that were so good that a store sold them for her.

That's pretty good, right?

She didn't do it anymore, but that was her first, you know, foray into starting a business.

Deborah followed up with greeting cards that were edible.

And if you know my daughter Deborah, you know she has to have a humorous twist to everything.

So these were, she thought they would really take off, but they didn't.

Um but it was a it was a greeting card you could eat, okay?

Um we didn't care.

We really didn't care.

We just wanted to try stuff.

So Daniel sold chicken eggs and chainsawed for people.

Samuel did piano lessons, Isaac played baseball, but he won a scholarship to college, so we considered that his job.

Josh began doing documentary videos at an early age, and charity is now doing piano lessons.

So it's you know, it's a process challenging them.

Nobody's gonna do it.

School's not gonna tell your kids to be entrepreneurs, but I guess here, here, write this down.

I think this is a great.

I wrote this down and went, that's pretty good by me.

You know, I'm sure I heard it from somebody else.

But the best way to predict the future is for you to create it.

The best way to produce or predict your future is you create it.

Don't expect other people, don't expect jobs that people are gonna pay you money for.

That's great when you have it, and most of you have that.

But if you're already entrepreneur and you get into a job you don't like, you can start thinking creatively outside the box.

Go go create your own future.

That's why I wanted to be a church planter and not be in an established church.

I remember my mom when I got back from Japan, she knew I was leaving Campus Crusade, and she sat me down and said, I've got something very important to talk to you about.

And I'm like, oh my goodness, you know, I'm glad I was married.

I thought she might like be pure, no.

But um, she she's sitting there and she says, You need to consider the Lutheran church in being a pastor.

And I go, why?

And she goes, Because we need young leaders like you.

And I go, Mom, you do not need young leaders.

There's a reason why you don't have any.

I mean, the spirit is not moving there.

And I don't like the liturgy, and I don't like robes and candles and stuff.

And so I'm a I'm a rock and roll preacher.

And then she goes, Well, I just I had to say that.

She goes, We just love you anyway.

And then we went on to something else, but she had to say that.

Okay, number two.

Number two, build a critical thinker.

Build a critical thinker, train discernment for truth.

So, again, you're not gonna get that necessarily in most churches, you're not gonna get it in high school.

You have to train it at home.

And do y'all know what I mean by critical thinker?

I mean you've got discernment.

You don't believe everything you read, you don't believe everything you hear.

I don't even believe on the right side of the political spectrum half of what they say.

Because it's just the same thing that the left does, you know, trying to get everybody riled up and freaked out and making stupid mistakes.

And so you need to look at stuff and read other stuff and have some discernment skills.

And I'll tell you, man, some of the best critical thinking training we do is in our hot tub.

And I really mean that.

It's like it could be around your kitchen table, wherever, for us is our hot tub in the back.

When we're all sitting around, we're all in the hot tub, and we just start talking about the day.

We just talk about how the week's gone.

And with us, at least, we talk a lot about current events.

So we talk about what this person's saying and that person, and and so what that does is we get into it.

We get into it.

So I don't I don't agree with that.

Well, I don't agree with that.

Where what's your thoughts on that?

Well, this is what so-and-so said, or this is what that person said, and so they're around parents who critically think, but also challenging, pushing back on things, and not just taking everything like you're a big Kool-Aid drinker.

Okay, don't be a Kool-Aid drinker.

I'm not a Kool-Aid drinker around here.

I don't agree with all that's going on in our city right now in the Republican Party.

I definitely don't agree with a lot that's going on in the Democratic Party.

Use your brain.

You got a brain, you gotta noggin, use it, you know?

And um, okay, so this, have y'all ever heard of the jail man amnesia effect?

I see, I knew it, because I never heard of it either.

Okay, the jail man amnesia effect was coined by Michael Crichton, MD, to describe the experience of encountering unreliable information in mainstream media and the quote, approved narrative, end quote, in your area of expertise, and knowing by first-person experience that this narrative is wrong.

And then suspending your own critical thinking skills and trusting these same types of experts, legacy, mainstream approved media in another area outside of your experience.

So here's what he's talking about.

Um, he's saying that you open up, let's say, the New York Times, and then you see something about, let's say, is anybody here in computers?

How many of you are in computer science type fields, or okay, some of you.

So you're you might be an expert in an area, and then you read, say, an op-ed, and it's it's written by an idiot, okay?

Which would not be unheard of in the New York Times.

So this person obviously doesn't know anything about computers, but they're making these grandiose statements that you know are incorrect.

And you go, you kind of laugh and go, how did he get in, you know?

But then you turn the page and you read something in the business section and you believe it.

You see what I'm saying?

So that's what is called the jail man amnesia effect.

You like you, it's like you go, you you got amnesia.

You just read in a particular area you already know to be true, and then but you believe the next thing they say.

So be careful.

Learn to be critical thinkers, even in the areas that you know you believe in.

Like you might be hearing something that you believe in, someone's saying, well, you know, whatever it might be.

And um, and you kind of want to agree with that, but it's kind of extreme.

It's really extreme, actually.

And then you go, wow, maybe he's right in the fundamental premise of what he's saying, but he's really running off with it into some extreme.

So use your brain, so be a critical thinker.

So here's what I would say too: send your young people with yourself, come to our Empower You filmings.

You're gonna hear great stuff from me on the Empower You.

So next time we do a filming, come to that.

Get involved in the youth group, and then take your kids to the summer courses on Worldview at Summit.

Send your kids to Summit over here in Manitou Springs.

Great stuff.

Okay.

Number three, build a world changer.

Number three, build a world changer.

Train outliers who don't just mimic the culture.

Okay, train outliers who don't just mimic the culture.

If you're not doing anything to train your kids to think bigger than who they are, they will mimic the culture.

They just will.

Okay, but if you start training into your kids, you can change the world.

That's why I love our mission statement, empowering people to change the world.

You say, Well, the world's a really big place.

Well, I'm talking about your world.

You be a world changer right where you're at.

Be a world changer in their high school, be a world changer in their elementary school, be a world changer.

And you say, Well, how do you do that?

Well, it's not easy.

It's really hard, actually.

That's the reason people don't do it.

But it's about a vision.

It's you looking your child in the eye.

Remember, I talked about eye-to-eye contact and focused attention.

So look that kid in the eye and tell them you're a world changer.

And yet they're making all Fs in school.

They keep quitting everything they do.

Just keep saying it.

I don't care what they're doing.

You keep saying it and saying it and saying it because in their heart they want to believe it.

And there's nobody that's gonna believe in them but you.

Their teachers aren't gonna believe in them, their coaches aren't gonna believe in them.

It needs to be mom and dad.

And if you've got a husband or a wife that's not a Jesus follower, then you do it.

Just keep powering down on their heart and saying, you can change the world.

I'm so proud of you.

I see so much potential in you.

I see the power of God in you.

Say it.

Say it, say it, say it, say it.

And and they're gonna believe it.

They will start to believe it.

Now, it may not be then, but you keep saying that.

It's so valuable.

So tell them they're smart.

Tell them they're a genius in that little body.

You're a genius.

And then give examples of you you took your plate and put it in the sink.

I'm so proud of you.

You're a genius.

I mean, start with something, okay?

So build a world changer.

And I think one of the best things that's helped us is biographies.

Biographies are huge.

Biographies are so good.

What I love about biographies is it's always about regular people who got a conviction in their heart and they believed and they kept pressing and they kept pushing, and God used them in a mighty way.

Abraham Lincoln, William Wilberforce, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., William Carey, Hudson Taylor, Ronald Reagan, Winston Churchill, Dietrich Bonover, C.S.

Lewis, G.K.

Chesterton, Oswald Chambers, Billy Graham.

I mean, the list goes on.

And there's always, there's always little kids' versions too.

You can get little kids versions, you know.

I know YWAM.

I think it's YWAM that put out YWAM Publishing put out all these little things, and we have we have a whole row of them.

And they're mainly missionaries, but there's stuff like that.

I mean, I think you could find it on Lincoln.

I think you can find them on um Pubby Ronald Reagan.

Different people like that that you emulate, that you love, and they're great little things.

And give them good literature.

No comic books.

No, I don't know, man.

Spider-Man just doesn't.

I don't dig Spider-Man.

I don't dig Superman.

I don't dig Batman.

I'm sorry, I know DC comic fans out there, but let me just tell you, let's let's deal in the here and the now.

Okay, let's deal with reality.

Um actually I I do like um Batman.

Batman's cool.

Here's why Batman's cool, because he's a regular dude.

He doesn't have any, you know, he didn't get a spider bite and has superhuman powers and all that.

He didn't fall down from wherever that place was, you know, into a little village and he's superman.

You know, it's like I like regular dudes who make regular mistakes, who decided to work harder than everybody else, and became a leader.

That's what I'm after.

And I think that's where you're at.

That's what you're for, too.

So good biographies, having your shelves full of those.

And then lastly, fourthly, build a courageous spirit.

Build a courageous spirit, train resiliency through facing difficulties.

Train resiliency through facing difficulties.

Don't rescue your kids all the time.

Okay, sometimes you need to go in with the principal, go in with the principal with your kid, and instead of supporting your child, if you know they're wrong, or you have this sneaking suspicion that they're kind of up to no good.

Okay, that you might actually listen to what the principal's saying about what the teacher said, and you go, honey, is that accurate?

Well, no, no, they're exaggerating.

Is it some of it accurate?

Uh well, no, yeah.

And I go, I want you to go to the teacher, I want you to apologize.

I remember Daniel, he may be listening to this, so Daniel, you remember this, but um, I don't know what he did.

I don't know if he threw his bat or something on his baseball team, and and I was at the game, and I went, that, you know, is is not right.

That's not the attitude Holtz have, you know.

So he had to go.

I made him use his own money from his from his chicken egg business, which wasn't very much.

Um he made more money chainsawing, but I said, you know, go buy bubblegum for everybody on the team, and I want you to apologize to Doug out the next game.

So he did that, you know.

So you train you train a kid who has resiliency through tough times.

I love Winston Churchill.

It's one of my favorite quotes by Winston Churchill.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it's the courage to continue that counts.

And so, guys, um build resiliency.

Um put your kids in some hard situations, have them go on mission trips.

Have them, and if they come back complaining that Pastor Ryan was mean or anything like that, just find out if that's true or not.

Because I know Pastor Ryan and he's not mean.

And sometimes you gotta pick it up and you gotta be tough.

And um, that's where sports is good.

I think sports is good.

Starting your own company, little company is good.

Nobody's buying my eggs.

Well, the last batch had three broken eggs in it.

That might be a problem for your equity, you know.

Um, so you you build resiliency.

Does that make sense?

Hey, thanks for listening to the Road Podcast.

It's been my joy to be a part of your life today.

And you know, that's part of what we do here at The Road, and this is what I do in having this Road Podcast is to empower people to change their world.

My passion and desire is that you would take God's word through the power of the Holy Spirit and make that relevant for your life.

You know, the reality is that God has placed your life here on this earth to make a difference.

And if you'd like more information about how to grow in Christ, if you need prayer, if you want more equipping in different areas of your life, go to theroad.org.

God bless you.