The Wholehearted Family - The Wholehearted Family

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

But the reality is, is that when we train the heart, it means we have to be listeners, we have to, it takes a lot more work.

It's so easy to just throw the law at our kids.

I want to challenge you to throw the heart at your kids.

Not the law, throw your heart at our kids.

And for you that are grandparents and you're gonna have grandchildren who say the same thing to you, that you're you're there for the kids.

You're training their heart to love God, and it begins with you loving them.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Listen, here at The Road, we go book by book, chapter by chapter, verse by verse.

We're in the book of Revelation.

We've done 10 messages in the book of Revelation up to now, but we're gonna leave Revelation tonight because I have a guilt complex about forgetting about mothers and fathers.

Now we believe in family around here.

My wife and I have been married for almost 31 years, and 28 of those with kids, and they're still in our house.

I mean, we uh we have so many friends that like are empty nesters and they're going on cruises and stuff, and um about the only thing that we cruise on is trying to get to the bedroom and fall asleep each night.

But we still have little ones, they range from 11 to 28, so we know a lot about family, and we've made a lot of mistakes in the process, but that's the way it is.

We've had two kids study abroad in Bible colleges, um Peru, England, and Japan.

We've had one of our kids on an archaeological dig in Israel.

We have two kids that we have one getting ready to go to college, we've got one currently in college, he's transferring to college that he's been a part of.

And so then we have two, we have a 14-year-old and 11-year-old, and we really don't know where they go to school.

We uh sometimes we do.

We've actually been trying to figure that out.

But we some people call it homeschooling, but we have had so many kids in so many different things.

We've had them in public, we've had them in private, we've had them in charter, we've had them in early college.

I would say the majority has been homeschooling, but I don't know about that because they're just gone sometimes and we don't know where they are.

Um and so we're still trying to figure that out.

But anyway, we do try to get them into some kind of a schooling um in their career.

We have found that each kid is really different, and that there's no real template, uh Holt template that comes out.

Some are extrovert, some are introverts, some are creative, some are horribly uncreative, um, some are athletic.

We've had one kid that um actually the piano teacher asked him to quit.

And and you can imagine that that's her livelihood, and so for her to ask him to quit was a significant thing.

We've had many kids that have been compared with the other kids because there's so many kids that come along, and so we have coaches and we have teachers and we have instructors that had the other ones, and they're they'll say things like, Why aren't you like so-and-so?

You know, and so there's some occasional sibling rivalry, and we've had to fire some teachers because they do that too much.

We have lived in tiny apartments.

We lived in one of the largest cities in the world in Tokyo, Japan.

So we've lived in a tiny apartment in Tokyo, Japan for many years.

That's where we kind of got started, cut our teeth on marriage there.

And then we've lived in a sugar cane field in Okinawa.

And then we've lived in suburbia, Pasadena, California, and suburbia in Briargate, where we started one of the churches that we started in our basement.

And we've never had much.

Um, we've had a lot for brief periods of time until it's all gone.

Um, but we generally speaking haven't had a lot, and so what's happened is that we've had to kind of generate it ourselves.

And so we the kids did a little Father's Day thing for me at Great Harvest.

This the only time in the next two days was 7 a.m.

this morning, so we did it there, and so some of the kids came.

I think most of them were there.

Isaac's um in New York right now, but um anyway, they came, and so we were asking about questions, and they reminded us of some of the fun things that we've done.

But one of the things that was true of us is that we didn't we've never eaten out a lot because we just didn't have the funds, a lot of discretional land comes, and it did a lot of kids and big bills, and any bill that was under a hundred was like a bargain.

And uh and so we didn't.

So they were reminding us that we always had boiled eggs on our trips because we always drove because we couldn't afford to fly.

So we'd drive and it smelled always like eggs and stuff.

And eggs, the smell of eggs has been compared to other bodily functions, and so that came up also.

And then we've had what we call brown muffins, and brown muffins are these there was this stage we went into.

Thank you, Phyllis Stanley, where um we always were grinding our bread.

And when Phyllis, listen, when Phyllis Stanley grinds bread and she gives you a loaf of bread, freshly ground in her beautiful way, and it has like sometimes it has raisins in it, sometimes it has nuts in it, it's all kinds of cool stuff, yet it holds together.

Okay, Phyllis is like you slice it and you got a you've got a piece of bread, right?

And it stays together.

And my wife's a beautiful woman in many ways.

But there was something missing in the translation between Phyllis to Liz that we never quite grasp, and I don't think it's ever happened.

And and ours just didn't quite like hold together the same way.

And so we would have things like brown muffins that were made from the recipe of Phyllis Stanley, and it was like it made you um it made you a regular.

It made you somewhat regular.

So it it it probably after a third or fourth trip driving down the road, we realized that maybe brown muffins aren't good for trips, long trips, trips to California, trips to Georgia.

We're talking 21 to 23 hours because we didn't stop because we didn't want to pay for a hotel.

We've always tithed 10%.

I think there's five or six times we didn't tithe 10%.

We've always tithed our money.

We've always given 10% of our income to the Lord, and we believe that that's the right thing to do.

So we drive older cars.

In 2006, when I was pastoring Mountain Springs, I I was given a the church bought me um the 2006 Toyota Tundra that I still currently drive.

That's the only new car that I've ever owned, and it's no longer a new car.

It now has 140,000 miles.

And all of our cars have a beautiful Holt emblem, and it's a cracked windshield.

And I would just say that um whatever you do should always have a cracked windshield in Colorado.

We've had to battle in prayer for all of our kids.

And we've had to fast and pray, and so for 25 years, Liz and I take Monday to fast and pray, and most of that's for our kids.

And we've made some mistakes, and so the other day there everybody was over at our house because most of us, except again, Isaac's out of town, but most of them are around here, and we were just asking them some questions.

I said, I'm gonna do this talk.

Can you guys give me some ideas on this?

And um, and so one of them shared that you know, you guys didn't value my opinion very much when I was growing.

I didn't feel like you valued my opinion.

And there were some other things.

And one thing great about being able to give a message in front of you is I can choose what I'm gonna speak on.

So I will choose to not use many bad illustrations that they gave us.

That could actually be for another talk.

So I want to say a few things before I begin, and that and I'm never comfortable giving a talk like this because um there's so many concerns about.

I think anytime you get into marriage stuff and you get into parenting stuff, people get really nervous.

And they get nervous because they've been through a divorce, or they get nervous because they were sexually abused as a kid.

And so I just want to say this that what we're what I'm gonna share is is a lot of it is, I believe, from the word.

That's why I chose a passage, but it does have kind of my viewpoint and my slant to it.

So the first thing I want to say is that we've made many mistakes, and that many of the young adults in our family could point to some of those, but I think that overall we've tried to be a kingdom family.

And so, secondly, I want to say that this is about a Christian family, this is about building a whole heart family, this is about building whole-hearted disciples.

So it's not about how to get a scholarship for your kids, and it's not about how to have the all-American family.

Somebody else can speak on that, and I'm sure there's seminars and books written on that.

I don't know how to necessarily do that.

We're a pretty free family, and so I like I like kids that are free and joyful and go for it.

I do.

And any of your kids around here that run around and stuff, I mean, I don't want them to get hurt or anything, but this is their church.

This is their church, and I want them to feel like this is their church, and I didn't feel like that growing up.

I grew up in a more denominational-minded family and church, and you just didn't.

I mean, you had a clip-on tie.

I mean, I had a clip-on tie from two years up, and that was torture.

Um, and I don't want kids to feel that way.

And so in our home, I want the pastor's family to feel like they have a chance to be who they are, not who I am.

And we've never ever talked to them about ministry.

We've never talked to them about doing ministry like full time, but all of them have been on the mission field.

And all of them have chosen routes that have ministry within it, but that was never an emphasis.

I want you to know that.

And I think also that people get super sensitive when we talk about these things, and I don't want to presume anything.

So as I share, I just want to lay that down.

And then here's the fourth thing, the last thing I want to say before we start, is questioning oneself is difficult.

It's probably the hardest thing that we do.

Questioning what the culture says you should do with your family is even harder.

And I want to just say this we've never been that enticed by, excited about, nor having any desire to do what the culture does.

I think partly because the first years of our marriage was in Asia.

And in a Buddhist country like Japan, we saw better parenting in Japan than we saw most of the time when we came back to America.

And so we've always had this worldview that was much more international because I had been in 27 nations of the world before I was 30.

And so I had seen so many different families and situations.

And so when I heard stuff about schooling, and when I heard stuff about, there was a parenting model that was flying through the evangelical community in the 80s that I abhorred.

And everybody was doing it, and and and just fundamentally it's so graded against my view of the love of God that that's when I think we began to decide, you know, we're gonna have to find our own way.

And we're gonna have to find God's own way for our family.

So I just want to say all that.

That's just all to not presume, but also to give a preemptive warning to what you're about to hear.

Is that okay?

Is that fair?

All right, so we're looking at Deuteronomy 6.

So you can either look on your app or you can open your Bible to Deuteronomy 6.

Israel is coming into Canaan.

Moses gives the nation of Israel the most important instructions, in my opinion, the most important instructions outside of the Ten Commandments here.

If you as a parent are not familiar with Deuteronomy 6, may this be a blessing to you tonight because this is how to shepherd, how to develop, how to build a godly, beautiful, beloved, whole-hearted home in a foreign culture.

So Israel is coming in to a different culture, a foreign culture, and Moses is concerned that if Israel does what the culture does, they will have no impact.

And you'll get this tonight that I believe that the most important thing we do in our homes is train, equip, and develop our kids to love God with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

So they may not be the smartest kids in the class.

They may not be the sharpest, they may not get that degree that other people get, but I'll tell you this: we pray and we fast and we work to build wholehearted disciples.

And so that's what Moses is saying here.

Moses is saying, look, you guys, you're going into a foreign culture.

There are Canaanite idols, women, and men that you're gonna want to date and go to the drive-in and smooch with and get married to and have babies with, that's gonna ruin you if you do this wrong.

And so here's what he says.

Now, this is the commandment, so you ought to underline, highlight, circle that word.

This is a commandment from the Lord, and it's still applicable today.

Now, this is a commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has, again, commanded to teach you.

So God's commanding something that he wants to teach them, and then listen to what he says here that you may observe them in the land in which you're crossing over to possess.

Now, I'm gonna talk more about that, but the reality is that Moses and God speaking through Moses never wanted Israel to go into Canaan and become Canaanites.

Just to become another tribe, he wanted them to possess the land.

He wanted them to take the land, he wanted them to cross over and so impact this Canaanite culture that they would want to become Jews.

That they would want to pro they would want to be proselytes coming into the Jewish faith.

And that their impact would be to destroy those idols and the idolatry that was in the land.

That you may fear the Lord your God, verse 2, and keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you.

You and your son and your grandson, all the days of your life, that your days may be prolonged.

Therefore, hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your strength.

Verse six 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, and when you walk by the way, and 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.

So, so they're they're going into this culture, men and women, that is different in its food, it's different linguistically, it's different traditionally, it's different religiously.

So at that time the Canaanite religions believed in infanticide.

So they dedicated their babies to their idols and had them slaughtered.

They believed in female circumcision.

There was a rim of the Canaanite religions that believed in blood sacrifices of humans.

But they are being told that you're not to go in and adapt, you're not to go in and be culturally relevant.

Anyone know that term?

Culturally relevant.

They were not to go in and be culturally relevant, they actually were to go in and be counter-cultural.

They were to go in and be culturally irrelevant.

So, how do we build wholehearted families?

I want to give you four thoughts, four maxims that I think I see in this passage.

And um may the Lord bless it.

So, Father, in the name of the blood of Jesus, we thank you for tonight.

We thank you for fathers, we thank you for mothers, we thank you for children, we thank you for babies, we thank you for singles, we thank you for those who are divorced.

God, we thank you for those who who've struggled in marriages.

We thank you, Lord, for those that have never been married.

We thank you, Lord, for those here who want to be married.

And we just bless you and praise you.

And God, may your word speak to us wherever we are in our journey.

In your name.

Amen.

So I, by the way, I want to say to all of you that are single, it's better to be single and wish you're married than to be married and wish you're single.

So, anyway, I am glad to say that.

So, first of all, here's my first maxim.

And this is what I see in the passage, and that is modeling.

Modeling.

The first thing I see is we have to model a wholehearted marriage.

So you that are married, you that are divorced, you that have kids, if you're single, divorced, and you have kids, then it's you.

But if you're still married or you're with your first husband, or you're with your second husband, um, then it's you both of you, working together, modeling something.

And so our children become, I hate to say this, mostly like us.

So, like it or lump it, it is true, they watch what you do more than what you say.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, What you are speaks so loud I can't hear what you're saying.

So we model because most people catch more than are taught.

We say caught rather than taught those things that really become values in their life.

That's why it's a struggle for so many Christian parents who have kids that had the model kids, and then around 13 and 14, all hell broke loose.

It's because in many cases, first of all, there's little sinners.

Okay, so they're they're just they're sinners and they're demonized.

Okay?

And um I think every kid is demonized at some point in their life.

And I mean I'm being facetious partly, but I think it's true.

I mean, it's really the culture's a demonized culture, and if we don't pray, listen, if you don't battle for your kids, they're gonna get demonized.

And I is, I mean, our kids have been demonized, and we've had to cast out demons, literally, cast out demons out of our kids.

And so, and so, first of all, they're watching you, their little eyes are observing you, and they need to see a good model.

And when you mess up, then you need to apologize.

It's amazing all the studies that have been done with children, how they found, and it shocked even the surveys that were done, that the number one thing that came out with teenagers, when they were asking them, if you could have your parents do something different, what would it be?

Number one was say you're sorry.

Say you're sorry, apologize.

And I think that's not teenagers, that's starting at the beginning.

I can't tell you how many staff I've had, how many employees I've had over the years, how many pastors I know who don't know how to say, I am sorry.

Those are some of the three greatest words.

You want to get yourself out of a ton of trouble?

Learn to say, I blew it, I am sorry.

Please forgive me.

It's amazing how powerful that is.

Some of you men don't have a clue how to say, I am sorry.

You're so arrogant with your kids.

And you and you're just rolling over them.

And I want to challenge you.

You know, get over yourself and humble yourself and love that guy.

Love that gal.

Hear their heart.

Sometimes they're smarter than you.

Because you know what it is?

They're they hear what you say, but then they see the they see the hardened heart and they see the bitterness and they see the lying and stuff like that.

Because we all struggle with that, right?

Everybody go like this, and the rest of you are liars.

You know, it's true.

And so we we do that because we're all sinners too.

And so to learn to say, you know, Joe, Susan, last week when we were talking about that thing, and I said this, you know what?

That's not true.

I didn't tell you the truth.

I was busy, I was forgetful, and it wasn't right.

And I'm so sorry.

Will you forgive me?

Do you know how far that goes in building bridges to the heart of our kids that be willing to say you're sorry?

Interesting about marriage.

Time magazine.

Did y'all see anybody get Time Magazine?

I get Time Magazine.

My dad pays for it.

My liberal dad.

I better read Time Magazine because I it's pretty good.

I mean, actually, it's really good articles and stuff.

But Time Magazine, two weeks ago, cover story on marriage, June 13th, 2016.

So two weeks ago.

Here's what it said.

And the title was on marriage, staying marriage.

Staying married.

New evidence keeps piling up that few things are as good for life, limb, and liquidity as staying married.

Carl Pilimer, a Cornell University gerontologist who did an intensive survey of 700 elderly people, found, quote, couples who have made it all the way later into life have found it to be a peak experience, a sublime experience to be together.

Dr.

Pilimer continues, everybody, 100%, so that was how many?

700 that he did the survey with, said at one point, this is the part we don't like.

Okay, so everybody listen.

Everyone 100% said at one point that the long marriage was the best thing in their lives, but all of them also said either that marriage is hard or really, really hard.

So is that any?

I want that to be an encouragement to all of you.

Now I'm not going to go into how to have a happy marriage.

My book, we're going to sell them in the lobby for five bucks.

I've got a few left, and if you want that book on the Gobwell marriage, it's out there and it's five dollars.

But I'll say this I think for men and women, it's the most stretching, challenging, most difficult, arduous thing you do in your whole life is to be married.

Isn't that right?

And it's so hard.

But here's what it is staying married or getting married, being married, is financially more, makes people financially more well off, physically in better shape, emotionally more stable, spiritually more fulfilled, and also their kids.

Now, this was interesting.

Time magazine in the article mentions an important point that I'd like to address to all of you who are single.

Because there's this word that I keep hearing on the radio and TV all the time.

I hate it.

Stop using, if you're using it, but don't listen to this idea that you're gonna find your soulmate.

You ain't gonna find your soulmate.

To use Georgiaese, it don't exist, it ain't out there.

There ain't no soulmate.

Harry Chapman, the author of the Five Love Languages, which has been on some version of the New York Times bestseller list for eight straight years.

Eight straight years, says this.

We have this mythological idea that we will find a soulmate and have these euphoric feelings forever.

Can I just put that under the rubric of stupidity?

Okay, that's just under stupidity.

Okay.

In fact, listen, but this is what he says.

I love this.

So Gary Chapman says this.

In fact, soulmates tend to be crafted, not found.

Ooh.

Isn't that great?

So now let's go back to remember Dr.

Pilimer, the guy at Cornell.

Here's what he said.

The key to marriage is practice, practice, practice.

In my research, I have found that these people never discussed divorce as an option.

They had a mindset that they would stay married.

They regarded their partnership, listen, this is good, as less like buying a new car and more like learning to drive.

I mean, Liz and I were talking the other night, and I was, it was early in the morning.

I'd just woken up, and usually I'm really lucid when I wake up.

I have really, I mean, she just takes notes on some of the things that I say.

It's so beautiful.

But on this, I actually said something smart on this particular day.

I woke up and I said, you know how many?

I hardly knew.

I mean, when you look at now where we're at, I hardly knew her when we got married.

And I was telling her how blessed I am.

Because some of you know, because you've experienced it in this room, you hardly knew your spouse too, and it didn't go so well.

And so there is a battle to be married, and there's a battle to stay married.

So forget the soulmate stuff.

And think in terms of I want to study my wife, I want to study my husband, I want to learn how to craft a soulmate through the power of the Holy Spirit, through prayer and fasting and seeking God together.

Look at verse 3.

Look at verse 3.

Therefore, hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, that you may multiply greatly.

That's the key word, that's the operable word here, that you may multiply greatly as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you, a land flowing with milk and honey.

So maximum number two, multiplying.

Multiplying.

First, model, modeling, second, multiplying.

We're called church to build children that multiply in the land.

Now I say if multiplication is based on procreation, I've done pretty well.

I get an Emmy.

Okay?

And so might Steve and Shawnee with 14.

Listen, that's not my point, though.

My point is this: you are building producers, not consumers.

I want to challenge you that as you raise your kids, however many there are, from one to whatever, if God's blessed you with children, you're building producers, not consumers.

You're building a wholehearted family by building children that become effective and successful and powerful in the land as Jesus followers.

And so what we're trying to do is we're trying to build confidence in our kids.

And I can tell you, if you're berating your kids on a regular basis, I've never found one study that says that builds confidence.

If you can build confidence through encouragement, you will have a kid that you actually want to continue to have a relationship with as they grow older.

But if you're building kids based on haranguing and pressing and pushing and constantly just driving them towards this perfectionism, you're going to hate the product.

I mean, there's some kids that are so, they're such people pleasers that'll do whatever you say, but I promise you at some point they're going to rebel against that.

So you're saying, well, where's the standard?

I mean, do we have no standards?

I'm not saying have no standards.

I'm just saying that you build it through shepherding their heart, not focusing on the externals.

So shepherding their heart will give you the externals eventually.

It may not be in your time frame, but they will, and we've tested this and it works, versus pressing on the externals and thinking that somehow that's going to change their heart.

It rarely, rarely happens.

The law's never worked.

The laws never worked.

All that the law does is allow us to realize what God loves and what God hates.

That's what the law is about.

But the law is always to drive us to a personal, dynamic, intimate, growing relationship with Jesus Christ.

That's called grace.

Right?

So we're building a grace atmosphere in our homes so that they'll multiply.

Because here's what happens most of the time.

My experience in being a pastor and a missionary for all these years has been this that these kids, our Christian kids, start going to college and we lose them to the tune of about 8.5 to every 10.

What?

There's a problem here.

If our kids can't go into secular colleges and know how to defeat the enemy there, then we're doing something wrong at home.

And I believe it's possible, and we've tested it, that you can build your kids and train your kids to go into a secular counterculture situation by the convictions they have based on their love for Jesus Christ, because we've not produced consumers, we've produced producers.

So here's what Romans 5.17 says.

And you guys remember when I did that series on reigning in life at the beginning of the year.

For if by the one man's offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.

So we're training our kids to reign in life.

I was talking to Daniel this week, and I said, you know, what were some of the things that stand out to you about our parenting through the years?

And he said, You instilled entrepreneurship in us.

We've encouraged our kids to think outside the box.

I remember one time Daniel coming back from being at Pikes Peak Community College, and we were out, I'll never forget it, we're back in the woods, and he goes, Man, Dad, they just hate the Puritans at Pikes Peak Community College.

I said, What do you mean?

He says, So he starts telling me all this stuff that they had said about the Puritans and the founding of our country and stuff like that.

And I said to Daniel, I said, Well, look it up.

Do your research.

Don't just read their books.

Read what's out there about the Puritans.

And so we we challenged him to go to history and to find, not just take it for what it was worth from a teacher.

So anyway, we encouraged our kids in kind of funny things, but we said, you need to have business.

You need to be business-minded when you do stuff.

So Anna had a dried flour card business.

And so she was always hustling at church to get people into her dried flour card business and made pretty good money.

Daniel had chickens, much to his chagrin.

He said, that's like the worst job.

I want to kill those chickens.

They're terrible.

All that work, and all I get is like two bucks for a stupid dozen, you know.

And then we would always use them, and he said, There's like no money in it.

So he started chainsawing.

So he started chainsawing for people, and he chainsawed.

Samuel has taught piano lessons.

But the most famous business in our family history was Deborah.

Of course, Deborah.

Who made edible stationery?

I kid you not.

She made avocado and chocolate edible paper stationery.

She made no money.

It did not work.

I like what Liz said, because Liz is downstairs teaching down below, so she couldn't be with us.

But she, I said, what do you, you know, she said that say this.

Don't, this is what she said, don't build young adults that are institutionally dependent.

Don't build young adults that are institutionally dependent.

Main point here: raise entrepreneurs, not employees.

You want to train innovation, you want to train creativity, you want to train them to think for themselves, you want to train them to be critical thinkers, to challenge teachers, to challenge the culture, to challenge what they're hearing on TV, and don't give them much media.

Be careful with the amount of media that your kids have an intake from, because they will ingest that.

Okay, so verse 4.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your strength.

And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.

Maxim number three, most important of all, missional.

Our mission is to build and shepherd our children's heart, to love God with their whole heart.

Now, you that are part of the road, some of you that are guests may think when I speak of being whole-hearted, we think of it a kind of the typical way, and that is all in, totally focused.

I mean, there's some rare kids out there, you know, you think of Daniel in the Bible or David and others, but quite frankly, most kids are not going to be all in and totally focused most of the time.

So here's what I mean by being whole-hearted is a reminder to all of us, because I've said it so many times, and that is that we've got dark places in our heart.

We've got motives that are impure.

We have areas of our heart that aren't right.

But it's helping our kids understand that's true about you, little sinner.

I love you.

But okay.

You looked at porn.

I'm man, I is this stupid?

I'm just gonna, you're grounded for a hundred years.

I mean, to me, grounding, sorry, again, this is just my opinion, but grounding is stupid, gang.

I think it's one of the dumbest ideas ever perpetuated on the American family.

It doesn't work, never has worked.

But the idea to say, well, why were you looking at porn?

What's going on?

Let's talk about that.

Now, were they boys or girls?

Yeah.

And to have a discussion about it, instead of shaming them, we begin to bridge them toward loving God with all of their heart.

With training, why that's not a good idea.

And putting all of the restrictions you can on the computer.

Our computers are all right down where everybody is, right in the main part of the house.

So there's less room for that kind of stuff to happen.

I mean, use when we use common sense on that.

But the reality is that when we train the heart, it means we have to be listeners.

It takes a lot more work.

It's so easy to just throw the law at our kids.

I want to challenge you to throw the heart at your kids.

Not the law.

Throw your heart at our kids.

And for you that are grandparents and you're gonna have grandchildren, I would say the same thing to you: that you're you're there for the kids.

You're training their heart to love God, and it begins with you loving them.

Because we're not building perfect kids.

That's not our goal.

Our goal is to build passionate kids, not perfect kids.

So I remember many times in the churches that I've been in seeing kids smash stuff.

I mean, just full on through the lobby, bam, nail something, and the same things happened at our house.

Full blast, wreck stuff.

And I love that.

And if you guys start, this remember, this is this is Bobby's church, okay?

So Bobby might not agree with this because this is Chapwell's church, so you've got to take this with a grain of salt.

But what I'm saying is, we want passion, and passion is messy, and passion is chaotic, and passion is stupid mistakes they make, and passion is them learning to be passionate.

Parents of young kids, let your kids be passionate.

I challenge you.

Please let them be passionate.

And by the way, they'll be the best creative entrepreneurs and athletes by being that way.

Obviously, with guidelines, and I don't have time to go through all what those guidelines would be, but the reality is that we're training their heart.

And it seems as though God felt that that was the most important thing that they did as parents in Israel was to train them to love God with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And so when we worship, that they see you worship.

When you pray, they see you pray.

You bring your kids with you, you bring them to, you know, you bring them around passionate people and equip them, limiting their appetites.

Limiting the appetites.

I remember when I was in Japan and I tasted a Fuji apple.

And I was like, oh my.

This must have been the fruit in the Garden of Eden.

You know, and all I'd had was red delicious and Granny Smith, and I think there was one other version of a red something in the South.

And they were always kind of mushy, and the you know, that tartness that comes with the Granny Smith.

But to me, the Fuji apple was like the honey crisp is today.

It was kind of like that, you know, and they keep having derivatives of all this.

But back then, when I tasted that, I was like, whoa! And so now the red delicious was, eh.

And Granny Smith was, yeah.

And the other red something was, yeah.

You know, because I had had a Fuji apple.

Well, why do I say that?

Because I think as kids are growing up, there's age-appropriate times for their appetites to be enticed.

But if their appetites are enticed too early when they don't have the maturity to handle it, it causes them to actually hate what God loves.

And so what happens sometimes is our kids, especially in school and stuff, get exposed to things that are enticing to their spirit.

It might be sexual, it might be emotional, whatever.

And then the things at church just don't have the same fragrance and same desire and passion anymore.

Your job is to guard that.

Your job is to guard who their friends are, to guard how many opportunities they have to have their appetites enticed in ways that are not, that they are not and their hearts are not ready for.

It's a big, big job, but it can be done.

When we have our 24-hour war room, I want kids in there.

Bring your kids with you.

You know, I don't know any kid that wouldn't say, if you said to them, you don't have to go to bed tonight.

Oh man, what a bummer.

You know, kids would love to do that.

Bring them to youth group, get them involved in youth group, get them around Christian kids that are going places, that have a vision, that have a mission for their life.

Because I guarantee it's not happening at school.

And so they need it.

Maximum number four, lastly, this.

So modeling, second, multiplying, third, mission on fourth, mobilizing.

Mobilizing.

We must actively, attentively, intentionally train and coach our children to love God.

Nobody's gonna do it for us.

The church isn't gonna do it for you.

The principal of your school is not gonna do it for you.

Your charter school is not gonna do it for you.

Your early college is not gonna do it for you.

Only you can do it, and I'm not gonna do it for you.

Verse 7: the operable key verse here.

You shall, 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.

We must mobilize by training and coaching our kids.

Listen, at a set time and a set place, it's not gonna happen if you don't.

Everybody here who wants to work out, you have a set time, you have a set place.

Everybody who's dieting has a set time and a set food and a set place.

Anybody who goes to a job has a set time and a set place when you show up and when you leave.

It's just life.

Right?

So you need, as parents, to have a set time and a set place.

It used to be called the family altar, all kinds of old timing terms.

That was a Puritan term, the family altar.

I just call it, you know, a training time, a teaching time, an equipping time with your kids.

Though I'm not from Colorado, so I'm not really smart.

I'm from Georgia, but I did figure this out.

The road on a good night, if the spirit's really moving, we go maybe two hours.

There's 168 hours in a week.

So the training and equipping of our kids, as good as that children's program is downstairs and the youth program during the week is, is not going to completely cut it.

For many of you, your children, if they're in school eight hours a day, that translates into 40 hours a week.

If you include sports, et cetera, that's about 50 to 60 hours of influence per week.

They sleep about 56 hours in a week.

So the culture gets our kids 50 hours a week.

That's conservative.

And it doesn't take a rocket scientist too much to figure out that 50 hours times 12 years comes to somewhere around 15,000 hours of influence in our schools.

But here's the most amazing discovery.

Every year they do the research, and it's always the same.

They ask high school kids, high school juniors and seniors, who is the most influential person in your life, and it's still today, 2016.

I don't know if they've done it in 2016, but I know it's true in 2014, mom and dad.

Isn't that amazing?

You think you don't have any influence?

All the programming and Kardashians and the voice and all the things that have influence over our kids, they still look to their parents as the most powerful influence in their life.

And so, men and women, we have been given by God, I believe it's just the sovereignty of God, that He has given each of us an influence in the hearts of our kids.

They want to please us.

But it's like when I'm fly fishing, and when I'm out fly fishing, and um and I've got to go upriver, because I usually fish up river.

And so I have to determine how far I go out because it's harder to go upriver.

Okay, so sometimes it's too hard.

I go out, I have to go around because I gotta go into the stream, right?

I have to face it.

And so if I stumble, boom, I'm down, and many times I have been.

Right?

You know, I turn, I feel like I'm on good footing, and then there's a big rock, and bam, I go down.

And so going upstream is always harder than going downstream, culturally, too.

And so to go upstream takes an intentionality, it takes an effort, it takes a strategy, it means take it means thinking through your steps, you know, thinking through what you're doing because you're going into the stream.

And that stream is getting faster and faster as the years go by.

You realize that?

That our culture is becoming more and more influential because of the phones and because of TV and because of movies and media and stuff.

And so many times we get around even Christian environments and we're talking about movies, right?

And we're talking about the influence of a movie, or we're talking about the influence of something we saw, and everybody's showing something on YouTube, and so the influence is stronger, and so parents, I want to challenge you.

Go against the culture by training and equipping your kids.

So, when we asked our kids the other day, what's the most important thing that we did in your life?

They said that they call it the group quiet time.

The group quiet time.

And that's where Liz almost every morning has a time of worship, prayer, and in the word.

Worship, prayer, and in the word.

Sometimes it's 10 minutes, sometimes it's 45 minutes.

But she does it, and she just feels like that's where she decided to plant her flag was to have some time with the kids every day in the word.

So here's what it says: you shall teach them diligently to your children, diligently, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up.

When I teach on situational leadership, whenever I teach on situational leadership, I say the best way to learn to be a leader is through formal training, informal training, and non-formal training.

So formal training is, I don't care if you're the most godly person on the face of the earth and you just every, you fast and pray every day of your life.

I mean, you're emaciated.

You're so godly.

I mean, you've never, I mean, you just never eat anything bad, and you just love Jesus with all your heart in your life.

Like, ugh, like unbelievably committed, but you want to be an engineer.

Well, if you don't go to school, you won't learn to be an engineer.

You do need formal training.

And I'll just say this: when I was unsaved, I was not good at math.

And when I got saved, I was not good at math.

Okay?

And so you've got to have formal training.

And so in our lives, there has to be some kind of formal teaching that happens, and I call that formal training.

And so, moms and dads train your kids.

It might be over supper, you know, when you guys eat together.

I hope you eat together some.

Um, it might be just three days a week.

It might be start with one day a week.

But do something, and Liz is really sophisticated.

Does anybody have a Bible?

Can I borrow your Bible?

Okay.

Liz is really sophisticated in her time with her kids.

She goes, Would everybody turn to Isaiah 41?

So the kids turn around.

Okay, we're gonna just read.

Start, we're gonna start with you, and let's just read around.

So then everybody reads the whole chapter, and then she goes, What's God saying?

What can we learn from this?

That's it.

Okay.

Sometimes it's that simple.

It's powerful, though.

It's so powerful just to open the word because it's living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword.

And that's why we have this.

That's what I love about our PBJ, Prayer Bible Journal.

So here it is.

There's the verses right there, already available to us as a family.

So that's formal.

But listen to what it says.

It says also, you 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.

So there's this informal side.

How many of you figured out that if you've got teenagers, you don't go to bed all the time when you want to?

Because I found with kids in their teens that it's usually at night they want to talk and I want to sleep.

And they come into my room and they sit on my bed.

It's like, get out of here.

I'm tired.

I've poured out my life for you today.

I've had enough of you.

Ah.

But no, they that's when they want to talk.

And so that's informal.

Those are some of the most special times.

Those are some of the best times.

All my boys know that on that trip, when we're four-wheeling and nearly killing ourselves, going into elk hunting camp, what we call the Roosevelt camp, going through this arduous area on our way up, that's when we start talking about sex.

So how's it going, son?

Yeah, about sex.

And you know, because I figure that they don't want to look at you anyway when you're talking about that.

And so they don't have to, because we're about to kill ourselves because there's like, you know, aspens coming like this close.

Ah.

And I don't have to see their faces turning crimson.

But it's that's true.

I mean, that's when I think it's a good time.

You know, you're trying to shoot something.

So why not talk about sex?

So we do.

But those are so you hear what I'm saying?

There's informal, there's non-formal times, and I want to encourage you as parents and grandparents that you take those times because those are beautiful times.

Those are beautiful times.

I remember I got the talk from my dad when we were on a quail hunt.

We were coming in from the field, and the dog that it never pointed and always flushed the birds 500 yards away, um, that we nearly shot like 18 times.

Um, we're coming back with nothing, which was most of the time.

And dad started this thing about stuff that guys think about.

And he kept saying stuff to me, like, have you thought about this?

You know, I'm walking and and I'm well no, and he says, You haven't?

Well, okay, yes.

And then he gave me his little thing, and I guess that's why we do it now at Roosevelt Camp.

But those are important times, guys, you know?

And I think that sometimes our kids um have the strangest schedules about when they talk about stuff.

And I want to encourage us to be a church family that allows that, that we love our kids, that we make room for that.

And if you've made mistakes, and we've all made a lot of mistakes in our journey, and maybe you feel guilty, maybe you feel under the pile as I share tonight.

I want to say grace, grace, grace, do things in piecemeal, do what you can.

But um, but that calling that God's given us is unique and it's beautiful, and that's why you're a mom, that's why that's why you're a dad, and that's why you got those kids because it's your responsibility to raise them.

And we got some pregnant women in here, and you know, may it be an encouragement to you to get excited about your kid and build a little training center.

It was Jonathan Edwards who said, Every house is a little church.

Every house is a little church, and it's fun and have tons of fun.

If things are always hard, then then stop that.

That's not of God, that's demonic.

I mean, enjoy your life, have fun, play practical jokes, whatever you like to do, but enjoy your family, laugh a lot, humor is powerful.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

To connect with us further, visit theroad.org.

If you are walking through a difficult time, we want to pray for you.

Go to theroad.org, click on the ministries tab, and go to our prayer page to send us your prayer request.

Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.