Loving Your Grown Up Children

Well, good morning Crossing Church.

How are you doing today? It is so good to be here.

And I'll tell you what I want. First of all, I just want to

welcome all the campuses all across the States that are

joined together. We get to be one family

together. If you're inside or online, we

are so thankful for you as well. And do you know what we call

last week, we just call that a regular week at the crossing. 52

baptisms, 52 baptisms. Come on.

I mean, does anybody have any question whether or not God is

all over what was happening here?

I mean, it is a it is a time of revival.

It's an exciting time and we get to share in it.

This is what God's doing and we get to participate in that.

You see that happening at camp Allison and I that's a huge

thing for us. We remember some, many of you

were here back when we did the Wreck the Roof campaign and you

made commitments and one of those commitments was to pay for

this camp. And, and there it is right

there. And look what it's doing.

You see all of these young people coming into this

relationship that's intimate and personal with Jesus Christ.

It's so, so great. Well, Father's Day weekend.

So should we get a trophy for that or something?

I mean, what what do we get Actually takes very, very little

to be a father in the biological sense, but actually earning that

title is a much heavier lift. And we've been talking a lot

about family in the last three weeks.

And this is something that I've noticed, Allison, I think would

agree with me that getting married isn't really much of A

change if you've been in a serious relationship for very

long. We were in our relationship five

years before we got married. And so it was just like all the

benefits came in and it was awesome to be married.

But that does not compare to parenting.

If you want your life changed, become apparent.

I mean, it is a seismic shift in life and it will define your

life until you leave this world. And there will be times you will

pray for that because that's parenting, right?

That's, that's the reality of of parenting.

Allison, share a little bit about what you think about that.

There's a common conception that, especially in American

culture, that once they, we've raised our kids and we, we want

them out and, and we've done our job and now it's time for them

to carry on with their lives and start their own families.

And that is so true. I mean, I, I, we love empty

nests. I like the quiet.

But some ways that's true. But in a lot of ways that's not

true. There's no off switch to being a

parent. And in so many ways, parenting

adult children is significantly harder than raising younger

ones. They may be leaving our house,

but they're not leaving our head and they're definitely not

leaving our heart. This is the stage that Jerry and

I are in. Let me give you a little insight

on how this looks for us. Our oldest one is Ben and his

wife Kim and our 2, two of our grandkids live in Franklin, TN.

So we're down there. About a month ago, we gave him a

Christmas present that we would come down and watch the kids and

and send them on a special date. And it, it was wonderful during

that day that we were down there, they got a phone call

that their landlord was selling the house they were renting in.

So they needed to start looking for different places and they

wanted to actually buy. Buying in Franklin, TN is like

buying in New York City. It's just like the prices are, I

mean, we were blown away at the prices, but we were so thankful

that they invited us into the conversation and they asked us

to go look at houses and we're like, you know what, that's

awesome. Thank you for inviting us.

And how do we, how do we respond to that?

About a couple months ago, our second, our second child, our

oldest daughter, Jessie called us and surprised us that she was

pregnant. And I'm like going yay, she's

pregnant and she lives in Puerto Rico.

And how do I as a grandma, be a super long distance grandma,

Great blessing. How do I respond to that?

Then a week, about about two weeks ago, we went to

Indianapolis to see our son Joey and Erica and their son Alex.

And they just bought a house and they asked us to come over and

help move in and do some chores around the house.

And we were thankful to be asked and we said, all right, how do

we respond to that? In about 3 weeks, our youngest

1, Abby and her husband Aaron, and their two boys are going to

welcome a little baby sister. And so we're super excited about

that. And every time a child comes

into your life, it adds a different layer.

So we, how do we be helpful in that?

Let's, let's admit it, life is awesome.

And it's also awesomely messy. No doubt, no doubt about it.

And and she was just telling you what it's like with adult

children in the last what, two months at least in our lives.

You know, it, It's, it's pretty crazy.

So a couple of weeks ago, Allison and I were up here and

we shared with you about raising children while paying attention

to their love language. But we were talking about when

children were at home, when they were young, when they were

infants. And as they grow in your home.

We never sailed into the turbulent water of what that

becomes after they become adults.

So I want to tell you that we're in that stage of life now, and

we're obviously not experts. We've never done this before and

we're trying to learn how to do it.

So we're right in the same boat with all of you.

And once again, our only examples are what they were two

weeks ago. And that's how we were raised,

how we are the adult children of our parents and trying to learn

that and understand that maybe like for me, I'm the youngest,

so I have older siblings. And of course they'll say, well,

you know, the parents that raised us are very different.

The parents that raised you, you know, because you got everything

you ever wanted and we didn't. And you've heard all those

stories before. But once again, if, if that's

all we have, we want to look somewhere else to get a more

perfect example. And so why don't we just go look

at God's word? Maybe it's different from when

children are young and still in the home to when children are

grown up and they're adults. So I just took another scan

through God's Word. So let's see if we can get some

good examples. How about we'll start with Adam

and his adult children? Nope, sorry.

His oldest murdered the younger brother as an adult.

So that's the first murder in the Bible.

Some of you have been close to that in your families, but Adam

actually and Eve experienced that.

How about Noah? No, he ended up cursing one of

his three sons for perversion. How about Abraham father Abraham

Fail. He banished his first son,

Ishmael. He was about 100 years old when

he actually started parenting. How about Isaac?

You got to be kidding. That family was was plagued with

favoritism and sibling rivalry. Rivalry that ended up with

stealing and hate. Like hate enough to murder.

How about Jacob? No his kids sold their own

brother into slavery. How about Aaron Gee?

Fire came from between the wings of the of the angels on top of

the ark of the Covenant and burnt them both to a crisp

because they were cheating God and desecrating the altar.

How about David? Yikes, that man after God's own

heart raised a family that committed rape, murder and

attempted patricide. Allison said.

You need to tell them what that is.

That's wanting to kill your parents.

How about Eli? His kids were thieves.

How about Samuel? His kids were terrible and it

just keeps going and going. So guess what?

The same problem exists with parenting adult kids as it did

with raising smaller children. So we talked about it a couple

weeks ago that nothing builds your prayer life rather than

raising kids. And I don't have very much

advice for you other than praying, praying, praying,

reading your Bible and praying again.

John 17 says this John 1715, My prayer is not that you take them

out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one.

It's one of my prayers that you pray for our children.

Let's not take them out of the world, but protect them from the

evil. 1. So as we wrap up this parenting

series, there's three parts of raising kids that I want to go

through. The first one is control.

Control coaching and consulting. That's those are the three

areas. The first one controlling.

This is the stage from birth to tween and tween nowadays is

between 11 and 14 ish. There you are their whole world

and they are yours. There isn't anything that you

don't have your fingerprint on, every decision, everything they

eat, everything that they do, everything they think you have

an exact and entire representation wrapped up into

that. There are rules to be kept,

there are rewards for keeping those rules, and you want to

teach them good choices. Parents try to protect their

children from life changing mistakes and parents protect,

provide and nurture so that we can keep them from life changing

mistakes. Now let's move to the second

one, coaching. So in control, you are on the

field, you are a player, you are in there.

Now coaching would take a step back.

We're on the sidelines, we're still calling the plays, we're

still paying for everything. We are still right in their

life, but we're at we're at a different seat in the in the

playing field. This happens between tweens and

goes somewhere into the early 20s unless you're in the

military and then that's then the military gets you at 18 or

whenever you go in. But usually young 20's the

boundaries start to come down in phases, in very small phases so

that they you can teach them to actually make good choices.

Parents try to protect their kids from the life changing

things that would happen if they make bad choices, but the

consequences are things that we also have to teach them.

So we can't let, we can't protect them always, but we have

to learn how to coach them to make good decisions.

This is a dangerous time because some choices are life altering.

Now I want to move to the last one, the one we're going to talk

about today as we finish this series.

And now this is on consulting. We've gone from controlling

right on the field to coaching from the sidelines.

Now we're backing up even more and we are in the stands.

We are watching from the stands. We kindly and without motive.

Let me say that again. We kindly and without motive, We

ask more questions than making profound statements.

I had to learn this the very hard way.

Nobody taught me this. And I knew as a parent that I

was going to have to let my child go.

I mean, the minute they come to you in the hospital and you have

that child and you hand, you know that eventually you got it.

You got to let him go. God designed it that way.

So I understood that. But the next part, nobody taught

me this one. So if I could share just two

seconds of advice here. Letting our dreams for our

children go is way harder for me than letting our children go.

Let me say that again. Sometimes we have to let our

dreams for our children go as we let our children go.

I, I needed counseling for this part because I did not

understand what this meant and how part how how they're my

dreams for them were such a part of me that when I had to let go

of the dreams, I was letting go of myself and I didn't know what

to do there so little word for advice there.

We have to learn to how to be cheerleaders and keep the

communication lines open. So I stole this from a book that

I read. We keep the welcome mat out, we

keep the bank account guardedly available.

Yeah, right. You're so good at that.

I have grandkids. Grandkids are, that's all.

The rules are different. OK, We keep the bank account

guardedly available and we keep our mouth shut.

OK, now this is this is definitely here's here's the

definition of extension of your mouth shut.

What we don't do, take it from me because I did it.

None of this. None of this.

None of this, none of that. OK.

We smile, smile and nod and, you know, go back to our seat in the

stands. Some of you parents are in all

three phases at the same time. Been there, done that.

Exhausting. Let's pray.

Yeah, you could end with that. We could end with that, and we

could just have an altar call right now and you'd probably be

up here if you are a parent of an adult child.

So once again, the best Bible illustration for raising adult

children is actually the same one that Allison and I used two

weeks ago, the story of the prodigal son, because the story

of the prodigal son happens actually with adult children.

We're going to see emphasis maybe in a few different places

in this story. So just I'm not going to read

the whole thing again just to review.

You know, there was a father, this is a parable Jesus told a

father. Now that father that he is

portraying in the in the parable is the heavenly Father.

And the father has two sons, and the younger son wants his

inheritance early. And so the father obliges him,

gives him his inheritance early. He goes out and the Bible says

he spends his inheritance on loose, living in every kind of

bad way that you can imagine. And so it ruins his life and he

becomes penniless. There's a famine in the land.

Circumstances happen in the world, and he's trying to manage

those circumstances, and he can't.

He has no money. His friends leave him, and he

ends up getting a job feeding pigs, which is like the worst

thing that for a Jewish person that could be imagined.

And the Bible goes so far to say that he longed to fill his

stomach with what the pigs were eating.

And it was in that moment he says he came to himself.

Like, he kind of woke up from this.

And he goes, you know, even the servants in my father's house

have it better than I do. I'll go back and say I don't

deserve to be your son anymore, but just treat me, hire me as

one of your hired hands, and I'll be OK with that.

And so he makes starts his way home.

And then, when he's still a long way off, he comes over the

horizon. The father sees him, runs to

him, embraces him, puts a coat over his shoulders, new

clothing, because I'm sure he was dishevelled and looks look

terrible. Puts the signet ring on his

finger, puts sandals on his feet, tells the servants to kill

the fatted calf. You know, this son has this

whole prepared speech. He doesn't even get through it

before. The father won't hear any of

that. My son was dead.

He was. He's alive again.

He was lost, but now he's found and they start to make

preparations. And in the meantime, word

reaches the older brother. And the older brother is angry

about that. And so the father, he runs

interference and he goes to the older brother to explain to him

what's happened. The older brother has got some

harsh words to say and they're not untrue, but the father said

we have to celebrate because you're brother, he was lost, but

now he's found. He was dead, but he's alive

again. This is actually what Jesus was

trying to say about the entire lost world, that we're all the

younger brother. We've all got our inheritances

early. We've all blown that inheritance

on loose living and but that is exactly why Jesus came.

Let me point out a couple of things from this story that you

may not have seen the first time we looked.

Jesus depicts the Father as loving both of his sons while at

the same time realizing that they're very different.

And so he parents them in different ways.

Now, that's true when they're young because they're wired

differently. God has a sense of humor.

He doesn't make clones, does he? No.

Every one of them has got their own personality and a lot of it

times is very different than yours.

And so as parents of adult children, we have to understand

that parenting as adult, parenting adult children, we

have to be sensitive to their specific needs.

And that might be misinterpreted by siblings.

So that actually happens, right? Notice that just because the

prodigal son made really bad life altering choices, it didn't

mean that he had a bad father. One of the things in counseling

that I've heard is that parents who have children that make

really bad choices want to assimilate all the

responsibility for that. They want to take it all on

themselves. Like if I would have been a

better, better parent, they wouldn't have made those

choices. Remember, God doesn't have

grandchildren, He just has children, and everyone has to

make those life choices themselves.

And I think it's important to understand that just because

your children make bad choices, it doesn't mean you're a bad

father or bad mother. Would you call God a bad father?

He's a perfect father and yet he portrays himself as a father who

has children that make bad choices.

So that's something that we need to let we we need to release if

we're holding on to that. We don't see the father give up

on the younger son, even though he's made bad choices, like

Allison said, he never got him out of his head and he never got

him out of his heart. He was always looking out to the

horizon for that lost child. And we don't see the father when

the son comes home, go into the I told you so mood mode.

He sees the bigger picture and celebrates the win in spite of

what had been tremendous losses. The father reminds the older

brother, too, of this truth that you've heard Clayton say many

times, that God's way is the best way.

The Father's way was the best way, and there wasn't going to

be a second split of the inheritance.

So the younger son had profoundly lost things, and

those things were going to stay gone.

That's why he said everything I have is yours to the older

brother. There are still earthly

consequences for making bad choices, and as it applies to

our relationship with God through Jesus Christ, we should

understand this, that the most important things are a lot in

life between you and your children aren't the physical

things, they're the spiritual ones.

So like we as we wrap this up, we know that God is the best

parent and he shows us how to parent.

So I want to talk about one thing that he just mentioned in

The Prodigal Son. And many of us and maybe you

right now have an adult child that is not living their life

the way that you taught them or that you want them to.

And you're worried about them and you are concerned about

them. And sometimes you want to go

back into that control mode. You want to just reach out there

and take control of the situation and bring them back in

because you like, I know better, I'm the parent, but they're an

adult and you can't do that anymore.

We can't. Once we get to that consulting

phase, it's we shouldn't go back to the control phase.

So what do we do when that happens?

We do what is shown in the prodigal son.

The father waits the heavy word. He waits.

He looks every day, all day. He prays and he waits.

He prays and he waits. Well, wait a minute.

There's the verse that says that Jesus went after the lost sheep.

He left the 99 and He went after the one.

Well, that's true, He did. And aren't we glad that He did?

Because we are the one. It's some time in time in our

life. We are the one that needs the

Savior and we need Him to come reach us and get us.

And he reached that lost sheep because that lost sheep didn't

know any better. So he needed someone to save

Him. But sometimes if we have an

adult child who's not making the choices that we want them to

make or that God wants them to make, they have to come to their

own senses. And the only way that that

happens isn't by us controlling the situation, it's by praying

them through the situation. Only God knows those things.

So we have to be very attentive to God as he parents and follow

his direction. The verse that I cling to that I

have said probably more in any other verse that I pray

constantly is Romans 826, not 828.

Every everybody uses the word all things work together.

This verse all things work together for you know, OK, yes,

but Romans 826 is the best verse.

Don't don't lose that verse. Go back and memorize it.

In the same way, the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, helps us in our

weakness. We don't know what we ought to

pray for. I spend too many times in my

prayer life trying to convince God that I'm right.

And guess what? God just looks at me and he

goes, bless your heart. But the Spirit himself

intercedes for us through wordless groans.

I want to make a a little caveat point here because of something

I've seen that where Christian parents, parents of faith that

have raised their children in faith, see their children do and

then they adjust because they're two things that slam together

here. Being a godly parent of an adult

child doesn't mean you give up your faith to accommodate their

choices when they violate God's truth.

I'm going to say that again. Being a godly parent of adult

children does not mean that we give up our faith to accommodate

their choices when they violate God's truth.

I've seen parents walk away from their faith when their children

make certain decisions, particularly sexual identity

choices. And instead they they lean into

those bad choices because they're afraid of losing their

kids. That's real.

The idea of being afraid of losing your kids is real.

And so the the natural human inclination is to lean into a

decision or a choice even though it's a bad choice.

Now, you don't have to approve of a thing, tolerate a thing.

You can stand on your faith and love them through those choices.

And if you stay consistent in your faith, let me tell you,

there'll be a time later on that your children will, will

appreciate the fact that you weren't hypocritical when it

came to your faith, that you were solid in your faith.

That's really hard to do. Now what?

What do I mean by that? Well, I mean that as parents, we

have to do this with everybody, but especially with our

children. We want to lean out with grace.

We want to, we want to embrace them.

We want to lean out in grace, right?

So grace is loving and it's forgiving and it's accepting and

it's all of those things. But we can only do that as far

as truth will let us. If your child was drowning in

the water and you were on a dock and you're trying to reach out

and save your child, you can lean out a long way.

But you can only lean out as far as the dock.

And gravity will let you. Because if you lean out further

than that, there's going to be two people in the water.

Do you understand? And so we can only lean out as

far with grace as truth will let us.

We hold those things in tension, but ultimately we want our

children to make good choices because they understand good

choices. Now that doesn't mean that we

should beat our kids down. Does mean that your children

should respect your choices of faith and should not expect that

you would abandoned your faith for their choices.

So we need to learn to practice grace while holding firm to our

faith. In Romans 12/18 it says when it

is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace

with everyone. And I want to do that, but I

don't want to dishonor my Lord in the process.

The last piece of advice that that I would share is that you

stay on the same page as the other parent.

If you're married, it would be your spouse.

If you're not married, it is the other parent.

One of the best things that Jerry and I do is a regular

evaluation conversation of where we are as parents and how we

should respond to the challenges or the situation of what is

going on in the lives of our adult children.

We don't always agree. We yeah, we don't always agree.

And we definitely almost always have different approaches to the

same goal, but we're always united.

We're a united front on the big picture, especially spiritually,

even though we're opposites attract on the little picture.

And what I've noticed is that when we stay on the same picture

and we offer up our children to the Lord, there comes a time

where God just says, hold out your hand and I hold out my

hand, and your adult children become your friends.

And that is a real blessing. Big statement here.

Parenting is the closest we get to God on this side of heaven.

Let me explain why, like God, we actually get to participate in

the process of creation. Like God, we have an unbreakable

bond of love that forms with our children to the point that we

would give our very lives for them.

You see how that's like God. Like God, we long for their best

while at the same time enduring their worst.

And we bear the scars of our parenting.

But ultimately, and this is a hard one to wrap your head

around, they're not your kids and they're not my kids.

They're his. We are only stewards of what

always has been and always will be his.

Like I said a little earlier, God doesn't have grandchildren,

just children. So we have to do our very, very

best to reflect Him as we go through this wonderful,

terrible, scary, euphoric time in life of being parents.

We're moving to a time of decision.

I don't know about you, but I get done with a sermon like

that. And I go, yeah, I don't know if

anybody else needs to be up here, but I do.

I don't know if anybody else needs to be on their knees

asking God, crying out to God, but I do.

Not just when they're growing up, but when they've grown up.

And I would imagine that's true with you as well.

And I want to speak to two groups of individuals out here.

Group number one is your faith is kind of on the side in your

life. It's like when you order salad

dressing at the restaurant, you're afraid they're going to

put too much on it. And so you want it on the side

so that you can put as much on as you want as you need it.

And a lot of times that's the way we treat God in our personal

lives and in our parenting lives.

Like, you know, well, you know, if I get into a rough spot, well

then I'll call on God. But I can handle most of this

myself. You know, that's not true.

That's just not true. You need God and you need an

intimate, personal relationship with him through Jesus Christ.

You need that. You can't have him as a tweak.

You can't have him as an option. And some of you are living that

way right now. And if you're trying to do

parenting by yourself, that is not a winning proposition.

That's a losing proposition. And I want to encourage you, if

you've never come into an intimate personal relationship

with Jesus Christ, you need to do that today.

The past is the past, but today belongs to you.

You can't fix what you've done in the past, but you can make

good decisions with God today, and that'll impact the things

that have happened in the past. Because I love this word.

My God is a Redeemer. He is a Redeemer.

He knows how to buy things back, bring things back.

He knows how to restore things. So if you've never come into

relationship with Jesus, there's going to be somebody right over

there by the baptistry that would love nothing more than

talk to you about that decision and pray with you about that

decision. If you're here today and you

have that relationship with Jesus, that doesn't mean that

you don't need this time any less.

You should recognize because of your relationship that you need

it more. You just need it terribly.

When I was a kid, you know, I grew up in a traditional church.

They were all pretty much traditional back then.

We'd sing out of a hymnal. We sing verses 1-2 and four.

First three always got left out. I don't know why, but they had

the same chorus. So you might have a different

verse, but you'd have a a different chorus.

And you know, I grew up to the point where I thought, well, all

those old songs are lame and we need to sing new songs.

And I still believe that to some extent.

But those old songs stuck with me and especially with

parenting. I need somebody with me.

God was so gracious when he gave me Allison, and she's great, but

she's flawed just like me. One of those songs had a chorus

that said, And he walks with me and he talks with me.

I need that. And I love this next line.

And he tells me I am his own. When I start feeling defeated

and isolated and uncared about, unloved, He reminds me who I am.

And you know what that creates and the joy we share as we tarry

there. None other has ever known.

I invite you to have a moment with God, your Father who loves

you, who can tell you that you're His own, up at these

steps today. Would you stand with me?

Let's pray together in Jesus name.

Heavenly Father, would you just take this holy moment, this

godly moment, the separated moment?

I pray that our hearts would be open to hear you're still small

voice speaking words as only a perfect parent could.

And I pray that his little children, all of us, we would

run to you for hope and help and strength in Jesus name, Amen.