Why TODAY Matters More Than You Think

What up? Crossing family?

Today we are beginning a four week sermon series on the power

of family. Jerry and I are going to be

taking turns going through this series answering some of the

questions that many of us have rolling around in the back of

our minds. For instance, questions like how

do I train my children in the Lord?

How do I love my children? Well, how do I protect them from

the things that are happening all around them?

We believe, believe that today is not just another day.

We believe that the decisions we make today will indeed influence

our tomorrow and their tomorrow. And waiting until tomorrow to

make the changes simply will not do.

We believe, and we believe that you believe this too, that our

families deserve better. And so we believe that the

change should start today and shouldn't wait till tomorrow.

I want to to welcome all of our different locations, those of

you watching online and those of you who are a part of the

crossing inside. And I want to wish a special

welcome and would you guys help me welcome all the people that

are new here to the crossing this weekend?

We love you. Our goal as a church is to help

people find an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

And I have really good news. You can begin that relationship

today. Why this series?

I'll tell you, perhaps one of the hardest things to do is to

raise a godly family. If you were to flip through the

pages of the Bibles, those of you who are doing like a year in

the Bible thing, you'll be hard pressed to find a normal,

healthy family dynamic. So if your family is jacked up,

I got good news for you. So are the people in the Bible.

God designed the family to be a spiritual powerhouse that would

launch children fully equipped not just into adulthood, but

fully equipped to glorify Him and to love others well.

The problem is that since the family has so much power and

potential, it has an enemy, Satan, and he attacks it

regularly. Satan desires to create chaos

and conflict. Raise your hand if there's ever

been chaos in your home. Yeah.

Raise your hand if there's ever been conflict.

OK, this will be a great series for you.

Satan loves anger. Have you ever heard rumors of

people getting angry in their home?

Raise your hand. You.

This isn't. You don't have to identify.

The neighbors had their windows open and you just heard it.

Resentment. He takes joy in overreaction

over correction, and he lures us into complacency.

Your family has an enemy. And just like everything that

God created has a plan and a purpose, God has a plan and a

purpose for your family. Did you know that your family is

one of the ways in which God blesses you?

You might be going, I don't know if I like that blessing.

Psalm 127 says this. Children are a heritage from the

Lord, offspring a reward from him.

Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in

one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver

is full of them. Much of the Christian life is

stewardship of God's blessings. Maturity in Christ is being a

good stewards of the blessings of God.

For instance, we are to be good stewards of the gospel, which is

a blessing, and try to make sure that we seek to advance it.

We are to be good stewards of our lives, which are a blessing

from God, and we are to use them for the glory of God.

You and I are to be good stewards of our resources, which

are a blessing from God, and to steward them for the sake of the

mission. We are to steward our witness so

that way other people can find what we have found in Jesus.

So when it comes to the blessing in the form of our family, our

role is to be a good steward of it.

So what does that look like? Proverbs chapter 22 gives us

Proverbs 22 · chapter mention

some insight into this. Start children off on the way

they should go, and even when they are old, they will not turn

from it. Some of you, you grew up in

church and you remember this being said a different way.

Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is older

he will not stray from it. Both of these translations are

trying to capture the word and unpack the Hebrew word hanak.

Turn to your neighbor and say Hanak.

You've learned Hebrew. Hanak means to dedicate to

narrow. For instance, hanak is used in

the dedication of a house in Deuteronomy chapter 20, the

Deuteronomy 20 · chapter mention

dedication of a temple in First Kings 8, and the dedication of

an altar in Numbers Chapter 7. There is this setting aside this

Numbers 7 · chapter mention

narrowing of focus. For instance, how many of you,

you live in a house or you grew up in a house that had plates?

How many of you grew up in a house that had the good plates?

They had been ha knocked. They had been set aside.

Recently, my wife bought all new plates for our house and I got

one of the plates out of the cupboard.

What? What is it?

Is it called a cupboard cabinet? Yeah, we got that too.

And we put it on. I put it on the counter and I

began to cut with it. And she says you can't, you

can't cut on that plate. I said, OK, well, which, which,

which plate can I can I cut on? She goes none of them.

I just just say I'm fat and get me some Styrofoam because this

is ridiculous. There's been this setting aside,

you guys have heard me talk about the holy towel in our

house. This towel that Jennifer has set

aside. It's the one that hangs either

on the oven handle. And that towel, although it has

all the the ability to absorb liquids, it's just for people to

look at. Like, we're so poor we decorate

with towels and like, a college dorm room, that's what we have.

And recently this week, kid you not, my one of my sons fell into

a pond and had algae and Moss all over his shoes.

And guess which towel he got to use?

Yeah. And he didn't get in nearly as

much trouble as I did for cutting on a plate because it's

been narrowed. It's been set aside for

something special, something divine.

We are to hanak our children. We are to set them aside,

dedicate them, prepare them for their future responsibilities.

We are to hanak them for adulthood.

We are to instruct them into what is right and what is wrong.

And did you notice what the text said in the way that they should

go, not the way they want to go? I hear a lot of people this,

this is a Coach Clayton moment and Coach Clayton doesn't

respond to emails. So keep it to yourself.

When you complain about the behavior of your kids, you are

saying more about you and your parenting than you are about

your kids because your responsibility is to train them

in the way that they should go. Your kids are super

disrespectful. That is because you tolerate

disrespect. Adults are a gift.

Parents are a gift to their kids.

Because we have perspective, we can think long term.

Kids can't do that. That's why God gave them you.

And we are to use this gift of perspective.

We see things that they don't see.

We know what's coming. We know what's at stake, and our

job is to prepare them. Now, I'm going to stress you out

for just a second. OK, in love.

So everybody take a deep breath. Here's just some questions that

should be bouncing around in your head.

What kind of money manager do I want my kid to be when he gets

older? Do you want my kid to learn how

to order less, live on less, show restraint?

How to sacrifice? How to save?

What kind of spouse am I training in my home?

How are they going to speak to their future spouse?

It will be very similar to how they speak to you or your

spouse. What kind of person are they

going to be around the house? Do they know how to empty the

dishwasher, sort the laundry, know how to make their clothes

match? I have 0 abilities when it comes

to matching clothes. OK, this was not something that

I learned from anybody in my I have.

I might as well be color blind. I have no fashion sense.

In fact, you have never seen me in an outfit that I'm 42 that my

wife has not picked out and said you can wear that one.

If you don't like this, you can e-mail her at

[email protected]. What kind of spouse do you want

to raise? Do you want to raise someone who

looks to help around the house? Who looks to sacrifice?

Do you want your kids to know how to apologize because do you

think they're going to have to know how to do that in their

marriage? When are they going to learn

that before they have a family or after?

What kind of provider do you want your kid to be?

What kind of work ethic do you want them to have?

Do you want them to have any marketable skills?

Can they cook? What would they be like as an

employee? Would you hire them?

And if you wouldn't hire them, why would anybody else?

Are they honest? You feel the stress?

You're like, Oh my goodness, we should have started 37 years ago

on this sermon series. So how do I do all of this?

If this is a responsibility from God, how do I do this?

And I know there's some of you right now.

You're going, but I don't have kids yet.

You will. And when you do, you are to

start them in the way they are to go.

Deuteronomy chapter 6 gives us insight into how God does this

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

Here, O Israel, the Lord, our God.

The Lord is one. I'm going to circle back on that

if I remember it. Love the Lord your God with all

your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

These commandments that I give you today are to be on your

hearts. Impress them on your children.

Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the

road, when you lie down and when you get up.

Tie them as symbols on your hands.

Bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of

your houses and on your gates. There are three things to notice

here. One the priority, the most

important thing you will ever do is train your children in the

Lord. I made a very big commitment

early on before I had kids that if I was in town I was always

going to be the one who took my kids to school for one reason

and one reason only. I wanted to everyday pray out

loud over my kids and I have prayed the exact same prayer

every day. Here's the prayer if you guys

want a cheater prayer for you to have for yourself.

It's going to sound very familiar to all the scripture

that we use here at a church like every month.

Ready, Heavenly Father, I just asked that my kids would grow up

to love you with all of their heart, mind, soul, and strength.

That they'd embrace the Great Commission and make disciples of

all nations. May they be a leader of others

and a follower of you and help them to find a spouse who will

love you and love them well. Do you want to know why I pray

the same prayer and that prayer only it's because it's the only

one I care if he ever answers. I want them to be right with the

Lord and committed to the Lord and fall in love with somebody

who is also committed to the Lord.

I have if I'm in town, I travel a lot, but if I'm in town, that

is my job. That is what I do.

I have never met someone to talk to them about Jesus before 8:30

in the morning because my first priority is to my kids.

Your kids are going to learn a lot from you.

Make sure that they learn Jesus. First Timothy chapter 4 verse 8

1 Timothy 4:8

has this to say for physical training is of some value, but

godliness has value for all things holding promise for both

the present life and the life to come.

I love sports and I love kid sports.

Turn to your neighbor and say Clayton loves kid sports.

If you are a kid sport parent, I love it.

I love that you are fully invested in making memories with

your kids in athletic arenas. I love it.

I just need you to know it has value, but not as much value as

training your kids in righteousness.

I I'll talk to people on the phone and they'll talk about how

awesome their kid is doing in a particular sport and I love it.

I just would love in the future, like one day I get a phone call

and someone is not bragging about how well their kid did at

a thing. They're bragging that their kid

memorized Scripture, that their kid invited someone to church,

something that has more value. And I'll tell you why Parents

just, you know, Coach Clayton, for just a second, I've done a

lot of marriage counseling, and I've never been in a marriage

counseling. And they were just kind of

talking about how they went through this dark valley.

And then he is sitting there and he's like, yeah, things were

just going really bad. And she goes, yeah.

But then things totally turned around because he showed me that

he could hit a curveball. And then I was like, Oh my

goodness, my 42 year old husband can hit a curveball.

We don't have problems anymore. I've never heard that testimony,

not once. I've never been talking to a

couple and they're just having a really hard time.

And then he says, listen, we were in free fall as a couple.

But then she started talking to me about how good she was at

volleyball and how she could bump, set, spike it.

And I was like, I guess we're good.

I guess as long as our entire marriage is volleyballs being

thrown at your face, we're going to be fine.

It has some value, but not nearly as much as training

somebody in righteousness. The first one's priority.

The second one is consistency. Consistency.

How consistent are you as a parent?

Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 7 through 9.

Deuteronomy 6:7–9

Let's look at it again. Look at how they develop

consistency. Impress them on your children.

Talk about them when you sit at home, when you walk along the

road, when you lie down, when you get up.

Tie them as symbols on your hands.

Bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of

your houses and on your gates. This is to be a regular

occurrence when you drive around and when you're getting up in

the morning and before they go to bed at night.

These are things you are to do over and over again.

You want to know why? Because the only things that you

are good at are the things that you have done over and over and

over again. If you are good at sports, at

instruments, at drama, at finance, if you're mechanically

inclined, you got that way because you consistently engaged

in that direction. That means that if you want your

kids to be great at life, at adulting, at parenting, at

following Jesus, you need to consistently invest.

If I could be honest with you, the area where I struggle the

most as a parent is in the area of consistency.

My kids will go from almost no rules to lots of rules to I'm

not that that much doesn't bother me all that much to this

bothers me a lot to you know you can do this for a little bit

too. You're grounded for a month.

The pendulum in my parenting swings way too much.

And you know what this does in your kids?

It creates a ton of confusion. What matters to mom and dad

today is a lot harder place to learn than what matters to mom

and dad and mom and dad's. If you are not on the same page

in your parenting, you are creating confusion for your

kids. I said I'd circle back to this

says here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is 1.

They are united in what they want for you.

Now you guys have heard me talk a lot about our golden dummy,

Suge. Now Suge is a tremendously

obedient dog. Well, come here, Suge, come

here, come here, bud, come here, come here.

Now listen, you don't, don't. I'll send him home with you.

Listen, if you ever want to know how to get a dog to just

absolutely love you, be the person in the house who hates

him because this dog loves me. All right?

Now come here. Nope.

Come here. Come here.

Get up here. No, get up here.

Good boy. Now, Suge.

Oh, my goodness. You do love me place.

Now Suge is a Hey. No.

Suge is a tremendously obedient dog.

Heal Suge. Down tremendously obedient dog.

He does exact down. He does exactly what I want him

to do, for the most part, whenever I want him to.

I can go on walks anywhere I don't have my dog pulling me

around on a leash. Sugar will do exactly what I

asked him to do. Place.

Hurry up. Now for as obedient as Suge is,

come here, come here, sit. For as obedient as he is, there

is one behavior we have not been able to fix in our house is that

is if you get anywhere close to my house, he comes running for

the front door. Down, down.

Stay. He will come to the front door

and try to go through the front door and the down and then when

you come in he will jump on you non-stop place.

And do you want to know why Sugar is like this?

Because he got consistent coaching from me in all the

areas that you're down, all the areas of our house except for

this. Because I would come home and

make Suge stay back and be calm, but my kids would come to the

front door. Oh my goodness.

Hi, sugar. Sugar.

And so Suge did not understand what actually matters in our

home. And now he's 3 and we can't

break the cycle. And do you want to know why Suge

is up here? Because Suge is the most

obedient person in my house, because Suge has received the

most consistent parenting and coaching.

Would you guys give Suge a big round of applause?

Get out of here, bud. Go now.

Some of you, you're going, Oh my goodness, we're going to go home

and we're going to be like, kids come to the kitchen table, we're

going for it. And what I would tell you, don't

do that because you'll be swinging the pendulum again #3

parenting is my responsibility, not somebody else's.

Training your kid for the future is not somebody else's job, it's

your job. You don't get to outsource this.

Teachers, we love you. We're super thankful for you.

Enjoy your break. You deserve it.

But parents hear me. Teachers are your partner in the

development of your kids, not a substitute for it.

Coaches are awesome, wonderful, super thankful for them.

They are a resource, not a substitute for your engagement

and your participation. We have an incredible team of

pastors and staff here at The Crossing and they are a

tremendous asset for the spiritual development of your

kids and helping you on your parenting journey.

But hear me, they are not a substitute for your presence and

your coaching. You will be judged for how you

led your home. We will be judged for how we LED

our home. We will not be judged for how

your kids turned out. You will be.

Now let's put this in perspective.

Churches get about 40 hours a year with your kids and you get

3000. I'm going to show you in a

different graphic that will really stress you out.

We get the black dots, you get the red ones.

Recently, I was convicted about this in a pretty big way because

I was thinking about all the things that my kids have learned

from me. And I was, I made a list and I'm

not going to share all of it, but I mean, my kids learned how

to throw a ball from me, how to dribble, how to ride a bike, how

to swim, how to mow, how to use a leaf blower, how to change

mower blades, how to shoot a layup, how to read a defense,

how to chip near the green. And then I started thinking,

what are things that they really need to learn from me and what

are the things that I want them to only learn from me?

Like, for instance, there's there's people that will teach

my kids, neighbor kids will teach your kids something.

I don't know if I want neighbor kids to teach my kids certain

things. I want them to hear that from

me. We are great neighbor kids in my

neighborhood. But there's certain things I'm

like, no, I think I'm going to be first and I'm going to be the

loudest on these particular issues.

And then I said, what is the most important thing that my

kids could ever learn from me? My kids already get prayed for

on a regular basis, but what is something I really need to make

sure that they learn? And this is what I wrote at the

top of the list. I want them to learn how to open

the word of God, read it and obey it.

I want them to learn how to apply it to their lives.

Remember, every morning I pray with my kids and I pray over my

kids and I, I take my kids to church pretty regularly.

Sometimes my kids are going to church 156 * a year.

I'm doing a pretty good job on that front.

But then I realized I was outsourcing something that was

my responsibility. I prioritize and I fund

spiritual experiences for my kids.

But that was me outsourcing instead of participating.

So at the Hensel house, we started a family Bible study

called DBSA Discovery Bible Study.

And I'm just going to tell you kind of what it looks like.

We read a passage of Scripture. I read it, Zane reads it, Maddox

reads it, Jennifer reads it. We read it in different

translations. I'll just so you know, parents,

you're going to love hearing your kids read the Bible.

It's one of the coolest things you'll ever hear.

And then what we do is we just kind of go through what we call

the spec SPEC. So S is a sin to avoid.

I want my kids to get used to reading the Bible, noticing a

bad behavior, a sinful activity, and go, I don't want to do that.

I would much rather my kids get used to seeing sin when it's

across the street than when it's in their own life.

Does that make sense? How many of you would like your

kids to sin less if you didn't raise your hand?

You you got a rough 1 coming. OK, we want our kids to sin

less. How do I teach my kids about

what sin is? Read the Bible.

I want them to have a promise to claim.

I want to have a sin to avoid, but I want them to have promises

to claim. Some of them they can grab onto.

How many of you know that life gets difficult at times?

How many of you have ever had to walk through a a difficult

season? Navigate a dark valley.

When you're in those moments, you are going to reach for

something. I want my kids to reach and

cling to a promise of God. And how can they reach for a

promise of God if they don't know the promises of God?

So I want them to have a sin to avoid and a promise to claim.

I want them to have an example to follow.

They have all kinds of examples. They have coaches, they have

teachers, they have friends. They have all kinds of examples,

all kinds. They have people they watch on

YouTube, they have people they watch on TikTok.

They have tons of examples to follow.

I just want to give them some examples that are following

Jesus. And so I want them to have some

spiritual heroes in the Bible and #4 CA command to obey.

I want my kids to get used to seeing the Word of God, reading

the Word of God, and obeying the Word of God.

Why? Because spiritual maturity is

faith and obedience. And then there's two other

questions we asked. What are you going to do in

light of what we just read? And who do you need to tell?

Because I want my kids to be a follower of Jesus and an

evangelist for Jesus. And if I could tell you

anything, I would say if you have to cut one, cut The Who are

you going to tell? Because sometimes that can

introduce so much anxiety that they don't enjoy the other part,

depending on how they're hard wired.

Now I'm going to tell you something super depressing.

Full disclosure, this we do this.

We haven't been as consistent as I had hoped.

We've probably been doing it about every other week, OK,

because some of you are going, man, I can't wait to go home.

We're going to start this in my home.

I just want you to hear me say this.

This is the hardest hour of my week.

I don't want you thinking that my family gets around the

kitchen table and we start reading our Bible and I love it

when they're reading it and I hear it.

I don't want you thinking that might we get done.

And my kids are like, can we can we just sing an A song right now

as a family? Can we just hold hands?

Pray longer, father, pray longer, Mom, read another verse.

OK, I need you to know that is not how it goes.

There's frustrations. There's moments of tension.

It is the hardest hour of my week.

And do you want to know why? Because it's the hour of the

week that I am under attack. Because it is the one hour a

week I can be completely certain that I am being who God called

me to be in my home. Our goal is not to just make

this another day, but to leverage each and every single

day we have with our kids, with our grandkids, for the Kingdom

of God and for His glory. I'm going to stress you out a

little bit. 75% of the time that you will spend with your kids

will be spent by age 12. Raise your hand if you have a

kid over the age of 12, you are now managing the remaining 25%.

So how you and I start training for godliness today will matter.

And I promise you, one day your kids will thank you in the

future. We're moving to a time of

decision. OK, There are some of you that

are listening this term. You're like, man, this sounds

great, but I need to level a level with you.

If you don't have an intimate personal relationship with Jesus

Christ, you can't give your kids an intimate personal

relationship with Jesus Christ because you can't give what you

don't have. And until your life is

surrendered to Christ, you can't teach your kids how to

surrender. And so there's some of you,

you're going, you know what? I I want to be who God called me

to be. And I want you to hear me say

this. You can't be the parent God

called or created you to be until you have turned your life

over to Him. Impossible.

And so today, some of you, you might need to go.

You know what, I've been putting it off for way too long.

Maybe today the Holy Spirit has prompted you in the middle of

this message to go, You know what?

It's time for me to get my relationship with Jesus Christ,

right? I know there's some of you.

Anytime you start talking about family, you start going, yeah, I

had a pretty bad dad. And so when you talk about God

as a father, I'm starting to go that that that's more of a

trigger. That's more trauma than it is

help. And on some level, I want you to

hear me say this. I get it.

Having a bad earthly experience with your dad could definitely

cloud on some level, but I need you to know that your bad dad is

nothing like our good father. When the Bible talks about God,

it says that He is His love endures forever, that He is

gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, that he rescues and

redeems, that He pours out grace and mercy, that He hides us

under His wings. He is our strong tower, our

shelter. He is all of those things on

your behalf, if you will let Him.

So don't let a bad experience with your dad keeping you from

the experience you were designed for with your Heavenly Father.

How many of you, before you got married, you dated a crazy

person? Yeah.

Yeah. I didn't write off all women.

I just knew I hadn't found the right kind of crazy.

I'm sorry I didn't see Maddox was in here.

Your mom and I kiss. And just because things haven't

gone right here doesn't mean that like all of a sudden you

get to put all of that baggage on God.

God loves you so much that he sent his one and only Son to die

on the cross. And Romans chapter 5, verse 8

Romans 5:8

says that he made this move on your behalf before you did

anything right. And so today, before you can do

anything else right, you need to come into a right relationship

with Jesus. And so in just a few moments,

the people around you are going to stand and sing and some of

them are going to come to the steps and pray.

And I want to encourage you to talk to somebody maybe right up

there underneath that screen next to the baptistry about how

you can start the relationship with Jesus Christ that you

desperately need to the rest of you in the room.

To those of you who are parents and grandparents, how you and I

leverage our today's will impact their tomorrow.

So I want you to think, pray about what are the changes that

need to be made? I'm not wanting you to go home

and start swinging the pendulum. I actually want you to begin

going. All right.

How do I turn the heat up in my home, in the area of

righteousness, in discipline, in training, turn it up overtime?

Not a huge pendulum swing, but God revealed to me what are the

steps that I need to make today? Maybe you want to come up to the

steps and pray and steal the prayer that I pray over my kids.

Maybe you want to just pray over your spouse or your ex-spouse

and go, how do I lead and leverage the environments that

I'm in for your Kingdom and for your glory?

Would you guys stand with me? God, I know that every person in

here that's a parent or a grandparent carries a heavy

burden. We're trying to do it right, and

rarely do we ever feel like we are.

And so, God, I ask that you would show us the path that you

want us to walk. Show us the things that you want

us to do, and give us the courage and the consistency to

do it. God, help us to be godly

examples, to show them what it's like to do it right.

And God, when we do it wrong, give us the courage and the

humility to own it and apologize for it.

God, stir something up in our hearts to pursue you, to trust

you. In your name I pray.

Amen.