Mother's Day 2020

Good morning.

Can everybody hear me?

Yeah.

Woohoo! Well, I have to say this is definitely a first for me.

Not so much speaking on Mother's Day, but speaking from the back of a truck in a parking lot.

This is definitely a first, but I want to tell you it's such a privilege to be able to spend this time with you a few minutes in the Word of God.

And I hope you've got your Bibles and can open it to Luke chapter 8.

Luke 8 · chapter mention

That's where we're going to go.

I know that they've been passing out the notes, and I have to tell you that as I was reviewing my notes this morning and trying to figure out how long this was going to take, I realized there's no way that any of my lessons are going to fit into this time span.

So we're skipping parts.

So I'm just going to go ahead and tell you now, and if you want to fill out all the notes, they'll be on the webpage, but I'm going to skip the first two little parts because that's just about background for about gardening.

I want you to see that my truck is filled with some of my gardening tools, and I believe that God has a garden for us to tend that's not just the dirt and the grass and the flowers and the tomato plants, but He has a garden for us to tend in our families.

And so we're going to use this as an illustration.

We're going to talk about the parable from Luke of the seed and the sower and what we can learn from that as we raise our children and tend our families.

And I hope that this will be good advice for the parents as well as for the children.

I know there's a lot of children, and so please understand when I'm reading the verses about beating your children.

I am not talking about child abuse.

And so we're going to take this in the intent that God had with love and limits.

And so please understand I'm not telling your parents to go home and give you a good spanking.

We have other things in mind.

But God has a garden.

So we'll just go ahead and get started.

God has a garden and you should know that.

Some of you can hear me, that's right.

The garden of Eden.

And he planted the garden and he walked in the garden in the cool of the day.

Now, if he was in Alabama, that would be in the morning.

In other places, that might be in the late evening.

But the cool of the day, God would walk through the garden.

There's an old hymn that's one of my favorite songs, and it's titled In the Garden.

It says, I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses, and I meet with God there, and he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own.

God still walks in that garden.

And I have some gardening friends.

Forgive me for being a crybaby.

You already know that about me, so maybe you've got tissue in your car.

But God will speak to me when I'm working in the dirt.

I can't understand why my husband is coming to the rescue with a handkerchief.

Thank you, honey.

I don't know why it is that God talks to me when I'm working in the dirt, but he does.

There's just so many lessons from growing things through the scripture.

And Jesus constantly alluded to growing things and the farmer and he said in John 15, I'm the vine and you are the branches.

My father is the gardener.

And so all of these stories are there.

And when it came time for Jesus to be buried, Jesus was buried in a garden tomb.

So everything's about a garden.

Now I'm going to skip the little section about lessons from the garden because we could spend a whole lesson on there.

But I want us to talk about this parable.

So turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 8, and let's read this story.

Luke 8 · chapter mention

A farmer went out to sow his seed, and as he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path.

It was trampled on, and the birds ate it up.

Some fell on rocky ground, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture.

Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants.

Still other seed fell on good soil.

It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.

And when he said this, he called out, Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.

Parables are not difficult stories, but they're intended to be heard with your spiritual ears.

It's not just understanding the words, it's a message that speaks to the heart.

And he uses everyday terms, everyday imagery.

He talks about the soil and the rocks and the sand and the thorns and the dirt and the path and the birds.

And if you've been ever had a gardening experience, you know that the birds will come and take the first blackberries.

I mean, they just do.

It's so frustrating.

You work so hard, and then the birds get the fruit.

That's not how it's supposed to be.

And you can have a beautiful rose bush, and in one day, those little mites can come and just take every leaf off the bush.

You have to be watchful when you have a garden.

And so the disciples asked him, What does this parable mean?

Now you understand that his disciples were fishermen and tax collectors.

There weren't many farmers among them.

And so they said, What does this mean?

So he began to explain, and he said, This is the meaning of the parable.

This is the best kind of parable, the one that Jesus explains.

Therefore, you don't have any question at all about what he meant.

He says, The seed is the word of God.

You know the Bible is the most important tool that you have.

I've got a weed whacker, and I've got pruning shears, and I've got my little handy-dandy bucket here, and I have my work gloves, but the word of God, that's right, that's worth an amen.

Somebody say, beep, beep, beep.

That's right.

The word of God is the best tool that we have for tending the garden.

And so you need to learn how to use that tool, and you need to learn how to keep it sharp, and it needs to be available to you on a daily basis because you're going to use the word of God in raising those children.

He says, the seed is the word of God.

Those along the path, this is the road, those along the path are the ones who hear.

And the devil comes.

Remember the birds that ate the seed?

The devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved.

We have to be on guard because sometimes the devil is opposing us in this task.

You have to understand that gardening in the family is something that the devil hates.

John 10 10 says that the thief, talking about the devil, comes only to steal, to kill, and to destroy.

But I've come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.

The devil is going to oppose all of your gardening efforts.

He's going to send the birds, he's going to cause everything in the world to try to interrupt the growing of a good crop in your family.

Then he says, those on the rocky ground are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root.

They believe for a little while, but in the time of testing, they fall away.

Danny's here, Danny, not Danny, my husband, but Danny, my friend, and he brought me a couple of tomato plants a couple of weeks ago, and I wasn't going to be home, and I hadn't decided where I wanted to plant them, so I put them in the garage, watered them, put them in front of a window.

They were great.

I came back a few days later, they were in perfect condition.

And it was a beautiful spring day.

It was kind of sunny, and I thought, well, I'm going to put these out on the porch so they can get a little sunshine.

I went about my business.

I came back and checked on them later that afternoon, and those plants had just gone.

I killed them in just three hours.

I mean, three hours of sun.

I guess the concrete got too hot.

I don't know what happened.

But I, you know, it doesn't take much, but the sun is hot.

And because they were not in the ground, they were unprotected, it scorched their roots.

Well, a plant that is planted on rocky soil and doesn't have enough dirt for their roots to dig down deep and be protected from the persecution and the hardships of life, they start out great.

It was a beautiful plant, but it died very quickly.

We're going to talk about that kind of soil.

The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way, they are choked by life's worries, riches, and pleasures, and they don't mature.

Have you ever had a blueberry bush that just didn't make blueberries?

Or a blackberry bush that just didn't blossom?

Or a tomato plant that the tomatoes just never came?

Well, you know, if you plant them in the wrong place, that'll happen.

You know, if you if you put them where they're not in the right sun or the right shade, that'll happen to a flower.

And if you don't tend it properly, that'll happen.

But I have some I have some violets in a in a flower bed, and I've got grass that's coming up among them.

And it just, you know, they're competing for the soil and the nutrients and the sunshine.

And when you get thorns and thistles and weeds in the middle of your garden, it's just a mess.

And they often will choke the plant so that it's not fruitful.

But the last soil, he says, but the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.

Several weeks ago, Pastor Rick preached about the building on the word of God as a tower and a firm foundation, and the wise man who builds on a rock, and the foolish man who builds on the sand.

And the good soil is like is similar to that parable because we have to hear the word of God, hold on to it, don't let the birds take it away, and we have to then grow.

It's not just enough to hear the word, but we have to be doers of the word.

And in that we're going to find a good prophet.

Well, let's just talk just a little bit more.

This parable, it tells us about the seed.

We know that God is ultimately our gardener, but the seed is the word of God.

But the parable is really about the soil.

For those of you following me in my notes, I'm under point number four, the parable of the seed and the sower.

The parable is really about the dirt.

You know, I don't know about you, but every time I go to plant a garden, I find that there's something wrong with the dirt.

If you're a wise farmer, I mean, if you're not just growing a few marigolds for your own pleasure, if you're actually trying to get a crop of wheat or corn or you're a farmer and your livelihood depends on that soil, you're gonna take a sample of that soil and you're gonna go down to the farmer's agent, the cooperative extension, and you're gonna get them to test that soil and tell you what you need to do it, do with it.

They're gonna tell you what nutrients it needs, they're gonna tell you whether you need to mix some sand in.

My dad grew up on a farm and he had they had 160 acres of red clay, and they were forever having to till in sand so that the dirt would be light enough to make a good crop.

And when I first started a garden up at the cabin, I the dirt was so rocky and so full of clay that I just had a truckload of topsoil brought in because I just didn't want to fight the dirt.

It just was not good dirt.

But if our children, if we relate this to our children, our children are like the soil.

And whatever state they come in, however they're born into the world, because every child is different, everybody has a different personality and a different temperament and different talents and different ways that they respond to things.

What however they come to us, it is our job as the gardeners and the family to work that soil to give it what it needs.

And everyone might be a little bit different.

This patch might need something that that one doesn't need, and this one might need something else.

So, kids, if you think your parents aren't fair, you need to understand what fair means.

Because fair does not mean equal.

If you're clay, you need sand built in.

If you're rich and dark, but you've got a clay bottom, you need irrigation or you need a way for the water to get out.

Everybody needs something different, and the wise farmer is the one who pays attention to the soil, investigates that particular soil, and then does what is needful.

If it's if it's given out because it has no more nutrients, you might have to add some lime or some fertilizer, some tin, tin, tin.

If you don't know what those numbers need, just go browse around in a garden shop.

They'll tell you all about the uh nutrients that are in the fertilizer.

But we look and we look at the soil, and there's four kinds of soil.

So that's what we're gonna talk about.

We're gonna talk about the four kinds of soil and give you some advice.

First of all, um, let me just a couple of things to remember.

There's the hard path, the rocky ground, the thorny patch, and the good soil.

We've talked about those already.

But remember that this is a joint effort with God.

There is no vocation, there is no calling or occupation in life that a person is more aware of their total dependence on God to help them.

Maybe the medical community, because you can give medicine, you can diagnose, you can give treatment, but God is the one who heals the body.

You know, I mean, he's the healer.

And a farmer, he can he can dig the ground, he can fertilize, he can irrigate, he can plant the seeds, but he's ultimately at God's mercy for the weather, for the insects, for everything.

And then what is it?

The miracle of growth.

That's something that only God can explain.

The same is true of human life.

When God gives a baby and a child, it's a miracle.

We understand about how the seed grows and how the womb and pregnancy and all that works, but the truth is that the gift of life is a gift from the giver of life, God the Father.

And so we are in a joint effort with God when we garden.

I plant, my this is my plan.

I don't have a lot of indoor plants.

Anything indoor is usually made of silk or plastic.

I just don't do a lot of indoor.

But I plant things outside and say, Okay, God, I've done my part.

Please water it.

Please bring the sun.

My mother used to call me and she'd say, Have you been digging in the dirt?

Yes, I set out some lilies today.

She goes, Well, it looks like rain.

I said, That's the plan.

I plant, he waters.

That's how it works.

You know, I can't keep up with all this stuff.

But it's a joint effort with God.

And don't underestimate your dependence upon God, whether you realize it or not, with your children, you are completely dependent on God for wisdom and guidance for his spirit to deal with them.

Kids, I want you to know something.

Your parents are not entirely responsible for you.

There's a little bit of responsibility that comes from you.

You're responsible for how you respond to your parents.

And the Bible speaks to that.

In Ephesians 6, it says, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

And this is the first commandment with promise.

And so you have a responsibility to obey and to honor your parents.

Because when you don't, when you refuse and rebel, you're making your own heart hard.

And in that rebellious heart, it's really hard for the seed to grow.

And so you have a responsibility.

Proverbs says that even a child is known by his doings, whether they're good or bad, whether they're right or wrong.

And so even children have a responsibility in this gardening.

But this is how you can show your dependence on God.

It's through prayer.

One of my favorite Mother's Day gifts ever is a framed picture of a mother kneeling by her bed with her hands raised, praying to God for her children.

And it's like you're looking through a doorway and you're peeking at her as she's kneeling by her bed, and on the door is a shadow of a little pigtail girl watching her mother pray.

When my kids were young, they were a handful, full of energy.

I wonder where that came from.

But they also got a double dose of stubbornness, one from their daddy and one from their mama, so I really can't blame it on Danny.

But when they became teenagers, you know, I asked a friend for advice, and this honestly, this is exactly what she told me.

And she has a real southern brogue.

She was from Montgomery, and she said, Whatever you do, do not kill them.

When you're old, you'll regret it.

And I thought, oh my goodness.

So I asked another friend for advice about teenagers, and she said, Oh, it gets worse than this.

I said, What?

Oh my goodness, thanks for all the encouragement.

I really appreciate it.

Parenting is hard work.

And raising children to love God and to know God and to follow Him, that's a hard, hard thing.

So, what is the evidence?

Prayer is your evidence of your reliance on God.

Because you go to Him and you say, God, what do I do?

How do I handle this?

You're constantly referring to the referee in heaven, saying, God, I don't, I I need your wisdom.

And sometimes you're you're on your knees before God repenting because I lost my temper and I yelled at my kids and I said things I shouldn't have said and I did things I shouldn't.

And you know what God will say?

God the referee will say?

He will send you to your children to apologize and to ask their forgiveness for not living up to that godly standard that you are held accountable for.

And you know, sometimes it's a joint effort and we have to rely on Him.

Ask God to work in your life and then to work in the life of your children.

Now, parenting is easier with two committed Christians.

It's always easier with both parents going in the same direction, serving God.

It's easier, but it doesn't mean it can't be done as a single parent.

So whatever your difficulties are, God sometimes puts us in the pressure cooker.

But God does his best work in the midst of suffering.

Joseph was a child who was kidnapped, stolen, put into slavery, and in that pressure cooker, God raised up a leader.

And so the pressure cooker doesn't mean that everything's going to go bad.

It does make life harder, but it can be done.

Let's talk about these four types of soil.

The hard path.

You need to know that the devil opposes you in this work.

This is the soil where it says that the birds come and eat up the seed so that they can't even remember them.

You know, a child with a hard heart is not open to hear the word of God.

Now we know that the word of God is effective.

Isaiah 55 says that it always accomplishes what God sets it out to do.

And yet, if they can't get the word of God, if they can't hear the word of God, remember what Jesus said at the end of the parable?

Let him who has ears, let him hear.

You know, if you don't have ears to hear, if you don't have a heart to receive the word of God.

So what do you do?

You pray for rain.

Because weeds and hardness is softened by the rain, the rain of the Holy Spirit.

I pray that God would so work with them.

You know, it's hard to resist your parents sometimes when they're very persuasive.

But resisting God is even harder.

And when you go to bed and you lay down at night and God starts talking to you and he starts convicting your heart, it's really hard to resist that.

So pray for rain that God would bring a softening of heart, but also oppose the devil in prayer.

In Ephesians 6, it says that we are to stand and oppose the devil.

This is spiritual warfare.

Parenting is an act of spiritual warfare.

And you have authority.

God has given you authority over your children.

You are responsible.

You can pray with confidence that God hears you and cares about what you're trying to do.

Persevere, never give up.

One of the things that gives me confidence to pray for my children and to keep praying.

Some of you have adult children who have walked away, who are not serving the Lord, who don't know the Lord, and you think, well, I've been praying for them for 40 years, for 50 years.

They have a hard heart.

They're not interested in spiritual things.

Never, never, never give up.

Why?

Because you have a promise.

2 Peter 3.9 says, God is not willing that any should perish.

So if we pray, 1 John 5, according to the will of God, we know that we have the requests we've asked of him.

So we can pray according to the will of God, and it's not his will that any should perish.

How many of you have children?

I hate to say honk the horn, but people that you're praying for.

Amen.

Amen.

May we pray that God will give repentance to them.

It says that the goodness of God leads people to repentance.

We're not praying for fire and brimstone.

We're praying for a soft heart.

We're praying for a heart that is open to the Word of God.

You keep loving them, you keep praying for them, and you never, ever, ever give up.

Then we have the rocky road.

Okay, parents.

This is a hard one because sometimes this one points more at the parents than it does at the children.

A rocky road is a child that is, dare I say it out loud, pampered and irresponsible.

Everything is done for them.

They've never suffered the consequences of their actions.

If they fail a class in school, you go talk to the teacher and try to get them to change the grade.

If they misbehave in school and the principal says that they can't come back to school, you sue the school because they're being mean to your child.

This is the parent who never lets the child suffer the consequences of their action.

It's time for soccer and you forgot your tennis shoes.

Well, I guess you'll have to play.

I can't play soccer in these shoes.

Well, I guess you will.

Some will just run down to the store and buy them another pair.

You know, if you are not responsible, then you need to suffer.

I'm talking to the children, you need to suffer the consequences so you learn to be responsible.

It's like leaving your bike in the driveway behind dad's car when they've told you ten times to put it in the garage.

And then dad backs out of the driveway, crushes your mangled bike, and you say, You threw up my bicycle, I want a new one.

Well, whose fault is it that the bicycle was parked in the driveway behind the car?

Who is supposed to park it in the place where it goes?

The irresponsible party should pay the consequences.

And so when we shelter our children from the responsibilities, when we don't give them work to do, I know the kids are going, oh, I don't want to hear this anymore.

Where's that coloring page?

Where's my crayons?

They don't want to listen to this part.

But you know, this is the easiest soil to repair if you're willing to do the work.

Now it's hard.

Kids, let me tell you, this is hard for your parents to do.

Do you know why?

It's because we love you.

We absolutely love you to pieces.

We want to give you the moon.

We want to give you the world.

We want you to be happy.

We want your life to be easy.

We don't want you to stump your toe.

We don't want anything bad to ever happen to you.

And for something bad like not having a bicycle, some terrible hardship like that, we never want that to happen to you.

And so we try to shelter you from that.

And in that sheltering, it's like that tomato plant that I left in the garage.

I sheltered it, and then when it got out into the sun, it got out into the real world, and didn't have anybody to protect it, it just died.

And so the only way to get the rocks out, the only way to develop a deep root system and soil that's going to produce the plant that's going to hold up under perseverance and hard things and persecution.

You know, as a Christian, not everybody's going to like that.

There are some people that are going to make fun of you.

There are some cultures that when you come to Christ, they tell you you realize that you're laying your life down.

Because in our Muslim country, it's illegal to worship Jesus.

And if you follow Jesus, you may follow him right to your death.

How do you stand up in that kind of persecution if you just have two inches of soil?

You can't.

And so if you want your children to have roots that go deep, that will get them through cancer, get them through a pandemic, get them through a lost job, get them through hard things, then you've got to help teach them responsibility and work now, while they're young, while they're able to learn these things.

Sometimes we have to look in the mirror because we're the ones who allow that sheltering to take place.

We're the ones who give them a task to do, and then when they don't finish it, we go do it for them.

You need to cut the grass, son.

Oh, well, he just cut half the yard, and then his friends came over to play.

Well, oh, I hate for you to miss out on that.

I'll cut the grass for you.

You work before you play.

You need to practice the proverbs.

Let's just read.

Let's just read a couple of proverbs.

My son, don't despise the Lord's discipline.

Now, discipline doesn't mean just beating and spanking, but his order and his work.

Don't despise the Lord's discipline and don't resent his rebuke because the Lord disciplines those he loves.

As a father, the son, he delights in it.

It is a sign of love that you put consequences in the way of your children.

I I remember the worst thing in the world.

I don't know if Eric's listening.

Eric is 47 years old.

My children are 47, 34, and 32.

Oh my goodness.

How did that happen?

So, anyway, I remember when he was 16 and had his driver's license, the worst consequence in the world was to pull those car keys.

Do you know how humiliating it is to have to get on a yellow school bus when you're in high school?

Oh, that's horrible.

That is just horrible.

Everybody knows you did something really bad.

And it's amazing how effective it is.

Alright, so don't um withhold discipline from a child.

If you punish them with the rod, they will not die.

Proverbs 23.

Hebrews 12, have you forgotten the word of encouragement that addresses you as fathers addresses his son?

It says the same thing, it's quoting from Proverbs 3.

It says, Don't make light of the Lord's discipline.

Endure hardship as discipline.

God is treating you as his children.

When your parents love you, they will help you to learn to be responsible.

Nobody comes out of the womb knowing how to be responsible or knowing how to work.

This is a taught skill.

And that's how we work with the rocky ground.

You should give love and limits.

Please stop threatening your children.

The rocky child has a parent that uses words and never actions.

They say what they're going to do, but they don't follow through.

They don't mean it.

If you mean what you say, you should think about what you say.

I remember grounding my girls when they were in high school, and grounding them from the car meant that I had to take them to school.

There was no school bus in Virginia.

And I had to take them to school.

What a bother.

It was a pain in my patootie.

I had to take them to school every morning and every night because they were grounded.

I felt like I was the one being punished.

And yet, here we go.

I have to be good to my word.

Love them and give them listings, limits, be consistent.

Discipline in love and gentleness, not in anger.

God doesn't discipline us in anger, He disciplines us in love.

Train your children.

Teach them.

This is deliberate, intentional, on purpose, teaching your children not to quit when things get tough.

I remember one of the most painful things we experienced as a family with our daughter in sports.

Both all of our children were involved in different activities.

But one year Mary was on a volleyball team.

She had come into a new school, and the coach had her system.

She had her team.

She'd been working with them since seventh grade.

She was now in 11th grade, and Mary was a good volleyball player.

Both my girls, great athletes.

And so here they are playing volleyball, and we'd come to the game and Mary would ride the bench.

We'd come to the game and Mary would ride the bench.

And we'd talk to the coach.

We'd ask her if she talked to the coach.

And the coach said, Oh, she's a great player.

She can hit, she can serve, she can do all these things that are necessary.

And so we said, then is there a reason why she's not getting any play in time?

You know, this is honestly what the coach said.

I just forgot.

I forgot.

I got so involved with the game, I forgot she was sitting there.

And I'm thinking, well, she didn't forget, and we didn't forget.

And Mary wanted to quit so badly.

She knew she wasn't going to get any playing time.

This lady had her night at her state championship team, and she wasn't interrupting the flow by putting somebody else in the rotation.

That's what it came down to.

And Mary was as good as those other players.

But you know, you never know when somebody's going to roll an ankle and you might get in the game.

And we said, Mary, you started the season.

You have to finish.

I know it's painful.

I know it hurts, but you have to stay on the team.

Now, next year, you don't have to be on the team, but this year we have to finish what we started.

And it was hard.

It was hard for all of us.

We'd cry.

We'd go to the game and cry because we knew how hard it was.

But you don't quit.

And you've got to help your children develop that.

Steps for training.

How do you train a child?

How do you help them?

First of all, you do it.

So you have to be a doer of the things you want your child to do.

Parents do it.

Then the children watch the parents do it.

So the parents are watching, the children are watching you have your quiet time.

They're watching you do the work.

And this is why it's important for everybody to have a chore around the house.

Because if only one person does the work in the house, that's the message the kids get.

Oh, boys don't have to wash dishes.

Oh, girls don't have to cut grass.

Oh, not at my house.

I was the oldest daughter, so I cut grass because my little brother who was six couldn't run the lawnmower.

And he had to wash dishes because I was outside cutting the grass.

You know, they need to learn that everybody works together.

Parents do it, the children watch the parents do it, then the children do it while the parents watch them.

What are we watching for?

To help them do it well.

You know, they're still learning.

They think they knew it.

I won't do it myself.

Well, but the parents watch.

And then ultimately the children do take on those tasks and they do it themselves.

That's how you train somebody.

Alright, let's go to the third one: the thorny patch.

This child is busy and self-absorbed.

I know we don't know any kids like that.

I know some adults like that.

Somebody should have beeped their horn.

Hello?

I know that I can be busy and I can be self-absorbed.

You know, I have my moments when it's all about me.

And Danny, don't say amen too loud.

But this child, the thorny patch, is a place where we're so busy that we don't have time for God.

They think about themselves first, what they want, what they need, what they look like, what their friends say, what other people have while they need to catch up.

My friend has a Facebook page.

I need new equipment.

I need this.

I need a new phone.

I I need to I need these new shoes.

They're too busy.

They've got a lesson for music and a lesson for sports and a lesson for friends, and they've got they've got all they've got everything in the world.

They have so much going on in their lives that they don't have time for God, for his will, for his plans, for his goals, for his thoughts, or even the fact that God's going to take care of us.

Do you know the biggest challenge I believe that we have in this country is that we live in a thorn patch.

The world is very distracting to us.

There's so many pleasures and beautiful things and wonderful things, and it keeps us from the important thing.

We choose the good things over the best things.

So what do we do?

Matthew 6 33 says, But seek ye first the kingdom of God.

What does it mean to seek something first?

What does that mean?

There's a song, I want to seek you first before I ask for prayer requests, before I do this, before that, I want to seek you first.

I want to love you, I want to serve you, I want to honor you.

I used to think that that meant that the first thing I do in the morning is I open my Bible and I have my quiet time and I seek him first, and then everything else in my day is going to go just right.

And then I had some days that didn't go just right, and I thought, well, what's that about?

Seeking him first means that I seek him first all day long.

I consult him first.

Before I make decisions, I ask him.

It does mean that I give him the first part of my day.

Why?

Because my day might go wrong.

Have you ever had your well-laid schedule disappear on you?

Something comes up and everything goes wrong?

Well, if I only accomplish one thing in a day, I want it to be that one thing that matters.

I want to spend time with God.

And so I need to do that.

But if I'm so busy, if I have to be at my job at five o'clock, or I have to be at work and I've got to get this, and I've got we work more than we have to.

Sometimes we do things that aren't necessary.

We've got to figure out what it is.

And as parents, we have to set the example.

Do we have time for God?

Do we have time for the Lord?

Do we have time to go to service?

Are we so busy working?

And then when we do have free time, now we've got to uh fulfill all our pleasures.

Now we've got to get our fishing in and our hunting and our pickleball.

I mean, we got to get all these things into our day.

And we're so distracted by good things.

They're all good.

Philippians 6 says, finally, brethren, think on these things.

He says that sometimes we're worried.

Anyone a worrier?

Sometimes we just worry, worry, worry.

We're worried about our children.

We're worried about the pandemic.

We're worried about social distancing.

We're worried about money.

We're worried about the future.

We're worried about whether they're going to get sick or break their leg or kill themselves when they get their driver's license.

We're worried about everything.

And yet Philippians 4 says we're to trust God and not worry.

Are you setting an example of trust and faith for your children?

Or are you setting an example of worry?

James 4 says, What causes fights and quarrels among you?

Don't they come from the desires that battle within you?

You want things, but you don't have.

So you kill to get them.

When you ask, you don't receive these things because you ask with the wrong motives that you may spend to get it on your pleasures.

Don't you know that friendship with the world means that you're the enemy of God?

So money doesn't solve all our problems.

We need to teach our children to rely on God and not on money.

Should they get a good job?

Yes.

But are they going to trust their job to supply their needs, or are they going to trust God to supply their needs?

Those are the things we have to teach them.

We should practice good safety.

But who's ultimately in charge of our health?

God is.

So, yes, wash your hands.

Yes, social distance, yes, do all these things.

But trust God, do not be a worrier.

And so, that's right, somebody else, that's right.

We should be not be a worrier.

All right, the last soil.

We're gonna wrap this up.

So we've got the hard path, the rocky area, the thorny patch, and the good soil.

These are the children that have been tended well.

I don't know if you've ever been to an amusement park or to the botanical gardens, somewhere that has beautiful landscaping, and all the flowers are blooming.

And I I love to go to Six Flags or Disney World or somewhere, and they just they're just gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.

Can I tell you that that doesn't happen by accident?

Somebody has been tending that garden.

It doesn't look that way because somebody just threw out some seed and walked away.

Somebody has been planting and fertilizing and pruning and watering and tending, and good soil happens because the children are tended well.

Somebody spent a lot of time and energy.

They are deliberately focusing on keeping this patch of ground clean, keeping it untainted from the weeds, pulling out the weeds, fertilizing it, giving it the nutrition and ready for the seed.

Now, after you've worked on the gardener, we've worked on ourselves, what does the soil need?

The soil needs consistency.

They need love, they need boundaries, they need to know that they matter to the family.

They need you to listen to them and care about their ideas and their feelings.

You care about those things.

But children also need stability and authority and somebody who's in charge that's not them.

And you should take your God-given authority as parents, as fathers and mothers to give them the word of God and pray over the Spirit of God.

You've got to walk in the Spirit.

Oh my goodness, the most important thing is that we set an example for our family.

Amen.

Amen.

I love you guys.

Thank you so much.

Let's have a word of prayer together.

Father, I want to thank you so much for each family that's represented here, for those that are watching on live.

God, we know that parenting is an impossible task.

It's a miracle that any of our children even survive physically, much less prosper spiritually.

God, only you can do that.

Only you can save a soul.

Only you can turn the hard ground into soft ground.

Only you can protect us from the weeds.

You tell us, Lord, that we are to pray against the enemy, that you would uh lead us not into temptation.

And God, that you would keep us safe and protected.

God, we pray for our children today.

We pray that they would do their part, that they would honor their parents, that they would tend their own hearts, that they want to be good soil so that you can let the word of God grow and flourish and produce fruit in them.

I pray for our parents today, for all of our mothers, for our fathers, for all of those that are parenting in difficult circumstances.

God, I pray for them that you would give them your wisdom.

You tell us in James 5 that if we lack wisdom, we can come to you.

And you tell us that the word of God is a guide to our path, a light into our path, and a lamp into our feet.

And so I pray, God, that you would teach us the word, ground us in the word, that we can be fruitful and disciple our own children, to lead them to you, to know you, to love you, to serve you.

God, I pray all these things in the strong name of Jesus.

Amen.