Train Up a Child

We're in a new series of messages that were it's just short as three weeks.

Uh we're calling it a closer look.

Uh we've spent the better part of the year zoomed out in the Bible.

We looked for I think it was 15 weeks, we looked at the whole Bible, so we looked at the meta-narrative of the Bible.

Uh, we looked at the big storyline of the Bible.

We tried to look closely at the different genres and the different literary elements of the Bible so that we can do the best we can to read it and get from it what we're supposed to get from it.

And I feel a real responsibility uh beyond like these moments when we all gather in this room and look at God's word together.

I want to set you up for success on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and beyond because if you think about like if you just ate one big meal every Sunday and then you tried to have that sustain you all week, right, it probably wouldn't be a good plan.

Uh the better plan would be to get good nutrients every single day to fuel you for that day.

And and so uh, you know, I'm gonna do my best to bring to you what God's given me to share.

But at the same time, I think even better would be that every time you're opening up God's word, you kind of know how to go into it and you allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you in that season, in that day, what you need.

And so that's kind of what we've been doing.

We're gonna uh zoom in now.

We've been zoomed out, we're gonna zoom in.

Last week we looked at a story in the Bible, but this week I just want to look at one verse.

We'll we'll have some cross-references and we'll look at it from a few different angles, but we're gonna primarily focus on one verse.

And um it's gonna be Proverbs 22, 6.

So if you have your Bibles, you can go there.

If not, I'll put it up on the screen.

And I'm I'm going old school today.

I'm going King James, all right.

King James.

And when you read the King James, you know, you gotta say it with your chest.

You know, you can't just kind of half-heartedly say the King James, you've got to do it right.

And I'm gonna present it because it's a familiar verse for a lot of us, and uh I I originally heard it in the King James.

So here's where here's what we're gonna do.

Proverbs 22, 6 says, Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he gets old, he will not depart from it.

Um, okay, in traditional King James English, it's using the term he, not to just represent males or boys, but it's talking about humanity, so people.

So you could say they.

Train up a child in the way they should go, and when they get old, they will not depart from it.

Um okay, let's look at this.

Uh the book of Proverbs is like we talked about in the cover-to-cover series, as part of wisdom literature.

And um, this is written, most of the Proverbs are attributed to King Solomon.

Um, it says in 1 Kings 4 that Solomon wrote 3,000 Proverbs.

So a lot of the Proverbs that he had documented or were attributed to him make up a lot of the book of Proverbs.

It also says in 1 Kings 4 that Solomon wrote a thousand songs.

And so what you have is really a compilation.

Probably a lot of this wisdom literature didn't originate with Solomon, but he's it's it's attributed to him.

Um, something interesting in the in the Proverbs, you'll notice Proverbs 25, 1 says these are more Proverbs from Solomon compiled by the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, which is one of those things, if you happen to be reading Psalm 25.1, or I'm sorry, Proverbs 25.1, you'd probably not think much of that.

What's up with Hezekiah?

Who cares?

But what matters about this is that, okay, if if we look at his historically, we date Solomon in the 10th century BC.

And Hezekiah uh reigned a couple hundred years, actually more than 200 years later.

So what that tells us is that this compilation that we have of Proverbs didn't, it wasn't compiled by Solomon, that it was compiled over time, at least 200 years, probably more than that.

So now you start to look at what was going on during that period, and we can kind of build off what we talked about last week.

Last week we looked at Elijah and King Ahab, and King Ahab was part of the after Solomon, the nation split in a northern southern kingdom, and the book of 1 Kings, 2nd Kings followed the northern kingdom.

So Ahab, we said last week, was the seventh king down the line of the northern kingdom, and it says that he was a dreadful leader.

He was really uh he introduced idolatry, he was he was corrupt.

And so what you have now again is is showing um what was the state of the nation at that point.

The reason I bring that up is what they were doing with this wisdom literature is they were using it as a true north.

They were using it, they were almost animating it like the ultimate wise leader, even in spite of the fact that they were dealing with some bad kings, some corrupt kings, primarily corrupt kings, until they even lost their nation altogether, ended up in exile in Babylon.

And so what what one of the ways that the book of Proverbs serves us is it gives us leadership, wisdom, life wisdom axioms that we can draw on, no matter what situation we happen to be in on the job, no matter what situation we have to be in with leadership or who the king is or whatever, you look and you go, we're gonna draw on this wisdom, and it's timeless, which is why all these years later, even today, when you're reading in the Proverbs, the stuff that's being said is extremely helpful.

Um, one thing to note, and I've I've brought this up before, but I'll probably bring it up every time I do anything out of Proverbs, is to understand how to properly interpret the Proverbs, uh, because if when you're reading it, you gotta go, how should I be reading this?

How should I be receiving it?

So you have to understand that Proverbs express general truths or probabilities about how life works most of the time, not guaranteed outcomes or promises.

So when you're reading the Proverbs, they are probabilities or generally true things.

They are not guaranteed outcomes or promises.

These are not the promises of God in Proverbs.

These are general wisdom and probabilities.

So let me give you a few examples.

Proverbs 10, 4.

Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth.

Okay, is that always true?

No, it's not always true.

Most of the time it's true.

Hard work usually leads to good, better financial outcomes, usually.

But there are plenty of examples of hardworking people with diligent, dogged work ethics that don't end up with a bunch of money.

A lot of times they end up struggling financially throughout their lives.

And then there are more examples than we would care to note of people who are lazy and crooked who end up with a bunch of money.

All right.

So this is not guaranteed, this is not an economic formula, this is generally true.

There's usually a link, a correlation between the diligence of your work and then the financial outcome.

Proverbs 16, 7.

It said, when a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.

Alright, is that true?

Uh sometimes.

Sometimes, uh generally, if you live righteously, um you can win over the respect of the world around you over time.

If you if you're righteous long enough and you're consistent, usually people will respect you, and it might even soften some of your conflicts, and it might even win over some of your enemies.

Some of you know people, you did not like them when you met them.

They did not make a good first impression.

When you knew them in one context, you didn't like them, but when you got to know them and see what they were really about, you developed an affection for them and actually maybe ended up with a friend.

But that doesn't always happen.

In fact, sometimes by doing the things that please the Lord, you end up stirring up a hornet's nest.

Sometimes you end up making an enemy because of that.

And the more that you're faithful to what God's called you to do, sometimes will actually drive people further away, right?

Paul says in the New Testament, do all that you can to live at peace with people as long as much as it concerns you, as much as you're able to.

But there are people that choose you and they will not allow you to have peace.

Um, that's just where they're at.

So these are generally true things, but not always true.

Proverbs 11, 25 says, a generous person will prosper.

Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.

All right?

Yeah, often generosity will provoke reciprocity.

People, when you're generous with them, so a lot of times they return the favor, but that's not always true.

I know people who have given, given, given, given, given and been taken advantage of.

And so they instead of being in reciprocal relationships where there's give and take, they just gave, the other person took, and they were depleted.

And so they weren't refreshed.

So again, uh, this doesn't always happen.

This is a proverb, it's not a contract with God.

So when we know that in Proverbs is train up a child in the way they should go, and when they get old, they won't depart from it.

We know what we're dealing with here.

We're dealing with something that's generally true.

Now, I want to say this as a disclaimer.

Um, I am gonna talk a little bit about parenting.

This will certainly that today's message will have parenting implications, but it's gonna be broader than that.

Um I'll I'll kind of share some of that in a minute.

But I want to give a disclaimer because I am a father.

I have three kids.

I'm a father of three.

I have a 16-year-old, a 13-year-old, and a 10-year-old.

Um, and I would just like to say up front, if anything about this sermon seems like I'm a know-it-all, okay, or being condescending, I have miscommunicated because I am an imperfect father.

I subscribe to the uh Maya Angelo form of parenting, which is do the best you can until you know better, and then when you know better, do better, right?

That's what I try to do.

Um, but I am very imperfect.

Uh I'm married to a woman named Shaylin Ford, who is also an imperfect parent, although her batting average is better than mine.

I'd like to go on record and make sure I get that out there.

All right, her batting average is better than mine.

But both of us are imperfect, and we were both raised by imperfect parents who were raised by imperfect parents.

So what we're really wanting to do here is not to, anything where we go and we're critiquing or we're looking back trying to learn is not to dishonor our heritage or where we've come from.

In fact, like myself, who's trying to do the best I can until I know better and then know better, do better, my parents did the same thing and their parents did the same thing.

So, in a sense, what I'm trying to do is honor their intent by getting as by using everything, the good, bad, and the ugly, to try to learn and to improve upon, which by the way is what I hope my kids do.

I hope that they honor my intent enough to look at me and to find the things I did right and carry those on and to find the things I could have done better and improve upon them.

So, so so we're not dishonoring today.

Um, here's the goals for today's sermon.

Three goals.

One is to help anyone who's trying to help a child.

So if you if you're trying to help a child, if you have a if you have have a child, it might be your child, it might be a niece or nephew, um, it might be a grandchild, it might be uh somebody in your neighborhood, or maybe you're a coach or a teacher or something.

But any child, if you have a child in your life, I want to help you help them.

The second is I want to give leaders something to think about.

So some of you have um you don't work with kids at all, and yet uh today's message will really be transcendent beyond just uh kids, but but there will be things that you and how you work with adults.

And then third is for us all to get a little bit better at studying the Bible, right?

So if some of you, all three of these, what would apply to you?

You're working with you have a child in your life, you you you lead adults, and you want to get better at studying the Bible, or maybe you just latch on to one of them.

But I want to put those in front of you so you can keep working through uh the application as we go.

All right.

Um, how many of you, the Proverbs 22, 6, train up a child in the way they should go, that verse was familiar.

Like when I read it, you're like, I've heard that before.

Maybe you'd heard it in the home, you grew up with it.

Um, this is one of those verses that seems pretty much self-explanatory.

Like, we don't need to do a lot of thinking.

Like, what is there to think about?

Train up a child in the way they should go, let's get to work.

Okay.

But I think it's one of those things that is when we think about studying the Bible better, we have to think about assumptions that we might be making when we read something, particularly around words that animate in our minds.

So think about words like a piece of wood, and over time they get painted on, and they get coats and layers of paint.

And so when you see that, you don't necessarily see the wood, you see what's been painted on the wood.

And if you were to really try to understand the wood, you'd have to power wash it all the way down, all the layers of paint to get down to the essence of what it is.

So when you look at the word train, let's just start with the first word in the verse.

Train in Proverbs 22, written, okay, in the 10th century BC, when I hear the word train, when you hear the word train, what do you hear?

What do you see when you think about training?

If it when you see the word train, something came into your mind.

Uh if you're an athlete, if you grew up playing sports, you think about training for the sport, you think about skill development, you think about going to practice, you think about shooting uh repetitive jump shots or throwing a ball or whatever practice you did.

If you're if you're a musician, you think about training on your instrument.

If you're an artist, okay, you think about training on your art, whether it's digital art or physical art, or uh if you're a singer, you think about voice lessons and and and how to warm up your voice and train it and training your ear.

If if you're um uh really in the school academics, you think about learning a subject and what it takes to mass have a mastery of that subject.

Um if you if you um were in the military, you would think about training in that way.

If you have a business or you're a manager, you think about how to onboard people on your team or employees, how do you train them to do the job well?

Speaking of military, by the way, I'm a downline.

My grandfathers, both of my grandfathers were soldiers.

They both served in World War II.

Okay, and both of them grew up with Bibles, and they both grew up trying to raise Christian kids, their families.

My grandpa Ford had nine kids.

Nine.

It's a lot of kids, if you're counting, all right.

That's a lot of kids.

He worked on the railroad after he got in the military, out of the military, he had a farm and worked on the railroad.

Nine kids.

He, when he heard the word train, train up a child and the way they should go coming out of World War II, what is he thinking of?

He's thinking of basic training.

He's thinking of General Patton, he's thinking of how I was trained, and I need to train my kids in the same way.

Nine of them.

I gotta train them that way.

So think about that now.

He's gonna have those that layer of paint on the word train.

Train up a child.

And and how did General Patton train World War II soldiers to go into an industrial age battle in World War II?

It was a very, very specific way of training.

Okay, everybody gets the same haircut, everybody uh we we pack our bag the same way, we get dressed the same way, we line up the same way, nobody talks back, sir, yes, sir.

That's the proper answer.

Whatever I ask you, the answer is sir, yes, sir.

Nobody went in World War II went up to the private first class and was like, How would you like to salute?

Like, how would you like to salute?

Like, what hairdo do you want?

You know, we want you to be able to express your individuality, we want you to be able to be creative, we want to know who you are.

All right, no, it is line up this way, do this thing this way, and and and it made sense for the battle that they were fighting, okay, to do that.

So, what does that do?

It creates obedience, it creates discipline.

We don't disobey an order.

I I'm not teaching you to go think independently.

I'm teaching you that when I say go, you go, and you don't even question authority.

In fact, that's why in our homes, again, what it turns into is anything like talking back, any sort of response or questioning of authority is now talking back, and that is disrespectful, and therefore you don't talk back.

So if you ask, well, help me understand why.

Well, it's like because I said so, because I'm General Patton and you're not, so shut up and do what I told you to do.

Okay.

Um, now again, I say this not as disrespect because that worked.

Now, here's the here's the reality.

Okay, is this what Solomon was talking about in Proverbs 22, 6?

And when he talks about train up a child in the way they should go, if you start getting into the Hebrew, you start looking at it, ultimately what he's really talking about is setting them on a path, helping them to avoid the folly of youth, and to help them get on a path of character and to be very careful in your discipline of them so that you can guide them.

This isn't telling them to not think for themselves and to simply obey.

Now, is obedience good?

Yes, obedience is a virtue.

But I think if we really think it out in terms of not just training soldiers to take the hill, but to training human beings to navigate the complexities of life, what we want to teach is a principle of to honor authority, to respect authority, but that wouldn't mean don't ever question authority.

I think we would want to go talking back or having a sincere question, like if I'm confused, it's appropriate for me to ask a question to get clear.

If something violates my values, it's appropriate for me to stand up no matter how big a boy you are, no matter how big a boss you are.

I can stand up for what I believe in, but how do I do so respectfully?

Okay, so our issue isn't don't ever talk back or don't ever question leaders.

Don't ever question authority.

Think about that.

If that's the world we live in, where I never question a leader, okay?

I never question my parents, I never question the place I work in, I never question uh powerful people, that's not a good I think we can all see that could go really bad really quickly.

I think the important thing is we don't want to disrespect and dishonor.

So instead of saying all talk back is disobedient, disrespectful sin, I think what we want to teach is how do how do you do this in a respectful manner?

So this now, now we just we we're just starting to think about Proverbs 22, 6, and just we just started on the word train.

And now we have to start to think about it.

We think about reading our Bibles better, we think about how do we challenge our own assumptions and power wash words down to the purest essence of what they are, that would mean it would be in our best interest for you and I to spend some time thinking about what training we've been given, and to think about what training even means to us, and then think about the people we are given the responsibility to train.

And are we doing this the right way?

Are we doing it mostly the right way, but we need to rethink some stuff and to tweak some stuff and create better ways to do this?

So train up a child in the way they should go.

Um, how did Jesus train?

Let's look at this, and we're gonna step a little bit away from kids, although Jesus trained disciples who were young men.

Many believe they were teenagers, young men.

But here's how Jesus, this was his training ground, and I want you to take and think of the training that you were given, and I want you to sort of lay it next to the way Jesus trained the disciples.

So this is gonna be, I'm gonna go quickly through this.

Uh this is synthesized from probably eight months of teaching that we did last year.

We spent a lot of time in these passages last year.

Um, but here's I'm gonna go through quick.

So Matthew 4, Jesus invites them, it's invitation, put down your nets and follow me.

And the put down your nets was really a mouthful because they were identified in the text as fishermen.

So, in a sense, it is put down your identity, put down the certainty of your paycheck, put down your provision, put everything down and full commit.

I want you to follow me because I I want to take and I want to do something fresh.

We're gonna almost like hit the reset button.

So it's invitation.

Matthew 5 through 7 is the Sermon on the Mount.

So just because I I like I words for this, I just call it information, but it's more than that.

Because he teaches them not just content or information, and he doesn't just tell them what to think, he teaches them how to think.

So what he does is he starts with challenging the status quo and learning and unlearning.

And here's what it sounds like.

He says, You've heard it said this, but I say this.

You've heard it said this, but I say this.

And when he goes through the you've heard it said this, but I say this, he's taking commonly held beliefs or views or interpretations and he's causing them to rethink it.

He's giving them, he's giving them permission to question their authority structures.

He's giving them permission to question what they've assumed to be true, even about God and their theology.

So he said, You've heard it said this, but I say this.

And then he drives the conversation really deep.

One of the ways he does it is he we we call it the Torah sampler.

He takes their Torah and he gives four case studies that he wants them to do the rest of the four uh 609 uh laws of the Torah.

But here I'm gonna do four in front of you.

So one of them, he does oaths, which are like contracts.

He said, You guys think about oath, you're not thinking deeply enough.

He said, in the law, there's a way you make an oath, you make a contract, you do this, I'll do that.

But he said, within the law, you y'all have found loopholes that if I swear by this thing, okay, we have a deal, but then if I swear by this other thing, then this one's undone.

So what happened is you made a commitment to somebody.

They thought you would honor that commitment because you're a person of your word.

Therefore, they made commitments based on that commitment, but you got a better offer.

So because you got a better offer, you walked away from your commitment and you got away with it in a loophole, but they're still stuck with the bill.

But you rode off into the sunset with your new thing.

So legally, you're good.

Legally, the judge can't do anything to you because you found a loophole in the law, but what you did was put something in the world that wasn't so good.

Taught this person, it's me against the world.

You you did not honor what you set up and said you would do.

So he does that on a whole bunch of stuff.

He talks about marriage, he talks about adultery, he talks about all kinds of stuff.

Okay, so what is he doing?

He's driving the conversation deeper.

He's teaching them how to think, he's giving them permission to challenge the status quo.

He's teaching them how to unlearn.

What a skill.

Teaching them how to unlearn things so that they can learn the new thing.

So that's what he does in Matthew 5 through 7.

The next one is imitation.

If you want to freshen up your Bible study, okay, uh go to Matthew 8 and 9 and just make notes.

Make notes of details of everything Jesus does in Matthew 8 and 9, and then go to the book of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles, and notice the similarities between the things Jesus did in Matthew 8 and 9 and the things that the disciples did in the book of Acts.

And what you're gonna find is that Jesus is training them.

He's training them.

Okay, put down your nets and follow me.

Commit.

And then I'm gonna teach you how to think, and then I'm gonna show you how to live.

I'm gonna show you how to do this in front of you.

I'm gonna live it out in front of you so that these principles have a personality, and I show you how to contextualize them.

So he models it in front of them, he lives it out.

And then we get to Matthew 10, and this is where it really gets good because he said, Alright, here's the deal.

You have everything in you you need to be to thrive.

You are capable.

So here's what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna remove myself.

So far, I've been the safety blanket for you.

Every time something goes sideways, y'all look at me and I fix it.

But not now.

Matthew 10, he said, I'm sending you out as sheep among wolves.

And I'm gonna give you authority, I'm gonna give you the power to cast out demons and to heal the sick and do all this.

And he goes, I'm gonna want you to go out because you need to get in the real world.

I know you feel like you can't do it, but you can do it, and I'm gonna prove it.

And you're gonna go out and life's gonna squeeze you.

And when life squeezes you and you feel the pressure and you feel the pain, something's gonna come out of you.

And what you're gonna find is everything from Matthew 4 through chapter 9 is gonna come out of you in chapter 10, and you're going to see what is happening inside of you.

Look at this, it says in Matthew 10, 16.

He said, I'm sending you out as sheep among wolves.

Therefore, I love this line.

Be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.

Be as shrewd as man, I'd love to just talk about that.

What does that mean?

Shrewd as snakes, innocent as doves.

What does that even mean?

No one knows what it means, but it's provocative.

Verse 17 says, Be on your guard.

You'll be handed over to the local councils and you'll be flogged in the synagogues.

In other words, you'll have to suffer.

You're gonna go through hardship.

Verse 18, on my account, you'll be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles.

Verse 19.

When, but when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it.

In other words, I won't be there to hide behind.

You're gonna have to stand front and center, put on the spot, and at that time you'll be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the spirit of your father speaking within you.

In other words, there's more in you than you think there is.

And when you get squeezed, it's gonna come out of you.

And when it comes out of you, you're gonna go, dang, that was good.

I did it.

I didn't know what to say, man.

I just started talking, and all this stuff started coming out of me.

I didn't even know it was in there that's been planted in me since Matthew 4 and Matthew 5, 6, and 7, and Matthew 8, 9.

I didn't even know I had learned that, and boom, it came out.

But those things don't come out if you just keep hiding behind the leader.

Those things don't come out if you keep hiding behind your mother.

Those things don't just come out if you hide behind your father or whoever.

At some point, you got to stand up there for yourself, and there's a whole dimension of development and training that happens when nobody's there to save you.

And they got you front and center, and you have to speak up for yourself.

So this is how Jesus trained, right?

It wasn't shut up and don't talk back and don't think for yourself.

He taught them how to rethink, unlearn, challenge the status quo, drive the conversation deep, and then go live it out.

And he modeled it in front of them.

Alright, so all of this just from us questioning the word train.

Train.

What does train mean?

Okay, next part of it, let's go back to the King James, Proverbs 22, 6.

Train up a child in the way he should go.

The way he should go.

In the ISV, International Standard Version, look at it, it says this train a child in the way appropriate for him.

And when he becomes older, he will not turn from it.

In the amplified version, so if you're not familiar with the amplified version, it's basically it takes commentary and injects it in the text.

So a lot of times you have a study Bible, there's an asterisk, you go to the bottom and you read commentary.

But what this does is it puts a summarized commentary in the text, but you know what the commentary is because it puts it in parenthetically.

So it says in Proverbs 22, 6, train up a child in the way he should go, teaching him to seek God's wisdom and will for his abilities and talents.

Even when he is old, he will not depart from it.

So what it's doing here is it's taking and adding two dimensions to our training.

The first is standardized, in other words, in the Ford family, there are some things that are just standard.

We all tell the truth.

We all treat each other with respect.

We don't hit our siblings.

We, okay, these are things we the way we talk to one another, way we the way we behave.

Okay, we behave.

All of that, a lot of that morality is standard, but then there's a customization where it says use, use, uh, train up a child in a way that's appropriate for them, in a way that meets them at their gifts and abilities.

To go, what is unique about how I parent this one versus how I parent that one?

That's why families are so important because in a larger society, right, you can't create societal structures that's going to be able to get that far down the individual.

The structure is the family.

I mean, we we do our best to have justice in the world around us, but really to go the distance to find out the depth of the uniqueness of each individual.

That happens in the home.

And so that's why they you know you dedicate your home to the Lord.

Lord, I want to create shalom in this home.

I want I want these kids to understand who you are.

I want to create a sense of security.

I want them to understand values.

I need to understand who they are.

You might have one child that came out of the womb ambitious, like they popped out of the womb and just went and climbed a hill, you know, like army crawled up a hill, you know, as an infant.

They're just they they want to conquer.

I mean, they are just aggressive, uh competitive uh since day one.

And then maybe another one that's a little more passive.

And at some point you got to go, okay, we got to figure out what's what what's going on here.

And I I want to try to guide this one that has a strong will without crushing the will, because that's a good thing, but I want to mature the will so that they don't become a bull in a china shop.

I remember I remember when my daughter Ella was 10, she came to church, and and um a girl in the church uh she found out that this girl had started a thing at her school called the no bully buddies.

I think Ella was in like third grade, and she comes home from church, she's fired up.

She's like, Dad, this girl started no bully buddies.

I mean, what an idea.

She's like, I'm going to school tomorrow.

I'm starting a no bully buddies chapter at my school because there's a bully issue, and uh, you know, someone's got to do something about it.

Might as well be me.

So I'm going in and I'm gonna start the no bully buddies.

I was so pumped, man.

I was like, this I was like, heck yeah, girl.

I was like, pulled back like the bow and just let her go.

I didn't even ask questions, you know.

I was just like, go, you know, tomorrow.

What do you need from me?

I'll fund it.

You know, I don't even know.

What do you get?

You guys need t-shirts?

We'll make t-shirts, like, I don't even care.

Like, you just tell me like I'm behind it, no bully buddies, like I'm I'm I'm on your team.

And um, so she goes to school, man.

Uh a couple days she comes home.

How's it going, Ella?

Oh, it's going great.

You know, we're we're we're igniting a movement to reach a disconnected culture, you know, at this school.

And um, so a couple days after that, I get a call from the teacher.

I'm like, hello?

It's like, Mr.

Ford, this is Miss So-and-so, and um we love Ella.

We really love Ella.

She's a good girl, and and so we're so thankful for her.

But um, have you heard anything about this no bully buddies?

I was like, yeah, absolutely.

I was like, I absolutely have.

Isn't that amazing?

They're like, well, yeah, we love the concept.

They're like, there's there's just a problem, is um she started to bully kids into the club.

I was like, what?

What are you talking about?

She's like, yeah, so she she she launched it, she launched it into the third grade a few days ago, and and um signing kids up, and and and and there was a few kids who just didn't want to be in it.

And uh she didn't like that.

And so she tried to talk them into it, and having heard all of her logic and persuasion, they still decided that they didn't want to be in the no bully buddies.

And so she sort of got the whole gang together to put social pressure on these children, and we call that bullying here, and so we think you might want to talk to her, you know, and I was like, Roger that, you know, I'll take care of it from here.

Now, when I talked to her about it, what what I didn't do was crack down on her, what I didn't do was shame her.

What I did.

We started with her strength.

We're like, look, first of all, love what you were trying to do, but let's look at this now.

If we don't do think this all the way through, and we just start acting, even with passion, even our passion, if we don't discipline our passion, we can end up becoming the very thing that we're trying to extinguish.

We could end up becoming the problem, a bigger part of the problem that we're trying to solve.

So, hey, you don't need to be ashamed of yourself, but we're gonna get a little wiser today.

Let's start to work our way through it.

And so we start working our way through the conversation, right?

So train up a child in the way they should go.

If you have one that's aggressive, we go, great.

How do we harness that?

If you have one that's not, let's figure out what's going on with that.

Is it that you feel overshadowed by your older sibling?

Is it feel that I have the same gifts, but they have it in larger portion?

Why would I even try?

I'm always gonna fall short.

Do I need to help you become secure in who you are so that your portion and your mission is enough because your identity is rooted in who you are in Christ and in your love and God's love and all this?

So it doesn't matter.

In the parable of the talents, the the the the rich man did not can commend the one who went from uh uh uh whatever it was, five to ten over the one that two to four, it's just double what you got.

Doesn't matter how much you have at the end, take what you have and use it for God's glory.

And so, okay, is it that or is it really, hey, I just I have different interests.

I'm gonna okay, let me enter with you there.

And so we have a value as a family work ethic.

We're gonna work hard, we're gonna give our best for God's glory because good work and excellence honors God and serves people well.

We're gonna do that, but it might play out totally different.

And I'm gonna meet you there and help train up a child in the way they should go.

They should go.

I'm not gonna predetermine where you're supposed to go.

I'm not even going to define the ultimate success for you.

I'm gonna put you on a path of character and aim you ultimately at God's purpose.

So when you think about this, and let me give you a quick framework and then I'll get up out of here.

When you think about your brain networks, right?

The more you understand about how your mind works and your brain works, the more of this stuff makes sense.

We have three main brain networks.

The first one is survival.

Your brain is designed first and foremost to survive.

So many of those are just instincts where you're mapping patterns in the world to go, how do I get food?

How do I get water?

How do I get shelter, and how do I stay safe?

The second is belonging, community.

All right, we can all experience times of solitude, but ultimately isolation isn't good for anybody.

You're supposed to belong somewhere with somebody.

And then the third is purpose.

Once I have my my survival is is not in question and I'm accepted in the right community, then okay, I can now transition into, well, what is my contribution in this community and ultimately get to what you know Maslow would call self-actualization.

How do I I've got these other things, these answers, uh questions answered.

Now, how do I move into the person that God's called me to be?

So if you think about this now, again, this is where we go from a with a child, what do we do?

We create a safe environment as we can.

We want to create where they have food, where they have water, where they have shelter, where they have clothes, they have the basics.

By the way, related.

You ever noticed how all the way back from the book of Deuteronomy, God seems really can to care a lot about the poor?

You notice that?

It brings it up all the way back in Deuteronomy and all throughout the Bible, it's like take care of the poor.

We're gonna look, I'll get a little ahead of myself, but in Galatians, there's gonna be a dispute between Christians, and they're they finally come to peace and they go, Okay, we can settle on all that, but make sure you take care of the poor.

Why would God care so much about the poor?

If you think about it, well, first of all, we the first answer would be, well, God cares about the poor because He doesn't want anybody starving to death and you know, people dying too early, and you know, God cares about people in that way.

But if you really think about it, if somebody is so poor that their basic needs are in question every day, am I gonna get food?

Am I gonna get water?

Am I gonna get shelter?

The brain is designed to obsess around that until it's figured out.

And if it never gets figured out, you would spend your whole life just thinking about food, shelter, and water.

If we can get that figured out, now I can start figuring out belonging.

And now I can start thinking about values, because my values tell me where I belong and where I don't belong.

If I've anchored my values, okay, I might be in an environment that's trying to woo me, trying to suck me into that environment, trying to seduce me into that environment, and I go, Oh, that's not aligned to my values.

I don't belong here.

When your values are really strong, you might be in a powerful environment and go, I am not supposed to be here.

I gotta go.

This is not for me because I know my values.

Your values let you know who you're supposed to attach to.

If you're clear on your values, you know who you're supposed to marry.

If you're clear on your values, you knew who you're supposed to do business with.

You knew who you're supposed to live around and support, who you who where you belong and where you don't belong.

And that's why, by the way, if my values cause me to be expelled from a group or a community, I'm cool with it because I can be alone with my values because I'm confident that at some point, even though we didn't align value-wise, there's plenty of fish in the ocean.

There's a lot of people out there, and I'll find people who have a shared value.

So I'd rather be clear on my values, be alone for a while, and eventually find the people that align up to my values, and we'll go ahead and and be a community.

I'll belong here.

But I'm what I'm not gonna do is not try to get along where I don't belong.

So if somebody lives their whole life in poverty, they never even be able to get to the place where I can think about values and belonging, and certainly never get to self-actualization or get to the place where I'm really living my God-given purpose, using my gifts for God's glory.

What a certain kind of wasted life that you, you know, and I think it breaks God's heart that somebody would never be able to get to that place, and that's where he goes, hey look, man, as a as one of my sons and daughters, when you see that, do what you can to help them get out of that.

Help help them get out of that.

Maybe you're buying them a little bit of time, maybe you're getting them out of a ditch, but eventually get them to where they can actually develop to where those needs are met for them.

Uh hopefully in their own capability, right?

Hopefully, we get we're gonna try to get them to Matthew 10, where they can go out as sheep among wolves and stand on their own two feet and have that level of capability and live their purpose.

So when you think about whether let's go back to our goals, whether it's you're helping trying to help a child, whether you're a leader that's been in put put in charge of uh a team or a business or uh you're managing something or you're coaching something, or maybe even we're just reading the Bible, trying to read the Bible better, okay?

What are we doing?

We're stepping back and we're going, look, let's try to create a safe environment as we can.

Let's try to help people become self-sufficient in terms of being able to have those needs met.

Let's get clear, especially if we're raising kids on values.

Here's what really matters, here's what doesn't.

Let's let's certainly be clear about the things that are standard across the board, but then let's enter with each one into customization.

What's unique about you?

For some of you in your leadership role, maybe you have been so focused.

You've started with the question, how do I retain everybody?

And yet maybe you need to start going, who should I retain?

And then who are the people that their purpose might actually be beyond me?

It may be outside of what I'm doing, and it may be the best way I can serve them to help aim them towards God's best for their life, purpose for their life, and it might even be be outside of anything you're involved in.

The greatest work you do in their life might be to help them get clarity and to send them into their next season, right?

So, so let's let's take a look.

Train up a child in the way they should go, and if we do that, eventually it tends to stick more often than it doesn't.

Let's take a moment here.

Let's pray together.

Lord, we come to you in Jesus' name.

I thank you, Lord, for the great responsibility that you've given us.

Lord, in having the impact on the development of other people.

Or some of them are our own children or family members or children's children.

Some of them are friends, and some of them are in our classroom, on our sports team.

In some way, there's a something that's brought us together.

Lord, I pray that you would help us to do more than just teach a skill, an athletic skill, or a musical skill, or to teach an academic subject, but to help shape the life the hearts and minds of young people.

Lord, I pray also that you would use each leader, Lord, some of whom maybe aren't with children as much, but maybe they're dealing with adults who have some things that maybe would have been better for people to learn at an earlier age, but it's not too late.

And I pray, God, you would use them even in the lives of grown-ups to be able to see uh deeper, Lord, that you would use them in a process of healing and also in a process of gaining wisdom and direction for their lives.

And so we thank you for that, Lord.

I pray, God, that you would each person, each open mind and heart, that you would help them to see what you want them to do with this word today.

In Jesus' name, everybody said amen.