Fam – Parenting God’s Way

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason Burns and Access Church in Lakeland, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Let's get to work today.

Today we're starting a new series of messages that I think is so important.

The series is called FAM.

We're going to talk about all different kinds of families.

We're going to talk about your family.

We're going to talk about your immediate family, your extended family, your blended family.

We're going to talk about parenting.

We're going to talk about what it means to have family as your family grows through stages.

But also we're going to talk about more than just your immediate family.

We want to talk about friends that feel like family.

And we want to talk about having a church family that honors God.

Today, I get the privilege of kicking the series off with a topic that every single Easter, when I do the survey and I ask you, what do you want to hear a sermon or a series about?

It is usually one of the top two or three requests.

It's the topic of parenting.

Why is parenting such a challenging topic?

It's because when you have a baby, they hand the baby to you and they go, here, and then you have to figure it out.

There's no resource manual, there's no instruction guide.

You got to figure it out.

And if you read every single book, you wouldn't know what you're doing.

I remember feeling like I knew everything there was to know about being a parent until I was a parent.

Like you don't know until you do it.

You ever meet someone who, when they had a kid, it's like it broke them.

Anyone ever want to admit this?

Many years ago, do not elbow your neighbor.

Come on.

Um many years ago, there was a family in our church who had a baby, and so my wife and I bought a big old box of diapers, and we went to their house, and before we rang the doorbell, there was a sign on their door, and it said this, and forgive my language, but it said, Opinions are like butts.

Everybody's got one.

We don't want to see yours, so leave it at the door.

And I didn't know what they were asking me to leave at the door.

My opinion, you'll get it later.

I didn't know what it, I didn't know what it meant.

And here's the funny thing.

All of us are trying to figure it out.

Today's message, I want to be very clear.

It's a parenting message, but I've got 12 principles that if if these will apply to you at every stage and season of your life.

If you're single, it applies.

If you're single again, it applies.

If you're in the throes of having children at home, it applies.

If your kids are grown, it applies.

It applies to all of us at every stage and season of our life.

And here's what I want you to understand.

Today I don't want you to hear Jason's advice for how to raise kids.

I want to go to the Bible and say, what does the Bible say about it?

The book of Proverbs 24, Solomon, the wisest man to ever live, said, It takes wisdom to have a good family, and it takes understanding to make it strong.

Today I want to talk about what is God's wisdom for your family.

Why do I want to do this?

Because if I were to give you my advice, I don't even know if it's all right, to be honest.

In fact, when I think about my parenting journey, I would say this the jury's still out.

My wife and I have the three best kids I've ever met in the whole world.

They are incredible.

But anything can change, anything can go awry.

So here's what I don't want to do.

I don't want to fill your head with Jason's top ten tips for how to be a good mom or dad.

I want to say, what does the Bible say about being a parent?

Now, if you were to look across the last hundred years or so, there's been two predominant styles of parenting that have kind of come and gone in different generations.

The first is what I would call the authoritarian style of parenting.

Authoritarians are the people who their whole goal in raising children is to get their kids to obey.

How do you get your kids to obey?

By threatening discipline.

All right, we're we are in the South, everybody.

Anybody, you don't have to raise your hand, but anybody get spanked when you were a kid?

Okay, now there's a different level.

Anybody get a whooping?

Anybody ever have this?

Okay, there's different levels of this.

I have a buddy who um, he told me when he was a kid, he was kind of a smart mouth to his parents, and he said one day he did something bad, and his mom bent him over her knee and spanked him, and he looked at her right in the eyes and he said, Is that all you've got, pillow hands?

And then his mom said to him, words that were said to me many times that struck fear in my heart, just wait till your father gets home.

You understand this, right?

The authoritarian model of parenting, the only goal is to get your kids to obey what you want them to obey.

It's not about them making the right choices, it's about them doing what you tell them to do.

The other form of parenting, this kind of became popular in the 60s and 70s, is kind of a the pendulum swing the other direction to what we would call permissive parenting.

Permissive parenting is the parents whose goal is not to discipline their kids, but for their kids to have a good time.

Like the goal of permissive parenting is that your kids will just like you, not be afraid of you, not fear you, not obey you, but to like you.

The problem with permissive parenting is kids don't have boundaries and structure, and where there's no boundaries and structure, kids tend to go awry.

I actually believe that some of the challenges we're seeing with entitlement in the upcoming generation of high school and college students and young adults is a direct result of permissive parenting.

Now, I want you to see that both of these have pros and cons.

Today, I want to take you to what I believe is the third style of parenting, and it's what I would call biblical parenting.

The goal of biblical parenting is that when your kids are old enough to make their own decisions, when they're old enough they go off to college or they're in that philosophy 101 class and they have a professor who's ripping their faith to shreds, that when they have permission to make their own decisions about morality, what's right and wrong, what they're going to do with their bodies, with their minds, with their hearts, that they make the right decisions based on God's word because you've instilled in them, you've written on their hearts the words of God, and they've made it their own.

Now, if you hear that and you're like, well, good for me.

I mean, I got I have no chance at being able to do that.

How can I be a biblical parent?

Let me give you a little bit of advice.

This is so important for you to get.

If you were to study the Bible, there's like no good parents in the whole Bible.

There's none.

Remember Adam and Eve, first parents?

One of their sons killed the other one.

Okay, let's make it even more practical.

Uh, Mary and Joseph, the mother and stepfather of Jesus, they have Jesus.

When Jesus is about 12 years old, they go to Jerusalem and they go to the temple, and then a couple days later they they leave, and when they leave, they leave with this caravan of their friends heading back home, and a whole day passes, and Mary and Joseph look at each other and they say, Hey, where's Jesus?

Where's our son?

They lost God.

Left him in Jerusalem.

If your kids haven't killed each other, and if you haven't lost God, you're doing a little better than you think you are.

Will you celebrate yourself and give yourselves a hand?

Okay.

We've set the bar very low.

Let's try to raise it, okay?

I think every family needs a goal.

Going through life without a goal is just kind of existing.

But when you have a goal and a purpose, it changes things.

Some years ago, my family sat down and we said, What are the words that we would say are the values of our family, the Burns Fam, the Fab Five?

What is it?

What is it that makes us unique and special?

And we came up with four words.

These are not aspirational goals, this is who we actually are.

We had a friend draw it for us in the form of like an ancient crest.

And this hangs on the wall in my house.

Here's they are that the four words are love.

We are gonna show love, God's love in every possible way.

We will do the right thing regardless of what it costs.

Generosities, we will live with open hands and an open heart in every situation.

And honor means we see the good and the value in every person and we honor them as a child of God.

These are the values we live with.

Today, I want to challenge you to do this for your family, but I want to challenge you in a way that gives you some guidelines.

If we were to study the life of Jesus, you go to the Christmas story, we have the story of his birth, then we see him again around two years old, and then it kind of fast forwards into Jesus' life until he's about twelve when his parents lose him, and then we don't hear about Jesus again until he hits 30 years old and starts his public ministry.

Between the ages of 12 and 29, we have one verse that summarizes the life of Jesus.

We have one verse that gives us a picture of his adolescence.

Remember adolescence?

Remember middle school and high school?

Everything was weird, your body was changing, everything smelled like axe body spray.

Remember this?

And we have one verse that summarizes Jesus' adolescence, and here it is, Luke chapter 2, verse 52.

Luke 2:52

It says, And Jesus grew in four things in wisdom, number two, in stature, and number three in favor with God, and number four in favor with men.

I want you to understand that as your pastor, one of my goals is that every kid who comes through Access Church, whether they're in the nursery or they're all the way up in high school, that every child who comes through grows in these four areas.

And I think that these should serve as kind of a north star in your parenting journey.

Now, let me tell you this: as your church, the next generation is a really big deal.

In fact, our whole ministry, Access Kids and Access Youth, literally, our goal is to help kids grow in these four areas.

Every Sunday here at church, we have Access Kids.

Access Kids is for babies all the way up to elementary.

This is a huge deal to us because we don't believe that children are the church of tomorrow.

We believe children are the church of today.

So what do we do?

We take big biblical truths and we make it applicable to every stage and season of their life.

If you drop your baby off in the nursery, the Access Kids Nursery, I want you to know something.

We are not just watching them.

We are not just holding them so you can get an hour of peace.

We're literally ministering to them.

How do you minister to a baby?

You sing songs of God's love over them, you recite Bible verses to them.

Like you just show them God's love.

And at every age and every stage, we take the big biblical truths and we break it down in ways that they can understand and apply.

Let me tell you one other thing we do every week in Access Kids.

Every week in Access Kids, we have the big service for Access Kids, and then we get our kids into small groups.

We call them access groups.

Why do we do access groups on Sundays instead of throughout the week?

Because your kids can't drive.

And so we want them to have that group experience.

And then when they get a little bit older, my hope is that they'll come Wednesday nights, every Wednesday night for your students, middle and high school students, we have Access Youth.

To me, it is the best ministry to students in all of Florida.

Like I love what we get to do with our students, and they get time to grow in their relationships, they get time to grow in their faith, they get to worship and they get to play.

It is one of my favorite things we do, and every Wednesday night, after they have the big group and the sermon and all the worship and everything they do, they go and they have access groups.

Why?

Because we really believe that life change happens when we get out of rows and we get into circles and we share our faith.

Everything we do as a church is applicable to kids at every stage and season of their lives.

My hope that every child who comes grows in wisdom, in stature, in favor with God, and in favor with man.

I want to talk to you about how you can do this in a way that affects your family, not just now, but for generations to come.

If you have your message notes, pull them out.

Let's write this down.

The first area that we should grow our family, maybe it's an area we should even try to grow in our own selves, is the area of wisdom.

Now I want you to know what this means and what it doesn't mean.

This doesn't mean that Jesus just grew by going to school.

He learned his history and his language and his science.

And we we is that important?

Yeah, absolutely.

I believe in the education system, and we know from the Bible that Jesus did go to school.

Like all that stuff is good.

But I think wisdom has a much deeper understanding, and I want to give you three points from it.

The first thing I think that we should do that we can model from Jesus is this is that we should teach our families to fear God.

Now, this doesn't mean to be afraid of God.

This has something so much more profound.

It means to live with a holy sense of reverence and awe.

If you zoom out of church culture and you study the way churches teach about God, very often the pendulum will swing from one extreme to the other.

In previous generations, we were taught to be afraid of God, that God is this sovereign, he'll zap you if you do something wrong, kind of God.

And then the pendulum tends to swing, and we start to say and sing things like, we are friends of God, he just loves us, he's like all lovey-dovey with us.

And I think both extremes can be dangerous.

We are to live knowing we have a Father in heaven who loves us, who did the unthinkable for us by sending his son to die in our place, but also we should live with the holy sense of reverence.

He is the all-powerful, almighty God of the universe.

Solomon, the wisest man to ever live in Proverbs, says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Living with a holy, respectful awe of God is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the holy one is understanding.

So, so what do we do with this?

In the book of Psalm, David says this.

He says, Come, my children.

He gathers his kids.

He says, Listen to me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord.

It is our responsibility as parents to teach our kids to have a holy, sovereign respect for who God is and who what his strength means in our lives.

Second thing we need to know when it comes to wisdom is we need to treat the Bible as our guide.

If you study the statistics on this, it is staggering what's happening in our country.

If you go back a couple generations, that that boomers generation, what we would call them today, 35% statistically, 35% of people born in that generation believed that the Bible should be the moral compass or the authority in our lives.

This is the generation that is just kind of coming out of power and the next generation starting to take over politically.

And I want you to think 35% of them thought that.

Statistically, the upcoming generation, based on research from Varna, 4% believe the Bible is the authority and the final word for our morality, for our lives, it is the word of God.

I want you to think about this.

If one generation thought that, 35% believed it, and you think about the state of our country, where we're at morally, ethically, all those things, imagine what it'll be like when the number is 4%.

What's it gonna be like?

So, what is our responsibility?

In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses says this he says, These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.

Impress them on your children.

Here's what you do talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

Your home should be a place where you consistently talk about the things of God, where every conversation can be fun and light, but also the things of God should be included in it.

Why?

So that we impress them on our children's part.

Final thing in this section might be the most important, is we need to teach our children to guard their minds.

Why?

Because Scripture teaches that what gets into our mind eventually gets into our heart, and scripture also teaches that our hearts, what happens in our hearts, is what the rest of our life flows from.

So I read a stat that the average 18-year-old that's graduating high school, from the time he or she was born until graduating high school, on TV alone, they see over 100,000 sexual scenarios on TV.

Statistically, 90% of those scenarios are by unmarried people.

What are we teaching ourselves?

Statistically, those same children graduating high school will see 8,000 extreme acts of violence on TV alone.

I read that the average high school graduating senior boy will have killed 800,000 people graphically in video games.

What happens when that becomes our norm is we become desensitized and our eyes stop caring about what we're feeding ourselves.

Well, I want you to know this.

The same way your body works with junk food, your heart works with junk that you allow in.

One of the hardest conversations I had to have with our staff years ago was I said, guys, I want you to think about what you're talking about.

I started noticing our staff was talking about watching shows and movies that are just, it was fun and cool or whatever, but it was raunchy and dirty and gross.

I said, listen, if we're gonna be leaders that lead with integrity, we have to guard what we allow into our eyes, which get into our heart.

David said in the book of Psalm, chapter 101, he said, I will set before my eyes no vile thing.

Psalms 101 · chapter mention

Okay.

We live in the immediate dopamine culture of TikTok, porn on demand.

You can have literally anything you want in the palm of your hand with a few clicks of your finger.

We have to be careful and we have to train our kids to pay attention to what they feed on because what they feed on ultimately is what they become.

Jesus grew in wisdom.

Secondly, he grew in stature.

Now, this doesn't mean that Jesus just ate a clean diet, maybe some keto and worked out.

That's not what it means.

I would like to say that there's something deeper than this.

Your stature is who you're becoming.

It's really the purpose of your life.

I think one of the most important things a person can figure out is not when they were born, but why they were born.

That this is the reason that as a church, one of the four things we do is our next steps class.

It's literally happening in this service at 1030 next door.

It's literally happening every single month on the first and second Sunday of the month.

The reason we do it and the reason we talk about it so much is it's not just a way to join our church, it's for you.

It's so you can discover why God made you and what what are the unique talents and giftings that God has embedded into the tapestry of who you are.

And it's not so you can know that, it's so you can use that to make a difference with your life.

Like if you feel like you're eking out an existence in your life, your life will never make sense until you start to live your life on purpose and for a purpose that matters for eternity.

In the book of Acts, I love this.

He says, However, I consider my life worth nothing to me.

If only I may finish the race and complete the tasks that the Lord Jesus has given me.

My life isn't worth much of anything unless I do something with my life that matters.

So, as parents, here's what it means: it means our responsibility is to help them discover their purpose, that's why God made them.

Pay attention to this.

Here's the second thing that I think we should do when it comes to growing in stature is we need to pray God's favor on their life.

And this is a weird one to some Christians, because some Christians read this and they're like, There it is.

This church is all about prosperity.

Yeah, absolutely we are, but we're about a biblical prosperity.

In the Bible, in Hebrew and Greek, the word prosper has this connotation of just meaning push forward.

Like a child on a swing that can't swing themselves.

It means to get a little push of assistance.

Who wouldn't want to walk in God's favor in every part of their life, in their health, in their relationships, in their finances, in their careers?

Who wouldn't want that?

Well, we should pray for God's favor.

And I want you to see what David says about the favor of God.

In the book of Psalm 5, he says, Surely, Lord, you bless the righteous, you surround them with your favor as a shield.

We should pray that God will take care of our children, provide for them, take care of them.

It's a big deal.

Possibly the most important in this section on stature is this last one.

We need to teach our children to choose relationships carefully.

Why?

Because Christians and even secular social scientists believe the same thing that we become the sum of the five most important relationships in our life.

I could say it to you like this: if you have five friends that smoke three packs of cigarettes a day and you start hanging out with them, you will be the sixth.

If you have five friends who get blackout drunk every single weekend, you will be the sixth.

If you have five friends that make immoral choices with their life, you will become the sixth.

You become like the people around you.

So if all the negative is true, conversely, the positive should be true.

And the positive is if you surround yourself with people that are chasing after the things of God.

If you surround yourself with people who are passionate about discovering their purpose and passionate about living a life that makes a difference, you'll be the next one.

Can I tell you this is why access groups matter so much?

It is hard as an adult to make good friends.

Can we be real about this?

I heard someone say one time that it's often overlooked that Jesus' greatest miracle wasn't the healings or the turning water into wine.

Jesus' greatest miracle was being in his 30s and having 12 close friends.

Because it's hard to do.

Where do you make good godly friends?

Let me take it farther.

Where does church come to life for you?

Not when you come and sit in rows and listen to a speaker.

It's when you get in community and you share your life with other people.

That's when church will come alive for you.

We need to choose our relationships wisely because they matter so much.

The next, Jesus grew in wisdom, he grew in stature, and then the next thing is he grew in favor with man.

Now, this is such an important topic for you to understand, and I want you to understand something that I really believe that one of the most important things you can understand is that you and I were not intended to do this life selfishly.

In fact, many of us were born selfishly.

If you think about your life, I want you to understand this.

When you really think about your life, when you think about like when you were a baby, maybe said mama or dada first, right?

But what is one of the first words that kids learn when they're babies?

Mine! Mine! It's all my my.

Paul says, Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.

When I was a kid, there was this kind of hokey song that we would sing.

It said, Jesus and others in you, what a wonderful way to spell joy.

Really simple.

Jesus should be first, others should be second, and then me should be number three.

Why does this matter?

Most Americans live with themselves as number one.

They're the main character in their story, it's all about them.

We don't look to serve, we look to give.

We don't look to meet needs, we look to have our needs met.

And this is a very dangerous way to live your life.

How different would your life look if the focus wasn't on you?

Can I tell you what I think would happen?

I think depression would slip, I think anxiety would begin to fall off, I think fear would fall off.

Because many of those things, can they be chemical?

Yes, absolutely.

But they can also be a too much of a self-reflection where it's all about me and myself and my needs.

What if instead you made this decision to live an other's focused life?

Here's what I think this will look like.

I think you'll start to live with these three words honesty, honor, and respect in all of your relationships.

Why honesty?

Because lying breaks relationships.

Why honor?

Because every single person who's ever walked the face of this earth is a son or a daughter of God.

And it's easy to find dirt on people.

It's harder to excavate the gold out of them.

Why respect?

Because respect opens doors that you can't open on your own.

These are three words that we should live with.

Many years ago, I heard a preacher say that in his family they only had two rules.

So I stole it and made it my own.

We do two rules in my family.

Rule number one, we always tell the truth.

Why?

Because lying breaks relationships.

If you tell me the truth, we can fix whatever the issue is.

But if you lie to me, it breaks the relationship.

Honor and respect.

The second rule in the family is we always honor our mom.

We always honor Liz in my family.

Why do we do this?

Because I want my boys to grow up knowing what it looks like to treat a lady.

I want my daughter to see what it looks like for godly young men and for a husband to love and respect and honor his wife.

I don't really lose my temper at home, but I lose my temper when my kids break either one of those rules because we only have the two rules.

But if you can learn to live this way in every part of your life with honesty, honor, and uh respect, it changes every part of your life and all of your relationships.

Jesus lived with wisdom, stature, favor with man.

And number four, he lived with favor with God.

I know you might expect this from a preacher, but are you ready for this?

This one's the most important one.

I remember when I was dating my wife before she became my wife.

I was with her dad one day and I said, Alright, look, if you could boil down your best advice to me for one thing, what would it be?

He said, just keep Jesus number one and everything else will kind of work itself out.

Here I am some 20 plus years later, and I think that's the best advice.

Put God first.

Everything else in your life will fall into place.

What does it look like to live a life characterized by favor with God?

Number one, it means we make Jesus the Lord of our home.

What does it mean?

Let me make this as clear and as practical as I can.

There's lots of good things in your life.

You should celebrate all the fun, all the beauty, all the joy, throw the best parties, have the best vacations, do all that.

But in your home, it should be known and modeled that Jesus is first.

He's first.

And a lot of us, if we're not careful, we will drift towards Jesus not being the most important thing in our lives.

I think Jesus should be the first part of our day.

We should wake up and spend a few moments connecting with God.

I think Jesus should be the first of our emotions.

I think when when life kind of falls out and the bottom falls out on us, I think we should run to Jesus first.

I think Jesus should be the first in our finances through tithing.

I believe Jesus should be the first of our week, and we should honor Jesus by coming to church.

Say, what does that look like?

When I was doing my doctoral program some years ago, I found a stat that kind of knocked the wind out of me.

It said, in my grandparents' generation, people attended church three times out of every four weeks to consider themselves active in church.

In my parents' generation, the number dropped to one time, they attended church one time every two to three weeks.

In my generation and beyond, according to the statistics, people consider themselves active in church when they come to church one time every five to six weeks.

I want you to think about this.

What message does it send to your kids when you're always in church?

That we honor God first.

Can I tell you unintentionally what I think has become a God in our generation of parenting?

Kids' sports.

I love sports.

I can't wait for football season.

I love sports so much.

My kids have played like every sport that you can play.

We we're a sports family, we love it.

We just don't love it on Sundays.

Like we don't do it on Sundays.

Can I tell you why it matters?

And I want you to see this.

According to the most recent statistics, every child who plays sports, out of them, only 0.023% of kids who play sports will make it to the professional leagues.

Can I give you another stat that will floor you?

100% of those kids will stand before the great judgment throne of Christ and have to give an account for their life.

Okay, so which one matters in all of eternity?

Like Sunday church attendance is a Saturday decision.

I'd like to back it up and say Sunday church attendance is a life decision.

My family, we get to church.

If we have to travel for some reason, I am like cheering you on at church online.

I'm celebrating with you.

Why?

Because church matters, and I want my kids to see it.

In the book of Joshua, there's this moment where Joshua's leading the people of Israel.

They're surrounded by all these neighboring countries who are far from God and they have all these false gods that they worship.

And over time, what happened is the people from Israel started kind of integrating with them, and then their gods became the people of Israel's gods.

And Joshua has a moment where he draws a line in the sand and he says to his people, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve.

Then it goes on a little bit later, he says, But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

Let me say what this looks like in my family.

I love you, I love sports, I love fun things, but I want you to understand that as a family, we have decided that we are a church family.

We are in church.

Why?

Because I want to be connected to the people of God, I want to worship the living God.

Jesus promised that when two or three are gathered in his name, he's there.

I want to be where Jesus is.

We are a church family.

Here's another thing that it looks like to somebody someone who grows in favor with God is I'm the kind of parent who wants to show them my love for God.

And I want you to get this.

A lot of parents say the right things with their mouth, but their kids never see it at all.

Let me ask you a question.

If your kids grew up to have the same relationship with God that you do, would it be good or would it be bad for them?

If your kids modeled everything that you did, the way you serve, the way you give, the way you love, the way you attend church, the way you are active in the community and making a difference with your life, if they modeled all of the ways that you follow Jesus exactly as like you do, would it be good or would it be bad?

I want you to understand something.

Your kids see.

They pick up, they feel the things that you do.

In the look of one of the Corinthians, Paul says this.

He says, Imitate me just as I also imitate Christ.

I want my kids to see me worshiping.

I don't do it as a show for them.

I just want them to see it.

My hands are lifted in worship.

I sit in worship in every single service with my hands lifted, worshiping God.

Why?

It's not just so my kids will see it, but that's a benefit.

I want my kids to know that when the legacy offering comes around, we write a big check.

Why?

Because we don't ask our people to do something that we don't do.

I want my kids to know that we're a tithing family.

I want my kids to see that like it doesn't matter what I attain in my life, the greatest calling in my life is to serve people.

So we're the lead servants in our church.

I want them to see it so they'll model it.

Last thing.

If we're gonna be people that grow in favor with God and raise families that do, we need to be like Jesus in every situation.

What does this look like?

A fun Bible study for you someday is to read through all of Paul's writings.

He wrote like half of the New Testament, and I want you to pay attention to every time he says one another or each other.

Look in the book of Colossians, chapter three.

He says, bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.

Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

It's easy sometimes to follow Jesus when it's easy.

If you get in the rhythm of coming to church, it's easy to just make it a part of your Sundays.

It's just what we do on Sundays.

But what about when the rubber meets the road?

What about when someone has betrayed you, hurt you, when their life and their choice choices have spit upon you?

What do you do?

You model what it looks like and you actually be like Jesus.

You love and you forgive and you pray the best for the people who hurt you and betray you.

You do this, why?

So your kids and your family will see.

What is the point of this?

Jesus screwed wisdom, stature, favor with man, and favor with God.

I think if we'll be intentional with this, we can raise families who the next generation looks at and says, I don't know what was different about them, but I want what they have.

Let me end with this thought.

Every parent that's had a kid that's grown and left and become an adult will say the same thing to you.

They'll say, Don't blink or you'll miss it.

Don't blink or you'll miss it.

And it's true.

In fact, I would say that I don't think anybody is more intentional about not blinking than Liz in me.

But time still does go fast.

My oldest is going into his senior year of high school.

The difference between the kind of life of parents that make a difference and that they don't feel like they blink versus those who blink and have regrets at the end is one word.

It's intentionality.

So would you make the decision today from this point on to be the kind of parent who helps your kids grow in wisdom, stature, favor with God, and favor with men.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes all across this place and pray for you?

So, God, for every age and stage of life in this room, for those who are joining us in our North Lakeland location or online, here's my simple prayer.

Give us the courage to do an audit of the way that we live our lives.

God, I pray first of all for every person hearing my voice that they will make the decision to reorient their lives around the idea of growing in wisdom, stature, favor with God, and favor with men.

For those who are in the season and the privilege of parenting, give us the courage to reorient some of the decisions we've made so that the wisdom, stature, favor with God, and favor with men become the ways that we live our lives.

And God, my prayer is that this church will be the kind of church that people look to and they say, I don't know what it is about that place, but they just seem to have the best families.

God, I pray for your blessing on every family represented in this place.

For those whose families feel broken, we pray for healing.

For those whose families need grace, would you just pour your grace out in a supernatural way?

Thank you, God, that you can do it.

We thank you for it and we love you.

In Jesus' name.