Parenting Q&A (part 2)

Parenting. Parenting specifically, we're focused on teens and latest teens, so not young children here at the moment anyway.

And question number five fits right into that. If you don't believe in the concept of adolescence, because we talk about, you know, that's not really a biblical term, then how can you justify adults, meaning,

I'll just say children, who are 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, having to submit their choices, and even 18, 19, 20, 21, submit their choices concerning marriage and everything else.

How can you say that children, who are in many ways grown -ups, should submit to their parents?

Most of the time, Steve, I read from the Ten Commandments. By the way, the Ten Commandments are found in two places.

Where are the two places? Exodus 20, good. Deuteronomy 5, perfect.

And obviously, it tells us in the scriptures in Exodus 5, excuse me, you've got me mixed up.

Just mixed them. Cut and paste. Exodus 20, honor your father and mother that your days may be long in the land that the

Lord your God is giving you. What I usually say to start is, is there a time when you don't have to honor your parents anymore?

Kind of start with that. Is there ever a time as a young person, as an adult, even if my parents were living, that I wouldn't have to honor my parents?

And the answer is, no, we always have to. And of course, I think of the Lord Jesus on the cross, still taking care of his mother, making sure that his mother is cared for,

I think, honoring his mother, honoring his parents, even on the cross.

And so, is there ever a time to dishonor your parents? No. But then it gets a little more complicated when we say, well, what about children that are older?

Do they still have to honor their parents? Well, they always have to honor. The question is, do they always have to obey?

Now, I don't know about in your house, Steve, but in my house, when I paid for your food, for your room, for your board,

I don't know why we don't call it room and board anymore. That's what my dad always said. You pay for room and board. Then if I'm paying for you, and whether that's at 18 or 16 or 15,

I expect you to obey. I have rules. And so, to me, it's really easy if you're living at home, you do what

I say. Obviously, I'll give you some more freedom as you're older, but you do what I say when you're in the home.

So, I don't really care what age you are. If you're 19, living in the home, you'll do what I say. Now, hopefully,

I'm not an ogre, but I don't really care what age you are if you're living in my home.

So, what if I'm paying you? I'm just going to extrapolate here, extend things a little bit.

I'm your son, and I'm paying you $250 a month rent. I would charge you more.

$275? Is this Gideon and the Lord here? Okay, great point.

Overall, before I answer that question, the way we worked it out in our family was, if you were a young lady, that is

Maddie, Gracie, or Haley, and you were at home, even though you're 18, as long as you helped mom around the house, you didn't have to pay rent because I'm the head of not just my wife, but my children, and my daughters need a head, and they need a leader.

So, if I'm taking care of them, and I'm supposed to protect them and provide for them physically, financially, protect their virginity, all these things that go along with being a biblical father, then

I didn't charge them rent. I didn't charge them room and board, as long as they were working toward school, they had a job, they were productive, and once in a while they'd buy some groceries or something like that.

On the other hand, with Luke, since he's a boy, while I'm his dad, I'm not necessarily his head -to -be, his covering, as it were, so Luke always had to pay rent, and the girls didn't.

Starting at age 12? I should have, I could have put that toward the college fund.

And so, of course, you parents, you can do whatever you like, and you say, well, we want to treat everybody equal, that's fine. I don't do that, and I think we've mentioned before, when it comes to differences between boys and girls,

Luke, he always had to go last, except on his birthday, and pretty much everything. So whether it was a slice of pie, it was food, it was who gets in the car,

I call first, or whatever, he always had to go last to give deference to the young ladies.

And maybe you want to chime in, feel free, Steve, but overall, you always have to honor your parents, it doesn't matter what age you are, and you specifically are going to need to obey me if you're in my home.

Maybe you want to talk a little bit about, what do we do when they're older and they want to marry somebody? Yeah, we'll discuss that more as time goes on, but I think, if you just think about it this way, when your parents, like Janet's parents, are in their 90s, does that mean you stop honoring them if they're disabled, like my mom was, or whatever, do you stop honoring them?

And the answer is no, in fact, I think as time goes on, your obligation toward honoring them sort of steps up a little bit, because sometimes they need that help.

When it comes to obeying, as you were saying earlier, I think there's a, how do you describe that?

Bifurcation. Yeah, there's a separation. And certainly as time goes on, the need to obey your parents decreases, even as maybe the need to honor them might increase.

Well, Steve, when it comes to any authority in Scripture, let's say 1 Peter 2, honoring the king.

We want to speak well of the king. Let's say your parents are 90. Let's say they're not

Christians. Let's say they do some things you don't like or care for. Well, there's a way to speak well of them still.

There's a way to pray for them. There's a way not to slander them. Whether our parents are great or not, those are the parents that the sovereign

Lord gave us in his goodness and providence. And sometimes even now, maybe people are thinking about their mother on Mother's Day, and maybe their mom wasn't a good mom.

That was still the mother that the Lord gave to that particular person for their good and working things out, and maybe you wouldn't have come to the

Lord without that kind of mother or something, right? And so when it comes to honoring, I think we can always speak well of our parents, even if we disagree with them.

And then in Acts 4 and Acts 5, what do you do with authority that you have to disobey? There are times that you have to disobey your parents, maybe even as a young person at 14 or 15.

And there's times that you have to say to your older parents at 80 or 90 years old, I'm sorry,

I can't do that. Thanks for the advice. Now, if they're smart, they are saying, if I were you,

I'd do such and such. And that's kind of how our relationship has gone now with the girls and with Luke.

Luke will ask me for certain questions, ask me questions, and I'll say, well, you know, that's a good question.

If I were you, I'd do such and such. Or maybe you'd approach it this way. Or what do you think? I don't say to him, do this or else, because I can still hold 25 % of the inheritance over his head.

And so there's this give and take and back and forth. And I think that's even what we do in counseling, right? In biblical admonition, and we're trying to help people.

If we don't have a Bible verse, what do we do? We could use our authority as dads.

We could use our authority as pastors. Do this, even though I don't have a Bible verse. So that would be wrong to do.

Instead, we try to say, if I were you, I'd do such and such. Or many times I'll tell people, I would tell

Luke such and such. If you don't want me to spend your inheritance, you'll do such and such. So I think we could even obey our parents, even when we're older.

I think if my dad was alive and he said, Mike, I'd like you to do such and such, and I didn't want to do it,

I think I'd still do it, short of some biblical thing. When my mom was on her deathbed and she asked me to officiate a funeral for this gay man, do you think

I wanted to do it? I didn't really want to do it, but I thought my mom's asking me to do something.

And she didn't even say, do it. She said, would you please do it? He's a friend of mine. And so, the people probably know the story.

I met with the man whose lover died, and I said, I'm a pastor, and I'm going to talk about the

Bible. And he said, just don't make it a long sermon. That's all he said.

So I felt under conviction even there. If my mom asked me to do something, and I didn't want to do it,

I still did it. And because he was not a believer, and he asked you to keep it short, you went 65 minutes.

No, I didn't do that. And by the way, I think that was the largest honorarium I ever received from believer on believer.

There's a challenge. Okay. It's just common grace. Can I just stop for a second,

Steve? No. No, go ahead. Are there follow -up questions in line with this? Because maybe you might have specific questions when you're thinking about older children.

Do we want to talk about marriage at all? If somebody asks our permission or something like that? Yeah, we can.

I mean, I can X out questions further down the list. No, that's okay. But if you have a question, just raise your hand and we'll call on you.

As long as it's germane. As long as it's not Jonathan, I thought you were going to say.

All right. That's a good question. How do you teach your kids to honor you? You know, it's funny, because I was thinking about that this morning,

Mother's Day. How do you teach? Here's a good kind of twist on that question.

How do you teach your sons to honor the girls that they are courting or that they will marry?

You know, and to me, the most obvious one is, you know, showing them how to love their wives. I mean, if you're yelling at your wife all the time, and then you're thinking, well, my son will learn the opposite lesson.

You know, he'll learn how to treat his wife nicely by the fact that I treat my wife rudely, or that I scoff at my wife, or that I make fun of her.

Probably not. I think that's really the key, and I'm sure you know, Jonathan, if we treat our wives well and honor them, then the kids watch, right?

The kids look. The kids see. And I know this is more of an adolescent talk here today, but even when the kids were super little,

I was taught that when you get home, you don't greet the kids first.

Right? You go straight to your wife, hug your wife, kiss your wife, extended embrace.

And the kids, of course, are trying to jump in between you and jam into the sandwich, you know, and everything else.

And I also would say, I learned back at Grace Church, when you date your spouse, you want to tell your kids ahead of time, you know,

I'm going to take Mommy out because I love Mommy, and this is important for us to do. And remember, the kids are going to be gone one day, and you're going to be,

I was going to say, stuck with your wife, but I mean, you're going to be with your wife, stuck in a good biblical way, leaving and cleaving, this kind of stuff.

Uh -huh. And so I think, there's no edit buttons here at Sunday School.

We're live. So I think that's probably the main thing, is how to honor, is to demonstrate that honor.

And of course, we want to be submitted to the Lord. And for all the talk of the grace of God, which

I want, we still are obedient people. We want to obey the Lord, and honor, and set the tone.

And so, I'm trying to think what your question was again, Jonathan, what are some ways that we teach children to honor their parents?

I mean, it's pretty simple. I ask you something to do, and then I want you to do it, young son or young daughter, right?

Instead of pleading, or counting, or timeouts, that's a little bit on the younger side. But I ask you to do something,

I expect you to do it. I think instruction is one way, right? And correction.

But I think another one, you know, like I was saying before, about example. You ought not, the ladies here, ought not to expect their children to treat their dads right, if they don't treat their husbands right.

Right? I mean, if you're always arguing with your husband, or saying, you know,

I don't think we should do this, we should, you know, and in other words, being contentious, then why wouldn't you expect your children to argue with dad, and your children to be disrespectful to dad, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So, I think there's a real sense in which we set the tone for what we can expect in the future.

You know, how are you training your kids to take care of you in your old age? Kind of, what are you doing between yourselves within your marriage?

And just to sort of close, or not close the door, but sort of further that, arguments, or disagreements, let's just say, between husbands and wives should take place behind closed doors, not out in the open, so that, you know, the kids go, oh, you know, that's how things are resolved, you know, could you, could you, could you, no.

There are going to be disagreements, because you're two people, you have different opinions, but those things need to be happening away from the kids, not in front of them.

Jonathan, one of the things that I always made sure to do is that, of course, if a young person, one of my children, disobeyed,

I would take care of that, and sometimes it was instructions, sometimes it was corrections, sometimes they'd lose something, sometimes it was discipline, but if they either lied, or if they disrespected their mother, then the proverbial, whatever proverb you want to bring into that, happened.

It was more intense, it was more stern, it was less patient. We are not going to dishonor our mother, and so I think that's another way you could do that.

I probably disagree with Steve just a little bit here, and I think he probably will end up agreeing with me. If you're fighting in such a way, and arguing when it's sinful, and saying words that you shouldn't, and all that stuff,

I wouldn't do that in front of the children, some kind of sinful argument. But if it's just a difference, then

I want my children to say, oh, mom and dad disagree, but they can nicely work through this as a couple.

Maybe. I mean, I think it also depends on every couple is going to be different, and so you have to know, okay, where's this argument, this disagreement, where is it going?

And if it's not going to be resolved like in short order, and very pleasantly, then

I would suggest no. Why don't we disagree right now in front of them, and show what we would do.

I totally disagree. How could you say that? Okay.

I mean, I don't have to live with this guy. And that's fine.

But I mean, I think it's a question of depth, and how somebody, either the husband or the wife, has to quickly evaluate how deep the chasm is, the disagreements, and go, maybe this is best adjourned to the discussion chamber.

So the cone of silence needs to descend. And if the husband's like, you do what I say because I'm lord of the house, that's wrong.

And if the wife's saying, who are you to mess with me? Obviously, that's wrong. Yeah. I mean, if the first thought is, let's get the wrestling mat out, that's not good.

yeah, if there's checkmate in two, then go ahead and go for it. You know, so that's fine. Okay. Number six, you seem to be more concerned with fathers protecting their daughters.

We've talked a little bit about this. Should, you know, in other words, protect their daughters from young men coming along, and wanting to date them, and that sort of thing.

Well, what sort of obligation do fathers have towards their sons, or parents have towards their sons, in terms of protecting them from, you know, and I think this is more the case now, protecting them from young women who are aggressive toward them, and wanting to date.

Well, it's interesting. We have put our children in private school, and public school, and home school.

And I think we are moving from private school, a private Christian school, to public school. I want to say

Luke was 14, or something like that. And we pulled him out of school for many reasons.

One was, he disobeyed exactly what we told him not to do. He disobeyed what we told him to do.

And the other thing that kind of exacerbated that, was the girls were throwing themselves at him. You know, in the old days, it was the, probably the men who were typically the aggressors, overall, or generally.

And here, it's turned into, as a result of many things, including, I think, feminism, extreme wings, at least.

The girls were very, kind of, proverb, seven girls. Right? I'm not saying that the guys aren't, you know, wrong, or aggressive.

But now, the women are equally as aggressive. And so, I had to pull Luke out of school for, he was disobedient.

We told him something he couldn't do, or he'd get yanked from school. We wanted it to be consistent. And also, the girls were just relentless.

And so, I think you have to protect both your young women, and your young children. I do not, cower from saying, while equal, image bearers, boys and girls, men and women, there are different roles.

We don't live in a symmetrical world. And so, I don't have any problem when I say,

I need to, with extra care, watch my girls, and protect my girls. Because that's what

I'm supposed to do. And that's what the Bible says. And so, I'll die on that. But that doesn't mean I can't help

Luke, and watch over Luke. after we had the talk, the birds and bees talk, as it were,

Kim and I would have that talk with each of the kids. And then afterwards, I'd say, to them, you know, you can talk to dad anytime you'd like, but you probably, young ladies, talk to your mom more about that than me.

And so, one of the ways, to answer your question directly, is to regularly have those talks, with your son, about that subject, about sex, and just about dating, and how to look at girls, and how to protect your eyes, and what not to do, or if somebody shows you pornography, or if you're tempted to look at a lady, that in a way you shouldn't, or, you know, processing through.

You know, if you see somebody look at your mom like that, what do you think, Luke? If you see somebody looking at your sisters like that,

Luke, what do you think? But now, you're the person who's doing that. Right? Because that's one of the things that I do. If I see some lurid man looking at my wife in a way,

I'm like, and you're gross. And I think, and I'm tempted to do the exact same stupid thing. So, just working through, in all stages, with open communication with Luke, to answer your question, how do

I deal with a son? That's what I do. Follow -ups? Spencer, do you have any questions?

Spencer, how do you deal with your sons? Well, one day maybe you'll have two sons as well.

What if my child is a professing believer and pursuing a relationship with an unbeliever?

Well, I'm trying to think of the funny way that I can answer the question. But is there a funny way to answer that one?

I think sometimes our professing daughters can be attracted to men in ways maybe they shouldn't be.

Maybe someone because of common grace, they're handsome, they're witty, they're fun, they're moral, they're all these things.

It's just like when you send your children off to university. You have to teach them and train them that because of common grace, unbelievers can be really nice.

Right? This is one of the reasons why I think in Michael Kruger's book Surviving College 101 or something to the title, is to tell your young people going off to secular university that homosexual men and women are very kind and nice, and they have fellowship and belonging, and they're sharing and everything else.

Sometimes fundamentalist Christians and evangelical Christians are mean and rude and nasty, and you don't want to be friends with them.

That doesn't mean homosexuality is right. So you could say behavior doesn't mean anything about morality, right?

Yeah. If my daughter is wanting to date somebody that's not a believer, I'm trying to work through all kinds of issues.

Heart issues, why would you want that? Of course, I know 99 % of the people on this earth would like to have a companion, would like to have a wife, a spouse, a husband, children, intimacy, friendship, relationship, and so that's not a bad thing.

I have two children married and two that want to be, but part of it is for me rehearsing with my children sad stories because that sometimes really works because the children have seen as pastor's children, and you have seen as church people sad stories where people say, you know what,

I'm going to convince myself that person's a Christian so I can marry them because I know I'm not supposed to marry someone who's not a

Christian. And then you see the fallout. There's something worse than not being married and it's being married to the wrong person because then it's still death dues part.

And so sometimes what I do, Steve, is we just rehearse. Remember that person that really wanted to get married and then they lowered the bar for their

Christianity so they would be acceptable so they can get married and then now look. It's the same thing when it comes to alcohol.

I think it was Gracie and Maddie and Kim going to a person's house, a lady that used to attend

BBC, and then pouring down the toilet about 40 bottles of high -proof alcohol.

And as you know, I'm not against alcohol and drinking and moderation and all that, but she had a problem and so the kids could see what was going on as they poured all those bottles of, you know, $40 a bottle times

I don't know how many. And then they didn't even have time to pour all the bottles down the toilet so they brought them all home.

I guess Pastor likes apricot brandy or something.

I have no idea what's going on but just all the things that go along with it. And that's just what sin does too, right?

It doesn't look at, in terms of alcohol, throwing up, hangover, losing your job.

It doesn't see that because in Proverbs, the wise person looks ahead. The fool says today.

So you can always tell the wise one, say, you know, are there consequences to my actions and what I do? And so if I'd like to marry an unbeliever, let's walk through what this is going to look like.

Right? We're going to walk through and there's going to be this tension for your entire life because the person that loves you the most in the world, the three persons, the triune

God, your spouse hates. I mean, they might not say it but biblically speaking.

What are you going to do about your children? Fighting to take the children to a church versus a synagogue or a

Catholic church, et cetera. And you start walking your way through all that. It's hard enough to be married to a

Christian, right? Because you think, okay, this is difficult. We're both sinful people versus we're unbelievers.

I marry an unbeliever and that unbelieving husband, for example, he doesn't submit to scripture so he doesn't want to say,

Ephesians 4, we should probably take care of this before the sun goes down on our anger. We should probably make up.

I, the husband, should probably defer and say, you know what? As a leader, let's reconcile and I'll start first and please forgive me and let's work through these things.

I think, you know, a couple of things came to mind when you were talking. One was, you know, for young men,

I think most often the way it goes is this. I've heard Pastor Mike say a number of times. Somebody wants to, a young man wants to leave the church or says he's no longer a

Christian. So what do you say? What's her name? What's her name? Right? I mean, that's very common.

And then from the other side of it, you know, for the young ladies, what I most often have heard, and I think you probably agree with this one too, is he's open.

He's open to Christianity. I'm like, okay, so he's open. Will he be open 20, 30, 40 years from now?

I mean, you know, in other words, the Holy Spirit, you know, may be in action here, may not be.

So let's just kind of see what happens. But here's the thing, and here's something else you often say, which is, you know, our emotions follow our actions.

In other words, how we feel follows what we do. So if we're pursuing, whether it be male or female, if we're pursuing somebody who's an unbeliever, you know, our emotions are going to follow them, and either our faith is going to, you know, diminish, or we're going to convince ourselves that it's not that important, or we're going to convince ourselves that their faith or their lack of faith isn't that important.

So, I see that hand. Andrew? Andrew, I think one of the things I would do to start is

I'd figure out how old they were. And so, it seems like the romantic interest of people these days starts younger and younger and younger.

You know, people are wanting to have boyfriends when they're 11. You have the whole world out there to have fun with, and surfing, and songs, and music, and dance, and all these other things, and you want to have a boyfriend or girlfriend because it's cool, and you have to quick put it on Facebook, or Insta, or something like that.

Facebook's for old people, right? Yeah, oh, super old people. Notice how I said Insta?

Obby. I think they have a page, hashtag cool pastor, and they show the pastor that's wearing the $900 sneakers, and the $4 ,000 jacket, and all that stuff.

I just want you to know, $39, right there. Hashtag cool pastor. Hold on just a second,

Tim. So, I would if they're 14 or 15, at least in our family,

I didn't let our children date because when you start to date, other things easily can happen, and those feelings, and then sometimes you swerve off into the bad sexual ditch, and so why date if you can't be married?

So, that was our rule. You'd be interested, you could watch, you could learn, if somebody that you like is in the youth ministry, and you decide to serve in the youth ministry,

I wouldn't blame you, but I didn't let our children date when they were 14 or 15.

So, I didn't really have to do much, except encourage the young people, you know what, my young daughters, they'll be the man for you, and he's going to be there, and we'll notice him together, and you'll, in the sovereignty of God, be married and have children, et cetera, et cetera.

So, that's one of the things. If they're a little bit older, what I usually would do is I would just go have a coffee with the young man.

Hey, I'd love to go have a coffee with you. And we would just sit down, and I'd just try to listen, and ask, and talk, and it's kind of like almost with an elder interview when you're going to have a baptism, or you're asking, are you a

Christian, and they can't really, they don't even talk about Jesus, right?

And sometimes we're just nervous when that happens, and I'll say, well, in an elder interview, I'll say, well, what do you think about Jesus? Oh, yeah,

I forgot Jesus. So, I think part of it is when it comes to are you a real

Christian, overall, it's time and trials, right? Anyone can make a profession. In the foxhole.

But as time goes on, we'll see. And so, if there's a young man, 14, and he professes Christ, and my daughters are interested, well, if the

Lord wants you to marry him, he's going to be around when you're 18, 19, or whatever. And so, the big thing for me though,

Andrew, overall, is just time spent with my children, talking. If I was to do it over again, because we didn't have cell phones when the kids were really little, nice dinner table talk, five nights a week, or as often as we could, no cell phones, no anything, just talking, engaging with the children.

When they were younger, it was, it was, if you think about grammar, and logic, and rhetoric, the trivium, in terms of grammar is just teaching children data.

That's how the family Bible study was. Then we moved to logic. How do we put this data together?

And then we moved to rhetoric. How can we talk about this data in a logical, nice way?

So, our home Bible studies, morphed from, this is what the Bible says about these two cool ladies in Exodus 1, named

Shipra and Puah. Some people you don't want to be named after, but those two, that's kind of nice, Shipra.

Have you ever been to Shipra? And it moved to, what do we think about dating?

What about this young man? What qualities do we see in him? And some of it had to do with, if it was

Luke looking at a young lady, oh, and I'd say to Luke, doesn't that remind you of mom? I wanted him to make that connection.

What he loves about his mom, he sees in another lady. And I don't mean in some weird way you marry your mom, but you marry somebody that has attributes that are like your mom, but maybe better.

It's the same thing. Oh, he reminds me of you, dad, when he said such and such, or whatever, and trying to call that out of the kids.

So to me, the big thing is, I know my propensity is to be lazy, so all hands on deck, talking, thinking, interacting, trying to get in their world, and Kim is 10 times better at that than I am.

But she's in their world, with their interest. And then when you're, Deuteronomy 6, walking by the way, it's not necessarily a home

Bible study, although that's good. I think you should all do that. But just in life, you're taking a hike, and then something happens, and you start, before you know it, with your girls, you're talking about boys.

Hypothetically. So just father involvement is what I would like. I want our children, and so far

I think it's happened with two of them, that are married, I want our children to want our approval.

And if you're a biblical father and mother, or just striving to do that, we don't have to be perfect, I think that's what we're after.

They don't want to pick somebody that we don't like. That's why if you're afraid to bring that person home, or bring the person to the church, then something's kind of wrong, because you're hiding.

You secretly like them, but you know something about that person other people aren't going to like. And after all,

Andrew, it takes a village. Yeah. Sorry.

You know, one of the things, one of the things when you mentioned, you know, Kim was ten times, or a hundred times, or a thousand times better than you.

I think it's good, too, to get your wife's perspective on things, and you know, Jenna is just kind of the emotional ninja.

Meaning, she a lot of times won't say much, and then when everything's done, you know, maybe the young man's left, or whatever, she'll go, did you notice this?

Or did you hear when he said that? And I'll go, no, because in my mind, either I was thinking it was a good thing, or I just missed it for whatever reason, probably because I was waiting until I could have my chance to talk.

And then I'm like, I go, that's actually a good point. You know, that's something, you know,

I need to kind of hone in on. I think it's good to have, like Pastor Mike was saying,

I think it's good to have, you know, different perspectives, even beyond husband and wife, and whatnot.

And to really listen to, as Mike was saying, listen to what your kids say. Well, why are they attracted to that person?

What is it about them? And you know, you'll hear all these great things about them. What you may not hear, is some kind of, if I could put it this way, testimony about their testimony.

You know, I've watched him, or I've watched her, and I see how godly he or she is, and how they serve people, and how they talk about the

Lord, and you know, whenever I engage with them, it's always, you know, around Christ -honoring topics, and I really like the way they, you know, so those kind of things.

I mean, as a dad, if I were to hear that kind of conversation, I'd just go, well, I like this guy already, you know, or I like this girl already.

I don't even know who they are, and I already like them, you know, so that kind of thing. Andrew, I think, as it evolves, there's not a lot of parenting these days, and so sometimes, when

I would meet a young man who'd be interested in, for instance, Haley, I would meet with him. That young man didn't really know what to do.

He hadn't been taught. Now, I'm certainly not a perfect father, but I try to teach Luke, this is what you do. Here's how you ask the dad for permission to go date the daughter.

Here's how you treat the young lady. Here's what you don't do, and you know, schedule, you know, have a dinner date, and then have a second date planned that same night, that if it goes well with the young lady, you can take her on that.

If you don't get along, then just simple things. So since that doesn't really happen, if a young man said to me,

Pastor Mike, I'm interested in your daughter, I would say, first, it's Dr. Abendroth, and then

I'd say, well, good, let's get together, and then I said to myself, people in my life come to me and say, would you please disciple me, and sometimes

I say yes, sometimes I say no. Sometimes I'll say, well, you know, it would be better if you were discipled by Andrew for a while, because I've got this preaching class, or whatever.

But I always said to myself, when a man said, could I date your daughter, God has just given me a new discipleship person to try to help him, even if they don't get married.

How do we work through these things? What do we do? What do we say? How do we think in a biblical fashion?

Most young men have no idea. And so I just thought, well, for the sake of the kingdom, even if this guy doesn't marry my daughter,

I'll invest in him some more time. And it could be getting together, it could be reading a book together, it could be something else, let's talk every couple weeks, something like that.

And then even when they were, like when Marty was dating Haley, it was, let's talk every two weeks, and let's talk about this book that we're reading.

We're reading a Jerry Bridges book together. I slowly eased into, what about pornography?

So I'm going to ask you every two weeks, you know, are you looking at pornography? Just things like that, that I don't really know if people want to talk about anymore, but I want to invest in those young men, because at least one of them is probably going to make it through and get married.

Okay, so kind of a related follow -up. Have you, you know, what would be some reasons why you would, as the dad, either end a relationship for your son or for one of your daughters, you know, a dating relationship, and just say, you know what, this relationship is not going any further?

Probably we'd already see the writing on the wall. That's from the Bible, I think, sometimes, isn't it?

We'd see the writing on the wall, so it wouldn't be some dramatic thing that my daughter would just be shocked at, because we would talk about the young person, not in a nitpicky way, but oh, he did this well, or why would he do that, or what's going on.

One of my daughters was dating someone, and I know that young man, and that daughter, and Kim and I, we went to Fenway and hung out.

I'm not really a baseball fan, but what do you do? You sit and talk and have fellowship. That's the fun part of the game to me, and it was a few weeks later, and this young man and my daughter walked in the house, and he looked at me, and he said, it's official, we're a couple, and I looked at him with the meanest

Pastor Mike look, which is kind of my default look, and I said, are you asking me or are you telling me?

They just looked. I thought, this is over, because you didn't really know her.

This was early on. This is not like all this other stuff, so it ended shortly after that, but I tried to help my daughter think through it, so she would make the decision versus me coming down going, this is a no.

If the kids are six, you're not going to play with that kid anymore because he's whatever. This is over.

Six, twelve, whatever. I don't want to just be the ogre. I don't want to lord it over and say no.

I'd rather have my daughter buy into the decision and say, you know what, that's really right. Dad, he's just not the guy for me, or he just has some growing to do.

So there's a time, I think, you're going to have to help them figure out it's a no. Maybe a lot of times like that.

Okay. Well, I think this one's pretty easy, so let's just do this and then we'll close.

What if I don't like the prospective in -laws? Does that play any part in it?

Well, if there wasn't any sovereign grace of God, probably yes. So you could have a young man who grows up as an atheist, satanic, crazy person and then gets saved and then his parents are still satanic, crazy people, but he's a regenerate

Christian and so we just have to work through it and then you have to tell your child this is how you're going to have to deal with these parents and it's going to be a long slog and you're going to have to be deferential, you're going to have to be patient, you're going to have to be prayerful, but the

Lord might save them as well and so I'm less concerned about the in -laws in terms of yes or no binary decision making, but I would say, well, you know, this person didn't have a dad and so it's going to be harder for him to be a dad.

This person has got an unbelieving mom and so he doesn't really know what it's like to walk through that and so I don't really care that much about the in -laws, but it is nice if there are in -laws that are

Christians. But even with Christians, when you say that they're, you know, as you get to know them or maybe you already know them, maybe you already have some established relationship with them, you know, nobody's perfect, so everybody drags in whatever baggage, you know, they have, so they may have their own weaknesses or whatever that their kids then have to kind of battle against, you know, like somebody, somebody, there may be, even though they're believers, they may have a wrong view of money or they may have a wrong view of work or they may have, you know, they may work too much or whatever and so you kind of, do you, you know, that kind of thing, do you ever think, okay, this is fine, just know that, you know, your potential husband, your potential wife or whatever is used to somebody who works 85 hours a week or whatever.

Yeah, that's good, I just think it's wisdom, you talk to them ahead of time, you work through it, you're there if they, they need something answered, moral support,

Luke's wife, Hannah, now her parents are wonderful Christian people, more from a charismatic bent, we have a great relationship with them and then when, you know, you didn't ask this question but how do

I deal with in -laws, Marty's parents aren't Christians and so I'm just kind to them and nice but Hannah's parents are

Christians and so I just always bring my charismatic chaos book to walk around with so we can talk about what we disagree on.

No, of course not. Strange fire. Strange fire, yeah, I don't do any of that, it's just, we're so thankful that the

Lord has saved Hannah, saved Luke, brought them together to that kind of stuff that we're just thrilled and then now we're united by Hannah's due in a few, couple months and so we'll be the grandparents together and so, we can talk about it more but I think probably times, times fleeting.

well let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning, thank you for the reality of, you know, kids and this whole process of discipling young people and helping them and thinking, you know,

I want, by the grace of God, to raise my children to have better marriages, to be better parents than I was and Father, let that be our mindset that we might biblically train ourselves, think through these issues biblically so that we might help them one day to do the same.

Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you that even when we fail, his grace, your grace, is sufficient and you love us in spite of what we do and Lord, I pray that you would continue to bless us and strengthen us and guide us as we worship you today, in Jesus name,