Teaching the Fear of the Lord | Outside Eden

Welcome to Outside Eden, two sinners discovering grace together. Good morning. Good morning, Judith. This is my wife, Judith. We've been married for 20 years and we have four children from the ages of 20 down to eight.

They're all about to have birthdays. And we're in our home. There are dogs and children at home. So we apologize if there are any noises, but we're gonna let you know that up front.

And a rogue bird that keeps trying to get in our house. A rogue bird.

Is this your first episode or you just wanna hear about this particular topic? We're glad that you're here. We're gonna be talking about teaching your children the fear of the Lord. But this is chapter four.

And Judith, tell them what book we're reading right now. We're reading For the Love of Discipline, When the Gospel Meets Tantrums and Time Outs by Sarah Wallace.

And we have really been encouraged by the book so far. So if you wanna go back, this is our fifth episode. We did an introductory episode and then we've covered one for each chapter. This is for our church and for those who could benefit from that.

But if you're not in our church and you're listening to it, we hope that you're encouraged and we'd encourage you to find a good church so that you can be shepherded and have other like-minded believers encourage you as you shepherd your children.

Judith, before we jump in. You have to call me Justin at this point. You got it out of the way. It's good.

I did, I got it out of the way. Before we jump in, I just think it'd be healthy for us to take like a minute and encourage people. This is a lot. We're already on chapter four and I feel like the first three chapters were heavy.

And if you're thinking, well, I can't go into chapter four until I get the first three down. No, those three are lifelong. Like all the way through adulthood, you're gonna be loving your children in those truths.

So it's more of being encouraged. What's great about this book is that it builds on itself and it keeps giving you more encouragement and more tools, but you should see it as a means of just encouragement that as you grow with your children, so your love for Christ will grow, your love for the gospel will grow, and then that will hopefully bleed over to them as well.

Yeah, I feel like it's one basic kind of fact that we're building on, speaking to the heart. And each chapter kind of shows you a different way to do that. So it's definitely not a read this chapter and now go practice that.

Yeah, we spent five or six days concentrated time with our kids. We were on vacation recently and so we spent all day, every day with them. And it's just a reminder of that this is a long road where this isn't just one like, oh, do this one thing and your children will be fixed for life.

If that would be the case, we wouldn't even need Christ or the gospel or the church or the Bible because we could just do one simple thing and fix ourselves and then honestly, we wouldn't even need the Lord.

And that's what this chapter is about. This chapter, when it talks about the right kind of fear or fearing the Lord, it's about dependence, self-reliance versus reliance on the Lord. I love her definition of fear.

So we're going to kind of define some words because the word in English, it seems like more and more words get lost and meanings are lost. I would say that word discipline is one that we had to kind of work with early on.

Submission, when we're talking about in marriage, that's also a high buzzword that has a lot of negative connotations to it. And fear can make it sound like it's something of dread, like we're afraid and so we hide ourselves.

And I don't think that this is the kind of fear she means and I know for a fact in scripture, this is not the kind of fear that the Bible, because it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Well, that can't mean I am afraid and I must hide myself from God and I don't even want to be near his presence because then that would be not very wise. So I love the way she uses is awe and I would kind of add to that, it's awe inspiring trust, like proper fear of the Lord creates a wonder of who he is.

And in that wonder, it isn't we go hide ourselves from it because we're afraid of the danger. We see its immense power and want to be in it, like we want to trust it. Right. So it's really seeing it for, it really in comparison, this is me and my capacity of what I can do and look at God and his capacity and what he can do.

And it is terrifying in that it's so much more powerful than we are, but when it's presented to a child, meaning the child of God,.

It draws us to trust him. Right, because he's not only just immensely powerful, that may bring some of that fear, but he's also kind and good. And so that instead of bringing dread, it can bring comfort and hope.

That's right, that's right.

She has a quote in here and I thought it was really helpful. There is a danger in neglecting to teach our kids to fear God. If God is not to be feared, he is not to be trusted. And I think that's at the heart of what we were trying to say, that the purpose of fear is reliance on God.

We see his power, his wonder, his glory, his beauty and his grace. And it draws us into trusting him. But often we don't fear things that we think are beneath us, that are less than what we are. Because of why would we fear or even respect it?

Because it's like we don't respect the dirt that's under our feet. And this, when we're thinking about reliance, a proper view of God would cause anyone, according to the Bible, cause anyone to completely collapse into his arms and say, I can trust you in every area of my life.

That's what a proper view of God is. And that's what we wanna teach our children to experience and see is that type of fear. So we're gonna work through the book. She's got some practical ways to apply this.

All right, so the first section in chapter four that we kinda wanted to walk through is they will learn to trust God instead of themselves. Judith, I know you had some thoughts on this section.

Yeah, so this part really brought it back to how, again, as believers, what we're teaching our kids is gonna be counter-cultural. We've talked about that in the past chapters. And in this chapter, it relates because what message are our kids constantly hearing from the world, right?

Like you can do it. Just believe in yourself. You can do anything you wanna do. You can be anything you wanna be, which sounds so inspiring at its first. Hopeful. Right, yeah. But what happens when we can't?

Like God didn't make us that way. And so what happens when in our weakness, we're not able to do something or when we give into fear or doubt or any of those things. So it's a counter-cultural type of thinking where instead of believing in themselves, they are instead recognizing their weakness, embracing their weakness, and saying, I can do it because I believe in God.

Like God can do this through me if this is something he's leading me to. And I believe in him to accomplish that. So, and we'll talk about this in a few minutes when we compare man-based awe versus God-centered awe.

But just talking about how we can depend on God for the strength to do those things. And that actually brings a lot more hope and comfort than when we're depending on ourselves in that fear to just, well, to talk ourselves out of it.

Like, oh, well, this isn't something to be afraid of, so it's gonna be fine. And trying to give us ourselves facts when really it's, you know what? The reason we're not gonna be afraid is because God is with us and God is in control and he will never leave us.

Well, they experienced this.

We've had four children, all four of our children have had those moments where they're afraid of the dark or there's something that's terrifying for them. And they grab onto our leg or they hold onto our hand or they don't want us to leave the room.

That's because our power is stronger than theirs and they can feel it and they feel safe. And they know that the danger may not go away, but they can at least endure it knowing mommy or daddy is there, right?

And that's the opportunities that we have of explaining to them is that this is for the rest of your life. The world is gonna wanna tell you, you are strong enough. Now, listen, as human beings, we have amazing capabilities of doing things that are just unreal.

It's often the creation of God in us is really amazing what we can do. But when it comes down to the real work of life, which is to honor the Lord and to do the work of the kingdom and to love others as God has loved us, we don't really have that capacity.

And that's really what we're called to. And we have to look time and time again, Paul talks about that when his flesh is exposed in its weakness, when he's like, I can't seem to be doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

And he even speaks of anxiety and fear. He speaks of wondering about trust. And he says, in my moments of weakness, that's when God's grace becomes the most powerful to me. And that's when I realized I have to live life, embracing my weakness and clinging tightly onto the truth of his power.

Yeah, so we're teaching them to fear God, not in that dread way, but in that awe, the constant remembering of his power and his goodness and fearing him in that way. And when we do that, no matter what comes to them in life, they can let go of what they can do in their abilities and come back to, I can have comfort because I serve an all powerful, good God, and I can have confidence in that.

Well, and this really, I'm gonna connect the two, when in the next section, it talks about the fear of God points to the gospel. If the world's agenda and the world's message is all our children are hearing, then pointing them to God is not going to make sense to them because that's not what the world, the world does not point to them to a higher power.

It's all about my emotions, my feelings, and what I want to do. And often, we tell people, you can be whatever you wanna be. Well, whatever they want to be may not be honoring to the Lord or may not be right in the eyes of God.

It may not be a part of his will, right? And so we are, when we're teaching our children about life, the gospel comes in and teaches them, first of all, your position before God is that you are a guilty sinner, that you have committed crimes against him, not once, but your entire life is an existence of crime.

And God frees us from that so we don't have to continue in our sin, but then our life is now used, whatever it is that God leads us to, wherever we find this, while you hear passages of, Paul is saying, whatever your hand finds to do, do for the glory of God.

It's not that every child has to be a missionary or a pastor. We don't even teach our children that. I've asked a couple of our kids here and there what are their thoughts about ministry in the future?

And it wasn't just something that they felt like God was putting on their heart and that's totally fine. But what we do teach our children is that their life, no matter what they do, music, art, woodworking, wherever they end up, that they're supposed to be about the work of the kingdom.

And the greatest honor and joy is sharing the light of Christ wherever they're at, right? Well, God can give, because that's scary when you think about it. That's terrifying to think like, well, God's gonna use me to advance his kingdom.

But that's where we're teaching our children that you have to trust in God's means. And God's means is through his word and through his church, right? So when we're teaching them to depend, you can't teach a child to depend upon God by one or two conversations a week.

It has to be a life that is centered around the gospel and centered around the words and means of God, which is in his church. And that means the predominant lifestyle is one that's constantly in this communion and conversation about God, where, I'll say it now, Justin, Judith, good night.

This doesn't happen in our private conversations, I can tell you that, right? No, but you get behind a microphone, and I've been talking to Justin for so long. We have conversations with an eight-year-old right now and almost to be 20-year-old.

And yes, they are different, but we are trying to teach our eight-year-old how to deal with his flesh and not speak out of anger and out of hatred. But then at the same time, we're trying to teach our 20-year-old how to not to live out of fear of the unknown and dread in the flesh, right?

And why?

Because God is good and he's gonna be faithful to his plan and he loves her. That's right, that's right.

So yeah, I didn't know if you had any additional thoughts before we moved on, but we had just covered that they will learn to trust God instead of themselves and the fear of God that points to the gospel.

Yes, so the next part, fear of God, that points to the gospel. I love that part, because again, I just felt like it was so foundational. It's like laying this foundation for the way you're gonna train them the whole time they're in your home.

She mentioned a passage. I'm gonna go ahead and read it. Psalm 78, four through seven. We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might and the wonders that he has done.

So it continues, but again, you can see laying that foundation of creating awe and fear of who God is. He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.

Again, there's nothing written in there about fear of punishment or anything like that. It's all about, wow, look who God is, look at his power, look at his love, and that should direct how you operate.

And so I just wrote down, they come to know and understand the fear of the Lord as they hear us talk about his mighty works and great compassion and forgiveness, and this is a proactive work. So again, it's something that we're doing every day, which I know there's verses in Deuteronomy that talk about that, but it's something that we're talking about every day, all day long, taking every opportunity.

So at the end of the day, on most days, it's gonna be more about, wow, look at that creation that God made. Wow, he's a God of detail. He created this for his glory and so that we could enjoy it and marvel at it.

Man, look at this delicious food God created. He could have made everything taste bland and be the same color, but he produced all of these different things for us and glorify him in that, just pointing out all of those details and creating this spirit in our home of we are in constant awe and wonder of God instead of, oh, don't do that.

God's watching you. We don't wanna disappoint him, and again, we don't always say that and connect it to God, but sometimes when we parent in a constant, you do this, you get that, you do this, you get that, that's a picture of God to them by how we're parenting them.

So I just loved how this once again just laid a foundation for, no, we have to be proactive from day one, and we're not gonna do this every day perfectly, and I hope you guys can always hear my heart in this.

We're not gonna do it perfectly, and we don't have to because God is gracious, but just that being our goal, that as much as we can day in and day out, we are pointing our kids just to the awe and wonder and power and glory of Christ.

Yeah, well, what you're describing is transactional relationships, and we don't have that with God. I mean, we do with Santa Claus, which is crazy. We love to sing songs about Santa, and what is he? He gives you coals if you're bad, and he gives you a present of your wish if you're good, and he keeps a list, and he tallies it, and we don't wanna, I'm guilty of it.

We're all guilty of saying, oh, God is so disappointed in what you're doing. Well, yeah, guess what? God is also disappointed in your parenting at that moment too. We don't want to be pointing our children to, hey, perform well, otherwise God's gonna thump you on the head.

He has so many reasons to reject us and to thump us on the head.

Yeah, and she says that. She says it's so rare to have a religion that creates total humility and total confidence that exist in harmony, because if you think of false gods in other religions, people are scared of their God, and then they do all these things.

There's still not total confidence that they'll be accepted, but they do all these things in hopes of being accepted, and with God, we can look at it and say, again, be in awe, that fear and awe of, wow, he could have destroyed us, but he chose to forgive us.

That constant of he has the power to do this, but because of his love and mercy, he's done this. It creates a different kind of fear. It's an awe instead of a dread. That's right. Yeah, he's not obligated.

You were talking about in pagan religions, you'll notice like in the Old Testament, they were making sacrifices of all different kinds, including their own children, as in almost the God is now obligated to be benevolent to them because they made the ultimate sacrifice of giving one of their children over, and now they're waiting for the God to do his part.

It's total transactional, where the entire Bible is, it doesn't matter what story you pick up in. You're going to see the failure of man and the benevolent love of God in mercy. He doesn't wink at our sin, but he, like we just, for us, we just celebrated the resurrection of Christ yesterday.

And the resurrection of Christ is such an amazing celebration because Christ conquered death, which is the ultimate penalty for our sin, rose from the grave and sits victorious. And so God's benevolence towards us cost him the ultimate, which is the death of his son.

And that's what we're teaching our children is that we love him because of the ultimate amazing sacrifice of what he did for us. And this has been, Joseph and I, a couple of years ago, we had this conversation just about like teaching our children tone and then motivation from love instead of fear.

Like they obeyed dad because they were afraid of the consequences dad would bring. You know, and I could even use that voice, you know, the dad voice. And I realized that the difference was sitting my children down.

And I ask this question all the time. They might even be able to, someone might even hear me right now. But I said, now, listen, you did this expecting it to benefit you. Do you feel like it benefited you?

No, because they're angry. Right, it doesn't feel good. No, do you feel loved because of this? No, because you thought it would. Does anyone else around you feel loved and did anyone else around you benefit from what happened?

No. So what do you think that came from? Love of God or self of selfishness? Selfishness. And instead of scolding them and, and obviously you can't do this with a two year old. As they get older, these are the conversations you're going to have, but you're helping them look to the gospel and say, look, the consequences you're experiencing is because you ignored the truth of what God's love does for us.

And when he says love others and you will have this joy, it's an opportunity for us to teach them God's way and his power and his might is so much better than yours. You trusted your own way and look what it produced.

Let's trust God's way and let's see what happens. Cause I think it will produce joy. And that's this next section where it talks about fear of God impacts discipline, right? So I don't know if you have any thoughts there Judas, but that's, this is that transition that she made in the book.

And I know that this is something we've been practicing in our parenting that you don't just tell your kids the gospel expecting like all of a sudden it's going to click one day. And I know a lot of parents are excited because like, oh, my child said a prayer and now they're saved and they're expecting like this massive change.

Well, if that was the case, there wouldn't be any warning passages in the Bible about Christians staying as childish in their faith or wandering, you know, your child, even though, which I do believe that three of our four children have put faith in Christ.

And I believe that they still wonder like we do, right? So we have to constantly be using the gospel, the wonder of who he is and the power of who he is to then discipline their heart, to shepherd their heart towards actually believing and obeying it.

Yeah, this is from the same section, but it's a little bit of a different thought. She says, discipline when it's from the fear of God in this correct way is all about God and not about us. And when I read that sentence, it reminded me of previous chapters we read where we discussed how a lot of times in parenting, it's fueled by our annoyance or irritation or inconvenience.

And when we let the gospel impact our discipline, it's all about God. It's about his authority, not our authority, not, oh, you really put me out right now. And so I'm gonna show you what happens when you put me out, just because we're bigger and we're in charge.

It points to Christ and his authority and kids will pick up on that. And also I would even say, how does that affect how they treat others when they're the ones who get to be in charge? Is it merciful, impatient, or is it, oh yes, rules.

I have total control. And we can see it in our children because like we've said before on here, our parenting has changed 20 years ago when we were raising our first. It was very much about outward behavior and obey first time right now.

And it's like, you don't leave any room for any other circumstances, just perfect obedience right now the first time I ask. And I think that affects how they treat others and what they expect from others.

And so I feel like when this kind of parenting, the correct gospel-centered parenting is instituted, I feel like not only does it help our children obey and help them to fear God, but it also helps how they treat others and what the kind of grace and mercy they show others, because it's all based on this thinking of really understanding the gospel and who God is.

Yeah, I think what's helpful for me, being that I'm a pastor, I think about this a lot, but even in our parenting, so Adam sinned, the whole world fell into a curse and they are now underneath the depravity of their flesh.

And so that precious human being, God plants into this Christian home and he says, teach them to fear me. And now that word fear, again, if you don't understand it correctly, you're like, well, I want my kid to be afraid of the Lord.

No, we want our children to see the awe and wonder of God and trust him. So if I could rephrase it so that we could help in our modern context, it says we are to raise our children in the fear dimension of the Lord.

We're to raise our children to see the power of God in the gospel and trust him with their whole life. And it starts at the diaper age all the way to the graduation of 21, 22 years old, right? And there is something unique and special when you think about your kids being a gift from the Lord, because that's how the Bible describes it, that he entrusted them to me.

He says, you're a sinner that will need to depend on me even greater now because you are not. So this is my encouragement to the parents, to all of us, including us on the podcast, that the longer I parent, the weaker I feel.

And the more I go, if I don't have God's truth, my kids are hopeless and so am I. So hopefully you're hearing in here, we're not giving you tips of how to do it. We're hopefully pointing you to the reality that you can truly trust God and his word, right?

That to spend all of your energy and time shaping and molding your kids' hearts towards God is the greatest gift and mission of your life. It is the work of the kingdom, right? To shape and mold your marriage in such a way that it remains strong so that your kids have a safe place to be, right?

So not only is this a book, I think that's healthy for parenting and there's a lot of single parents who are gonna be listening to this. So hopefully everything we're saying is beneficial. But I do wanna take a moment and say also, you have to work on your marriage.

And if you're not first reflecting it with your spouse, it's gonna be even harder than to reflect it to your children.

Yeah, more is caught than taught. This is very, very true.

Yes, we remind our older children that as they get annoyed with their younger sibling, they learned, he learned it from them.

I mean, we don't expect them to parent him, but they're definitely learning a little bit of a parenting perspective because the age gap is 12, 10, and eight years older than our youngest. So it's kind of like, you guys, you have more responsibility because he's watching everything you're doing.

Oh, and he wants to be just like them. Yes.

And everything, so. Well, Judith, did you have any other additional thoughts or final encouragements before we, you know, the last section of the book, which I felt like we kind of started with, was how do we teach our children the fear of the Lord in times of fear, in times of blessing?

I felt like we kind of already addressed that a little bit, but if you had any additional thoughts. No, I don't think so.

There's just this one quote by Jen Wilkin, which is not the author of the book, but she is an author of a lot of great books. She writes, to understand both our insignificance within creation and our significance to our creator.

Again, it just adds to that point that we talked about earlier, that it's this combination of I'm insignificant, is that humility, and then also, but in Christ, he loves me so much. I am his creation.

And just how that can be really comforting and can give strength to our kids as they're trying to obey and also as they become adults and they're trying just to get through life in general.

Yeah, well, and to that point, I will make one kind of last thought here. I grew up, and I even implemented this a little bit when we first were parenting, of instead of exposing our children to the wonder of God, I was more focused on warning them of the harm that was coming their way in the culture, right?

So don't do this, don't do that, beware of this, see how that's bad, see how that's ugly, see how that's dirty. And all they ever hear is the negative, and it's like all of their friends, all of their family, all of their neighbors are bad people, and we're the only ones who are the good people because we're the ones not doing that.

And that's not teaching them the fear of the Lord, that's actually teaching them to be a Pharisee. It's better to uplift the wonder and the glory of God and his awe and his mercy and kindness, and then let them see the comparison of like, oh, wait, they're telling me this, but when I compare it to God's love, that love seems less and not helpful.

When I compare it to God's wisdom, their wisdom seems harmful. When I compare it to God's purpose, that purpose over there doesn't help anybody.

Right, it's like when you're constantly showing them what true love and real love and real beauty is, then when they see the fake, they won't be satisfied by it.

Right, or it's easier for us to identify and point it out because we're pointing them back to, now you have two choices here, you can choose this, what you've experienced in your home and the gospel, or you can choose what the world, because just Judith and I, our kids will come to us and be like, hey, this doesn't seem like it's wrong.

I don't understand why we don't do this or because the advertisement is so good and it's so deceiving that, again, I remember when it was always negative, always negative, and it was just so disheartening because all I felt like life was about things I can't do.

And in Christ, he's like, you're free to do anything that you want, and I will give you new desires of your heart so that your heart will desire what is right, but you have to trust me in that. And that's where it's been freeing with our kids to be like, what do you wanna do?

Like, how can that be used for God's glory? How are you gonna trust him where you feel like you're not capable of doing that?

What areas can we grow in? Right, and I do wanna touch on this a little bit because it's just something that I feel passionately about and I feel like it's kind of a subtlety in our culture, but when we are staying so busy with activities, we are gonna have less time to have these conversations with our kids.

We're gonna have less time to be constantly pointing out the beauty of Christ and his creation. I feel like when we leave time for observation and exploring things that he is drawing us to, it leads to more conversations.

It leads to a deeper look into all these things. So it's just kind of a, not that activities are wrong, our kids are in activities, just to be aware of it, to be aware and to be taking, you can't think of the word, like just taking note of, okay, let's stop for a second.

Let's pause. Are we too busy? Are we having time together? Are we having time to go explore together? Are we having time to talk about things together instead of trying to fit conversations in as we run here or run there?

Or you know what I'm saying? I just, in our culture, that's a huge pull and I just think it's because we are not of this world, I feel like it's important to, as we enjoy things of the world, that we're constantly checking in with ourselves and with our family.

Well, and as your kids get older, it's harder.

We have two working kids. We have one that's about, we're about to have three drivers and we have to sit down every week and be like, hey, look, tonight is dinner night and the kids know that we don't pull out the Bible every time and have a biblical discussion, but we do talk about life and struggles and we have a what's your beef night?

Is there something going on in the house that you're struggling with?

And you always know when they have something in mind when one of them will say, hey, can we do what's your beef tonight? Oh, you have something to share?

Yeah, typically it's a Monday. So we'll probably do that tonight. And my other thing, and this is going to keep coming out in all of the episodes, if the fear of the Lord isn't what drives your home, then entertainment and culture will.

If the church isn't the priority where they're centering their life around the gathered word and the gathered church for fellowship, encouragement and sports and activities get in the way, you are teaching your children to fear or to put more trust, inspiring awe in themselves and whatever activity they're in versus the Lord.

And I know that's spicy and I'll save a full conversation on that later, but hopefully this is helpful for you. A little longer than I anticipated. The next chapter is also a long chapter. So we'll hop on to that one here very soon.

Thank you for being patient with us. We're trying our best to get these out every week, but We're out of town for We're out of town and we're busy parents and we have church and life and school.

So thanks for being patient with us. We're not professional podcasters. For sure. Well, you are actually. No, I'm not. I am a pastor and I happen to do a podcast. All right. Love you guys. For those of you that are in our church and thankful for those of you that listen globally, a part of God's kingdom.

We'll talk to you soon. All right, bye.