TLP 475: The Single Most Dangerous Influence in Your Child’s Life

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Despite the fact that our kids interact with this item every day and despite the fact there's only one thing in this world more destructive, most parents aren't even aware of its dangerous potential.

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Parenting isn't about us. In fact parenting isn't even about our kids. Parenting is just one way

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Christian dads and moms are to worship God. So welcome to the Truth Love Parent podcast where we train dads and moms to give

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God the preeminence in their parenting. I'm your host AM Brewster and today we're going to come face to face with the reality that there are a lot, lot, lot, lot, lot, lot of dangerous influences in this world.

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But it's quite possible that the single most dangerous of them all has already made it into your home. Despite all of your best efforts this one just sneaked by and you probably think you know what

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I'm going to say. It's technology. Yeah that tech just funnels all the worst influences in the world right into your kids eyes that's for sure.

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And though technology can definitely introduce very wicked influences into your home that is not the topic of today's show.

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But before we get too much further let me invite you to get to know Evermind Ministries. Evermind Ministries has been serving

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God's people for 15 years by keeping God's truth at the center of the human experience. It started as a blog called

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Taking Back the Bible and grew to include ministries you know and love like Truth Love Family, the year -long Celebration of God, and its newest ministry

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Faith Tree Biblical Counseling and Discipleship. Since this is Evermind's 15th anniversary

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I thought it was a good idea to share with you the dream that eventually started this podcast. In the fall of 2006

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I was newly married, my wife was expecting a baby, and I was still actively looking for a ministry.

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I had graduated with my Master's of Science in Counseling in 2005 and I was chomping at the bit to get into full -time

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Christian service. And that opportunity came in the fall of 2007. I had just taken a job at a

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Christian school in Illinois where I would eventually become one of the associate administrators and teach on the high school faculty and where I would serve for seven years.

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But at the time I was hired to teach sixth grade and it wasn't long before I absolutely fell in love with that age group.

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But I quickly realized that the sixth graders who had been attending this Christian school for years and years and many of whom who had parents who professed to be

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Christians, so many of my students had very little working knowledge of the scriptures and how they were designed by God to inform our living.

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And that's when I started to really understand how God's truth could and must be woven into every fiber of our day.

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It was never going to be okay for any moment of our existence to exclude God. All people everywhere need to submit to God's preeminence in all things.

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And the seed for Evermind Ministries was planted and quickly grew. My first post for Evermind's blog,

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Taking Back the Bible, was published on November 8th, 2007. And ever since, I and our volunteers have been striving to keep

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God's Word at the center of the human experience. Every human experience. So, as the year progresses, we're going to highlight the various Evermind Ministries and we pray that they can all be a blessing to you.

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In the meantime, I pray that today's topic, our free episode notes, transcript, and related parenting resources help you keep

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God's Word at the center of your parenting. I also hope that our Wisdom Talk on Wednesday, April 23rd at 1130 a .m.

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Eastern Time will further clarify and apply the lessons we're going to learn today. Be sure to download the

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Wisdom app on your phone, follow me at ambruster, and join the conversation on Wednesday, the 23rd at 1130 a .m.

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Eastern Standard Time. Bring your questions, your additions, and your challenges. I look forward to taking more time to make this information even more valuable for you.

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There is no cost for the wisdom discussions, so I pray you'll take full advantage of them even if you can't be free at 1130 a .m.

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Eastern Standard Time. All of the past discussions can be easily accessed from my wisdom profile.

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Alright, let's keep God's truth at the center of our parenting by getting into today's topic. Picture for me, if you will, all the things in the world that may be dangerous to your children.

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Some of those things are only maybe a danger to children of certain ages, like bathtubs. Other things are a danger to everyone, like drug dealers and rapists and Satan.

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And still, other items may be beneficial or dangerous, like cars or fire. The reality is that, humanly speaking, the world is full of destructive influences, devices, ideas, cities, machines, and even governments.

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But we mustn't dwell on them because to do so would take our eyes off Christ, His sovereignty, and His love.

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And we can really only have peace in this world if we're keeping our eyes focused on Him. Still, there's one element that has the potential to hurt our children in ways we almost can't imagine.

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But despite the fact that our kids interact with this object every day, multiple times a day, and despite the fact that there's only one thing in this world more destructive than it, most parents aren't even aware of its dangerous potential.

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Let me introduce this influence to you by way of a story. I can say that the day my son was born,

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I didn't know anything more about parenting then, at that moment, than I did the day before. But staring into his face,

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I was overwhelmed with a sense of reality. The realization that I would be responsible to teach him his colors and numbers, to protect him physically and spiritually, to introduce him to the milieu of experiences

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God had for his young life, just it poured down on me like with an almost physical weight. And over the next few years, my wife and I understood that our son was like me in so many ways, and yet like her in so many other ways.

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We joked that he was 50 % me and 50 % Johanna. Silly though that observation may be, it dawned on me that he got kind of a double whammy.

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As he grew, we could see that he struggled with sin in areas that I had too long been addicted to, but he also often rolled around in the sinful mire my wife grew up battling.

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As I tried to look into his future, I saw him having to wage war with a frightening mix of temptations.

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Like you, my wife and I made far more wicked choices than we care to publish. Both of our teen years were unfortunate displays of self -worship and relational carnage.

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And then my daughter was born. It didn't take too long to realize that she was 100 % me and 100 % my wife.

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And the wave of dread that slammed over me left me a little lightheaded. Of course, my children aren't me or my wife.

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They're them, and though they may struggle with many of the same temptations, they don't have to give in the way that my wife and I so often did.

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But the story's not done yet. As our children grew, I realized just how much they took after us in the way they looked, talked, gestured, ate, the way they thought, but also how they argued and complained, yelled, disobeyed, and rebelled.

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And it wasn't because of who my wife and I were in our past. Our children were oftentimes just copying the only people in the house

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I had to observe. My kids started judging like me. They started arguing like my wife.

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Our kids started being dictating like me. And they started getting drunk like my wife.

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Okay, I couldn't even get through that without laughing. That part was a joke. Everything was just getting a little too heavy and depressing there.

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I had to say something. Seriously though, I don't know about you, but if I forget how awesome my

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God is and really thought about the possibility of my kids growing up to be just like me, I'd be petrified.

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And I'm pretty sure you can see where I'm going here. I can't tell you how many times I've interacted with a child and thought to myself, what kind of parent would allow their kid to be like this?

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But when I meet their parents, I think, oh, that kind. Now, I know that might sound harsh, but we've all thought it, and no doubt many people have thought it about my kids.

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Ladies and gentlemen, second only to indwelling sin, we parents are the most potentially destructive influence in the lives of our children.

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And this is true for three stark reasons. I said earlier that my observations about my children, their behavior, really didn't have anything about to do with who

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I was in the past, but that there are so often copying who I am now. Unfortunately, the very first observation we need to make right now is that we are potentially the most destructive influence in the life of our children because number one, who we were does affect our children.

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Four of the books in the Pentateuch discuss the concept of, quote, the iniquity of the fathers. Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy all use the same phrase, quote, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation.

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Now, I don't want to spend too much time on this, but since it's a difficult doctrine, I do want to discuss it for a moment.

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Have you ever thought of the unique nature of sin? How it affects the spirit and the physical? We talk about personality all the time, but what really is personality, and why do our children so often mirror ours?

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Why is one person tempted to one kind of sin more than someone else? See, we can't answer these things conclusively because the

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Bible doesn't address them directly, but I'd like to present a sanctified hypothesis. Just as all men inherited their sin nature from Adam, so more specifically, we inherit our sin nature from our fathers, and we in turn literally pass our sins down to our kids.

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Unfortunately, righteousness isn't genetic the way sin is. What this doesn't mean is that our kids will be held responsible for the sins

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I've committed, but my children will likely struggle with the same temptations, sinful habits, and self -worshiping addictions to which

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I've given in because they've inherited it from me, just like they got my unattached earlobes and my wife's stunning good looks.

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They literally inherited mine and my wife's sin. In fact, the first time this idea of the sins of the father is presented in the

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Bible was when Moses was receiving the law from God. The first words of God the Father on this occasion were these, the

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Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation.

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Upon hearing this, Moses proclaimed, if now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the

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Lord go into the midst of us, for it is a stiff -necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin and take us for your inheritance.

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I know exactly how Moses felt. It was such a joy to hear that God was a forgiver and he was a lover of men, but at the same time, because he's holy, if man does not repent and turn to him, those sins will be held against him and his children's children, and that again is a frightening thing.

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So we beg God, please forgive us for our sins, forgive us for who we are, help us to change so that we don't have the potential of having this judgment fall on us, not our children.

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Now, at this point, things have been a little heavy and you may be feeling a little depressed because it seems like there's nothing that we can do about this point.

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The past is the past, but there are two things to keep in mind. Number one, knowing what sins that we struggled with can help us see what our children may fall into and that will help us be able to prepare them better because that's what we want to be, intentional premeditated parents.

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So realizing they will struggle in many ways that we did is super helpful. And number two, we can use this point to encourage our children and young members of the body of Christ to be ever vigilant lest they somehow develop sin patterns that they may pass on to their kids.

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It's important to recognize though that my children were conceived in sin and that sin was mine.

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That's one of the things that makes me one of the most potentially dangerous influences in life of my children. But number two, and I think even more so than the first, who we are now affects our children.

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As I've mentioned before, our kids were created by God to learn. The ability for a child to process and memorize, interpret, and utilize information is staggering and they spend the bulk of their formative years observing us.

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In addition to that, they have a natural love and affection that causes them to want to imitate us over the other individuals in their lives.

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So whether it's our poor diets, negative responses to hardship, cutting words, pride, our vanity, our excuses, or our hypocrisy, our children will likely learn it.

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Even if I do my best to teach my kids to be humble, my arrogant lifestyle will quickly and more efficiently educate them in pride.

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Do what I say and not what I do has never worked. If you don't want to be a dangerous influence on your children, you must grow in the grace and knowledge of your

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Obviously, the effect that we have on our children should not be our sole goal for spiritual growth, but I think it would behoove us to allow the reality to impact us.

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Our children will find it easier to emulate our sinful behavior than they will our sanctified choices.

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And obviously, this point continues on into the third point, number three, who we will be affects our children.

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Because if I don't get a handle on my loose tongue or my wanton video gaming, if I don't submit to God's will for my eating, if I keep returning to my selfishness as a dog returns to its vomit, my children will likely continue excelling in my school of depravity.

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And though my kids will be held responsible for their choices by God, I will be the one to blame for illustrating for them all the ways to deny

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God and worship self. Now, at this point, I don't know if we could go any lower.

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I've actually done my best to paint a pretty horrific picture. You know why?

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Because we parents need to stop lying to ourselves. We need to stop excusing our sin as we punish our children for the exact same things.

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We need to take responsibility for the fact that our daughter inherited her cunning tongue from me.

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We need to man up and acknowledge that our sons are so arrogant on the court because they spent too much time with us on the court.

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But there's hope. Yes, I said hope. It was during episode 35 that our guest

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Tim Challies noted, even with all the negative influences in their lives, so many kids turn out so well.

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He said, God's grace is so amazing that there's great hope for us in parenting.

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God has amazing ways of working beyond our abilities, beyond what we actually think we know."

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God is gracious to our children, and one of the significant ways he shows that grace is through us.

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In the same way that parents are the most potentially destructive influence in the life of their children, they also are the potentially most beneficial influence in the lives of their children.

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To be honest, that's why God gave them to you in the first place. Whether your kids are step, adopted, biological, or fostered,

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God has given them to you in this time of their lives because you are the one he wants to use to help them glorify him.

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You have been given your children because with God's truth, love, and power, you are the ones he intends to teach your children to live in the reality of God.

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You are the ones he's talking to when he says in Deuteronomy, It's true that your kids will likely sin just like you, but it's also true that your children are blessed to live in your homes.

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You've been called to be the ambassadorial first follower to point them to God. Who you are now for God and who you will be for God can influence your children more powerfully than your sinful choices can.

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Why is that? Because Satan might be able to use your sinful choices to tempt your kids to the same, but God the

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Holy Spirit can actually fill your children and give them the grace and strength to follow your

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Christ's honoring example. So isn't being a parent a glorious blessing? Listen, mom, dad, be diligent.

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Your influence is paramount, so make sure you're a good influence and not a destructive one.

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If you'd like to learn how not to lose your positive influence, please check out episode 4 called

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Don't Lose Your Influence, and if the phrase ambassadorial first follower confused you, please listen to episode 7 to learn about being a first follower and episode 26 to study the concept of the ambassador parent.

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We here at Evermind Ministries and Truth Love Parent thrilled to share God's hope -giving word, so please subscribe to our podcast and share this episode, and please write in review.

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We want more and more people to learn to be intentional premeditated parents. Truth Love Parent is part of the

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Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you worship God through your parenting, so join us next time as we study

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God's Word to learn how to parent our children for life and godliness. And remember that TLP is a listener -supported ministry.