TLP 439: Are You God in Your Home?

Truth.Love.Parent.

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If you've been perceptive, then you've realized two things. Number one, you've taken God's job far more than you thought, and two, the one constant that runs through all of these impersonations is blatant arrogance and pride.

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Welcome to Truth, Love, Parents, where we use God's word to become intentional, premeditated parents.

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Here's your host, AM Brewster. If you were in Back to the Future 2, how's that for a setup, and you walked into your

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Hilldale residence, would a computerized voice that sounds like a 1980s speak -and -spell greet you by saying, welcome home, lord of the manor, king of the castle?

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That is to say, are you where the buck stops in your home? Is it your way or the highway?

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If mom's not happy, no one's happy. Whose opinion matters more in your house?

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Whose word is law? Well, in the stereotypical American home, dad and mom wield that authority.

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But should they? Is that really how God created it to work? Well, I won't leave you in too much suspense.

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The answer is, kind of. Do the parents have authority over their children? Yes, they do.

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But are dad and mom the end -all to end -all? Definitely not. Because the focus of this episode is not to detail the authority structure in the home.

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I'll include a link to an earlier episode we did called Stop Being the Leader. It unpacks the glorious reality of the fact that parents are not the ultimate authority in the home.

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They're someone far more important in that regard. And before I introduce our topic for today,

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I'd like to encourage you to rate and review the show. It can take anywhere from a handful of seconds to a couple minutes, but the benefit of your review and rating far exceeds the time it takes you to write it.

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iTunes and Facebook are great places to leave a review, but you can leave one just about anywhere that will let you. However, if you do leave a review on another platform, do us a favor and email it to us so that we can include it on our website under our

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Reviews tab. We'd love to do that. Okay, the title of today's episode is

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Are You God in Your Home? As you can probably imagine, you shouldn't be. God should be

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God in your home. But even if you don't consider yourself the king of the castle or matron of the manor, that doesn't mean you don't try to be

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God in your home. Today we're going to look at five different ways you intentionally or sometimes unintentionally take

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God's place in your family structure. And as you can imagine, that never works out. It will always hurt relationships, tempt the other family members to sin, and lead to overall family dysfunction.

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But how, you may ask, does a parent pretend to be God? What does that look like? I'm glad you asked.

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I want you to think about just some of the things God has done. Creating the universe, facilitating each atom, tracking every sparrow, counting the stars, and superintending every event to achieve his greatest glory and the benefit of his followers.

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If God weren't God, he'd definitely have his hands full. Yet even though we know he's omnipotent and omniscient, we still feel the need to lend

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God a hand. It's like we think we're his administrative assistant or something. Well, guess what?

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He doesn't need our help to do his job. In fact, there are many cases where he flat out commands that we stay away from that which only he can do.

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So what divine tasks have you tried to usurp recently? Number one is a big one.

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Number one, oftentimes we try to save people. Now we all know that we can't redeem anyone's soul from hell.

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We need Christ's shed blood as much as the next guy. However, we often pretend that we can see the heart of man and then use that divine insight to make pronouncements concerning another's eternal destiny.

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And what's worse, many people do this with their children. I once spoke with a teen who informed me that he'd recently been born again.

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He also told me that when he shared this news with his father, Daddio reminded his son that he'd been saved since he was five and insisted his son had merely received, quote, assurance of salvation.

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Sadly, eight months later, that young man had completely rejected God and is now a hardcore atheist.

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He had never been saved, not earlier when he was five, not later in his teens, and Dad, not good.

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Instead of being aware of his son's doubt, confusion, and searching, Father Dio assuaged his own concerns by futilely trying to write his son's name in the book of life.

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While trying to convince his son that he was saved, Dad missed the chance to share Christ with him. We can't save someone and we can't know for certain a person is saved.

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You can tell a tree by its fruit, but we seem to regularly mess that up too. When dealing with someone about their eternal destiny, let

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God's word be their source of joy and comfort. I recommend pointing the person to 1 John.

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It's also very helpful to take them through Galatians 5, where it lists the fruits of the flesh and the spirit. Allow the scriptures to reveal their standing with God.

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If they don't have assurance from the Bible, you shouldn't say anything to convince them. That's God's job. I will say though, however, on a flip side, it is very beneficial if somebody is living in such a way that the

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Bible is clear that Christians don't live like that, that you point that out to them. Again, you're not God and you can't say to them, you definitely aren't saved and I know it, but when

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I was nine, my mom came to me and told me, Aaron, you are not living like a Christian.

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You are living, everything you do is for yourself. And by God's grace, he used my mom to help me come to know him and a relationship with him through his son.

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At the age of nine, I thought I had been saved, but I wasn't. My mom was so helpful in that.

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This idea of saving someone is this, when we try to take God's job and confirming for someone that you are in fact born again.

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I never use those definitives with my children. I'll say, if it's true that you've asked

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Christ to be your savior, if you truly are born again, then, and I'll fill in the blank. Sometimes I'll use more general terms, but I always leave it open that daddy doesn't always know and that the key thing that we need to rest on for assurance of our salvation is not what mom and dad say, it's what

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God says. Now onto the second, the second way that we take God's job, we get revenge.

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Most Bible readers are familiar with the anti -revenge injunction, but does that really stop them? God says, vengeance is mine.

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I will repay, says the Lord, but we love to punch in with our holy time card and start delivering pallets of vengeance.

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We use passive aggressive quips, manipulation, caustic remarks, gossip, and all backstabbing techniques simply because we want our antagonist to feel the same pain we did when they hurt us.

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Ladies and gentlemen, this is sin. Every time. God saves this chore for himself because he's the only one who can exact righteous vengeance.

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We avenge because we feel we must protect our own pride. God avenges because his holiness is actually worth it.

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The third way we take God's job and fail at it is that we condemn others. Have you ever said something like, he'll never change?

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Oh, really? According to the Bible, change is God's biggest accomplishment.

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Behind every moment and minutiae of the day, God's sovereign hand is working to change you and change me, yet our divine condemnations are actually motivated by pessimistic hatred, not love.

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Yes, when we say things like, he'll never change, it's motivated by hatred. You see, love hopes all things and believes all things.

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Just check out 1 Corinthians 13 7. True love rests in God's ability to do the miraculous and optimistically looks forward to our loved one's maturity.

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When we assume someone will never change, we're being hateful. We also heist this

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God job when we judge people for doing things the Bible doesn't directly address. It's true that we are commanded to make judgments.

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John 7 24 says, do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.

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But the key is, where do you use God's word and his wisdom to discern between good and evil?

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However, when we judiciously decree that someone is sinning in an area the Bible doesn't specifically name, we must be very careful.

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Condemning a soul is God's job. The fourth way, we assume motives.

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1 Samuel is very clear that man's understanding of another man is very limited. We see the skin.

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However, God has the ability to know the thoughts and intents of a person's soul. In 1 Samuel 16 7 it says,

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God sees not as man sees. For man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

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Yet that rarely stops us from assuming we know why people do what they do. I've seen it before. You say,

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I know why she did that. He always does the same thing because he'll never change. God has equipped us with the wisdom and discernment necessary to shine his truth in a situation.

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When we use the Bible, we can often have a very clear picture of the motivations God reveals.

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But because our personal insight can only penetrate the freckle level, we must remember the four key things about interpreting another's motives that we discussed in episode five, four ways to better understand your child.

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And one of the biggest, I think the biggest ways that we steal God's job is number five.

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We receive worship of all the things God's responsible for. This one is the most dastardly to usurp.

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However, we're so stuck on ourselves. We're quick to impersonate God when worship is being passed out.

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This is the proverbial dancing where angels fear to tread for even angels are smart enough not to take this job.

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How many times today have you impersonated God by receiving worship? Now it's easy to hear that question and say, nobody has offered a sacrifice to me or burnt incense and no one's prostrated themselves before me as I walked through the hallway.

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But that's not what I'm talking about. Ken Collier said there are just two choices on the shelf, pleasing

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God and pleasing self. When we reject God's will and do what's right in our own eyes, we're placing ourselves higher than God.

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We are worshiping ourselves. Everything from reading blogs, to parenting, to eating, to taking out the trash must be done as an act of worship to God.

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The moment we don't actively desire God's glory, we're seeking our own. It's just interestingly enough, it's when we snatch this task from God that we seek to take the other four jobs to ourselves as well.

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If while listening you've been perceptive, then you've realized two things. We all have taken

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God's job more often than we ought. And number two, the one constant that runs through all of these impersonations, is blatant arrogance and pride.

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We've come to the place where we think we can do God's job better than he can. It's so easy to give someone confidence in their eternal state, exact revenge, condemn others, read people's minds, and bask in the glory of worship.

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Unfortunately, we not only epically fail with each attempt. We make everyone else's

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God -given jobs that much more difficult, because now we're the ones that need to be rebuked, corrected, and admonished.

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We've been tasked with enormously vital responsibilities, satisfying and fulfilling jobs.

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God wants you to be his ambassador. He's gifted you to fulfill every single one another in scripture.

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He's given you his word to use in discipling, counseling, parenting, leading, and mentoring your children. He's called you to bear the fruit of the

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Spirit and to put on the whole armor of God. He's entrusted you with the life -changing gospel of Christ.

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There are plenty of things to keep us busy, so stop taking God's job. If you think it would be helpful to have a

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PDF to remind you of the five things we discussed today, please look for the link in the description. Truth.

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Love. Parents. Is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional, premeditated parent.

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Join us next time as we search God's word for the truth your family needs today.