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Mike and Steve discuss their God given successes as parents and self inflicted parenting wounds. In other words, here is an episode of “hard knocks.”
Welcome to no-compromise radio.
It's too fast. You have to wait for 12 seconds. I don't have to wait for anything. I'm going to have to edit it. Welcome to no-compromise radio ministry. Mike Abendroth with Mr. Interruption here today.
Who's that? Well, it's you. I don't know if I trust you anymore. I'm trying to take over. Oh, shots fired. By the way, I want Steve's fan base to know that I've asked Steve if he wanted to do any radio shows this summer while I was gone.
Just Steve Tuesday Guy solo stuff. And he hasn't committed yet, so you can write him the Tuesday Guy.
You know, I did get a message from Internet Messenger. Somebody sent me one and said, oh, you should definitely do it. Oh, seriously? Yeah, I blocked him. I blocked him.
I've gotten a couple encouraging emails lately that no-compromise has helped folks and they used to like it. Now they listen to the Pactim, so it worked out just great.
They've gone on to bigger and better things.
We're feeding the Pactim. I just gave you a copy of Pat's Covenant Theology book. Did you read his thesis? Which I already bought. Oh, you did? Yeah, I did.
Oh, sorry. No, that's all right. I thought, you know, because I figured I might get a free copy of it eventually, but I thought I just want to support the, you know. The cause. Yeah. Oh, all right. It's the brotherhood thing, you know.
Nice.
Well, today on No Compromise Radio, I thought I would pick Pastor Steve's brain. Uh-oh. And that's the show.
Boy, this is going to be a quick one. The first 25-second show in the history of No Compromise Radio.
The Tuesday Guy Prima, and it was just a short lesson. Steve, I want to talk a little bit about something practical, and that's parenting and grandparenting. Okay. So you have some experience in both, right?
Yep. You have more experience in parenting than I do because your children are older, and more experience in grandparenting because I've only got one and you've got a whole gaggle. Yeah, we have a few.
How many are you up to, eight?
Seven. Seven. Yeah. Do you think there'll be any more? I'm not holding my breath, but sure, we'd love some. Okay. Do you think Steven will ever have children? Many things I do know, this I do not know.
Maybe that's your outside chance. Yeah. Right. Yeah. All right. Steve, how about this? Let's just start big picture. The Bible talks about parenting, true or false? True. Do you think the Bible talks a lot about parenting?
These are so difficult.
Well, I mean, does it talk a lot about parenting? I think if you're going to say commands, there are some. I mean, certainly you could go to Proverbs, Ephesians, various places. So yes. A lot? I don't know.
It depends on what you mean by a lot. But I think we could see enough description to go along with prescription and understand, draw a lot of wisdom from those things.
And you didn't know what I was going to ask you, but I think that's the right answer. Thanks. I would go to Proverbs, right? That's kind of the bulk of parenting. My son, my son, my son, right? Chapter 2 starts that way, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, I believe, all start with my son or my sons.
And we could go to Colossians 3, which is the parallel passage to Ephesians 6 that you talked about. And then the only other thing that I can think of, Steve, on the flip side is Hebrews 12, for it says here in chapter 12, My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. And then it says, It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?
If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them.
Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and lived? And here's my point. For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he, God, disciplines us for our good. And I was thinking, Steve, it's almost like, okay, godly people will be godly parents.
There is some information in the Bible on how to parent, but part of it is if you're a godly and maturing, you'll be a better parent. It seems best to them.
Do you know what I'm saying? Yes, I think that's definitely true. If you're godly and maturing, you'll be a better parent. I mean, I think we and we both seen this over the years. There are a number of situations where it just seems like there's a disconnect between the way people think and the way they parent, you know, the way the things that they know and then, you know, what they do with their kids.
And you just go, I don't understand why there's that disconnect, but there is.
Well, Steve, it's part of, I think, pastoral ministry where we could say to ourselves, all right, we're going to teach a doctrine and then we're not going to teach any more doctrines until we live up to that doctrine, practically speaking.
Dude. But that would be bad. So, we have to keep teaching, teaching, teaching, even though we're never going to reach that level of manner worthy of the calling.
Well, think about that. If we did that, we'd only get one doctrine, you know, ever taught. Well, you better pick your doctrines. Why is that? Well, we haven't quite maxed that one out yet. Okay, well, back to the well.
I mean, I think churches like ours where we put a premium on teaching and teaching, you know, the sovereignty of God, high view of God, doctrine of God. Don't we run the risk of saying, well, we know more than what we do and that creates hypocrites?
Well, I think it was you who recently said, you know, basically everybody's a hypocrite. Which is true because if, I mean, think about this. If there was somebody who lived up to everything that they knew, either they wouldn't know very much or they'd probably have a wrong view of themselves or there's somebody who should be removed from this world because the world's not worthy of them.
So, maybe that was Enoch. Yeah. That's why he left. Could be. Could be. Well, I mean, it says, you know, he walked with God and so maybe that's what it meant. I don't know.
Why aren't there a bunch of people, you know, worshiping Enoch? You know, there's a bunch of Mary worshipers it seems these days. The Enochites. Uh-huh. I bet you they're around.
There's the Book of Enoch. That would be interesting. Uh-huh.
So, back to the parenting thing. Let's talk a little bit about maybe, Steve, we'll do parenting first, then grandparenting. What are some of the things that you think you did wrongly that you wish you could change or, if you don't want to make it personal, things that you see in other people that they do wrongly that you'd encourage them to change?
So, problems with parenting. Just high-level, specific, whatever you want to do.
You know, I think that one of the things I see a lot and, you know, I probably especially did this early on, disagreeing in front of the kids, you know, with your wife. I think that's just awful. And, you know, it teaches the kids a lot of things and not one of them is good.
Well, but what if somebody said devil's advocate, Lee, if you can disagree in a godly way, in a kind way, and resolve the problem in front of the kids, what about that?
I still don't think it's wise. You know, well, and mostly because as a devious child myself, I was extremely, you know, devious and somebody who would view that as the perfect opportunity to play one against the other.
And leverage. Yes. Oh, yeah. I was good at that. Oh, man. Manipulation started young.
So, at best, just be careful about arguing with your children and if you do, make sure you're godly if you do it, if you have to. Yeah, if you have to.
Yeah, but I would say, you know, the basic premise should be that when my kids think of parents, they should think of us as one indivisible unit. There should never be like, well, mom lets me do this and dad lets me do that.
And then they know which one to go ask.
Yes. And by the way, parents, you know, you want to be on a unified front. If your child asks you to do something, then maybe you say, have you already asked your dad about that? Have you already asked your mom about that?
To see what they say so then it can be unified.
And you know what the end result of that is going to be? You're going to catch your child lying a lot.
Steve, you're not very Presbyterian in terms of, you know, you're looking at some small children as unregenerate. Come on.
It's because I believe in something, you know, we Baptists like to call depravity.
So that's one. Here's one that I've seen. I've seen, and I probably made the mistake. I don't think I did too much, but of course I'm jaded probably through my own self-righteous lens. I see some parents, they forget that the primary relationship in a home is the husband and wife, which kind of dovetails on what you were saying.
And that the children are welcome members. We're glad to have them, praising God to have them. But one day they'll grow up and move out and then you'll be with your wife. And so I think some parents don't make that disconnect where, you know, the way I was taught, Steve, is when I get home from work, I would always hug Kim first.
I'd smile at the kids and say hi, but I would go hug Kim for a long time. And then the kids would try to get in between Kim and I, you know, make a little sandwich of the family. But I was trying to establish, I love you children, but I love your mom the most.
Maybe the most isn't the best, but I love your mom. And then they can kind of fit right in. Does that make sense?
Yes. I mean, you did have one rather gigantic advantage over me, which was, you know, you were believers early on. So we did not have that going for us.
Well, and that's an interesting take, too, because what I had going for me was I had the Spirit of God in the Bible and I wanted to honor the Lord. What I didn't have going for me was probably a healthy view of Christian liberty.
And I had a double dose of legalistic fundamentalism.
Well, I thought it was funny. Even Sunday, I think you said, you know, we didn't used to have cable TV. And then you said, you know, you're joking, but you said, you know, like good Christians or something like that.
Well, if you think about it, when parents, you know, if you think big picture with Trip, Ted Trip, shepherding a child's heart and you're after their heart, it's just so much easier for me, though, instead of doing that, to just say, well, we don't have cable TV.
Lar. Right. We don't. I mean, I never let the kids trick or treat. And I'm thinking, you know what? If you want to dress up like Satan and run around, the answer is going to be no. But if you've got a four-year-old and you want to dress him up like a bunny and ask the neighbors for some candy, what do I care?
We'll probably lose listeners for that.
Well, you know, I mean, last year I had the joy of watching my, well, let's see, four-year-old grandson march around or actually it was three at the time, march around to Santa Claus for Halloween. So, that was pretty funny.
You know, it was the double offense. You mean they actually celebrated Halloween? That's number one. And number two, Santa Claus? Come on.
I think the only thing we did with our kids in terms of trick-or-treating, because I had outlawed it, is that I let them spy on the trick-or-treaters. So, they could get in the yard and spy and make sounds and try to scare the trick-or-treaters and stuff like that because they're pagan trick-or-treaters.
You didn't give them BB guns or anything like that? No, just wrist rockets.
Go ahead, kids. Tell them. So, they did that. I remember Steve going to the bookstore trying to get little tracks. Chick tracks? Uh-huh. Essentially, how do you get a good Halloween track? And then one time my wife let the kids dress up and they dressed up as Protestant martyrs.
And she had Xeroxed some things from Fox's Book of Martyrs about papal persecution and stuff like that. And these men were willing to die for their faith and these women. And so, the kids were dressed up with kind of like bloody garments.
And then they would knock on the door and they said something like, not truth or dare, but I don't know, whatever they said. And then they would give them the track and tell a little story about one of the martyrs.
I think they'd say, to the fire with you. To the fire. And then now, it's like, you know, would I ever leave candy out and just say, take as much as you want? No way. As a teenager, just take it and put it all in a little pillowcase.
Take as much as you want.
Libertine. How about when it comes to fundamentalistic rules when we have children? Do you think, Steve, that maybe it's a little better to go a little more law heavy when the children are younger and then you start easing off the law gas pedal later?
What do you think?
Well, I mean, because it's harder for young children to sort of understand grace or gray areas even though, you know. So, I think, yeah, law is probably better earlier.
Yeah. Well, in the context of we love you, right, the relationship to the lawgiver, mom and dad, these are why we have these laws. I think if I had to make my biggest confession regarding bad parenting, it would be for too many years, it was law heavy, and I just assumed gospel truths.
In other words, I told the kids what to do and how to do it, which there's nothing wrong with that. But I didn't stress as often as I should have verbally how much they meant to me, that I love them. I mean, I probably said I loved you every day, but just making sure that they understand this is a father who loves you, who's done everything for you, and gladly has done that.
And then in light of that, here's how I want you to obey. I just didn't make it as obvious. I think I just assumed, oh, dad loves you, and now I'm asking you to do this. Does that make sense? Yeah. When you were in the military, did you have a drill instructor, drill sergeant?
Do you recall anything about that drill sergeant? Are you kidding?
Are you kidding? Sergeant First Class O 'Leary. Seriously? Oh, yeah. He was from Massachusetts, actually.
Well, I was going to say with a name like O 'Leary.
Yeah. And he, yeah, I don't even want to imitate him. And then I had Staff Sergeant Weck. Weck was the first one to really understand what he was dealing with when it was me. He just knew I was a wise guy.
So he was pretty funny.
Yeah. What's the worst thing that somebody, a drill sergeant, an instructor made you do?
Nothing. I mean, usually push-ups and stuff like that. I think the worst part of the whole experience was the first probably 48 hours, because they wake you up in the middle of the night, and they're running you around, and I really thought they were going to kill me.
So, you know, and it really did help me a lot later on in life, like when I went to the Sheriff's Academy, because people would be like, Steve, why aren't you stressed out? You know, you're not taking this seriously enough.
And I would just, what I wanted to say to them was, I've already been to the major leagues, and you want me to get stressed out over single-A baseball. You know, I can't do that, right? I really can't do that.
I thought I was going to die those first 48 hours. And, you know, here I am at the Sheriff's Department, where they're expecting me to study and run a little bit, and you want me to get stressed out. I'm not going to do that.
But I remember when I went in to see, at the end of those 48 hours, they march you into the first sergeant's office one at a time, and the man's name was First Sergeant Wiley. I mean, there are things you just, people you don't forget, even though you, like, basically only interacted with him twice, and it was 40 years ago, you know, 45 years ago.
And I'm sitting there with First Sergeant Wiley, and he's got this nervous tick, and he goes, How you doing, kid? And every once in a while, he just kind of like, he'd just do this little twitch thing, and you go, I don't know, but I think once I get out of this room, I'll be a whole lot better, sir.
Did you just call me sir? And behind him, he's got a picture of him holding a severed Vietnamese head. And I just thought, this guy is not well, and I'm stuck in this room with him. This is not a good situation for me.
See what happens on No Compromise Radio. We start off on parenting, we get into severed heads. Don't you want Pastor Steve to do some shows on his own this summer? Come on. How about when it comes to parenting?
Encouraging parents to think rightly about the Lord's Day, and the primacy of the Lord's Day, and getting ready for the Lord's Day on Saturday, and making sure the children understand whether you're traveling on vacation.
It's not, are we going to go today? But why are we going to go? And where are we going to go?
And our attitudes as we go. Well, I think we hardly ever, you know, went on vacations per se. So, but let me just say this, you know, with regard to Sundays, the Lord's Day, I mean, when I was growing up, because I was in the LDS Church, the Mormon Church, everything was very legalistic.
You know, you couldn't even, you couldn't watch TV. I mean, like, it was a great act of grace to be able to watch Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom on Sunday. Or, you know, if we were really lucky, we'd get to watch Disney, you know, the Disney show on Sunday evening.
But typically, you know, no TV, no games, no going outside, no nothing. It was just like sit and read or kind of thing, you know, just lots of, it's the Sabbath, you know, rejoice. And that's a Mormon Sabbath.
Yeah. Right. And I think maybe there's some carryover into people that are Sabbatarians now. I appreciated Jim Renahan's comments about the 1689 London Baptist Confession and having Sabbath follow Christian liberty.
So, you learn about Christian liberty, and then you see the Sabbath issues after that. And I thought it was fascinating when Jim said, well, you know, there's some, I don't know if he said gray area or not, but there's some room there for conscience and other things on Sabbath and Christian liberty.
And he said, if you're a bicyclist and you go on races every Saturday, I would say probably you shouldn't do that. But if you have children that are four and six and eight and you take the bicycles to the park and you ride in the park, that's of necessity because children have energy and you can't just sit around all day and do nothing.
Well, that's what they wanted us to do, sit around and do nothing. And it was pretty miserable most of the time. You know, I mean, especially in a pre-internet age, what do you do? You know? And so, it would just be like, like I said, like reading or something like that.
But then again, you know, when I was a child, the way the Mormon Church worked was there was an early morning meeting for the men. Then there was Sunday school. And then our sacrament meeting would be like in the evening.
And so, it was like all day long you were going to church in one way or another or hanging out. So, you know, it really didn't seem like that big of a deal because you're always just, okay, it's time to go back to the church.
It's time to go back to the church. And now they've compressed those all into one, you know, block of meetings so that you just go once. And so, you know, I think that sort of shortens it. But, you know, to get back to the whole idea, you know, what about this kind of thing, preparing.
You know, you teach your kids a lot about Sundays by what you do on Saturday night, right? If you're in the habit of staying up until 1 .30 or 2 o 'clock in the morning on Saturday night. Yeah, but Creature Double Feature's on.
Yeah, or Saturday Night Live or whatever, you know, whatever's so important that you have to do on Saturday night. You know, so that you can't get up early and go to church. Well, that tells something to the kids about how important church is, which is it's not that important.
What do we do, Steve, when it comes to soccer's on Sunday now, football's on Sunday now, basketball's on Sunday now, tracks on Sunday now? What do we do with that? Would you, if you had to do it over again, you're raising your children as a Christian man.
Do you let them have games on Sunday when they're 14? You let them go? What do you do?
No. No, because, you know, I think there's a meme running around, and most memes are pretty stupid, but this one's wise, right? 99 .999 of your kids are not going to play pro football, pro basketball, whatever.
But 100 of them are going to appear on Judgment Day and have to give an answer for what they did with the Lord Jesus Christ. So, you can either take them to their Sunday morning games and skip church and tell them that their eternity doesn't really matter all that much, or you cannot do that.
And, you know, I think there are plenty of ways to get around the whole Sunday thing. I think that's just a lie. I mean, high schools don't play on Sunday mornings, right? So, I just think that's rubbish.
You know, it's interesting, Steve, since I live in Lancaster, Massachusetts, established in 1653, by the way. Oh, excellent. Good for you guys.
He rolled his eyes. Holden established in 1741, by the way. Oh, all right.
You're a late bloomer. What happened is I said to myself, what is going on here? There's all these games on Sunday. And this was 25 years ago. Games, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Well, the Seventh-day Adventist who make Lancaster Mass their New England headquarters town, they had enough pull in town to make sure there was no games on their Sabbath Saturday.
And so, they're all pushed to Sunday. Sure. And what I would tell my children, if I did it over again, and I think I probably told them 20 years ago, what do we really have to give up for our Christianity?
You know, you call yourself a Christian, Haley, and you're 15, and what does it cost you? It doesn't really cost you anything because right now we live in America and everything's fine. This was before the latest administration, etc.
And so, what does it cost you? It costs you, you can't play on a Sunday. And the team's going to say, well, then you can't start the next week. Okay. Big deal. Right. What about this, Steve? As we wrap up today's show on parenting, part one, fathers do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged, Colossians 3 .21.
I think I probably exasperated and provoked too often. That would be one of my problems.
But see, I look at that, you know, and as a kid, if I didn't know that verse, I would have just said, Mom, you're provoking me.
Yeah. Like husbands say to wives, sadly, submit. Yeah.
I would have used that like my, you know, ace card, my trump card.
I think I said to Kim maybe twice, you have to submit, and I wish I could take back both of those. It'd be better if I just would have said, we thought about it, we prayed about it, we're working through these things.
We just have to make a decision, and we're going to go this direction. I love you. That would have been better than me saying submit. Right? You get these letters that are read, right? This letter was read, Ephesians were read, and in the congregation, all of a sudden, husband's ears perk up when Paul writes, the Spirit of God writes, Husbands, love your wives.
And all of a sudden, then the wives are listening. Oh, wives, submit to your husbands. Children, obey your parents and Lord. One more reason to have children in the worship service. Which leads me into, what about having children in worship services and teaching them to sit still so they can listen?
Is that something important? Well, I think it's vital, and it's something that we didn't really have to struggle with a lot because our kids, by and large, could do that. And now that I think about it, I'm like, why is that?
Why is it that they were, I mean, obviously the credit goes to their mom, but I don't know why that wasn't a bigger problem than it was. I don't know if they were scared to death. But I think maybe ADD wasn't as prevalent because kids didn't have instant entertainment all the time.
Well, that's an important thing to talk about now on the show, because if I were giving advice to parents, it would be this. Make sure regularly you have the children sit at the kitchen table or the couch, and they just have to sit there.
They can sit with a book if they want. You can make them sit there for just boring time. You can make them sit there while you're teaching them the Bible, but no gadgets, no toys, just learning how to sit.
And you start off with two minutes, and it works to five, to 10, to 20, and before you know it, you're set.
Is that what you used to tell your kids?
Hey, kids, it's boring time now. No, but I know somebody who used to do that. Boring time. It's boring time. I would usually have the kids sit on the couch, and it was called book time. So what I would do is I would say, everybody go to the bathroom.
Everybody's going to get a book. We're going to sit on the couch. Then I could read too, and they would just have to learn to sit with a book, right? And that's what you do at the church service. You sit with a book, open the Bible.
I think we should call this boring time, Dad. Okay, good. Let's do that. It's now officially boring time. Boring time.
I don't want to translate that over into the worship service, although I keep reading that book by Cruz, I think, about what is worship. And you think, okay, it seems routine. It seems mundane. It seems like we have the same liturgy every week, and we do.
But what is going on behind the scenes? It's been good to think about. The invisible realm. Okay.
Have you read the book? No. Do you want to read it? I don't know. What are you reading these days? I'm reading Christless Christianity, Simply Trinity. Just the usual.
Okay, nice. Mike Cavendroth, Steve Cooley. You can write us, info at NoCompromiseRadio .com.