TLP 76: Parents Who Do | Peaceful Parenting, Part 7

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If we want peace, we mustn't only obey the four peace prerequisites we've been studying, we must also attend to the whole of biblical teaching.

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

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Here's your host, AM Brewster. Thank you again for joining us. Today we discuss the fifth and final peace prerequisite from Philippians chapter four and get a full picture of the type of parent we need to be if we want to experience incomprehensible peace.

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It's possible, but it will take some work. But don't worry, God doesn't leave us to accomplish what's only possible through Him.

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No, He gives us everything we need for life and godliness. But more on that in a minute.

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We have an acronym we use a lot at Truth, Love, Parent. It's LSR, and it stands for Listen, Learn, Subscribe, Share, Rate, and Review.

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Subscribing, rating, and reviewing you only have to do once, but listening, learning, and sharing can be done all the time.

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If you haven't done all six of these steps, will you consider embracing LSR for us? We greatly appreciate it.

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Once again, I cannot begin to express the blessing this study has been to my soul.

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Just like you, there is so much in my personal parenting and my professional parenting that dangles huge temptations to anxiety and anger right in front of my face.

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But God's truth has bastioned me, and Christ Himself has taken charge of the garrison keeping a daily watch over my heart and mind.

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So thank you for this opportunity to study God's gracious, ever -sufficient truth with you. I foresee that, including today, we have only two more parts of our study left.

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Today we'll look at the last peace prerequisite, and next time we'll see the final peace promise. If you're new to our study,

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I strongly encourage you to start with episode 69. The experience will be immeasurably valuable.

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But even if you've been with us since the beginning, it's important to have a quick review. 1. Our Responsibility to God At the beginning of our study, we were reminded the absolute necessity of finding our joy in God.

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Psalm 331 says, Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous. Our joy can't be found in things like families, jobs, 401ks, or houses.

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We can't allow our happiness to reside in obedient children, or pleasant spouses, or decluttered garages.

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As Christians who have been saved from eternal damnation and temporal impotence, how could we not rejoice in our

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God? And again, I say rejoice. 2. Our Responsibility to Others When God, His Word, and His will are the only things that bring us true happiness, we will strive to live

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His Word and will. Everyone around us will be beneficiaries of our gentle spirits. And because we have the

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Holy Spirit in us and the future expectation of the return of Christ, we have all the power and motivation we need to love everyone, no matter how unlovely.

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3. We Have a Responsibility to Ourselves But there will be times when we broken people living in a broken world attempted to fear and anxiety.

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In every single situation, we must run to our highest joy, the very throne room of God, and pour out our prayers and supplications to Him.

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He's the one who matters. He's the one powerful and wise and loving enough to know what to do. And I take it to Him with thanksgiving.

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I can do this because I've bathed myself in His Word. I know His promises and I enjoy in who

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He is and the relationship we have. And number four, our responsibility to reality that we saw last time.

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God's reality is the only reality. Everything else is a delusion. Therefore, I need to align my thoughts with God's reality.

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I will only dwell on what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and praiseworthy because those are the only realities.

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Why bother functioning off a delusion? And today we look at the fifth and final parental peace prerequisite from Philippians 4.

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But first, I do have to clarify something. Do you really want peace in your parenting?

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I know it's easy to say you do, but if you're not willing to intentionally and premeditatively take steps to be the parents

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God wants you to be, then you have to get real with yourself and admit that you don't really want

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God's peace. What do I mean by that? I'll say it works like this. Sometimes what we want is the destination without the journey.

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You want a fit body, but you don't want to embrace the diet necessary to attain it. You want a higher standard of living, but you don't want the nonexistent weekends and overtime necessary to make the extra money.

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You say you want peace in your home, but you're not willing to really rejoice in God, be gentle with your kids, shun anxiety by thankful prayer, and think in a sanctified way.

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If that's the case, the best thing you can do for yourself is just admit that you're not really interested in God's unfathomable peace, but that instead you really just want everything to go your way and for everyone in your family to be okay with that.

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And you know as well as I do that that's never going to happen. But if you really do want

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God's peace and you're really interested in fulfilling your responsibility to God, others, yourself, and reality, then you are ready for the fifth and final peace prerequisite, which is this, we have a responsibility to our leaders.

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He says in Philippians, the things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things.

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Paul puts the finishing touches on his dissertation on peace with an unbrotherlike admonition to do all that Paul has revealed about our responsibilities toward God.

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Once again, he layers the verbs in order to leave nothing out. Have you learned it from me?

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Do it. Have you received it from me? Do it. Have you heard it from me? Do it.

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Have you seen it in me? Do it. The surface implications are twofold.

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Number one, if we want peace, we mustn't only obey the four peace prerequisites we've been studying.

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We must attend to the whole of biblical teaching. And two, if we have peace, people will be able to learn from us as well.

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Paul clearly experienced the peace he's writing about, and it's because he glorified God with his life that he received the peace promises from God.

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But it's also because he glorified God with his life that other people, including us today, could learn how to have the same peace.

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If you're living biblically and experiencing peace, your life will be a veritable textbook to students of peace, including your family members.

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So, we see that peace is the natural and inevitable byproduct of a life that rejoices in God, loves all men because it loves

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God, rejects anxiety because it runs to God in times of trouble, thinks about only things that God loves, and strives in God's power to glorify

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God in all things by maturing and growing in our sanctification. It's that simple.

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I know, I know, it's not always easy. We still battle with our sin nature every moment of every day, but the truth is not complex, it's simple.

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And to help you understand it and be able to review it in the future, we have free episode notes for you linked in the description of today's show.

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And then on our next episode, we're going to finish our study in peaceful parenting by looking at the second peace promise in Philippians 4.

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I really hope you'll join us as we put on the finishing touches, stand back, and enjoy the immense vista that is

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God's promise of peace. And then, roll up our sleeves and take our first steps into being an intoxicatingly peaceful parent.

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See you next time. Truth. Love. Parents. Is part of the

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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.