Biblical Parenting Principles that Changed My Life! | Ed Moore

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All right, welcome back to the Room for Nuance podcast. I'm Sean. And my name is Ed Moore.

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Wow, voice for radio. Will you open us in prayer, brother? Yes, thank you. Father in Heaven, thank you for this opportunity that I have to be in Decatur, Alabama, and Lord, to share some things that you have taught me about being a father.

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I'm thankful for this opportunity. I pray now that you would give me wisdom as I speak. I pray that you would give me grace.

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Please be with Sean as he asks the questions. And Lord, most of all, I would ask, please, that you would be with those that are listening if they need help,

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Lord. Lord, we do need your help in raising our children. And so, Lord, if there's anything that could be helpful today,

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I pray, Lord, that it would be heard and applied. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thank you, brother.

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All right. So pretty par for the course. We usually... Actually, sorry. I completely forgot.

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I have to sign like two things real quick. Just for like... I'm sorry. I know

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I should have remembered it before. It's okay. Take it from the top. What am

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I signing? I'm happy to sign, but... It's like a live... because this is part of the...

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like not part of the church, but it's kind of connected. So you have to do an NDA and a general release liability.

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Meaning you're allowed to use it. Yeah. So like if you just sign on this one, right here for that.

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And then sign here for the second one. There's actually three. And then sign right here for this last one.

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Well, what's that last one? He's now your dad. Wait, is that...

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are those the adoption papers? Yeah. Nice. Nice. Wait a minute. Adoption what?

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And you just became my father legally. So we are good to go.

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All right. Now we can get the episode going. All right. So now that you're my dad,

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I feel like we can really have a good conversation. Who's your daddy? Luke, good job.

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You played the part perfectly. I'm also surprised, Ed, that you didn't even flinch at signing an

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NDA. You were just like, whatever, dude. No, nobody ever signs anything.

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I thought you would at least flinch at the NDA agreement. That's so funny. That was good.

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Thanks. And that was well played. Oh, he did it, right? Did you have any idea? That's why I snatched my notes from you because I have it in my notes to do that.

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I didn't. I just thought, how am I going to recreate that prayer?

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That's all. That was my biggest concern. Okay. So, brother, in five minutes or less, not leaving out the best parts, can you tell us your testimony, how you came to know the

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Lord? Yeah, happy to do that. I was raised in a small town in Western Pennsylvania, a little town called

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Dubois, in a Christian and missionary alliance church. My parents were both saved on the same night in 1946.

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I'm not born until 1961, so by the time I come along, they are well established in the faith.

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Church was everything to us, Sunday school, Sunday morning, young people's on Sunday night,

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Sunday evening service, Wednesday night, no exceptions. So I grow up with the

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Word of God. I grow up with the gospel. I am a very bad child.

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I'm a very disobedient child. And when I am 16 years old, I get saved.

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I did not learn any new information when I got saved. I had always known the gospel.

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What happened was I had a dead heart, and then it was brought to life.

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I did not love Christ, and then I did. And when I came to know Christ, it was a really radical transformation.

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What happened though? What led you... There were no circumstances that led to it.

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It wasn't like I walked an aisle or I prayed a prayer. No life crisis? There was no life crisis.

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From infancy, I've known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make me wise unto salvation. Before I was saved,

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I had memorized the book of James. I knew a lot of the Bible. I knew the

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Bible stories. All I can say was I used to be blind, and then I could see.

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But at 16, you just wake up one morning and you're like, you know, this is real. I never doubted that it was real.

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I can just remember one night sitting in my parents' living room by myself, everyone had gone to bed, and I began to think about the death of Christ.

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And I began to think for the first time that that was for me, and I began to weep uncontrollably, and I fell deeply in love with Jesus Christ, and there was a radical transformation in my attitude.

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Because I was raised in a fundamentalist home, there weren't too many of the traditional teenage sins that I needed to repent of, but there was a radical transformation in my heart in that I just became really interested in the

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Bible and really interested in church and sought to serve every opportunity that was presented.

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I wanted to be at the church around the people of God all of the time. And previously, I was always there, and it's not that I didn't want to be there previously.

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That was just what you do. It was a part of your life. It was like going to football practice or going to school, going to church.

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But when God saved me, I just wanted to be around the people of God. And I would say about a month after I was saved,

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I can remember very distinctly, I was sitting in a Sunday evening service, and our pastor stood up and was leading the hymns, and in between two hymns, he said, this hymn reminds me of Isaiah 6, where the

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Lord says, who shall we send and who will go for us? And then I said, here am

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I, Lord, send me. And it was like there was a laser beam coming from him to my heart, where I was figuratively jumping up and down in my seat saying, here am

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I, send me. I want to preach the gospel. I want to serve the Lord. I will do whatever you ask me,

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Lord. I was eager and willing to serve the Lord. I had a very open heart to do whatever

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God wanted me to do from the very beginning. But like I said, there wasn't a crisis, there wasn't some new information

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I received. I was just brought to life. And it is the word. James 1 18, of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth.

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Having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but through incorruptible seed, through the word of God, which lives and abides forever.

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I had been receiving the word all along, and one day it just brought me to life. Wow. Well, praise

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God. You have, I think, like many Christians, another level of your testimony where there's a deepening of the reality of grace in the gospel.

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And we're going to talk about that a little bit later in the interview, because part of it has to do with some of the changes that you made as a father.

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Correct. So let's start with this. I've heard you give your parenting talk twice now.

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I think it's absolutely fantastic. You haven't written a book or anything, although that may change.

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But both times I've heard you give it, first of all, it's all anybody can ever talk about after they hear it.

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I didn't just sign a book deal, did I? No, you wish. But you always start the talk with this quote from Mark Twain, whose original name was?

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Samuel Clemens. Look at that. When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant,

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I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

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You say that this is not just a humorous quote, but a profound truth. In what way?

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Why do you always start your talk off with that? Because wise parents do not play to the audience of their immature children.

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They do what is right because it is right, and they are convinced that in time, their children will come to see that.

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But whether they see it or not, they are not playing to the audience of their kids. They're doing what is right because they know it to be right.

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Which in a sense is just in parenting, what we do in all of the Christian life, right? We live as under the Lord, whether people get it or don't get it, it's kind of beside the point.

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Right. But it's particularly applicable in parenting because there is going to be that pressure.

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Maybe it's from a 14 -year -old, maybe it's from a 12 -year -old, but there's going to be that pressure to do things differently than you know them to be done so as to please your children.

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There's that fight that goes on. Similar to pastoring in some ways, you feel that pressure sometimes.

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I think I feel it more as a parent because I'm not living with the people that I'm pastoring, and there's not that constant battle to try to win the heart of the person on a day -to -day basis.

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Oh, you pastor differently than I do. Yeah. I'm just kidding. Go ahead. Yeah. You're living with the people, and you start to question yourself saying, you know,

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I graduated from high school in 1979, and now it's 2009, and my son is a senior in high school, and he's telling me that I am out of touch and that I don't know what

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I'm doing. Maybe he's right. Maybe I am out of touch. But I think a wise parent says, no, it really doesn't matter what the year is.

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Truth is truth, and we're going to stick with this. Whether you like it now or not, I believe that you will come to see it.

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But with that Mark Twain quote, there is the understanding, or it is assumed that parents know what to do.

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So are they gonna stick with what's right? Well, they have to know what's right before they can stick with what's right.

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Thus, the talk, here are some things that are right, and stick with that.

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And you're pretty good at the beginning of the talk to say, obviously scripture is our foundation for truth in all areas of our lives, especially as parents.

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But a lot of the way we arrive at truth is through failure, right? We try, we mess up, we think we know what's right, and then maybe the

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Lord kind of shifts our perspective a little bit. So a little bit later in the interview, we're going to talk about some of the ways that you, as a dad, realized that you missed it, right?

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I mean, have you had moments like that where you thought, this is the truth, and then you went through an experience of failure, and you realized, actually, no,

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I wasn't reading scripture properly? Yes, absolutely.

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In fact, I don't know when we're gonna get to that, but for years,

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I've been giving this talk. And by the way, in the talk, there is nothing about money management, there's nothing about manners.

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It's not exhaustive. It's not exhaustive, it's just some things that we incorporated into our family.

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And I sort of had a little bit of a crisis in my own mind and conscience about three or four years ago, and my wife and I sat down and started to analyze a lot of the things that I had done wrong as a parent.

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And she basically said to me, it's fine for you to give this parenting talk, but you really need to also include some of the mistakes and the sins and errors that you made.

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Don't make it sound like you did everything right, but give a realistic picture so that others can be helped by the mistakes that I've made.

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And I think you do that really well, brother. So your talk is basically eight tips, right?

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Which will probably be the eight chapters of the book, Shall It Come to Fruition? You make four qualifications.

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You say, first of all, these are not exhaustive. We covered that. Kind of like in the nine marks,

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Mark always says, these are not necessarily the only marks of a healthy church. These are just nine marks that I want to highlight.

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You also say that these tips are born more failure than success. This is an important one. You say that the list is not formulaic, right?

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It's not a, if you do this, then your children will turn out a certain way. Why do you feel like you have to say that?

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I think because of many books that I read on parenting or a lot of books just with general topics on biblical counseling, you're sort of left with the impression that if you follow the steps, then you will get the guaranteed results.

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And look, I've seen parents who did just about everything wrong.

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They were really bad parents and their kids turned out to be terrific and godly and responsible.

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And I've known people that were much better parents than I am or I was, and their children turned out to be ungodly and weird.

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So this is in the hands of God. This doesn't come with a money back guarantee.

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These are some principles, all things being equal, that if you apply, you will most likely see good results or at least we did, but there's no guarantee whatsoever.

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So we believe in divine election and we believe that salvation is of the

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Lord and it's in the Lord's hands. Because if you think about it, you see your children grow and develop in certain areas.

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But just as I was brought to life as a dead sinner, I'm sure that my parents would have wanted to have done that for me.

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And in many churches where they emphasize the sinner's prayer at a young age,

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I think it's more the parents and the Sunday school teachers wanting to bring this about in the child's life early on.

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But we really want to do it. If I could have done it, I would have done it. But when you see someone who was born again, one of your own children, you just have to sit back and say,

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I didn't have anything to do with that. That was a work of God. And if you think that you had everything to do with it, you have some different issues to work through.

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Right. You have a pen. Raise a child in the way that he should go and he will not depart from it.

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That is not a promise in scripture that is guaranteed. If you're a good parent, your kids are going to get saved.

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It's a proverb, which is a maxim. It's a thing that's generally true, but in a fallen world is not infallibly certain.

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Yes. In fact, I even misused that verse when I do give the talk. It's sort of a springboard text.

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I've heard some people say that what it actually means is if you raise a child in the way he should go, meaning if you let a child go the way that he wants to go, when he's old, you're not going to be able to bring him back to the way that is right.

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I don't know. I mean, there are some smart guys that said that who know a lot more about Hebrew and Hebrew idioms than I do.

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I just take it at face value that if you raise up a child in the right way, when they are old at some point, they will return to it.

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But yes, I think everything in the book of Proverbs... Not that the book of Proverbs isn't true. It's all true, but that literature...

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It's not intended to be. It's not intended to be. Yeah, right. You said idiom. Is that Latin for idiot? For plural?

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Like a gaggle of idiots? And then your final qualification is this.

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My family is not your family. Your family is unique. Don't try to be another family. So here you're trying to say, although truth is truth, you can plug it in anywhere.

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It's kind of like the regulative principle, right? There's elements and then there's forms. You can take this truth

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I'm giving you, but it's going to look different in your family than it's going to look in mine. Yeah, I think some of the biggest mistakes

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I made I tried to match apples for apples with families that I admired.

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I watched what they were doing, and so I tried to imitate it way down to the letter, and that was a cruel thing to do to my children.

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And it's not that imitating is bad. Paul says, imitate me. We have to find people to imitate to learn how to do things, but you have to figure out how it works in your context.

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Yeah, you don't paint by number. No, your family is your family. That's right.

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So like I say in my talk, you are not the Moore family. You are not the

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Manson family. You are your family. You do take acid, but listen to the

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Beatles. Anyways. Helter Skelter. Helter Skelter, baby. Pull that mic just a smidge -a -rooney, but yeah, yeah, get it right up in there.

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All right, there we go. All right. Watching you do this is like watching you with your phone earlier. I feel like I'm trying to help my grandpa make a

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Skype call. Grandpa, turn the camera on. All right, so you have eight tips.

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You have eight tips. Look it, just do this. Go like this. Bring it over closer. There it is.

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Okay. Is he fine on audio? Okay, it's just driving me crazy. All right, and we're leaving all this in the episode.

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All right, and your tips are not - We're live. We are live, folks.

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Your tips are not pithy. They all follow the same pattern, except for the eighth one, which doesn't have the double thing here, but we'll get to that.

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You say, use, and then you have a modifier, expressive words.

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This reminds me of my church covenant. It says, the way that we watch over one another.

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What does it say? The children? No. Anyways, it doesn't just say watch over one another.

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It's like lovingly care for one another. You don't just say, use words. You say, use expressive words -

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With obnoxious frequency. Ah, he knows it. With obnoxious frequency in order to -

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Communicate. Communicate love. Love. So you say the expressive word that we need to use is,

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I love you. The obnoxious frequency is, we have to say it all the time. Right.

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And the first word of all of the points is use, James 1 .22, be doers of the word.

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So the talk is designed such that if you just listen to the points and you don't listen to a description of the points, you would be able to go home and do what it says, because the point itself is long enough and descriptive enough that you'd be able to do it.

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So now you're asking about love specifically? Well, let me ask you this. Let's just get out ahead of a potential objection.

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So a man listening to this will say, let's say after we run through all this, he's convicted, he's convinced, he needs to say,

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I love you, and he needs to say it more. But he says, I'm just not expressive.

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It's really hard for me to say, I love you. What would you say to a dad like that? I would be sympathetic to that, because it might be hard for that man to say,

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I love you, if that man was never told that he was loved by his father. But I think it's more than just what the

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Moore family does and how we talk to one another. I think it goes back to God. And we are to be like our

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Heavenly Father. And what was he like with his son when his son was on earth?

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This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased at the baptism and at the transfiguration.

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So he says it, and he says it more than once. He's in a pattern of saying it. Yes. And then even reading the high priestly prayer, reading about the love between the

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Father and the Son. So I don't think it's a valid excuse for someone to say that I'm not expressive.

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Yeah, I've had to work through this, even just with guys in our church, trying to get the men of our church to say,

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I love you. And if you think that there's somehow, some way that it's less masculine, you got to work through that.

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You look at the way that Paul talks to the Christians that he's writing to in his letters. He's saying,

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I want to be there with you and take care of you like a mother taking care of an infant. There's nothing about saying,

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I love you, that is unmasculine. We got to be able to say it to one another and especially to our children.

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Absolutely. Yes. So for example, my dad did not have a dad. My dad is born in 1926.

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His dad leaves him when he is six months old. I don't know if you know anything about the culture of America back in the 1920s.

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There's no war going on. So literally my dad is the only little boy in his community who doesn't have a dad because people did not get divorced back in those days in small towns in Western Pennsylvania.

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He is raised by his mother and some other ladies in the house there.

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He never has a dad around. And you would think, well, he has no idea how to be a dad. He was a great dad.

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One of the things that made him a great dad is that many times a day he would tell all of his children how much he loved them.

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Every night when I would go to sleep, he would walk into the bedroom. He would kiss me on the forehead. He'd say,

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God bless this boy from the top of his head to the sole of his feet. And then he would get down and he would give me a kiss and I could still feel like he hadn't shaved yet that day, his whiskers.

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And it was like, yeah, this guy loves me. Or I would be playing on the floor and he would just for no reason stop the playing, call me over.

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I would stand in front of him. I don't know, I'm six, seven years old. I'm standing in front of him and say, no, you listen to me.

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Look at me. I love you and I want you to know that. And I'm very glad that you're my son. And I'll go back and play.

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Well, when you grow up in a home like that, what you assume is that this is happening with every other kid.

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You assume that that's just what is normal. Anything that happens in your home, you think that it's normal.

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And then you start to meet people. I can't tell you the number of people that I've met who said their father lived and died and he never said,

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I love you. And they would say, now I know that he did love me because he showed me that he loved me.

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He provided for me. He was always there for me, but he never said that he loved me. And I would say, well, does it make any difference?

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And they'd say, oh yeah, it made a tremendous difference. I would love for him to have told me that. And so that's why

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I say do it with obnoxious frequency. My dad died in 1992 at the age of 66.

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He died of a massive heart attack. He had a glorious death. He was in his bed and died so quickly, he didn't even lift the covers.

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He just had a massive heart attack and he died. I miss him to this day, but there was no sense in which we needed to have the talk or we needed to say something that had never been said, because he said it to me every day of my life.

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So he went to be with the Lord and I'll see him again one day, but there was nothing that needed to be said.

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So if there are any dads that are listening right now that are struggling with this, first of all,

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I would ask you to ask yourself, does it mean anything to you or did it mean anything to you whether or not your father told you that he loved you?

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And why would you want there to be any doubt in your child's mind?

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Say it, say it frequently. If it's something that you're not accustomed to saying,

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I would preface the first time I say it by saying something like, I've recently come under the conviction that I need to tell you that I love you and I need to do it a lot.

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I think this is just to say to the kid, yes, I have always loved you, but I just haven't said it, but I'm saying it right now.

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So I want you to know that I love you and I want you to know that I'm going to be telling you that I love you. I think it would make a big difference in families.

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You use the word obnoxious in relation to the frequency, is it because sometimes children think you're overdoing it?

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Well, I think that kids are going to be insecure until they are secure.

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Sometimes I'm loving on my daughters so much. I'm like 10 ,000 little kisses. I say, all right, I'm going to kiss you and I'm going to count to 100.

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You stop me if you've had enough. And they're like, dad, ugh. So I wonder if part of it is because you do it so much when they're young that they don't really appreciate it.

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Sometimes they might even be annoyed by it, but then later they look back on it and they go, man.

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Oh, it was the greatest thing in the world when I was six and seven and eight, to have my father tell me that he loved me.

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He didn't mind. I mean, he said it all the time in front of everyone. But when you're 13, 14, 15 in public and you're in the parking lot and you're walking away with your friends and your dad yells out, love you,

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Eddie. I appreciate you giving us a theological foundation for this as well.

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I thought that was a really good part of your talk. Hey, did you ever get a chance to ask your dad about how he learned to do that with you in light of his lack of having that?

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Obviously, I'm listening to your talk through the lens of my own experience, especially without a father and now being a father and nobody ever taught me to do that.

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I wonder if part of it is because I was so broken by not having a father that when

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I became a father, I was like, listen, I am never going to let you think for even a second that you are not deeply loved and known.

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But did you guys ever get a chance to just talk about that? We never did. I just always assumed that he was doing it because he himself did not experience it.

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He would tell really sad stories about his father. His father moved to another town.

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His father would come back to our little town and would not even stop by to say hello to my dad.

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And my dad would hear, hey, your dad was in town the other day. And it crushed him.

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I just think that he longed to be loved so much that he wasn't going to do it to anyone else.

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Another example. So my dad at one point moved to Florida.

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They tried to make it in Florida for a while. They lived in St. Pete and my dad worked in Tampa and they didn't have a car.

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And so my dad would hitch 18 miles one way every day and fade in, fade out.

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Several years later, I'm born. My dad would not, could not pass a hitchhiker on the road.

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He would pick up every hitchhiker because he knew what it was like to stand out there with his thumb out.

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In the same way, I think my dad knew what it was like not to be loved and he just wasn't going to do that to his kids.

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Wow. Okay. Tip two. Use creative actions with enthusiastic spontaneity to create memories.

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I think this is one of the tips that I have tried my best to incorporate into my family's life.

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And we have, well, we'll talk about that in a second. You say that this parenting tip is not that spiritual, but then you go on to quote

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Ecclesiastes 10 .4. Is it not

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Ecclesiastes 3? I think it's Ecclesiastes 10 .4. Okay. A time to laugh, a time to dance.

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I think so. So here's what's going to happen, Sean. You're going to get old and you're going to forget what is in Ecclesiastes 10.

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Okay. It is Ecclesiastes 3. Okay. Yeah. So literally me looking at the manuscript and then writing down the note,

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I messed up the scripture reference. I think Ecclesiastes 10 is something about how many wives

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Solomon had or something. I don't know, but yeah. So let's look at it this way.

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If heaven is our home, like this really is not our home, but heaven is our home and heaven is a place of joy and delight.

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And boy, am I being sacrilegious to say that heaven would be fun? Not in a trite way, but it's a delightful place.

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Then why would we not want to model what our heavenly home would be like with our children in the here and now?

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And so I just think make the house as fun as it possibly can be without sinning or being irresponsible.

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Yeah. But I mean, you talk about... Okay. Yeah. Enthusiastic spontaneity.

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Fun is shorthand for that. Okay. So right. Have fun. That's what... So great example.

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Last year, my son was living in New York City for five months. He was there with his family, his four children.

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He came there to take a ministry job working at a church in New York City.

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So they're on 75th Street and 2nd Avenue. They're in a little apartment.

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And my son's daughter, Mabel, who is five or six years old at the time,

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Mabel is an insomniac. She doesn't go to bed at night. She won't go to sleep. And so he puts her to bed.

31:06

She comes down. Mabel go back to sleep. Puts her to bed. Mabel comes back down. Mabel go to sleep. She walks down a third time like at midnight and Charlie looks at her and says,

31:16

Mabel, you've got two choices. You either go back to bed or you come with me right now and we're gonna go get pizza.

31:26

And so she puts on her... She's got her pajamas on. She puts her coat on over top of her pajamas, puts her slippers on.

31:34

They take the elevator down and they walk around the corner and get a slice of pizza. And that's the kind of thing that I'm talking about.

31:44

She's not going to forget that. That can't be everything that you do always in your life.

31:51

But if you never do anything like that, if there never is any spontaneity or fun, why would the kids want to be at the house?

32:00

Why would they want to go to heaven if it's just gonna be so boring? Right. So we always tried to do things that didn't cost a lot of money because we didn't have a lot of money, but you could have a lot of fun without a lot of money.

32:14

Right. Yeah. So let me run through some of the examples that I know from personal experience with you on spontaneity and just stories

32:23

I've heard. Let's run through them. Going Christmas caroling. Yeah. Usually about this time of year, no advance notice.

32:33

It gets dark early. We eat. Come on, guys. Put your coats on. We're going to the widows and older people in the church and we're going to walk around and the six of us are going to sing

32:45

Christmas carols. And that'll be a joy for them. It'll be a joy for us. So the whole thing would take, what, an hour and 15 minutes?

32:54

It doesn't cost you anything. It doesn't cost you anything. It teaches them to sing. Yeah. Sing a couple of Christmas carols and move on to the next house.

33:03

You say that you would have, you would put the kids down, get them all in bed, warm, comfortable, and then in like 30 minutes, bust through the door, ice cream trip, everybody in the band now go.

33:16

Right? Something like that? Something like that. If I could talk my wife into it or if she was in another part of the house where I could get away with it, she wouldn't stop me.

33:27

Yeah. What's your wife's name for the viewers? She is a big part of this.

33:33

We're talking a lot about you, but I know that you would want to say that you couldn't do all this stuff unless Anna was on board with this.

33:39

And she is. She's like a superhero. Yes. Actually, she ought to be sitting here and not me.

33:46

I tried to book her, but her agent made it happen. Yeah. So I would come up with the ideas, but she would be the one who would have to cook or to clean up or to get the kids ready for school the next day.

33:58

So I was the fun dad and she was the responsible one. But yes, she would play along.

34:04

Yeah. Pizza parties. So my first time really hanging out with you was at the

34:13

Ocean City Bible Conference, which everyone should go to, right? Yes, that's right. And it's at a beach in New Jersey, but give it a try.

34:21

Anyways, the beach in New Jersey, dude. Nobody thinks I want to go to the beach.

34:27

Let's go to New Jersey. Okay. So anyways, we go to at like midnight, we go to a pizza shop in Atlantic City that looks like yeah, cheese steaks, pizza.

34:42

It looks like it needs like a good deep cleaning. And so I'm thinking, oh, this is fun. We're a little kind of on vacation, a late night out, let's go get cheese steaks in Atlantic City.

34:53

But then out of nowhere, boom, you bust out the boom box and there's a hundred people and the owner of this cheese steak shop is like, what's happening?

35:01

You start blaring this music and it all turns into a dance party. That's something I feel like I've only seen in movies.

35:09

I didn't know that people actually did stuff like that in real life. Well, first of all, the owner of that place is making a lot of money, so we should be allowed to do whatever we want.

35:19

Secondly, it's not a classy joint, but yeah, why not have a dance party in a cheese steak place in Atlantic City?

35:32

It's great, man. So my daughter Patience was there with me and she was a little too shy to get out there on the dance floor, but you should have seen her face light up when people started doing it.

35:42

I mean, it was an experience that I'm sure she will never forget. And then when I was there as a speaker last time,

35:48

Bella got to come. No, we had to switch venues. Yes, because the place closed down that we went to and they changed it into a...

35:59

Like a weed dispensary? Yes, a weed dispensary. And I gave the people the address to go to the first place.

36:07

Big party at midnight, meet me in Atlantic City, they show up at the weed dispensary. Here's one tradition, even though the

36:14

Moore family is not the DeMars family, here's one tradition that you guys do that we took back and replicated exactly.

36:19

We do fancy dinner parties. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So our daughters put a sheet on the table, light candles, get dressed in fancy clothes, make me dress in fancy clothes.

36:29

Sometimes it's only the top, like a news anchor. I'm in my boxers, but I'm in like a really nice shirt and tie. And we do fancy food and we have like a fine dining experience and they love it.

36:41

Right. Right. So now somebody listening to this might go, that all sounds so cool and so fun and so amazing.

36:49

But Ed is obviously like a different breed. He's such a fun, creative guy. I don't feel fun and creative.

36:55

What would you say to someone to be able to do... Like who feels that way? How can someone who doesn't feel very creative use creative actions with enthusiastic spontaneity to create memories?

37:09

Yeah. Well, I think it would start with finding out what your children are interested in.

37:14

I mean, don't take them to the ballet if they're interested in baseball or don't. Or maybe do as a prank.

37:23

Yeah. Find out what your children are interested in and meet them there and play along with them.

37:28

I mean, I think there's just like some universals that all kids love. They all love a wrestling match.

37:35

They all love the pull my finger trick. I got your nose.

37:46

I think one of the things that I've learned, even though I myself am not an

37:52

Ed fan, I think what

38:01

I've learned from this is just there's something in me that when my kids say, can we?

38:07

I just say no. Dad, can we? No. Dad, can we? No. We ain't got the money. Just have a commitment to being a little more open and a little more fun.

38:17

If it sounds like it's going to be inconvenient, it probably will, but it's going to be worth it. Have fun with your kids.

38:24

And I think if that's your impulse, if you can shift from no to maybe this could be really fun, you'll find your own things and it'll be great.

38:32

Yeah. And it's the attitude that you have when you get there. So if you're going through the motions of yes,

38:39

I told you I would take you to the park. Now go play. You can be so hard right now.

38:46

Go ahead. Yeah. So several years ago, we were at a Mets game. The Mets ended up winning the game.

38:54

This is baseball. After the game was over, we went to the

39:00

Lemon Ice King of Corona. And I just had this moment of clarity while I was there.

39:05

I'm there with my two sons. They are small. The Mets won the game. The weather was nice.

39:11

It's summer. We are together. And I'm just thinking like, what more do you really want in life right now?

39:18

And a guy walked up beside me and he was getting ready to order his lemon ice.

39:24

In order to teach my sons a lesson, I said to the guy, I said, Hey pal, no way you're not paying tonight.

39:31

This one's on me. My team won and I'm here with my kids. So you pick out any flavor you want.

39:37

There's no way you're paying tonight. We're celebrating. So I wanted to make it seem as though there was a celebration.

39:45

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And I bet they remember that. I hope so. Yeah. Tip number three, use fervent prayer, not apathetic prayer, not lazy prayer, fervent prayer with tenacious persistence to convey humility.

40:03

You say that humble people pray and proud people don't.

40:08

That's how you start this point. Why do you start there? Well, think about your own prayer life.

40:16

When you don't pray, when I don't pray, it's because I don't think that I have to, or I will be fine without it.

40:24

When in reality, we need to remember John 15, where Christ said, without me, you can do nothing.

40:30

Let me go back to... Well, let's just start with the fact that I'm working under the assumption now that I am speaking to Christian fathers and that they want their children to be

40:41

Christians. They want their children to live and behave like Christians. Part of that is prayer. And so we tell our children that they should pray.

40:50

That's a good thing and they should. However, when we pray, it has much more of an effect upon them.

41:03

So let me go back to my dad. My dad was a radio announcer. He would have to sign on at about five in the morning.

41:12

He would get up an hour before he had to go to work every morning to pray. He was very committed to praying for a lot of missionaries.

41:20

And I can remember specifically that he was always praying for Dan Gerber, Archie Mitchell, and Dr.

41:29

Vietti. I don't know who these people were, but my dad... Those are such 1950s New York, back

41:35

East names. Right. Well, these were three missionaries who in 1962 were abducted in Vietnam and they disappeared and they have not been found yet.

41:46

So my dad heard the story of them being abducted. And now I'm born in 61.

41:51

He starts praying for them in 62. I'm not really even sure what prayer is until like 1970 or whatever, but sometime in the 1970s, as I'm hearing my dad pray these prayers all the time,

42:03

I said, dad, who are these guys? And he said, well, they were missionaries. They were in Vietnam.

42:09

They were kidnapped and no one knows where they are. And I said, are they okay?

42:15

And he said, no, they're probably dead. They're probably dead, but in case they're not,

42:22

I'm gonna keep praying for them. Well, he starts praying for them in 62. He dies in 92.

42:28

He never stopped praying for these guys. And I just thought, this is something that's real.

42:35

This is something that's meaningful. I just watched him always pray for people.

42:43

I always watched him pray with people. He would frequently go to hospitals and pray with people.

42:49

He would sometimes be asked to go to places and speak. Whenever he would go to a church, he would go in the men's room before he spoke and he would get down on his knees and he would ask

43:01

God to help him that night as he was preparing to preach. And looking back,

43:07

I don't think he was a great preacher, but he was humble and he was very dependent upon the

43:14

Lord. Now, he could tell me to pray all he wants to, but what made the difference for me is that I watched him pray and I saw how significant it was in his own life and I just saw how dependent upon God he was.

43:29

That was really helpful in my development. What encouragement slash exhortation or maybe rebuke would you have for parents who really struggle with this?

43:41

And let me, I guess, use myself. Let me put myself up as someone who needs this counsel.

43:47

Amber and I, I think we say that the thing that we struggle most with consistently in parenting is praying for our children as much as we should.

43:57

But what word would you have for us, brother? Yeah, I think part of the key to that is praying with your children.

44:10

So yes, you do want to pray for their salvation. I think it's really important to pray for their salvation while they are present.

44:20

So we did not have long family prayer meetings, but we prayed all the time.

44:28

My dad would pray every time he would pull the car out of the driveway. Of course, we prayed at meals. Every time you pulled the car out of the driveway?

44:34

Every time we pulled the car out of the driveway. How come? Yes. I don't know. I think because he was humble and he knew that people died in car crashes and so he would ask for God's divine protection while he was on the road.

44:52

And if the phone would ring, and there was someone who was sick, there was someone who was injured, it was never, well, that's too bad.

45:01

I hope they feel better. It was, let's pray right now. So I would just say, pray more often.

45:09

How's that? I think that's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You don't just want your...

45:17

This is you, by the way. You don't just want your kids to see you as someone who pretends to pray or only ever talks about praying.

45:24

You can't it for that long. And isn't that so true? One of the things about having kids is they see right through you.

45:31

You can't be fake with your kids. They know. Instead, you need to use prayer in order to convey humility.

45:38

And so I think you're trying to show your children what it looks like to be humble towards God.

45:44

That's the main point here, right? Not just be humble, but you're also training your children to see what humility looks like.

45:49

Dad can't fix everything. Mom can't do everything. I need God's help. Right.

45:54

And you can use prayer in order to convey arrogance as well.

46:00

I mean, we know this from the Pharisee and the tax collector. Right. Yes. I like to stand on my coffee table during devotionals if I wrote...

46:07

And point to your wife and say, at least I'm not like this woman. Yes. You've seen it.

46:13

So you've been at our devotionals. Hey, speaking of devotionals, what do you guys... What did you do in your family for devotionals?

46:20

Don't do what we did. We read through the Bible in a year. And so you have to read somewhere between three and four chapters a day in order to do it.

46:30

So don't read Scripture with your family. Do not read through... Quoting Ed Moore. Don't read through the

46:35

Bible in a year with your family, which we did multiple times. But if you miss a day...

46:40

So you've gotta read three plus in order to stay on schedule. Let's just say life happens and you miss two days.

46:51

All right, guys, come on, we gotta catch up. My poor kids would sit there through 12 chapters in one sitting, not really getting that much out of it, but doggone it, we're gonna get through this thing.

47:05

So... I don't know. That sounds valuable too. It... I mean, the Word of God is living and it's powerful, but I don't think it was wise to give them that much

47:16

Scripture, and it became more of a chore than it did a delight. Yeah, okay.

47:21

Now we're hitting on something. You want your family devotional time. I mean, listen, it can't always be the funnest thing that's gonna happen during the day, but you want your children to not bemoan devotional time.

47:34

So here's what we would do that was good. Okay. We would give a quiz at the end of the time. Were you listening?

47:41

Yeah. And then... And if you didn't pass, you got a spanking. No, well, it would breed another set of sins, competitiveness, and jealousy for the child that would win.

47:53

But at least they were listening. I would tell... I find that for a lot of parents, there's guilt about not doing devotionals.

48:04

I think there is, in some sense, an unhealthy emphasis put on family worship, an unbiblical, in some sense, emphasis put on family worship in some circles, not every circle, perhaps not your circle.

48:17

But a lot of parents wrestle with guilt about family devotionals. They see this family over here, and every night, without fail, before they go to bed, it's like an hour and a half long thing.

48:28

I mean, you sit down, Dad pulls out the Bible, he reads, they have good heart conversations, he always gets to the gospel, he always gets to their heart.

48:37

Then they sing songs together, and Mom... I mean, it's just... It's something... It feels unreal, and for a lot of people, unattainable.

48:46

Any thoughts to parents who are wrestling? Because then what happens... Sorry, this is a very long, wandering question.

48:51

But then what happens is, oh, we can't do that, so then they just kind of don't do anything at all. Any thoughts for how parents could deal with guilt in relation to family devotionals, life getting in the way?

49:03

Here's my take on it, and my take is based upon children and teenagers that I will talk to that come from homes where it happens, and those that come from homes where it does not.

49:19

You know how at the beginning of A .W. Pink's book, The Sovereignty of God, he says, well, a criticism of this is that you could overemphasize it, and Pink says, if a million sermons were preached on the sovereignty of God, we wouldn't even bring it back halfway.

49:38

The emphasis has gone so far in the direction of... Autonomy and mastery.

49:44

Yes, right. Some balance needs to be added to this. I really do believe that what you're saying is not that much of a problem.

49:57

I think the bigger problem is that they just don't do it, and maybe the guilt...

50:03

Not guilt in the sense that they are guilty before God and that they will be condemned, but I think that these guilt feelings might be something that they need to listen to because they are not doing it.

50:19

And yes, I know that there are those that just give up because they can't do it at all, but I don't think that what you're describing is a majority of families.

50:29

I think what's happening in a majority of families is that people are on their phones, they're watching the

50:34

TV, they are isolated in different parts of the house, and there really isn't an attempt to do it.

50:42

I like everything that Don Whitney has to say on this subject and his book on family worship, but it really can be very simple.

50:54

It can be everybody gather around, let's open the Bible, let's read a chapter, let's go around the room, and let's everybody say something that they learned, let's sing a hymn, let's pray, and that's it.

51:08

It doesn't have to be a deep study, it doesn't have to be a more family reading 12 chapters.

51:14

I just think that most people are just not doing it. They're just not trying it, yeah. Well, I think the evidence is seen in the fact that you speak to church kids and you start to tell

51:25

Bible stories or you start to reference things and they're just blank. They have no idea what you're talking about.

51:33

They don't read the Bible themselves. They don't have the Bible read to them at home.

51:39

On the other hand, you can tell which kids are having family devotions. You can really see it.

51:46

I'm not saying that that is always going to equate to salvation.

51:52

Again, that's the sovereign choice of God. But my encouragement to people would be, don't overanalyze this, but just do it and be consistent with it.

52:06

I can remember when my son Charlie left home to go off to college, and the last thing he did before he walked out of the house, he walked over to our

52:16

Red Love Seat. He sat down and he started to weep and he said, I learned more about the

52:23

Bible sitting in this chair than any other place on planet Earth, and I'm going to miss my home.

52:30

What he remembered about it was the time in the Word. Now, maybe when he was six and seven, he was maybe crying for different reasons.

52:39

But all that to say, I think we are spending too much time trying to ease the guilt of people and think of creative ways to do this or give people excuses why not to do it.

52:56

I just think people should be doing it, and my advice to them is to just do it.

53:01

Roger that. Thank you, brother. Number four, use precious time, and oh boy, is it precious, with strategic urgency in order to minimize regret.

53:13

Listen, I'm going to try not to cry because I know what's coming. You say that...

53:20

First, let's just talk about the preciousness of time. It's the only resource that we can't get more of, and there's no way to get more of it once it's gone.

53:32

When the sands of time are sinking away, you don't really think about it.

53:37

It's always in retrospect. You look back and you say, I wish, right? Yeah. I know you're not a big sports guy, but you do understand that...

53:48

Field hockey, water polo, karate. I know a lot about sports.

53:54

Football is a timed game. That's what it says here in my notes.

54:01

Yeah. At the end of every football game, teams are trying to conserve time in order to score points, time that they wasted previously.

54:14

They don't seem to understand that it's a timed game, so you need to get out of bounds. You need to use your timeout.

54:21

Well, when the game is over, it's over, and life is a timed game. I think nowhere is this said better than in the movie, the

54:31

Broadway play, Fiddler on the Roof, where Tevye is marrying off one of his daughters, and he says, is this the little girl

54:39

I carried? Is this the little boy at play? I don't remember growing older.

54:46

When did they? When did she get to be a beauty? When did he grow to be so tall?

54:52

Wasn't it just yesterday that they were small? Sunrise, sunset, swiftly flowed the days.

55:01

It's just yesterday that I brought my son Parker home from the hospital, but that was 32 and a half years ago.

55:08

Where did the time go? I think when we're raising our kids, we think, boy, we really have unlimited time.

55:17

Just take your time. It really doesn't matter. When in reality, it's flying by, and you'd give the world and everything in it in order to get it back.

55:31

It says in the Psalms, teach us to number our days that we might have a heart of wisdom.

55:37

Psalm 90, 12, in case anyone wants to look that up. So when you think about the course of your life, the

55:45

Lord says, you're gonna live to be about 70. If you're strong, you're gonna get four score years.

55:52

You're gonna get 80. You got more than 80, you're playing with house money. But your life, which is 70, 75 years, is described as being a vapor.

56:02

So if the entirety of your life is a vapor, how much shorter is the amount of time that you have with your children?

56:10

Let's just say ages zero to 18. Now, you shrink that number even more by saying, how much time do

56:17

I have in there that I actually can have an influence upon them? Because the day comes when they don't want to listen to what you have to say.

56:26

It's microscopic. And I don't know of any parents that don't wish that they could have some of that time back.

56:38

And so my admonition would be, please do what you can right now to spend time with your children realizing that that clock is flying.

56:51

You have two stories that you tell in relation on this point that I think really illustrate this point well.

57:00

The story, first of all, of sleeping in the bed with your father. Can you tell us that story?

57:06

Yeah. So it's the summer. It's June 1973. We didn't often go on vacation.

57:13

I just finished the sixth grade. But we had enough money this particular summer to go on vacation.

57:18

We drive from Dubois, Pennsylvania to St. Petersburg, Florida. We stayed in a motel.

57:24

I had never stayed in a motel before. It had a pool. It was the Empress Motel on 4th

57:30

Street in St. Petersburg, Florida. I remember the maid. Her name was Beulah Snow. This was a big deal for me.

57:39

Are you autistic? No, but I'm an excellent driver.

57:49

My siblings are older. So on this vacation, it's just my mother, my father, and me.

57:56

And there are two beds. And for no reason whatsoever, I just said to my dad one night, hey, dad, you want to sleep in the bed with me?

58:06

And my father was very wise. Not only would he do things that were wise, but he would explain them.

58:12

And he said, you bet your life I will spend the night with you. Because I'll tell you what,

58:17

Eddie boy, soon is coming the day when you're not going to want your old man in bed with you. So I don't think anything of it at the time.

58:25

It's just like, yeah, I'm rolling over. And my dad sleeps in the bed with me. And I get up the next morning and I go and swim in the pool.

58:31

And it's just, it's whatever it is. You don't know when you're 12. Fast forward to 2002.

58:41

I take my son Parker to Cooperstown, New York. And I just want to say to every father out there, if you have not taken your children to the

58:51

Baseball Hall of Fame, you are just a bad parent. Sorry. But I take him to Cooperstown, New York.

58:58

It's off season. We stay in this place. It isn't really a hotel.

59:03

It really isn't a bed and breakfast, just a place where there's a room to sleep. And we walk in and there are like three bedrooms and a kitchen and a living room.

59:11

And my 11 -year -old son says, this is great. We can each have our own room. And I said, that's fine, buddy, whatever you want.

59:18

And that night, of course, we did our Bible reading. We read our four chapters. We're getting ready to go to sleep.

59:23

He's in the bed right next to me. But then he had invited me to come into the bed with him. We turn out the light.

59:29

It's dark. And he says, hey, Dad, do you think it'd be OK if I came and got in the bed with you?

59:37

And I said, Parker, you bet your life would be fine. I'm going to tell you why.

59:43

Because fast is coming the day when you're not going to want your old man to sleep in the bed with you. And he crawled in with me.

59:49

And I realized what my father was doing in 1973 is that he realized that the clock was ticking and that there would be not enough time to do these things later, or the time just wouldn't be there, or the opportunity wouldn't be there later.

01:00:11

A sadder side to that is our bedroom was right beside my son

01:00:18

Charlie's bedroom. And frequently, I would walk past, and he'd be on the floor playing with his

01:00:23

GI Joes. And he would say, hey, Dad, do you want to play? And I would say, you know,

01:00:28

Charlie, I do. I really do. But right now, I have an elders meeting. Or right now,

01:00:33

I'm going to the hospital to visit someone. Or right now, I'm going to the gym or whatever. But I can't do it right now.

01:00:40

Fast forward one day. I have nothing to do. I walk into Charlie's room. And I said, hey, you want to play with the

01:00:47

GI Joes? He says, sure. And so I pull out the bin from under his bed.

01:00:52

And it has about a quarter inch of dust on it. And we pull out the GI Joes.

01:00:57

And we're starting to play with them. And I said, now, how do you do this? Like, how do you set up for war?

01:01:03

And how do you, like, what are you supposed to do here? And he looks at me. And he's being kind, because he does want to play with me.

01:01:11

But he says, Dad, I don't really play with these anymore.

01:01:17

And I thought to myself, was what you were doing every time you walked past this door really that important that you could have not gotten down on the floor for 20 minutes and set up those figurines?

01:01:34

And I realized, you know, that's it. It's over.

01:01:39

The day has come when he didn't want his old man playing with toys anymore, because he didn't play with toys anymore.

01:01:47

I am not saying that we need to forever keep our children as children.

01:01:55

You know, Paul tells us, when I was a child, I thought as a child, they grew up, I put childish things away. I'm not looking for this sappy sentimentality of always trying to relive what it was like when the kids were little.

01:02:08

No, they need to grow up, and they need to, and they need to move on. All I'm saying is, do not be deceived into thinking that you have a bottomless clock when it comes to spending time with your kids.

01:02:24

It's ticking, and it's ticking fast. And so take advantage of it so as to reduce regrets in the future.

01:02:33

Amen. Tip number five, use sincere thanksgiving, as opposed to insincere thanksgiving, with peaceful contentment in order to teach providence.

01:02:44

I think your main point here goes something like this, teach your kids the practical value of resting in his providence by being thankful.

01:02:52

At least that's what your article said. Can you unpack this a little bit for us? I think it has to do here more with losing and things not going your way, getting stuck in traffic, not getting the job promotion, not making the sports team, being turned down in some way.

01:03:18

Man born of woman is a few days and full of trouble. That's what life is like. I think one of the most valuable things that I ever did for my children is

01:03:25

I raised them to be New York Mets fans. They are the worst organization in all of professional sports.

01:03:32

You learn how to suffer when you live and die with the Mets. I think that's a lot what life is.

01:03:39

And when your children watch you, basically have an attitude of entitlement.

01:03:50

And I am expecting everything to go my way. And if things don't go my way, well, then there's going to be hell to pay because the world is supposed to line up the way that I want it to do.

01:04:04

So it could be as damaging as a father erupting and screaming and cursing or throwing a lamp across the room, or it can be as subtle as them just rolling their eyes and giving the family the silent treatment or whatever.

01:04:23

But when kids see dad react to a loss or a disappointment all the time with disgust, then they don't grow up to have thankful hearts.

01:04:37

Whereas if there is an emphasis before anything good or bad ever happens of always giving thanks,

01:04:47

I think it's wonderful if you walk outside with your kids when nothing is going on and say, do you kids realize what is happening right now?

01:04:58

We have an optic nerve that's sending a message to our brain, and we can see colors.

01:05:05

And I can say words, and you can hear them, and you have balance, and we can laugh, and the sky is blue, and we're breathing.

01:05:15

And isn't this just a great day? I mean, isn't this just wonderful? Or even when something happens that is good, instead of I got lucky or having a celebration, to just stop and say, that was such a kind gift from God.

01:05:36

Can we just stop right now and do this in the middle of a meal sometimes.

01:05:41

We pray before the meal. That is a prayer of faith, because you don't know what you're about to eat.

01:05:48

How about in the again, not just for giving us this food, but can we thank

01:06:01

God for how good this food tastes right now? And I think that's where the sincere comes in, right?

01:06:08

Because you can do this in a way that would be really annoying, because it would be superficial and fake. Right. You actually have to be the kind of person whose heart is overflowing with thanksgiving all the time.

01:06:18

That's right. Yeah. And I think, sadly, what

01:06:24

I've seen is there's a lot of dads that have really good theology, and they might believe

01:06:31

T -U -L -I -P, and they might teach it to their children, and they understand the sovereignty of God in Providence, and that He causes all things to work together for the good of those that love

01:06:42

Him. But yet, practically speaking, they don't really believe that. One bad thing happens, and they're like,

01:06:48

God, why? Yeah, the sky is falling. Whereas, I think you're going to prepare your children for life if you teach them how to lose, and if you teach them how to deal with disappointment.

01:07:09

I know that this isn't really a part of the point, but I think one of the main ways you can do that is to not have them turn on other people, or be jealous of other people, or to blame other people.

01:07:25

You can't live life blaming the referee, or the system, or whatever.

01:07:33

No, no, this is what God has ordained for us, and this is where we are, and we will do our best, and we will try to rectify the situation, but we will be thankful.

01:07:46

Yeah. This part of the talk cuts me every time, and I'm always like, okay,

01:07:53

Lord, thank you for reminding me I need to do better in this area. The older my kids get, the deeper the cut goes.

01:07:59

But you write, listen to your children talk to one... You say one another, but just listen to them talk in general, and see if they talk like you.

01:08:08

I've had to correct how my boys spoke to one another while admitting and repenting of the ways I've spoken critically in an anger, and then...

01:08:15

Oh, it is the most painful thing in the world to be upstairs, and they're downstairs, you're listening to them talk to one another.

01:08:22

Their voices are higher because they're younger, but their tone, their attitude, it's like, where did he learn this?

01:08:30

He learned it from me. That's an ugly mirror. Yeah. Yeah. I heard my oldest tell my youngest something to the effect of,

01:08:39

I'm not going to tell you again. And the way that she said it was so exactly me, and it was so not okay.

01:08:47

And I just thought, man, I hate myself. But this is what

01:08:53

I love about you, Ed. I never in that moment... I think, okay, when that happens, first of all, shudder, right?

01:08:59

Deep soul shudder. And then I go, okay, resolved. Again, resolved again,

01:09:04

I'm going to try to work better. I'm going to try to communicate. Let my speech be seasoned with grace, right? Which tone and all that stuff.

01:09:10

But I never think to go to them and say, hey, I'm going to correct the way that you're talking.

01:09:16

And I'm going to also admit that one of the reasons why you talk like this is because you've learned it from me. So dad's going to try to do better, and you're going to try to do better.

01:09:23

We're all going to do better. I'll just go, hey, don't talk to your sister like that. That's not the way... Right. So this feels like classic

01:09:30

Ed Moore. Don't just recognize that there's a problem, but go attack it in humility, repent to your children, and then try to improve together as a family.

01:09:41

I think you'll get more mileage out of that, but that's also before God. All things are open and naked before the one to whom we must give an account.

01:09:51

And so... Did you just think of that? Did I just think of what? Yeah, the way you just said just now. All things are open and naked.

01:09:58

Is it naked and open? I don't know. I think it's... Is that scriptures? Yeah. Okay. All right, go ahead.

01:10:05

Yeah, it might be Old King James. You can't fool God, so I think when your children are small, you can fool them, that they aren't bright enough to pick up on the do as I say, not do as I do.

01:10:20

Oh, okay. They get to be older, they realize, hey, wait a minute, the hypocrisy here is...

01:10:27

Yeah, it's pretty obvious. Amen. But it is always open before God, so I think we need to be honest with our kids about where we fall short.

01:10:37

How incredible are our children in sanctifying us by pointing out our hypocrisy?

01:10:43

It's incredible. Kids, first thing we do when we get in the car, put on our seatbelt.

01:10:48

When they were like two, three, four, five, I wouldn't wear my seatbelt sometimes. They never said anything. And then one day they're like, dad, where's your seatbelt?

01:10:55

I was like, oh no. And it happens all the time. Words we use... Yeah, so kids are good hypocrisy spotters.

01:11:04

Yeah, yeah, sanctifiers. Absolutely, yeah. You talk about how one of the ways that you grew in patience, gentleness as a dad, by...

01:11:18

You say that it happened by coming to a deeper understanding of the gospel.

01:11:23

Yes. Can you speak to that? Yes. So I go into the ministry in 1984.

01:11:31

I was saved by the gospel in 1977. I go into the ministry in 1984.

01:11:38

I work as a youth director, and then I work as an assistant in a church in South Carolina when

01:11:46

I'm in seminary. 1992, I take the church where I am now. Every single sermon that I ever preached included the gospel, but I never preached the gospel.

01:11:59

I didn't get it. There was a real disjointed sense to my ministry, to my life, to my preaching, which was, here's what the text says.

01:12:13

We're going to get to the text. I'm going to do my best to explain the text. Then there's going to be a brief commercial in there sometime which says, and if you're not saved, here's the gospel, but now...

01:12:25

Call now. Call now, but let's get back to the legalism. And it was a very law -driven, works -based, you need the gospel to save you, but after that, well, your sanctification is something that you're...

01:12:47

Yeah. That's your work. Which means that you were parenting with that paradigm as well. Which means

01:12:52

I was... Yes, it was like a high... Yeah, performance. Yeah. Do and live, don't and die.

01:12:59

And then I get a hold of a little orange book by C .J.

01:13:05

Mahaney, The Cross -Centered Life. I think you could probably read it in 35 minutes.

01:13:12

It's so good. Yeah. What year is this? This is about 2005.

01:13:19

How old are your kids at this time? Let's see. They're like from five to 14 in there.

01:13:31

So I start to... The wheels start to turn theologically where I begin to see exegetically that every aspect of the

01:13:43

Christian life is tied to the gospel, whether it's giving.

01:13:51

New Testament giving is not about duty, but it's, you know, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.

01:14:00

Or forgiveness, be kindly affectionate to one another, forgiving one another even as God in Christ forgave you.

01:14:08

Or even sexual purity, you are not your own, you're bought with a price. What is that? That's the gospel.

01:14:13

Therefore glorify God in your bodies. And I really begin to understand gospel indicatives and imperatives. And I'm seeing that the gospel is...

01:14:21

It's almost as if someone came in in the middle of the night and took my Bible and planted these gospel verses everywhere, and I began to see that the gospel is of first importance.

01:14:35

And when I saw this, it was almost as if I got saved all over again, because there was this flood of joy, and there was this power which had not previously been there.

01:14:52

And it was almost like, even if I am getting saved for the first time right now, it just doesn't matter, because the only thing that matters is the gospel.

01:15:03

And seeing that, and that gospel working in my heart, a humility.

01:15:15

As you have received Christ, so walk in him. How did you receive Christ? Through the gospel. How do we walk?

01:15:21

Through the gospel. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross.

01:15:29

It is just everywhere. And I began to be overcome with,

01:15:35

I wouldn't say guilt, but just an awareness of this has not been my emphasis on how

01:15:44

I have made demands on my wife, how I have ruled my home, how I coached my

01:15:50

Little League team, how I lived my life, how I pastored my people, how

01:15:55

I viewed life. And it all, there was just this paradigm shift, not with condemnation, but there was this paradigm shift which was accompanied with joy, where my children can tell you, and I don't want them to tell you, of the days prior to that.

01:16:19

Because prior to that, although I loved my children and I had good times with my children and did things spontaneously with my children and prayed with my children and did devotions with them,

01:16:33

I was a very angry man, a very demanding man, a very unreasonable man.

01:16:42

And I wouldn't say it changed overnight, but I would say it almost changed overnight to where there was a gentleness that came over me through the power of the

01:16:58

Holy Spirit and understanding the gospel, which had not previously been there. And my children would tell you that there was a marked difference after that.

01:17:10

So yes, growing deeper and understanding the glories of Calvary, it made all the difference in the world to me and my parenting.

01:17:23

Praise God, brother. Tip six, use joyful hospitality, not begrudging hospitality.

01:17:32

Use joyful hospitality without petty grumbling in order to demonstrate selflessness.

01:17:38

I hear you basically just rip off First Peter 4 .9, show hospitality without grumbling.

01:17:46

So I think it does teach children selflessness. Let me just say this, we like having people in our house.

01:17:58

Most of the nights my kids grew up, there was somebody staying in our house. When we moved to New York City, all of a sudden we got friends we didn't have before.

01:18:08

People, if I lived in Des Moines, Iowa, they wouldn't be coming to see me. But the fact that I live in New York and hotels are so expensive, now we have these friends, but we didn't care that they were using us.

01:18:19

We do that to other people when we wanna go to different parts of the country as well. So all's fair. I hope to use you one day. Yes, yes.

01:18:25

But see, you are my friend. But we enjoyed people being in our home.

01:18:32

We enjoyed having meals with people that would come over. There are always people in our house.

01:18:40

I think everybody knows where the key is hidden, was really not hidden. People are just in and out all the time.

01:18:48

Our children were raised in a home where there are people there all the time. And it's all fun and games until somebody breaks something, or someone overstays their welcome, or they don't know when it's time to go home, or...

01:19:05

They bring a pet into your house. They bring a pet into your house. And only then do you have the opportunity to teach your children, first of all, this is just stuff.

01:19:20

Secondly, it's not our stuff. It belongs to the Lord. And He who has two, give to one, give to the one who has none.

01:19:30

He's given us all things richly to enjoy, but He tells the rich in this world that they are to be generous unto good works, and to give.

01:19:44

And the Lord loves a cheerful giver. And I think you can, again, just like with the prayer point, you can tell your children to be selfless.

01:19:54

Or you can tell them to be prayerful. But unless you're praying, they're not going to. In the same way, unless your home is open and you show hospitality without grumbling, it's pretty tough to teach selflessness.

01:20:10

And a great way to teach selflessness is through hospitality. Your son Parker is a pastor of...

01:20:16

I don't want to say it's a college church, but it's a church located near a college campus. And his ministry is thriving there.

01:20:24

And I think a big part of his success there has been what he's learned from you, as far as hospitality goes, opening up his home to all those students.

01:20:33

Yeah, the interesting thing about that particular church, it's...

01:20:41

Interesting thing about that church, it's like 13 miles away from Athens, Georgia.

01:20:47

It's a country church on a road where there's nothing. But by and large, most of the people in the church are college students.

01:20:55

So I am prideful and I am arrogant enough to say, yes, this is something that he learned from me.

01:21:05

However, let's be honest. I can talk about hospitality, but it's my wife that cooked the meals.

01:21:15

I can talk about hospitality, but it's my wife that cleaned the house. I can talk about hospitality, but it's my wife that did the dishes when everything was finished.

01:21:26

And in the same way, yes, Parker does open the doors of his house to these college students, and it is a great ministry, but the real hero is his wife,

01:21:38

Audrey, who has four children, but the doors are always open. And so yeah, did he...

01:21:45

Yeah. My son learned very well how to marry a woman that is hospitable.

01:21:52

Yeah. Praise God. But it's my wife and Audrey that have really done the hard work.

01:21:58

You're also careful to give theological grounding for this argument. You've done a little bit of that, but in your talk, you basically say, listen, if our

01:22:06

Heavenly Father has welcomed us, how can we not then welcome all people? And so brother,

01:22:12

I'm thankful for the example that I've seen just from the short amount of time I've gotten to spend with you of hospitality and to get to see some of the fruit that's been born of that.

01:22:22

I pray that our church is characterized by what I've seen in you and your family. Number seven, discipline with faithful consistency in order to eradicate foolishness.

01:22:36

Can I just read some Bible? Yeah. So is that what the article says? Okay. So that has been edited.

01:22:45

My actual words are use the chastening rod, but that's fine.

01:22:51

Discipline is good. They changed it because they don't want to use Bible language. Let me tell you a little story about that.

01:22:57

So my next book is coming out through Christian Focus in March, and it's the story of my abuse and how the gospel healed that, and it's parenting and all that stuff.

01:23:09

It's a memoir. Anyways, working with the editor on it, they were pretty strongly insistent that I cut the spanking sections.

01:23:20

Because one of the points that I'm trying to make in the story is, look it, I endured this horrendous abuse in childhood, and now by God's grace, as I become a new creation,

01:23:31

I can actually administer loving biblical discipline to my children and not be what

01:23:38

I experienced from my parents, my mother. And so it's a really important part of the story.

01:23:44

And they're just like, listen, they're from the UK. This is not going to go over well. You can go to jail here.

01:23:51

We really don't think you should talk about spanking. And my response to them was like, I'm not going to not talk about what the

01:23:57

Bible says is a good thing. Can people abuse it and do it wrongly? Yes, of course they can.

01:24:02

But this is biblical language. And anyways, all that to say, the fact that the language has been changed in the article shows that even in the

01:24:09

United States, in some circles, talking about spanking using biblical language is uncouth, and I just don't get that.

01:24:17

Yeah, I think I understand it because there have been so many abuses, and there is actual child abuse.

01:24:27

But that's not new. There's always been child abuse. Yes. It's been politicized, that's for sure.

01:24:38

Yeah. Well, this is a tough one.

01:24:46

See what... Sorry, go ahead. Well, I mean, you have, for example, in some marriages where one parent will be in favor of the other one will not, what do you do?

01:24:55

Or you have some cultures where you actually would be arrested and your children would be taken away.

01:25:02

What do you do? And you have some instances...

01:25:09

But the most normal thing for Christians in a place where it's not illegal, and you're not going to abuse your kids, it shouldn't be controversial for Christians to talk about spanking their children.

01:25:20

Well, that's why... Truthfully, the thought never even crossed my mind. I recognized that that was not my language, but what

01:25:28

I originally said is use the chastening rod, what with consistency or...

01:25:34

Yeah, faithful consistency in order to eradicate foolishness. Which is why I wanted to start with Scripture, because you quote so much

01:25:41

Scripture to back this up. Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.

01:25:47

Proverbs 22 .15, do not withhold discipline from a child, for if you strike him with the rod, he will not die.

01:25:53

If you strike him from the rod, you will save his soul from the grave. Proverbs 23 .13 -14, whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.

01:26:03

Proverbs 13 .24, and the rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.

01:26:10

Proverbs 29 .15. Obviously, the rod does not only refer to physical discipline, but it certainly at least refers to physical discipline.

01:26:22

Can you walk us through a way to administer physical discipline that reflects the gospel, that's wise, that's careful, that doesn't veer into abuse, and so on and so forth?

01:26:35

I will, but let me speak first about the mistakes that we made early on.

01:26:43

All of the tricks that are conventional, we tried to do with our children.

01:26:52

Counting to three, making them feel guilty. Oh, you don't want to make mommy feel sad, do you?

01:26:58

Or that makes daddy so happy when you obey. Or I'm going to reward you with, do you want this little piece of candy?

01:27:08

If you obey, then I will give you this. We did everything that was wrong, everything imaginable.

01:27:16

You remember when The Lion King came out in 1994, my son

01:27:22

Parker's favorite character was Scar. What does that tell you about him? I took seven or eight bucks that we didn't have, and I bought him a little

01:27:32

Scar toy. He was doing something that he shouldn't have done, and I said, don't do it.

01:27:39

He did it again, and I said, Parker, stop it. He did it again, and I said,

01:27:44

Parker, if you do it again, I'm going to throw away this toy. I'm thinking, here

01:27:50

I am. Now my credibility's on the line. I'm cutting off my nose to spite my face, and here, you want to talk about the idiot.

01:28:00

He does it again, and in front of him, I actually throw the toy away.

01:28:06

What does he do? Three minutes later, he does the same thing. Now you've got to stab him or something.

01:28:13

Right. In order to maintain my credibility, I can't dish it out of the trash. That Scar doll is in a landfill in Staten Island somewhere now.

01:28:24

Then I get a hold of Ted Tripp's book, Shepherding a Child's Heart. It's a classic.

01:28:30

It's a classic, and boy, did it help us. What Tripp says, and he says a lot more than this, but essentially, what he says is you give a directive to a child in a conversational tone one time.

01:28:48

If the child is capable of doing what you ask them to do, and if they do not do it, immediately end with a good attitude, you spank them.

01:29:01

I thought, all right, we'll give this a try. First of all, it was a big shock to their system because what had happened previously is you would tell the child to do something, and then the second time, you tell them you're a little bit louder, and by the third time, you tell them you're emotionally invested, and the fourth time, it's a war, and the fifth time, although I never brought physical harm to my children,

01:29:29

I'm a big man. They are small at the time. I wasn't abusing them.

01:29:35

I wasn't hurting them, but still, they could see that I was angry, and what does the

01:29:41

Scripture say? The wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. It wasn't accomplishing anything.

01:29:47

It was a spanking, and I'm saying, well, I'm spanking you because the Bible says I'm supposed to spank you, but I'm out of control at that point, and they're in a fit.

01:29:58

It just wasn't working, and so when they did something, and they did it the first time,

01:30:06

I would say, all right, Charlie, go get the spoon. Meet me in the yellow room.

01:30:13

For ice cream. For ice cream, yeah. The spoon is the rod. The rod, yeah.

01:30:19

Make them go get it themselves. Go into the room, and then ask the question, why am

01:30:27

I spanking you? I'm going to spank you. Do you know why? They tell you, okay. You spank them.

01:30:35

After you spank them, sit them on your lap. You pray with them.

01:30:41

You kiss them, and you tell them, and I would tell them this every time. I would say,

01:30:47

I am never going to spank you again if you obey me. If you just obey me, this is never going to happen again, and it really did not take very long because kids are smart.

01:31:00

It did not take very long for them to understand when he says it, he means it.

01:31:07

Can you tell us the basketball story? Okay, so we're getting ready to go somewhere.

01:31:12

I walk outside. Our neighbors had a basketball hoop in the driveway. I said to Parker, I said, let's go, and he's getting ready to put up a shot, and he looks at me.

01:31:24

He heard me say, let's go, and he pulls it down, and he rolls the ball over by the toy box, and I'm thinking, okay, now

01:31:32

I know that this works because what's going on in his mind is he said, let's go.

01:31:41

If he said, let's go, he means let's go. I don't know. This guy's nuts. He's going to spank me, so it's not worth it.

01:31:50

I would not have spanked him if he had put up one final shot, but in his mind is when my dad says it, he actually means what he says.

01:31:59

There's no cajoling or bribing or bartering. No, no.

01:32:05

Are you saying that at any slight infraction, people should use the rob? No. I think there are times when children need to have things explained to them.

01:32:19

I don't think it's... No. I think one of the hard and fast rules that I learned being a dad is that there are no hard and fast rules, that you have to use wisdom.

01:32:32

You can't be a legalist, but I think for the most part, yes, that's what you would do until they get to the age when you don't or can't spank them anymore.

01:32:43

We tell parents in our church when we're working through this that usually the physical aspect of discipline is when they're younger and it's more stimulus -based, and they can't conceptually understand the wisdom you're trying to communicate to them, these propositional statements.

01:33:01

And the older they get, the more they can grasp of that, which means that the use of the rod should decline the older they get.

01:33:07

So it would be very weird if you're taking off your belt for your 17 -year -old son. Maybe there's a situation,

01:33:14

I don't know, but the heart work should be happening more the older they get. When they're two and you say, don't throw your sippy cup on the ground, and you put it back up, and they look you right in the eye, and they throw it on the ground, and you grab their hand, you pop their little hand, you say, no, no.

01:33:29

Because a two -year -old can't conceptually understand the heart work. Maybe Kevin DeYoung can get to the gospel with their two -year -old in that situation, but what they need is the rod.

01:33:40

They need to understand what the word no means. It's a vocabulary word, yeah. Yeah, that's right.

01:33:46

So wisdom. Have you found that... So I guess

01:33:52

I'll just use my own kids as an example again. One of my daughters, I found spanking just did not work.

01:33:59

It doesn't mean I didn't do it, but it meant, especially the older that she got, I found more natural and logical consequences that made more sense in her mind, and sometimes even affected her more.

01:34:14

So for example, for one of my daughters, it was, you know, go to bed without dinner. Now, some people are already ready to call child services, right?

01:34:20

You can't do that. Trust me, she'll be fine. But for her, you know, take me in the back and pop my butt twice.

01:34:28

That's not a big deal. But send me to bed without dinner, like, wow, this is serious.

01:34:33

I got to figure something out, you know. And I'll tell you, just recently, I got a...

01:34:39

Have you ever gotten one of those? Well, maybe I don't want to reveal your age. I got a frantic text from my wife, your daughter, right?

01:34:49

You know it's bad. Your daughter, and then XYZ. So I had some time to think about how to respond, right?

01:34:55

And the issue was my daughter was being disrespectful in the way she was talking to my wife. They were fighting over something at,

01:35:02

I don't know, something homeschool related. So I had some time to think about it, and I thought, you know what I'm going to do?

01:35:07

I'm not going to spank her. She's almost too old for that now. I think I'm going to go home, and I'm going to tell her that for the next 24 hours, she is not allowed to speak to her mother or to myself.

01:35:19

If she has something that she wants from us or needs from us, she can write it down. She cannot communicate to her sister to communicate to us.

01:35:26

She has to write it down, or it must not be that important. Because what I'm trying to do with that discipline is teach her that although as our daughter, she does have the right to speak to us, that does not mean that that right cannot be taken away if you abuse it, right?

01:35:40

And I think it really worked. I think it was pretty impactful. So again, there's more wisdom, right?

01:35:47

Trying to find ways as children get older to administer the rod of discipline, even if it's not necessarily spanking.

01:35:54

Right. And we tried a number of things that I don't think worked particularly well as they got older.

01:35:59

But one that did is I would say to them, okay, this is your mother.

01:36:10

You are to honor her. The tone that you used to speak to her was ungodly.

01:36:17

So what I'm going to ask you to do is to go to your room right now, and I want you to write a three -page essay on why what you did is wrong, and I want you to use scripture, and why you should never do that again.

01:36:33

Punctuation, spelling, that all counts. Sentence structure,

01:36:39

I want it to be done properly. I want it to be thoughtful, and you may not go to bed tonight until you've written this three -page paper.

01:36:48

And that was effective? It was effective. When you read it, you realize it is effective, because what they write, when their mind slows down enough to say, my mother cares for me, and my mother loves me, and my mother's always been good to me, and I had no right to speak to her in that way, and the word of God says, honor your father and your mother, so forth and so on.

01:37:17

I mean, did she mean it? I think she did. I think she did.

01:37:24

I saw Mike McKinley do that with one of his children while I was there, and I thought, make your kids write an essay. That's the dumbest thing.

01:37:30

You know how people are when they judge other parenting. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. But no, actually, it makes a lot of sense.

01:37:37

And Mike, if you're listening, you're not dumb, buddy, at least not for that reason. I would say that my deepest regrets as a father are when

01:37:49

I disciplined my children in anger. Before Ted Tripp's book?

01:37:55

No, no, no, no. I would say before C .J. Mahaney's book. I used the excuse,

01:38:07

I'm the father, and they have to honor me, and I'm going to rule this household, and they're going to do what

01:38:14

I tell them to do. And so we're using all of the Ted Tripp stuff at this point, but it is not because of Ted Tripp, but because of Ed Moore, because of Adam.

01:38:26

It's gospel -less. You're going to listen to me because I'm your father, and that's the end of it, and if you don't listen to me, that disrespect is something that you're going to pay for.

01:38:38

And so, although I never hurt them physically, it was carried out without grace, and I really regret that.

01:38:52

Because the purpose of discipline is to lead them to repentance. Yes, yes, which is a kind gift from God, and God doesn't deal with us in that way.

01:39:02

And so I would say to any father or mother out there, if you have a problem with temper or with anger, you need to get to a biblical counselor immediately.

01:39:16

You need to humble yourself. You need to understand that you are reproducing.

01:39:24

There is discipleship here that is happening, and you are reproducing a legalist, and you are reproducing an angry person, and they are going to do that with their children.

01:39:38

And so there has to be a gentleness that goes with it, and I really regret my days of anger.

01:39:47

I really regret that very much. Yeah. Thanks, brother. Tip number eight, use the practical gospel with personal applications in order to reproduce disciples.

01:39:59

Now, in your talk, you say, if you added up the importance of everything that I've said so far, it would not be as important as this last point.

01:40:08

Yeah, by far, it's the most important point. Yes. You say, the main thing to remember is when you sin against your family, and you will, speak for yourself, thank you very much, you need to call a family meeting.

01:40:23

Right. We want our children to be saved.

01:40:28

We want our children to live for the Lord. We want them to be godly.

01:40:34

So we teach them everything in life. We teach them how to ride a bicycle. We teach them how to throw a baseball.

01:40:41

We teach them how to write. We teach them how to tie their shoes. We teach them how to drive a car.

01:40:47

There's constant teaching going on, but there's very little teaching that goes on with respect to application of the gospel.

01:40:57

Now, I am not saying that you need to sin in order to teach the children how to deal with the gospel.

01:41:04

We do not sin in order that grace may abound. But woe to the world because of offenses, for offenses must surely come.

01:41:13

You know, I'm writing these things so that you don't sin, but if anybody does, we have an advocate with the

01:41:19

Father Jesus Christ, the righteous one. So if we say we have no sin, we're liars, and the truth is not in us.

01:41:25

We are living in the same house with our children, and we will sin. Let's start with the premise.

01:41:36

I'm speaking to people who are saved, people who are on their way to heaven, and people that want to see their children go there as well.

01:41:43

You are saved. You've been joined to Christ. You are a Christian. You're indwelled by the

01:41:48

Holy Spirit, but yet you are still going to sin, and this sin is going to happen,

01:41:55

I would say even frequently, in front of your children. If you never admit to them that you have sinned, and you never show them your personal need for the blood of Jesus Christ, you know,

01:42:12

I mean, if you think about it, if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.

01:42:22

Why can that fellowship that we have with one another not also be with our children?

01:42:29

So in order for that to happen, we have to walk in the light. So a simple example of that would be, let's just stop what we're doing right now.

01:42:40

Let's come together. Everybody heard what

01:42:45

I just said to your mother. Everybody heard the tone that I used. Everybody heard the words that I used.

01:42:53

First of all, the Bible says that I am to treat your mother as the weaker vessel, that I am to let my gentleness be known to all.

01:43:06

The fruit of the Spirit is gentleness. Love is not rude. I spoke to your mother in a way that was rude.

01:43:13

I was not gentle. I did not honor her. And even if I wasn't a

01:43:19

Christian right now, this is wrong, because your mother is just too good of a woman. But the fact of the matter is,

01:43:25

I am a Christian, and I have sinned against God. I've sinned against your mother, and I have sinned against you children in that I have spoken to her in the way that I've spoken.

01:43:36

This is wrong. I have already gone to God, and I have asked

01:43:41

Him to forgive me, and I believe that He has, because there's a promise in the Bible that says if we confess our sins,

01:43:49

He is faithful just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. But I need for you children to forgive me.

01:43:58

I want to ask your forgiveness, and I want to do the very best that I can by the power of the Holy Spirit in the future never to speak to your mother in that way again.

01:44:08

I don't have any excuse. I'm not equivocating in any way. It's not because I'm tired.

01:44:14

It's not because she agitated me. There's no reason that this happened other than the fact that I am a sinner and that I have acted selfishly and in a cruel way toward your mother.

01:44:25

And I need Jesus. Your father needs Jesus. Your father needs the gospel.

01:44:32

And children, I am so thankful that we have the gospel and that we have an advocate with the

01:44:37

Father, Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. And so, children, you have the right to hold me accountable for this, and I want to walk in the light before you.

01:44:49

Now, I elaborated quite a bit right there to accentuate the point. Well, okay.

01:44:55

Let me pause you right there. I think one of my fears is that our listeners or our viewers will think, wow, that was quite a script you just read us there.

01:45:05

But I've actually seen you do this. There was a time when you came to preach for us at Sixth Avenue, and we had a dinner at my house on Saturday night, and you had a little back and forth with one of our members, and it got a little interesting.

01:45:23

And I mentioned it to you afterwards, and you said, thank you, and so on and so forth. The next morning before Sunday school, you called everyone who was there at my house the night before into my office, and you did exactly what you just talked about here.

01:45:41

You repented. You said, I said this. I shouldn't have said that. Here's the excuse I gave in the moment. I think that that was me just trying to justify myself, and you basically walked through the gospel, and you repented.

01:45:53

And so, I mean, you accentuated a little bit, but not a lot. That is exactly what

01:45:58

I've heard you do in real life before. Yeah. Well, the sad thing is it's something that's fresh on my mind, because I sin so often.

01:46:08

Yeah. Do you ever get to the point where you think, oh, I can't do this again. I can't call another family meeting and do this whole rigmarole again?

01:46:20

I don't think so. No, I don't think so, because I believe in the gospel, and I think if I were not repenting, then it would seem very hollow.

01:46:37

Yeah, right. But I'm not doing it as a, well, this is what you gotta do in order to take care of it.

01:46:46

No, I have been convicted by the Holy Spirit. I don't want to do it again, and I need to repent, not just to confess what

01:46:57

I've done wrong, but I need to repent. See, here's the thing,

01:47:03

Sean, there is so much incongruity between the

01:47:08

Christian life of the parents and what we expect from the child. We expect them to be honest.

01:47:15

We expect them to be responsible, and they should be honest and responsible, and we chastise them when they are not, yet all the time we are forgetting things, we are losing our temper, we are acting selfishly, we are sinners.

01:47:37

And again, with a little child, they're not going to be able to figure out, for some strange reason, little children think that their parents can do no wrong, but they don't think that forever.

01:47:51

And one day they wake up and say, what is this faith?

01:47:57

What is this church stuff? Because here we go to church and we sing the praises of Jesus Christ, and then we come home, and it's like He's an altogether different person, where we demand godliness from our children, but yet we never teach them our personal need for Jesus.

01:48:22

So what ends up happening is they either learn how to be hypocrites, they can play well in front of you, then they will be someone else on the side, there'll be a double life.

01:48:34

Or they will just say, you know, I can't do it, and they will go off and just be as wild as can be,

01:48:43

I can't do it. Or they'll be a Pharisee, and they actually will be good, and they will be pridefully good, and they will see no need for Christ, because they're able to live up to the standards that we put in front of them.

01:49:00

Or, here's what you want, they will be disciples. They will be those that understand that they are sinners, and that sinners get forgiven because Jesus is mighty to save.

01:49:14

And how do you know that? Like, how do you know that? I know that because I saw my father and my mother as weak, frail sinners, constantly expressing their need for a

01:49:28

Savior and His precious blood. I think that is how you reproduce disciples, not by somehow pretending in front of the kids that you are perfect.

01:49:43

Amen, brother. This is not in your talk. There are two more things I want to ask you about.

01:49:49

Number one, letting go of your children, particularly thinking...

01:49:56

Yeah, well, it sounds like that's all I needed to say. Yeah, this was...

01:50:02

If you want to know how to do this, I would say that there are several billion people on planet

01:50:12

Earth right now that are better than me. I did not do a good job at it.

01:50:21

I had to learn how to be good at it, but I don't know...

01:50:29

You said you homeschooled your kids just because you liked hanging out with them, so... Right, yeah. Right, yeah. Yeah, I mean, probably the education they got wasn't as good, but we had a good time together.

01:50:39

Yeah, it was fun. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, I think we're okay now, but boy,

01:50:47

I'm interested in my children, and boy, I love my children, and I want to know everything that's going on in their lives, but I need to remember, and everybody that's listening needs to be remembering that, for this cause, shall a man leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?

01:51:07

They need to leave, and they need to cleave. So we live in New York. Our kids live in Georgia, North Carolina, and Kentucky, but I mean,

01:51:20

I would have them living right next door to me if I had my way, but that's not the Lord's will. This is just something that I'm not good at, and I had to learn how to do.

01:51:32

I'm thinking about this in light of my sermon text this Sunday, Jochebed releasing

01:51:38

Moses into the Nile. It was an act of extreme faith.

01:51:45

Moses, she had kept Moses for as long as she could have. The edict is out. All the Hebrew baby boys must die.

01:51:51

She probably tried to pass off his cries for the cries of Aaron for a little while, but it didn't work, right?

01:51:56

Right. And then finally, she has to release him, and that is...

01:52:01

You're talking about to the basket or to...

01:52:06

Yeah. And for a lot of parents, that's what it feels like.

01:52:13

They've seen what Egypt can do to children, and it's a dark, scary, death -filled world out there, and to let them go is just so hard.

01:52:28

And there's a sense in which if we're gonna be good pastors, we have to tell them, if you don't let them go, you're saying that you can take care of them better than God can.

01:52:40

Mm -hmm. You're saying that there's an aspect of your life, there's something that you care about that you just can't trust God with.

01:52:46

But the irony is, and I'm not trying to preach my whole sermon, I'm just wrestling with this as a dad as I'm thinking about it.

01:52:52

The irony is that if Jochebed would have tried to keep Moses, he probably would have died, right?

01:52:59

It wasn't... He would have been found out. It wasn't until she let him go that he could get what he really needed, which was salvation.

01:53:09

And so, yeah, just thinking about that, especially in evangelical...

01:53:15

In the subculture of evangelicalism, there's an idolatry connected to family, which can make it even harder.

01:53:23

And then if you think about how... I think dads... You're an exception that proves the rule.

01:53:29

Dads tend to do better at this than moms do. For moms, it's really, really hard to let kids go.

01:53:35

I'm rambling now. It's not my view, but... No, but I mean, don't let them go too quick.

01:53:45

I don't know where this idiom came from, but we talk about sheltered kids.

01:53:51

And since when did that become bad? You never see someone on a rainy day saying, oh, you have an umbrella.

01:54:02

You are so sheltered. You live in a house with a roof. You are so sheltered.

01:54:07

When did shelter become a bad thing? The gospel, by definition, is shelter.

01:54:13

The wrath of God is coming down upon us, and Christ absorbs that. He takes it for us.

01:54:18

In the same way, we don't want to... I totally disagree with parents that say, we just need to let them get out there and experience the world.

01:54:30

I'm talking about when they're small, when they're impressionable. Oh, yeah, for sure. And we just need to make sure that they're not sheltered, that they get out there and they experience the world.

01:54:41

We use the greenhouse illustration. You gotta slowly release them into the world with an appropriate amount of shelter for each phase until they're finally ready to be on their own.

01:54:52

Good. I will steal that. We'll use that in the future. I just don't think

01:54:58

I was good at it. Yeah. I wanted to keep them, but you can't, and I'm glad I didn't.

01:55:05

The Bible says no. Yeah. That all four of your children are believers, praise God, right? Yes. You sure?

01:55:12

Yes, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. What an incredible legacy.

01:55:17

I feel like as a dad, once you see all your children walking with the Lord, it's like, you can take me now.

01:55:24

It doesn't really matter what else happens. I think one of the most important things that the Lord has given me to do,

01:55:30

I've done, and praise God for that. Did any of your children go through any serious rebellion stages?

01:55:38

No. Okay. Let me say something about my children being converted.

01:55:49

Over the past year or two, many of my regrets as a dad have come to my memory, and I think in an unhealthy way.

01:56:04

Yeah. Love keeps no record of wrong, but you're sitting here stewing in your screw -ups.

01:56:10

Right, and the way that I have approached my past in a non -Gospel way is to be desirous for a time machine.

01:56:19

That is to say, if I could go back to that point, I would change this, where God doesn't give us a time machine,

01:56:26

He gives us the Gospel, because the time machine essentially is pride.

01:56:32

It's saying, I can't believe that I did that, because if I were really myself,

01:56:37

I would have done it differently, and I would have done it better. No, you might have actually done it worse. He doesn't give you that,

01:56:43

He gives you the Gospel. But I was sitting down at breakfast with one of my elders a little over a year ago, and I am just...

01:56:53

I won't do it like in this interview, because I'm too prideful, I'm too arrogant, but I'm just talking about some of the mistakes that I made, the sins that I committed as a dad, and how it injured my children, how my anger, and I'll just...

01:57:10

And I am just letting myself have it. He's a very respectful man, he's...

01:57:20

This elder. This elder, yes, he's Korean, and so he's sitting there very respectfully listening to me.

01:57:27

And then after I go on and on and on, he stops me and he says, and he's younger, he has five kids, but they're all small.

01:57:37

And he said, Ed, if 20 years from now, you could tell me with a guarantee that all of my children would be saved, because mine are, he said, if you could tell me that all of my kids would be saved, nothing else would matter, which is

01:57:58

Korean for shut up, just like, shut up and stop your complaining. Yeah.

01:58:04

Can you say that with a Korean accent? No, but his point is, yeah, you have messed up.

01:58:15

He's not saying, oh, you weren't so bad. No, he said, man, what you're telling me was bad. But do you not see that the

01:58:23

Lord has restored the years that the locust have eaten, that where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, and that God was kind and merciful to my children, not because I was a good dad, because I wasn't.

01:58:38

Any of these eight points that happened to turn out good, first of all, it is

01:58:44

God that led me to that. It was learned through trial and error and mostly error.

01:58:50

And if I stumbled upon something, it wasn't because I was so bright, it's because every blind squirrel finds an acorn.

01:58:56

I happened to find some things that worked. If anything that I did was good, it is by the grace of God.

01:59:03

My children are not saved because I was a good dad. They are saved in spite of the fact that I was a bad dad.

01:59:11

It's the grace of God, and it's not skill in parenting. And I think it was my arrogance that really was causing me just to hammer myself rather than to be thankful for the grace of God.

01:59:29

Yeah. The self that you envision when you think of who is Ed Moore, you can't imagine him doing it.

01:59:37

He's too smart. He's too godly. He's too this, too that to do any of that stupid stuff. Yeah, but reality is different.

01:59:43

Yeah. Let me read this final quote before we get to the bonus round of what

01:59:50

I think is going to be the best part of the interview. And this is not for you to respond to it necessarily.

01:59:56

This is just, I thought, one of the most impactful parts of your talk. You say, in 50 years, when someone says to your child, tell me about your dad, there are going to be a lot of things that they will say that will be embarrassing about your legacy, but more than anything else, the one thing you want them to be able to say is that their dad was a

02:00:14

Christian, that he loved Jesus, that he obeyed Jesus, and that he prioritized the kingdom of God, that he was a humble man, and that when he was wrong, he pointed us all to Jesus Christ.

02:00:26

Brother, I think I can say that by God's grace, I've seen that in you as well, which is why I wanted you to adopt me.

02:00:32

And now you've signed the paperwork. All right, now this is some of the fans, this is their favorite part of the interview.

02:00:43

Do masks work to prevent the spread of COVID? No. Well, I wouldn't know.

02:00:51

I didn't wear one. Let's go. Did you get the vaccine? No. No.

02:00:58

Was the government involved in 9 -11? Our government?

02:01:05

Yeah, our government. No. You don't think so? Not at all. Not in any way? No. You don't think anything was suspicious about that?

02:01:11

Nothing. As a New Yorker, you think it's Osama bin Laden all the way? A hundred percent. Do we go to the moon?

02:01:18

Yes, absolutely. And are we going to go to Mars? We, as in us?

02:01:24

No. Okay. Elon Musk says in 50 years, we'll have a base on Mars. Do you agree with that?

02:01:31

I don't know. I don't know. Like, what is Mars even made out of? Who shot JFK? Oh, it was...

02:01:38

Lee Harvey Oswald? No, no, no. John Wilkes Booth acted alone on that. Yes, Lee Harvey Oswald, all by himself, no conspiracy.

02:01:47

No CIA involved? None. In the slightest? Nope. Critical race theory, good for our children? No. DeYoung or Wilson?

02:01:56

I don't even know what you're talking about. I mean, I know

02:02:02

Kevin DeYoung's a really good preacher and he lives in North Carolina. Theonomy, yes or no? No, no.

02:02:09

Why do you say it like that? So first of all, you're talking to someone who is really uninformed.

02:02:17

You're talking about like Rush Dooney and Gary North and... Those are the originals, the

02:02:23

OGs. Yes. And I haven't even looked at anything pertaining to that in the last 35 years.

02:02:31

So I would say it was a no then and it probably still is a no. Yeah. So these were all supposed to be joke questions, but this has turned out way better than I could have ever anticipated.

02:02:41

These are supposed to be the real questions. Yeah. Favorite candy? It's the

02:02:47

Reese's Cup. Frozen or not? No, melted. No, like melted.

02:02:54

Yeah. Like licking it from the paper. Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. Have you ever tried any of the

02:03:00

Reese's Outrageous or the new things where they put like chips and all kinds of weird stuff in there?

02:03:07

No, regular Reese's Cup. Yeah. I forgot what I was going to ask you.

02:03:13

Least favorite candy? Turkish Delight. Is that a candy? Yes. Okay.

02:03:19

It's pretty bad, right? Yeah. Favorite movie of all time? Field of Dreams.

02:03:26

Really? Just because you just love baseball and Kevin Costner? Yes. Favorite book other than the

02:03:31

Bible? Uh, The Prince and the Pauper. Why? Mark Twain. Why?

02:03:37

Well, because there's so much gospel in it. Yeah. And it's masterfully written and laid out.

02:03:44

Nobody says it. Even though Steinbeck is my favorite author, I think that Mark Twain was the best one.

02:03:55

He was the best one at putting sentences together. Favorite Steinbeck book? Grapes of Wrath.

02:04:01

No, favorite. No, no, no. That's really depressing. I know.

02:04:07

I would say favorite Steinbeck book would probably be -

02:04:14

No, not even. Although I did like East of Eden.

02:04:22

I will say Cannery Row. I couldn't even finish it. What did you say?

02:04:27

I couldn't even finish it. Finish what? Cannery Row? I couldn't make it all the way through. I thought of mice and men,

02:04:34

East of Eden. This is one of the ones I got to get to. When I got to it, I couldn't even get halfway through it.

02:04:40

I finally just put it down. What do you love so much about it? I think that Steinbeck has a way of describing simple poor people in a way that is interesting.

02:05:00

Favorite food? I would say probably if it's done well, it would be

02:05:08

Italian. Least favorite food? Italian if it's done poorly. Yeah. Favorite book of the

02:05:13

Bible? Favorite book of the Bible would be James. You've memorized that at a young age.

02:05:19

Yes. Favorite book of the Bible that you've preached through? Well, that would also be James.

02:05:26

But you know what? I really enjoy Judges. That was a lot of fun.

02:05:32

Yeah, it is good. That's an interesting way of describing Judges. Least favorite or perhaps most difficult book of the

02:05:38

Bible you've preached through? 1 John. True or false, you do not type up a sermon manuscript.

02:05:43

I don't know how to type. You don't know how to type. It's all written down in a spiral notebook.

02:05:54

That's why I can't write a book. I can't type. Yeah. You just try voice to text. Do you know what that is?

02:06:01

But still, if you do that, then it doesn't come out in my handwriting. Which matters.

02:06:07

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I hear you. I had other questions. Hold on. Maybe that's the

02:06:14

Lord's sign to shut it down. Brother, this has been a fantastic interview. This is one of those interviews that I just know the

02:06:22

Lord's going to use it. Anybody who listens to this is going to be blessed by it. If you're listening or watching, make sure that if you are helped by this interview, that you share this interview.

02:06:35

God's Word tells us that we have received help so that we might be a help to others. And so, yeah, share this interview far and wide if it makes an impact on you as a parent.

02:06:43

And I'd be pretty surprised if it doesn't. For the first interview with Ed Moore on Room for Nuance, I'm signing off.

02:06:52

Brother, thanks for being on. Let me pray. Before you pray. Yeah. And that was so smooth. You totally ruined it.

02:06:58

Before you pray. Okay. I do not think I spend enough time thanking my wife and acknowledging her as the best parent in our family and the best parent that I know.

02:07:14

And so, if what I say was in any way helpful, what she would have to say would be so much more profound, and it was performed so much better.

02:07:28

And so, I admire her more than I admire anyone else on planet

02:07:34

Earth. And I would really be remiss without saying how much I love her and how thankful I am for her.

02:07:40

Maybe we can bring her down and do a part two. Yeah, let me practice.

02:07:45

Lord Jesus, thank you so much for teachers in the church. They are gifts to the church to see the body built up into the fullness of the image of our

02:07:55

Lord Christ Jesus. We pray that this interview will help thousands of parents.

02:08:02

It's such a difficult job, but it's so worthy. Children are a gift and they are such an opportunity,

02:08:09

Lord, for us to disciple and to carry out the great commission. So, help us to reflect your image to our children in everything that we say and do by your grace.

02:08:19

Help us to remember your grace when we fail. Remember that the grace that we receive is not merely for our forgiveness, but also to rise up, to be sanctified, to grow, to improve.