Parenting Q&A (part 1)

So tonight it's going to be probably part one, because I got lots of, I received many questions and I'm not going to be able to cover them all. I'm going to try to talk about different age groups because some of you have kids that are really little, some of you have older kids, and so I'm just going to try to mix it and match it as much as I can.

This will go online unless I say something that I think maybe we just ought to keep within the family. After every question that I talk about, then if you want to stop me and ask some clarifying question, that'll be great, and then we'll move on to the next one.

If you have more questions you want to submit via the email, or just want to write them down, you can give them to me. We won't meet next Sunday night because it's Resurrection Sunday. The week after that we'll probably have a panel, and so there'll be ladies, the elders' wives, and some, Kim and some ladies at least, and then myself and the elders will meet with the men and we'll kind of split it up a little bit, and then probably the next time we meet we'll do part two of these questions in this format.

That sound all right? Well, let's pray and then let's talk about the word. Father, I thank you for tonight and these dear parents. What a great privilege it is to have children and then want to train them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

We ask for your wisdom. I pray, Father, that you would help me to help these parents, and that we know that this is way beyond our ability, and so we're asking for your Spirit's power and resources. You have not left us alone as children to just fend for ourselves.

When our Lord and Savior died for us and was raised, he gave us his Spirit, and we're thankful for that. I pray for all the children here tonight, that they would learn and listen, and we want our children saved.

So, Father, would you please grant them new hearts that they might have fellowship with you, and I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, well, let's turn our Bibles to start it to Proverbs 22. This isn't a question, but just a framework for tonight.

There are lots of priorities in life, but training children has to be right there at the top. You have all kinds of issues with work and friendship and everything else. We're very busy people, but it is very important to train children.

R .L. Dabney said, The education of children for God is the most important business done on earth. It is the one business for which the earth exists. In other words, it's very, very important to train children.

Of course, every one of your children, and mine as well, have eternal souls, and they will live forever. Right after they die, they live forever. Their souls either in heaven or in hell, and so this is very important, especially when we think of that, and that we are stewards of God's children.

They're not ultimately our children. He gives them to us to steward, and stewards are to be found, what? Faithful, and so that's what we want to do, and Proverbs 22 is a great verse, and I picked this tonight because people tend to misuse it, and so I want to make sure we understand it properly, and Solomon writes underneath the inspiration of the Spirit of God, Train up a child in the way he should go.

Even when he is old, he will not depart from it, and the best thing you can do when you look at the Bible is you ask a lot of questions, and what does this mean, and what kind of verb is it, etc. This is actually, and it probably shouldn't surprise anyone, an imperative, train up a child.

In the Arabic, which this wasn't written in, but it's a sister language, it's kind of used of a rope in a mouth of a horse, and you take that bridle or that rope in the horse's mouth, and you can make that animal submit to you and follow you as you lead that.

You can instruct. I don't care about any kind of noises tonight. We're all welcome. Every kind of noise, if you're 10 or under, is fine by me, or 12 or over. What do we care, and I don't have my phone to go off tonight.

I rarely forget my phone. It's at home. I feel like something's wrong, you know. You walk out the door. It's wallet, keys, phone. Now, typically, we've heard this verse as some kind of promise that if you train your child up in the ways of the Lord, he or she will become a Christian, right, but that doesn't work because, A, you're not saved by something that you do.

Good thing, right, because what child would ever then be saved? J. Adams writes on this verse, the verse stands not as a promise, but as a warning to parents that if they allow a child to train himself after his own wishes, they should not expect him to change these patterns when he matures.

Children are born sinners, and when allowed to follow their own wishes, will naturally develop sinful habit responses. The basic thought is that such habit patterns become deep-seated when they have been ingrained in the child from the earliest of days, and so, really, it's not a promise of salvation.

It's a negative promise. If you don't do this, something bad is going to happen. It's hard to look at your little child in the nursery, in the incubator, and think, you know, I have been given by God this little sinner.

Remember what the Puritans used to call children? They look so innocent, but on the inside, they're sinful, and he called, one of the Puritans called them innocent vipers, and you look at them, and you think, how could I ever discipline?

How could I ever train? And Solomon reminds us that we, in fact, should be very careful to train. Verse 18 of chapter 19, let's look there, and then let's get to the first question. It's also important because not only is it a command, but time is ticking.

You only have so much time to raise a child, and then they're out of the house. For us, we have a couple children still in the house, and a couple gone, and so I'm feeling this, the impact of this. Proverbs 19, 18, discipline your son while there is hope, and do not desire his death.

There is a God-given opportunity that you have to shape your child, and you need to do it while there's still hope. Final verse we're going to look at before we get to the question is Hebrews 12, 10, please, Hebrews 12, 10.

It is fascinating to me that there's a lot in the Scripture about justification. There's a lot in the Scriptures about sin. There's a lot in the Scriptures about the person and work of Christ Jesus, but there's not very much about parenting.

So what do you do? There's hardly anything in the Bible about parenting, our parenting. There's less on parenting than there is on parenting. So what do you do? And I think this is very timely because the right kind of people parent rightly.

In other words, if you're a godly person, then you will parent in a godly fashion. This is not a throwaway line because nothing in Scripture is, but Hebrews 12, 10 says, for they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them.

We're talking about fatherly discipline and then the ultimate heavenly father, but he, the heavenly father, disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness. There's a lot of things you have to do when it comes to parenting that aren't necessarily chapter and verse, but things that seem right to you.

And so what I'm going to do tonight is I'm going to try to give you my wisdom. A lot of it is, you know, Kim and I, as we've been parenting together for the last 26 years, and sometimes I'm not going to have chapter and verse.

I'm just going to try to give you what seemed best to us. And then I'm going to try to give it to you so then it can seem best to you. And you say, well, I didn't like what you said about this, that, or the other.

We're going to cut and paste and we'll do it our way. That was for you. You're from California. You know, we do things the Massachusetts way, et cetera. That's fine. Because remember, when you talk to people, this is the Bible, they must do it.

And if you can't find things in the Bible, this is what I think, this is wisdom, and then you can cut and paste, right? So I have to be careful as a pastor if I give counsel that I don't confuse the two because I have no authority over you to just say, this is what we did and this is what I think you should do.

Does that make sense? And even when you counsel other people on the phone, somebody needs encouragement, the Bible says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean on your own understanding.

In all your ways, acknowledge him and he'll what? He'll make your path straight. That is a non-negotiable great truth. And then on some of these other things, when I tell you I allow my children to eat goldfish in the service, or don't, you can figure out how you want to incorporate that, right?

The way I like to eat goldfish is you kind of put them in half and bite it and you just eat half of one or you eat the head off first. That's how boys eat them, right? Are you guys allowed to eat goldfish in the service?

No? Okay, good. Maybe we get some flaming hot goldfish and that would be good. All right, question one that I received from one of you. I'm not going to tell you who gave me the questions because some of them are dumb and then you don't want to be embarrassed.

Some of my answers are going to be dumb, but I will have to be embarrassed, that just comes with the job. Remember, this is New England, we stab in the front. What is the balance between discipline and grace in raising children?

They need to know, the person wrote, they need to know the weight of their sin and consequences, but we also want them to know the love and goodness of their Savior who bought the penalty of sin for them.

So, in other words, how do we discipline firmly and then also have kind of fun and excitement and joy and good things in life as well? How do we balance between discipline and grace? Now, if you were asked that question, you might have your own answer.

My answer is pretty simple. We have required a lot out of our children not to get to heaven because that's a gap that they can't bridge, but we've required a lot of our children as we've traveled in airplanes and been to other churches or sit here at Bethlehem Bible Church, I think when the sanctuary was flipped around, and we have had high, high, high standards for the children and we've expected a lot from them.

So, what do you think that is going to make us do on the other side, on the grace side, on the fun side, on the exciting side? The more you expect from your children, I think the more you better make sure that they have a great time and a fun time and a joyous time and an exciting time.

Otherwise, it's going to be lopsided. So, I think that's the main principle that I want to give there. If you're going to be a hard parent, that is, we expect you to do these things, then I think you better have some fun, too, because I think if you look at the Lord in His character, He has justice, right?

He is just and He is gracious, right? I think it's probably wrong to talk about an attribute as He has justice, but He is just and He is gracious. And therefore, we have strict discipline, but then there's also wonderful rewards.

We'd like to reward the kids. I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I'll do it anyway. When we would put our kids in nursery, and by the way, if you want to exegesis tonight, you're going to have to get like a cassette or something, a track reel to reel, because this is just like a lot of just practical things.

Steve's in the back laughing. We would bring our children into the nursery and we would tell them ahead of time, we want you to obey, we want you to say yes, please, no, please. We'd have to tell Luke, you know, don't hit the other kids, you know, whatever it was.

And then we would say, and we're going to ask the teacher, we're going to ask the nursery leader, how you did. They're going to say fine, and then we're going to ask them again, how did you do? And if you do well, there's going to be great rewards.

And if you didn't do well, this is getting recorded, so something else would happen. And we, Kim did it more often than I did, I did it at Summit Grace Church, but since I'm here doing this, I wasn't back there very often.

And we would do that very thing. And we would ask the teacher, you know, how'd my kid do today? And the teacher always goes, okay, fine. No, how did my child do today? And there they are. And we make this little transaction.

And if they did something wrong and having to ask for forgiveness and all that, but if they did things well, then we want to reward the kids. Because by the way, I don't think Christianity is only no, right?

We should be the happiest people, the most joyful people. We don't have to worry about dying and go to hell. And the fruit of the spirit is love and joy and peace. And we get to experience the shalom life.

We get everything, right? It's all for us by the hand of our gracious God. And therefore, that would be one of those things that we would do to kind of balance that out. Lots of fun, but lots of holding them accountable.

And so that's just something that in my mind, and Kim did a much better job than I did on this, but the kids in the neighborhood, whose house did they want to go to? They all wanted to come to our house because it was the most fun, right?

We wanted to have the most fun of, the one that I always think of is when all the neighbor kids came over and we played our own version of, what's that game where you have to do crazy things? Fear factor.

We had our own fear factor game. And I guess I can say this because the statute of limitations has passed, but how long you can put your hands in the snow without trying to take them out and all these different things and the food and the fun.

And remember we had one kid in the neighborhood and he wasn't really allowed to eat anything except like flaxseed oil cookies. He'd come to our house and eat like 19 peanut butter cookies. Okay, eight, enough to make him throw up.

I do remember that. So I don't think it's wrong in the economy of God. If you do this, it will go well with you. There are consequences to wrong behavior and there are benefits to good behavior. So I remember when Kim, if she'd go out of town, I would come here on Sunday night to preach and I would tell the kids ahead of time, okay, daddy's going to be preaching and people, you know, are going to watch and here's what they say about pastor's kids and all that.

Here's your stuff and here's what you're going to draw and here's what you're going to do. And if you take good notes and we're going to go get an ice cream afterward and everything else. And if you don't, and if you do things wrongly, then when we get home, dad will take care of it.

And the dad's signal was always get on dad's bed. That was always the signal. You didn't want that. Go get on dad's bed. And I remember one time somebody did the wrong thing and I had to say something while I was preaching a sermon to the kids who were doing something wrong because I didn't have Kim there to kind of help, right?

But you don't want to forget about the other ones where you can go reward the kids for good behavior. Like if your kids sit through this tonight with good behavior, I think you ought to praise them. And kids, what do you want tonight?

What would be really good? I see. That's what I say. It's right down the street. No school for a month. Now, listen, this is a, this is important. Every kid's kind of wired differently and you figure out what really makes them want to obey.

And then you use that for one kid. It's ice cream. It's another kid. It's not having broccoli or whatever. I mean, there's ways to do exciting things. My, I was thinking about my mom the other day, she's been with the Lord now for 12 or 13 years.

I mean, I don't want to be that kind of, I know I'm kind of grumpy sometimes and kind of crabby and all that, but I don't want to be that kind of guy with the kids. I want to be like my grandmother. I mean, my mom, who is a grandmother to my kids, it was Saturdays.

It's ice cream sandwiches for breakfast. I mean, it's that kind of stuff. That's what kids remember who wants to go. I mean, I think some of you do this kind of like broccoli for breakfast. Does anybody's parents make broccoli pancakes for breakfast?

I think some of you nutty crunchies do here. I mean, what are you thinking? So we're going to get back to this in general, though, if you're going to want that standard up there. And I'll just say it since I'm your friendly pastor.

Many of you have standards that are too low for your children here at Bethlehem Bible Church. You expect too little and you will do things like, we'll say hi to the pastor and then they'll look at me and they won't say hi.

They put their head down and you'll say, what? My kid's just shy. Your kid isn't shy. Your kid is rebellious and they're disobeying right in front of you right now. You said, look at the pastor and say hi, and they won't look at the pastor and say hi.

To me, that's high treason in my life. Not for your kids, but I mean, my kids, if I say, look at John MacArthur and say hi, and the kid goes, I'm shy. I don't have to Morris code you to what's going to figure out what we're going to do later when we get home.

So I think you want high standards, but I don't want you to be the downer parent and the no parent and the no fun parent and the parent that is always just giving law, law, law, law without gospel. Does that make sense?

That's just in general. So high standards, but have some fun and put yourself in the eyes of your children. What turns them on? What do they like, et cetera. All right. Number two, this is what I wanted to get to more tonight.

How should my children act on Sunday? This is going to be good. Well, not because I'm doing it, but because this is just important. How should my children act on Sunday? You want to train your children in such a way that they can sit with you on Sunday for the whole service when they're a little tiny and you know, they're nursing or this, that, and the other.

I understand, but your goal is to have all your children sit with you. You don't, I don't mind any of the crying, by the way. Look at that. That is perfect. And by the way, don't we want to do that as a church too?

Some children are just really obedient and some children are a little older and some other children have cranky, fussy, this, that, or the other. We just want to be nice to one another as they parent their children and I'll see you on my bed.

But here's the thing, your children aren't going to sit still with you here in church if you haven't been able to control them at home. It starts at home. So just give you a few ideas on our little children and then we'll talk about bigger children.

At home, we had different times. We had times on the couch that would start for 10 minutes and there'd be reading time. What else did we use, Kim? Clay. Clay time. Maybe not on the couch but on the kitchen table.

There was iPhone time. No, there wasn't iPhone time. There were, it's time to read, it's time to take a nap, it's time to do this, that, or the other. We had these set schedules, 10 minutes they'd do this, 15 minutes they'd do this, and a half an hour they'd do this, so they could just learn to sit and just kind of be still.

We'd work our way up to, and by the way, I needed this because I was working two jobs at the time and Kim would have to go run errands. So when it was pack and play time and they'd have to sit in the pack and play, our couch time, that was my couch time too, and then I would lay down and take the nap.

I mean, it was just a self-serving thing. But we would work at home with the children so they would be ready to sit at the service. There was a preacher that once said, if you'd like to damn your children, excuse them to the nursery and the preschool every time the pastor preaches.

And he was trying to be in your face in terms of saying, people get saved by hearing the word preached. Don't you want your children to hear the word preached? Well, they get saved other ways, you know, hearing the word preached at nursery, I understand that.

So at home, we would do all kinds of things to teach our children to just sit still. Now, I'm going to go back to that, but on the way to the church, I want to say probably 2000 times in my life, I have given the speech to the kids.

We're on the way to church. And when people say hello, you look at them in the eye and you shake their hand. And when they ask you, how are you doing? You say, I'm doing well. And then you say to them, how'd your week go?

Right. Instead of just kind of hello, we'd we'd tell Luke specifically, since he was a young man, there's handicapped spots right out there. And when you see, it was like with your grandma, Dottie, when you see Dottie getting out of the car, you quit, go run over there and open up the door.

Kim would give specific assignments, different girls to go say hi to Carol Jemison or go say hi to somebody else. And she would send them off. Our kids knew when they were little, you don't leave the sanctuary.

You run around and have fun, but you do not leave the sanctuary. And here's a little assignment. You go talk to this lady, you go talk to this man, you go do this, that or the other. You go talk to Bill Walls about, you know, World War Two and, you know, when Wilt Chamberlain picked you up at the airport.

Did you know that happened, by the way? We're trying to recruit Bill Walls to be in track at Kansas. And so he flew into Kansas and the guy to help recruit him was Wilt Chamberlain and he got in Wilt's car and went to Kansas.

Weren't you too? I guess so. Let's get here early and Luke, you get the shovel and you go out there and shovel and help put the sand down and everything else. But we would have that conversation every single time we went to church.

I mean, I think every single time. And it's funny because the kids didn't do it every time, but when they did do it, we, of course, were very thankful for that. Our kids got older and here's what we expected our kids to do on Sunday.

Bring your Bible, stand for scripture reading, sing, take notes, do everything up to communion. They were required to do all of that. And we would have, do you remember, Haley, what we did? We had for every three sermon notes, what'd you get, like a dollar or something when you were littler?

By the way, did you collect any money for reading the Bible, talking about grace? A hundred dollars. You read through all the Bible in the Abendroth household? Well, you have to be in Abendroth. You just can't come to her house and read it.

But if you read the Bible, you get a hundred dollars. Check them off and go. I mean, whatever you want to do to try to encourage that. And you say, that's a reward. You're trying to bribe your children.

And? Okay. When we'd come to church, by the way, parents, if you come with that heart of drudgery, don't want to show up, it's not exciting, they're going to get that vibe, right? But if you say today, we're going to go learn about God's word and here's what we're going to go do.

After Sunday night in Los Angeles, we would always take the kids for a baniya cones is what we would always get. You know what a baniya cone is? I didn't know what a baniya cone was either, but I went to Los Angeles drive-thru at McDonald's and I'd say I'd like four vanilla cones.

And they're like, okay, como? Como se dice? Vanilla? Baniya? And so I just take the V and make it into a B. You guys in the back know. And I take the two L's and I make it into a Y. Instead of saying vanilla, it's baniya.

And they're like, okay, pull up. Two baniya cones, pull on up. There's, of course, sometimes at church there are things that go on that maybe aren't that exciting, but it's just like when you're training your children with the Bible at dinner time that I'm going to talk about in a little bit.

Let's see. I've told you this story before when I would teach the children the Bible, I would say, I love the Bible. I remember even doing this in front of the kids. You're looking at me like, who are you?

But I was trying to tell the kids this is not exciting because, I mean, this is exciting because what's the opposite? All right, it's Bible time. Everybody line up. Alphabetical order. You're going to love this.

That's not how you're going to encourage people. I get to study the Bible. And by the way, there are exciting things in the Bible. We'll get to that in just a second. No, I'll just talk about it. At home, okay, before I forget, if you have older kids and you come to church, I would give them assignments, right?

I would tell them, here's what I'd like you to get done today. Here's what I want you to do for ministry opportunities. Here's who I'd like you to go talk to. Don't, you know, hover around me and everything else.

Go do this, that, or the other. And one of the most difficult things was trying to figure out things for them to do. So in our house at home, I know Luke was a young man and men struggle with laziness more than girls do.

So I would have Luke do an hour's worth of outside work at 13, 14 years old. Every day he had an hour's worth of work to do. The hardest part about that job was what? Trying to figure out what he was going to do.

Remember what you did yesterday, Luke? Undo that and put it back and then kind of redo it. But you're trying to plan on, okay, what would I want my children to be doing? You just have to tell them very specifically.

Here's who I want you to go talk to. Here's what I want you to end up doing. Here's after the service, go through, I mean, lots of times did we not, Kim say, go through all the different aisles and pick up the trash or something like that to just try to get the idea that we're here to serve the other people and they've got something to do, then just show up.

I know people that say, well, my kids don't sing. My kids don't stand up and do scripture reading. My kids don't pay attention. My kids don't read the Bible. They don't bring the Bible. Now, if you're a brand new Christian, I understand, but if you're not a brand new Christian, that's on you.

And I don't think it's too late to change, but the Avendroths, we sing, well, I'm not a Christian. I didn't ask you if you're a Christian, you sing. And by the way, I know how to make things very hard for you at home, or I not know how to make things very good for you at home.

And so the Bible teaches clearly the way of the transgressor is hard. And if you don't want to do these things, there are going to be consequences. And I will try to coach you in a variety of different ways to do the right thing.

But parents, if your kids are little, you just expect them to obey and you coach them and you, you tell them good things. You correct them. If you have older kids, I think there's things that the children who are older, 15, 16, 18 year olds can come and do and serve while they're with you.

I'm going pretty fast because time goes by fast. Questions so far about what we do at church. All right, let me help you have your kids kind of sit with you at church as I describe what we do for Bible time at home when the kids were little.

You can tailor it whatever way you want. For us, it was the dinner table was better than breakfast. So we'd have dinner and then we'd clear all the food and the plates and the drinks away. Why would we, why would we put all those away?

Because the kids will play with them, right? Right. So let's get rid of all those. We'd have Bibles for every kid and a hymnal for every kid. And so they'd get those out and it'd be somebody's job to go get those.

And we sat down and the first time I did it, I think we probably went like three hours and 45 minutes. Start off just basic, you know, we're going to just study the Bible for a few minutes and the kids sitting there and what you want your kids to do on Sunday, have your kids do there.

So what's a good idea? Okay. Everybody go to the bathroom before we start, right? Any nose that need to be picked, pick now, right? Just take care of all those things. Put your phones to the side and, you know, get rid of all those things and then sit down and tell the children, all right, you're going to just sit here as we do this, because it's going to be exciting.

And by the way, our children, they would have to say before they got up from a meal, Haley to remember, may I please be excused? No, you may not, because we're going to have Bible time. The next thing that they had to say was, mom, thank you for dinner tonight.

It was good. Well, I can't, I can't make them lie. It was mostly good. No, just kidding. When I made it, it wasn't as good. And what was the third thing I had to say? May I please be excused? That was, oh, and then when they finally got up after Bible time, push their chair in.

Nobody pushes chairs in anymore. I'm telling you, so many people come to my office and don't push their chairs in, but the discipleship guys, no, push the chair in. I would hire people based on did they push the chair in or not afterwards.

Okay, good. So may I please be excused? No, we're going to have Bible time. That was a good dinner, mom, thank you. And then when they're done, push the chairs in. So now it's Bible time. Everybody's got a Bible.

Everybody's got a hymnal. And of course, if you've got little tiny kids, they can have a beginner's Bible, et cetera, and a hymnal. And I would just go through sections. For instance, I would have every kid pick their favorite song and we would sing it.

The little kid gets to pick and we would, I mean, I don't know how many times we sang This Little Light of Mine. A lot. Climbing, climbing Jacob's Ladder. A lot. Little Bunny Foo Foo. A lot. No, they have to be Christian songs.

And everybody take turns. We would sing, right? So the two-year-old gets to pick. Zacchaeus was in a tree. And then the old ones get to pick. And then mom and dad get to pick if we've got enough time.

So one of the things we did is we would sing. And the kids would sing and I would sing. And so by the way, if you're at home singing with your kids, guess what your kids do when you go to church? We sing.

Well, why aren't you singing? Well, I don't want to. Okay, well, then now we'll deal with that. Then I would get the Bible out. And here's the easiest way to do it. Men go to, if you're the dad, you should be doing this.

Of course, when the dads are gone, moms can, of course. But the dad gets the Bible out and says, today we're going to learn from God's word. And it's going to be from, we're going to look at the book called Exodus.

And then I began to ask questions of the children about what we learned the day before. So let's say today is Exodus 2. The day before are two days earlier. What's Exodus 1? What did it teach us? And I would tell the older kids, you don't get to answer first.

And I would look at the little kids. What's Exodus 2 about? Or Exodus 1 about? And the little two-year-old would do the right answer. Jesus. Good. All right. Sometimes we'd put M &Ms out. And if you got the right answer, you got an M &M.

And if you're willing to bet high stakes, because I used to go to Vegas every other week. I did, but that was for work. I like that laugh. All right. Anybody want a 5-M &M question? But it's going to be harder.

And if you get the 5-M &M question right, you're going to be set. So I'd go ask every child one of the questions. And of course, the older kids were dying to answer for the young ones because they want them to get the right questions too.

And then I would read Exodus 2. And I would say, what did this teach us about God? And what does this teach us about sin, our humans? Because then that will lead us to that we need the Lord Jesus, right?

To bridge that gap. And so we would read. And then we could pray for each other. You can have prayer journals. You can read other books like Pilgrim's Progress, whatever it is. Do a five-minute one to start.

Pray. Good job, kids. Way to go. Get the ice cream out. Do something fun. And off to the next day. You say, well, what if we miss a day? You're going to miss days. But I would imagine my children would think, you know, when we were five years old, we don't ever remember missing a day.

But we missed lots of days. Then what happens? You go, we have older children. Guess what the older children get to do now? I'd like you to read, right? I'd like you to lead. We have a thing in our discipleship where the guys have to give verses.