Training Children - Proverbs 22:6 - The Wise Family

The modern goal in raising kids is comfort and safety until those children are old enough to decide who they're going to be. Christian, our goal in parenting is the exact opposite, all right? Our goal in parenting is not to provide enough time for a child to figure out their destination in life. Our goal as a parent is to help them conform to the set pattern and destination that God has for them. And I'm going to tell you something, you will never be more countercultural as a Christian than when you decide to parent a child to conform to God's dreams for their life rather than the American dream, all right? If you have a copy of scripture, I want to invite you to take it out and turn with me to Proverbs chapter 22.

Today we're going to be chasing down this big idea. Wise families train their kids, all right? I love the term train that comes up in this passage in Proverbs because training means equipping. Training means to dedicate someone for a particular purpose. Training means to set them on a path to godliness and to maturity rather than making sure that they have the space and the experiences to figure it all out on their own. There is a massive difference in the way that Christians are called to raise their kids than the world. And I get it because listen, here's what the world says many times to believers. The world says, why are you so uptight?

Why are you trying to mold them and shape them in this particular destination? Why not let them kind of figure it out on their own? Well, here's the reason. Because our goals for kids are not nice, decent people with good jobs. That is too low a bar. Christians are not raising kids for the American dream. We are raising kids for God's dreams. We are not raising kids in hopes that they will, listen, attain a nice life. We are trying to raise radical people that are willing to give their lives away.

And that is a totally different thing. And to do that, you've got to train someone. To do that, you've got to use all the little kids play Minecraft. They've got the little blocks and all this stuff. You've got to think of every day of their life as a block to lay the foundation for a set path that God has for them.

That's what it means to train kids. And that's what we're going to get into one verse here this weekend. I'm going to read it a bunch of times. So let me go ahead and just read it once and then we'll just keep going back through it and circle it a bunch of times. I'll be talking through this verse and make sure we understand it. And then we'll come on the backside of this message with three quick applications that hopefully will change our tomorrow based on what we have learned today. All right. Proverbs 22, verse 6.

Here's what it says. This is a popular passage. Some of you might know it. Train up a child in the way he should go.

Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. Now, I know that, man, right on the heels of Kids Week and at all of our campuses, we have a lot of new people here this summer. We have probably a lot of new people here even this very weekend. But I want you to pause and tell you kind of where we're going this summer. We are going to be spending five or six weeks in the book of Proverbs specifically looking at areas where the wisdom literature of God intersects family life. Okay.

And one of those is here today with training kids. But I want to make sure you understand the nature of wisdom literature in general. Wisdom literature is one of the greatest gifts that God ever gave humanity.

Okay. Listen, he didn't just create us. He gave us literature in the book, in the Bible, that we can navigate the world by. He gave us this beautiful gift. It is such a gift that I rarely do a personal devotion in my life without a piece of that devotion, at least a little bit of it, being part of the wisdom literature because I understand there's a lot of things that I want to glean from God's instructions for the world that he created that I would rather learn from him than learn by experience. Okay.

By the regret of kind of having walked through something very, very hard. The Bible is filled with things that we just need to know, and he wants us to know them on the front end because he loves us that much. He wants you to know that co-signing a car loan for a friend is a disaster.

Okay. He wants us to know that when we're always talking, sin is inevitable. He wants us to fully understand some things about his world, that sex outside of marriage won't just drain your health, it can drain your wealth and your whole life. He wants us to see a lot of these things before we have to go out and to live them. He wants you to know right on the front end that being friends with the gossip will burn you at some point in your life.

Like he wants to give you that on the front end. It's a beautiful thing that God has given us, the wisdom literature, and that's what we're talking about this summer. That's what we're getting into today.

Now, one more quick thing about this, man, why are we doing this now? And probably in every single generation, a preacher stands up with wisdom literature and they say it has never been more needed than it is right now. And they're probably all right. Every time you get into a new generation, it's like, man, we got a whole new set of things that we're dealing with. And I'm going to go ahead and say that today. You know, we have a whole new set of things. And generationally speaking, we've never needed wisdom, maybe more than we need it now in general.

And for the family in particular. All right, you think about it like this. Wisdom is life by God's design. And we learn that from the Bible. And then I want you to also see this.

All right. We need wisdom from God's Bible to combat the foolishness that we find in the world. Wisdom is life by God's design. And we need it because we find ourselves in a foolish world. And those influences are coming upon us all the time. We live in a day and age where families think it's normal to take on so much debt that you're crushed.

And they just can't even breathe. You know, we live in a day and age where there are major movements throughout our nation that decry the, quote, patriarchy of the nuclear family. We live in a day and age where people are scared because of the backlash of culture to even define what a woman is. This is where we live. Do you think we need wisdom? Do you think our kids need wisdom? Do you think our families need wisdom? Oh, those are national issues. That's big.

Something far away. Okay. How do you stop the money fights that are right there at home? College students, how do we as individuals and families actually engage with the vulnerable, with the poor in a way that helps without hurting? Parents that are going to send your kids off to school for the first time because we got a bunch of those.

All right. This church is dripping with young families that have that age and you're trying to figure that out. Man, how do we talk to our kids about biblical sexuality knowing that what we say, depending on where they are, is already labeled hate speech? We need the wisdom from the scripture maybe more than we have ever needed it right now. And that's why we're getting into that this summer.

And this is why we're going to hit a few of these issues. And the first one is this idea of training up a child. All right. Train up a child in the way that he should go. And even when he is old, he will not depart from it. Let's just kind of walk through this.

All right. What does train up mean? Train up means to instill a particular skill set or set of behaviors. Training means to equip somebody for a particular task. Biblically speaking, training, you could cross reference this and other Old Testament passages. Training means to dedicate something for a particular purpose. That's what we are to do with our kids.

They're not figuring it out on their own. We are to dedicate them to a particular way of life, to initiate them into a path that takes them into Godly maturity and love for God's mission. It is to set, if I could say it very simply, it is to set their direction or maybe a little more catchy. Training is aiming.

That's what it is. It is trying to get their direction to be going in the way that God says it should go. We are to be doing this from a very early age, from a formative stage in their life. Christian parents, you've got to understand, and people in the community, this applies to grandparents. If you've got nieces and nephews, man, if you're single and you're in our church and you're around and you have a chance to influence the children's ministry that is here, we all have this mandate from Scripture to aim them, to train them, give them a particular set of skills in order that they would have this life of godliness and to maturity.

And it is the absolute opposite of what we get from the world. Some of you might be brand new this weekend. Some of you might be newer to Mercy Hill or newer to Christianity. Man, this is one of those things where you've got to realize this is a stark difference from the way that the world thinks about kids, so much so that the intro of this message and the first, whatever, five or seven minutes of it is probably enough to make some people's heads explode if they ever hear the podcast. Because the mantra of our society is that the truth of who you're supposed to be and the destination of your life emanates from you and is to be validated by the community. That the community, your family, especially your dad, is supposed to be there to validate whatever it is that's coming out of you in whatever direction that you have decided it is every modern Disney movie that has ever been. All right, why does Moana long for the ocean? Pretty much because her dad told her not to, okay? You know, why is it like, hey, you don't let your powers be out. And then it's like the whole movie Frozen is about letting it go.

Not that I saw that 500 times because Hattie Jo was the exact age, okay, when it came out. Man, it's the culture mantra. Man, the truth is in you to be validated by the rest of us. And the Bible has it the exact opposite. What the Bible says for parents, for those of us that are involved in training kids, for grandparents, for nieces, you know, if you got nieces, nephews, whoever it is, the direction of your child's life is not set by them. And really, it's not set by you. The direction of their life is supposed to be set by God and coached by you.

I understand, okay? And listen, although this is about families this summer, man, I know we got a lot of people that are not there. We got a lot of singles in the church. We got a lot of young people that are maybe just kind of coming in or not quite married yet or whatever.

There's going to be so much that we can glean. I want you to understand, this might be one of those that you put in the bank for later, but it also might be one of those that you realize if you are in that life stage, there's a bunch of kids in this church that need to be aimed, and maybe you can have a hand in that. Man, do you serve in our kids' ministry? Or are you one that prays for the parents that are in your group?

Even if you're not a parent, you're praying for them and praying for their kids by name? Man, did you jump off the sideline and get involved this year? You didn't, you need to next year with Mercy Hills Kids Week. I want to celebrate this. Y'all, 850 kids with over 500 volunteers this week.

Can we praise that across all of our locations? Man, some over 150 kids brand new to Mercy Hill for the very first time. These families, we have no idea exactly how they're coming in and where they have been. I've got one particular picture that I want to show you guys. Guys, this was one of my favorite stories from Kids Week.

I just have to tell it, okay? This is Corey on the left, Kennedy on the right, from the Northeast campus. And what happened on Thursday of Kids Week is that the worship leader for that campus got sick, and she couldn't serve. She was the worship leader. So they get there, and they don't have a worship leader. Corey, fourth grade, Kennedy, second grade, we got it.

They stood up. I know, hey, can we praise God for them? And can we praise God for the parents and the community of faith that is raising a bunch of kids?

I was just about in tears over there watching them as they are leading all of these children that are just about their same age or a little bit younger. And I'm like, man, is that not a picture of what we're trying to do? Hey, we all have a role in aiming. Training is aiming. Now, what is the direction that we are trying to train and aim these children? Train up a child in the way that he should go, all right?

Let's focus on that. Train up a child in the way that they should go. Now, let me go back specifically to talk to parents here for just a minute because I want us to try to get a renewed understanding of what my role as a parent is. Some people walk around in our culture, and they think, man, my role as a parent is to provide food and shelter.

Good job. You're on the same level as a possum, OK? That's what they do as well, all right? So we need a little more than that, all right? So then it's like the next thing is like, well, our job is love. Like, all you need is love. Great Beatles song, bad parenting philosophy, OK? But because there's a lot of kids with terrible behavior that aren't being trained, but they're loved a lot. It's more than that. What we are called to, what our role is as parents, husband, you know, wife, father, mother, man, people that have influence, grandparents, aunts, uncles, opportunities to speak in, we are there to train them and listen the way that he should go. Now, there's a lot I could get into with this, OK, because there's some different interpretations of this, and people kind of go different ways with it.

But I think the most plain, readable, especially when you carry the weight of that word train. See, you don't have to train a child to go the way that they would go naturally, all right? And anybody who's been around kids know that. You don't have to train them for that. They are going to go the way that they want to go. That comes pretty natural, doesn't need any instruction, OK?

All right? So we train them not in the way that they would go, but the way that they should go. See, we have to train them the way they should go or else they will go the way that they would go naturally. And this is getting back to our cultural moment. Man, our culture says that's right. Give them space and safety enough to figure out exactly what they want of life.

Let them really construct their own reality. And the Bible says the exact opposite. The Bible says there's two paths, and one of them is foolishness, and it leads to destruction.

The other is wisdom. The wise path is about parents and those with influence training and aiming children into the path of godliness and maturity and the love for his mission. And that's what the Bible calls us to here. Here's my question, very pointed, all right?

Are you training them to find God's path or to walk God's path, or are you training them to, quote, find their own path? The cultural influences are all around us, and it seeps its way, y'all. And in my life, too, OK, I'm not immune to this. It creeps into the church. It creeps into Christian parenting, where all of a sudden we find ourselves trying to help them construct their own reality rather than to conform them to the path that God has for them in his word, which is the wise path. And you know where I see this a lot? All right, I see this a lot, where this is what we do many times as parents.

And Christian, you're not immune to this, OK? What we do as parents often is that we are continually, this is one way that I see it, we are continually going to our children, and we're asking them what they want all the time. Well, what do you want to eat? Well, what exactly do you want to do? Well, do you want this, or do you want that? We're asking them all the time, what do you want? What do you want?

What do you want? Now, listen, what I'm about to say makes me a caveman, and if you have not noticed this, I don't care, OK? But I'm going to tell you something. If our job is to train them, what in the world does it matter what they want? If you have a trainee and you are the trainer, what is the point of all the time trying to figure out what it is that they want, right?

If what they wanted was the direction they were supposed to go, then the role of the trainer would be irrelevant, all right? We don't need that. That's not it. It's not what do you want? What do you want? And it's not what do I want? What do I want? What do I want?

God's direction coached by me to help you get to the wise path. Now, let me caveat this before anybody tries to throw anything at me, OK? Because I'm not, OK, so I've kind of overstated this, but I'm going to caveat it, all right? And here's what I'm going to do. Does it matter what they want? Y'all, of course it matters what they want for this reason.

I'm going to tell you. Why does it matter what they want? It matters when we start thinking about God's unique design on their life.

He's given them abilities and desires that we can mold into passions and talents for his kingdom. That's where it matters, OK? So let me give you the illustration, all right? So I want to try to draw and just think about this with me because I'm not great with this stuff, OK? But I'm going to try to draw a river, all right?

So you can maybe imagine with your mind that this is a river, OK? Now, I want you to think about this, all right? This is God's wisdom, or we could say maturity, OK? Whatever you want to say, all right? So this is God's wisdom, this is maturity, and this is the river, OK?

Here's the deal. If they stay within this river, if we keep them in this current because of our decisions in their life, not the trainee, what do you want, what do you want, what do you want, OK? But we're going to say, hey, there are questions that I'm not going to ask you because this is what God wants. If I keep them in this river now, it matters greatly what they want because this is about passions, and talents, and abilities, and unique wiring in their life. And eventually, when they become believers, spiritual gifting, OK? So, OK, if you're like, man, I'm trying to get my mind around this.

I'll give you a quick way. Maybe it'll click, OK? Many of us, and maybe some of you today, maybe some of our campuses, are asking your kids, do you want to serve in a ministry at the church? You're saying, do you want to serve? And the right question is, where do you want to serve?

You see, it matters how God has wired them. Where do you want to serve is a question that stays in the stream of the river. Do you want to serve is you as the trainer asking them as the trainee if you want to be in the river or if you don't want to be in the river. This is not part of their decision. This is our job as parents, as trainers, to say, no, the questions are going to stay within the river.

Not are you going to save some of your money, but how much and by what means? Not are you going to exercise your body and eat things that are healthy, but what do you like inside of those things? See, it's not like, oh, I don't like the eggs.

Well, OK, fine, then just go ahead and do the cocoa puffs three times a day, all day, every day. It's like, no, no, that would be asking outside. I mean, the Bible is clear as day. Your body is the temple and the glory of a young man is his strength.

It's clear as day. We should ask the questions for their desires and abilities, but only from within the stream of the current that is going to take them into godliness. And this is the path that we are to keep them on, train them, equip them. All right. Give them a particular set of skills.

Yes, I know Liam Neeson and take taken and all that. OK. All right. Give them behaviors that are going to get them to where you want to ask them questions about the way that they should go inside of the stream. But this takes us to God's direction for their life. And then the scripture says this is a beautiful thing.

And it's a proverb. We're going to get into this, that when they are old, look, train up a child on the way he should go. Even when he is old, he will not depart from it.

How much could we say here? Train them in the way that they should go. And when they are old, they will not depart from it.

Man, that's what we want. As Christian parents, as grandparents, as people with influence, some of you guys serve and kids every single week. We have kids classroom leaders that are 19, 20 years old. I heard a testimony from one of them that had huge goals for Kids Week and student camp and all that. You're training, you're aiming. And what is the hope? What is the goal? That when they are old, they will not depart from it. They will have been set on a path right now. Let me let me say this. And we've got to say this.

I'm going to get back to this at the very end of the message as well. I mean, some of you have heard this passage and you're already feeling pretty rough because the reality is maybe you have kids that are wayward. Maybe you have kids that have grown up and begun to make decisions and you've got to understand something.

I'm going to say this over and over throughout this series, but you've got to hear me today. Proverbs are not promises. That is a misunderstanding of the genre of scripture. In a sinful world, there are times when the link between God's wisdom and the thriving life that is supposed to come from that is severed because of sin.

There are times when that happens. Proverbs are general truths about the way God has set up the world. And generally speaking, when we set a child on a path, they will not depart from it. But that is not always true. And some of you need to hear today Proverbs 22 six. Listen, it is not to be used as a sledgehammer of guilt in your life over maybe a child that is walking away equally so. And some of your grandparents here, it's also not used as a way to create a little trophy of pride about how great our kids have turned out. Right.

OK. They're not in our hands that much. Man, we are called to do what we are called to do.

Ultimately, they are in God's hands, but we don't want to have to run to the caveat all the time. I want us to walk in truth. So let's get back to the general truth that is here. I'm going to come back to this, though, at the end, because I know there is pain from raising a child and spending 20 years pouring into them and seeing them walk away. I understand. OK, but what we're going to and I'll get back to that. But here's what we've got to say now that they will not depart from it. This is a general truth about the way that the world works. And what we've got to understand is that our kids are under attack.

I've told you this many, many times. Look throughout the pages of scripture. Satan hates kids. He wants kids. He wants to tear families apart. He hates them. He wants their lives. And we have got to realize the culture that we are living in is so influenced through demonic forces and foolishness that if we want them not to depart from the way later, we have got to spend time building the blocks in the formative years of their life right now.

Have we ever lived in a time where training was more needed? I walked into Target with my kids. Well, this happened multiple times, but this particular instance is a blending of two.

This is a couple of years ago and then just last week. But this is what's shocking. OK, this is the world that kids live in. You walk into Target and you find out it is completely immoral to label clothes or label toys, boys or girls. But what is not immoral at Target is to buy an action figure from the movie Boondock Saints, which is a cult classic with two hundred and thirty nine F bombs and forty murders in two hours.

Now, that's fine as long as we don't label. And at the same time, you go to the kids section and the centerpiece of all the children's books is the night before Pride. We live in a confusing time. We live in foolishness.

And what we've got to realize is, like, hey, if we want or if we want to give our children the best shot of not departing from the wise path later in their life, we must help them to form the way they're thinking about things right now. I know a church planter in a major U.S. city, I'm not going to name the city, but he's in a major U.S. city, and he told me that he came home the other day and their child, six years old, little girl, she declares to them that that day her bathroom buddies were George and Troy. And it's like, it's like, really?

I mean, you know, this is long go far away kind of, no, really? And you may try to have a meeting with the school and you're the one that is immoral for not having an open enough mind and seeing that a child's truth flows from within. Here's what he told me about where they're living, where they're trying to do ministry. He said, man, Christian parents in this particular city that he's in intentionally Google and Zillow and all that and try to find the neighborhoods that have the highest Muslim population so that they can move into those neighborhoods. And I said, man, that's awesome, like moving in for the sake of the mission. He said, not exactly. They're moving in because in those neighborhoods, the schools don't try to do such social engineering. I said, wait, let me get this straight.

Christian parents are trying to find the most Muslim neighborhood because they have more in common with someone from the Muslim faith than they do a modern secular person from this particular city. And he said, absolutely. My point is we are living in foolish that we see it all around us, right? And it's, man, it's always been this way.

I mean, you go through different seasons of history and there are things that are just, you look back and you go, how could it have ever been that way? And I fully understand, but this is the moment that we're living in now. And we've got to ask the question, do we want them to be strong and steadfast, Christian maturity, godliness, love for the mission? If we don't want them to depart then, what we have to do is come back now and we have to be able to say, hey, we have to train them now if they're not going to depart then because the world is after them. Three quick applications of this and I'll be done, but I'm going to bucket them all in one kind of big thing here for us just to jot down. Guys, we need to train children in godliness.

This is it. I mean, one verse, one kind of application that I'll break down, train the kids, equipped with a particular set of behaviors and skills and knowledge that sets them on a path, a dedicated path is what the scripture would say, an initiation into the path, man, so that one day when they are older, they will not depart from it. I want to remind you again, Christian parents, people that have influence, grandparents, uncles, aunts, people that are serving in kids ministry here, our goal for these kids is not to create nice little citizens with good incomes.

That is too low of a bar. We're not trying to sell them on the American dream. We're trying to sell them on God's dream for their life. We are not trying to create people who attain a nice life. We're trying to create people by God's spirit that will be willing to give their life away and pour their life out for the sake of the mission.

And to do that, they need training. I hear all this stuff all the time about Gen Z. Gen Z is the next one, you know, coming through seven to 20 something years old. It's kind of in that bucket, man.

Most of kids week was sort of in Gen Z and you hear the stats and you hear the stuff on the news and the screen time and the isolation and the broken families and all of this. And we see it and we say, what a problem. One pastor looked at it and said, well, the world sees a problem. The church should see an opportunity.

The church should see an opportunity for us to enter in and to say, wait a minute, if we have hundreds and hundreds of children that make up our local church, can we not commit ourselves again to training and aiming them in the right direction? But it's going to have to overcome the mantra of our culture. Guys, it is not easy. I'm raising kids.

I got 12 down to five, okay? It is not easy to get away from what the culture has instilled in us, that our job is safety and comfort so that they can figure out their path in life. It's not easy. And what we're going to have to do is to make a choice to say, wait, I'm conforming to God's path, not trying to help them kind of find their own inner light or whatever it is to do that.

Here's the deal. To do that, we are going to have to, as a people become very convinced that God loves them more than we do, that God has a path and a destination for them, and his dreams for them are greater than the small puddles that we dream for them. He has a vast ocean that he wants for them. And we've got to begin to believe that, and we've got to begin to believe and say whatever God is saying about their life and his path, that will be blessedness in their life. How do you get to the point where you can trust God with your kids more than you trust yourself with your kids?

Man, the only way I know to do that is to go to the gospel and to realize in the gospel, God did something that proves all time and forever more that he loves them more than we do. I mean, God Almighty sent Jesus Christ to die for their sin, to die for our sin. All the times that we would depart from him and parenting bad, all the times that they will depart from the wise path, and he sent his son to stand in their place. Jesus Christ walked this earth without sin, but he laid on a cross as if he was the only sinner in the whole world.

All the sin of the world placed upon his shoulders, and he died for their sin. And three days later, he burst forth from the grave and offers them the chance for the newness of life. And he offers us the chance for the newness of life.

Can you believe this? What the Bible says is train up a child in the way he should go when he's old, he will not depart from it. Now, I've already said one time, that's a proverb, not a promise. But don't you understand that from God's eyes, it is a promise. From God's eyes, and here's what I mean, that when someone has placed their faith in Christ, even though we know we depart all the time in Christ, clothed in his righteousness, he sees us as if we've never departed from the faith, never departed from the wise path one time in our life. Now, that is perfect love.

That is a radical love. And if I become convinced as a dad, and this is hard, if I become convinced as a dad that God loves my kids more than I do, if I become convinced that they are really his and mine to steward during this time, if I become convinced of that, then it becomes easier for me to yield myself and my parenting to God's path in conforming them to what he has for them rather than them finding their inner self, or whatever it is that the culture would say. Three quick ways that I think we can do this and we'll be done, all right?

The first one is this, we got to remember, you can't take your kids somewhere where you haven't been. And many of us are like, man, I got it. The kids got to this, the kids got to that, the kids got to that, well, how's your quiet time?

Right? It's like, man, what are we doing around gather groups and give and go? It's like we think it's all about them, all about them, all about them. Don't we understand that the greatest gift we can ever give to our kids is our spiritual health?

When we are spiritually, and actually I would say spiritually and physically, when we are spiritually and physically healthy, when we are honoring God with all of who we are, man, that is the greatest thing that we can give to them. You know, the kid, the kids, the kids, okay, gather groups, give, go. Man, if I just grabbed the kids and I said, man, does the family value the beach more or does the family value going to church more? You see? Like does the, hey, okay, ask the kids, you know, 10, 12 year old kid, hey, do you know a couple of people in your parents' community group?

Like what are their names? You know? Hey, you know, can your kids see, man, we care about generosity. Yes, I mean giving to your local church, but I just mean a generous life. Like, man, we're just, we're just a generous people with our time and our talent, our treasure, with our home, with everything that God has given us. We want to be open handed. Gather groups, give. What our, what our kids know, man, if we ask the kids, hey, man, do we pray for the nations around the dinner table? You know, do we pray for our neighbors? Do we know some people?

This is kind of the question. The first thing I would say when we're thinking about this path for our kids is our recommitment to God's plan for our, we can't be amending, conforming them to God's wise path. If we are not all in on the, you know, what we call it at Mercy Hill, the axe to flywheel, man, gathering with local body, being in a group, you know, having close connection with other people, giving, being generous and being one who is on fire to go. All right. Number two, I would say this, training also starts with a plan, okay?

Training starts with a plan. And you're like, man, I, you know, I'm not great at putting things on paper and all that. I would encourage you to try.

I would encourage you to try. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be awesome, man. Just think about it. A guy told me one time, Pastor JD Greer told me this one time in an offhanded way. He said, man, the best parenting advice I've ever heard is from zero to six years old, teach your kids the word no. That's it.

Yup. Make sure they understand the word no. Okay. He's being a little facetious. Hey, seven to 12, pump them so full of the Bible that when you push them, that's what comes out.

And from 13 to the rest of their life, walk beside them as they're trying to understand it and to work it out in practical ways. Now, I'm not saying that needs to be your plan. I'm not saying it's sufficient to be a plan. I'm just saying it's some framework for a plan, right? It's some framework.

I think about this in our life and I kind of hesitated with this, but I thought, man, I just went and pulled it out of my Evernote file and I said, you know what, if you don't have a plan, I'm going to just kind of read you the plan that I have for our, for our family. It is not incredibly detailed. It is not incredibly eloquent. It's they're not even complete sentences. Okay. And I just thought, man, I'm just going to read this to you.

And it's not for you to copy unless you don't have one, then copy and paste it. I don't care if these bullets work in your gun for discipleship, then great. All right. But maybe it'll set you on a path. This is pulled right out from, from my notes and our kind of little family, you know, diagram that we have and kind of vision frame for our family. Family Devo in the morning with a story at night, there has to be a culture of talking about God and life throughout days and weeks.

Spiritual and physical health go together and neither can be prioritized to the detriment of the other. First mission trip before they're out of elementary school, sex talk before fifth grade. That may be news to one of my kids this weekend, if they are hearing this, okay. Trip to the creation museum before high school questions about politics and culture are encouraged and have to be fully answered from a biblical worldview, full immersion into the life of the church at every level, bend over backwards to foster Godly bonds of friendship and whole with whole families and individual friends marked transitions at 13, 16 and graduation with meaningful moments and extravagant gifts. International mission trip in high school, memorize key proverbs along with other various scriptures before graduation.

Learn about God and the world from a key resource list before they are out of high school. Now, that is not incredibly detailed. It's one paragraph. My point is, do you have a plan, man, if you have you, have you written something out and then none of this is Bible.

I could be wrong on some of this. Somebody could come and push me on it. Well, great. Make your own plan.

Okay. Make a plan. Training starts with a plan. I've never tried to attain much of a goal in my life without taking one step back and trying to write out some things about how we are going to get there. Training up a child in the way they would go and having one that doesn't depart from that when they're older doesn't happen by accident.

It happens with intentionality and with God's favor and with God's spirit and God's blessing moving in it. Hey, another quick resource is our Family Resource Center. I just want to give you the link to that again.

Guys, it's right on our website and you can go to that. Hey, but how I want to close for this weekend is this. I want to come all the way back because I fully understand from very personal relationships that I have, I know that some of us might say to the, hey, man, you don't get it. Your kids are young enough. You can still kind of control where they're at and you don't know what it's like to have a child that you've raised in the faith that walks away and the fact is you're right. I don't. But as a pastor, man, I've watched many people walk through and here's what I've seen. There are mature Christians that walk through that some, man, if a child's not walking with Christ, there's going to be grief, I understand, no doubt. But there are some that walk with grief and prayer and there are some that become absolutely crushed and despondent. You know, the Bible talks about this. Things happen in our life.

Some people get pressed, other people get crushed, some people get struck down, other people get destroyed. Why? Where's your ultimate hope? What is the greatest desire for your life? See, here's the deal, and this is tough, but I've got to just say it. This is one of those times I've got to just step in and say it, okay? There are people, maybe even in this church, maybe even in our campuses that would say, sure, the number one thing I want in my life is to see my kids walk with Jesus.

You might say that today. You might say, I want my kids to walk with Christ more than anything else in my life, and that sounds pretty pious, but I'm telling you, it's idolatry. Might as well be burning incense to a statue. When we finish the sentence, my deepest desire is, and it's anything other than God himself, we have moved him out and moved something else in, and that's what an idol is. It's worshiping something, a set of circumstances, a possession, man, it's something to happen. It's worshiping something other than the creator. Is wanting your kids to walk with God, should it be one of the deepest desires of our heart?

Absolutely, but it is not big enough to be number one. The scripture says that hope deferred makes the heart sick, and the one place that we know that our hope will never be deferred is when our hope is in God himself. You know, Deuteronomy says that God is to be our one thing.

Colossians says that he is to be before all things. So here's what I want to do today, man, for some of us that are walking through the pain of that, man, I want you to try in some way, somehow, as we begin to worship, as I begin to pray, to ask God, hey, I want to release them. That doesn't mean you don't love them, doesn't mean you're not going to walk with them, doesn't mean you're not going to fight for them on your knees every single day. That's not what it means. It just means that that is not going to be my deepest desire of my heart, because my deepest desire is to be you, all right? I hope that some of you will find freedom in that, even today.

God wants that for you, all right? Let's pray. Father, we come before you, and Lord, we declare that the children of this church are already in your hands. They are made up of hundreds and hundreds of families. There are people that love them, whether they're even their own kids, or whether they're kids that they work with here, or surrogate aunts and uncles, and older brothers and sisters. God, we love the kids of this church. Father, we pray that you would keep them, and help us be a church that aims them through our training of them. And Father, I pray right now, Lord, for those in our church, and I know the number is in the dozens, if not hundreds, of people that have children who were raised in the faith, that were trained in godliness, that have walked away, Lord, I pray that you would convince those families of two things. First, God, that their relationship with you is to be prioritized and preeminent. It is to be the biggest thing in their life. And Lord, whether their kids ever come back to the faith or not, you have still called their name, and you are their God. And as hard as this is to say, that is enough for us, and it is more than we ever deserved. And God, I also pray right now, Lord, for families in that situation, that they would understand that the story is not over. In Christ's name we pray, amen.