How Can I Help My Family - Part 2

Audio on demand from Vision Christian Media How can I help my family?

Why good things happen to bad people? The Truth Network Podcast is brought to you by the Future of Version. God has called us to do. And during this month, when you send your gift to Turning Point, we have a special resource to send to you.

It's our 2021 Turning Point calendar, Colors of Creation. I'll tell you more about that at the end of the program, but right now, let's finish up what we started yesterday, How Can I Help My Family? I remember going away and getting some time alone with the Lord and really sitting down and trying to crystallize some years back, okay, Jeremiah, what are your priorities?

So let me tell you what they are. Number one, I'm a person, and I better take care of my personal relationship with God. Secondly, I'm a partner, and I've got a wife. God is first, Donna second. Thirdly, I'm a parent, and I've got children.

The only thing ahead of them is God and Donna. I had it tested when I was invited to speak at a convention up at Arrowhead Springs. I was asked to go and speak to a group of 450 women at a women's Bible study. We agreed that was an opportunity that I should take.

They wanted me to teach the life of David, and I had just preached through the life of David, so we went. You know, we had this thing all scheduled out way out in the future. I knew the basketball season was over.

I don't schedule anything during basketball season that conflicts with the ball games if I can help it, not anything during football season. So I was so excited, you know, this thing is out here in March. Well, then our wonderful basketball team got good about halfway through the year, and they started getting better and better, and they started winning, and they won, and they won, and they won. They got in the playoffs, and they kept winning, and I kept looking at this date that was over here, and we kept getting closer and closer to the date, and would you believe I was scheduled to be at Arrowhead Springs from Thursday through Saturday, and our guys won all their games and were supposed to play for the city championship on Saturday morning at 10 o'clock in the sports arena, and I'm supposed to be at Arrowhead Springs.

You got to be kidding. Well, I'll tell you, I got up to Arrowhead Springs, and we told them that we'd speak any time they wanted us on Thursday and however many times they wanted us on Friday, but we were coming home on Saturday. I'll never forget this. We got to Arrowhead Springs and went into that beautiful hotel up there, which is the Campus Crusade headquarters, and there was a lady who came through the lobby, and she said, are you Dr. Jeremiah? I said yes. Oh, she said, we're so glad you're here, and she said, let me just tell you right up front, we're so glad you're not staying for Saturday. I thought this poor lady hadn't even heard me speak yet, and she's already made up her mind, and then she said something I will never forget. She said, what you don't understand, and she smiled, is that we are all wives of executive husbands. They fund this ministry so that we can do what we do with Bible study, and she said, it's just so incredibly encouraging to see somebody in a position of leadership make a decision in favor of their family. During the afternoon, I'll never forget this, it was one of the last sessions, and a lady got up, and she ran out of the building. She had tears coming down her face, and you know, that happened, and I went to the director of the conference, and I mentioned this lady who had left, and I said, could you please see if I might have said something that offended her? She came back to me later, she said, pastor, don't worry about it, she didn't offend her. She had heard about what you were doing, because we had to announce that you weren't going to be here on Saturday, and you weren't even talking about it, but while she was seated in the meeting, it really became a matter of great concern to her. Her daughter was playing for the state championship in Denver, Colorado on Saturday, and she got under such conviction, she got up out of the meeting, went and packed all her duds, got on the next plane, and went home.

What are we talking about? We're talking about putting our children in a place where once in a while they understand that they're important, making parenting a priority. I want to tell you something, if we didn't do anything else with our life, making parenting a priority is pretty much a full-time task. Number three, keep reading in your Bibles, principle number three is protect your family from destructive influences. Verse two changes the metaphor just a bit. It says, the watchman stays awake in vain, it is vain for you to rise up early to sit up late unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. We've been in the family building business, we've seen the family get built like you build a house, now we have a picture of a city that is a protection for its people. The writer of the Psalms changes the picture and he says, unless the Lord keeps the city, the people who try to keep it are doing it in vain. He's still talking about the family, that's evident. What he's talking about is the fact that while it is important for us to come to God and let him be the builder of our families, when our families are built, we have to come back to God and ask him to help us be the watchman over our families and it's a picture of a parent looking out over his family and protecting it and watching out for it.

Boy, if there's ever been a day when we needed to do that, this is the day. Now the interesting thing here is that the psalmist once again puts us in partnership with God. Just as there's one builder and two laborers and we're working together on the same project, there's one who is the watchman but we're to be watchmen with him, you see it? Unless the watchman who is the Lord is working, then we who are also watching aren't going to understand it. So what the psalmist is saying is we're in partnership with God in building our homes and we're in partnership with God in protecting our homes. Are you with me? There's a man who has written a great deal about the family and I come to love his writings.

His name is Steve Farrar, maybe you've seen some of his books. He said rather indelicately, I don't let my children watch network TV for the same reason I don't let them drink out of the toilet. Now I probably would have said that a little differently than he said it but he got his point across, right? I understand the necessity of work and God knows if that's something you have to do to make ends meet, that's one thing but if you're doing it to live at another standard of living, it's a foolish decision because you're giving up your children for more toys.

What a trade. What God is trying to help us understand is this, that we not only have to build our homes, once we build them, we have to stand over them and be protecting of them, care about them. I want to share this with you because I think it's a very practical hands-on sort of thing. If you're in partnership with God in protecting your family, how do you do it? Well, how do you do anything in partnership with God? It ultimately involves prayer. Read an article written by Suzanne Fields in which she talked about this whole matter of praying, how important it is for couples to pray for their children. Right after that I had been given a book by Patrick Morley, it's called Man in the Mirror.

It's got articles about the kinds of things that we struggle with as men, articles about children and about our relationship with our wife and how we deal with our jobs and how we deal with our money and all the temptations that come as a part of our maleness. Patrick Morley, in his book, talked about seven couples who were all new Christians who started to meet in a prayer group and the result of their prayers are so dramatic that he said, I verified their story personally. These couples were naive new Christians and they discovered when they met for the first time that they all had something in common and that is that they all had children who were not saved, in fact, a total of 23 of them. Someone brought a verse to their first Bible study that said this, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved and your household, Acts 16, 33. They took it as a promise from God that God was gonna save all their kids and they started to meet together, all of them, and they began to pray for the 23 children who God had given them who were outside of Christ. And each week as they faithfully prayed for these children, over the course of two years, all 23 kids committed their lives to Christ. In the Denver Crusade, Dr. Billy Graham spoke about this verse of scripture in Acts and he said that they had learned through their own study that in homes where the father came to faith in Christ first, the entire family came to faith in 60% of the situations.

Where the wife came first, it was 40 to 50. Where the children came first, 25% of them saw their entire family become Christians. Now what does that say? That if you want the families of America to be changed, you've got to change the fathers because they have the greatest influence in the home in bringing others to faith. The way that this is all going to change in our families, in our partnership with God and the protection of our home is through prayer. Some months ago, this really became apparent to Donna and to me.

And I don't know if you've struggled with this. Sometimes we've struggled with praying together and praying for the things that are important. We pray, but it's not always been as focused as we had wanted it to be. And one of the things that gets focused real quick when you end up with a bunch of teenagers in your home, boy, do you begin to sense the need for prayer in your life, amen?

So we began to realize the kinds of challenges that were out there for young people. One of the things we started doing is just, we sort of stumble out of bed and get there to the place where we walk. We don't say very much for the first few steps. We're kind of getting awake and about halfway around the tour, I began to pray.

We don't say anything about it. I just start out. And then when I'm finished praying, Donna prays. And it's an incredible time of oneness together because we're the only two laborers building this house.

God's the builder, but we're the laborers. It's a bonding time for us. And I'll tell you, it's a wonderful thing to see how God answers prayers.

I'll tell you something else. It's a wonderful time of communication. I learn a lot about my kids that I didn't know when I hear their mother pray for them. You may not hear anything else I say today, moms and dads, but I want to tell you there's never been a time when we needed to pray for our kids more than we do now. They're fighting battles most of you don't have a clue about that are in intense battles and they need to know that mom and dad are standing with them and praying with them. And you say, well, boy, you know, I came here today to get some help from my family. Now you got me into this guilt trip pastor and I'm feeling, you know, I got to go home and got to talk to my wife about this and I know this is not going to be fun.

Well, let me just tell you, God wants to take you wherever you are. And if this has been a struggle for you, let me tell you, it's been a struggle for us. This is not something we've come to easily, but we're glad now that we've got a few of these under our belt and under our experience and we're learning how to do it better. I was real intrigued by Patrick Morley gave us a little list of some things we could pray for for our kids. Listen to this, pray for a saving faith if they don't know the Lord, pray for a growing faith if they're immature, pray for an independent faith as they get older.

Isn't that a good thought? Pray that they will be strong and healthy and mind and body and spirit. Pray for a sense of purpose and destiny in their life. Pray for a desire within them that they will have integrity.

Pray for a call to excellence. Pray to understand the ministry God has for them. Pray that they will set aside times to spend with God. Pray that they will acquire wisdom. Pray protection against drugs and alcohol and premarital sex. Pray that God will bring them the mate that he wants them to have and begin praying for that person already because you know your kids and they need prayer. And there's a whole list of stuff to pray for your children.

What an incredible thing. That's how you build the house and that's how you protect your children. You know one of the things that happens as your kids grow older is you become aware of this wonderful thought that you have lost control.

Are you with me? Little by little. Isn't that what parenting is all about? It's the gradual losing of control. Some of you kids think you're under all kinds of oppression right now. Well let me just tell you it's going to change. It's inevitable.

You're going to get more and more control over your life and that's the real scary thing about being a parent because you know why? That's when we get our grade card. That's when we find out how well we've done. And ultimately we're going to say goodbye to them. And the thing that's so incredible is that the one way you can still be in touch with your kids is through prayer. Let me tell you something. God hears.

He really does. One last thing. Number four. We need to get to the place where we praise God openly for our kids. Read with me verses three and following. Isn't this a wonderful passage? Behold, children are inherited from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.

They shall not be ashamed but shall speak with their enemies in the gate. That's the best thing that Solomon could say in his language about parenting. What he said is be positive about being in the family. Be positive about your children.

Realize God gave them to you as a gift. Realize that they're in heritage for the Lord. That's God's reward to you. You say, good night.

I hope I don't get rewarded too much more. I know how some of you think, but I want to tell you the truth. Children are God's blessing to us. And the psalmist uses this metaphor class. He says they're like arrows. What does an arrow do?

An arrow goes to a place where you can't go to accomplish a purpose you can't accomplish. Isn't it incredible to see how God raises up our children and he thrusts them out? And do you ever stop and think about the fact that whatever good your children are doing out there, wherever they are right now if they've left home, there's a part of you that's doing whatever they're doing because you're in them, not only physically but your life has been built into their life and they're an arrow that's gone out from your bow to do good for God. And then it says here that when your children are grown, that you will not be ashamed. And it says they shall speak with you in the gate. And this is a wonderful picture here.

It's a picture of what happened in Solomon's day. All the business was transacted at the gate of the city. Are you with me?

And all of the major disputes were decided at the gate of the city. And what Solomon's talking about here is this, if you grow up good children and when you get older, you get in trouble, they come and stand with you and help you out and speak for you and they're part of helping you. You know, you might not think that's important but as you get older and older, it's good to know you got some kids out there who will come and stand with you and encourage you. And some of us who are children still are in that process right now with our parents, aren't we? And one of the reasons we're doing that is because God has raised us up in a good family. Now we can come and stand with our parents in a time when they really need for us to stand with them.

Oh, let me tell you something, friends, God has a good plan for building good homes. He tells us if we put God at the center of our home, that's the first thing. If we put parenting at the top of the list, that's the second thing. If we determine to protect our kids as a watchman, watching over a besieged city, that's the third thing. And if we bring praise to God and have a positive attitude toward our children that God has given them to us as a gift.

What an incredible thing that can be. The salmon nearly leaped off their hooks. That was a far cry from the day before when the four anglers couldn't even seem to catch an old boot. Disappointed but not discouraged, they had climbed aboard their small sea plane and skimmed over the Alaskan mountains to a pristine secluded bay where the fish were sure to bite. They parked their aircraft and waded upstream where the water teemed with ready to catch salmon. Later that afternoon when they returned to their camp, they were surprised to find the sea plane high and dry.

The tides fluctuated 23 feet in that particular bay and the pontoons rested on a bed of gravel. Since they couldn't fly out till morning, they settled in for the night and enjoyed some of their catch for dinner, then slept in the plane. In the morning, the sea plane was adrift so they promptly cranked the engine and started to take off. Too late, they discovered one of the pontoons had been punctured and was filled with water. The extra weight threw the plane into a circular pattern and within moments from liftoff, the sea plane careened into the sea and capsized. Dr. Phil Littleford determined that everyone was alive including his 12-year-old son, Mark.

He suggested they pray, which the other two men quickly endorsed. No safety equipment could be found on board, no life vests, no flares, nothing. The plane gurgled and submerged in the blackness of the icy morning sea. Fortunately they all had waders which they inflated. The frigid Alaskan water chilled their breath. They all began to swim for shore but the riptide countered every stroke. The two men alongside Phil and Mark were strong swimmers and they both made sure, one just catching the tip of land as the tides pulled them out towards sea. Their two companions last saw Phil and Mark as a disappearing dot on the horizon, swept arm in arm out to sea.

The Coast Guard reported they probably lasted no more than an hour in the freezing waters. Hypothermia would chill the body functions and they would go to sleep. Mark with a smaller body mass would fall asleep first in his father's arms. Phil could have made the shoreline too but that would have meant abandoning his son.

Their bodies never were found. And then the writer asks, what father wouldn't be willing to die for his son? I'll tell you what, the best I know, I think I would do that. I think I'd die for my son if it came to that and for my daughters. I think if somebody came after my family and it was me or them, I think I'd put myself in harm's way to protect them. I hope I have that kind of courage. But let me ask you something, men and women, if we, and I assume that most of us would agree to that, if we are willing to go so far as to die for our children, why is it that it seems so hard for many of us to live for them?

That's the issue. Because you see, tragedy is no less painful if it's by the sudden stroke of a storm or a drowning than it is if it's the long protracted hurt of a disenfranchised child who has been swept away in the world and has lost all hope of ever recovering. And I want you to understand that while we can't always be the ones to stand in harm's way, God has put us as parents in this world to stand in harm's way for our kids.

By the grace of God, I want to join hands with all of you as fellow parents and say I'm going to give that the best shot I have until it's no longer necessary. And you know, I recorded this message several years earlier and looking back over my shoulder now, I see that what I pledged to do, I have done. And I don't need to say any more than that. There have been moments when I've had to stand in harm's way and I've done it gladly. God honors that. I want you to know that.

Well tomorrow, as I mentioned, we're going to talk about why do good things happen to bad people. Before we say our final goodbye, however, I want to remind you that our resource for the month of September is the beautiful calendar, Colors of Creation. This calendar is a 14-month calendar that begins in November of this year and extends through the entire 2021 year. Beginning in January of 2021, there's a read through the Bible schedule that will take you through the Scripture in one year. If you follow every day, you can kind of check it off as you go. There's a place for you to write in your appointments in every single day of the year.

There's beautiful photography of colors, all kinds of other good spiritual information to bless you and encourage you, enhance your home, and hopefully encourage your life. When you send your gift to Turning Point during the month of September, ask for your copy of the 2021 calendar. And I promise you, you will have it by Christmas. You will have it before the new year starts, and that's saying something with what we struggle with with the mail delivery these days.

We'll have that to you in plenty of time so you can begin working on it in November and be all ready for the new year. Thank you so much for joining us today. Be sure and join us tomorrow right here on this Good Station as we answer the question, Why do good things happen to bad people? Today's message originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Senior Pastor, Dr David Jeremiah.

We'd love to hear how Turning Point is impacting your life. Please tell us at Turning Point, Post Office Box 3838, San Diego, CA 92163, or visit our website at davidjeremiah.org. Ask for your copy of our 14-month 2021 calendar, Colors of Creation, highlighting God's breathtaking handiwork.

It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard and New International versions and in Standard or Large Print in the New King James, with notes from over 40 years of study by Dr Jeremiah. Visit davidjeremiah.org forward slash radio for details. I'm Gary Hooke Fleet. Join us tomorrow as we continue, God, I need some answers. Thanks for taking time to listen to this audio on demand from Vision Christian Media. To find out more about us, go to vision.org.au