The Heart of Communication

Introduction

I want to turn your attention this morning to Proverbs 20. Proverbs 20 and verse 5 is where I want to launch from. This morning talking about the depths of this verse, which are I think somewhat complicated, and that’s part of the point. And what I want to get at this morning, there is difficulty in parenting, and we just need to be honest about that. And part of that difficulty is not just the surface level, not the things that we see in behavior, but actually what is deeper, what’s going on in matters of the heart. The wise man says this in Proverbs 20 in verse 5 the purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. We’re gonna go a few different places this morning that are more general principles.

This is not specifically a verse that has to do with parenting your child, but it is a concept, an idea that sometimes matters of the heart don’t lie on the surface. You gotta dig deep, you gotta draw it out of deep waters. That is certainly true with our children often. Behavior doesn’t ref does reflect something deeper, but it also can be a little bit deceptive, and that can be true on both sides of this. Sometimes your child may be upset, they may be angry, and you may not know why they’re so upset and angry. Maybe you think it was something you said to them, but it turns out their sock isn’t on right and they’re just upset. Okay, these are the things that happen sometimes with our kids, and as parents, we don’t always understand right away exactly what is happening, but it is our job to build a relationship, to work to draw these things out.

I would say, even more critically, when we think about more important matters, there’s the things like the sock not fitting or something like that creates problems. But sometimes we just have to ask, why is it that my kid is disobeying? Or maybe why are they obeying? We’ve got to kind of think on both sides of this, and it can be for a variety of reasons. Maybe they’re disobeying because they’re angry, or they’re apathetic. They feel like they’ve been beat down. They’ve been trying, but they continue to get criticized, whether it’s from you or from other places, and so they feel like what’s the point? Right? I’m trying to try to do right and it just never goes right. Or maybe it is just outright rebellion.

You’ve told them what to do and they don’t want to do it, and so they don’t do it. Sometimes it’s leniency. We have given mixed messages as parents, and they have learned what works, and sometimes what works is not doing what you say. And so this is a matter of parenting for sure. Sometimes it’s just ignorance. You know, we haven’t explained something well, or they don’t quite understand something. They either don’t know they’re disobeying, or they don’t know how they’re disobeying. And so there’s all sorts of factors to go into this. Why do kids obey on the other side of this? Well, maybe it’s out of love. That’s what we want. That’s what we would like to think. Sometimes it’s merely out of total fear that if I don’t do what I’m told, the consequences are going to be severe.

Sometimes it’s out of convenience or selfishness. Again, it’s just what works. I want something, and I know if I obey, if I do what my parents tell me, the things that I want will come about. And so out of convenience, I’m going to obey. So my point here is that the behavior itself doesn’t always tell the whole story. Sometimes behavior can be deceptive. Sometimes there’s things outside of our control or outside of our child’s control that we have to work on and work through. And none of this is super easy or simple. Parenting is complex. the passage we read earlier from Luke 14, the idea of counting the cost. We have a lot of young parents here. We have others who may want to be young parents soon.

You have to count the cost. You have to understand the sacrifice that comes with this. Very gospel oriented. It’s no longer about you, it’s about your children and the responsibility that God has given you as a parent with your children, and that just simply involves sacrifice. Sometimes it means giving up things that we want because of a greater cause and raising our children. Sometimes it means abandoning a conversation we’re having because we need to go take care of a little one and make sure they’re doing the right thing or that they’re safe. These are the types of things that happen in parenting every single day, and it’s just part of the process. And as parents, it’s our job to build this relationship so we can help our children grow.

We help them learn, we help them develop. And of course, even in the middle of that, we have to understand that every child is different. And it may be harder with some children than others. Those of us who are parents fully understand this. It doesn’t mean one children is bad, one child is bad and one child is good. It’s just personalities are different. And there’s my two older children, they’re not here, so I can talk about them. They are completely different. I mean, different in almost every way. Chelsea is much more extroverted and outgoing. Titus is much more quiet and introverted. They are a year and a half apart. They were raised almost exactly the same way. Now, maybe there’s a difference between how we’ve raised them and how we’ve raised our two younger ones, because hopefully we’ve grown as parents over the years.

But those two have experienced much of the same things, and yet they are completely different. And those of you who have particularly multiple children, who have three, four, five, seven children, you know there are differences in all of these children. You can’t just peg them as all the same and do exactly the same thing with every child. It takes work and sacrifice. Some of you who are beginning to have multiple children, you’re learning this in the process. That maybe the things that you did with your first or your second child don’t work exactly the same way with your third or your fourth. And so you have to modify, you have to change, you have to work through it. And as we’re talking about the importance of the heart, I do want to be clear as I before I get much further that we are going to talk about discipline later.

And so the idea of digging in to the heart of a child’s behavior, asking why they are doing this, what’s the impetus behind what’s happening here, that does not mean that we don’t correct bad behavior, or that we allow emotional reasons to excuse poor behavior. That’s not the goal we’re headed toward here. It is just the reality that as parents we need to be tapped into our children, and that’s what we’re gonna talk about this morning with this idea of communication. That the goal is to address the child’s heart rather than just merely modifying behavior. And it’s easy as a parent to get caught in that trap. We’re busy, things are going on, people are looking at us, whatever the situation is, and we feel like it needs to be handled now, and it’s so easy to overlook or to make a mistake in presumption of thinking we know what’s going on and quickly snap in the situation just to get the behavior to stop.

Now, I understand sometimes the behavior has to stop, and we may have to do things like remove a child from a situation or those sorts of things, but we cannot neglect the heart. And when we do so, it’s going to build up bitterness and resentment and problems in our child’s heart that when we’ll have to deal with later. And those of us who have some experience with children at this point understand the difficulties of this. And I’ve already talked about our need to apologize at times and to say I reacted too quickly or I didn’t understand the whole situation or whatever might have happened. Our children need to know that our concern is for them and their care and not just not embarrassing us, or whatever the reason may be.

Now, at some point, our child will reach a stage where they will make their own choices, and it’s up to them how they’re going to behave and the things that they’re going to do. But when they are four years old, their behavior is mostly on me as their parent and what I’ve allowed them to do, how I’ve allowed them to act. And that is an uncomfortable reality that us as parents, we have all recognized at some point. Sometimes we live in delusion and we like to think it’s not that. But the reality is it relates to what we have done and how we have parented them, and that’s why we want to talk about this. This is a learning process. And as parents, I also want us to understand that we need to give ourselves grace.

The goal in none of these lessons that Jonathan and I are either one or doing is to guilt you and make you feel terrible. It is simply to speak truth. And by the way, they are truths. Jonathan said this in his first sermon, and I am happy to say it again. These are truths that we both need too, as young, well, youngish men. I’m I hope I’m still kind of young. Jonathan’s young, who are still raising our kids. We are not standing before you as perfect examples who always do it right. That is certainly not the case. But we do want to look to biblical principles and we want to speak truth, whether we’re weak in these areas or not. We have to hear it ourselves too.

And so these are not to just make you feel guilty and horrible about yourself and recognize all the mistakes you’ve made. We’ve all made mistakes, we’re all learning. it’s so valuable to have our parents or other older members who can guide us along the way with biblical principles as well as we work through this, and sometimes they are a voice of reason when we are caught up in our delusions. I’ve had this happen before, and usually it’s done very gently with an older member that points something out or point out a behavior. And as younger parents or middle-aged parents, we need to appreciate that. We need to appreciate the effort being made by those who have been through this before. They know their mistakes, they realize the things they could have done better, and they’re just trying to help us along the way.

And so there’s a lot of humility that needs to go into this whole process. And when you do realize your weaknesses, have some grace with yourself with where you are. The goal is to improve and to get better, and to use all the information we have to take on this task, this noble task of parenting as best that we can. And so the goal when we think about communication is that we want to understand our child, we want them to understand us. And that’s where we’re going to head here in a few minutes with the other idea of good communication and how we want this to work. That we’re trying to draw something out that is not easy to find sometimes. And sometimes we may assume what’s in our child’s heart or what’s in their mind.

And yet when we have the conversation, we ask them why they did what they did, or to try to explain to us why there’s some problem that they’re dealing with their sibling or whatever may have happened, we can be very surprised. I’ve had this happen multiple times, just in my own personal experience. Titus and I have gone a lot of fun places for basketball tournaments and things like that, and those car rides are great opportunities to have those kinds of conversations. We’ve done similar things with Chelsea, going to volleyball tournaments and that sort of thing. You get a lot of good insight. And sometimes what I thought I knew is not at all what was actually going on. And this just speaks to the importance of having these conversations.

1. Good Communication Is Dialogue, Not Monologue

And so when we talk about communication, first of all, I want us to understand that as parents, good communication is dialogue, not monologue. Thinking about this more as talking with our children and not to our children. Now, certainly there are times when they need some rebuke and some reproof, and we will do most of the talking in those situations. But overall, as we’re talking about the idea of communicating frequently, communicating regularly, this is about a ongoing conversation that is going to be had between a parent and a child. This is the concept, actually, that God is getting at in Deuteronomy 6, a passage that’s often referred to. We talk about parenting. The idea there is that you’re teaching your children. You’re teaching them in everything that you’re doing.

Right? You’re talking to them, it says in the text as well. And you’re doing this when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise, and you’re putting things on the doorpost of your house and on the gates. And the whole point of all of this is that everything is directing through communication to your child lessons that are needed in their life. And ultimately, where we want to go here is pointing them toward God. That’s where we want that communication to continually be going, as we talked about last time. It’s not just about what I want as the head of the house or as the father, or what my wife wants as the one who’s managing the home and the authority that we’ve been given by God.

It’s not just what we want, this is about what God wants and how we’re trying to turn their heart to Him. Psalm 78 is a psalm that speaks to this regarding Israel and the intentions that God had there for them. That He wanted these fathers to teach their children. And so they would teach the next generation. Children who had not even been born yet. And so those children would arise and tell their children. This is a pattern he just wants to continue. And this is not something that just happens when a mistake is made. This is about day-to-day life. So do not limit communication to correction. Again, it sounds kind of easy, but in the craziness of life, it becomes very difficult. And let me just encourage those of you who have younger children to think very carefully about the importance of this idea before your children get older.

My two children are at Twin Cities Church of Christ this morning. They left about 8 45. This is very typical in my home at this point. There are days where I will see one of my older children for an hour. Sometimes less. Sometimes Titus gets up at 5 30 in the morning. He doesn’t come home until 6 o’clock at night because he worked all day and he went and mowed some of y’all’s yards, and then he doesn’t come home from that until it’s pretty late. We eat dinner and then he’s off doing something else and then going to bed. This is what happens when your children get older. And it gets more difficult to do this unless you are extremely intentional about having this daily connection with them.

And so let me encourage you who are starting this process to think very carefully about what the wisdom of Scripture is telling us here in Deuteronomy 6. Finding these occasions. And it’s no fault of anybody’s.

It’s just that those occasions begin to get less and less as your children get older and older. The opportunities are not always there. They’re not eating every meal with you anymore. They’re gone quite a bit. And so take advantage of the time you have when they’re little to reinforce this concept that the lines of communication are always open. Try to resist the urge to turn everything into a lecture. And yet use daily opportunities to reinforce biblical truths and things about God that your young ones need to hear. Let me just give a note for the children among us. Your parents’ instructions are not always because you did something wrong. Sometimes it may feel that way. I know with my own children, it seemed that way sometimes.

We’re just kind of want to give some general knowledge, some valuable information. And the reaction to that is, I didn’t do that. Or it wasn’t me. Just understand that sometimes your parents, as we are trying to continue to convey wisdom to you, we see something or we hear something, or we’re made aware of something that happened, and we just want to share some wisdom with you. And it’s not necessarily that we’re trying to call you out or say you did something wrong. We just want to communicate and we want to build a relationship with you that is based in love and wisdom and guidance. Our goal, this may surprise you, but our goal is not just to feed you and clothe you and keep you safe until you’re 18 so you can leave.

We actually want way more than that. Just like God wants way more with us. He wants a deep relationship. He wants closeness.

And in much the same way, your parents want that as well. And so sometimes the rules they make or the things that they tell you along the way, they’re not meant to make things difficult for you. They’re actually done in love because they care. And they know down the road some of this will make a little bit more sense to you. And let me suggest this to our young ones here this morning as well. Just like you don’t want your parents to only talk to you when they’re correcting you. Don’t only go to your parents when you want something. Find other times to interact with them, to show gratitude and appreciation for the sacrifices they make for you. This is a two-way street of communication that should be happening on a regular basis daily.

And all of that is aimed toward the goal, as Deuteronomy 6 tells us, to point our children toward God. Let me, before I go further, that note for children is for your benefit. But parents, we need to reinforce those principles and those ideas by the way we act. The way we behave is going to set the tone for how those things work. And of course, as our children get older, they have those decisions to make as well, to show gratitude, to be thankful, to come and talk to us. But a lot of that is going to depend on how we set the stage. And this is what I mean to our younger parents when your children are young to begin this process. To think carefully about Deuteronomy 6 so that when they are 13, 14, 17, 18, they do want to come to you when you’re sitting down and when you’re walking by the way and when you’re lying down.

They want to be a part of that process still. Ted Tripp made this statement in the book, Shepherding a Child’s Heart. He said, You’ll never have the hearts of your children if you talk with them only when something has gone wrong. If our main time that we spend time interacting with our child and talking to them is to correct, to reprove, to rebuke, that gets tiring very fast. And so let me encourage all of us to find times to praise our children, to commend them for the good things they’re doing, to tell them we’re proud of them for what they’re doing well. I’ve heard it said before in the past that you should praise your child ten times more than you rebuke them. I don’t know where that comes from, but it sounds pretty good.

2. The Need to Be Clear

And that may be a good goal to have that we are spending time and we’re thinking about the good things that we can say to our children about them. Not just the times of correction. Those are needed. They’re gonna happen. They’re necessary because we have a duty to teach and to instruct, to correct. And so all of that is going to happen. But also we want to demonstrate love and mercy and grace and care toward our children and make sure that they understand that’s how we feel. We’re not just there to point out their mistakes and to correct them when they do wrong. Good communication relies on, second of all, the need to be clear. So the first part of this, communicating daily or frequently, is really about quantity.

It’s quantity time, right? There’s importance of that. And in our culture, sometimes we’ve kind of put this focus on quality time, right? We’re so busy and we’re doing all these things, but if we can kind of go do this fun thing together, then that’s good for our child. And that’s certainly true. But they also need the quantity. They need to be around us. They need to see that we want to be around them, that we don’t want to just push them away and not have time with them. But as well, we need to have our communication be clear. The content, it’s not just the quantity, but also the content of our communication matters. Proverbs 18 and verse 2 says, A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinions.

And that gets hard as a parent. We have the things that we want, and we think we know what our kids need about everything, and sometimes we haven’t explained all this to them very well. And what we’re talking about here is this need to seek understanding, to draw deep from the well to understand our child and have them understand us. And that’s going to require some clarity in the process. As parents, we need to seek to understand our child and their heart, but we also need to put careful attention on being understood. And those are both challenging things. Sometimes, as parents, we are not clear or consistent, which leads to a lot of confusion and frustration. Sometimes we just haven’t done the work to understand what’s going on in our child’s life and why they may be feeling the way they feel or acting the way they feel or acting the way they act.

And let me also just point this out. I think we talked about this a little bit last time, but venting to our child, lashing out in anger, berating a child does really nothing good. It only shows that mom and dad are not in control of themselves. And there are all sorts of bad messages sent with this. That our children don’t need to be learning from their parents. Let me go back to the idea of being understood and seeking to understand. When we give instructions as parents, when we’re doing the Deuteronomy 6 pattern, when we’re trying to walk with them through life and teach and talk and instruct, and we have expectations for them in the home, which are all very good things. Are the expectations and are the instructions age appropriate?

When I was a young parent, I never even thought about this. That I can remember. We went to a homeschool convention one time and we listened to this lady talk. I don’t even know what she was talking about, but I remember the point she made. She said, You tell your child to clean their room. Do they even know what that means? You got a young child that’s five or six years old. Go clean your room. Well, that seems like a clear instruction to me. You know, at the time I was probably 28 or 29. Simple. Just go clean your room. What’s hard to understand about that? Well, have I ever demonstrated to the child how to clean the room? What’s expected in cleaning the room? Or when they go in and they throw things under the bed and push it in the closet, do I come in and berate them for not cleaning the room and just taking the lazy way out?

Sure, there’s some things they should probably understand. But also as a parent, I need to make sure I’m being clear about what I expect. When I give them this instruction, or here’s another one clean the kitchen does not mean the same thing to us as it does to our children. Anybody else experienced that? Hey, go clean the kitchen. And you come in and there’s dishes all piled in the sink. And I’m like, what happened in here? Oh, we moved everything from the counters and we piled it in the sink. We cleaned the kitchen. Well, my older ones, I sort of expect them to know a little bit better than that. But some of this is just a matter of being clear with what I actually mean.

Sometimes we do mean that, don’t we? We’re in a hurry. We just want to get things off where they are. Let’s just move it all over here. Let’s get it cleaned up. And so sometimes it is different depending on the circumstance. And as a parent, I need to be careful that I’m not confusing and frustrating my children by giving, again, mixed messages, where sometimes I mean one thing and sometimes I mean something else, or just being completely inconsistent with my behavior. Let me talk from another angle on the idea of being clear. Do I try to talk my baby through why he shouldn’t be grabbing a knife off the table? You know, knives are dangerous. You shouldn’t touch that. You know, leave it where it is.

Don’t do that. Look, that’s not clear to a baby. They don’t reason with you. The level of communication that has to happen there is going to be different. They have to learn what no means. A very simple instruction.

Right? This is we’ll talk more about discipline later. But when they are a year old, we can’t reason with baby through the whole logical progression of why knives are dangerous. They don’t understand. Kids are very smart and they can do a lot of things, but our communication needs to be clear and effective. And so reasoning with a one-year-old is not a clear message. We leave both parent and child confused and frustrated. And the bad behavior, or what we call poor behavior, then is actually more on me as the parent than it is the child, because I’ve not actually effectively communicated to that child what is really needed or what is expected in that moment. Here’s a hard one. Do I keep my word? Or are my children unsure if I really mean what I say?

Let’s approach this from a relatively benign standpoint, at least at first. How many of us? I know I’m guilty of this, so I’ll admit it first, say it’s time to go. It’s time to go. The kids come over and time to go, and then because we all love each other, we stand and talk for 30 more minutes. And then we go, why didn’t you come? We told you to come.

Maybe I was just confusing or inconsistent in the instructions that I gave. Because I told them it was time to go, but then I stood and talked a lot longer when they could have been playing, and they realize that they’re smart. Right? This is the sort of thing I’m getting at. And again, sometimes there’s nothing wrong with the scenario itself. It’s more about how I react in that scenario and what I’m demanding of my children. Am I demanding things of them that I’m not holding myself to? Am I being inconsistent with the way I communicate to them? Do I threaten punishment and then not follow through over and over and over? What kind of message does that send? I told you not to do that. If you do that again, if you do it again, if you do it this time, these are ineffective, unclear forms of communication that do not help.

As I said in the very beginning, this is all complex and difficult, and in the moment our emotions cause all sorts of conflict in our minds. And that’s why it’s important to talk through this and to think about what it means to shape our child’s heart, to pull out the intentions of their heart, and also to be careful about the things that we say and the decisions that we make and making sure we’re seeking true understanding in what is best for them, that we’re being sacrificial, and our duty to raise our children in the instruction and the teaching of the Lord, not just based on how I feel in the moment. And that is hard. I’m not going to say it isn’t. But it’s why we need to regularly be looking to Scripture, not the world around us, and understanding how to raise our children.

But the number one clear communication priority in our family, both in word and action, needs to come down to this. There’s a couple different ways to say it. One is the words of Jesus, seek first the kingdom. That’s what matters most. I don’t care if any of my kids ever get a college degree. If they love the Lord and they serve him, that’s what matters most. Now, if they do those things, that’s wonderful and that’s great, and there’s all sorts of options in life that they can follow. And I want them to have a good life. And I think God wants us to have a good life. Wisdom literature says that. But that’s not always how things go. And what matters most, both to God and to me as a parent for my children is that they love God with all their heart.

Whether they get married or they stay single, whether they have a wonderful job or they do day labor, those things don’t matter. What actually matters, the number one thing, and this is what my children need to know when they leave my house, is that mom and dad will be proud of me if I love the Lord. That’s what matters. Jesus again in Matthew 22 says, Here are the greatest commandments. You love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength, and your neighbor as yourself. The number one priority is to love God and to love others.

My child can do all sorts of amazing things, but if they treat people horribly, that is not what I wanted for them. If they don’t love God, that has been a failure. It is not what I was going for as a parent. And as I said earlier, it may very well be that it was the methods I used or the way I went about it that were part of that process. And it’s a sobering reality of what it means and the responsibility that comes with being a parent. Obedience should flow from love. Again, big picture principles we’re looking at here. Jesus told his disciples, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. The principles should be true in our homes as well. We should be able to say to our family that our family is not simply about following rules, it’s about following Jesus. Rules serve a purpose, and the rule is not the goal. It’s not the end in itself. Loving God and others is. And compliance with a bad attitude, just keeping some rules, but not loving and not really wanting to, and having a bad attitude doesn’t match the number one goal in the home. This is where we’re making the separation between the heart and simple behavior. We’ve probably all done it ourselves. Those of us who have kids have seen our kids do it where they’re compliant, but they don’t really want to do it.

3. Communication Needs to Be Fair and Gracious

And it takes some work, both in our own heart when we’re in that mindset or in the heart of our child to try to turn that with the right type of demeanor and the right kind of emotions that we love and that we care about the things of God. And then finally, communication needs to be something that is fair and gracious. This is about tone. Right? So we’re talking about quantity, we’re talking about quality or content, but also the tone, the nature of how this happens in our home. God’s instructions are also important in the home. So the general instructions he gives to all of us things like Colossians 4 and verse 6. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

I mean, Paul is not talking about parenting right here, but man, that speaks to parenting in a big way. The way I’m going to answer Chelsea is probably going to be different than how I might answer Titus and how I might answer Xander and how I might answer Josie. Now there’s going to be some similarities and things might be the same at certain times, but if I’m careful about what I’m doing and I’m taking into account their different personalities and their different experiences and the things that they’re true about them, and I’m gracious and I my words are seasoned with salt, I’m going to be thinking about the best way to answer each person. And that can be really hard. Again, I’m just going to be honest with you.

It can be harder with some children than it is with others. Some of you know that. And it can take more work, and that’s just part of the process of parenting. And so this general truth principle in Colossians 4 is that we are, as people, we should be careful what we say and how we say it. But that applies also to parents. It also applies to children. By the way, the way you talk to your parents, you should be careful. But here we’re putting the prerogative on parents to be setting the tone for this, to be showing how this should be happening in the home. And so if we lash out and we’re angry and we’re disrespectful as a parent, this is hard to recognize. How can we be upset with our children when they copy us?

When they do the same things that we do.

Paul says in Ephesians 4. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. This is parenting advice as much as it is anything else. It shouldn’t all be about correcting and breaking down bad behavior and rebuking. In fact, Paul warns us about that in Ephesians 6 and in Colossians 4, particularly to fathers, that we’re not provoking our children to wrath, that we’re not doing things in such a way that’s going to set them off and make them angry as they’re trying to learn how to handle their emotions and deal with life.

We’re not making it more difficult and worse for them. Don’t do that, he tells fathers. But follow the advice he’s giving here to everyone. Again, just general advice. Let no corrupting talk. Don’t say things that are gonna make your child angry and upset when you know that’s gonna happen. But do things that build them up, that praise them, that give grace to the people who are hearing. And I think this is maybe a line that’s overlooked too much. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. When we do this, God is mourning at our behavior. When we treat people unkindly, when we’re harsh and when we’re bitter and when we’re angry and we slander and we do all these things to the people around us, God is sorrowful over our actions, like a loving parent.

He wishes we wouldn’t do that. And he doesn’t only tell us what not to do, he says, here’s what you should do. Right? Don’t do all those other things. Get rid of all the malice and the hate and the bitterness and all of that. Those are heart issues. Work on those and try to remove those. Here’s the solution to this. Be kind. Be tenderhearted. This is what God wants for me. And it’s what he wants for you, right? He’s interested in the heart. He wants my heart to be tender. He wants me to care about the people around me. He wants me to treat them with respect and love, forgiving. Just as he’s forgiven us, he wants us to be forgiving. And so we have our two siblings here fighting and they’re arguing over a toy or what was said or whatever it might be.

Point them to a passage like this. Forgive one another, even as God forgives us. These are biblical principles that happen day to day that need to be reinforced and taught. Don’t let bitterness well up inside you. You know, your brother, your sister, they do this all the time. Every day they’re doing this. You know what that is? That’s bitterness welling up within you because you didn’t say something about it, and now you’re lacking. And parents make sure we aren’t doing that to our children. These are principles right here in Scripture about the way we should act, not just with our children or with our parents, but with everyone. And they certainly apply in our home. Just a simple piece of advice from a little bit of experience in my life.

Be careful with comparisons. Very easy to do. It’s just not fair most of the time. There’s times when comparisons can be helpful, or maybe you’re trying to point out the good attributes of a sibling. One sibling’s criticizing the other, and you’re like, well, what about the good things about them? And then maybe that’s an area you need work on. You’re good here, and they’re good on this thing. Some of that can be okay. But unfortunately, I’ve learned that comparisons can do much more damage often than we realize. Our children here, I wish you were more like this person. Or your brother or your sister is better than you. So be very careful about making comparisons. If they are helpful, do it in a very careful way.

But certainly you don’t want to give an unclear and unfair message to your child. And do not let emotions run the home. The loudest person and the first person to complain shouldn’t always be right. Here’s how this works: it’s inconvenient. I don’t like it. I want peace. And so as soon as there’s noise made, as soon as something happens, we just want to squelch it and get it over with. That seems really great and effective. But the problem is that’s not how life actually works. And sometimes the first person’s complaint sounds really good until somebody else comes and what they said is examined more carefully. Proverbs 18 speaks to this pretty thoroughly. Actually, three places in that chapter, it warns against this kind of behavior. Again, general principles, but this applies to parenting as well.

We already looked at 18 verse 2 that you take no pleasure, a fool takes no pleasure in understanding. They just want it over with. They just want the problem gone. They don’t really want to seek what’s actually going on. But we go a little bit later in the chapter, in verse 13. If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame. Now, if you haven’t been there as a parent, you’re definitely better at it than I am. There have been times when I hear the complaint and I can’t believe why my other child would have done that, you know. And so, how could you do this? And then, of course, only later to find out I didn’t really get the whole picture.

Be very careful. We all like to spin things in our favor. And children are very good at it. Be very careful what you accept in the very beginning. Verse 17: the one who states his case first seems right until the other comes and examines him. And let me just say this too, whether it’s about your children, you know, in your home and the things that are happening there, or issues your child might be having with another child. Be very slow about the story you tell yourself and what you believe. Make sure you get the whole picture before you start making rash decisions about what’s actually going on. The goal in all of this, then is to build a relationship that is pointing our children toward God specifically.

Conclusion

And what we’re talking about this morning. That’s what we want. Yes, we want their behavior to be acceptable. We want it to be good, and that’s a process that takes time. And parents, the reality is our children are going to do things that are embarrassing. It’s just going to happen. We need to accept that up front. But the goal is not to just stop the embarrassment at all cost. The goal is to dig deeper, to understand the heart, and to point our child toward God. I saw a video, I think it was last night. Some of you might have seen this. A man’s kids are in his truck, not sure why they were in the truck. That’s for another lesson, but they released the brake on the truck.

He’s not in it. And you start seeing doors open, the kids are falling out of the truck, and the truck kind of cranes down this hill and goes flipping into a ditch, end over end over end. The father, who is probably in shock at this point, but his reaction is quite remarkable. He doesn’t scold the children and walk to the edge and look at his truck and disbelief. When he sees what happens, he stops and he opened his arms, and his children ran to him and he gave them a big hug and held them. That’s good parenting.

That’s showing that he cares more about them than he does a piece of metal, even though it has some value. I don’t know anything else about the rest of their life. But I do know that was a picture of a father who loves his kids. That’s the goal. We don’t always do it right. Sometimes we chase the truck and we’ve got to apologize later. But that’s where we want to end up as parents. Because that’s how God is.

That’s the kind of father we serve. If you haven’t given yourself to him yet, today’s the day. You should give yourself to a father who loves you and cares about you and wants what’s best for you at all times. Not your earthly father. We do the best we can. We do what we think is right, but we’re not perfect. But the heavenly father, he does for our good, the Hebrew writer tells us. He knows what’s best. And he wants to spend an eternity with you. He wants you to come to him and give your life, to give up who you are, be baptized into Jesus Christ and be raised in newness of life, ready to walk with him forever. Can we help you do that this morning?

Come now as we stand and we sing.