(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Though I have no friend like you, If that is not my home, then, Lord, what will I do? The angels may feel deep, From heaven's open floor, And they can't feel at home, In this world anymore. Just not before, Amen, we'll live eternally, The saints on every hand, Are shouting, Victory! This heart of sweetest praise, Is written at the man of stone, And I can't feel at home, In this world anymore. Though I do know, I have no friend like you, If that is not my home, Then, Lord, what will I do? The angels may feel deep, From heaven's open floor, And they can't feel at home, In this world anymore. I've loved and have tested my faith, Mountains have risen to stand in my way, But no matter the trial, When my path grew so hard, I have walked hand in hand, With an Almighty God, With God, All things are possible for me, By His grace I can stand, And I claim to be He, And with the Lord on my side, His assurance is mine, Though I walk through the fire and the flood, I will begin to ride on with God. Life holds its truth, valleys often appear, But His Word gives His promise, That my God's ever near, When my steps are uncertain, And my strength's almost gone, I can make the impossible, To an unfailing God, With God, All things are possible for me, By His grace I can stand, And I claim to be He, And with the Lord on my side, His assurance is mine, Though I walk through the fire and the flood, I will begin to ride on with God. I'd rather have Jesus, Than silver or gold, I'd rather be His, Than have riches untold, I'd rather have Jesus, Than have to torment, I'd rather be led, By His name, Let him love now, Let him be the King, I'll a-vast your way, Or be held in sin's best way, I'd rather have Jesus, Than anything in this world, Of course, today, I'd rather have Jesus, Than mends the cause, I'd rather be faithful, To His dear cause, I'd rather have Jesus, Than world wide way, I'd rather be true, To His holy name, Than to be the King, I'll a-vast your way, Or be held in sin's best way, I'd rather have Jesus, Than anything in this world, Of course, today, He's on his throne, Have faith in God, He watches your resume, He cannot fail, He must prevail, Have faith in God, Have faith in God, Have faith in God, And your prayers are unanswered, Your word is clear, He will never forget, Wait on the Lord, Trust His word, And be patient, Have faith in God, He'll answer yet, Have faith in God, He's on His throne, Have faith in God, He watches your resume, He cannot fail, He must prevail, Have faith in God, Have faith in God, Have faith in God, In your pain and your sorrow, His heart is touched with your grief and despair, Cast all your cares and your burdens upon Him, And leave Him there, I'll leave Him there, Have faith in God, He's on His throne, Have faith in God, He watches your resume, He cannot fail, He must prevail, Have faith in God, Have faith in God, Oh, the unsearchable riches of Christ, Guilt that can never be told, Rages exhausted of mercy and grace, Precious, more precious than gold, Precious, more precious, Guilt that can never be told, Oh, the unsearchable riches of Christ, Precious, more precious than gold, Oh, the unsearchable riches of Christ, Who shall their greatness declare, Jewels whose luster our lives may adore, Girls that the poorest may wear, Precious, more precious, Guilt that can never be told, Oh, the unsearchable riches of Christ, Precious, more precious than gold, Oh, the unsearchable riches of Christ, Freely, how freely they flow, Making the souls of the faithful and true, Happy wherever they go, Precious, more precious, Guilt that can never be told, Oh, the unsearchable riches of Christ, Precious, more precious than gold, Oh, the unsearchable riches of Christ, Who would not gladly endure, Trials, afflictions, and crosses on earth, Riches like these to secure, Precious, more precious, Guilt that can never be told, Oh, the unsearchable riches of Christ, Precious, more precious than gold. He leadeth me, O blessed thought, O words with heavenly comfort fraught, Whate'er I knew, where'er I be, Stilled is God's hand that leadeth me, He leadeth me, He leadeth me, By His own hand He leadeth me, His faithful Father I would be, Lord, by His hand He leadeth me, Sometimes mid-semes of Heav'n's gloom, Sometimes there in His lovers bloom, By waters still o'er troubled sea, Stilled is God's hand. Everybody here this morning if we can go and find our seats we will get started and once we find a seat let's grab a hymnal and go to song number 182. Song number 182 this morning we're going to sing our first song is Wonderful Story of Love, song number 182. Song 182 let's all sing it together let's all go astray, Angels with rapture announce it, Shepherds with wonder receive it, Sailor, oh won't you believe it, Wonderful Story of Love, Wonderful, Wonderful, Wonderful, Wonderful Story of Love, Wonderful Story of Love, Go the o'er far away, Wonderful Story of Love, Still enough for all today, Calling from Calvary's mountain, Down from the crystal bright mountain, And from the dawn of creation, Wonderful Story of Love, Wonderful, Wonderful, Wonderful, Wonderful Story of Love. We can sing it a little louder this morning. I know it's early but we can all wake up. Let's all sing that last verse as loud as we can. Wonderful Story of Love we're gonna sing the third verse out on on my cue here. Wonderful Story of Love, Jesus provides a rest, Wonderful Story of Love, For all the pure in us, Rest in those mansions above us, With those who come before us, Singing the rapturous chorus, Wonderful Story of Love, Wonderful, Wonderful, Wonderful, Wonderful Story of Love. Nice and loud. All right guys let's all pray together and we'll open up the service with a word of prayer. Lord we love you and we thank you for this church. Thank you for just allowing us to gather here and sing unto you and Lord that just the opportunity to hear preaching from your word Lord and fellowship together. Lord we love you. We just ask that you bless everything we do and it's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. All right for our next song let's go to song number 98. Song number 98, The Name of Jesus. Song number 98. Let's all sing it out together on the The name of Jesus is so sweet, I love his music to repeat, It makes my joys full and complete, The precious name of Jesus, Jesus, oh how sweet the name, Jesus, every day we'll sing, Jesus, let all saints proclaim, His worthy praise forever, I love the name of him whose heart Knows all my griefs and bears apart, Who bids all anxious fears depart, I love the name of Jesus, Jesus, oh how sweet the name, Jesus, every day they'll sing, Jesus, let all saints proclaim, His worthy praise forever, I lay my fondly love to hear, It never fails my heart to cheer, His music drives the volunteer, Exalt the name of Jesus, Jesus, oh how sweet the name, Jesus, every day they'll sing, Jesus, let all saints proclaim, His worthy praise forever, No word a man can ever tell, How sweet the name I love so well, Oh, let its praises ever swell, Oh, praise the name of Jesus, Jesus, oh how sweet the name, Jesus, every day they'll sing, Jesus, let all saints proclaim, His worthy praise forever. Good morning, thank you so much for coming to Steadfast Baptist Church. If you didn't already get a bulletin you would like one, just lift up your hand nice and high. One of our ushers can come by and get you guys a bulletin. On the front we have our Bible memory passage, as well as on the inside we have our service times and our soul winning times. Also our church stats, please make sure you're turning in your maps and everything like that to our bin so that way we can make sure we're updating it very accurately, and we're doing really good as far as our soul winning so far, but we'll just keep on pressing forward. Also on the right, please make sure you're in prayer for our expecting ladies, and then if you didn't receive your giving statement or have a question you can ask Brother Fur about that. Upcoming events, pretty soon we're going to be having our Rayonosa Soul Winning Marathon, and so we're really excited about that. I'll be putting together just a small chat group based on our sign-up sheet, and I'll give you all guys the details about lodging. I think people are going to be meeting here around 9 a.m. for the carpool group that's going to leave on Wednesday, so if you want to be a part of that you can. Of course you can just meet us down there on Thursday as well, and then there's a the cruise missions trip. I don't know if it may still be available. If you are interested at all you need to see Evangelist Fur and ask him about that. I'm going to be gone that Wednesday, the February the 19th. Also our kids choir is going to be starting in March, and so that'll be exciting, and then we'll have a spring recital, so for those of you that are practicing we will probably give you some more details about that recital pretty soon, but that's just the date. There's some church reminders again. There is a quiet time at our church from two to four on Sundays, and so that's just here in our sanctuary area if you'd like to stick around. We just ask that you wouldn't be talking during that time. If you want you can use our fellowship room for some light conversation. Also there shouldn't be any running or playing in the church. Children shouldn't be on our stage areas in our kitchen fridge area. Also please don't be in the mother bay rooms without their their parents, and then also our fellowship room. Please don't turn into a rough house or play area. Also make sure you're not using our church supplies unnecessarily. Please make sure you're cleaning up after yourself after the service. We do have water bottles for guests and visitors and our soul winning. Please keep it to that. Also just make sure you're watching your kids, and kids please if any adult or usher gives you instruction. Please just make sure you're obeying them as well. On the back we have a list of our prayer list, and so please continue to pray for our church. If you have any additional prayer requests you can email that to us, and we'd like to update. One other thing I was going to announce is we had a baptism competition at the end of last year, and I don't know how, but the Urbanic tribe won, and so uh we yeah well there we go all right. Actually it was thanks to uh the Garcia's, so they they had the most baptisms come in, and so they got the top prize, and then everybody in their tribe got a prize. If you didn't see it yet and you're in his tribe, evangelist fur uh has your reward for you, and so sometimes just being part of the team you get rewarded. There you go. Just being on the right team. Somehow it's Urbanics. I don't I don't get it. Okay all right I'm not bitter okay, but uh we'll go ahead and sing our psalm psalm 148. All right that was psalm 148 psalm chapter 148. Let's all sing it out together on the first. Judges of the earth. The earth. And we also exalted the horn of his people. The praise of all his saints, even of children of his room. How people near unto him. Great singing everybody. Now as the offering plates are being passed around, go ahead and turn in your bibles to proverbs chapter 17. That's the book of proverbs chapter number 17. So so proverbs 17 the bible reads better is a dry morsel and quietness there with than in house full of sacrifices with strife a wise servant shall have rule over a son that causeth shame and shall have part of the inheritance among the brethren the finding pot is for silver and the furnace for gold but the lord trieth the hearts a wicked doer giveth he to false lips and a liar giveth ear to a naughty tongue who so mock at the poor reproach at this maker and he that is glad at calamities shall not be unpunished children's children are the crown of old men and the glory of children are their fathers excellent speech become it not a fool much less do lying lips a prince a gift is as a precious stone in the eyes of him that hath it whithersoever return it it prosper it he that covereth the transgression seek it love but he that repeated the matter separated very friends a reproof enter with more into a wise man than an hundred stripes into a fool an evil man seeketh only rebellion therefore a cruel messenger shall be sent against him let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man rather than a fool in his folly who so rewardeth evil for good evil shall not depart from his house the beginning of strife is as when one leadeth out water therefore leave off contention before it be meddled with he that justifieth the wicked and he that condemneth the just even they both are abomination to the lord wherefore is there a price in the hand of a fool to get wisdom seeing hath seeing he hath no heart to it a friend loveth at all times and a brother is born for adversity a man void of understanding strike at hands and becometh surety in the presence of his friend he loveth transgression that loveth strife and he that exalted this gate seek it destruction he that hath a froward heart findeth no good and he that hath the perverse tongue perverse tongue falleth into mischief he that begetteth a fool doeth it to his sorrow and the father of a fool hath no joy a merry heart doeth good like a medicine but a broken spirit dryeth the bones a wicked man taketh a gift out of the bosom to pervert the ways of judgment wisdom is before him that hath understanding but the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth a foolish son is a grief to his father and bitterness to her that bear him also to punish the just is not good nor to strike princes for equity he that hath knowledge spareth his words and a man of understanding is of an excellent spirit even a fool when he holdeth his peace is counted wise and he that shutteth his lips is esteem the man of understanding let's fire our heads for a word of prayer father in heaven we thank you for this day and for our church i pray that you fill pastor shelley with the fullness and power of the holy spirit enable him to preach the sermon you've laid on his heart with boldness and clarity of mind and help us to apply this message so that we can be more complete christians and glorify you in everything we do we love you in jesus name i pray amen amen i want to look at uh proverb 21 the bible says i'm sorry verse 21 he that begetteth the fool doeth it to his sorrow and the father of a fool hath no joy and what i want to preach about this morning is kind of a dichotomy this idea of nature versus nurture nature versus nurture now this is just kind of a colloquialism or some kind of a phrase that people use in the world today to talk about upbringing children or uh essentially parenting and talking about the influences of a child and what really is the cause of a child's behavior and i think that this verse kind of speaks to the nature aspect because the bible is bringing up this idea of someone begetting a fool and how there's something tied to the nature of this particular child being a fool and how it's going to be very sorrowful to the father and to the parents that they had begotten a fool now go to proverbs 22 go to proverbs chapter 22 and i want to look at a lot of bible this morning but look at verse number six the bible says train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it so this is the bible bringing up the idea of nurture so nature is kind of this idea of what the child is going to be like on their own what is their inherent characteristics their own free will choices some of it even just goes through their quote hard wiring in the sense of what kind of genetics they have what they're predisposed to be like as far as just their intelligence and their height and their weight just everything about them as a person including their own choices and then nurture kind of goes into their environment it goes into their parents it goes into all the different factors and a lot of scientists argue about this kind of stuff they argue about well is it really the nurturing aspect that makes us who we are or is the nature aspect and there's always kind of this fight in this war and i believe it's because both are very crucial and important to the makeup of who we are that there's not just one aspect of well everybody has the same genetics is going to be the same and everybody has the same environment's going to be the same no there's just a mix and at the end of the day we all have free will and because of our own free will well that's just going to make just all kinds of different outcomes possible when it comes to who we are as people and we want to make sure when we look at the bible that we understand what the bible is emphasizing now i think when the bible emphasizes nature it's really emphasizing the fact that we all have free will and that we need to make sure that we take personal responsibility for the choices that we make and then when it comes to the nurture aspect that the bible brings up i think that's trying to emphasize the importance of parents and the environment that we put our kids in and how much that's going to affect our child's upbringing because at the end of the day a parent has the single greatest impact and influence on their child's upbringing now parents don't necessarily they're not going to necessarily be the most influential character but they have the potential to be the most influential character because many parents could potentially ship their kids off to someone else and allow that person to be the single greatest impact or influence in their life they could just abandon their kids they could give their kids to someone else they could send their kid to a boarding school they could just send their kid to the public school or to daycare or or give them to someone else and so that person might end up becoming the single greatest influence or impact in that child's life but as a parent you have essentially a gift from god to become the single greatest influencer in your child's life and you're gonna have a great impact on their life and so we want to make sure that we realize that the nurture aspect is very important now i think there's a verse that kind of summarizes both look what it says in verse 15 foolishness is bound in the heart of a child but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him so here the first part of the verse is talking about the nature isn't it it's saying the nature of children is that foolishness is bound in their heart just take it to the bank children are born foolish in a sense they have a lot of immaturity that just inside of them just to start but there's a way to remedy that that's where the nurture comes into play where the rod of correction can drive out a lot of that foolishness now what we have to understand about the bible is no matter what proverb we're looking at there's always going to maybe be exceptions or there's always going to be a case where this doesn't fit but we don't want to live our lives basing anything on exceptions we want to live our lives based on the general wisdom and the principles taught in the bible and what the bible is clearly saying and do what the bible says here because obviously we could look up verses in the bible that talk about if a man have a stubborn rebellious son which will not harken to his father and after they've chastised him like he's still going to be rebellious that they would put him to death that would obviously be an exception to something like this because the rod of correction didn't work in that one super rare circumstance but generally speaking the bible is just telling us as a whole the rod of correction is going to drive out the foolishness in a child and what i i really want to get across in the sermon this is the most important part of the sermon is just that parents are going to have the greatest impact on their child's future parents will have the greatest impact on their child's future and when we talk about parenting it's a great responsibility that god has given to us now this is just kind of my trying to explain this verse and in kind of a practical sense i believe as a parent if you don't really do anything with your kids if you're not really parenting them at all if you're not giving them an attention you basically just do basically nothing as a parent then you're almost certain that your child's outcome is going to be a negative outcome like it's just almost guaranteed that by doing nothing or not being very active in the parenting it's just going to be a failure why because foolishness is bound in the heart of a child so when parents just don't raise their kids don't give them attention aren't doing anything positive for them it's almost certain failure whereas it's possible that someone could be a bad parent or be raised in a bad environment and still turn out good and that's where the free will comes in and that's the exception but we don't want to live our lives thinking well i know somebody that turned out great and they didn't have good parents therefore i don't have to really work hard at being a parent or try you know that's a bad idea no we should realize that even though Daniel Shadrach Meshach and Abednego turned out great in their environment we do not want to put our kids in that environment we don't want to put our kids in an environment of the babylonians we don't want to put them under the master of the eunuchs we don't want to have them be abandoned by their parents and then hope that they turn out well just like there's going to be people that were raised in the public school system that still have a great outcome are very educated work really hard and it's kind of despite their environment it's not as a result of their environment but then the flip is going to be true as well that you're going to have in some cases a good environment with good parents and the child is just very stubborn it's very rebellious and again that's an extreme as well what we wouldn't want is for anybody to base their life on extremes and exceptions we want them to base them on the general principles of the bible and realize that the nurture aspect of parenting is very very important we need to be driving the foolishness out of our child and we need to encourage our children to make good decisions for themselves so what's the point of nature versus nurture tell the kids hey you need to be responsible for your actions but parents we also need to do the best that we can in raising them and we need to work on both of these aspects go over to proverbs 15 let's look at a lot of proverbs here about nature now last week i preached a sermon on bad kids and i just really wanted to showcase a lot of places in the bible that talk about how many bad outcomes there are in just reality and that's to show that free will really exist that there really is free will and we need to take personal responsibility but in this sermon i really want to focus you know more also on the nurture aspect but you can't ignore a lot of the nature verses that are found in the bible look what it says in proverbs 15 verse 5 a fool despises his father's instruction but he that regarded through proof is prudent so as children you children you need to listen to your father you need to obey your father's instruction and that is a choice that you are going to have to make whether you're going to listen to your father and whether or not you're going to disregard the instruction that your father gives you look at verse 20 a wise son maketh a glad father but a foolish man despises his mother so people that are despising their father despising their mother you know that is a bad personal choice we should listen to our mom we should listen to our dad and if you're wise you're going to make your parents very happy go to proverbs 17 the bible says in proverbs 13 a wise son hear this father's instruction but a scorner heareth not rebuke it seems like the bible in the book of proverbs is constantly reiterating the idea of children needing to listen to their parents why because it's not automatic children decide whether they're going to obey mom and dad children decide whether or not they're going to hearken to their father and mother's instruction and you know what we need to be encouraging our children to say look you have a choice here but you need to choose the right thing and we need to show them proverbs to show them when you don't choose the right thing here's the outcomes that you have here's you know the person losing their money and losing their health and dying young and god being mad at them and god cursing them and god punishing them and you're going down a bad path and being taken advantage of the strange woman and the guy that's a flatterer and the froward man and all the evil that's out there and that's why the book of proverbs has so much instruction to children because parents should be constantly giving instruction to their children but at the end of the day the nature of the child is going to impact how much they receive how much they implement them and the best thing you can do as a child is learn through the proverbs not through experience you know everybody says experience is the best teacher i think proverbs is the best teacher okay now some lessons obviously you might have a little bit more understanding when you go through it physically you might be like wow that proverb was very true but you know what it's better to walk by faith and not by sight and just know hey the strange woman's bad not because i know but because the bible says so all right there's some people we just know we just know that that was the problem we know that there's issues we know about flatters you know i wish that i could just say i know flatters are bad not through personal experience but just i just know but you know what i know through both and sometimes it's nice to just trust what the bible says and use its wisdom to guide us proverbs 17 verse 10 a reproof entereth more into a wise man than a hundred stripes into a fool so you know some people are going to be more stubborn and you give them instruction over and over and over verse 25 look at this a foolish son is a grief to his father and bitterness to her that pair him i mean isn't the bible kind of pointing a picture here or painting a picture that children have to take personal responsibility for their actions i mean isn't i mean what is the point of these verses if it's not trying to say kids you need to be a wise son don't be a foolish son go to proverbs 23 and let's look at verse number 22 proverbs 23 verse 22 so we're first just tackling nature nature versus nurture i think that there's going to be legitimacy to both of these because the bible teaches both of them not just because of science but i i could quote for you all kinds of things from science today and they'll even say the exact same thing they'll say hey there's kids that have good upbringings and they just make bad decisions and there's people that have bad environments and bad upbringing and they make good decisions but those are in many cases the exception not the rule and at the end of the day we need to make sure that we are doing the best we can to nurture them but we also have to try to foster the right nature in our children proverbs 23 look at verse 22 hearken unto thy father that begat thee and despise not thy mother when she is old there's i guess a tendency for men especially to end up or even i guess ladies having kind of a bad relationship with their mother as they age as they get older thinking i don't need you anymore or thinking well i you're just holding me back or being upset with them for some reason you know we shouldn't despise our mother we should love our mother we should take care of her as she took care of us look at verse 24 the father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him thy father and thy mother shall be glad and she that bear thee shall rejoice so proverbs 23 verse 24 says if you get a wise child you're glad the in proverbs chapter 17 it says if you get a foolish child well then you're going to have no joy so at the end of the day the bible is basically just kind of painting this picture of you know a part of the nature of the child is going to have a great impact on your feelings and emotions go to proverbs 28 the bible says in proverbs 19 he that wasteth his father and chases away his mother is a son that causes shame and bringeth reproach so there's children that will waste their father's instruction they'll chase away their mother and they just cause a lot of shame and embarrassment because they're a fool proverbs 28 verse 24 who so robeth his father or his mother and sayeth it is no transgression the same is the companion of a destroyer what an evil child to take advantage of their parents to get financial gain from their parents to to rip their parents off or steal their money or do evil under their parents you know the bible says they're supposed to honor thy father and thy mother and of course that's respect but it's also in the new testament when jesus christ brings it up it's actually paying for them it's giving them money the bible talks about honor widows that are widows indeed and the bible talks about show piety at home it's talking about children taking care of their parents financially the exact opposite would be ripping them off the exact opposite of being a robber of them taking financial gain at their own destruction or at their own detriment and you know children will do this sometimes children when their parents are wealthy or they have a will or it's the end of their life they'll do things that are harmful to their parents to extract more wealth from them you know put them in a home or or try to cause them to be on medication or pull the plug or do all kinds of evil stuff to them just so they can get that inheritance get the money extract wealth from their parents you know we should not be robbers of our parents and we should not get greedy of the inheritance and harm our parents for financial gain the bible says you're a companion of a destroyer look at verse uh seven go back down i guess proverbs 28 verse 7 whoso keep of the law is a wise son but he that is a companion of righteous men shame is his father look this is someone that's making their own decisions of what friends they're going to have and as a child you could form bad relationships you could hang out with the wrong people and what will happen well they'll negatively offend offend you and cause you to stumble the bible says evil communications corrupt good manners the bible is making it clear that you can't just hang out with whoever you want we should stay away from the strange woman from the froward man from the evil people proverbs chapter one is specifically about staying away from the wicked and those that are trying to get you to be a companion of them and the bible says when your companion of fools you're going to be destroyed and look the companion of righteous men shame is his father you know people that are going out there and partying and drinking and living just a crazy life if you go and be friends with those people you're going to embarrass yourself and you're going to embarrass your parents for having made those kind of decisions okay and so we need to make it clear to our children your decisions are important and who you are is important we need to try and teach our children to make good decisions go go to proverbs 29 now let's kind of balance this out with what the bible says on nurture proverbs 29 look it says in verse 15 the rod and reproof give wisdom but a child left to himself bring his mother to shame so again the rod and reproof are a way for a parent to nurture their child and to give them the right instruction and try and encourage them to have good behaviors and notice that it gives wisdom so foolishness is bound on the heart of a child but how can we take that foolish child and make him wise it's by disciplining him and in correcting him and instructing him but what happens if you never instruct your child what happens if you never correct him what if you're not spanking them what does the bible say a child left himself bringing his mother to shame again there could always be exceptions but we don't want to live our life on exceptions is it possible for a parent to just not spank their kid and not teach their kid anything and they end up having a positive outcome or making good decisions yeah it's possible but generally speaking it's almost always gonna be a failure and that's what the bible is saying if you just leave your child to himself if you're not disciplining them if you're not instructing them if you're not helping them it's going to be almost for sure a negative outcome that's why it's so important for parents to make sure that they're giving instruction they're encouraging their child that they are educating them that they're loving them they're doing all the things that the bible is telling us as parents to do for their our children look at verse 17 correct my son and he shall give thee rest yea he shall give the light unto thy soul notice if you correct him it's going to make your life easier i can't tell you how many people i've noticed their child's being kind of wild and foolish as expected and the parent just doesn't correct them just doesn't spank them just doesn't discipline them and i'm thinking like you would you'd be happier right now if you would just get them under control it's like you're you know some parents are like man parenting so hard and parenting so frustrating and i'm thinking like yeah but you're kind of your own worst enemy because you're just not correcting them if you would just take them out and correct them they'd stop you know in our house we kind of have this rule it's like if you're crying for no reason then you're going to get disciplined we don't want you to cry for no reason we'll give you a reason to cry okay if you need a reason to cry you can have one but see then you know what that does it discourages them for just crying for no reason yeah and yet there's so many kids that are just crying for no reason and then they grow up and they join the blm then they become a leftist and a democrat and and they make a tik-tok account and they just cry for no reason they just scream in the camera because donald trump's president and they don't even realize he'll probably make their life better you know in comparison to kamala i'm just saying like if they had brought in the person that they wanted it would have made their life worse just like kids like screaming and crying that they want candy and ice cream and the parent says no and gives them healthy food well that healthy food is going to be better for them they just don't know better they're just kind of a brat and at the end of the day brats should be corrected punks should be put in their place and you know what children should be corrected and you know what it gives you delight in your soul if you say hey i'm struggling with parenting it just seems so awful and these kids are just so terrible well sometimes you might just need to increase the correction now look some kids are just hard some kids are just ornery some kids are going to be giving you a challenge and i get that and you know correction only goes so far you can't just necessarily just beat the foolishness out of them you need to also show them love empathy grace there's a lot of balancing that comes to parenting but you know what if you're just not correcting them if you're not giving them a rod you have a problem you need to implement that you need to get them in control go if you went to proverbs 20 go to proverbs chapter 20 what does the bible emphasize about parenting it emphasizes physical discipline proverbs 20 look at verse number 30 the bible says the blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil so do stripes the inward parts of the belly now again a stripe is typically going to be on the back of someone what does it have to do with the belly it's not going to do anything to your belly what it's talking about is it's talking about a feeling inside it's talking about that gut reaction you have when you do something wrong you know when you're about to do something wrong and then all of a sudden just your gut tightens and you kind of feel awkward and you feel nervous about it and you think like uh that there's something bad going on like i don't have that feeling well you're a reprobate okay so you can just leave all right but for the rest of us if you were to lie or steal or cheat or do something you kind of get this tightening in the gut and you kind of get this feeling and you realize there's something wrong and you know when you get caught or you get punished you can sometimes have the same feeling it's called shame yeah it's called shame we need to bring back shame in our culture shame in america people don't feel shame anymore why because they aren't getting punished they're not being dealt with they're not having any kind of public discipline or even private discipline and yet you know it's talking about physical pain giving you some instruction you know my boss always said this he said pain teaches and it's just a great phrase pain teaches because your body reacts in a certain way when you've done something to harm it or to hurt it and you say like wow i don't want to do that again that's a bad decision pain teaches us not to hurt ourselves and harm ourselves and in the same way physical discipline can do the same thing go to proverbs 13 go to proverbs chapter 13 now of course when we talk about our children we're talking about disciplining little babies and toddlers and children and stuff like that we're not implementing stripes and the blueness of the wound and all this stuff that's obviously in context of much older people and much more extreme punishment type scenarios and of course when it comes to punishing children our punishment should always graduate with the child in the sense that it's very light you know when they're young and it slowly grows over time but to some degree that you know there needs to be some level of pain otherwise it's not really punishment you know if they're not crying if they're not experiencing any kind of discomfort or pain well then it's just not an effective punishment you know the punishment has to have some level of pain in order for it to be effective now it says here in verse 24 he that spareth his rod hated his son but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes so again we want to chasten our children betimes that's typically referring to something being early you could look at this in a couple ways early in the sense that we need to do that at a very young age early in the sense that when you do it right away doing it immediately and not delaying in punishment you know the bible talks about negatively about delaying punishment and how it can embolden the wicked it can cause people to go out and do even more harm so when we discipline our children's we need to do it um early we need to do it in a speedy manner you know it's annoying how our justice system just takes forever and it doesn't feel very just you know a justice system should be quick i i think the worst punishment would be uh when i was younger if i got in trouble my mom would spank me and then she'd say oh and when your dad gets home you're getting spanked too and then i just have to wait like all day and it was just this agonizing tormenting thing because like i'll just kind of like have fun and then all of a sudden that i'll just remember again that my dad's gonna spank me when i get home like oh it's just like this is like so depressing for the rest of the day and i'm just like can we just get it over with you know it's just like the delay it just makes it so much worse and so you know we we don't want to have this kind of over the head thing where just all this delay and punishment we want it to be speedily want it taken care of and you know that is the best way to punish our children but you know if you're not if you're not spanking at all you're just wrong right and you hate your kid if you're doing it occasionally and not very consistently you also hate your son because it doesn't even say that he doesn't do it if you're just sparing it meaning you're not doing it consistently you're not doing it when it's needed when it's appropriate the bible's saying you just don't love your child a loving parent will discipline his children and he'll do it regularly he'll do it consistently that's what the bible teaches now go through a diffusions chapter number six go to effusions chapter number six so when it comes to nurture one aspect is giving correction and that correction can be physical and verbal we need to be giving both obviously when they're little i give a verbal correction but it's not it's not really meaningful i'm not expecting to understand anything that i'm saying per se i'm just i'm still i'm just kind of getting in the habit right hey you did this it was wrong here's the punishment right but you really can't expect them to fully understand until they start you know getting to the point where they can communicate it's verbal and everything like that but you know as they graduate of course you want to be more clear i always want my children to know exactly why they're being punished i don't want them to think that it's just random or just dad has having a bad day or anything like that it should be hey i told you to do this you didn't do it here's the punishment and they can basically expect it they know they're wrong and and that's how you even can tell like whenever they're doing wrong and you're like you just say their name and they just like get caught and they're all like because they know they know they did wrong and that's the important you're trying to teach them hey when you do what's wrong there's a punishment let's not do what's wrong when you get the instruction let's make sure you're listening and hearkening of course when it comes to punishment that's not the only aspect of parenting though we don't want to just only punish our kids we're not just drill sergeants we're not just in the military and we don't have to care about your feelings and and everything else you know as a parent we should also care about your feelings the bible says in ephesians chapter 6 verse 4 and you fathers provoke not your children to wrath but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the lord so now this is the only time the bible used the word nurture preachers are my nature versus nurture this is the one time you have the nurture word used in the bible if you look up nurture in a dictionary it says training nourishment education upbringing so we want to make sure that we're training our child and the lord that we're nourishing our child and lord that we're educating our child lord that we're bringing them up in the lord admonition so it's nurture and admonition admonition is a gentle reproof counsel or warning so we want to make sure that we are gentle in our correction and our counsel warning this goes to show that as a parent you need to use discernment and recognize you know the punishment of children should graduate with them and it should start very gentle it should start very gentle very loving you know light affliction and it should graduate with them as they get older and older and that's part of the nurture aspect when you're caring for them and thinking hey this is just a little toddler this is a little child you know this is a young child this is maybe a teenager you're kind of thinking about where they're at in their stages of life and you're providing them different punishment as they graduate and of course that's going to be to your discretion as a parent there's no there's no checklist there's no you know specific thing here that's for every parent to just recognize hey am i giving them gentler proof am i am i considering their age am i considering you know all the different factors i may punish my sons differently than my daughters even just because of the aspect of you know recognizing children are going to be different that doesn't mean that like sons get spanked and daughters don't it's just i might consider that hey the daughters might be different and how i approach that or how much force is necessary and i want to make sure i'm providing them gentle encouragement or a proof i also think though you have to understand this is not saying that we shouldn't punish it's just saying we should think about certain things when we come when it comes to punishment but we also want to balance that punishment with love with affection um educating them go go to colossians 3 i want to look at one that's similar but it says provoke not your children to wrath wrath would be anger intense ups you know being upset in an intense way the bible says in colossians chapter 3 it's pretty similar verse 21 fathers provoke not your children to anger lest they be discouraged the word provoke is to stir up purposefully or in sight to stir up purposefully or to incite so i think of really the word that you could probably use is like a bully you know a bully we don't want to bully our children you know when you go to school you could be bullied by a lot of different individuals and that doesn't really help you in your your upbringing that doesn't really make you a better person necessarily being bullied being corrected can bring you a lot of benefit you know it used to be in public school that the principals and teachers could spank the kids so you know in this when the public school the parent or i'm sorry the teacher would correct them they tell them the wrong and even potentially spank them but that spanking or discipline is going to be based on rules like if they're skipping class or they're chewing gum or doing something wrong and they know the rules and they break the rules there's a difference between a teacher that's correcting them and spanking them and a bully right the bullies at school aren't necessarily making better they're just picking up and giving you a swirly in the bathroom taking your lunch money just causing you to you know they'll give you a wedgie i'm not trying to give you ideas here okay sorry for you homeschoolers i'm just saying they're going to just terrorize you take your things and it's not for any just cause there's no real reason it's just they're picking on you and being mad at you you know that would be a bad thing as a parent if you're going around and just bullying your children where you're just doing negative things you're just picking on them you're attacking them you're hurting them and look there are probably a lot of situations where children are growing up in a household where their parents are bullying them they're not giving them it's not we're not talking about strict discipline for for bad behavior we're talking about just for no reason hurting their child for no just cause for no legitimate reason they're just simply bullying them making fun of them ridiculing them hurting them attacking them you know we punish our children we don't want to have an unfair punishment we want the punishments to fit the crime you know we don't want to give them a punishment that doesn't make sense that wasn't communicated that doesn't you know fit with the scenario doesn't fit with the child's age when we punish our children we want to make sure that it's warranted it fits the crime it's not excessive it's not too harsh you know you obviously could even using proper you know spanking or discipline techniques go too far just because it doesn't fit the crime just because it doesn't really fit the example and you know we don't want our children to be confused about discipline you want them to get that cotton deer headlights look where they they know they know it's coming because they know they deserve it and they know what they did is wrong and they're just being disciplined accordingly and it's weak as a parent if they know if the child thinks they should be punished and they're not then it shows weakness on the parent's side if the child's getting punished and they just they think that there's no reason why it's legitimate it can cause them to start getting discouraged or have some wrath or have some bitterness or having some anger now as a parent i know that i'm never going to punish my kids perfectly there's probably going to be some times where they might even think that it wasn't exactly right or wasn't exactly fair or they didn't like it or something like that because it's just never going to be perfect but you just don't want this to be a consistent pattern you don't want this to be the regular situation because you can cause that bitterness to keep building up and that bitterness turns into anger and hatred and wrath and all kinds of evil against you as a parent and so you know as parents we don't want to do something like that we don't want to only punish our kids we want to make sure that we're balancing them with affirmation saying hey that you love your kid you should be telling your kid that you love them you should be talking positively about them and you know talking about the things that you like about them saying hey you your son's telling your sons that they're handsome that they're they're they're strong you know whatever it is that's accurate about them they're a good fighter you know your daughter's telling them that they're beautiful telling them that they're sweet telling you like their singing voice you know all the different things that you like about your child you should be constantly affirming them on a regular basis not just only punishing them not just only bring out the criticism not only at you know telling them what they're doing wrong but also constantly praising them encouraging them telling them the things that you like about them you know we want to make sure that we're balancing punishment with mercy it's okay if your child deserves punishment that occasionally you don't give it to them it's called mercy you just say hey i know you did wrong i told you i was going to discipline you but this time i feel like you you're upset about it enough and i feel like you got it so i'm not going to punish you and then they get to see like oh wow and then they recognize and you know you don't want that to be all the time you want to be sometimes so you want them to hope they say like hey last time when i was really sorry and i told my dad i'm sorry and i got right he was merciful me maybe he'll be merciful me this time so then they get in a habit an attitude of you know asking for mercy that they don't deserve hoping that they might get it and they don't always get it sometimes they get it and that's kind of how it works with god isn't it that sometimes when we transgress and do wrong we beg and ask for his mercy and many times we may not even be punished as we deserve but we want to be parents that are like god because god many times does not punish us like we deserve so as a parent there's going to be times when we shouldn't be punishing our kids like they always deserve so there should be a healthy balance of you're regularly punished it's happening it's communicated but then occasionally we're even giving mercy and you know that'll sometimes win over the heart of your child when you show mercy in some cases when you you don't always give them everything that they always deserve you're not just the law but you're also extending grace above what they deserve sometimes not only do we need to punish them but we need to give them affection giving them hugs giving them kisses telling that you love them you know that it's never going to be wrong it's never going to harm anything jesus christ put the little children in his lap you should put children in your lap and you should play with them and you should you know i love my kids love to be tickled i don't know why they tell me that they don't but but then but then they're like but will you tickle me and i'm like yeah you know they're like don't tickle me and then you don't do it they're like come on why aren't you tickling me and it's it's just kind of that thing they just like to wrestle they like to be tickled they like to play and you know we should have a lot of interactions with our children like this we should bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the lord hey we need to discipline them we tell them that they do things that are wrong but we want to balance that with lots of affection and you know we need to make sure that we're having a lot of positive interactions with our children and this would just be a you know my personal opinion but i just think if you're struggling with a specific child if there's a child you feel like you're disciplining a lot just just go out of your way to start having some positive interactions with them just try to give them maybe a little bit of positive attention that you weren't normally going to give them just to try and help balance that out now again you know parenting is not a science it's an art there's there's no real way to know exactly what all the right things are to do every child's different every circumstance is different every environment's different everybody wants to give you all kinds of parenting advice i think you should trust your instincts and your heart because you know your children very well and trust what the bible says about these things making sure that hey i'm disciplining them i'm giving them attention infection and i'm just going to trust the process and know you know that's what the bible wants me to do as a parent go to genesis chapter 18. i think the scariest thing about parenting though is the fact that in many cases you can't really know how well you did until it's over and and that's got to be very difficult it's got to be really challenging as a parent myself it terrifies me it terrifies me to think about what's going to happen what the outcome could be and if i made good decisions and you know there's so many different things i think about like my sons i you know i hope my sons will play sports like i did and we can you know have fun doing those things together and i hope that my children are you know smart and i hope that we can have good conversations and i hope they love have a love for the king james bible and i hope that they love church and and going there and they have a desire to see people saved and i hope that they desire to marry someone that's going to be a good person for them and i hope that they make all kinds of good decisions in their life i hope that they pick a good career and they stick with it i hope that they stay away from the bad influences that are out there i hope when i'm not looking that they're not going to go down dark paths there's all these different things that i'm i'm hoping for them but at the end of the day you know i can't know and i don't think that anybody can know but what we should do is our best we should do our best to try and help them and encourage them go down the right path and we need to give them the instruction that they need i think if anything i i want to make sure i constantly am communicating to my children what they need to do now genesis 18 look at verse 19 for i know i'm just talking about god talking about abraham that he will command his children and his household after him and they shall keep the way of the lord to do justice and judgment that the lord may bring upon abraham that which he has spoken of him so god commends abraham because he says he's going to do something he's going to tell his family tell his children tells what this is what you need to do you need to follow my instruction and they do it and of course that's one of the reasons why i believe god picked abraham is because he could command his children his children would follow after him and follow his instruction go over to ecclesiastes chapter number eight go to ecclesiastes chapter number eight ax 21 another great example in the bible of a parent is philip the bible says and the next day when that i'm sorry when and the next day we that were paul's company departed and came unto cesarea and we entered the house of philip the evangelist which is one of the seven in a boat with him this and the same man had four daughters virgins which did prophesy so paul's just talking about just kind of matter of fact hey we visited philip the evangelist and we noticed this guy has four daughters they're all still virgin and they preach they preach the word of god and so you know philip's a good example of someone in the bible who is on the right path now something we'd have to understand about philip is if they're daughters and virgins and prophesying and they're at his house they're probably not married yet right they're probably pretty young and they just haven't gone under some other person's influence and one thing i've kind of just noticed from my own personal experience is that many cases daughters and women end up start to reflect their husband after time like at first they're pretty much like their father and they're following their father's footsteps but then once they either start dating or get married or following another man they end up often just kind of reflecting that individual and being very much like that individual and so it's very important that we pick you know help our daughters to pick good men men that they would want to follow you know and a lot of times it's like okay well i just want a guy that is really good looking but perhaps that guy that's the only thing going for him and he's just really a vain person and all he really cares about is his looks and so if you're just following guy that only cares about his looks then you're going to start becoming someone that only cares about your looks and at the end of the day life isn't fair because as a young woman you're usually already at your peak and for men they start getting you know more attractive over time for some stupid reason i don't know how that works but it's not a fair game and you don't want to chase that you don't want to chase a man that's chasing looks because then he might trade up later he may not really that be interested in you he's only interested for one reason right now you know you want a man that wants to marry you when you're young not only because of your looks it should be because of your looks but it should also be for other reasons too and we need to be very careful who we follow and we need to teach our daughters to look for a man that has good characteristics that is good character that is you know going to be someone that's going to be worth following and we want to have those kind of men in our lives so our daughter can have someone to marry i want to just quote another verse but the apostle paul also talks about timothy and he says in philippians 2 you know the proof of him that as a son with the father he has served with me in the gospel there's also a tendency for sons to follow their father now daughters i i'm just saying daughters typically they end up becoming more different than their father because they start kind of following the man if they follow a better man they usually end up being better if they follow kind of a worse man they end up kind of being worse where it comes with a son in many cases the son is going to be a lot like his father a lot more like his father and so as fathers sometimes you need to ask yourself this question do i want my son to be me that's a sobering question isn't it do i want my son to be me and and say like no like there was a time in my life where i asked myself this question i said no i said wow i want him to be a lot better than me i want him to be a lot different than me so then i thought you know i need to work on becoming the person that i want my son to be so that i could try to encourage him and be an example into him so that hopefully god willing he would follow in my steps and be a better person so in many cases we need to be a good person not just for ourselves but for the people that are following us and looking up to our example so they would be like us and timothy as a son with the father he was following paul so he was becoming like paul you know it'd be funny i'm sure the haters are like oh timothy's just trying to be like paul and paul's like right you know he's just like that's a good thing you know it's supposed you're supposed to be you're supposed to be like the people you're following okay otherwise you wouldn't be following them right the point is obviously you're following someone to be like them now this is this is an important verse not necessarily for all of us but for some of us because you may say like all this sounds great but i i know i've known a situation or i've been in this situation where it doesn't seem like it worked out but i don't want you to lose i don't want you to lose faith in the word of god or in the system just because of an exception and this is what the bible says in ecclesiastes chapter 8 verse 12 though a sinner do evil a hundred times and his days be prolonged yet surely i know that it should be well with them that fear god which fear before him she's saying hey even though i know there's exceptions even though i know there's people that are just super evil and super wicked and they just seem to have everything go good for them and live a long life i realize that it's still right to serve god and he's saying verse 13 but it shall not be well with the wicked neither shall he prolong his days which are as a shadow because he fears not before god verse 12 and verse 13 are contradictory did you realize that he's saying in verse number 12 his days be prolonged verse 13 neither shall his days be prolonged what is he saying he's just trying to help you understand there are exceptions to the rule the rule is if you're wicked if you're a bloody and deceitful man you should not live out half your days the exception is someone like the clintons and the clintons exist so that your fate is tested but the vast majority of bloody and deceitful men they died young they had horrible outcomes negative situations bad things happening and of course joe's three's friends they don't understand the exception thing at all so they always come and they just accuse well obviously you must be wicked because look at all the bad things are happening to you and we just want to be careful that we don't make exceptions for ourselves in every single situation that we're not living by exceptions we want to live by the rules okay well i know this wicked person and everything's going good for them so i'm going to be like them no don't be like them and even if you end up finding yourself in an exception situation don't say like well now i don't think that the bible is right on parenting because here's an exception or it didn't work out in this one scenario for me or someone else or something no no the bible's still right right okay verse 14 there is a vanity which is done upon the earth that there be just men unto whom it happened according to the work of the wicked again there be wicked men to whom it happened according to the work of the righteous i said that this also is vanity what is the bible saying there's some people that are just good people righteous people and then their life looks like they're a wicked person just because like really bad things happen to them you're just like what in the world and then the opposite there's people that are wicked and then everything good seems to just happen for them and it just doesn't make sense but you know that's because god doesn't want to make it just so simple that everybody that's prosperous in the world was doing everything right and everybody that's bad everything's negative because then there's no more faith anymore then it's just like okay but what people do is they find that one celebrity that one lotto winner and they think like oh look how great their life is but if you play the lottery you will lose oh yeah but look at this person that won yeah but they're the exception what about the the millions of people that played and lost and lost all their money and are just ruining their life by gambling and making all these bad decisions and then the guy that won let's look at his life five years after the fact and realize it wasn't even better anyways so you know it's easy to just look at some celebrity some athlete some actor and actress and think oh wow look at their life i want to be like them but they're the exception not the rule in many cases if you were them you wouldn't want to be them anyways you just don't even realize what's going on behind closed doors most of the people that are actually praised in our society have the worst lives imaginable they're on all kinds of drugs they're surrounded by pedophiles they're surrounded by tiny hats that don't fit and you know that's just frustrating when you're trying to put a hat on it doesn't fit they're just surrounded by all kinds of inconveniences and you just don't realize you don't know what their life's really going like and so you just don't want to live your life on the exception go to proverbs 19 go to proverbs chapter 19 we need to make sure that we're doing everything that we can in our parenting and you know as children you also need to make sure that you're taking responsibility for your actions look at what it says in verse 18 the bible says chasten thy son while there is hope and let not thy soul spare for his crying that if you have young children this is your opportunity to discipline them because at some point it will no longer work that's what the bible says chasten thy son while there is hope notice the while while means there's a point in which it's too late there's a point in which it's not effective anymore also notice this word hope it does not say chasten thy son while there is guarantee it says while there is hope now here's the thing i believe that if you are following the bible if you're doing what we've read in these scriptures that you're almost going to have a good outcome almost every single time i mean it's pretty much like the rule but could there be an exception sure and then the opposite is true too if you do virtually nothing you're almost guaranteed a bad outcome but is it possible there could be an exception yeah it's possible there's an exception but let's not live our lives on the exception let us live our lives on the rule what's the rule chasten thy son while there's hope and you know we get on our knees and we pray and we ask god to help and guide our children and we want good for them but you know we have to do our part we have to nurture them because if you don't nurture them it's almost certain failure and if you do right it's almost certain guarantee it's not certain but it's almost so you might as well do it why would you not want to do it you'd have to hate your child to not give them every opportunity to be the best child that they could possibly be you have to understand that everything we do is going to affect our children go to first corinthians chapter seven what's going to affect your children whether you put them in public school or you homeschool them now here's the thing if you put them in public schools i mean they're doomed no but i think that homeschooling is going to give them the best possible outcome that's why i encourage it that's why our family does it i think it gives you the best opportunity does it mean that children could not thrive in a public school setting or not be well educated no of course they could and in some cases homeschooling might even be worse because if you're doing homeschooling but it's just they're at home and there's no schooling that's not homeschooling just being home is not homeschooling okay homeschooling is where you're actually educating them you're reading with them and let me tell you something it is difficult is it can be frustrating it's time consuming there's a lot of effort there's a lot of energy you know and i but i think that it can be superior if done properly if done with a lot of attention and a lot of dedication but that is going to affect your kids what school what education what time you give them are they reading do they know how to read are they good at math are they learning history you know what history are they learning we have them we have like textbooks that say like american history with a christian perspective it's like that's like the subtitle and i like it and it's still not i need to have like a new ib perspective okay because sometimes we went through like the presidents and i was like there's some more information here okay you get to you know bush and then you get to barack and you're like all right let's get some let's this is off the page instruction time okay we need some other instruction here but you know it's important to still educate your kids have them read a lot have them study a lot learning foreign languages that's going to really affect them you know what's going to really affect kids divorced parents and look i'm not trying to beat up on anybody i'm just saying it's going to have an impact on the child single parents you know you look at the serial killers like the list it's pretty much like fatherless homes almost every single time you look at the people that are being arrested in our country in the highest percentages fatherless homes you you look at the home life and you see problems and again what is what did i teach earlier when you're not really doing anything we're not educating it's almost a certain negative outcome and we see that in the world today we see people that are not doing much with their kids not educating them not putting much energy not putting much discipline that they're just almost certainly going to be a bad outcome and just so many negative outcomes coming out of this world from parents not doing anything not being there not educating not training not helping them you know allowing your daughters to dress like whores is going to be a negative outcome that's right i mean if you if you realize hey my daughter is going to end up reflecting her husband then you don't want to dress like a whore to attract a terrible guy to attract a vain guy that doesn't have good intentions that doesn't want to marry your daughter and look in 2025 america marriage is kind of like at an all-time low in the minds of men today and i'm not saying that's right i think that's wrong i think that men should desire marriage they should seek for marriage marriage is a great institution but let me tell you something in the world today many men are afraid of marriage they're terrified of commitment they're scared to tie the knot because of what our government has done to marriage and done to men and so as a young lady the worst thing you can do is dress like a whore you should dress like a godly conservative woman and try to attract a man that's still interested in marriage and interested in a woman that wants to be an actual wife and as as dads you should have control over your daughters and you should not let them dress like whores you should not let your daughters date sketchy dudes i've seen people not in this church probably in this church but i'm just saying the person i'm thinking of is not in this church okay i've seen people let their daughter date somebody and i'm thinking like that guy would have been kicked off my porch by me physically before i would let him come in my house looking like some effeminate queer punk i'm thinking like this guy are you kidding me and you say like are you allowed to do that yes i am yeah i mean i would i would rather i mean i don't want to be too crass but i'm like i'd rather become a striker than let my daughter date one of those guys being a pastor is important to me it's not that important so let my daughter be around some punk i'll make sure that they can't date physically okay it's sad i mean it's sad how many parents it doesn't even seem like they care at all just thinking like do not allow that to happen you know not going soul winnings in effect your kids not taking them out soul winning occasionally or regularly not reading them the bible taking them to a lame church is going to affect them not disciplining them and you know of course having a single parent household or maybe maybe it's a joint but one saved and the one that's the other one's not you know even though it's a negative situation you can still overcome bad environmental factors you can still overcome things look what it says in first corinthians chapter seven i want to give you a little bit of hope the bible says for the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband else were your children unclean but now are they holy so the bible says hey even if you don't have a spouse that's gonna raise your children right you could still do it and you could still have a good outcome look at eunice lois and timothy you don't really see the mention of the father it's it's likely i can't i don't want to say something negative about his dad because i don't know but it seems likely that his dad just wasn't very spiritual he wasn't really into things of god and yet we see the mother and the grandmother being brought up and it seems like they were the ones that really influenced their children to serve god and they do right and timothy's a great young man so even if you're in a negative situation even if you have you're kind of behind the eight ball when it comes to some of these environmental factors you can still have a positive outcome go if you went to ephishians chapter number five now i just want to draw on the board a few things just to kind of help you and i just want to kind of give you my parable of of of the nature versus nurture and the parenting okay sorry if you guys over here all right but i think that when it comes to parenting one analogy that's kind of used in the bible often is just seed when we think about it and the bible even talks about the sower sowing the seed which is the word of god and it's a parable used to talk about preaching the gospel and getting people saved but i think that that particular parable can also be used to help parenting even though that's not what the bible is mentioning in the parable of the sower but if you kind of just think of you know a man as a husbandman or the sower he's going to sow seed okay now ladies don't get too offended all right but in my parable the ground or the soil is like the wife okay and you have the seed if a man never sows seed never gonna have any children but where he sows that seed is going to have a big impact on how well that fruit tree is going to produce okay and so you want to put it in good soil and the reality is the woman you choose to to marry and have children with is going to be arguably the one of the most important factors ever in your child's upbringing you know if you say like what's one of the reasons why you married your wife because i knew she'd be a great mother and a lot of the other girls that were whores that i talked to briefly i knew they would not be a good mother okay i didn't want anything to do with them and so you know we need to think about what soil we're putting in here's another thing maybe the soil wasn't that great to start with but you can break up the fallow ground and you can actually make that soil good soil again so you know as a husband you should you know work on your wife and make sure she's staying as fertile soil that she's going to have a lot of nutrients because the soil is going to feed the seed okay so you want to plant your seed in good soil and that's going to have a big impact on your child's upbringing now obviously in order for this to germinate you need something forgive me my crude drawing here we're playing pictionary you need some water right you need to you need to sprinkle the water and the bible brings up the water as the word of god in many cases doesn't it i want to turn it i'll turn these visions chapter 5 with you real quick but the bible likens the word of god unto water says in verse 25 husbands love your wives he's in his christ also loved the church and gave himself for it that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word that he might present it to himself a glorious church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing but that it should be holy and without blemish swap men to love their wives as their own bodies he that loveth his wife loveth himself now of course this is talking about husbands and wives but it's talking about literally in the relationship giving her the water of the word to help her and of course that water with the soil is what's going to give this seed germination and it's going to cause it to sprout okay and when it comes to the in the outcome of your children you know you want them to end up sprouting as a tree and again that's not the only goal the goal is to eventually get fruit but we need to water because without water it's not going to do anything without the soil it's not going to do anything so let's think about a prayer bowl if you marry a bad woman or you're sowing your seed with bad women if you're just going around scatting your seed to whoever whenever it's pretty much just a guaranteed bad outcome think about it men that just go out and just scatter their seed and do whatever they're not marrying they're just girlfriend it's just pretty much negative outcome after negative outcome after negative outcome very rare very rare exceptions to that if you are with a god like they say a good mother but you're never giving her any christianity any of the word of god it's probably going to be another negative outcome how many people in this world today they have a loving mother but they're not christian they don't have the word of god or they don't go to a good church or they don't care about the things of god they're not producing great kids they're not producing children that are producing fruit okay so we need the water then we also need another thing you need pruning shears all right and what do pruning shears do well when you have a bad branch coming off of this tree or something the pruning shears are there to basically cut off of that particular branch and in order to produce good fruit in order to have the tree be successful it needs to be pruned and so if you think about a lot of the things that are important to parenting that we're reading in the bible that we're thinking about is you want the fertile soil you want the soil to be giving nutrients and and all kinds of nourishment to the seed you need to be constantly watering it with the word of god but then you also need to have discipline and these are going to be some of the most important factors when it comes to raising your children and without these you're almost guaranteed to not have a successful outcome is it possible that you could plant seed in good soil and not be doing this and have an outcome yes because couldn't it just rain so maybe a grandparent or maybe a random person comes in their life and starts giving in the water and giving the word of god and they end up growing and then maybe someone else in their life comes and ends up pruning some of the branches for them and so they can end up producing fruit but the reality is that's very rare so you know who needs to be doing that dad and the parents need to be making sure that they're watering their children with the word of god they're taking to a good church they're teaching the word of god they're correcting with the word of god and then they're also pruning some of those branches on a regular basis with discipline and of course then you know god willing that tree will produce some fruit now in a in a parable again nothing's going to be perfect especially mine but obviously we're also trees too and we're going to produce fruit hopefully god willing your child at some point you're going to be pretty much done your little water can and pruning shears are going to be done they're kind of on their own they're a mature tree you're moving on to the next you're you're doing your own thing that mature tree is then going to now basically responsible what's going to happen afterwards it can end up producing fruit becoming better than you it could be worse than you of course our children can do the same thing we can give them all the tools we can give them all the attention we can help get them in the right place but at the end of the day we don't know what decisions they're going we don't know exactly where they go and when it comes to seed specifically any seed is going to have certain limiting factors based on its own nature right some seeds it doesn't matter how much water and soil and whatever it got it was only going to be a certain height it was only going to produce a certain kind of fruit right apples or something or oranges or whatever it's not going to be able to get where it's going to create apples and oranges so there's certain things that is inherent in the child and that's with our child all of our children have different you know characteristics about them they're gonna you know they're gonna be one's gonna be male or one's gonna be female it's only options okay based on that you know they're gonna have certain limiting factors you know what if i don't water and i don't give them attention they'll never reach their full potential so every child might have a different level of potential okay and it may be that this tree its max potential was this height okay and for me as a parent like i don't care if my child is this tall or this tall in their maturity and then they're producing a fruit as long as they're just reaching their potential you know i just want them to reach whatever their potential is and whatever god's plan has for them what i don't want them to do though is not reach their full potential and that would be me not watering not pruning doing whatever you could theoretically don't have a tree that you keep watering and you keep pruning and it just keeps doing this and it's not that you're not watering it it's not that you're not pruning it it's just it's a stubborn rebellious son which the bible says and then what does the bible actually say you would have to get rid of it you'd have to get rid of that and you know in society it used to be even in the laws of connecticut of 1673 i could show you the exact reprint of the laws it said if you had a stubborn rebellious son which is 15 years or older and he looked like this that society would get rid of it and we live in a society where we don't get rid of these and you know what that causes a lot of extra problems in society okay and i guarantee if this little tree saw this one and then it got plucked up and removed it'd be like okay i'm gonna get i'm gonna reach my full potential i like this plan okay but we live in a society where you know this is kind of happening and obviously you know it could be a bad outcome because the parents not there right obviously you're gonna have lots of people there maybe they're not even they're just sewing it on the the wayside and whatever and just kind of like sprouting up here and it's just kind of i mean this is a lot of people and if we come along with our watering can and we water them maybe they might end up sprouting at some point and having a little bit of potential and actually producing something eventually okay even if they're not our kid we could influence our grandchildren we could influence our cousins and our nieces and our nephews and our neighbors and this whole world at the end of the day even though i can't guarantee this and this could happen i'm still motivated to do as much this and this as i possibly can we should do as much water and as much pruning as we can we should do as much energy and effort because they won't reach their full potential if we don't now the potential could be greater than ours it could be a little bit less than ours we don't know all we know is that this works and this works and when you do a lot of it hey you might have a couple of these every once in a while but you'll never have this if you don't do this you'll never have a great outcome if you're not giving the water the word if you're not pruning them if you're not doing what's right and so you know i think that some people could use the nature versus nurture argument as a cope to say like oh well my kids aren't good just because they're a bad seed you know obviously we should take personal responsibility for our kids and try to make sure that we can make improvements or do the right thing but it is possible okay and this is how i live my life you know it's possible that someday i could be a joeb in some scenario you know my first instinct is never that i'm joeb my first instinct is what am i doing wrong what could i improve what could i change what are areas that i should do something different in and you know that's where the joeb situation is frustrating it's not like joe just day one's like yeah i'm perfect you know he's just kind of like i can't figure this out i've thought about it i haven't been doing all these things people are accusing me i mean his friends are accusing him of hanging out with wicked people and and taking advantage of people and being sinful and he's just thinking like i haven't done that i haven't done that i haven't done that i haven't done that i don't get it seems like and they're saying yeah but every wicked person's punished he's like what about these wicked people that aren't punished and just constantly refuting them and he's just like man if you guys could convince me i did something wrong then i would believe it but you can't but at the end of the day he's still at least thinking about it isn't he he's thinking like is there an area in my life that i can improve is there an area that i need to make a change is there something i'm not doing right and you know as parents we should always be challenging ourselves hey am i taking church seriously hey am i reading my bible hey am i being a good example and then when it comes to our parenting we need to make sure that we're really checking a lot of things go into third john chapter one we'll finish go to third john chapter one thinking about the education that we're giving our children thinking about how we're allowing our children to dress and talk and act who they're hanging out with who their friends are who they're dating if we're encouraging them to serve the lord we need to be thinking about all of these different things are we pruning and disciplining our children are we educating them and because of the fact that in many cases we can't really know how things are going to work out until they're done i think a good idea is to sometimes just ask people that are there so you know i a few months ago or a little while ago i asked my dad i just asked him i said hey in your personal opinion because we have a close relationship and and we talk a lot and i just said what do you think if you were to judge yourself and say like what are some things that you wish you'd done differently as a parent what would you what would you have done differently because i think that that's a good part like let's ask somebody that has several adult children raise them what would you do differently and my dad said his number one advice the most the thing that he wished he could change the most is he said he wished he told his children he loved them more he said i wish i just told him that i love them on a more regular basis and been more verbally affectionate and i think that's a good advice i think that's a pretty good wisdom now here's the thing my dad was very verbally affectionate i feel like not always okay on the golf course but um there was plenty of there was plenty of good moments and i knew that my dad loved me i have never questioned that i've never even thought contrary to that but you know just his own personal conviction he felt like maybe you know he could have he could have done some things differently i don't want to sit here and judge my own father i think that he was a good father i think no one's perfect but at the end of the day you know i've seen in my personal family and i've seen in many people that i know closely some really different outcomes in the same family children becoming way different and that is a lot of their nature okay so we have to understand that there is a nature aspect there is a nurture aspect but as a parent only thing i can affect is the nurture and at the end of the day there's nothing that's going to give me more joy than my children doing right that's what it says in first look at third john uh one verse three for i rejoice greatly when the brethren came and testified of the truth that was in thee even as i walk us in the truth i have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth you know if you really want to make your parents happy be a good child be a good christian you know this works for god too you know what makes god really happy being a good child of god serving god you know we've been thinking a lot about the parenting side and and that's good but you know think about how god's our parent and he was a perfect parent what of our outcome and and realize you know we need to make good decisions to make god happy we want our children to be happy with us we need to be good children of god too and of course nothing is ever going to be guaranteed but that's okay because i don't have any guarantees in life i'm not guaranteed the next breath i'm not guaranteed you know i got married with no guarantee but i'm going to put every effort and energy i can in my marriage for it to be successful and i know if i don't put any effort energy in my marriage it won't be successful i have no guarantee in my children but you know i'm going to put every effort and energy in my children having a good outcome you know i have no guarantee in my job i guarantee all of our jobs our companies get sold bought the irs could raid it you know whatever some weird thing could happen your boss could just get mad fire you i mean there's no guarantee you're gonna have your job for the rest of your life but you know what if you want to keep that job you're probably gonna do a really good job aren't you you're probably gonna show up and put in the effort put in the energy i mean we're not guaranteed anything in this life okay but that doesn't stop me from then motivating myself to do right the only guarantee i have is eternal life but you know what that doesn't cause me to not want to serve god i do want to serve god and i do want to have good children and i want to have a good wife and i want us to raise one of the greatest generations to ever live but the only way for our children to reach their potential is if we go ahead and provide them the best nurture that we possibly can the best admonition the best of proof the best correction the best wisdom and so let us put a lot of effort and energy into our children let us set them up for success in the future and let us encourage them and warn them your success is dependent upon you we're going to give you the tools to succeed we're going to help you we want you to be successful but you have to make good decisions for yourself please make your choices carefully let's close in prayer thank you heavenly father so much for giving us all these different warnings and instructions and wisdom i pray that you would just help all of us as we're raising our children to have just be filled with the holy spirit and be reminded of your instructions that we'd realize the importance of physical discipline we realize the importance of love and nurture and affection and attention i pray that you would help us to as husbands to love our wives and to nourish them and cause them to be good mothers i pray that you'd help us to be good examples as husbands and as fathers i pray that you would help us to motivate and encourage our children to have a zeal for the things of god pray that you would help the mothers to have patience with their children and to invest to have energy and have hope for their children's outcome and i pray that you would help a lot of these children and all these children to be motivated to want to serve you and to be a good example for the next generation in jesus name we pray amen amen all right in closing let's go to song number 173 song number 173 love lifted me song number 173 so song 173 let's sing it out together i was singing deep in sin far from the peaceful shore very deeply stained with men seeking to rise for war but the master of the sea hurt my despairing cry from the waters lifted me me nothing else me love lifted me, love lifted me. When nothing else could help, love lifted me, love lifted me, love lifted me. When nothing else could help, love lifted me. Souls in danger look upon, Jesus completely saves. He will lift you by His love out of the angry ways. He's the Master of the sea, billows His will obey. He, your Savior, was to be saved today. Love lifted me, love lifted me. When nothing else could help, love lifted me. Love lifted me, love lifted me. When nothing else could help, love lifted me. Great singing everybody. You were all dismissed.