That struggle to love is just so beautifully pictured by this illustration my brother, Tedd, gives. He and Margy have been married for a long time. They're getting a little bit up there in age and they're careful with what they eat, but they love ice cream. And so Tedd will say to Margy, "Margy, would you like just a little dish of ice cream?" She said, "Yes, I will. He says, "I'll get it." And he makes him this little dish of ice cream. Now he's being the servant and as he walks the ice cream to Margy, he's doing this. You know what he's doing? He's weighing the portions. This woman has cleaned his socks and underwear for 40 years and he’ll cheat her out of a spoonful of ice cream. Now listen. Parents, listen to the question. Are you a daily living example to your children of self-sacrificing love? Moms and dads, your children are not your indentured servants given by God, so you don't have to get up out of chairs and do things, you can just bark orders at these little slaves. That's not teaching your children to love. That's teaching your child the person who has the most power has the right to be selfish. Do your children watch you make specific and continual sacrifices as acts of love for the people that you live with and they live with? You can't teach love without loving. Love means you're willing to get up earlier than you'd want to get up. You're willing to stay up later than you'd want to stay up. You're willing not to watch things on television or not to participate in activities because of the needs that are for you. You're willing to have that same conversation again and again and again in patient gracious love. You're willing to have a little less money, live in a little lesser house, drive a little bit of a lesser car in order to have the time that's necessary to invest in your children. Are you an example of self-sacrificing love? Are you? And are you raising children who have learned the value of love and learned the blessing of the love, and as they exit the home, they're ready to love? I think one of the big points of crisis in western culture is we're sending generations of young people out in the world that have no understanding or commitment to love whatsoever. No wonder, marriage doesn't work. There's a third focus of this learning community. It's that the family is meant by God to be a redemptive community. You see, if I hold up the standard of worship high before my children and I hold up the standard of love high before my children, they ought to begin to feel the weight of that standard. That ought to begin to produce some frustration in them because they don't love God the way they should and they don't love their neighbor the way they should. And that should begin to create this frustration inside of them. Parents, that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing. The Bible says that God's law is a schoolmaster to bring your children to Christ. One of the things that our culture says is the last thing you ever want to have happen is that a child would feel bad about himself. Can I say this? Baloney. There is something broken inside of your child. There's something wrong inside of him or her. The Bible names that sin and sin makes me not want to worship God and not want to love others. And as your children begin to break under the standard because they find those standards heavy and they find those standard difficult, parents, that's a good thing. That is beginning to create in them a sense of need for the Lord Jesus Christ. Hear this. God's love, God's grace, God in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ is only ever attractive to a sinner. I think we are too good in the church of Jesus Christ of raising up self-righteous little Pharisees. They learn the biblical lingo. They memorize the verses. They know how to act in public, but their hearts don't really belong to God because they haven't experienced that inner neediness when I begin to realize, "I am not what God made me be. I don't like to do what God is designed for me to do." And you get there by holding those standards high. I was going to bed one evening and I would often visit the rooms of my children after they were asleep, and just pray for them. And I was walking down the hall and I heard my daughter crying in her bed. I sat down next to her and I said, "Baby doll, what's the matter?"
She said, "I can't talk."
Transcript: Session 2
GETTING TO THE HEART OF PARENTING
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