Now because you're not perfect, you will struggle, you will give yourself to functional idols, confess it. The child's hope is not supposed to be you anyway. The child's hope is your God and when you confess that, you're in another opportunity to say, "We're in the same place. Only God can rescue us and let's go there together." Rebuke. Rebuke sort of has a bad name. If I called you up on a Friday night and said Saturday morning, I'd like to come over and rebuke you, you probably wouldn't be real excited, would you? But rebuke is actually a beautiful thing. Rebuke just means comparison to a standard. That's what rebuke is. Your rebuked when you realize what? You've fallen below a standard. Now your standard is the word of God and what you're actually doing in these character moments is you're holding the word of God before your children, not the world of your opinion. It's God's word. You don't define character any more than your children do. That's God's job. And now stay with me because this is very exciting. The Bible says the word of God is like a mirror. When you look into the word of God, what do you get? You get an accurate view of yourself. If you want your child to have an accurate view of their character, hold God's word in front of them. Think about this. Everybody, I think, probably in this room, used a mirror this morning. You got up, you stumbled into the bathroom, you took your first look in the mirror, suppressing your screams at the damage that the night has done. And what in that moment you're actually making a comparison, you're making a comparison between the standard of what you would like to look like and what you actually look like at that moment. Are you with me? And you accept the authority of the mirror, don't you? You don't say, "You've been hanging in my bathroom this long and this is the way you're going to treat me?" If you say that you're insane. You look in the mirror. You know you now have an accurate view of yourself, so you pull out instruments of human repair to bring yourself back to the look that you want. Some of us even put chemical substances on our epidermis. Now, that's the Bible. You want to hold the Bible in front of your children. What does God say about this moment? God says I should be a peacemaker. Now, if I love God, if I want to please Him, if He's in His rightful place, then making peace is a character commitment for me. Now, let's go back to the situation you just had with your brother, if you were committed to peace, what would have happened? Beautiful conversation, looking in the mirror of God, shining the mirror of God on that situation. What would have peacemaking looked like? "I would have let her into my room for a minute." You say, "Bill, is it really that costly? Is it that big of a deal that this female human being who you happen to be related to crosses the glorious threshold into your domain? I mean, it's a little creepy, isn't it, Bill?" He says, "Yes, that is kind of dumb, isn't it?" "Yes." Be a peacemaker. It's a better way. What a great conversation. Imagine having 10,000 of those between 6 and 12. You're just implanting beautiful things in the heart of your children and you can't be too busy to do that. If the next little league game is keeping you from that, miss the stupid game. We're letting the wrong things rule us. I'm about to get myself in trouble, but I don't really care. If you dress up little Johnny in his baseball uniform on Sunday morning because he's got a game and you're going to leave in the middle of a worship service to take that boy to play baseball, what are you telling him is important in life? What God is in charge in that moment? That's not legalism. That's worship. That's character. I had many conversations with coaches about these kinds of issues, about the dedication of my son to the team and to the sport and to the coach and to fellow players. But there's moments when we're not going to be here because we believe the center of the universe is a God, who we personally know through Jesus Christ, and we believe worship as our calling. And from 10:30 to 12:00 on Sunday morning, we are gathering with people who worship God. That's the highest thing for us to do. Please forgive us, we won't be there.
Transcript: Session 8
GETTING TO THE HEART OF PARENTING
67
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