problems happen when that child is 17 or beginning to exit the home, then you're in trouble. Here's the time where the issues are small. Most of them are inside of your house. They're easy to talk about. You get regular examples all the time. Go after it. Thank God for it. Now you got to hear me say this. You can't give away character you don't have. And some of you in this room don't recognize bad character in you, so you don't recognize it in your children. Hard talk, but I got to be honest with you. If you're selfish, if you let yourself off the hook, it's very hard to recognize those things in the right way in your children. I was in my early pastoral days just a few years ago. Why are you laughing? Pastoring a very small church, we were pretty poor. But I decided that I wanted to take my children – we were in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a place where the American Dream died in 1950 – I decided I wanted to take my children to the local theme park, Hershey Park, chocolate world. And so I had fared away money for months to take our children there. I'd gotten those discount coupons from the local fast food place, so that we could afford going there. And I knew that we could not afford the exorbitant price of food and drink in the park without getting a mortgage. And so we packed a cooler-full of sandwiches and a cooler-full of soft drinks. Now I have four children and I'm not a stupid dad, so I bought four cans of each kind of soda to avoid global nuclear war. Except there was this regional chocolate fudge soda. It was the most amazing thing. It was a drinkable glory. I just have to say this, I'm very thankful that much of the glory of God in creation is edible and I couldn't resist even though there were only two cans of that on the shelf. Packed those in the cooler and we headed down to Hershey Park. When we got there, one of our children said, "Dad, can we have something to drink?" It didn't seem like a dangerous request. I opened the cooler and now, there was only one can of that magic chocolate fudge soda because I gave birth to a child that if there was a crack in our parenting, he could drive an 18-wheeler through it and he realized that that was in there, and he had snuck a can on the way down. Our children sighted in on that one can of soda and all hell broke loose. They were grabbing one another, stuffing their heads in the ice, hitting one of the cans of soda, ice down the back pushing, shoving and so I jump in and say, "You want a fight. We don't have to pay all this money for you to fight. You can fight for free. I'll take you home, I'll put a cooler in the middle of the yard. I'll put one can of soda in the middle and you can fight forever." They're no longer fighting because they're watching the crowd gathered behind me as I'm losing it in the parking lot of Hershey Park. Now look, from the time that I thought of doing this for my children, that day quit being their day and became my day. It was about my comfort and my appreciation. I wanted children who would ride the ride and say, "This ride is a wonderful ride, but not nearly as wonderful as that man who worked so hard to provide this day for us." You see, this is very humbling to say, but my lack of character was rooted in my idolatry. And I'm screaming in the park, this is the thought behind the word. "This is my day. Don't you mess up my day. We're not even in the stinking park yet and you've already messed up my day. Now how can I give character in that moment when I have none myself? I can't. I can't. I can't. In fact, my children are kind of mortified as dad's losing it there in the park and because of that I don't get at the fact that this is not an interruption. This is not a bad thing. That happening is a good thing. God loves these children. He's put them in a family of faith and he's going to reveal their lack of character to me, so that I can be part of the development of this character that is the operation of His rescuing grace. How beautiful! But it doesn't look beautiful to me because at that moment, I'm not worshiping God. I'm worshiping the idol of my own pleasure and you're in the way of my pleasure, and you're going to get it. And so I've learned if I'm going to be God's instrument of character in the life of my children – hear what I'm about to say – I have to fall down on my knees and not weep about them. I have to weep about me.
Transcript: Session 8
GETTING TO THE HEART OF PARENTING
69
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