Not in My House

Nehemiah 4:14 (NIV)

After I looked things over, I stood up and said to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the people, “Don’t be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your families, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes.”

Introduction

Church, I celebrated a birthday recently. I am now 42 years old… My sons asked me, “Dad are we going to have a party?” and I sadly told him, “There’s nothing to celebrate about getting old...”

Things hurt that didn’t use to hurt. You forget where you placed things. You forget what you wanted to speak to someone about.

What’s to celebrate!?!?

Have you ever noticed how fast time seems to go the older you get?

My Dad uses this saying, “Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end the faster it goes...”

So I was reading on this and someone offered this idea - that a year, 365 days, has a different impact for people depending on their age. Now, a year is always a year, but to a four year old, a year is 25% of their life. For a 42 year old, a year is only 2.3% of their life.

Mind blown, right?

A year stays the same, but we change. And therefore how it impacts us changes.

Transition

And I wanted to start with that becuase I’m actually going to be talking about the family today.

Even after we came off of a 2 months series on the family, the number one requested topic in our Reply All series is family.

So this is our last sermon in this series, but it might feel like a Bonus Episode in our previous series How to Raise G Rated Kids in an X Rated World.

So let’s dive in…

God has not Changed, we have Changed.

Going back to what I said earlier, we change, but time doesn’t change. In the same way, we change, but God does not change.

One of the fall outs of Biblical illiteracy that is increasing in the church, is that people do not know God.

They know who he is, but they don’t know God for themselves.

You can know a lot about a person, but that doesn’t mean that you actually know that person.

And so we have traded in what we should know about God for what culture thinks about God.

Let me walk you down this path...

Would you go to a mechanic if you needed dental work done?

Would you go to a baker if you needed your engine replaced?

Would you go to a doctor if you needed to install a new water heater?

The obvious answer is no. We are going to the wrong places for solutions.

And yet, more and more, we are turning to people who are not trained in God’s word to tell us what we should believe about God.

One of our Reply All responses was that “the image of God has been distorted,” and the truth is, God has not changed.

Society has changed.

Culture has changed.

People want truth to be relative.

But let me show you what has not changed for thousands of years - the word of God.

Let me tell you about someone who has not changed since He created time, the God we serve.

Why are we so bent on treating God like he plays by our rules?

Why are we so bent to make the Bible fit into our narrative, rather than trying to frame our world through the lens of the Bible?

He doesn’t change, he is sovereign, he reigns over all, and the thing that some of you need to do is turn off the news, set some boundaries on your social media, find some life-giving friends, and get in your Bible!

[Pause]

It’s not that you are misinformed, you are uninformed.

Here’s what has happened in the church...

We have traded in our life of devotion to Christ to a “hook up” with Christ.

We traded in the immutable truth of God’s word for your personal convictions.

We stopped reading our Bible and started reading blogs about what people say about the Bible.

But at some point you need to wake up to everything that is going on around us, everyone say ‘around us’, and spend more time focusing on what we are putting inside of us.

What the World Needs...

And let me take you to the next step...

The world doesn’t need Christians in politics as much as it needs Christians to start praying.

A praying church is still the answer to the world today.

2 Chronicles 7:14 (NIV)

if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

Listen to me church, the answer to a world that is lost has always been a church that is burning with a passion for Jesus and that is burning with a passion to pray.

We’re losing our way in the church because we’ve lost our hunger for God.

We’re losing our way in the church becuase we’ve stopped following the example of Jesus.

We need to get back to walking like Jesus, talking like Jesus, and loving like Jesus.

We accomplish far more in prayer than we do when we are holding up signs and bull horns condemning people. Jesus never taught us to do that.

But do you want to know what he did teach us to do?

Mark 9:29 (NIV)

He replied, “This kind can come out only by prayer.”

Where it Starts

Now, this is a family message, so let me make my way to the point of everything that I am trying to say this morning…

We know that culture is going sideways and that it is going to continue going sideways. We know that. The Bible tells us that this would happen.

2 Timothy 3:1–5 (NIV)

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days.

People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,

without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good,

treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—

having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

The world will not stop becoming what the word said it would become.

But parents, your responsibility is to commit your children to the fear and the knowledge of God.

To quote my friend, “I am no longer concerned that prayer has stopped in the schools. I am more concerned that it has stopped in our homes.”

Simply bringing your children to church isn’t enough. The 75 mins we spend with your children is not enough if you aren’t teaching them how to pray. It’s not enough if you aren’t teaching them how to read the Bible. It’s not enough if you aren’t having conversations about God. It’s not enough if they don’t see you, Mom and Dad, walking in this.

Let your kids find you reading your Bible.

Let your kids find you weeping in prayer.

Let your kids see you serving the underserved.

Let your kids see you on Sunday raising your hands, singing out loud, backing up the preacher, and being glad to be in the house of the Lord.

Let your kids see you being the type of Christian at home that you pretend to be on Sunday.

Discipleship begins at home, and it begins with you, Mom and Dad setting the tone in the home.

The Outside In

One of the beautiful things about the Gospel is that it has always been about creating change from the inside, and working it’s way to the outside. That has always been the way that it has worked with God.

The world, which offers a counterfeit Gospel, has always been about creating change from the outside in. The world wants to bully people into change without a regard for who people truly are.

I know that bullying people into submission is no longer accepted, and thank God that there is much more awareness of bullying, but the old trick has a new method. Now it’s using influencers to communicate to the next generation that you need this. You have to wear this. You have to smoke this. You have to give in to this.

And it works.

We unpacked this together in College just this week.

Israel went into Egypt, and God meant for that to happen. They were going to grow in Egypt. They were going to thrive in Egypt.

But what God didn’t want to happen was for Egypt to get in them.

But it did… We see that in the wilderness when the Israelites were turning to idolatry over and over and over.

Where did they learn that? In Egypt.

Just like we talked about Babylon being a spirit that is contrary to God, Egypt represents when we allow our environment to change us, rather than us changing our environments.

When Israel walked into Egypt, they had position and authority because of the God they served. In time, what was going on around them, their environment, it got in them.

God places us to bring change to our environments, not to be changed by our environments.

So what happened in the wilderness, that needs to also happen in us?

Well, first God game them commands on how to follow him. These started with being on tablets, but then remember, he said my goal is to write them on your hearts.

Meaning… he wanted to change them from the inside out.

The Inside Out

And God has always been about your heart and your soul.

Remember, when Israel picked a King they looked at the outside, but it was God who picked a King by looking at someone from the inside.

And today, this is the same thing at work. We are in the world, but we are not of the world. But when the world gets inside of us, we are surrendering who God made us for a counterfeit version of ourselves.

So Mom and Dad, you have the work of shaping your children from the inside out.

We start by forming them into the image of Christ, so that they aren’t deformed into the image of this world.

We are intentional about what they consume, what they are exposed to. and what you allow.

You teach them how to pray, how to read their Bible, how to discuss and ask questions of the Bible, the importance of “one another”, the importance of corporate worship, the importance of serving others...

Then, instead of asking, “What do you want to be?” we start asking, “What does God want you to be?” “How has God wired you?” “What are your strengths?” “What are you uniquely gifted in?”

Place in your children a genuine faith!

2 Timothy 2:5 I am remember your genuine faith, for you share the faith that first filled your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice. And I know that same faith continues strong in you.

Conclusion

For so many years I felt as though the Christian experience was all about playing defense.

Growing up in the holiness Church we were always being told what not to buy. Avoid this brand. Don’t go here. Don’t do this. Don’t do that.

But Pastor, didn’t you just say that we need to watch what we consume?

Yes, but there’s two different postures to this. I grew up with a defensive posture.

Keep the devil out!

Keep the devil away!

And it was more of a posture that, “If you do this, you’re going to like it and we’re going to lose you!”

So we played not to lose, rather than playing to win

And instead Mom and Dad, what I am offering up today is that we so fill our kids with love for God, love for his word and love for his people, that they don’t need anything else.

I am so full with the things of God that there is nothing that this world has to offer me.

I am so living a life in abundance right now, that I don’t need anything else to pick me up.

I don’t need a temporary high.

I don’t need a person to complete me.

I don’t need money to make me happy, I’m already happy.

I’m not settling, but I certainly don’t need any shortcuts, quick fixes or counterfeit living.

I have all I need. I am living life to the full.