Sermon Tone Analysis

/Scriptures: Proverbs 6:20-23/

/ /

20 My son, keep your father's commands

and do not forsake your mother's teaching.

21 Bind them upon your heart forever;

fasten them around your neck.

22 /When you/ walk, they will guide you;

/when you/ sleep, they will watch over you;

/when you/ awake, they will speak to you.

23 For these commands are a lamp,

this teaching is a light,

and the /corrections of discipline/

/are the way to life/,

/ /

 

1.

All of us have points of vulnerability that leave us prone to counterproductive parenting.

We can become so intent on producing a desired result or trying to correct what we perceive to be poor judgment or even trying to help our children avoid making the same mistakes that we made that we actually drive them toward the behavior that we want them to avoid.

We are particularly vulnerable in certain areas:

 

Ø      */Reputation/* – Most of us want others to see us as capable and responsible parents.

When the behavior of our children doesn’t contribute to that then we become motivated to change that.

And perhaps the behavior does need to be changed?

But you know your motivation is crucial because your kids will understand what it is whether or not you communicate it to them.

If they sense that they are given behavioral expectations as a result of what someone else thinks of them it will accomplish several things.

It will make them resent you.

It will make them resent the source of their expectations.

It will make them doubly resistant to the changes that you try to produce.

Ø      */Values/* – We want to pass on to our children the things that we believe to be important.

And it’s not just lip service that we give to these things most of the time anyway.

Life has taught us, through our own experiences that these things are important and we want to see our children embrace them as passionately as we think that we embrace them.

Our children however have another vantage point.

They see us more clearly and truly than most other people in this world.

They know what you are like when you have reached the end of your ability to be patient.

They have turned the monster loose within you.

They know whether your faith or your values actually work and how consistently true to them you are.

At some point, most kids will question their faith and your faith.

None of us live perfectly and least of all at home.

This is not to excuse poor living because if your faith is real it is more vital that it be lived at home than anywhere else.

And if you can’t live it there, then you are pretending everywhere else.

Your ability or the lack of it, to practice what you believe in the most private places in your world will tell you how real you are and how committed you are to impacting this world for God.

Nevertheless, in the economy of God’s grace, He can always work beyond your weaknesses if they are given over to Him.

He can use even those to draw the hearts of your children to Him if you will be open about your own struggles and give the grace to your children that you know God extends to you.

My Dad was a drinker – I’m not sure how heavy a drinker?

He did certain things out of respect for me and my brother.

He never allowed alcohol to be stored in our refrigerator.

He had friends who would come to the house with beer and want to keep it cold and he would say “No”.

I’ve heard him do it.

He did his best to spare us from seeing him when he was drunk although I remember too many times when my Dad was “possessed” by the demon in the bottle.

What I mean is that he was “different”.

Maybe not drunk but different as though he had been taken over my some unseen, unfamiliar spirit.

That’s the problem with people who believe that they can drink and control it.

You will step over the line every now and then and it may not be an issue of where you will spend eternity but you may have the same effect on your children that my dad had on me?

Not permanently damaging but incredible disappointing and then of course, how will you communicate to your children where they should draw the line and what will you do when they come home one step over that line?

Or maybe tow steps over or ten steps over?

I will never live with that memory and I’m thankful for that.

He let me know that I wasn’t jeopardizing my manhood but rather, enhancing it by learning to say no to the things that everyone else thought all right.

I remember the speech, not the one about the birds and the bees.

He sat my brother and I down one day and told us that he could not ask us anything because he had earned the right by the example that he had lived but he showed us the respect to ask us (rather than tell us) if we would promise him that as long as we lived at home, we would not drink.

He made it clear that when we moved out, we would have fulfilled our promise regardless of the long term decisions that we made about alcohol.

I respected that and still do.

I think somehow, the spirit of the asking was godly and it impacted me more than a thousand sermons might

 

It is grace-lessness that turns people away from God and gives them misconceptions of His nature that some take a lifetime to get over.

(Ill.

The Grace Awakening – Chuck Swindoll)

 

Ø      */Sense of personal failure/* - we measure our success by the response of our children.

I detest failure in myself.

My pride is threatened when I have to admit that I have not succeeded.

There are times when I’d rather deny it or make excuses or blame someone else.

We do not want to fail.

There are some here today who hear these words and they grate and grind in your heart because you are not seeing in your children what you want to see.

Can I encourage you today to give even this to God?  I believe that He is pleased when we “tell Him all about our troubles”.

Ask Him to help you “sit sideways on your load”.

Ø      concern for child most important

 

 

2.

No matter what anyone says, “There are no guarantees.”

We all know of children raised in ideal circumstances who go their own way and we know of others raised without any observable advantages and perhaps even discouragement when it comes to faith and they search and seek for God and live beyond their teaching.

We should also remember that wayward children are not necessarily the evidence of poor parenting.

We can pray for the best and hope for it.

We can do the things that we need to do as best we can and then the rest is in the Lord’s hands.

3.

How do I correct my children?

 

a)     There must be a bigger picture than correcting the immediate offense.

Something that you are deliberately grooming them toward.

There should be a purpose for the things that you build into them.

There should always be a bigger picture clearly in focus.

Thoreau writes:  “There are a thousand people hacking at the branches of evil for every one striking at the root.”

I got an e-mail this week from someone regurgitating the evils of the pagan celebration of Christmas.

I am not sure how much was true and how much was untrue but it really doesn’t matter.

When we take those obscure things and make some drastic change of direction that our children are unable to understand we create confusion that  in my mind, makes it much more difficult for our children to actually discover God.

When our children need to be disciplined we need to learn to see beyond the particular offense to address a larger issue that is there.

The offense is merely something that shows us the more important issue.

Those kinds of issues are rarely corrected with one disciplinary action.

They need to be monitored and we need to engage in the harder work of addressing the emergence of principles that can alter the course of their lives.

Often we may discover that the source of these larger principles are not nearly as insidious as Christmas conspiracies but they come from a misinterpretation or a correct interpretation of values that we consciously or unconsciously propagate within our own homes.

You can thank God if you discover this.

Every once in a while it may be a good idea to survey the unconscious teaching that we are doing in our homes.

That is sometimes the most powerful.

We are many times most impacting when we are least conscious of it.

Children Learn What They Live

 

If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.

If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.

If children live with fear, they learn to apprehensive.

If children live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for themselves.

If children live with ridicule, they learn to feel shy.

If children live with jealousy, they learn to feel envy.

If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty.