Godly Discipline

Children’s Church

Deuteronomy 6:4-7, Hebrews 12:7-11

Children 2

Read Deuteronomy 6:4-7, Keep a mark in Hebrews , we will be there soon.

Pray

Intro - Growing up one of the things that kept me in line was that I feared what my parents would do if I crossed certain lines.

-In High School kids would sneak out late at night to hang out and get into trouble. One reason that wasn’t tempting, was that I knew the discipline that would await if I was caught.

-If I ever came in after curfew on a Friday night the first thing I did was try to get the dog to stop barking. Sneaking in was crucial if you were going to avoid discipline.

Transition - Discipline is spoken to in scripture. What we find is this...

Big idea - Godly love disciplines.

Spiritual discipline leads to godliness.

One way that you express your love for your children is by discipling them.

With our children we faithfully hug them, we faithfully play with them, and we faithfully discipline them.

Godly parents use all the tools they can to develop godly children and discipline is an important tool.

Godly love disciplines.

Transition - Why should we discipline and why should we discipline in love? Because ...

1. God Lovingly Disciplines His Children

Turn with me to Hebrews 12:5-7

Consider the great love that God has for you.

-He knows that your obedience is what is best for you. God knows that obeying and following Him will protect you and give you success.

Because of His great love for you, if a child of his does not obey him, He will discipline you to bring you into obedience.

-God desires you to be completely dependent on Him.

So, When we go our own way … when we become the boss of our life … when we get out ahead of God in our life...

He humbles us. He breaks our will through discipline. He brings us back to Himself.

He does this because He is a loving Father.

Hebrews 12 tells us that those He does not discipline are not His children.

If you follow Jesus in Faith, you will be disciplined, because ...

Godly love disciplines.

God the Father has set the example for parents (and grandparents).

God wants us to be like Him and be faithful to discipline our children.

This may surprise you, but discipline does not mean “to punish”.

Discipline means “to train”.

The reason we are disciplined by God and the reason we discipline our children is to train them.

Transition - So we see that God calls parents to spiritually train.

2. Godly love Spiritually Trains

Illustration - Last semester I met with a small group of men.

We met for Discipleship.

The word Discipleship and Discipline are only different by a few letters.

-The reason is that both have as their root meaning, training.

-We were meeting together to discipline ourselves.

Illustration on training

Sports Illustrated, August 2, 1976, pp. 31-35, quoted in How to Profit from Bible Reading, I. L. Jensen, Moody Press, p. 80

Lanny Bassham, Olympic gold-medalist in small-bore rifle competition, tells what concentration does for his marksmanship: "Our sport is controlled non-movement. We are shooting from 50 meter, half a football field, at a bull's eye three-quarters the size of a dime. If the angle of error at the point of the barrel is more than .005 five one-thousandths of a millimeter, you drop into the next circle and lose a point.

So we have to learn how to make everything stop. I stop my breathing. I stop my digestion by not eating for 12 hours before the competition. I train by running to keep my pulse around 60, so I have a full second between beats...

You do all of this and you have the technical control.

Transition - Lanny Bassham did all of that for an Olympic Gold Metal. God calls you to train for a prize that is eternal.

The small group I led met for training.

-What did we do? How did we train?

-We each share some things that we could spiritually hold each other accountable for.

-Each week we would ask each other and report on how we were doing our daily time with God, how well we were loving toward our wives, purity in our lives.

-This was to help us bring up the week areas.

-What else did we do?

-We read a book together that was about growing as Disciples. We read a book that lead us through training.

-We discussed the training, we did some spiritual training.

-As we got to know each other and developed relationships, some guys who never really knew each other before met outside the group and spent time together.

Through this training process, greater spiritual transformation began to take place.

Every Christ Follower must be a disciple. Every Christ Follower must be in active training.

The Masters training comes at a cost, but it makes you better.

Transition - AND … Parents are called to train their children.

3. God has called parents to train children spiritually.

Read Deut 6:4-7

When do you train our children? What time of day?

vs. 7, when you sit, walk, lie down, when you get up.

And God has given a special address to Fathers.

Read Eph 6:1-4

Fathers, God has laid the lions shares of the responsibility on you to train your children spiritually.

Mothers are not to be left out. Timothy did not have a believing dad.

2 Timothy 1:5 ESV

5 I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well.

To all moms, but especially those with no dad or unbelieving dads, Timothy’s life was changed through his mothers and grandmothers faith.

God has called both parents to train children.

What specifically can I do with my child to train my child?

Parents, Grandparents, Family members… You can...

A. -Read scripture with them.

-Read scripture after dinner or at bed time. When they are little, read the children’s bible stories with them.

-Ask them questions about what they read.

-When your child is a teenager, show them how to have a quiet time.

-Hold them accountable to that.

-Ask them what they are learning.

-Talk to them about God & spiritual things.

B. -Pray with your child.

-Let your children also say a prayer after you pray.

-Teach them how to confess sin. You do this by them hearing you confess sin in your prayer time with them.

-If they heard you lose your temper, or say something ugly. Confess that in prayer during your prayer time with them.

-When they have sinned, help them learn to confess in prayer.

Pray for others spiritually by name.

-Pray for specific people’s walk with the Lord. Friends, neighbors, family members. Call them by name.

-Don’t spend all of your time praying for the sick cat. Pray for things that are eternal.

C. -Ask them what they are learning.

-Ask you children each week after church what they learned and how they can apply it to their life.

-Share with them something that you learned.

-Have your teenager take note of the message.

-When I was a child, my parents would have me draw a picture of something the pastor said that stood out to me.

-Ask them and discuss what they learned at church.

D. -Help them memorize scripture and give them an incentive.

-Some parents/grandparents give an incentive for grades.

-What if you gave an incentive for learning verses of scripture.

-What would it tell them about how important God’s Word is if you learned it with them.

F. -To learn to give to the Lord

-When they are little give them something to place in the offering. Some coins are fine. They are participating. They are learning.

-When your child get’s paid an allowance or earns money for job - Teach them 10% to the Lord, 10% to savings. Help them remember to place their little bit of money in the plate.

Why should a young person learn to give to the Lord? Because God needs their money?

No, because their heart needs to learn to release things of value to the Lord.

G. Share with your children what God is teaching you.

H. Don’t give up - When it seems like your efforts are falling on def ears don’t be discouraged and give up.

-IDK how many times my parents and middle school Sunday School teachers thought I wasn’t taking it in. I was getting it. It was not a waste.

Illustration -

Charles Francis Adams, 19th century political figure and diplomat, kept a diary. One day he entered: "Went fishing with my son today--a day wasted." His son, Brook Adams, also kept a diary, which is still in existence. On that same day, Brook Adams made this entry: "Went fishing with my father--the most wonderful day of my life!" The father thought he was wasting his time while fishing with his son, but his son saw it as an investment …

Your children are catching from you (grandparents, from you family members, from you parents more than you could realize.

Godly love disciplines.

Transition - Not only do we formally train our children, but we informally train our children.

4. The Parents’ Example

Read Deut 6:5-6

Parents, The greatest gift you can give your children is to live out a Godly life before them.

Illustration

About 2 years ago I walked into the hardware store. Randy Miller Son LOOK AT YOUR SEATING CHART who was about 12 helped me.

I have to tell you when he first started to help me I thought, what does he know?

-It took me about 30 seconds to realize, he knew a lot more about hardware in a hardware store then most men.

-He was impressively helpful for a boy.

-I thought to myself, how did he know all that?

-I’m sure Randy spent some time with him showing him and training him, but 80% of what he learned was by simply watching his dad.

-He knew exactly what to do, because He watched His dad.

Parents & Family - Your own personal spiritual life is the greatest sermon your children will ever get.

-Your kids may never tell you. They look up to you. They watch you. Parents are their greatest influence.

-We still talk to them about God every chance we get...

-When you lie down, when you wake up, when you are in the car, when you spend time together.

Parents, The greatest gift you can give your children is to live out a Godly life before them.

Godly love disciplines. Godly love trains.

The first generation Moses to be trained and take the land had unbelieving parents.

Ever think your broken parenting cannot accomplish what it needs to. God used unbelieving/ religious parents to train those who would take the land.

Transition - We can’t get talk about discipline without addressing Corrective Discipline.

5. Corrective Discipline

We saw earlier in Hebrews that God disciplines those He loves.

He disciplines His children.

While discipline trains, sometimes it corrects with negative reinforcement.

Sometimes discipline stings. Discipline is not fun.

Spurgeon - If we never have headaches when rebuking children we will have plenty of heartaches when they grow.

God has called parents to use corrective discipline faithfully.

Corrective discipline is different than punishment.

-As Christ Followers, we do not punish our children. We discipline them.

Punishment says, You must suffer for the sin you have done. It is punitive.

But corrective discipline says,

I must train you with enough negative reinforcement so you don’t make the same mistake.

-So there are difficult consequences we give - Not for the sake of suffering and revenge, but for the sake of training.

-We know what happens to a child that discipline has been with held.

-The child is spoiled, selfish, disobedient, it sets them up for failure.

Godly love disciplines.

-Do not confuse godly discipline with fleshly punishment.

-When you yell out of frustration or to scare a child, that is not godly love nor godly discipline.

-When you call a child a name, Brat, idiot, stupid … tell them in frustration to shut up … you are operating out of the flesh, not the Spirit of God.

AND THIS IS TRICKY -

-There are times a parent needs to raise their voice.

-When we raise our voice and get intense it needs to be motivated out of love for the child. Sometimes training gets intense.

BUT - When we yell because we are frustrated and lose our temper, then we’ve crossed a line.

-Jesus was furious when he cleansed the Temple.

But He was furious because God’s Glory was being stolen. He was angry because He loved well.

-Parents, Learn to speak softly - but sternly, to mean it, and to consistently give consequences.

-Do not get in the trap of having to raise your voice for your child to obey.

-When they get older, they will be so used to you raising your voice it will mean nothing. They will ignore your emotional drama.

-Corrective training is best done when a parent softly, and sternly speak to them, and gives firm consistent predictable consequence.

Say what you mean, mean what you say, predictably give consequences.

Illustration

Jamaican Grandmother

If you play with your children you will raise your grandchildren.

If you raise your children, you’ll get to play with your grandchildren.

Illustration

But let me warn you about anger.

There have been times I have lost my temper with my family, gotten very angry and I got control of a situation in my house.

The control I gained by causing fear in the moment, I lost in respect over the long term.

Not because I was angry, but because my words and action of anger did not come from God, but from my sinfulness.

I want to address spanking

Proverbs 23:13–14 ESV

13 Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. 14 If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol.

I want to give you a model for discipline.

If you don’t like spanking, adapt this model.T

The model I am about to give you can work well for any corrective discipline.

-Time out, Grounding, Removing Privileges

-When the offense is committed...

1. -You send your child to his or her room.

2. Take time to make sure your emotion is in check & pray.

3. You go in and with a calm voice explain why they are in trouble.

4. Talk about how what they did was a sin. (Very important)

5. Tell them that you love them and that’s why you can’t ignore their disobedience.

6. Pray with them.

7. Tell them how many swats they get.

8. Give Swats

9. Hug them & tell them you love them

My friends, Being faithful and predictable in corrective discipline is not fun - BUT

Godly love disciplines.

Transition - I’ve made a big deal about discipline and punishment being different.

Gospel

The reason we do not punish sin is that as Christ Followers, God does not punish us for our sin.

However, God does believe in punishing sin.

Jesus took the punishment for sin on the cross.

Jesus took God’s Wrath for your sin on Himself.

Through faith we receive the gift of forgiveness, based on Jesus taking our punishment for us.

Those who do not trust in Jesus will receive their punishment for sin in hell.

God’s love is so great that He sent His Son to die for sinners.

Through faith in Jesus - You can receive forgiveness.

God does not allow sin to go unpunished.

Because of God’s justice. Sin must be punished.

Illustration - A little girl said to her teacher, ”Miss Hayes, I don’t want to scare you, but my dad said, If my grades don’t improve, someone’s going to get a spanking!”