Family Series 3: Parenting

Colossians 3:12-21
Matthew 20:20-28
Deuteronomy 6:4-9, 20-25

Instead of another Cajun joke today, we're going to start with a little theology from Bill Cosby. If you get frustrated as a parent, don't worry too much. Even God has trouble with his children.
After creating Heaven and Earth, God created Adam and Eve. And the first thing He said to them was: "Don't."
"Don't what?", Adam replied.
"Don't eat the forbidden fruit."
"Forbidden fruit? Really? Where is it?"
"It's over there," said God, wondering why He hadn't stopped after making the elephants.
A few minutes later, God saw the kids having an apple break, and He was angry.
"Didn't I tell you not to eat that fruit?" the First Parent asked.
"Uh huh."
"Then why did you?"
"I don't know."
God's punishment was that Adam and Eve should have children of their own.¹

Cosby says that his mom put a curse on him: “Someday you're going to have grow up and have a kid just like you!!” My Mom put the same curse on me, and now I understand!

But children are also one of God's greatest blessings. In our Call to Worship today, Samuel read that children are a blessing and reward from the Lord (Psalm 127).

Today, we're talking about parenting. But this discussion isn't just for those of us with children. In 1996, Hillary Clinton wrote a best-selling book based on the African proverb: “It takes a village to raise a child.”² James Dobson, America's biggest name conservative Christian, argued, “No, it takes a community to raise a child.” But they were both saying the same thing. Parents don't raise kids alone. We live together in a networked community. Growing healthy kids involves: school teachers and Sunday school teachers, doctors and nurses, coaches and babysitters, big brothers and big sisters, musicians and TV stars, grandparents and aunts and uncles. When we think about raising healthy kids, this is something that concerns all of us – especially in the household of God, where we are all brothers and sisters in Christ.

Before we go on with the sermon, we're going to stop for some time to think. Look in your bulletin. On the back side of the Table Talk insert, there are some questions. Take a few minutes and write down your answers to these questions:

1. Deep in your heart what do you really want for your children (or the children in your life)?

2. If you could give your kids only one “thing,” what would you give them? (For example: happiness, a good job, a loving family, intelligence, money, godliness, confidence, humility, a loving heart, good health)

OK, what did you say? If you could only have one thing for your kids, what would you give them?

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We all want our kids to grow up to be healthy and wise, blessed by God and a blessing to others. That's a goal we can all agree on. But how do we get there? How do we, as a community, help our kids to grow in body and spirit? How do we help our children become the adults God dreamed they would be?

Parenting has three basic tasks: providing, loving, and guiding. If we do all of these together, then our children will amaze us as they develop and grow to be healthy, loving people.

Let's talk about providing first. This is the most basic parental task. We've got to provide for our children's health and safety. All children need certain basic necessities: food, shelter, clothing, medical care, sleep, protection, and fun. So we work, we cook, we wash clothes, we shop, we clean. We do the house stuff and the money stuff so that our kids are taken care of.

This is pretty basic, but we can still mess this up. There are two common mistakes.

Common Mistake #1: We focus all our attention on providing. We try to give best we can possibly give of everything: the best house, the best clothes, the best toys, the best schools. And all of this costs money, lots of it. We can completely miss the boat on parenting if we spend all our time working to provide for our children. Parents, be careful that you aren't working so much that you can't give your kids the love and guidance they need.

South Korea has the longest average work week of any country in the world!³ I know there are good reasons why Koreans began working so much. I understand the history. I know about Park Chung-hee and the Saemaul Undong movement. But don't you think this is enough? Don't you think Korea is wealthy enough and you are wealthy enough? Don't you think it's time to slow down and start giving more time to your families?

Common Mistake #2: We don't give enough sleep and fun. Sometimes, parents are so concerned to be good parents that they push their kids too hard. Kids need sleep and fun like air and water. If we cut those out of their lives, it's like cutting out calcium or protein from their diets.

We all need sleep. We need regular sleep and we need a lot of it. Check out these numbers:

Age and condition	Average amount of sleep per day
Newborn	up to 18 hours
1–12 months	14–18 hours
1–3 years	12–15 hours
3–5 years	11–13 hours
5–12 years	9–11 hours
Adolescents	9-10
Adults, including elderly	7–8 (+) hours
Pregnant women	8 (+) hours

Not getting enough sleep can cause three basic problems: physical health problems, emotional irritability (getting angry easily), and academic problems (difficulty to think in complex ways).⁴ This leads us to some basic conclusions for parenting.

1) Pushing your kids to study for hours and hours is foolish. If they don't get enough sleep, it will hurt their health and their grades. (It may also hurt their ability to stay awake in school!)

Besides, listen to this! Duke University did a huge study on homework, and they found that test scores actually go down if your kids do too much homework! Up to second grade, kids can only handle 10-20 minutes of homework a day. From third to sixth grade, they can do 30-60 minutes a day. In middle school they can do 60-90 minutes everyday, and in high school they can manage up to 2 hours of homework in one day. But more homework actually hurts your kids academically. Too much homework makes test scores go down! It's information overload. It shuts down their brains and makes them dislike learning.⁵ So after a while, tell your kids to close the books and go to bed!

2) Parents need sleep too. If you don't sleep enough, you're going to get angry easily and have health problems. Kids are a lot harder to love when you stumble into the kitchen with a headache because you didn't sleep enough!

Parents, make sure you and your kids are getting enough sleep every night. This is just as important as making sure your family eats healthy foods.

The second basic task for parents is loving. Feeling loved is every child's single greatest emotional need. Next to providing the basics for health and safety, the most important thing a parent needs to do is to help your children feel completely secure in your love. Your kids need to know that you will love them forever no matter what happens and no matter what they do.

When children deeply feel their parents' love, they have a stable foundation for the rest of life. They can handle the ups and downs of life more easily because they are anchored in love.

There are three super-basic ways to show love: time, talking, and touching. Kids need all of these. (The truth is we all need all of these!)

Time. Parents, you're going to hear this from me for as long as I'm the pastor here. Time, time, time. Your families need your time. The most important thing you can give your family is your time. Your kids and your spouse will feel loved if you spend real, quality time with them.

Talking. How many times have you heard a parent say this? “My kids just won't listen to me! It goes in one ear and out the other!” Parents, adults, if you want kids to listen to you, to really listen to you when you talk to them, you've got to listen to them first. If you're doing all the talking, you'll also be the only one listening!

Colossians 3:21 says, “Parents, don't come down too hard on your children or you'll crush their spirits.” Parents, make sure your kids know that you love them just like they are right now. Make sure they know that you are proud of them.

The last basic way to show love is touching. Kids have a deep need to be touched. Kids need to be hugged, tickled, kissed, patted, cuddled, chased, tackled, carried, and touched in a thousand ways. When you touch your kids affectionately, it's like giving vitamins to their emotions!

Parents, love your kids. Show them your love through time, talking, and touching. If you're not a parent, there's lots of good news here. You can still show love to kids. You can volunteer in the nursery. You can pay attention the kids running around here. You can help us get a youth program started. You can volunteer in the orphanage or single mom's home. Our kids need lots of love, and you can help give it.

The last basic task for growing healthy kids is guiding. One of the most famous Bible verses about parenting is Proverbs 22:6, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.”

We teach our kids all kinds of things: how to walk, how to talk, how to use a spoon, how to apologize, how to choose right from wrong, how to think. Sometimes we teach our kids on purpose: “Here, let me teach you how to tie your shoes.” But most of the time, our kids learn simply by watching us.

Paul said, “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice” (Philippians 4:9). And that is exactly what our kids do every day. We are a constant, living life-lesson for our kids. They are soaking up everything we do as the right way to do it. So, it's extremely important for us to set a good example.

I remember a song that was popular when I was in high school. A father is singing his prayer to God: “I want to be just like you 'cause he wants to be just like me.”⁶

When parents think about guiding their children, they often focus on outward success. Get good grades. Get into a good university. Get a good job. Success. The child is successful, and the parent was a successful parent. Right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong! It doesn't work like that.

First of all, “researchers have found that even more than IQ, your emotional awareness and ability to handle feelings [your EQ] will determine your success and happiness in all walks of life, including family relationships.”⁷ It makes sense if you think about it. There are a whole lot of smart, well-educated, well-paid people with really sad, messed up lives. In his book Raising Emotionally Intelligent Children, John Gottman explains, “The key to successful parenting is … based on your deepest feelings of love and affection for your child, and is demonstrated simply through empathy and understanding.”⁸ It is guiding your children with love through time, talking, and touching.

Second, good grades, good schools, and good jobs are not what success is about. For us as Christians, life is far more than that.

Remember James and John's mom in Matthew 20. She came to Jesus and said, “Put my boys in the two best spots, one on your right and one on your left.” Jesus said, “Lady, you just don't get it. Being the best in my kingdom isn't about succeeding in this world. Success in my kingdom is about serving others, not being at the top.”

For us as Christians, success is living close to God, participating in God's mission in the world. That matters way more than what school they get into or what kind of job they have. If your children miss church to study, you are teaching them to value jobs more than God. If you send your kids to hakwons or expect them to study on Sundays, you are guiding them to pursue worldly success instead of God. Parents, please, please, guide your children toward God, not away from God.

Psalm 127 says that children are like arrows we shoot into the future. They will live beyond us. They will do more than us. They are our greatest contribution to the world.

If we truly want to be good parents, we will provide for their needs: food, shelter, sleep. We will show our kids love through time, touching, and talking. We will guide them toward true success – spiritual and emotional health.

If we truly want to be a loving community that changes our world, it starts with our kids. For all of us, parents, singles, married, changing the world starts by loving our kids.

1http://www.ahajokes.com/par006.html.

2Hillary Clinton, It Takes a Village, (Simon & Schuster, 1996).

3“Working Time,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time.

4“Sleep,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep.

5Claudia Wallis, “The Myth about Homework,” Time, 8/29/2006, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1376208,00.html. And “Homework,” http://www.aft.org/parents/k5homework.htm.

6“I Want to Be Just Like You,” sung by Phillips, Craig, & Dean; written by Joy Becker and Dan Dean.

7John Gottman, Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child, (New York: Fireside, 1997), 20.

8Ibid, 18.