Chasing Bigfoot | Part 5

Hey, it's good to be here. Glad you guys are all here. Then, you know, it's Memorial Day weekend. And so

I hope you take a moment in all of the festivities of whatever in your day off to maybe reflect on what this weekend, what the Memorial Day is all about. It's to remember men and women who have died in serving their country.

So it's not like a Veterans Day. You can't just have the veterans stand up because if you're being remembered on Memorial Day, you'd have to be Sergeant Lazarus for us to do that. So but it's a it's a moment to reflect and you realize it's it's kind of like a remembrance of how every week when we come to worship Jesus, it's a memorial day for us.

We're here to worship and remember the one who died for us. But, you know, Jesus said in the word, he said, there's no greater love

than for you to be willing to lay down your life for another. And that's really what Memorial Day is about is to remember that. And for me, it's all personal because I always think of my dad this time of year, even though he he if you're if you knew here, he he fought in World War two Korea, Vietnam, and he was a career soldier, and and he

he didn't die serving his country. He he would call the ones that died the real heroes. But he's buried up in the National cemetery now. So I know on today, he's got his flag up there, and I always think about him. But what makes me remember

him at this point is a conversation I got to have a few years ago with the guy that served under him in Korea. And when he asked me how my dad was doing, I realized he hadn't talked to him. I go, well, my dad passed away.

And he got I could tell on the phone he got emotional about it. And I'm like, well, when was the last time you saw my dad? He goes, well, we left Korea in late fifty three. So sixty whatever years ago. Men were like back then. They didn't have social media or phones. It's like, all right, good war.

We spent three years fighting together. Bye. And that was it. And, but he said something when he got emotional about it. He just said, you know, your dad was a good friend. But I'm able to have this conversation with you because he was even a greater leader.

In other words, he says, I'm not remembered on Memorial Day because the leadership your dad provided. He saved our lives multiple times, and he got on us. He was our friend. But if we were doing something knuckleheaded, he would just jump down our throat and be like, hey, stop that. That's going get people killed.

And he goes, I'm so thankful for his willingness to be a leader and not just a friend. Because if he was just our friend, we would have all died several times over. You know what? That kind of relates to what we're talking about today in this last this last

message in this Chasing Bigfoot parenting series. And that we need to talk about what does it mean to lead our kids? What does it mean? What's what's the myth out there? We've been laying out these myths that are out there and then laying them down next to biblical truth.

And as we unpackage these myths, what you've seen if you've been here the whole time is every one of these myths on the surface look okay. Because the thing we're talking about is not necessarily a bad thing.

We've talked about what happens is you turn things into idols. When you take anything, including a good thing and raise it to the main thing, it warps everything. Write that down your kitchen

refrigerator and say that 10 times fast. And so we've been unpacking some of these things. They're not bad things, but we elevate them to the wrong level of what they should be. And today's truth is one that's so easy

to fall into the trap of, but so essential. And it relates to what that man said about my dad's leadership is a parenting is you're sending your kids out into combat.

You are going into a world that they have to be prepared for. And the myth I want to unpackage today is this idea that says I need to be my child's biggest fan.

Now don't hear what I'm not saying is is I'm not saying you can't be their biggest fan. I'm not saying you shouldn't be a cheerleader for them. The whole point is don't elevate to that's my primary role. My primary role is just to be their fan. No, it's not. Here's the truth we want to talk. It goes back to what this guy said about my dad is simply this. I am my child's leader before being their cheerleader.

That's the truth. You have to be leader before cheerleader. And I'm just going to tell you, if if if if you don't lead before you cheerlead, sooner or later, you're going have nothing to cheer. And you're gonna set your kids up for failure. And so what does it mean

to lead before I cheerlead? And that's what we want to look at. There's a passage of scripture we're gonna be in. It's in Hebrews chapter 12. And that's the book of the Bible that shows that God likes coffee because Hebrews.

Step number one to leading your kids, dads, is you got to have really good dad jokes abilities. So there you go. No. But Hebrews chapter 12 is an interesting passage. It comes right after Hebrews chapter 11.

Hey, we can count. And Hebrews chapter 11 is called the faith hall of fame. It's a passage that talks about all these people in scripture that, you know, they trusted God and they said, hey, they did all this by faith, by faith, by faith. And now he's talking to this group of people that they're being persecuted for their faith. They live in a culture that's a little bit hostile to their faith in Christ.

They're not being put to death at the moment. They're just being kind of persecuted. Similar to our culture now, where it's like people look at you funny if you say, I believe that the Bible is the Word of God and I try to live by it, you know, and things like that. So in this, he describes on this idea of how they need to make it through life.

And he talks about discipline and it's basically he writes as a father. He's it's describing the parenting of God to his children. And he uses parenting in his illustration. So I just want to read these 12 verses here. And then I'm going to point out

how in this passage it shows here's God's parenting style that we should probably mirror and bring into our parenting style. And it describes some things on this is what it means to be the leader, not just the cheerleader.

So here we go. So Hebrews chapter 12 verse one says, therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, Let us strip off every weight that slows us down,

especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor besides God's throne. Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people. Then you won't become weary and give up.

After all, you have not yet given your lives in your struggle against sin. Then it says, and have you forgotten the encouraging words God spoke to you as your children

and as his children? Then he said, my child, don't make light of the Lord's discipline and don't give up when he corrects you. For the Lord disciplines those he loves and punishes each one he accepts as his child. Wow. Does that sound like encouraging words if you're a kid?

Did you sit there and go, man, I love when my parents said I was in trouble. He's making a point that what he's going to say we're going to see here is he's like, if if you don't correct, you don't care.

That's the point he's trying to make. He's trying to understand that when you go through tough times, some of the tough stuff is God correcting. God's going to send stuff your way. He's going to in other words, he's describing how, hey, I will send an army of destruction

at any distraction in your life from our relationship. And so he's describing it. So you don't have to get scared. You should know that it's I love you. Cause he says, as you endure this divine discipline in verse seven, remember that God is treating you as his own children.

Whoever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father? Times have changed since this was written. Verse eight. If God doesn't discipline you as he does all of his children, it means you're illegitimate and you're not really his child at all.

Since we respected our earthly fathers who disciplined us, shouldn't we submit even more to the discipline of the father of our spirits and live forever? For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best they knew how. But God's discipline is always good for us, so that we might share in His holiness.

No discipline is enjoyable while it's happening. It's painful. And you know what? That's describing

like you're on the kid end of this, the child end. But I think that actually goes for the parent as well. I think God disciplining us is painful to his heart too. But it's also painful as a parent. Because most of the time, if you have to discipline your kid, you're the one that got grounded.

You know, especially if you did what I did when my wife was my kids were little and she was staying at home, and I'd get frustrated and I would hand down the sentence. You're on restriction. You can't go outside and play with these toys for the next week. And then my wife would call me and go, what?

You just grounded me. I'm on restriction. Thanks. You know? And my son's home chewing his toast in the shape of a gun, so he has something to play with. So but look what it says. But afterwards, there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.

So it's describing what kind of what is this discipline? What is it? It's a correction is what it is. So then he finishes it with an encouragement. So take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weak knees.

Mark out a straight path. And here's where I think it implies that this should pass through us to other people. We mark out a straight path for our feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong. So we can guide our own families.

So there you go. It's kind of describing God as a parent and how He wants to take us and how He parents us. And He will discipline. He will correct us. He will send things that are painful to us and we don't like in order to get us to where He wants us to go. And that's really the heart of discipline. He goes, in the end, I want you to mark out the straight path. I want you to but he also knows that it's scary to trust God sometimes because it's going to be times that you're weak. Your grip is going get weak. Your knees are going to get weak. You're going to be tired and weak, and you're going to have to choose the courageous step of trusting him.

That's exactly what we need to do with our own kids. We need to show them that same path. So in here, see there's three roles.

Cheerleader, we get to be. But how do I be a leader before cheerleader? There's four other three other roles. And since we already talked cheerleader, I'm going to use they're all sports. It's a sports analogy I'm going to use because I want the dads to stop phasing out right now and start paying attention to me. Okay? So we're going to talk sports here. You can see three ways of how God talks about how He grows us and parents us here. And the first one is the role of the grounds crew.

The groundskeeper. The groundskeeper. What does the groundskeeper do before a sporting event happens?

They go out and they mark off the boundary lines. They lay out the boundary. This is inbounds, that's out of bounds. Here's where you win. Here's how you score. This is this is the field of play. This is what it looks like. That's what we need to be as parents. We need to mark off and explain the boundary lines.

We need to, you need to have, what are the boundaries? What is your house about? Now I could sit here and talk about boundaries of little kids. What is the way to get over there? There's good books. There's this thing called the Internet. Didn't know if you heard of it. You can look up some stuff like that. I want to tell you about the big picture idea that you have to have boundaries.

You need to define this is what our family is. This is where we're going. And if you are a follower of Jesus, you already have a pretty good regulation book here that defines the prime boundaries we should have.

You already have the definition of the playing field, But we as parents need to define that. And the problem is a lot of us, we don't. We kind of make it up as we go.

And that could be very difficult on your kids. And it's difficult on you because we don't know where we're going. So we don't really clearly lay out the boundary lines.

Think of it this way. How many of you probably had an older sibling? Or maybe you were the really smart younger sibling, so you turn the tables on them? Or you went out in your neighborhood and the kids would gather and you would start making up a game. Ever been a part of making up a game? And don't you hate how either the older sibling or the ringleader in your neighborhood, they only make up the rules. And then all of sudden, if they start losing, they start changing the rules as they go. Well, now this is actually inbounds. No, that's a home run. Or no, no, this counts as that. Or now it's worth it. Isn't that just the most irritating thing in the world?

You don't like that because you can't figure it out. And that's about that's described how a lot of us start parenting. God doesn't do that. He has clearly defined. This is inbounds. This is out of bounds. As a parent, you need to have a plan of what is the boundary?

What what what what because because because if you don't know what the boundaries are, makes it harder to do the next thing. And it honestly makes it easier to avoid the next thing or overreact to the next thing. Because you gotta be the grounds crew. But once you've defined the boundary lines, the next thing you gotta do is you have to be the referee.

This is the one I'm gonna spend the most amount time on. This is the one I think we misunderstand the most and and we struggle with the most. And even when we try to do it the most, I think culture itself is making it hard for us to be the referee. Because we live in a culture now that if I really do

live by God's boundaries, culture will say some of the stuff we do as a referee as a parent, we're a bad parent for doing it. And that is this idea of you've to call out the fouls of wrong behavior and enforce the penalties

of correction. So calling out these things. It means not only you have to have the boundary, inbounds, out of bounds, here's the rules, here's the way we play. And and and but when they when they go out of bounds, you got to correct them and bring them back. But a referee

Is a referee doing that out of anger out of this? No. They know the rule. They want the game to work right. You know, they need to. And then think about it. In a sport, like, you know, you got grown men who've played a sport their whole life, being paid millions of dollars, and they still need a referee.

So so do your kids. I mean, think about it. Like, one of the worst is is if if you go to the gym and play pickup basketball games,

isn't it you call your own fouls? So it means it's the honors that, hey, you just fouled me. And you know what makes that the worst all the time? Is there's always these two guys that are there. Always. There's the guy that calls everything a foul.

You looked at me funny. You just fouled me. That's a foul. And then you're like, ugh. And then there's the guy that won't admit anything he did as a foul. You under Isn't that the worst? Come on, guys. You know what I'm talking about. Or are you guys so out of shape? I don't remember playing a sport.

You you it'd be nice if you had a ref there. Right? Well, it's the same thing with parenting. It's it's you have to be willing to jump in. But I think there's a reason why we struggle with this. There's first of all, I think we struggle because we had bad examples.

Like when you hear this idea of you gotta call the penalty, call the fouls, it's this idea that you might have grown up in what I'd call an abusive scenario. The the the discipline is punishment. It's more like a judge passing sentence for you violating a law.

And maybe you grew up in that home where the rules were the rules, and it was the no grace. It was just all this is way you do it. They used God to scare you and all. And it was really, really, really, really controlling and probably verbally abusive, emotionally abused, and maybe even physically abusive.

That's not what we're talking about here. You can discipline is about correction. A matter of fact, the word there for discipline and punishment in that passage is a Greek word that means child training. It means you're you're directing them on a path. So the idea of discipline is not not to destroy the child.

It's to get rid of the distraction. It's not to trash them. It's to turn them. That's the whole point. So if you're on this extreme, I was a youth pastor for over ten years. I got to see, working with high school, college, the end game of parenting styles.

And you'll have parents that that I have to spend a minute on this because I have people come up, thank you for, you know, backing my way of parenting. And then they start to describe what they did. I go that no, no, no, no, no. That's not what I said at all. It's like it's it's it's you think of it, it's a control, make them obey a rule, and punish.

And the punishment is more about revenge. It's usually you got mad at them. And and and still, if you if you punish out of vengeance, that's about you, not about your kid. And if you ignore any discipline, that's also about you.

One is you're you're you're you have been disturbed by them and it's bothering you. The other is I'm overwhelmed and I don't want to be bothered by it. They're both selfish styles of parenting and disciplining. And here's the problem. Both extremes.

The parent that is overly controlling, you end up with a teenager that's in rebellion. They're just going to fight you on everything and run as far as way as they can. If you're on the other extreme, where you don't really blow the you don't ref,

you just kind of you you put the boundary out there. You talk about the boundary. You might shout about the boundary. You might get upset about the boundary, but you don't actually do anything. You just have a spontaneous reaction instead of a strategic action,

which, by the way, is how you're supposed to do this. Don't have spontaneous reactions either way. It should be a strategic action. So you end up on this end, not doing anything. And you know what you look like? Could you imagine? Could you imagine if you're playing a football game, someone total foul.

Ref blows the whistle, runs over there, and just starts screaming at the teams.

I can't believe you did this again. And we have talked about this over and over and over again. I'm out here slaving every day in this hot sun, and I'm not even paid full time. You guys got millions of dollars. You do not know how good you have it. You know how hard I work to do this, and you keep doing this. I am so disappointed in you. I I can't even right now. Just go play your stupid game. And then picks up the flag and walks away.

How dumb would that be? You know what the teams would figure out really fast? As long as we tolerate the screaming, we could break every rule we want. See, if you don't actually do this one, here's what happens on this end. Being a youth pastor, this end you end up with kids in chaos.

They don't know what the boundary They don't know how to stay in the boundary. There's no correction. You just let them figure it out on their own. And they're trying to figure out on their own. But here's the weird thing. A 15 year old in chaos and a 15 year old in rebellion act exactly the same.

You end up with the same kid. They're both wrong. True referee, what God describes here in discipline is he goes, you understand this is an act of love. I'm trying to turn your heart back to the right path. So, yeah, I'm gonna put something there that you're not gonna like because I'm gonna give you some discipline

until you can engage in self discipline. That's really what it's about. And that's why it needs to be strategic,

not spontaneous. When it's spontaneous, it's because we didn't think about it. We get frustrated, and it's an emotional reaction, and we just yell and scream. And the one extreme, we usually get abusive or controlling. The others, we yell and scream and just run away because we don't want to deal with it. And neither one works.

So how do you you you you gotta have a strategic plan of here's how I'm gonna discipline. You gotta stay calm in it. You can't and and here's the thing. I know it gets hard depending on your kids. I my son always wants to draw me into the spontaneous reaction because he acts like me. And and

and so, you know, we like to fight with the mirror. And so I was like, he would draw me in. And what I learned how to do is I learned from my dad. I go, oh, now I know why my dad did Is I buy myself some time. Like when he's being frustrated, I'll let him argue. I'll explain things and all this. And But then you get to this point depending on you. And it's a different point depending on what age they are, where you have to say, okay, we're done.

You have to make a decision now. You need to obey. You need to do what I've asked you to do and trust me. And now they get making a decision. And if he keeps going, rather than getting mad and giving and having a spontaneous reaction,

I have a phrase I learned from my father before me. And he'll just look at me. And I look at my son and say, son, are we at war? That's what my dad used to say. That was his way to calmly tell me things are going to get very uncomfortable

for me if I keep going down this path. But he's doing it in a calm, direct way that's actually scarier than the yelling. Cause it means because what it's saying is it buys me time. Cause I go, hey, are we at war?

And if he says, no, we're not at war. I'm just gonna No. No. No. It seems like you've you have invaded my sovereignty over here. And now you're throwing sticks and rocks at me. And and that seems like war. And here's the problem. You're throwing sticks and rocks. You're a third world country, and I am a nuclear superpower.

And you know what? If this keeps going, I'm gonna go get your mom who has the other key, and we're gonna flip the key and push the button, and you are not gonna be happy. Are we at war? And I say it you know, you could say it to him and come because that gives me time to go talk to mom, not just

he knows he's in trouble. I know I'm gonna react, but I'm not just yelling and screaming in the moment. Now, I've not done this perfectly. I got in a fighting match with him like six months ago, and he's almost 20 years old. But now he's an adult, so I won't get arrested. But

well, it'll only be a misdemeanor fighting. But he's bigger than me now. So

But this idea, are we at war? And he got used to it. It got to the point that he knew. It was kind of it was serious, but still kind of a keeps the moment calm. Because he'd start and I go I got to point. He goes, son, are we at war? No. Not a war. Not a war at all. Not a war. He goes, peace. Peace in our time. He's like, he's going all Neville Chamberlain on me.

Like four of you understood that vague reference to Neville Chamberlain. The rest of you went to public school. So, I'm just kidding. I went to public school also. Okay. But, yeah. For me, that phrase makes it very clear the boundary has been crossed. It makes it very clear that I'm gonna have to course correct you,

and it keeps it calmer. Do you have something like that? If you just wait till you're mad, it's not gonna make any sense. But here's the other thing. I I wanna spend a minute on this. This is a little bit different is is that, this is one of those things I think ultimately,

there are things in our culture, our society that that lead to issues and problems. And I think one of the there's another reason why it's hard for us to be the referee. And it's driven from this culture. And ultimately, culture, if you really dig deep enough, comes back to a theological issue.

And I believe there's a theological issue that's being fought culturally without identifying as a theological that's making this even harder for us to do as parents.

And it's the idea that in our culture, have an enemy we're trying to fight out there. There is an enemy of God that is not a creator. He is only a counterfeiter.

He wants God's job, so he'll take something that sounds right. The Bible, multiple times in the book of Proverbs, says there's a way that seems right to man, but the end it leads to death. This enemy takes those ways that seemingly make sense to us

and takes a little bit of gut to and counterfeits and twists it and sends us down this road to take us away from trusting God, away from Christ. He just wants to mess with God's plan. I'm telling you, that is absolutely what is always happening in our world.

And the counterfeit he's got out there when it comes that makes this hard is, this counterfeiter has got our culture to place tolerance in place of repentance. So we are taught in our culture, we're all about tolerance, not repentance. Repentance simply means to turn.

God all the time. And that's really the heart of of correction, of discipline. I need to turn my kid back to the right path. Turn them back to the right path. But but that implies there is this right path. And that implies that there has to be correction. There has to be repentance. I need to turn from this way and go that way. But our culture doesn't like to talk about that. They don't want to own that. So our new repentance

is tolerance. And it means we just, we have this idea of tolerance. And it's even deeper. It got more insidious when tolerance, a generation ago, got redefined. See, tolerance used to mean,

I can disagree with you and you disagree with me. My dad used to say, I went and fought three wars for this. That I'll get out of this foxhole and put my life on the line that you can disagree with me. But it also gives me the right to disagree with you. And I can say, I'll go fight for this

and still say you're going to hell. And here's why. And I hope I can show you the right way. This is the way I think it works. And you can do the same thing back to me, but I will tolerate you in the process. I won't destroy you. I won't demean you. I won't do it, but I don't have to agree with you. And as long as you were respectful in the process, that was tolerance. That's not what tolerance means anymore.

And this is the heart of every political debate. This is why politics has gotten so nasty, why everyone's fighting so hard. You can go out in the heart of every issue is we preach this tolerance thing. And in its heart, it it not only theologically, philosophically, it collapses in on itself.

Because what it says now is it's become this. Tolerance now means I have my truth. And if you don't accept my truth as just as valid, you're intolerant. That's exactly what we've done. This little lie and then now tolerance replaces repentance.

And that creates all kinds of problems. And it's really difficult to be a parent, especially if you believe in scripture and you go, but there is a right way. But now if I push my kids towards the right path, there are people out there that'll say, you're a bad parent. You're a negligent. You're a terrible parent

because you're doing this. Which is funny. They're saying they're intolerant of you.

My dad put it best. I should have just said it this way. He was the master of cookies on the bottom shelf. Great storyteller. If you like anything that I do, I got it from him. And he said it this way. He watched culture change in the late sixties. And what he said is I've watched happen is is is culture now

draws a circle around the dot of where they're at in life. This is me. They draw a circle around it and call that a bull's eye. That's what worked. That's why it's the counterfeit of tolerance. If you do that, you don't have to repent.

And here's why this is such a deeply embedded lie that twists us up as parents and is messing up our society. Tolerance doesn't help you. It doesn't help you. I mean, here's a practical. I don't even have to get all preachy on it. Look at the percentages of young people of the problems they're having.

The depression, the anti the suicide, all these things. And you would think it's all there. The economy, they're looking at a terrible time. They're going into adulthood in a terrible time. Well, my dad went into adulthood in the great depression. There was no hope. It's not

the externals that are causing the problem. It's this internal lie that says, hey, we have to be about tolerance. Your truth has to be right. And if you try to guide anyone out of that, you're intolerant. That's bad. That keeps us all stuck. That keeps us going down the path that seems right. But as God said, the end, it leads to death.

He's leading us down a path to death, and we get stuck in that, and we fight that, and we and we get we get pulled into this idea of this this idea. And here's what makes it so bad is now we're in a culture that the point that we call the bull's eye, we have gone to where that is who we are, our identity is.

So now we make claims like, well, reason you can't pick on this is that's my identity. That's the core of my identity, who I am. And the things they're picking as identity, scripture says that's not where you find your identity.

Your identity is not found in your gender. It's not found in your sexuality. It's not found in who you want to marry, who you don't. It's not found in all of these things. Your career, nothing. Our identity is found in being created in the image of God

and to be found in Christ Jesus. That is clear in scripture. But we as Christians fall for this. Because many people, well, that's how God made me. So you can't change this because God made me this way. That's saying, I'm already this way. Draw a circle, bull's eye. There's no need for repentance. I'm perfect the way I am. You're denying our brokenness.

And you can't see like the enemy has tricked us. And now it's filtered into the church. I have friends that are pastors like, well, I They start twisting scripture and basically because God is intolerant to them. Because God has lots of things. He says, do not tolerate this. Keep your kids away from this.

Guide them this way. Alright. Let me let me give you an example. And this will probably make some of you uncomfortable. But we're going to disagree. And I'll be tolerant. I'll just still be right.

I've been seeing articles, man, it's out there. And there's one particular I saw a family, four year old, they're like, their kid is still an it. They're like, it has to decide its gender. You realize that you think that sounds ridiculous, but when you philosophically

take a point, you gotta play it out to the end and see where it takes you. And this tolerance idea and your gender, you can't You got to let them explore the space. If I put a boundary on my kid and tell them their gender, well, then I'm telling them their identity and I'm controlling them. And that's what's leading to all the depression later on. No, it's not.

It's the fact that they're finding their identity in anything other than Christ is what the problem is. And so they're saying, I'm not going to do this. That's where it naturally goes. And if you try to put that stereotype on your kid, then you've controlled them.

You've put a boundary on them you can't do. You're squelching their identity. But you know what's funny? Same blogger, same person that's doing this has a rant against, I can't believe there's parents that feed their kids genetically altered foods. Those of you laughed understood the ridiculous contradiction that is.

You're gonna take a four year old and let them leave them on their own, figuring out something as complex as gender that their brain cannot even comprehend and just leave them alone. But you won't let them decide what they're going to eat for dinner. See the stupidity? Why is one over the other? Because food seems more

keep your kids safe by what you feed them. You keep them safe by this. So that's okay to control. But out here, that's their identity. No, it's not. What happens if Here's where that you get the contradiction, the fallacy of this. What if your kid says, you know what? I identify as an uneducated person.

You're like, unless your fever is over a 102, you're getting on that bus and going to school. Right? You wouldn't let them say I want to I What if their kid came out, five year old says, I identify as a candy ist. So henceforth and forth with, I will only eat candy. What are you going to do? Stay consistent.

Stay consistent. If you stay consistent, then you're going to deal with the dental bills and the diabetes. Good luck. You see, and then the other way that's taught to not squelch is here's how the enemy gets us.

You as a Christian parent would not let your kid decide if they want to go to school. If they want to come home at night. If they want to do this. But yet your kid gets 12 and starts complaining about church, and you let them just stay home. Why? Well, I don't want to ruin their relationship with God.

Oh, so if your kid doesn't want to go to school, you ruined their education by making them go? If you're young and you're pulling that con on your parents, stop it. I was a youth pastor. I know what you're doing.

You're the parent. This is what your home does. You're going do that in our home. When you're 18, you can always move out and leave. Matter of fact, that's part of the plan. If they really don't like it, that's what helps them leave. That's eagles get this.

You know what eagles do when they build their nest? It's all the scratchy sticks on. But then they go find soft stuff, and they pat it. And then when they feel when they get to the age that they think they should be flying away, if a bird if they won't fly away, they start taking the padding out. And it finally gets so irritating, the birds fly away. They go, good.

Eagle nests don't have a basement. So there you go.

That's part of the plan. And kids, just deal with it. Because when you are grown and have your own place, you want the people that live in your house to respect your authority, don't you? And my dad used something. This is just for you teenagers out there. I'm this is special for you. My dad taught me something super valuable. You're gonna hate me because I'm an old man, but at least I got tears in my jeans. I identify with you. Here we go.

You have no business leading if you can't follow. So if you wanna go lead the next generation, learn how to follow. It'll make you a better leader. Trust me. I just gave you gold. If you figure this out, you probably will lead the world someday.

But if you fight everything because your own way and manipulate and play into your parents' insecurities, it's not gonna help because they're pretty insecure because their parents were a mess also. They're doing the best they can as it says in there. So this idea is we get trapped in in in this this weird trap of of of

the things I wanna do became my identity. So then if you try to correct me, you're saying I'm no good or I'm not enough. But the reality is we aren't enough. None of us are. We all need Jesus. So we don't repent. We just rally.

And that's not helping us. And it won't. And here's why this is hard. And some people, even in this church, some people sitting here going, ah, that that made me uncomfortable. I can't believe he was he he said that. And the reason it sounds weird to you is because we grew up in this culture. And so when you hear the truth,

it sounds foreign. It sounds a little weird. Sounds right. That's why God says sometimes you gotta strengthen your weak hands and your knees because there's some things that he's gonna say that, but it seems like that makes more sense to go that way. He goes, nope. Death. Go this way. Then you hear the truth and it doesn't make sense. It's like this. Wanna show you a picture. It's like this picture here.

You hear this truth and you think I'm describing this. Like, unless I'm Yoda, how did you levitate a meteor in the air like that? So you see that picture and go, that's impossible. Therefore, since I think that's impossible, I think you doctored that. That's not really true. That's been fixed.

It's photoshopped. Right? I'm going tell you right now, that picture has not been photoshopped at all. You know, the only thing we did? I turned it upside down. Look at it when it's the other way around. There you go. Mic drop. That's the problem. We are living in an upside down world. So the truth seems ridiculous.

You got to turn it back right around and you'll see. Somebody having a hard time seeing how that's can you you get it? Someone challenged me on that. I'm like, fine. Go up. Look. Just do this if you don't believe me. Oh, yeah. Serious. It is the same. We're in an upside down world.

So the truth is gonna look like a levitating rock sometimes waiting to fall on you. When it's not. It's not. So as a parent, groundskeeper, referee,

and then finally, what you gotta get to. Because if you just do those, it's not gonna work out so well. You got to have the last one, which is the coach.

You got to be the coach. This is the goal. The coach is you take advantage of teachable moments to prepare my child for the game instead of benching them to keep them safe. See, discipline correction is a teachable moment. It's not a trashing moment. It's not a destroying moment. It's a teachable moment.

And here's the cool thing about teachable moments. If you do this well, your kids eventually move out and you're not supposed to be the groundskeeper and referee in their life their whole life. You hope you taught them to trust Jesus for that. But if you do this well, you get to be coach the rest of their life.

You can coach them and then spoil their kids in vengeance. That's the goal. Right? And so that's what you want to do. You want to look for these moments to teach them and train them and and and correct them. Not to correction is not destroying them. It's turning their heart

towards the path that God says, this is how life works. This is how the game works. And the biggest lie out there is is is is any kind of boundary restricts freedom. If you've played any sport, you know boundaries create freedom.

Discipline brings freedom. Lack of discipline brings slavery. We know that. You teach your kids this and everything except the spiritual matters.

You better go to school because you don't go to school, don't have any ideas, and you won't have a good job. So if you drop out of school, you'll work terrible jobs. You won't have a good life. You'll struggle.

And then that leads down to the road. If you get in with some sinister character, sometimes you end up committing crimes. You go around the law to get stuff, and then you end up in prison. So how did all that freedom of rejecting any authority in your life work out for you?

Does the same thing with no discipline in food. You end up drinking to cope with, so I can handle it. You end up an alcoholic. Destroys your life. Drug addict destroys your life. Everything that you think is I'm going go do my own thing and have no discipline ends ends in slavery. Discipline opens the door to freedom.

And that's what we need to train our kids. That's what you need Shalom to do. And I just I just want to close with this is is I learned this and and I have to set it up this way. My mom was great at this. This is only an illustration for one thing when it came to sports.

When it came to sports, my parents had were very different. My mom was a cheerleader. That's it. My dad coached.

And so so my mom would cheerleader. No matter what, man, I could be playing a game and I go, hey, I'm getting tons of strikeouts and lots of hits. The problem was I was pitching. So I was striking out when I was heading and giving all the hits when I was pitching. So it would be a bad game. Bad game. I'm just getting trash in my mind. Yes, so good. Yes. Almost like calming down, mom. But it was awesome. I could do no wrong. No matter what happened in the game, she can be, that was so great. That's fun. Let's go get ice cream. You know? Mom made me feel good all the time. My dad, different story.

When he would coach, he would he would always cheerlead. He cheered more me, but he also wanted to coach. He would talk about it. And when he was my literal coach, there was consequences for paying attention. And there was a game he was coaching once.

And, I got on first. There was a guy in third. I wanted to steal second because there was two outs. And if we could get one base hit and I get on second, we win the game. So I get off and I've been watching this guy. He's easy to steal. So I'm gonna steal. So I jump off and I get off and I happen to look down. I realized when I spit my gum out before I went up to bat, it landed on my pants. And I looked, go, wait, there's the gum. And I went like and it was all stuck in a color green. I'm like, what in the heck? And I was like,

And I look, there's the first baseman. Game over. Gee, I wasn't a kid. This was a high school game. I was in high school. I was like, squirrel. Somebody now pulls it. He's like, guys, what have I taught you over and over? And he says, mental mistakes. Physical mistakes we're gonna make, but keep your head in the game.

So go run five laps, and you can thank Bill for it. And it was just one of those moments. He he disciplined

and dislike. So there was times after games I didn't want to talk to my dad. Because it didn't feel good. Just like you said, discipline at the time feels painful. I didn't want to reveal. So sometimes I'd fight with him and argue with him. And then my mom be like, leave him alone. Like thinking he's being bad. He's like, he's trying to help me. And I know that. And and he would try and we'd fight. So what I do a lot of times, I'd run right to mom.

It was great. In my entire life playing sports, my mom never made me feel bad one time. Never made me feel bad one time. Every time made me feel good no matter what. But I can tell you this. My dad made me a better athlete. My mom did not make me better at sports at all. What kind of parent do you want to be?

Just aimlessly cheering as your kid doesn't actually get anywhere?

Or choose to embrace being a leader than a cheerleader. And I can tell you this. When I saw my dad smile and cheer for me because I did something right, it felt so much better than my mom.

Because she would cheer at anything. It felt more genuine from my dad.

Do you want to have the courage to do that? Because it takes courage. And so that's why I want to stop here. Because I want to have us a chance to try to experience some courage. And it's really an opportunity for you to go get your kids and Are we okay? No? It's a down. Well, stop that. Sorry. Stings for you guys.

What we were going to do was be able to take a tour of the building right now. And we had a walking tour and a path to go on. But the wind kicked up so bad, someone got hit in the head with something out here. And it's like you go out there, a tour and valley fever also. So they for safety reasons, they have to close it down. So we'll probably have to try to get you guys another opportunity to walk around. But you can go out there and look at But but I do need to finish up by challenge you with this one thing. I want give you an update then about our our courage campaign.

It it was the path was an opportunity to go show your kids. You still can take them out and look through the fence or whatever. But hey, we we've been in this campaign called courage. Why? And and and really, this does fit with the close of this. Because we try not to disconnect life from us being called to be the church.

And so as a church, we're called to have courage. Because this kind of courage and parenting I just talked about is hard. But what it said, there's something beautiful on the other side of it. Every time we trust what God asked us to do with courage,

there's something beautiful on the other side. But as my dad used to say, if he ain't scared, it ain't courage. So I've had to be coach Bill and challenge us as God's children

to take the courageous step. And one of them is we needed to build a building, if you've noticed it. How many of you have noticed there's a building going on right there? Yeah. Good. You guys are perceptive. And the

reality is, is we needed to build this because God called us. If we are a follower of Jesus, our mission, not a church's mission, our mission is to point people to Jesus by loving them like Jesus. And you know what? If you're new here,

this church is courageous when it comes to that. When we needed to go to Saturday, so many people moved. When we needed this. When we needed money, we pay. We end up in this building, in our building that. And we had to have courage. And the reason is not just because we need more room in here to reach people, but it's really because of our youth ministries and all. In a world where youth ministry seems to be tanking and people are running away from God, we had a youth night the other night and there were 600 here.

Six. They filled this room.

We need to build that building because we got to get out of their way. They're like, lead follower, get out of the way. You know. And our children's ministry, we have had so many lives changed. God has blessed us and he's inviting us

to be on the front row of what he's doing. Giving and sacrificing for a building is not something God wants from us. It's something he wants for us. We get to be a part of that. And I want to do a couple things here. First, I want to thank you for those of you that gave.

Continue to give. Because in order to build this building, it's a $17,000,000 build. And so in order to do it, we needed to get committed at least $5,000,000

because then we got qualified. We have a lender that's bridging the gap for us. They actually got a tent out there. It's a Cornerstone Fund. And what they are is they're a lending finance. You can go to invest retirement kind of thing. But they're kingdom minded. So they turn around and the investments and the money they make, they pour into being able to lend to churches like us.

And so if you get a chance and you're looking for some advice and help on retirement or planning or some investments, go talk to them. Because not only will that help you, that will also invest in the kingdom.

But in order to do that, we need at least 5,000,000. But we would like to to do better. But so I just wanted to thank you that you gave. Our goal was 5,000,000 over two years, and I'm sad to say we didn't get there. We exceeded it by almost a half a million so far. So there you go.

At least we're on path. We're on pace for that. We're about halfway. You know, we started back in September. Right now, if everyone who's committed, you keep giving, we're going to get to 5,400,000 or $5,500,000

So we're almost half 1,000,000 past. Well, we realized that when we look, don't want to be house poor. That was the bare minimum. And now we're looking. We're like, hey, you know what? We did that. You guys stepped up and we're there. But a lot of you didn't get a chance to jump in. You're still on the sidelines.

And I want to challenge you. Here, I'm now not cheerleader Bill. Thank you. I thank you. There's the cheer. Now here's the leader. Coach Bill says, I need the rest of you in the game. I need the whole team. I need you to have courage and sacrifice financially.

So we've stepped the goal, which scares me because I already asked. We pleaded. We did it. We exceeded what we thought. And now I realize God says, no, we want to go a little further. So we've raised the goal to 7,000,000. So I need 1.6 more million dollars.

So unless you're like Bill Gates and can just walk up here and go here, we're going to have to all jump in. And so I'm hoping we can get to 7,000,000, which enables us to do more with the building. It helps us to speed up, get out of the way, retrofit this for the youth ministries and all those things. But like I said,

here is an opportunity to have a front row seat of what God is giving to us. He's giving us a chance to be a part of this. There is something to be said when you walk in that building and you know that God let you be a part of it over just walking in the building.

There is something to be said when you know that God let you be a part of every life that's changed because of it. There's something to be said when you can walk your kids around and show them this and say, we sacrificed for this because that's what we value.

We are called to do this. You want your kids to be generous and not selfish and think about it. You tell them what you did and you say, and this is why you didn't get that new PlayStation. Or if they're 18, this was college for you. No.

I'm not kidding. I honest that's what I did with my kids. I'm telling you, it's stuff like that. You sacrifice and you show them and you invite them in and that's how you teach them. God is giving us an opportunity to be a part of what he's doing. So coach Bill says, get in the game.

You'll be so glad you did. You'll be so rewarded. Just take it from all the people in the church have been a part of it. And all I know is there is beauty on the other side of the courage. And I will tell you again, the building is great because we need it. But that's not the beauty I'm talking about.

I'm looking at the beauty I'm talking about. If you've come since we started this building, the people that have sacrificed sacrificed for you. That's why we did it.

But there's a lot more people out there that need to know how much Jesus loves them. And God is letting us be a part of that. And I'm gonna invite you to jump in and I wish I can invite you to go walk around, but you don't wanna get hit in the head and valley fever at the same time. It's probably wouldn't work. So hopefully, we'll try to set up another time that you can go and get your kids and walk them through there. But I would invite you to consider

getting the new thing and filling out a card and making a pledge and joining us on this. God's doing amazing things and I want you to be able to enjoy it. And imagine your kids growing up and them seeing that there was sacrifice for this and what they saw in their lives. It would be awesome. Amen?

Let me pray. Father God, thank you, Lord. Thank you that you love us so much. And Lord, I thank you that as we've looked at this parenting series, we ended on looking at you are the perfect parent. We are just parents that are trying to be perfected. But Lord, for everyone in this room, whether they're a parent or not,

we need to learn to trust you as our father. So Lord, I pray that as we do that, if we are parents, we'd be able to engage in these roles of leading our children the way you lead us.

Lord, I especially want to pray over any single parents in here because everything we just talked about is not just doubled, but compounded in difficulty when you're doing it alone. So Lord, I pray extra grace, extra strength for the single parents.

I pray for grace for there's some grandparents here that are parents again, that you you you empower them to do it again and stay faithful. And Lord, I pray for this this campaign, for this building, because we as your children are trying to do what you've asked us to do. And that is to faithfully proclaim

your love to this community. And you've been doing amazing things. And contrary to our culture, people are flocking to you here.

And Lord, we just want to be a part of that. So I pray that you speak to each one of our hearts of what is the courageous step you're asking each of us to do to be a part of that. I pray this all in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.