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Open Door SDA Church

Restoring the Home

Dwayne Lemon

01 The Sealing Work and Its Order

02 First Things First

03 Biblical Principles for Marriage

04 The Power of Forgiveness

05 Biblical Principles of Parenting

And so I'm very grateful for all of the things that we have been studying.

And on a subject like this, you know, we could spend a whole week going through the subject of biblical principles and parenting.

And I'm gonna let you know right up front, I don't stand before you as somebody who has mastered this.

My wife and I are privileged to have 4 gifts from God, 2 boys, 2 girls, so we have a perfect balance of hormones in our home.

And we have 3 women and 3 men in our house.

I can definitely teach a lot about what not to do.

I can definitely show you a lot about the mistakes to avoid because when I look at myself as a father, I unfortunately can see more of my challenges than my successes, but I know that I'm still in the Master's hand.

I know he's not through with me yet, and so I'm not downcast or anything of that nature.

I'm just still on the onward upward journey, and I want as many fathers in the room to join me in that.

But I do believe that heaven has given principles as it relates to parenting that we're going to cover and we're just going to cover enough that I believe by God's grace, it'll give us a good foundation.

It'll give us a good foundation that we can build upon, and then we can take it further and further in our personal studies.

I'm looking forward to next year, because next year by God's grace, we'll be doing more as it relates to ministering to the families within, but also the families in our communities, because the struggles are real, both in and out of the church, and people need a lot of help.

I'm reminded that as a result of things that has happened with COVID, especially the lockdowns, We have found that child molestation, domestic abuse, has gone up at very alarming numbers.

And the world, like never before, needs ministry.

They need the gospel, because the gospel is a wonderful simplifier of life's problems.

And so the more that we as God's people can take the gospel within our hearts, we can bring that into our communities.

We can mix that in our evangelistic efforts and we can really help in the most practical way to help a people be prepared to meet their God.

And so as we get ready to go through this very serious and solemn subject, I'm going to kneel for a word of prayer.

I'd like to invite you as much as you are able to to kneel with me, and if you can't kneel, just bow your heads reverently where you are, but let us pray together as we prepare to hear the word.

Our Father in heaven, we are very, very grateful.

We thank you so much that you are blessing us and helping us to really see how much you want us to be prepared to meet you because Jesus is coming soon.

And you just want to make sure that we're counted on the side that says, lo, this is our God.

We have waited for him and he will save us.

And so Lord, we have been studying week after week and throughout the week, we've been looking at your plan to restore the broken families, because many of us, if we're honest with ourselves, we are broken.

We are in desperate need of help, but we're grateful that we can look onto the hills from whence comes our help, knowing our help comes from the Lord.

We know that you are with us because we are inviting you, not merely in this building, but in our hearts.

Please speak to us now and make your words plain to us, Lord.

Give us what we need, especially as mothers and fathers that will help our homes get on better ground is our prayer we ask in the worthy and mighty name of Jesus, let everyone say amen.

You know, let's go to the book of Malachi chapter 4.

You know, I remember 1 time as I become more and more acquainted with the love of God, with the mercy of God, with the grace of God, The more that I become acquainted with that, I find myself talking about it more, speaking about it more.

And I have some friends who are pretty hardcore.

You know, they're some pretty serious tough guys in the Word of God.

You know, they're present truth gangsters.

They take the Bible like a shotgun, and they blow you away with it.

And what happens is a lot of times, you know, we can become so rough with the word that we lose our ability to demonstrate redemption.

Even our language, our speech is not redemptive anymore.

And the more that I study the word of God, you know, he's opening my eyes.

It's never been clearer to me what God wants so that we can actually go home with Jesus.

I'm not confused on what God wants as it relates to the finishing of his work.

But to accomplish it is terribly difficult because it requires a degree of surrender that very few people have.

And 1 of the hardest places to demonstrate biblical surrender is in the home.

Because in the home, we often feel This is the place where we can unzip the actor and actress of who we are and we can now be ourselves, right?

When we're at home, we're our most comfortable selves.

Sometimes we enjoy talking about other people.

We do a lot of things we dare not do in the house of God, not realizing our homes are houses of God.

And so what God is trying to do is awaken us to the reality that who you and I are at home is the real us.

And that's where God needs to meet us most.

Because if we can learn to be Christians in the home, I guarantee you, you can be a Christian anywhere else.

And so Jesus is not blind to the realities of what we as God's people really need.

And so as I'm going through these studies week after week, believe it or not, we've been studying end-time prophecy.

I mean, you've been talking about forgiveness, you've been talking about having personal walks with God before getting married, you're talking about biblical principles of marriage, Where's present truth in that?

You see, Jesus made a prophecy in verses 5 and 6.

And Jesus spelled it out very beautifully.

His spirit spoke to Malachi and said these words in verses 5 and 6.

I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

The children and the hearts of the children to their fathers lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." In other words, the last day work is going to be people that are not Elijah in person.

When you read Luke chapter 1 and verse 17, it shows that John the Baptist, who was the first application of this prophecy, it says that John the Baptist came in the spirit and power of Elijah and so God's gonna have a people right before the Lord's second coming, before the great and dreadful day of the Lord, God is going to have the spirit of Elijah and the power that was given to Elijah to work in the hearts of his people.

It's going to reunite hearts together that have been broken.

It's gonna take those families that have been separated.

It's gonna, and listen, you don't have to be out of the home to be separated.

You can be inside your home and be almost as it were just as divorced as an individual that's outside of the home.

Nowadays you got husbands and wives that pass each other like ships through a night.

They don't talk, they don't reason, they don't spend quality time together.

Parents and children, often the new posture of the day is this.

And it's amazing, it's shocking, brothers and sisters.

And listen, I'm not gonna act like I'm not void from this issue.

There are times that I've been shocked at how my family and I can be in a room.

We're all together and the room is very quiet because everybody's head is in this position.

And I'm not trying to make it sound like this is criminal.

There's a relevance to looking at your phone at times, OK?

Sometimes we get text messages or otherwise.

But when you notice this going on frequently, and it's happening day after day, and week after week, and month after month, and year after year, that's when God is trying to say, hey, there's a problem.

Because families, we act like we have all the time in the world.

You know, when I joined this church 29 years ago, I was a dancer in the hip-hop and R&B culture.

I was an entertainer and I was a performer in the entertainment industry.

Our stage name, I was Des and he was Dagger.

And, you know, we would go ahead and we performed for hip-hop artists.

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Series

Restoring the Home

05 Biblical Principles of Parenting

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Restoring the Home

01 The Sealing Work and Its Order

44m

Peace be Still

52m

Righteousness by Faith in the Book of First Samuel- Part 2

1h 2m

Lord, Teach us to Pray

Lord, Teach us to Pray - Part 3

47m

Lost in Paradise

42m

Let the Words of My Mouth

Let the Words of My Mouth- Part 1

30m

The Weeping Prophet of Hope

51m

Lessons from the Book of Genesis

The Eden Family

49m

Plenary Sessions

As For Me and My House

1h 15m

Eve’s Broken Bones

1h

WYC 2012 Plenary Sessions

Repentance and the Latter Rain

1h 19m

Sound Doctrine