<p>Finding parenting’s ultimate purpose</p>

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Restoration International

Parenting ~ Heart to Heart

Alane Waters

Tom Waters

Parenting with a Purpose

Tonight, we're going to talk about parenting with a purpose.

Sounds like a starting place, doesn't it?

What comes to your mind when you think of parenting with a purpose?

What kind of purpose do you think of when you think of parenting with a purpose?

That is preparatory for heaven, isn't it?

Because there will be no heaven without that.

We have any purposes for our children here?

If that is happening, if we're really doing that kind of parenting with that kind of purpose.

If they're ready to meet Jesus when he comes, then they'll be revealing Jesus along the way.

But now I want to ask you another question.

And I always like to say this when I'm asking people questions.

I don't ask you questions that I haven't asked myself and we haven't asked ourselves or that the Lord has not challenged us on personally.

So if these are our purposes and they're very worthwhile purposes, then do you go through the day thinking of these purposes in your day-to-day parenting experience?

Because there are a lot of things that take up our mental space during the day.

But if we're going to parent with a purpose, then we need to take these goals or these motives that are in our hearts and we need to start making them a part of our daily life in practical ways, don't we?

If you wanna have a business, don't you have to have some kind of business plan?

You can have the most wonderful business plan in the world, but if you don't start making some practical steps towards accomplishing it in real life, it'll just be a nice plan, won't it?

We need to have these purposes brought into our daily experience because without that conscious plan, it'll be a desire.

And we can go through our lives saying, I sure want my child in the kingdom of heaven.

I'd like to have him ready for the kingdom of heaven.

He's bigger than I am now, and I sure want him to be in the kingdom of heaven.

If there's not a daily working out, a conscious working together with God For this purpose, it won't happen, because the devil will see to it that it gets put off 1 more day.

So we want to talk this evening about parenting with a purpose.

When we were not cognizant, when we were not focused on keeping that purpose in the forefront of our minds, we, like many of you, just found ourselves getting through and surviving day by day.

And it was interesting how many things would come in to take up our time.

And it wasn't just all those things that other people were wanting us to do, or our work commitments or responsibility, or the outreach we had in the church and that responsibility.

I created a lot of wasted time and opportunities because I didn't have a clear purpose in mind.

Yes, we had our children, we want them to be in the kingdom of God, but we never gave it a thought.

And when our children were little, our days and my days at home with them were just chaos.

We covered the basics, you know, but I filled that time and that space with so many other things.

I mean just something to fill time because I mean after all you're just at home with the children and so you Not really a lot to do.

Dad's off to work and he's not going to be home until 4 or 5 in the afternoon.

And you know it's only 10 o'clock in the morning.

And what are you going to do to fill all that space?

Well, let's just go out and see what's on sale.

Thinking of things to do to fill time and space, because the purpose was not clearly in the forefront of our mind.

Well, that's how we started our parenting, by default, not intentionally, but just because it wasn't a clear vision to us.

So we had Allison and we had Emily and they were growing up and we found out that we had a lot of challenges with 2 little infant and toddler that was incredible to us how they could have such strong wills and independence and a resistive spirit.

We talked about it, you know, out there somewhere, on those emotional moments, but we came to find out.

And for many years, once God brought it to the forefront of our mind in a very powerful and impactive way on a Friday evening when the chaos was put to a stop for the sacred hours of the Sabbath to enter.

That evening, God began to change the direction of our parenting Because the reality of coming to realize that the direction we're going, our children are never going to see the kingdom of God.

They're going to know their memory verses and they're going to be pretty good, but they have no Christ-likeness, was a startling reality to us as parents.

And we began at that night to be on our knees humbly before the Lord and asking Him to begin to change who we were and how we parented with our children.

And we can go back to that very evening and at that night say, that is where a very clear direction for parenting with a purpose began.

Now we've had a lot of dips since then, but we've never lost that in our vision.

It has always been there and it continues to be there at the ages of our young people.

And it's been that desire, that hope and that purpose clear in our minds that has brought us through some of the most trying and difficult circumstances in parenting with our own children, through the most trying and difficult circumstances between my husband and I in our marriage, and through some of the most trying and difficult circumstances with others, and the criticism of us for the odd ways that we were not conforming to the standards of the Christian Church of today.

But when we keep God first and we keep the desire, remember that opening text?

1 thing have I desired of the Lord and what?

It is a very clear desire that we are focused on seeking after God, then we begin to see incredible changes in our lives, in the lives of our children, and it has been forever in the forefront of our mind as parents.

So we want to encourage you that tonight, we as parents, and most of us are parents here tonight, keep that purpose clearly before us.

You have your Bibles open to Deuteronomy, the sixth chapter and the fifth verse.

Here is our purpose and this purpose continues to be opening to our hearts as our young people get older and older in their young adult lives.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

Love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, with all of thy soul, and with all of thy might.

That's his whole desire in redeeming us is that we could be restored.

God’s Word the Parent’s Guide

It's been such a blessed Sabbath day for so many reasons.

Tonight we want to close this beautiful Sabbath talking about something that is very important to us as parents and important to everyone here, whether you're a parent or a child, a grandparent.

You know, there's an interesting thing that there were many years in my life that I would have said amen to that, because How could you say anything else but that?

It was not guiding me through the difficulties of our early parenting.

You know, we say we are people of the Word.

Because we need the Word of God to guide us in the things that we need to do as parents.

And that's what we want to talk about tonight.

Do you really go to the Word of God to find the answers to the perplexities that you face?

Or in reality, do you do what we used to do?

And that is that we go to the authors that have supposedly gone to the Word of God and we try to glean from what these authors have learned on modern parenting principles.

Where do we go for the answers, for the things that we face in daily life?

Are we going to the popular counselors and leaders of our day in our churches.

I was at a women's retreat listening to a very popular Christian leader.

She was sharing with all the women there, all of us mothers in the audience, the challenges she faced in parenting.

We understand challenges, don't we, as parents?

Things just don't run smooth when they come out of the womb.

We find out very quickly that there's 2 individuals that need to be dealt with, our child and ourself.

And as she began to share some of the challenges that she faced with lying and stealing and depression in her young people as they grew up into their teen years.

She was expressing to the people that they had all these rules in their home and these standards in their home, but their children and their youth kept hitting against them and hitting against them and hitting against them until they were so frustrated as parents.

They finally decided that what they would do was go to a new parenting method.

They decided they would give their children 3 basic rules.

As long as you don't smoke, as long as you don't drink, and as long as you don't commit fornication, the rest is up to you and the Lord.

And I tell you, as I sat there and I heard those words, for those mothers in the audience whose hearts were aching for encouragement on how to face the challenges we have as parents, as mothers, I felt how empty.

We've just discarded the word of God and we've given a superficial, even kind of a, somewhat of a worldly freedom.

And those poor mothers left with nothing solid that they could go back to.

So we need to be careful where we're getting our wisdom and our encouragement.

You know, some people say, and I can remember hearing this more than once, Oh, did you know my child does this?

And of course it's something you don't want your child to do.

And then another mother who also has a child of a similar issues, well my child does the same thing.

This just must be normal childhood behavior.

It is a child who is not in the Lord Jesus Christ.

But God has given us something so much more, and that is through His power, we can raise our children from infancy to adulthood.

Not to be normal children by societal standards, but to be children and youth who have principles, who have a relationship with Jesus Christ, and who put him first in life so that they can have so much more and they can truly experience joy and peace that passes all understanding.

You know 1 of the things that we began to recognize and over the years we've listened to people share and we've observed that many times the problem that's happening in parenting is that life is so busy, and everybody can relate to that, okay?

Life is so busy that we really don't have time to be parenting from the Word of God.

That really what's ended up happening is that, and this is not how it is for us today, but it's how it used to be, especially in the early years of our parenting.

Life was so pushed and there was so much going on that all we did is try to maintain and put fires out as they happened.

That when a crisis arose in the family, we deal with it.

We had to deal with it because the children got loud enough, they got whatever enough, that we had to deal with it because it was right there face to face with us.

This is not what God is calling us to do.

Today our children, for many years, our children have been so important to us that they have had the first place under God in our marriage.

And not that we haven't made many mistakes, and not that we haven't had to struggle with our own busyness and the push of life, But we recognize that we couldn't just let our children grow up like weeds in a garden.

How much work do you put into growing your weeds in your garden?

Anybody here have a really tough time with it?

The weeds just come up and you have to work and pray and cultivate those other things to come up that you want to come up right?

We don't want our children to just happen and all of a sudden like many people that I talked to today, they've grown up and they're not ready, They're not prepared.

I wish I would have taken more time for them.

I wish I would have put more energy into them.

So If you find yourself today just letting your children grow up, just meeting the challenges when they happen, and then the rest is just maintenance, please don't.

You can make a commitment to God that that is going to change and God will give you the grace to change it.

So tonight we want to challenge you as we ourselves have been challenged and we want to encourage you as we have been encouraged that there is only 1 source that we can count on for wisdom and direction in life, and that's the word of God.

It has the answers to every problem we face.

Especially if that praying wife goes inside the cover of this book.

There's 2 verses that we'd like to share with you kind of to begin this evening.

Isaiah 40, chapter 40 and verse 8, it says, the Word of God standeth forever.

That means the Word of God is never outdated.

Everything that's written, whether it's in the book of Genesis or the book of Revelation, every page in between, is current for our needs today as parents.

Every word that's there is there to guide us, to encourage us, to direct us, to help us to understand how we can raise our children for the Kingdom of God.

And then the words of Christ himself in Matthew 24, verse 35, he says, heaven and earth will pass away.

Those things are temporary, but my word shall not pass away.

Because It's not really what's happening today in Christianity.

And I don't know how it is in the church where you're attending, but I tell you there are many people today that are facing a crisis in Christianity.

Reaching the Heart

The Lord is good and He's reaching our hearts, isn't He?

And that's what we're going to be talking about tonight.

Because God has to reach our heart as parents if we're going to reach the hearts of these little ones that he's given us as a heritage of the Lord.

Now it really isn't us reaching the hearts of these little ones, is it?

It's really God reaching their hearts as God reaches our hearts and He wants to work through us as parents.

He wants to build a relationship between he and us as parents and between us and our children.

He says in Proverbs 23, 26, My son, give me thine heart.

How can we ask for our child to be willing to surrender to us, to be willing to trust us if we have not set an example of being willing to give ourselves to God, to trust God.

That's the call that God makes to me as a father, to my wife as a mother.

And then as we respond to his call, then we can begin to expect our children to give their hearts to our Heavenly Father, and that our hearts will be knit together, Father and Child, Mother and Child.

We want to give you an overview of what we're going to be discussing this evening in reaching the hearts of our children.

Now when we say children, we mean from infancy to youth.

We still, as parents, with our children as old as they are, must reach their hearts.

I'm gonna share with you 4 areas that we have found scripturally, and it was really the experience that Jesus had as he spent time with his family, the disciples, we call that his family, how he reached the hearts of his family.

So the first area we're going to be talking about is time.

Christ spent time with them, 3 and a half years, intense time, giving of himself.

Interest is the secondary we're gonna be discussing.

He took time and an interest to know about their families and about the kind of work they came from and about the real desires in their hearts.

He understood their desires and their motives and it's understanding that he used to reach the heart of his disciples.

So with understanding, we reach the heart of our young people.

And lastly, but not least important, love.

And in reality, Love is all a part of those other things we talked about but through love reaching out to our young people This is how God reaches our heart.

This is how he will use us to reach the heart of our children We're going to emphasize that tonight And so as we talk about these 4 areas, if we really want to reach the hearts of our child, of our children, we need to make it a conscious commitment.

We make conscious commitments every day to things that are far less important and far less eternally important than reaching the hearts of our children.

I say it's worth making a conscious commitment to reach the heart of our child.

I believe that's 1 of the reasons that we're here and tonight we want to talk first about time you see Ecclesiastes 3.1 says that to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose it takes time to listen to our children It takes time to listen to our children.

It takes time to listen to them with interest and then as we're listening to our children it takes time to listen to God as we listen to our children you know sometimes we can listen to our children and I speak from experience both positive and negative sometimes we can be listening to our children And while they're talking we will be formulating what?

Oh you you know God wants to restrain us if we're listening with interest and it takes time then we will also be listening with interest to what saith my Lord concerning this matter.

I remember 1 day recently Allison came into my office.

Okay, My office is my part-time office, part-time bedroom.

My children reminded me the other day that I spend an awful lot of time in our bedroom.

If you've seen our pictures, a little corner of our room is my office.

And so we were just talking the other day about how much time I spend sleeping and sitting at that desk doing correspondence and phone calls.

And hadn't really thought of it like that.

But recently Allison came in and she came around the corner in the door and stood there and she began to tell me we were talking about her new responsibilities that she's taken on recently as a teacher for the young people in the church.

I was going to say the youth group, but really it's, I don't know, ages...

And she is thoroughly enjoying taking this responsibility, and the young people are just responding beautifully to her reaching out to them.

Well as she started sharing with me, she just walked in the room, and as she started sharing with me, I was busily involved in important work, right?

But when she came in and started sharing with me enthusiastically, I have to be honest with you My mind was trying to be divided between What she was saying in 1 ear and what I was concentrating on in the other Well actually in the eyes, okay, And I was trying to do this and the Lord just gently but firmly reproved me and called for me to listen with interest to my daughter.

Are you listening to your young people or are you so tired of hearing their prattle when they're little or hearing their crying or hearing their whatever that you tune them out.

If we want to reach the hearts of our young people friends we need to listen with interest and when the Lord calls to us to tune into them I hope you'll tune in because you know these young people they grow up very quickly don't they?

I was reminiscing this morning as I was listening to Paul and Carolyn sharing about their experiences with their children because it took my mind back to when ours were little the toddler age and as they're growing up 567 years old and brought back a flood of memories they grow up quick.

But 1 of the things that I won't regret, and I hope you won't regret it, friends, 1 of the things I won't regret is listening with interest to my young people.

You know, 1 of the blessings that's come back to me as a father is that as I have listened to my young people, they listened to me.

It's good fruit, and in the process, it's reaching their heart.

Another area that takes time is time to pray with our children.

I don't mean just kneeling in worship and having a family prayer time.

I'm talking about a time to kneel with them and teach them how to pray.

How to pray about their weaknesses, how to pray about their struggles, how to pray about their stubbornness, how to pray about their defeats, how to pray about their victories and their thankfulness.

It takes time to pray with your children.

We're busy mothers, we're busy parents, we have a lot on us.

And how many of us really take time to pray with our children?

It seems kind of basic, but it's a real need that we have.

But that reaches the heart of our young people.

When they see we're willing to get on our knees with them and pray that God will give them victory in their areas that they need to grow in, in habits that they need to develop in their spiritual life.

It encourages them, It reaches into their heart.

And do you know to pray for our children when they don't even know we're praying for them.

We can be standing at the kitchen sink praying for our children.

We can be driving down the road praying for our children.

This is time well invested that God wants us to use to reach the heart of our young people.

So take time to pray with your children and for your children and you will find their hearts responding to yours.

You know, God has a gospel order in everything.

And do you believe that there's also a gospel order in prayer?

We need to open our hearts to God for our own personal needs first.

Then the next person I pray for is my wife.

I need a living connection with my wife in addition to my connection with God and then I pray for my young people.

That's the order that I start my praying because that's where I feel my first needs and that's where my first mission field is in my prayer time.

Well now we need time to play with our children.

You know I meet people, I meet people all over the world who say that is 1 of the hardest things I find is to play with my children.

I can't get down on my hands and knees and run little cars around.

I have a terrible time getting down and playing dollies with my children.

We need to give ourselves to play with our children.

We need to become children with our children.

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Series

Parenting ~ Heart to Heart

Parenting with a Purpose

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Practical

Managing Children

1h 11m

Teach Them Diligently

Teach Them Diligently - Part 3: Each Thought Counts

1h 3m

Cultivating Christian Character in Children

Cultivating Obedience & Self-Control

1h

Waters Family Weekend 2005

Parenting with a Purpose

51m

Breakout Session B

Always on Call: God’s Purpose for a Professional Parent

48m

A Sacred Trust: Character

58m

Parenting ~ Heart to Heart

ABC’s

55m

Plenary

1 + 1 = 1

57m

Follow the Leader

1h 5m

Sound Doctrine