Parenting in a Broken World | Part 2
Our first parenting episode dealt with the critical role of establishing parental authority. We continue to build upon that foundation by examining the warning (command, admonition) that parents refrain from provoking their children to anger. The teaching provides actionable insights for parents, advocating for a gospel centered parenting style infused with the Holy Spirit's guidance, focused on self-control, fairness, and understanding.
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Transcript
Welcome to the Fortifying youg Family podcast.
Speaker A:It can be daunting to navigate through an anti marriage and family culture.
Speaker A:Our teacher will expound biblical principles to help fortify our families and keep these sacred institutions strong.
Speaker A:And now, here's this week's teaching from Sam Wood.
Sam Wood:So I think it's important for us to understand as parents that we're on a rescue mission.
Sam Wood:Rescue mission, Listen of love to steer our children to honor and obey us.
Sam Wood:And when we train them to honor and obey us, they're under an umbrella of blessing of God.
Sam Wood:I've often had my boys and I would bring them in and I've done this many times and I would bring them in whether it's a devotional time or just supper time.
Sam Wood:And I'd get at the Bible and I'd read these verses and I'd say, listen, when you obey and honor mom and dad, you're under the blessing of God.
Sam Wood:But when you do not obey and honor mom and dad, you remove yourself outside that blessing into the judgment of God.
Sam Wood:I wanted to reinforce this truth that God gives us in these verses in their heart and the need to train them and understand that it's very, very important to God that they obey and honor us.
Sam Wood:But not only in our text does it teach that parents are the God ordained authority over their children, but also parents are accountable to God for the training of their children.
Sam Wood:Listen, we're the God ordained authority, but also we are accountable to God for training our children.
Sam Wood:And I believe one day we will stand before God and we will be held accountable for how we have trained our children.
Sam Wood:And we see that as we look at the beginning of verse four where it says, angie, fathers.
Sam Wood:Now I'm just going to stop right there.
Sam Wood:And the word father there in the Greek is patur is speaking specifically of the father directly to the fathers, not speaking to the mother, but it's speaking here directly to the father.
Sam Wood:Now there's a lot of confusion.
Sam Wood:I believe today in our culture, in our society for who is accountable for raising your children?
Sam Wood:Is it the government's job to raise your children?
Sam Wood:Is it the Sunday school teacher's job to raise your children?
Sam Wood:Is it Pastor Peter's job and the elders of this church to raise your children?
Sam Wood:Now certainly he comes alongside you and helps you with that.
Sam Wood:Is it the daycare's job to raise your children?
Sam Wood:I mean, we can ask all these questions today.
Sam Wood:Listen, people may be confused about this, the media may be confused about this, but God is not confused about this.
Sam Wood:And that's why he says in Psalm 127, in verse 3, it says, though children are a heritage of the Lord or a gift to us from God, and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
Sam Wood:And listen, if you have children, that's a reward of God.
Sam Wood:It's a blessing, it's not a curse.
Sam Wood:Regardless of how the world looks at that.
Sam Wood:Children are blessing of God.
Sam Wood:But the word heritage there, as I said, it means gift.
Sam Wood:Our children are a gift to us from God.
Sam Wood:And as being a gift from God, we are called by God to be stewards over the gift that God has given to us.
Sam Wood:Now, a steward is someone who carries out the dictates of a higher authority and therefore is accountable to that authority.
Sam Wood:So as a steward, a mom and dad carries out the dictates of God, who is a higher authority, okay, for the benefit of that child and raising that child, that they might grow up in glorifying God.
Sam Wood:It's interesting in chapter six and verse four, as I said a moment ago, that God specifically singles out the father, and God is saying specifically that the father will be held accountable for bringing up his children.
Sam Wood:The nurture and admonition of the Lord, and this command was not politically correct in Paul's day, as a father was given supreme rule over the family.
Sam Wood:And many times the father would typically assign this parental direction to the mother.
Sam Wood:A child was born, given to the father, and the father would give it to the mother.
Sam Wood:If the father allowed the child to live, he would give it to the mother and the mother would raise the child, typically.
Sam Wood:So this was something very different in Paul's day for them to hear.
Sam Wood:Angie Fathers now, it sounds kind of familiar to me to the culture we live in today, where we live in a culture where most, if not a good percentage of fathers still have this mentality.
Sam Wood:That is, if we have a child, then my wife can raise a child.
Sam Wood:I can just continue to be a kid.
Sam Wood:I can continue to be whatever I want to be and go my own way.
Sam Wood:According.
Sam Wood:In fact, I just looked this up according US Census Bureau, 18.3 million children, 1 in 4, live without a biological step or adoptive father in the home.
Sam Wood:Wade Horn aptly states, if America continues on its present course to be known as the nation of the Founding Fathers with no fathers to be found.
Sam Wood:And even though many homes have a father residing in them physically, they're often absent when it comes to being there emotionally and spiritually.
Sam Wood:To be a father physically, listen, is but an act of a moment of passion.
Sam Wood:But to be a father spiritually is to take up the cross of self denial every day of your life.
Sam Wood: The June: Sam Wood:If a father goes regularly, regardless of the practice of the mother, between 2/3 and 3/4 of their children will become church goers.
Sam Wood:When the father is absent or passive, the family withers and the ability to pass the baton of faith to the next generation is greatly weakened.
Sam Wood:Some of you moms might be thinking, hallelujah, the responsibility is not mine.
Sam Wood:Sounds good to me.
Sam Wood:My husband's accountable to God.
Sam Wood:I'm off the hook.
Sam Wood:But that is not true.
Sam Wood:Even though God gives a responsibility, points out in verse six and ye fathers, he's indirectly pointing to the mother too, and the fact that the mother is in a one flesh relationship as a helper to the father.
Sam Wood:So even though he's pointing out the father directly, he's indirectly pointing to the mother or he's pointing to the parents.
Sam Wood:And the husband's wife is a companion and completer to him and a helper to him.
Sam Wood:Certainly, as we think about this tremendous task of parenting our children, the directive requires much more listen than just attending church like you're doing here this morning.
Sam Wood:It means much more than that.
Sam Wood:A parent must be involved, I think, in the church life and their children being in church.
Sam Wood:But certainly they need to be very involved in the child's life, always alert to opportunities to train the child's heart for God.
Sam Wood:Look with me again at verse four.
Sam Wood:Let me read it one more time.
Sam Wood:Angie Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurturing admonition or again the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
Sam Wood:And notice in this verse that Paul next addresses what we might call the negative side of parenting.
Sam Wood:What not to do okay.
Sam Wood:Provoke what not your children to wrath, provoke not your children to anger.
Sam Wood:Then he gives or promotes the positive side of parenting as he often does.
Sam Wood:Paul will give the negative.
Sam Wood:Then he gives a positive gives a but in between.
Sam Wood:But do what?
Sam Wood:Bring them up in the nurture and admonition the Lord.
Sam Wood:Now in the remainder of this session this morning I want to talk a look at this negative side of parenting that is provoke not your children to wrath.
Sam Wood:Tonight I want to look start getting into the positive side of parenting, but bring them up in the nurturer discipline and admonition or instruction of the Lord.
Sam Wood:So let's look at this as we finish out this Session this morning.
Sam Wood:The negative side of parenting.
Sam Wood:And.
Sam Wood:And what this really means.
Sam Wood:Provoking.
Sam Wood:Provoke not your children to wrath or provoke them not to anger.
Sam Wood:So the negative is this.
Sam Wood:It's both wrong and it's both detrimental.
Sam Wood:To provoke your children to anger.
Sam Wood:What exactly does this mean?
Sam Wood:To provoke means to irritate, to exasperate, or to make someone resentful or to make them intensely angry.
Sam Wood:We see a parallel of this verse in Colossians 3:21, where it says, fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.
Sam Wood:Okay.
Sam Wood:Or become discouraged.
Sam Wood:Unfortunately, over the years, I've seen many, many children who become angry, who become discouraged, become bitter, become exasperated because their parents have provoked them to anger.
Sam Wood:The question arises then, how do parents provoke their children to be so angry they become discouraged or they become disheartened or even turn away from the truths of God's word.
Sam Wood:Now, the thrust of the answer is by failing to do what it says next, that is, but bring them up in the nurturing admonition of the Lord.
Sam Wood:Not doing that certainly provokes your child too.
Sam Wood:But what hinders us from fulfilling this positive side of parenting and what will make us provoke our children to anger?
Sam Wood:I think we need to reflect back to Ephesians chapter five and verse 18.
Sam Wood:And in Ephesians chapter five and verse eighteen, it says, Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit.
Sam Wood:Now, this command by the apostle Paul precedes all the teaching on marriage, and it precedes all the teaching on parenting, because Paul wants us to understand that we cannot be the marriage partner.
Sam Wood:We need to be the husband or the wife.
Sam Wood:We need to be.
Sam Wood:We cannot be the mom and dad we need to be.
Sam Wood:A child cannot really be the child they need to be in honoring or being their parents without the filling of the Holy Spirit.
Sam Wood:So this is a very, very important command.
Sam Wood:The word excess there in verse 18 of Ephesians, chapter 5, means to squander away.
Sam Wood:It's a word that's used in the story of the Prodigal Son, where it says that he went out and wasted his life in riotous living.
Sam Wood:It's the same kind of concept there.
Sam Wood:Or he squandered his life away.
Sam Wood:Now, a Christian, listen, you can squander your life away when you're not.
Sam Wood:What, under the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit, a parent can squander their parenting away when you're not doing that parenting under the power, under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, Someone who's a Christian, who's not filled with the spirit, has a life like a drunkard that is totally out of control.
Sam Wood:We might say.
Sam Wood:Unfortunately, I don't think we hear a lot of teaching on this, but it's very, very important that we understand this because I often say a marriage where God is not in control is a marriage that's out of control.
Sam Wood:And parenting where God is not in control is parenting that's out of control.
Sam Wood:So in closing out this session, I want to share some characteristics of spirit filled parenting and I want to give you several here this morning that I think are good to think about.
Sam Wood:The first one is this.
Sam Wood:How can we be spirit filled parents that do not provoke our children to wrath or provoke our children to anger?
Sam Wood:Number one, a spirit filled parent maintains self control.
Sam Wood:Maintains self control.
Sam Wood:Parents need to look at all situations that they're in with their children very objectively and deal with them in a very controlled way.
Sam Wood:They need to maintain self control.
Sam Wood:Listen, if you're a parent who's screaming at your child, if you're a parent who's screaming at each other, if you're throwing things, listen or breaking things, you're not under the control of the Holy Spirit.
Sam Wood:And listen, when you do those kind of things and you're not under the control of the spirit, it can lead to physical abuse, it can lead to emotional abuse.
Sam Wood:Instead of developing a desire to obey and honor, the child develops a desire to rebel against their parents.
Sam Wood:And I've discovered sometimes as a father, and I know, Debbie, both of us have said this, that the most effective thing that I could do with my children sometimes if I get a little bit frustrated about something and I need to talk to them is to take a time out myself.
Sam Wood:And that is just tell my child, listen, stay right here, don't go anywhere.
Sam Wood:Dad's going to go in the other room and I go in the other room and I get on my knees before God and I pray and say, God, fill me with your spirit, God.
Sam Wood:I need to have wisdom and the understanding in this situation to make sure I'm training my child's heart the way it should be trained.
Sam Wood:So firstly, and again, we could say much more, but I just want to briefly mention these.
Sam Wood:We need to be.
Sam Wood:If we're spirit filled and we want to keep from provoking our children to wrath or anger, we must be parents that have self control.
Sam Wood:Secondly, we must be parents who practice consistency.
Sam Wood:Consistency.
Sam Wood:There's nothing more frustrating to a child that the parent's mood changes and actions change from one day to the next.
Sam Wood:The Parent becomes unpredictable to the child.
Sam Wood:The parent one day allows the child to do something and that they normally may not let them do, the next day they restrict them from doing it.
Sam Wood:There's no consistency in the parenting and this brings, this exasperates the child.
Sam Wood:So there must be consistency in our discipline, our instruction of the child.
Sam Wood:I've seen this so many times, especially destroy many teenagers lives when their parents are hypocritical and they'll say one thing and do something else.
Sam Wood:And they're not consistent in their instruction, in their teaching with their children.
Sam Wood:A third thing that spirit filled parents do is they avoid selfishness.
Sam Wood:They avoid selfishness.
Sam Wood:Now parenting is not about what's best for me, but rather what's best for my child.
Sam Wood:Now remember what I said a while ago.
Sam Wood:Authority is given for the benefit of the one that's under that authority.
Sam Wood:Proverbs 22:6, a very familiar verse we often hear quoted when we talk about parenting.
Sam Wood:Train up a child in the way he should go when he's old, he'll not depart from it.
Sam Wood:It's important to understand that the way that child should go is the way God has gifted them and directed them to go.
Sam Wood:And the way for that child to go might not be the way that we want them to go.
Sam Wood:It's God's way, not our way.
Sam Wood:Because God has given each child a unique personality, a unique gifting.
Sam Wood:And we're to help develop that gifting, come alongside God in developing that gifting for that child, to help glorify God in that child's life.
Sam Wood:For example, I can remember when my boys played tee ball and there was a little girl who came to the field every game dressed in a team uniform.
Sam Wood:But you know what else she had in her hands?
Sam Wood:Ballet shoes.
Sam Wood:And she would sit on the bleachers and cry and pout the whole time.
Sam Wood:She wanted to be a ballerina.
Sam Wood:But our parents were college athletes and insisted that their daughter would also excel in team sports.
Sam Wood:Now listen, my child isn't given to me so that I can live out my dream through them, or so that I can be an impressive parent and they can do something I can brag about.
Sam Wood:Many parents try to change their child into what they want it to be, but never could be and live out their dream that they never could fulfill through their child.
Sam Wood:This is wrong and it provokes a child to wrath.
Sam Wood:Let me say fourthly, spirit filled parents are willing to hear their child's case.
Sam Wood:They're willing to listen to their child.
Sam Wood:I think this is important too.
Sam Wood:And if you don't listen to your child, it can exasperate them.
Sam Wood:Also, refusing to listen to a child's explanation and not allowing them to give an explanation leads them to view your authority as being a tyrant or a dictator in the home.
Sam Wood:It could be the report that we received as a parent was wrong and the circumstances existed that the child was unaware of and we need to hear their explanation.
Sam Wood:Let them, give them time and let them explain what they did.
Sam Wood:When I was working as a mechanical engineer for Eastman Kodak and I was under the authority of a supervisor, if I've been accused listen of a problem without ever having a chance to give an explanation for what happened, then I would.
Sam Wood:If they kept accusing me, I'd quit my job.
Sam Wood:I'd go find me another job.
Sam Wood:I'm not going to stay in a situation like that where they're accusing me falsely and never give me a chance to give an explanation of what happened in that situation.
Sam Wood:In the same way, my children deserve a chance to explain why they did what they did.
Sam Wood:Now I've learned also that and it's important to understand, hearing their explanation requires discernment too.
Sam Wood:Just because a child justifies their actions does not mean that their reasoning is valid.
Sam Wood:That's why parenting, I believe as much as anything I've ever done or ever attempted, requires dependence upon the Holy Spirit.
Sam Wood:Considering a child's explanation provides balance and fairness to all of the instruction that we give that child in our authority over that child.
Sam Wood:Let me say fifthly, spirit filled parents explain the reason for their discipline.
Sam Wood:They explain the reason for their discipline.
Sam Wood:The modern view of parenting does not recognize really discipline at all.
Sam Wood:And we'll talk about this more as we get to it.
Sam Wood:But the other extreme, the tyrannical view which I pretty much grew up under, tells a child to do what I say when I say it because I said so.
Sam Wood:And don't ask me for an explanation, don't question me, don't ask me to tell you why.
Sam Wood:My dad would often be that way with me.
Sam Wood:I can remember it.
Sam Wood:True discipline is always based on understanding.
Sam Wood:It has an explanation to give to the child.
Sam Wood:And the goal is to train the heart of that child to think correctly, to think biblically.
Sam Wood:An explanation is necessary as an aid to develop that proper heart training and thinking.
Sam Wood:Let me say sixthly, spirit filled parents, and I'll just mention this, are fair with their children.
Sam Wood:You probably heard the old saying that the punishment must what fit the crime.
Sam Wood:I mean, all of us have heard that and certainly that's true.
Sam Wood:We need to be fair with our children.
Sam Wood:We're not to mete out the same punishment.
Sam Wood:Listen, my boys, if I had one of my sons, listen, they call their brother a name, they gonna get a different punishment than if they stuck the head of their brother under the water and held it there in the bathtub.
Sam Wood:Okay, so we mete out a different punishment or discipline depending upon what's done.
Sam Wood:We need to be fair.
Sam Wood:And we'll talk more in detail about that as we go through these sessions, too.
Sam Wood:Seventhly, never.
Sam Wood:If we want spiritual parents who do not want to exasperate their children, they don't show favoritism.
Sam Wood:And this is obvious, I think, and it's very, very important.
Sam Wood:One of the greatest examples in the Bible that you know and I know is in Genesis 37, 3, 4, where it says, now Israel loved Joseph more than any of these other sons.
Sam Wood:Now when I read that first sentence, I think, man, that's a big problem in this home.
Sam Wood:He's got one child he loves more than all these other sons.
Sam Wood:One son, because he was a son of his old age and he made him a robe of many colors.
Sam Wood:We know the story.
Sam Wood:But when his brothers saw that his father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him.
Sam Wood:There's a problem in this home.
Sam Wood:The father is showing favoritism of one child over the other child.
Sam Wood:And that will exasperate those other children and that child.
Sam Wood:Let me say, eighthly, spirit filled parents never force their views on the child, much as you may want to force your views on them.
Sam Wood:You never force your views on your child.
Sam Wood:In the early years, I remember my boys would imitate everything I did.
Sam Wood:They really would.
Sam Wood:I can remember my oldest son, our first child, Josh.
Sam Wood:And I can remember, hey, if I went and put my foot on the bumper of the car, he'd go put his foot on the bumper of the car.
Sam Wood:And I thought it was cute.
Sam Wood:He did what Daddy did.
Sam Wood:And since I was a preacher, I know in our first house, we had no furniture in the living room.
Sam Wood:And he would get on his little suit.
Sam Wood:We'd come home in the afternoon and have his tie on and have his little Bible.
Sam Wood:And he would go in there like he was preaching like Daddy, and he would imitate, you know, what I did.
Sam Wood:But as he got older, he didn't want to imitate dad so much.
Sam Wood:His peers and those other outside influences, you know, influenced him.
Sam Wood:And he wasn't as quick to take on my way of thinking.
Sam Wood:And this was certainly very Frustrating and is frustrating to a parent.
Sam Wood:I long for all my children to wholeheartedly embrace a Christian life, certainly, and have a Christian worldview.
Sam Wood:And in all of my training, I strive to give explanations based on the word of God to my children.
Sam Wood:I exalt, to try to exalt, you know, and give the character of God, the attributes of God, the wisdom of God, and hopefully displayed an undying devotion to God before my children in the way I treated them.
Sam Wood:But I couldn't force this kind of Christian mindset upon them.
Sam Wood:To do so would cause them to rebel against it and adopt the beliefs of their peers and those out in the world, their teachers, their college professors.
Sam Wood:And it's important for us as parents to understand that my child needed, my sons, needed to be quickened by the spirit of God before they would embrace the Christian beliefs and lifestyle.
Sam Wood:Now I was training them that way.
Sam Wood:But I remember and I'd call your attention.
Sam Wood:You know this verse in First Corinthians 2 and verse 14, it says, but the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him.
Sam Wood:Neither can he know them, because they're spiritually discerned.
Sam Wood:And I could direct my child with my training, my explanation, my example.
Sam Wood:But thinking with a Christian worldview required a supernatural act of God.
Sam Wood:It required them to be born again of the Spirit of God.
Sam Wood:And every child's greatest need, every parent, needs to continually get this in the heart.
Sam Wood:Your child's greatest need is a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Sam Wood:They need to become born again.
Sam Wood:And this is the greatest need of certainly every child.
Sam Wood:I couldn't force them to think the way I wanted them to think.
Sam Wood:God had to step in.
Sam Wood:And certainly we pray now we've got eight grandchildren.
Sam Wood:We pray every day for the salvation, the greatest need of every one of our grandchildren.
Sam Wood:We pray every day for their salvation.
Sam Wood:Let me say lastly, kind as I close out this morning, that if we want to make sure that we do not provoke our children to wrath or anger and exasperate them, we need to make it easy for our children to give honor to us.
Sam Wood:And I mentioned this a while ago, but we need to be parents that are honorable.
Sam Wood:And I know I preached a message, I think here, probably, I don't know, maybe seven years ago, eight years ago, on honoring your parents.
Sam Wood:And I'd encourage you to go back if you've never listened to that message, and I take about 45 minutes to talk about in detail what that looks like and go back and listen to that message, because Giving honor to parents is kind of like, it's kind of like a two sided coin.
Sam Wood:On one side is the word honor.
Sam Wood:On the flip side is the word respect.
Sam Wood:The word respect means to look back on.
Sam Wood:And we need to make it easy for our children to look back on us as parents, even as they're grown young men, young ladies, and give honor to us.
Sam Wood:And that means we need to be living a life that's honorable as a mother, as a father, as a husband and as a wife.
Sam Wood:We're God's children.
Sam Wood:If you're born again, you're a child of God.
Sam Wood:And a good question for parents to ask.
Sam Wood:And often ask this question in my parenting what if God dealt with me the way I am dealing with my children?
Sam Wood:How would I feel?
Sam Wood:What would it make me feel like?
Sam Wood:Would it exasperate me?
Sam Wood:What if God dealt with me the way I am dealing with them?
Sam Wood:I'm thankful that God is patient.
Sam Wood:I'm thankful that God is long suffering.
Sam Wood:I'm thankful that God is full of love.
Sam Wood:I'm thankful that God is full of grace.
Sam Wood:I'm thankful that God accepts me in the beloved.
Sam Wood:There's so much to be thankful for.
Sam Wood:Is having God the perfect father to be our father and as a parent, let this mind be in you, which was also in Jesus Christ.
Speaker A:Thank you for joining the Fortifying youg Family podcast.
Speaker A:And if you feel encouraged by today's teaching, give us a follow so we can invite you back and share us on your socials so more marriages and family can be strengthened and fortified through the truths of God's Word.
Speaker A:Remember, fortifying your family starts with a strong belief in God's Word.
