We are in a family series, and one of the questions that we’re asking is what forms our view of family? So two weeks ago, we, we talked about family, just family in general. We talked about the, the world and how it forms us. It forms us through TV shows. It forms us through movies. It, it forms us just culturally through, , the, the different values that we see around us. Last week, we talked about marriage. And, and likely your view of marriage was heavily influenced by the culture around us as well as the different people that you saw married, whether that was your own parents, whether that was people that you saw married, like those things trickle down into how our marriage works. Today we’re talking about parenting. And in the same way, so often, parenting is this thing that, that culture helps form some views that we have on, on parenting and books that we’ve read have, form some views that we have on parenting.

And other people you watch have influenced our views on parenting. , But no matter where you are in life, so, so some of you say, “Well, hey, I’m right in the thick of it. I’ve got young kids. I’m parenting right now.” Or some of you say, “Well, my parents, I, I parented a long time and, and now my kids are parents themselves and they’re, they’re adults. And so I’m, I’m beyond that season.” I think for all of us, even if you don’t have kids yet, I think for all of us, there are some very practical things that come when we look at God’s word about what it looks like to take wisdom and lifestyle of one generation and pass it on to the next. And so regardless of what stage of life you find yourself in right now, I promise there’s a lot of application for all.

, Here I think is, is the, the real issue with parenting. And that is that parenting is hard. Like, like just the truth of it is nothing prepares you in life for that moment when they hand you a child and they say their life is dependent upon you. And the other challenge is that there’s all kinds of different advice, there’s all kinds of different books, there’s all kinds of different people that would tell you this is the right way to do it. And if you look, at least in the last 150 years, our views on parenting have changed radically. , Look at what in 1894, pe- pediatrician Luther Emmett Holt, he wrote a book called The Care and Feeding of, of Children. And this is an exact quote from that book, “Babies under six months old should never be played with.” Th- this is a book that pediatricians were giving new parents and said, “Hey, here, here’s everything that you need to know to raise this child.” And the, the direct quote from the boat, the book says, “Hey, six months, just leave them in a corner.

Let them do their thing. They’re gonna be totally fine. You don’t wanna overstimulate them.” And then not long after that, 1914, they, they published an infant care guide. It had two specific things in it. One, it said that toilet training could begin by the time your infant is three months old, which any of you in the room that have ever parented, , someone who did not have a child wrote that line. The, the second says, it, it gave this warning that a father playing with his baby after work might cause nervous disturbance and disrupt the baby’s habits. The idea was, hey, mom has got this. And dad, if you come home after long days of work, you’re just gonna mess up the routine that mom’s already got. And so just don’t touch the baby, don’t talk to the baby, don’t look at the baby, just leave it alone.

That, that was real parenting advice from pediatricians in 1914. 1928, there was a book called The Psychological Care of Infant and Child, and it warned against excessive affection. Here’s an exact quote, “Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit in your lap.” And then it goes on to recommend one forehead kiss at bedtime and a handshake in the morning. <Laugh> So if you got young kids tomorrow morning, go up to your four-year-old, like, “And good morning, child of mine. Have a great day at school.” Like, you, you look at that and that just seems absolutely crazy. Like, that’s just wrong. And yet, in, in the scheme of world history, that was not that long ago. I mean, we’ve been parenting for a really long time, and 150 years ago, we were parenting radically different than we are right now. And so maybe you’re looking at that and you saying, “Yeah, but that was 100 years ago.” Like we’ve come a long way since then.

But can I just tell you that even today, parenting is confusing. There’s advice and other advice and you look at the advice and it totally contradicts one another. For example, 12 years ago, these are two magazine articles that came out within 78 days of each other. So on September 23rd, 2014, two doctors, they publish an article in Time Magazine. And here’s the title of the, the article, Timeouts Are Hurting Your Child. So probably if you’re a parent and you’ve got your kid in timeout while you’re reading that, you’re like, “Oh no, I’m ruining my kid.” But 78 days later, two doctors connected with the American Psychological Association. They wrote an article titled What Every Parent Shoul Know About Time Outs. And here’s two direct quotes. When used correctly, timeouts are highly effective and also decades of research demonstrate the effectiveness of timeouts. If you wanted to make it even more confusing, both of those articles cite the same research as one another in coming up to those very opposite conclusions.

A- and so if you’re a parent in the room, you, you look at the last 150 years, you, you look at that this book disagrees with this book and this doctor disagrees with this doctor, and you kind of find yourself in the middle and you say, okay, so what am I supposed to do? And maybe you think, okay, the Bible, surely the Bible has a whole list of, hey, do this and don’t do this and here’s the routine and here’s the way to discipline and here’s the way to, to make them sleep at night and here’s the right answer to screens and to social media and to cell phones if only that was true and yet the Bible is silent on most of those things. Did you know that the Bible only has between 15 and 20 passages that deal directly with parenting? That’s it.

15 to 20 passages. A whole Bible, there’s only about 15 to 20 passages. And so does that mean that the Bible is silent on parenting? No. It means that there’s a presupposition the Bible has. And that is the Bible assumes that if you and I will get our lives right with God, that the overflow of that will be healthy parenting. The, the most famous passage about parenting in scripture comes right after the Shema. It’s in Deuteronomy chapter six. The Shema is a prayer that the people of Israel would, would pray. They still pray it in Israel today. They pray it in the morning, they pray the evening, oftentimes they pray it a third time during the day. , Jesus, likely growing up as a Jewish boy would have prayed the Shema. So the Shema is in Deuteronomy six: four. It says, Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Now, people at the time took that literally and, and they would actually write the shema and they would put it in different places. They even had some people that, that would literally wear it in a way that they could see it in front of their eyes.

They put it on their doorposts of their house. But that’s not literally what it’s, it’s meaning. What it’s meaning is if we are loving God, we’re, we’re chasing wholeheartedly after God, that the overflow of that should be that in ongoing everyday conversations with our kids, we should be demonstrating to them that we love God. , To put it in a different way, that biblical parenting happens in the ordinary moments, in the ongoing everyday part of life that as I live my life, the overflow of loving God is biblical parenting. , Let me tell you something that’s gonna maybe shock some of you. , My, my family and I, we do not have like designated Bible study time every night as a family. And I know some of you are disappointed. You’re like, I though the pastor, you just assume every night I get out an acoustic guitar and we sing and worship and then we, we read the Bible and then we pray in like three hours every night that’s what we do.

And that’s not what we do. We don’t have any structured time as a family in our house where that is the thing that we do. Instead, we, we talk about God a lot, but it’s all just natural. It’s not, all just the overflow of everyday conversations that we’re having at the dinner table, everyday conversations we’re having with one another. And so this idea of biblical parenting, this is gonna sound backwards at first, that it does not start with who is my child becoming? So much of parenting is that, that I’m looking ahead of who am I forming my child into, but biblical parenting doesn’t start there. Instead, it starts with a different question. It starts with a question of who am I becoming? That, that if I am getting right in that vertical relationship with God, that the overflow of that will be on the horizontal relationships in my life.

So biblical parenting, yes, it has to do with the formation of my child, but it starts with the formation of my heart, the formation of my soul. And now I, I wanted to just pause for a moment, especially for those of you that, that have young kids right now, because if you think of your young kid right now and you try and in your mind imagine them as a 30-year-old, that sounds crazy. Like that sounds so far into the future and yet it will be here very quickly. And so I want you to imagine that your child becomes an adult and all of a sudden you’re not sitting in the room and they’re sitting around having a conversation and someone simply asks this question, “What was your mom like?” Or, “What was your dad like?” What will their answer be? Because probably we’re hoping for something like this.

We’re, we’re hoping that our kids someday will be talking to a stranger and they’ll say, “Well,” or talking to their friend and they’ll say, “Well, my, my parent was loving and they were kind and they were patient.” That maybe you’ll hope that they say something like this, “My, my parent was my biggest cheerleader. They always had my back. They always wanted what was best for me.” Or, or prayerfully, hopefully they’ll say something like they loved Jesus. They, they weren’t just one of those people that, that casually walked through their faith like they loved Jesus and they lived it out day in and day out. Or, or maybe, maybe the response won’t be that. Now maybe for some of you in this room that if you’re in that same conversation, you’re talk – thinking back to your parents and you say, “Well, they, they weren’t always around and I, I didn’t really have a great relationship with them.

And they were really more focused on themselves than they were focused on me. They didn’t really have my best interest in mind. , We went to church, but they didn’t really love Jesus. It was really just something we did on Sunday. It wasn’t something that we necessarily did day in and day out part of our lives.” Like someday there will be a conversation that your kids have about you. What will that conversation look like? If you’ve got a Bible, turn them into one Corinthians chapter 13. , We’re gonna look at a very famous passage that everybody, even if you’ve never been to church before, even if this is your very first time, we’ve all heard this passage. Most likely you’ve heard it at a wedding. It’s the love passage. What, what’s interesting about this passage is it’s not specifically talking about romantic love, although they read at weddings all the time, it’s also not specifically talking about parenting, but it practically applies to both of those areas because here’s what Paul is talking about, that he’s writing a letter to the church at Corinth and in chapter 12 and in chapter 14, he talks about spiritual giftedness.

And what we know from the rest of the, the book is that that church struggled with spiritual pride, that they wanted spiritual gifts in order to elevate themselves up, in order to make themselves look good, in order to make it all about them. And, and so Paul is writing in a corrective way to them and he tells them, “Listen, being spiritual i- is primarily about your lifestyle and how you treat one another.” And so in between talking about spiritual gifts in 12 and 14, he has the love chapter. And, and his point in the love chapter is he said, “If you wanna honor, you wanna glorify God, yes, spiritual gifts are good things, but the way that we glorify God as Christians is by living a life of love. And if we apply this as parents, if we get this right, if we, in our vertical relationship with God, we’re loving him, we’re chasing after him, the overflow of that is that this is how we live.

It will fix most of the challenges that we face as parents. Here’s what it says. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no records of wrong. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. That if we got this right as parents, like I just want you to take a step back for a moment and look at the world and, and the world’s got a lot of brokenness in it. But, but I would argue that a lot of that brokenness comes from some really unhealthy parents that raised some really unhealthy kids that became in turn some more very unhealthy parents. That, that if you could fix one thing tomorrow, if you could just fix parents and had all parents become this, it would fix the vast majority of issues that we face.

, I’ve got a quote from my dad and, and I, I wanna point out that it’s my dad because it’s gonna say Kurt Taylor on the screen and I’m not quoting myself because that would be weird. , Is my dad, , my, my dad is also named Kurt Taylor, which made it very confusing growing up because, , he was big Kurt and I was little Kurt, , because they’d say Kurt and they’d say, “Which Kurt?” And say, “Well, we’re looking for big Kurt.” And then at some point, I, I got bigger than my dad. So I’m five inches taller than him now, but I want you to know that I’m still little Kurt and he is still Big Kurt. Direct quote from my dad, he says, “If a child feels loved, you can pretty much screw up everything else and you will have given them the greatest gift in life.

Not feeling loved is the biggest problem with the world.” And, and there, there’s a lot of that heart, that mindset that is accurate. Now here’s the challenge. What then does it mean to love my child? , How do I love someone well? And, and the hard part with that word love is it’s just so ubiquitous. We, we throw it around all the time in everything that, that I love my wife and I love God and I love my children and I also love the church and I also love Denver and I love Colorado and I love to ski and I love my dog and I love the Broncos and I love pizza. And all of those things are true and yet all of those things have

Very, very

Different meanings. And so what, what

One

Corinthians 13 unpacks is,

Okay, here, here’s what it, it uses agape, , which, which

Agape gets thrown around in a lot of wrong ways inside

The church.

So agape means more than just divine, unconditional love.

, But agape is a love

That is not a shallow

Love. Agape is a love that is a deep

Love. And so if I’m gonna have

Deep love as

A parent for my child, what does

It look like? , There are

15 different descriptions that we get in this small section of one Corinthians 13.

Just verses four

Through seven has 15 descriptions and all 15 of those descriptions are verbs.

It starts with two positive verbs that

Love is patient, love is kind of things that we should

Do.

And then it goes into eight negatives.

Hey, don’t do this.

Love is not doing this. Now, it gets translated into English, most of them, as adjectives

Because

That’s, that’s the most one for one word that we’ve

Got. But I

Want you to understand all of them are active. All of them include action that are connected to one another. So

If you just look at this passage,

It breaks down pretty clearly into three different concepts,

Especially as it

Applies to parenting,

That love does

Three different things.

That love sees the

Person.

It also serves their good,

Putting their good above my own, and it also

Shapes their future. And so, so let’s

Start with the first one, that idea of

Love sees the person. So you have

These verses that connect to it, like love is

Patient,

Love is kind, it’s not envious, it doesn’t boast, it’s not proud, it’s not dishonoring. So

All of those are about love

Seeing the person and understanding them. I, I think that first one is one of the most challenging and difficult parts of parenting,

That love is

Patient.

And it starts

Very early on. Like you get that baby and you have to be patient right

Away because it’s

Screaming and it’s crying and it’s unhappy and sometimes you’re not sure

Why.

And so there’s times when it’s talking about patience, that, that, that’s what it means. ,

Love is patient.

It means sitting at a swim meet for nine hours, even though you’re gonna only watch your kid for 90 seconds.

L-

Love is patient. It means that when you are sitting at the dinner table and your child starts telling the story and it doesn’t really have a beginning and it doesn’t really have an end and it just starts to meander all

Over the place, that,

That loving them well is being patient enough to say,

“Hey, I don’t, I don’t

Know what’s happening right now. I don’t know what the point of this is,

But I love you.

And so I care for you enough

To

Still pay attention to show you that

I value you even though

What you’re saying makes no sense whatsoever.” Like that is patience. So, so there’s a part of patience that is being patient the way we think of patience, like you’re sitting at a red light and you’re waiting for it to turn green. But

The Greek

Word for patience actually means something a little bit deeper than that.

That the Greek word

For patience means that even if someone does something wrong to you or has irritated you or has frustrated you, that instead of responding in kind, you are patient in your response. That, that I am patient, even if you’ve offended me, I’m gonna be patient in how I respond to that. So it’s this verb that I’m responding to someone with patience and that’s part of parenting because you’re gonna have moments when your child yells at you and is frustrated with you and does things to you that, that the temptation is to respond in kind, but love being patient says, “I’m not coming down to your level. I, I’m gonna allow you to be frustrated and demonstrate that frustration, but, but I’m not gonna respond in kind because I love you and I’m gonna demonstrate that patience.” , here’s something that, that’s really challenging, especially early on, but it becomes so important later on, that we have to parent for who they’re becoming and not just for what they’re doing.

So much of parenting is about behavior modification. Hey, I’m trying to get them to do this and to not do that. And that works well for a short amount of time, but it is not a long-term solution. Parenting is about who are they becoming? What, what am I try, who am I trying to raise? , What does 10 years look like or 20 years look like or 40 years look like that that is the destination and so I’m gonna parent accordingly. If all I do is behavior modification, hey, can I just tell you that I can do behavior modification on my dog? I got, I can give it the right rewards, the right punishments and get it to do what I want it to do. That’s not the point of parenting. The point of parenting is bigger than just now. It’s about looking ahead to the future.

So love is patient. That means that love is actively patient. It’s giving patience. And then it says that love is kind. Probably the one that’s the most difficult for us to understand is that one. Love is kind because here’s what we hear when we hear love is kind. The love is nice. We’re just supposed to be nice all the time. And there’s a piece of that that’s accurate, but that Greek word for kind means something so much deeper than that. That, that the Greek word for kind isn’t just being nice. It points towards active goodness that benefits another person. So, so kindness in the Greek is actively doing something for them, for their benefit, for their goodness, which means that sometimes being kind doesn’t necessarily in the moment seem like kindness. Like, like let me give you an example. Let’s say that you have your child and their toddler and you’re at the grocery store and you have that moment because grocery stores, here’s what they do, is they put things at eye level that your toddler wants, that your young child wants.

So they’ve got candy down there, they’ve got sugary cereal down there. And if you take your child to the grocery store, there will be a moment where they grab something off of the shelf and they wanna put it into the basket and you tell them no and they don’t like that answer. And so they flop like a whale onto the ground and they start to cry and they start to scream and they start to yell. And, and here’s the challenge of that moment is now all of a sudden you’re embarrassed because everybody at the grocery store is looking at you and judging you and, and they, some of them are thinking that you’re a terrible parent. And so in that moment, you have a decision to make. And there’s, there’s a part of us that might think, well, the kindest thing would be that they’re, they’re throwing a fit.

The kindest thing would just be give them what they want. They want the candy, they want the toy, they want the cereal. I’ll just give it to them. And oftentimes what drives that is my embarrassment. I don’t wanna be embarrassed. And so because I’m embarrassed, I’m gonna do something that just solves the embarrassment. But can I tell you that that’s the least kind thing that you can do for your child? That kindness is about what is the best long-term thing for them? And the best long-term thing for them is learning self-control. It’s not just giving them everything that they want. And so being nice by, by giving them the candy that they’re crying for is actually not being kind. Another example, you know, think about cell phones and social media. At some point, if you don’t have a child old enough for this, you will, you will have this moment where these dreaded words come home, where they come home and they say, “Hey, listen, all of my friends, listen, everybody that I know.

Listen, I am the only one that does not.” And then the thing after that is either gonna be some combination of social media or it’s gonna be cell phone or it’s gonna be screen or it’s gonna be something that, that according to them, every other 13-year-old on the planet has this, and I am the sole child that, that you are raising like I’m Amish to not have what everybody else has. Like that’s gonna be a conversation. And so in that moment, sometimes what we think is, well, kindness is just giving them what everybody else has. But that’s not what kindness is. Kindness is you understanding your child and doing what is best for them. Interesting study that just came out last month about social media, , what they found that the earlier you give a child social media, the more it harms their development later on.

So they did a study of 10th graders and the 10th graders that got social media in junior high, by the time they got to 10th grade, they were between six and 12 months behind when it came to math and English. Six to 12 months. A- and so here’s, here’s where our, our culture sometimes morphs it is we, we, we say, well, hey, the kindest thing is just giving my kid what they want. But no, that is not what kindness is. That kindness can include tenderness and generosity and encouragement and forgiveness and practical help. Those are all parts of being kind, but it can also include telling the truth and establishing a boundary and correcting wrongdoing and also saying no, that all of those things together are being kind. That kindness is not the absence of firmness. It is firmness coupled with, or it’s firmness without

Hostility,

Contempt, or selfishness. It’s okay. I, I’m going to make the decision where I’m, I’m putting you at the forefront and sometimes you don’t know what the best thing for you

Is.

It goes on to say that love does not envy. And I think in our culture

Today, this is a

Really challenging one because the moment your child is born, it

Feels

Like there’s this competition because you got social media and so you’re seeing everybody else’s kid and their kid’s crawling and my kid’s not crawling.

Oh, their

Kid’s talking and my kids not talking.

Their

Kid’s walking. And, and, and by the way, if you’re in that stage of life, can I just pop

A

Bubble right now? Like

How quickly your child

Walks has nothing to do with their

Future

Athleticism. Like I just, bad news for you.

Like they could walk

At six months old, doesn’t mean they’re becoming LeBron James. Like that’s just not how that works.

But,

But we live in this

Culture where we

Feel like it’s constantly comparing our kid

To everybody else’s

Kid. And it happens with athletics,

It happens with test scores,

It happens with everything. , There’s,

There’s a brilliant quote by

A neurosur – scientist called Dr. John Medina, and he writes this, not a Christian, he just studies the science of children’s brains. And he says,

“Write this across your heart before your child

Comes into the world. Parenting is not a race. Kids are not proxies

For adult success.

Competition can be inspiring, but brands of it can wire

Your

Child’s brain in a toxic way. Comparing your child,

, your kids with

Your friend’s kids will not get them or you

Where

You want to

Go.” Like if, if we could

Embrace

That as a culture and as

A society, how much better

Would we all be?

, Then it says, “Love does not envy. It does not boast. It is not arrogant. It is not

Rude.” That, that word

Arrogant in the Greek, , we only find it seven times in the New Testament. Six of those times we find in this book in one Corinthians.

And so there is this, you peel back the layers, what, what’s the

Issue in this church? Is this arrogance? It is this

Pride.

And just like we talked

About

Two weeks ago and last week, the thing that kills a relationship more than anything else is selfishness. When, selfish

Issues,

Selfishness. When I am selfish, when I’m putting my wants and my needs

Above yours, that

Starts to harm the relationship. And in no relationship is

That more

Concerning than the relationship between a parent and a child. When it becomes about me instead of my kid, it gets unhealthy really, really

Quickly.

And, and here is

A hard biblical truth

That my child does not exist to validate me. And in, in our culture, so often that becomes the thing, that I’m trying to seek my validation through my kid. That’s not why God

Gave you your children. God gave you your children so that you could

Steward them to be all

That God

Has created them to be

For God’s

Glory, not for my glory. So, so it’s not saying that I shouldn’t be proud of my child. I

Absolutely

Should be proud of my child,

But there’s a

Distinct line between being proud of my child and then all of a sudden crossing a line where I start to seek my validation through my own child. That becomes very, very unhealthy.

It says

Love does not dishonor others. I think the way that we discipline really, really matters. And there’s a way to discipline that honors someone. It’s

Corrective. It, it’s

Saying this is a behavior that’s not okay.

We’re gonna stop that behavior, but there’s also a way to

Correct someone that dishonors that person.

Oh, what’s the difference? So discipline addresses a specific behavior. And it, it simply says what you

Did was wrong.

Hey, this

Was wrong. We need to change that. But shame is more personal than that. Shame isn’t just about

A behavior, it’s about

The person and it attacks their identity. Shame says, “What is wrong with you?”

And it’s so easy as a parent to, to utter that phrase, “What is wrong with you?

Ha- haven’t I told

You this before?”

And so it’s, it’s not just saying, “Hey, the action, the behavior is wrong.” Now it’s taking that behavior and it’s applying it to the identity of the person and that’s where shame comes from.

And so

Loving that person doesn’t mean that I’m not going to discipline them. I do need to discipline them, but I can discipline in a way that honors them instead of shaming them. Then you have this next section

That says that love serves their good

With not self-seeking and not easily angered and keeps no records of wrong,

Rejoices with the truth.

All these things is about saying, okay, I, I’m really in that heart of being kind, I’m really trying to help you and benefit you. So, so when it says that love is not self-seeking, that, that it’s not about, it’s about, about me, it’s about you,

That

That ties into the

Goal

Of parenting, that the

Goal

Of parenting, it’s not about what I’m getting out of it, it’s what my child is getting out of it. The goal isn’t to create a child who makes my life easy.

The goal is to faithfully

Steward a human being whom God is forming. There are all kinds of moments where I have to choose between the right now and the future. And oftentimes, choosing what’s easiest for me in the moment is the worst thing I can do for my child in the future. , Screens are a great example of that. Screens are just

So

Intoxicating. Like you want to keep a,

A

Child busy and distracted and quiet, give them my iPad. And, and basically

For the rest of the day, they will be

Distracted and quiet and, and connected to that thing. And it becomes so easy that you can just hand it to them and hand it to them and hand it to them. And it makes your life in that moment so much easier, but it’s not the best thing for them long term. Now, I, I’m not saying that iPads are

Evil or

Bad or that any type of screen time is evil or bad, but there’s a balance there. And my, my decision shouldn’t just be what’s easy in the moment. It needs to be

What are the, the

Values that we’re instilling that helps develop someone long-term? And it says love is not easily angered. And man, that’s hard. , Most of the time, the people that we are the most easily frustrated with or the most easily angered with are our family. Here, here’s an interesting way to put it. A question, what ver. Version of me? What version of you does your family get? Because oftentimes here’s what happens, that we treat our family in a different way than we treat everybody else. Like I take out a frustration or an anger that I had a bad day at work, I had a bad day with, with something and I, I take that frustration anger and it overflows into my family. And so sometimes I will have a conversation with my child out of frustration and treat them in a way that I would never treat somebody else.

I would never talk to a stranger that way. I would never talk to my boss that way. I would never talk to a coworker that way. And, and yet somehow in that relationship, you’ll see that frustration overflow. And so loving them well means that I’m not taking that frustration or that anger and letting it overflow into that relationship. Even if they do something that might naturally make me frustrated or angry, that I can slow down and stop and take a step back and say, “Hey, hey, I’m not going to address this while I’m angry.” It goes on to say that love keeps no record of wrong. That, that I’m not holding something against you and bringing it back up over and over and over and over again, that there is grace. That love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. , Culturally, that’s probably the hardest one.

That it does not delight in evil, rejoices with the truth. Now all that comes underneath this umbrella of being patient and being kind and putting the other person first. But, but here’s what that means, that there’s a difference between loving someone well and affirming anything that they believe or they’re going through. That if I love my child, I can love them and accept them, but if they have an unhealthy sin in their life, that the least loving thing that I could do is to affirm that sin. And so if I have a child that grows up and, and all of a sudden they’re struggling with an addiction, I should love them, I should accept them, I should let them know, “Hey, I’m always here for you, but I’m never going to affirm that addiction because I love you too much to affirm what is evil.” It’s this idea that love shapes their future.

What does that mean? That it protects, that it trusts, that it hopes, that it perseveres. The, the, the crazy thing about our kids is when they’re real young, it, it just feels so hard and so challenging and everybody starts to tell you, “Man, it’s gonna go by so fast. It’s gonna go by so fast.” And then it does. And you’re like, “Man, this is going by really quick.” I, I joke with my kids all the time that I wanna put a brick on their head and just slow them down because they’re, they’re still like, like bite size, you know what I mean? Like my, my, even my older ones, I can still pick them up and throw them over my shoulder and spin them around. And, and that is coming to an end. Like now I pick them up, I throw them over my shoulder and my back hurts.

And it’s like, oh, that’s a little different. And, and my, my youngest, I can still pick her up and, and like, like hold her and cuddle her. And I know that that’s, that’s going to change. She’s going to grow up. But parenting is raising an adult and not just preserving a child. And so the relationship will slowly change. What does that mean? That as an infant, you have a lot of control. You can control their schedule, when they eat, when they sleep, but eventually that moves into this role of coaching that, that now, hey, there’s some autonomy here and now I’m trying to coach you. I, I’ve got to create guardrails. I, I’ve got to create barriers with your future in mind. And then eventually it will turn into counsel. I remember my dad always saying that eventually your child will become your peer. And once they become a peer, they get to decide whether they like that relationship or not.

And so it’s growing from season into season into season with a future in mind. My wife and I this summer had this big kind of epiphany moment because our son, our oldest is 13, which means we got five years left. , My, my story is that when I graduated from high school, I never moved back home for the rest of my life. Not, not in the summers after college, not once I graduated. Like I never lived at home again. And that, that kind of is terrifying because I’m like, if that’s true of my son, I don’t know if it will be or not, but if it’s true of my son, that means I got five years left. And so when we’re looking at that, we’re looking ahead and we’re trying to make decisions right now, and he’s moved as a 13 year old into there’s some control, but it’s a lot of coaching.

And so we’re trying to help him grow in a way, because here’s what we know. At 18, he’s got to be ready. So like, like think of, of the most common conversation that, that people are, are having right now, cell phones and social media and internet. So at 18, he’s going to go off to college and he will have a cell phone that he can download any social media that he wants and he will have unfiltered internet access. And so we have to parent in a way for the next five years that has a destination in mind. A destination meaning he’s got to be able to make choices for himself when we’re not in the room and we don’t get to control it. And the only way for that to happen is to look at these next five years from 13 to 18 and say, how are we growing you in a way so that the things that we believe, the values that we have are flowing out of us and into you so that when you have that moment, you’re making these decisions by yourself and your own accord.

And here is the thing about parenting, that faithfulness is usually boring before it’s beautiful. There, there are so many boring moments of parenting. Like if you’re honest, swim meets, if you want to go back to a thing that is really boring, like it is just so boring. There’s so many boring moments and yet you’re building something in the long haul that is absolutely beautiful. That one day that, that you have grown up an adult who is your peer, who prayerfully you can have a beautiful relationship with, but that is so heavily dependent upon so many years before that. Love does three things. Love sees the person, love serves their good, and loves help, love helps to shape their future. Now, here’s the challenge when you talk about parenting, is you got a lot of people in the room, they’re like, “Okay, well I, I didn’t hit that.

Like it’s patience, kind, it’s never envious, doesn’t boast. It, it’s never angry. Like I, I’m none of those things. Well, great. Now, now I’m gonna walk out feeling terrible as my, as a parent about myself.” Or maybe you’re hearing, and you have adult parents, adult parents, I keep saying that. You have adult children. You are a parent with adult children. And so you say, “Well, I already missed it. I already blew it. What am I supposed to do now?” Let me point us back to hope and give us hope for everybody, that the hope comes from the gospel. One John 4:19 says, “We love because he first loved us.” A- all of this is impossible, , without the power of the Holy Spirit. That, that if I went to love the way that, that the Bible has laid out love, that I can’t just do it by, by trying harder and doing more, that I’ve got to truly love God and the overflow of chasing after him through the power of the Holy Spirit in my life is living in the way that he has called me to live.

, A different way to put it is this, that if I want to love my child well, that first I have to be loved well as a child, that I’m a child of God, that my identity needs to be found in that relationship before I can help pass that identity on to this relationship. And then also let me just point out hope. If you say, “Well, I’m, I’m a grandparent and I, and I messed up so many times and I have a very tattered or broken relationship with my child,” that all these principles about love still apply today to your adult children, to your grandchildren.

And so love is patient and love is kind. And maybe you say, “Well, well, there’s a strangement there. I’m not sure what to do.” , we’re gonna talk about that a little bit next week, but start by praying. Why do you pray? Because love is patient and love is kind. Because I’m focusing on that other person and I’m saying, okay, how do I help make you better? Someday, your kids will be sitting around a room and they’ll be having a conversation and people will say, “Hey, what were your parents like? What was your dad like? What was your mom like? And what would it be? What would it look like if the answers they gave so closely resembled one Corinthians chapter 13? That’s the hope. It’s impossible in my own strength, but it is possible for the power of the Holy Spirit. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, God, I thank you so much that you desire for us to parent in a way that looks radically different from the world.

Lord, help us to live lives and parent lives in a way that demonstrates our love for you. Help us to get that vertical relationship right so that it overflows into every horizontal relationship. We pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.