A Father's Heart

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

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Series Code: AFH

Program Code: AFH000014A


00:01 A good father takes time to play.
00:05 He has strong integrity.
00:08 He is someone that is truly dedicated.
00:12 He is not afraid to show his love.
00:15 He is a caring provider.
00:19 And he is a kind spiritual leader.
00:23 These are just a few ways to describe a father's heart.
00:40 Hi and welcome to A Father's Heart.
00:42 Today, we're going to be discussing
00:43 on how to father adult children.
00:46 When your kids are little is one thing
00:48 but then when they're out of the house,
00:49 with their own rules, with their own life,
00:51 and they come back to you for fatherly advice
00:54 or whatever it may be, how do you do that?
00:57 What do you do?
00:58 And with me today, to discuss that,
01:00 my two friends, Paul and Gordon.
01:01 How you guys doing today?
01:03 Pretty good, man. Feeling great.
01:04 Pretty good. Awesome.
01:06 So fathering adult children, like I said,
01:09 I don't have any adult kids, my kids are little,
01:12 how do you deal with your kids when they get older?
01:16 When they have their own ideas
01:18 or their own way of doing things
01:20 that might not be kosher with how you do things?
01:24 You know, I'm gonna let Paul start with it
01:26 because his is older than mine,
01:27 so he's got little more experience on this one.
01:30 I've a 21-year-old daughter.
01:32 Okay.
01:34 What I find amazing is
01:36 how God prepares us for all of this.
01:39 You either are trying to replicate
01:42 your own childhood environment
01:43 and what your parenting environment was like,
01:46 or what you knew to be as a child,
01:48 or you were trying to ensure that you not repeat it.
01:52 So in my case, environment was quite significant.
01:56 So I grew up in Brooklyn, New York.
01:58 Okay.
01:59 From age 10 to about my mid-20s and so,
02:02 and every day,
02:04 what I would say to myself as a teenager is
02:07 "I am not going to raise a child in this community"
02:11 because of all the challenges that I experienced,
02:14 the violence and all that kind of stuff,
02:15 so I wanted to have a nice community
02:18 that was diverse,
02:21 good educational standard, good standard of all...
02:24 Wanted all those things to be set in place.
02:26 And then, of course,
02:28 lay a proper foundation within the home,
02:30 a sound spiritual foundation.
02:34 That's what was important to me.
02:36 Then for me, you know, my...
02:39 Just moving out, you know,
02:42 he's been away to school for one year,
02:44 and what I find so striking is that
02:46 I have a different child,
02:48 it's just totally different child.
02:50 You look at him now and you wonder
02:52 "Well, wait a minute,
02:54 where is the young man that I used to know?"
02:57 He's so busy with all kinds of stuff.
02:59 So it's a different paradigm in parenting him.
03:02 You know, you can't tell him,
03:05 you know, just do this and do that
03:07 without having a more in-depth discussion.
03:10 He's discussing things the way...
03:11 He wants to know why,
03:13 he wants to know all of these different things.
03:14 So it's just different.
03:16 So I have to parent different, his mom and I,
03:18 we have to parent different.
03:20 We look at him and, you know, we'll say "Well..."
03:23 We look at each other and we say,
03:26 "Where is the Justin that left here a year ago?"
03:30 He's so different now.
03:33 That his dad is no longer his, you know, his buddy,
03:38 he's got other buddies now in his life.
03:40 So it's a real different thing.
03:42 So the way we have to parent now,
03:45 the way we parent now is basically
03:47 we parent to prayer.
03:50 You can't parent by telling him what to do.
03:54 It's just prayer.
03:55 So I'm praying for the right mate,
03:57 I'm praying for, you know, the right career.
04:01 So I'm praying, and as I gently pray,
04:03 I also will bring him into the conversation.
04:07 Now we've had some stuff that we have set down
04:09 from a long time when he was growing up,
04:12 you know, we want to be a part of life choices,
04:16 who you going to marry, who...
04:18 We want to know,
04:19 it's that person needs to fit within the family system.
04:22 But it is a different, different,
04:25 different dynamics, so...
04:27 How do you deal...
04:28 I mean, how do you deal with that?
04:30 'Cause you mentioned he's off to college,
04:33 he comes back,
04:34 you know, by that time,
04:36 you've already grown up in your house,
04:38 you know, you're the kid, now you're the adult,
04:40 and now you're leaving to go have your own life,
04:43 your own rules, your own standard
04:44 so you may not always agree
04:46 with what your parents did and how they did it.
04:48 Right.
04:49 How do you deal or how do you talk about
04:51 or provide an outlet
04:53 for you guys to talk about those kind of things?
04:57 Well, if I may, I'll start this piece here.
05:01 I think what I do what we do now,
05:03 we always have that family worship time.
05:06 So when he comes back, the same thing happens.
05:10 So at family worship, we have the opportunity
05:13 either before or after to sit down
05:16 and we talk about certain things.
05:18 And so that structure is still there.
05:21 I think that is how you really, you know,
05:24 continue to dialogue and making sure
05:27 that they're going in the right direction
05:29 'cause yes, he's found his own identity,
05:31 they're going to want to be their own person,
05:34 and you can't stop that, that's why I'm saying
05:37 it's important that you parent them to prayer
05:40 and I would be saying that a lot
05:41 because it is the crucial thing is prayer.
05:45 When you parent them through prayer,
05:47 God moves on their heart so that eventually
05:50 they're following your directions,
05:51 they don't even know
05:53 they are following your directions.
05:54 That foundation, yeah.
05:57 Xavier, I would say, it's the most exciting time
06:02 that I've had, next to the birth itself.
06:05 So when your child is born, and you're holding your child,
06:08 and, you know, you have, where you are right now,
06:10 you have the first one, two,
06:11 three years of toddlerhood and all, that's real exciting.
06:15 This period is extremely exciting
06:17 because it's like you're seeing the fruit of your product.
06:21 And you're not so able to engage in redirection
06:27 as you would when your child were in the home,
06:30 when you could say, hey, don't do that,
06:31 hey, don't do this, hey, you know, listen,
06:33 let me talk to you about this or that.
06:35 Basically now, my daughter,
06:38 our daughter is living out her life.
06:40 She's her own person.
06:42 She's grown into womanhood at age 21.
06:44 She's making her own choices, her own decisions
06:46 and you're actually seeing
06:48 what God has done through your parenting.
06:51 And yes, you still do have to direct and redirect.
06:54 Sure.
06:56 But I don't have it as good
06:57 as my brother here with parenting,
06:59 of the homecoming stuff
07:00 'cause when our daughter gets home, man,
07:02 I see her when she'd bring her luggage and say,
07:05 "Can you help me bring this in, Dad?"
07:06 And then she's gone.
07:08 She's off with some friends somewhere to, you know...
07:12 Same thing with mine.
07:13 Same thing with mine,
07:14 he is gone but we've got a reel him in, say,
07:16 "Hey, hey, come,
07:18 11 o'clock you need to be in this house."
07:19 Yes.
07:20 "Worship is at this time.
07:22 So no matter what you do, we need you here at this time."
07:25 So that we can still have that kind of,
07:28 that camaraderie to still have the conversation continue.
07:32 But you were saying, it's...
07:34 For me,
07:36 when our son left home to go to school,
07:40 it was a bittersweet and still is a bittersweet.
07:44 Because, you know, you still want the little guy,
07:47 you're still looking for that little guy but,
07:49 you know, the reality is he's no longer the little guy,
07:52 he's now trying to find his way.
07:56 And what I have to do at times
08:00 is pull back and give him,
08:03 you know, give him room to find his way,
08:06 give him room to make decisions,
08:07 and when he makes the decisions,
08:11 I allow him to test it out,
08:14 and then I would step in and say,
08:16 "You know what, let's look at it this way
08:19 or let's look at it that way."
08:20 So it's just a different dynamics
08:23 of parenting now.
08:24 Well, and one of the things I think about like in my life,
08:29 even though I have two little girls,
08:31 when I moved out of my parents house,
08:34 my dad was always the rough and tough guy,
08:37 the guys never shed a tear for nothing.
08:39 And my mom calls me and she says,
08:41 "Your father's crying."
08:43 And I'm like "Why?"
08:44 I said, "Dad don't cry, he doesn't know how to cry,
08:47 he doesn't have tears."
08:48 And she says, "Well, he misses you."
08:49 Wow.
08:51 How do you deal with that empty nest?
08:58 I don't know.
09:00 I tell you, there is a sad moment
09:04 but then there's still a joyful moment in-between
09:08 because I'm saying, now, okay,
09:09 my wife and I, we can do stuff now
09:13 and our pocket's a little heavier now
09:16 because we can keeps
09:17 a little more dollars in the pocket.
09:19 So it's a little different.
09:21 You know, the tears were there.
09:24 But still there is still a joy to see him grow,
09:29 and to see him move on,
09:30 and to see the changes in his life,
09:32 that's what it's like for me.
09:35 Well, we all have different parenting styles.
09:37 Some parents like to have the physical presence
09:40 of their child as long as possible,
09:43 20 years, 25 years, 30 years, 35 years at home, no problem.
09:47 While others may be a bit more proactive, so I'm saying,
09:50 maybe I was a little more like your dad.
09:52 From about age eight,
09:54 I started to prepare my daughter.
09:55 I started to tell my daughter, "Look, by the time you are 18,
09:59 you're going to be one of three places.
10:01 You're either going to be enrolled in college,
10:03 or you're going to be enrolled in the military,
10:06 or you're going to be doing mission work abroad,
10:09 but you are going to be out of this home."
10:11 Because that was my parenting plan and philosophy,
10:14 I mean, it's relative to each child's personality,
10:17 and I saw from a very early stage
10:20 in my child's development
10:22 that she was a very independent-minded child,
10:25 strong sanguine choleric type traits,
10:28 wants to do her own thing,
10:30 doesn't like to be told what to do,
10:32 etcetera, etcetera, okay, great.
10:34 You don't have to fight against a child like that.
10:36 You can help to empower them to get there.
10:39 So we were prepared for there,
10:41 at least I was prepared for that very early.
10:44 So when she was out of the home eventually,
10:48 you know, it wasn't like a great heartbreak for me.
10:50 Granted, she is attending a college
10:53 about a hour and ten minutes away,
10:55 that certainly helped.
10:56 Maybe if she were two days drive
11:00 or an aircraft flight or something,
11:01 it would have been a bit more, you know,
11:03 traumatic for me to deal with, but the fact that
11:04 she was just an hour away or so, that was great.
11:07 Nice.
11:08 And the parenting style, it is true
11:10 because I didn't leave home until I was married.
11:14 I got married and I left home.
11:16 So for me, my son,
11:18 it's the same kind of philosophy I have in my mind
11:21 that he can go to school, come back...
11:23 That's the reason why he's not going to school
11:26 so far from home, still want to keep...
11:28 I still want to keep some kind of a hand on him,
11:31 but yet give him his independence.
11:33 And so hopefully, you know, when he leaves finally,
11:37 he's leaving to get married and to start his own life,
11:41 the philosophy is different.
11:44 But you have to know your child.
11:45 My child needs that, he needs that guidance,
11:50 although he's trying to find his way, he needs that,
11:52 that independence is not fully there, yeah.
11:56 And I like that because you mention,
11:57 you know, depends on the child,
11:59 that seems to be parenting in general,
12:01 depends on the child.
12:02 You know, one of the questions I would pose is,
12:05 how do you know the limitations?
12:07 For example, if you have your child
12:09 and you're creating an environment,
12:11 how do you draw the line and not create
12:12 an enmeshed relationship with your child
12:15 where you're not giving them enough slack
12:17 to the point where they might rebel against you,
12:19 like basically where they don't feel like
12:21 they're overpowered by your parenting?
12:25 Yeah, that's about balance.
12:26 You'll have to have balance.
12:28 You have to give them enough space,
12:32 but then you're always there.
12:36 For us, it's conversation,
12:38 for us, is, like I was saying earlier,
12:40 is that the time where we have the devotion,
12:44 when we sit down, and we, you know, we pray together,
12:47 we talk together.
12:49 Now we talked in our devotions at this time,
12:52 you know, it's different issues,
12:53 life issues that we would deal with,
12:55 look it in the Scripture,
12:57 we look through Solomon, you know.
12:58 If there's something that he is...
13:01 Or him and my daughter, they're kind of edgy about,
13:04 we'll look through the Scripture
13:05 for some guidance.
13:07 Because I believe that's where we find guidance.
13:09 So you have to have the balance,
13:12 give them that space, and allow them to grow,
13:15 so it's not an enmeshed situation.
13:17 Well, bro, let me confess.
13:19 For me, this has been a grace-based process.
13:25 Parenting does have to do with a lot of trial and error,
13:28 not everything that you intend to do
13:31 works out the way you desire it etcetera, etcetera.
13:34 So what's good about this is God and His resourcefulness,
13:39 and God being able to take what you intended to do,
13:43 when you do it wrong that is,
13:46 and still use it constructively,
13:48 you know, it's amazing.
13:50 Our God is the most destructive-constructive force
13:54 that I know on earth.
13:55 He takes everything and makes good of it
13:57 and that's it.
13:58 So for our daughter, man, I messed up.
14:02 I made a lot of mistakes at times.
14:05 I mean, even considering that my secondary job,
14:08 I work as a counselor, I work with families,
14:11 and my role is to provide counseling
14:15 for at-risk families, and I would teach my clients,
14:18 you know, hey, don't do this, don't do that,
14:20 don't speak to your child this way,
14:22 don't be this rigid, you know, be more inclusive,
14:26 exercise a greater degree of liberty,
14:28 use what we call democratic parenting,
14:31 and all these parenting techniques
14:33 that I would teach parents,
14:34 then I would come home at times and lose it.
14:38 Literally, lose it, man.
14:39 Yeah.
14:41 Because I saw some situation that, you know, yeah...
14:43 But now, as I said,
14:46 it's amazing to see the fruit of our labor.
14:50 But because of God's grace.
14:53 So now, yeah, there are things that I worry about,
14:56 you know, I'm always filtering her peer group,
14:59 whenever I meet a new friend or a group of friends,
15:01 you know, I'm watching them very carefully,
15:03 and I'm praying because, of course,
15:06 I don't want her to be receptive
15:08 to any kind of negative influence
15:10 that's going to take her in the wrong direction.
15:12 Well, hallelujah, praise God for that foundation,
15:15 for that Spirit fill, Christ-centered foundation
15:18 that we're able to lay in the home,
15:20 in a Christian home,
15:22 so that now our children is there, your son,
15:24 my daughter, they are out,
15:26 I'm assured that they're making the right choice.
15:29 That's the text that comes to mind,
15:31 "Train up a child the way he should go,
15:33 and when he is old,
15:34 he will not depart from the way."
15:37 He may or they may leave,
15:40 but the training what you've instilled
15:43 in the home from young, it stays with them.
15:46 Right.
15:47 And they'll always have that.
15:48 Yeah.
15:50 But with that, I would say too, we can leave room for error,
15:53 you know, we're not
15:55 or I am not raising a perfect child,
15:57 I was not the perfect child,
15:59 I was way on the other side of the spectrum.
16:02 So it's to understand that
16:04 that is part of their developmental process
16:06 also that they will make mistakes,
16:09 they will make wrong choices, they will do or say things
16:12 that you're not happy with or proud of,
16:14 but it's also part of their developmental experience.
16:19 And yes, we have to know when to step in,
16:20 especially if it's something that is going to
16:25 put them in some significant amount of danger.
16:28 But outside of that, you know,
16:29 it's like when your little girl is learning to walk,
16:31 you know, there are times
16:33 you kind of let the toddler bump into this
16:35 or in some cases, you know,
16:37 the toddler is going and explore something
16:39 that's going to be a little bit painful.
16:42 Yeah, you go ahead and let them, you know,
16:43 open that little container of black pepper
16:46 and start to sneeze, and then you'll know okay,
16:48 don't mess with it.
16:50 You see, that's what gets me
16:52 'cause I do that with my girls but my wife,
16:58 "Why don't you let her get bumped?"
16:59 "She's got to learn, you know,
17:01 she's got to learn, let her bump herself."
17:02 Like my youngest scratched her nose,
17:05 she fell down, and she took a piece of skin off,
17:08 and she was crying, and I'm like,
17:10 I always tell my kids, "You bleed it,
17:12 you done it, you'll be all right."
17:14 "You'll be all right."
17:15 "You'll be all right, go about your business."
17:18 You know, I think that's also a difference of approach
17:20 between mom and dad, you know,
17:22 there's differences on how you handle it
17:25 and one of the things I always questioned, I guess,
17:29 in a Christian home, as you said, the balance and,
17:34 you know, what if your son or daughter,
17:37 your child comes to you and says to you,
17:39 "I no longer believe in God, I'm a Satanist,
17:44 I'm an atheist, I'm an agnostic."
17:47 Now mind you, we're all ministers.
17:50 We're all supposed to have it right.
17:53 You come from a minister's home,
17:56 you're supposed to believe in God the rest of your life,
17:58 yeah, you know,
17:59 the child and train them the way they should go.
18:01 But what if...
18:03 What if, you know, they come to you and say that?
18:05 What do you do?
18:06 Oh, that's a real rough one.
18:08 But I can say, let me put it in this context,
18:11 my son said to me, he called me, I was travelling,
18:13 he called me, he said, "Dad!"
18:15 And he started questioning, he went into some pantheism,
18:20 he was listening to somebody who were having the discussion
18:22 and God is in the trees, the air,
18:24 all these different things that he began to ask me about.
18:27 He began to believe this kind of stuff.
18:30 Inside, I got angry.
18:33 He didn't know I was, I was stewing.
18:36 Because I'm like, wait a minute,
18:37 we taught you better than this,
18:39 where you're coming with all this.
18:42 So that anger started to build inside of me and I said,
18:46 "God, help me, help me to keep calm."
18:48 So I can only imagine
18:50 if he is to pull that kind of stunt,
18:52 I might just totally lose it.
18:54 So I think it's a danger, you know, from me,
18:58 I have to be able to watch myself.
19:01 But yet, I don't think we can force them
19:06 to make choices,
19:08 they have to make the choice and you prayerfully have to...
19:12 You just got to keep praying.
19:13 And hope that somehow God will intervene
19:17 and change the heart
19:19 because only Jesus can change the heart,
19:21 only Jesus can make those changes.
19:23 We can't, as parents,
19:25 we can just give the best advice
19:27 that we possibly can, nothing else we can do.
19:29 Amen. Amen.
19:30 Knowing your child is important,
19:32 and as we shared earlier,
19:35 each child has their own temperament,
19:38 their own personality,
19:41 what you can say to child A or instruct child A,
19:45 you may not necessarily be able to do it the same with child B.
19:49 You have to work within their temperament
19:51 and their personality profile.
19:54 It's scary, man,
19:56 there's no other way to say that.
19:57 Once again, we're talking about this
19:58 grace-based process, you know.
20:00 So that is one of the areas definitely where
20:03 God calls us to stay on our knees.
20:05 Yes.
20:07 I'd be praying for our children,
20:08 saturate them in prayer, daily.
20:10 I mean, I will be in traffic
20:12 and just start praying for my daughter
20:13 'cause I don't know what's going on.
20:15 Share with you quickly, was driving in New York once
20:17 and had one of those nice daddy-daughter,
20:19 you know, talk, it was just the two of us
20:21 driving in New York.
20:22 And I was becoming concerned because there were quite a few
20:26 of my daughter peer that were seemingly gay
20:31 or within that lifestyle for some extent.
20:35 And I started to question, you know, man, you know,
20:38 how many gay friends she got, this kind of stuff I'm asking,
20:42 her mom and I are talking about and praying about and so forth.
20:45 And so I start to have this conversation
20:46 with my daughter as we are driving
20:48 and started talking about the biblical model,
20:50 and the nuclear family, and God's ideal,
20:52 and God's expectation, and God loves everyone but...
20:55 My daughter cuts me and she says,
20:57 "Dad, dad, I like boys.
21:00 I like boys, okay?"
21:01 Because she saw
21:02 where I was going with that degree of insecurity,
21:05 and I was getting to the part of, you know,
21:06 "I would love you unconditionally
21:08 and so on and so forth."
21:09 She stopped me there and she said, you know,
21:12 she put me at ease.
21:14 So it is important also once again for us
21:18 to know our children
21:21 and know regardless of what we may have as an insecurity,
21:26 you know, trust your child
21:28 and you still have to address those tough issues.
21:31 Now my child becoming a Satanist,
21:34 bro, that one, yeah, that one right there is stuff
21:38 but I will have to love my daughter all the same.
21:41 I would still approach
21:43 even that situation with tough love,
21:46 you know, which means I may have to set boundaries,
21:49 I may have to say, you know,
21:51 "Look, those things cannot come into our home."
21:54 Right.
21:56 That talk, that behavior, that conversation, you know,
22:00 I've even restricted certain clothing
22:02 because, you know,
22:04 I had a bit of a fight with her a few years back also
22:06 because she had a CD from a singer
22:09 that really troubled me,
22:11 the lyrics were about suicide, and death,
22:14 and all this kind of stuff, and, you know,
22:16 I did something I wouldn't normally do.
22:18 I took the CD without her permission
22:20 and crushed it.
22:22 And I put $20 on the vanity where the CD was, of course,
22:26 after then she came back,
22:27 "Have you seen my CD" duh, duh, duh, I said,
22:30 "Baby, that does not belong in this house, you know,
22:33 but you have $20 to reimburse you for the purchase."
22:37 Hugged there, sat down, talked, prayed,
22:38 and explain to her why it was a deal-breaker,
22:42 you know, we just...
22:44 Some things, we just don't allow,
22:47 you don't want to play, yeah,
22:48 you don't want to play with, right.
22:49 You love them
22:51 but you're not going to tolerate...
22:52 Yeah.
22:54 You know, certain behaviors.
22:55 So if you're going to try to be a Satanist
22:57 or whatever religion, yeah, in this house,
22:59 as my mom used to say to me,
23:01 "When you come in this house, certain things apply.
23:04 You can't bring things in here, you can't do certain things."
23:08 And I think as parent, we have to do the same thing.
23:11 What is happening now is that, even in a Christian home,
23:15 parents are allowing the children to rule at home.
23:19 So the children can do whatever they want to do
23:22 and they can say whatever they want to say.
23:24 In my house, it's not going to happen,
23:26 it's not going to down like that.
23:28 I think, you know,
23:29 you both brought some good points
23:31 as having that balance and pray
23:34 because that Satanist kid, that was me.
23:37 I told my parents, you know, I don't believe in God.
23:40 Wow.
23:42 Because He's mean,
23:43 He doesn't give me stuff, He restricts me.
23:46 Seeing, you know, if He...
23:47 if God is real, Satan is real too.
23:50 And, you know, and I think that was the critical part
23:52 that they love me no matter what,
23:55 they didn't love what I did but they loved me.
23:59 And that love and that prayer is what brought me out of it
24:03 out of 12 years of it, you know,
24:05 that's the critical thing that, you know,
24:08 especially as ministers, you know,
24:09 we talk so much to the congregation,
24:12 we give so much advice to the congregation,
24:14 we go home, we act complete opposite,
24:16 you know,
24:17 it's so critical that we educate ourselves
24:20 and our children on what the love of God is.
24:23 It's not some fairy in the sky, not so fluffy,
24:26 you know, let's feel goodness, let's...
24:28 These are the rules that's what you have to know, know.
24:30 This is God, inclusive, He loves you no matter what,
24:34 we're going to get through this together,
24:35 however, there are boundaries
24:37 and which have to be exercised because God has boundaries.
24:42 You know, and that's the critical part that,
24:46 you know, will win your child's love,
24:49 it's your ability to give him wings to fly.
24:52 Amen. Amen.
24:54 That is so important what you're saying there.
24:58 My own example, I was raised
25:00 in a very conservative fundamental
25:03 Adventist environment and growing up,
25:06 naturally, those traits were in me.
25:10 If I could change something,
25:12 I would go back to the earlier years of my daughter,
25:15 our daughter's nurture,
25:17 and I would be a lot more Christ-centered,
25:20 as opposed to being fundamental, doctrinal,
25:23 you know, and so forth because I think it's important,
25:27 and a lot of our kids
25:28 have not been introduced to Jesus.
25:31 Right.
25:32 So I haven't had as much challenges,
25:34 nothing of the sort of atheism, or agnosticism,
25:38 or anything of that sort,
25:40 but there has been a bit of resistance
25:44 towards mainstream Christian culture
25:47 and the rigidity that we may have experienced in our church,
25:52 this very structured,
25:55 rigid environment that some of us may foster,
25:58 especially as pastors.
26:01 You know, pastoral home, my kid got to look this way,
26:04 he got to look that way, she got to look,
26:05 you know, and so on and so forth,
26:07 and we put a lot of emphasis on structure...
26:12 Devotion being guarding the edges of the Sabbath,
26:16 and dress the core, and so forth and so on.
26:20 But we must ensure that we take time
26:22 to introduce our children to Jesus.
26:24 Yeah.
26:26 They must know Jesus for who He is.
26:27 They must understand the plan of salvation.
26:29 Yeah.
26:30 They must understand the value of justification,
26:33 and they must understand that God is not a judgmental God
26:38 in the sense that He is, you know, and they see God
26:42 through our parenting is what I'm trying to say.
26:44 Right.
26:45 So if they cannot see grace in my parenting,
26:48 if they cannot see love and humility in my parenting,
26:51 and just like the plan of salvation for us,
26:54 when I found out that Christ
26:56 had lived that perfect life for me,
26:58 when I found out that Christ had already done the work
27:01 and that it was up to me to maintain a devotional life
27:05 with Him of trust, and He basically
27:09 will lay everything in order.
27:11 So we have to demonstrate the same thing
27:13 in our parenting with our children,
27:15 don't make it seem impossible to them.
27:17 Man, and I really appreciate everything you guys have shared
27:19 because we could probably keep going
27:22 for another few hours with this
27:23 because it's so deep and so ingrained into
27:27 what we need to do as fathers.
27:29 And it's so difficult to do it.
27:31 But I appreciate it,
27:32 and I really do appreciate everything you said today.
27:35 And for everybody out there, you know,
27:39 fatherhood doesn't come with a manual,
27:42 it doesn't give you the good, the bad, and the ugly,
27:46 that's why you have to rely on God so much.
27:49 Your kids are not perfect, neither are you and,
27:53 you know, there's times that you're going to mess up
27:54 but you got to leave that room for flexibility
27:57 and room for error.
27:59 But never leave room for the devil
28:01 to take over your children.
28:03 So please, always stay mindful,
28:05 stay prayerful, and love your kids.
28:07 Thank you for watching.


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Revised 2018-09-27