It Matters What You Do in Child Raising

Let's open your Bibles to Romans chapter 12 and find verse 10. We're doing a takeoff on this verse. Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love and honor giving preference to one another and then I also would like to read Ephesians 6 1 through 4 which is connected to this whole matter of honor. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth and you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath but bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord and then finally you don't need to turn to this, but Proverbs 22 verse six.

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for giving us your word for such perfect guidance in this world that we're walking through. I pray that you would take all these words and burn them deeply within our hearts to walk in them.

Amen. Our focus of course here is the phrase in honor giving preference to one another. We're doing a takeoff on this verse. Well why? Well most of you are raising children and raising children is a little bit like tending a garden, where you are planting, you're watering every day, You are, you're fertilizing.

You're pulling weeds. You're chasing off varmints. You're dealing with insects, you know, that might come and hurt your little garden. And you know, you're learning as you go because you got these children probably when you were young and so it's it's an interesting moment right well hey when I'm finished with this message, I'm hoping that the Lord would strengthen every person's resolve to obey the word of God in your parenting. There are so many voices, corrupt voices, to influence you in your parenting.

But the word of God is pure and it's perfect, and it's actually set aside in so many of the parenting textbooks that are available today. And I also want to really speak to children and I want you to search your hearts, all you children, if you're looking at me now, I'll wait for a minute where you're looking at me, I'm looking at you in the eye, am I honoring my father and mother? Am I honoring to my siblings? Am I honoring to the authorities that God has given me? Am I, as the Romans 12 begins, am I presenting my body a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God which is my reasonable service of worship.

It's so important that we learn how to obey this command, to honor. You do not want your children to die on an overdose of self, and neither do you. And so we've been dealing with Ephesians 6, 1 through 4 which is really one of the summary flagship passages on raising children. And the other that I read was Proverbs 22 6 which stands in a much longer testimony about child raising where there's enormous detail about how to raise your children there's no book like it for the raising of children it's a child raising handbook Proverbs it was written by a father for fathers and mothers to teach their children. That's the specific purpose of the book of Proverbs.

It's interesting that God gives an entire book of the Bible to this matter of raising children. So this is divine wisdom for the raising of children. It really does begin with the presenting of your body as a living sacrifice and then honoring one another. Now here's something that I wanna just communicate again. The apostles designed a particular child raising culture to exist in local churches.

There is a child raising culture that should be established. Everybody doesn't do their own thing in the Church of Jesus Christ. They do the will of Jesus Christ and that actually calls a congregation to have a nearly uniform practice of raising their children as it is consistent with the word of God. Now, this first command with a promise establishes parental authority. Children, obey your parents in the Lord.

We spoke about that last week, and I wanted to establish this truth that God has appointed parents as supreme authorities under Jesus Christ in the lives of their children. And what I what I wanted to make very plain is that this must be established. You must start and proceed with that principle. Parents need to understand it and guess what the children need to understand it too if your children don't understand it you should try to help them understand it that this is the way God ordered their lives that parents and children should be united, because what God does in his commands is he drives children and parents together by his commands. And he drives the parents to secure the honor, and he drives the children to honor and obey, to really form, I hate to use the word partnership, but they're actually entering into a covenant together.

And parents and children should make an agreement, they should make a deal with one another that this is the divine order and it ought not to be violated at any point. And so it's critical that both are working together first of all for the parents faithfulness and obedience to God but secondly what is at stake it really the success of that child is at stake, and every child needs to understand that very, very clearly, and you get, if you're raising children, you get to have every day to try to make that plain to them, and you will need to do it probably almost every day in one way or another and all of this to say and I've titled this sermon thusly it matters what you do it really matters what you do It matters how your children feel about themselves, and they need to understand that their feelings are not the most important thing. They're actually obligated to obey God. It's very important that parents steer their children away from being controlled by their emotions. Children will be controlled by their emotions, and parents stand in the way of that to lead them to Jesus Christ, not to be controlled by their emotions, but to be governed by the Word of God and by the Word of God alone, your emotions will lead you astray and the Word of God will never leave you astray.

And so there is this process that God has engaged with parents and children and it begins with the parents to really deliver children from their egocentrism and and that means that there will be battles over authority. We'll talk about that later on in one of these messages. How do you engage that battle? But you, as parents, must engage the battle and you must win the battle, you must win the war. And in most cases you can, but often parents are unwilling to do it because they've listened to a bunch of corrupt voices that really have no clue about the Fifth Commandment and how to exercise it.

So there are these battles of authority. Outbursts, disobedience, dishonor, all these kinds of things are the things that parents must deal with and there you are in your garden and weeds are coming up and you are the God-appointed weed eater to go take care of those weeds. Somebody sent me a statement from Calvin's commentary on Ephesians six this morning. Calvin says this, children obey. Why does the apostle use the word obey instead of honor?

Which is really, it was a very interesting question because he begins with obedience and then he mentions honor later. He says this, why did he start with obey rather than honor? Which has a greater extent of meaning. In other words, honor goes deeper, right, than just obedience. He says this, It is because obedience is the evidence of that honor which children owe to their parents and is therefore more earnestly enforced.

It is likewise more difficult. Well, we knew that. So this establishes, you know, parental authority in the home And it's very important that you make very sure that you do not have a child-centered home. You have a God-centered home. And you are leading them to the authority of God in the Lord Jesus Christ.

A child-centered home creates an ego-centered child and it most often creates a peer-centered child rather than a parent-directed child. And frankly, it's difficult because our whole culture and the force of it is all about self-love, self-esteem, self- discovery, as long as the self is at the center. But the problem with the self is when the self is the center, that's when all the problems happen. Because God has placed us under authority, first of all, divine authority. We talked about the fact that this idea of honor, it includes esteem and recognition.

It's a word that has to do with worth and appraisal and value and weight. Picture the weightiness of a ton of gold. This is the idea of honor, to esteem one another in honor. And it actually places value in the heart of the child. So we've been talking also about this idea of honoring one another in Romans 12, 10, and then honoring father and mother is really part of a very broad picture of honor toward authority in the Bible.

And of course we began with where it begins, in honor toward God. All honor, all true honor begins with honor toward God. We honor one another because we honor God. He is first. And then second, there's honor toward parents.

Then there's honor toward elders in churches. And then there is honor toward civil governors, honor towards husbands and wives, honor toward the aged, honoring the Lord's Day, honoring employers, honoring those who are not honorable, and then back to our verse, Romans 12, 10, honoring one another. So this is the spectrum, and it's very critical that you children and parents understand this is the structure of society. This is the world God created and you're never out from under authority and you always have obligations to that authority and if you engage those obligations to that authority, it'll go well with you. So this is the doctrine of honor.

You know, I just have, I'm completing what I'm calling a catechism on the family. It's a, it's not a family catechism, it's a catechism on the family with lots and lots of questions with answers in a catechism form. Here's question 135. What is a parent's most important duty to their children? Answer, to love the Lord their God with all their hearts.

Question 136, what should parents teach their children about themselves? Answer, to explain their state as sinful creatures and their need to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. That really starts at the top of all child raising. This catechism covers every aspect of family life, from husbands and wives to raising children to the whole thing. But the watershed of all honor is honor toward God.

And frankly, I also want us to see this in another broader context, and this is the context of the sufficiency of scripture. This is actually part of a biblically ordered church, that there's biblically ordered raising of children in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. What governs a local church is first of all, the sufficiency of scripture, and secondly, a clear exposition of scripture, and then you have biblically ordered worship. We believe, our confession makes it very clear, that we can only worship God the way that God has commanded and no other way. And it moves to qualified church leadership.

It includes a clearly defined culture of holiness defined by the Word of God. It's a biblically ordered fellowship, biblically ordered evangelism, and a biblically ordered home life. It would be wrong for us not to deal with matters of home life because the Bible teaches churches how to order their homes. This is the apostolic doctrine of raising of children. So that's what it is.

So if you were here last week, I wanted to establish the principle that God has placed parents in authority and parents must claim their position. And to shift a child from self-idolatry to the government of God. Parents have this duty to shift the focus of their children off of themselves and on to God. That's the greatest work you can ever do in your life. So what if your child doesn't respect your authority?

I know some of your children don't respect your authority because I see it. It's obvious and you know it too as well. But what what if your children don't respect your authority? Maybe Maybe last week you went home and said, my child doesn't respect my authority. My child doesn't listen to me.

My child talks back to me. My child does not honor his siblings. And the answer really is that you've got to keep working at it. And it might be necessary for you as a parent, if this is the case, that you had not claimed your position of authority in your child's life. That's possible.

That's probably the most likely reason And you haven't successfully taught the importance of authority and the future success of that child that obedience and honor toward that authority would bring. So if you've been negligent, if you've let them go your way, if you let them go their way, if you have allowed dishonor and disorderly behavior, then I would just suggest that you repent before the Lord, And you might even need to go and repent before your children. You say, mommy and daddy have not been careful, we've not been obedient to what God has said. And so what we want to say is, things are gonna change around here, but we have to change. And we're repenting before the Lord.

That's often necessary and frankly in the in the child-raising cycle of your life you might have to do that a few times because what happens with most parents is that they do they do well and then they they get lazy and then they have to come back and then it happens again And that happened with Deborah and I, for sure. There were times that we had to circle the wagons and get back to business. And I think that's a normal thing that happens with parents. And you know, children need to understand that as well. Actually, they have parents who are actually human.

Now you children, again I want to talk to you children here. Do you believe, Do you believe that your parents are your authorities? I mean, have you embraced that? God gave me my mom, my dad, to be my authority. Do you really believe that?

And have you embraced it? And do you inwardly and outwardly honor them? Because it's both inward and outward, it's not one or the other. Do you obey them? Well, here's some other things, children.

I'm talking to children. You adults, you can just check out here for a minute. Do you interrupt your parents? Do you children, do you ever correct your parents unrighteously? A child can speak to parents in a respectful and orderly way, but if you have children who are always correcting you, you've got a problem.

Do you talk back to your parents? Do you have a harsh tone of voice toward your parents? Are you thankful for your parents? Do you do you greet your parents cheerfully at the beginning of the day, thankful that God gave you parents? There are lots of ways that you show honor to your authorities.

Do you put things back where they belong? Or do you just throw them wherever you had them? Do you just throw your trash on the ground? Sometimes that happens right here at church. Children, they won't throw their trash away right here.

Do you scream at your siblings? If you're screaming at siblings you have your egocentrism has overtaken you and you're getting ready to die of an overdose of self. Are you thankful for your parents? Do you express that to them? Do you ask their permission?

Do you seek their ideas? When you when you wake up are you grumpy or Happy if you're grumpy when you wake up you've chosen to be grumpy That's something you need to stop. You don't have to be grumpy. That's a choice. Don't say I'm not a morning person or you're a Christian person in the morning, okay?

Do you harass your siblings? Do you poke them and chide them and take things away from them and run? That's not honoring your siblings. You know, somebody said to me last week, they said when you're talking about honor, would you say this when you go through the food line, do you load up your plate and don't consider the people behind you? I was told to say that.

Not a bad thing actually, kind of relevant, kind of appropriate. Do you cut in line? Do you let the old people go first? We have a few old people in this church. I mean one of them just turned 98, you know, you do not want to, you don't want, you want her to have the easiest pathway.

Okay. Well, okay, how is authority exercised? Because we're establishing that parents have authority. And, you know, God's relational commands all govern the way that authority is to be exercised. You don't get to exercise authority any way you want if you are a believer.

The exercise of authority in the home is really clearly explained in Ephesians 5 and 6. Ephesians 5 beginning in verse beginning verse 18 begins what's called the family life codes. And begins with life in the family of God, and then it extends to life between husbands and wives in Ephesians chapter five, and then it moves to life with children, fathers and mothers and their children, Ephesians six. And the family life codes begin with the filling of the Holy Spirit. That's how exercise, that's how authority is designed to be exercised, is by the filling of the Holy Spirit.

And so you need to understand that all authority is meant to be exercised according to the authority of Jesus Christ and his work in your heart that that your heart might overflow in the exercise of your authority with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This is how authority operates and the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 518 he begins the family life codes by saying do not be drunk with wine but be filled with the Holy Spirit. And then he talks about how that works in the church. You're speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. The Holy Spirit is the glue, it's the essence of the relationships in a local church, and then the family is a mirror, in many ways, of the local church.

And so, authority is meant to be exercised under the filling of the Holy Spirit. And so if you have authority that's being exercised in anger, if you're yelling at your children, don't expect them to act mature because you're not acting mature. So it matters. It matters what you do in exercising your authority because there's much of what you ought to do in securing honor to your authority, but how do you do it? And That's where the work of the Spirit comes in.

You do it by the filling of the Holy Spirit. Now I want to explain how critical it is, both on the side of children, it will go well with them, and also on the side of parents, because I think there's a double message here. It matters what you do. It matters to you and it also matters to your children. And so I would like you to open up to Proverbs 22, six.

I read that at the beginning. I'd like your eyes to fall on the language here. Proverbs 22, verse six. In turning to this passage, I just want to disclose that I have lots of things I wanna share with you about raising your children. We've only just begun.

And but this is one passage that I think that we should all understand in this church. If we're going to have a biblically ordered child raising culture in this church. Verse six, train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. There's much to say about this. Let me just try to summarize it really clear quickly.

A tree follows the bent of the wind when it's young. That's really what this is saying. That what you do early on creates a trajectory for that child and a tree is bent by the wind. I have trees like that. They're very clearly it was the wind that blew them, the prevailing winds had them inflect in that direction.

Now this is probably the most famous child raising verse in the Bible. And it really puts this before parents. What you do really, really matters. And so it's important to consider these kinds of matters. Let me say it a different way.

Your children will reap what you sow in their lives. Your children will reap what you sow in their lives. Your children will reap what you sow in their lives. And God has established this incontrovertible order that God blesses his own ways. And when parents parent this way, it matters.

And if you obey his ways, your children will most likely reap the fruit. There are exceptions, we know that, but there's a general principle in this proverb. And here's the general principle that the apostle Paul laid down before the church in Galatia. It has to do with reaping and sowing. He said, God is not mocked.

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows he will also reap and whatever parents sow they will probably most likely reap. So how should we interpret the proverb? First of all it's a proverb. It's a proverb in the book of Proverbs. A proverb is a general principle.

The general nature of proverbs is that they speak in generalities and there may be some exceptions to those realities, but here's what I want us to really understand. The existence of such exceptions by no means refutes the truth of the proverb. The proverb will prevail in most situations, in the majority of instances. So the fact that godly parents who train their children in the way that they should go will generally have children who will be godly. They will follow the pattern.

They will follow the bend of the wind in their family. And if you have an ungodly child that grew up in a godly home, it does not refute this proverb at all. Because in the great majority of instances, the result is indeed that children will follow the true faith of their parents. Now there are controversies surrounding this passage, this verse. The Hebrew phraseology kind of introduces some questions, some interpretive difficulties, and I'll tell you what they are.

You can read commentaries on this, and you'll have, well, there are five possible meanings. I think it really comes down to two. One of two things. You choose. First, it can mean that it's generally true in life when you train up a child in the way that he should go according to the word of God, the child would not depart from God's ways when he's old.

If this is the correct interpretation, then believing parents should diligently obey God in the ways that he has commanded. And if they do, it'll be a blessing for their children, for the rest of their lives and for all eternity because God does bless faithfulness from one generation to the next. And the result is that they will walk in the ways they were taught to walk. And when they are old, they will still be walking in those good paths. That's one way.

The other way, And actually the language can possibly mean this. It can mean if you let your child go his own way and do what he wants to do and not restrain him and not deal with his egotism when he's old, he'll keep living that way and he'll wreck his life. It could mean that. And if this is the correct interpretation, then parents are just put on notice. If they are negligent and they neglect biblical commands, their children will likely reap the pain of their negligence.

It really matters what you do. So whichever interpretation you choose, one thing is clear. God commands you to bring up children in his ways. That's very clear. And what you teach and how you live before them is going to have a lifelong impact.

You who are raising children, it's showtime. This is actually the most pivotal time in your life when you have eternal souls in your house. Now, there are a few of you, not very many, where your children are gone. But most of you are raising children right now. And your children's future is profoundly affected by your behavior.

Your children will reap what you sow. And This is that principle of sowing and reaping. Let me say it a different way. What you dedicate your children to will have a tremendous impact on the trajectory of their lives. The places you lead them, the ways that you live, will have a profound impact on their lives.

If you let your children go their own way and be their own selfish little pigs, they'll probably grow up to be selfish big pigs. That's the general principle. Let me read what one commentator says about this. He says, Proverbs are not always absolute laws, but nuggets of God's truth that must be applied wisely to the different contexts of life under the sovereign hand of God. This proverb is saying, generally speaking, if you let your children go their own way, they will go their own way.

Now, What this means is that early patterns shape later patterns. Here's my view. If you don't subdue a child's authority and have them accept it before they age five, it's going to be really hard. After five, if you've secured it, life will be a lot sweeter, a lot sweeter. The spankings will taper off after five, but you've got to get it, and you've got to get it early.

Well, maybe you didn't get it early. Well, guess what? You can start. And you can start and you can correct. But the truth is you ought to start early.

You know, Most people who observe children say that a child's character is pretty much fixed by the time they're five years old. So that means those first five years are really, really important for you as you're training your children. Early patterns shape later patterns and tendencies. And of course, you know, the first thing to do is to make sure they understand that God is King. That this is the gospel of God's grace in Jesus Christ, that there is a king and his name is Jesus Christ and he is a good shepherd.

The gospel is the first thing they need to understand. And that if they have faith in his authority and they follow him, then it will go well with them. But if they allow selfishness and dishonor and disobedience and laziness and unprofitable speech and sibling rivalry, then this is what you're going to get as a child. But God has put parents in the way. God has put parents like as guards, as sentries in the way of selfishness to help them, to help their children to understand.

So, in other words, parents, all of us parents were made responsible by Almighty God according to his delegated authority to shape the affections of our children, to shape the attitudes and the actions of our children. And God appoints you to sow seeds so that by His grace that garden will grow into a fruitful garden. But along the way you're going to have to be fertilizing and pulling weeds and chasing off varmints and killing predators that come in to your house. So all this to say, you know, the Bible teaches that your child's future tends to hang on how you behave as a parent. That's just what the Bible says.

And you can qualify it all you want, but the truth is, this is actually the central teaching of the Bible. If you go through the book of Proverbs, There are so many promises like this. It really, really matters what you do during this season of your life. It's interesting, look to yourself. One of the things that's shocking and actually difficult to swallow, now I get this, parents get the blame for a lot in Proverbs.

Parents actually get the blame for a lot in Proverbs. For example, Proverbs 10-5 says it's shameful for parents to have lazy children. If you have lazy children, shame on you. It doesn't have to be that way. Proverbs 19, 26 says that it's a shame for parents, not the children, to have dishonorable children.

In Proverbs 28 verse 7, it's shame on parents if you have a gluttonous child who can't control their appetites. You didn't teach them to control their appetites. Shame on the parents. And what what Solomon is saying is these parents didn't teach their children to be diligent or honorable or self-controlled and they left them to themselves. A child left to himself will suffer harm.

That's what Proverbs says. If you leave your child to himself the child will suffer harm. So the if you just have an honest reading of Proverbs God puts a lot of blame on parents who don't do their duty. But at the same time, the kids who keep the faith had parents who loved the Lord with all their heart. They had happy homes and they had parents who taught them how to live, actually how to behave and how to honor them and how to honor one another.

We often claim the blessings and the promises, but we forget about the conditions that shape the outcomes of those promises, because these are conditional. That might be shocking to some people, but these are actually conditional promises for parents and children. And this is what the Bible teaches. I wish there was a lot more flexibility in it, but this is actually what God has said in his word. And what Proverbs 22.6 means is that parents should not expect faithfulness in their children if they don't keep the conditions of what is offered.

In this sense, parents are called to diligence. So it's a conditional Proverb, train up a child in the way that he should go. That's the condition. And when he is old he will not depart from it. That's the result of the condition.

So what you teach your children, how you allow them to live every day in your family, it matters to them that it might go well with them, and it matters to you that you are not blamable before God by neglecting your duty. You know when I was writing this sermon I did not mean this to be a hard sermon. I wasn't trying to preach a hard sermon but the scriptures are just very, very direct. The language is very, very plain. If you have a child who grew up in a godly home and they go astray.

Why, why did that happen? Now let me just make a few comments very quickly. First of all, appearances might be deceiving. We don't know the whole story. We don't know everything about the backstory.

We don't know everything about the back story. We don't know everything about the present story. And we don't know the mind of God and what he is doing because God is sovereign in these matters. We don't know what the future holds for that child. The story's not over yet, by the way.

This is something that parents with wayward children need to understand, the story's not over yet. Because God's not done with that child yet. But don't dismiss this verse because these are these are pure and they are holy words and so Do you believe this? Do you teach them diligently? Do you instruct them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up.

Are you inspiring them and telling them of the greatness of Jesus Christ and his kingdom? Is the word of God in your heart? That's what Moses told the fathers of Israel. These words shall be in your heart and then you shall teach them to your children. Are you dealing with dishonor and disobedience and dishonesty in your children when it happens?

Those are the things that I think they should be disciplined for. Those things, those three things, the three Ds. Are you praying together as a family? Are you exasperating your children? But don't expect to see Proverbs 22, six fulfilled unless you're obeying the commands of God.

Be steadfast, be immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. First Corinthians 15 58. Jesus said, if you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. John's 13, 17. Now, I just, I wanna conclude by just saying this, is that as parents we learn as we grow.

And as the years pass, two things change. Your children get different parents as the years pass. And parent and children change as well. We have people here that have 20 years between the first and the last child. And you know what that means?

The parents of the older children were different than when they were younger because parents change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst. It can go both ways. Our kids often get a different child raising experience. Our older kids probably got a different experience than the younger because you learn and you change.

And you And, you know, when you have your first child, I mean, you are on it. Big time, hopefully. And then, you know, you grow. Deborah and I had a 10-year gap between our oldest and youngest. Our youngest got a little bit different take in the last few years of her life with us than the other kids did.

You know guess what this is the way it works. This is how it works and particularly if you have a big family. You know somebody said to me you know the more kids you have, the diaper bag gets smaller because you don't, you figure out You don't need so many things in your diaper bag. You've learned a couple things along the way. Sometimes parents change because they get tired.

Sometimes parents change because they lose the vision. Sometimes parents change because they've embraced worldly ideas that they rejected long ago. These are just some of the dangers of parenting. I know you've seen it, maybe seen it in yourself. Every parent can look back and see what they could have done better.

I have a whole laundry list. Maybe I'll share it. Maybe I'll share it the next time I preach. But you children who think that your parents made mistakes, maybe you're disheartened by it, There are two things I want you to know. It was God that gave you those parents.

God knew that you needed those parents. You should be praising God even for their weaknesses. Because it was God that put you in that family. And I recognize there are some egregious and horrific things that it's impossible to give thanks for. Let's carve that out.

But every parent makes, you've got to understand that every parent makes mistakes. Guess what? They were young. They were inexperienced. They were learning as they went.

And God uses their flaws to teach you how to live successfully with other authorities that have flaws. It's very important that you recognize some of the flaws of your parents because it helps you to be patient with those other authorities like that. So I do have a long list of different things I would like if I had to do over again. I'm very thankful for the experience we had in our family, though I loved the child raising years. I'd love to go back to it.

But okay, so let's bring this down. We're living in a time of hands-off parenting, and it's influenced by therapeutic culture, and it's not influenced by the sufficiency of scripture. And you have Freud and Spock and the gentle parenting movement that's really harming families. But Christian parenting is very, very different. The scriptures teach us to walk differently with our children.

And we need to recognize how serious it is that God gave you children. And it's really important to you children to understand how serious it is that God gave you authorities, these imperfect authorities, that they would teach you the ways in which you should go. The stakes are so high, it matters what you do and how you live. You know, yesterday I was reading Psalm 26 and I thought, this is what we should all do all of us David says examine me oh Lord and prove me try my mind and my heart ask God ask God to help you through Ask God to help you make any changes that are necessary. Any in-course corrections that need to be made, make them now.

But ask God and say, examine me, oh Lord, and prove me. Then in the next Psalm, in Psalm 27, verse 11, teach me your way, oh Lord, and lead me in the smooth path. So I pray God gives us a really mighty, wonderful crop of parents who will lead their children in the ways that they should go, so that when they're old, they will not depart from it. Would you pray with me? Father, your word is sometimes hard but it's always good And I pray, oh Lord, that you would give us such a heart within us to keep all of your commandments and to walk in them, amen.