A The Family Matters Q&A

This is our question answer. This will be our last. Our three sessions are over. This is the Q and A. And you guys have put together lots of great questions. We don't have time for them all. He's tried to limit it to around fifteen. So I'll get going and let vote speak to us on these all. Right. Number one, what is the role what is the role of grandparents regarding the influence of my extended family towards my kids? You know, the Bible has a lot to say about your children and your children's children, right, And I think we have a role to play in the lives of all of our descendants to the degree that the Lord would allow us number one to tarry right, to live long enough to have an impact and an influence on generations to come. And two, to the degree that our children are able to and desire to have us partner with them in that process. So it depends on those two factors. You know, I have grandchildren now, and I'm you know, grateful to the Lord for the privilege of having grandchildren, and so I'm able to have an influence and an impact there because the Lord has allowed me to stick around long enough. If the Lord sees fit and I stick around long enough for their children, and I have great grandchildren, right, So that's the one piece. The other piece is my relationship with my children. So my daughter, for example, has two sons, and because of our relationship with our daughter, you know, she welcomes our input and our influence in the lives of our grandsons. And also we are we are very careful to exercise that influence within the context of their desires for their children and to not contradict those those things. So I think those are the two factors that we have to keep in mind as as grandparents. Right, all right, UH, do you have any detailed advice for dealing with UH? In a marriage? An unsubmissive wife who is mainly unsubmitted to scripture and argues with the truth, I think you should wrestle her for it. Ha ha, And you just say, listen, we're going to wrestle, and if I win, no wrestle, that's good. And if I win, then you submit to me. Vote is a purple belt in jiu jitsu, so he wins either way or no. Really, it's interesting because that question, that question really is based on a misunderstanding. Right, Someone's not submissive to me. How do I make them? Well, if you make them, it's not submission, right. You can't coerce submission. You can't force submission. That that's subjection, right, you you can't do that. And the other thing is I think the question is really insightful because this is about someone who's not submitting to the scriptures. And again, that's not something that we can force. Okay, that's something that requires us patiently doing that which we're called to do. And the Bible's really clear for husbands. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Right, you know, washing her with the water the word. You know. Our desire is to see her and splendor, spotless without blemish. Right. That that's our desire as husbands. That's our approach as husbands. That's our pursuit as husbands. I have to be less concerned about my wife's submission to me than I am about my submission to the Lord. In the way that I care for my wife, her submission to me is not my problem. That's her problem, right, that's between her and the Lord. My My job is to love my wife in such a way that we're clearly the way when you read that text, right, it's my job is to love my wife in such a way that she will be more like Christ as a result of being married to me than she would have been had she not. Okay, So that's my job. My My My job is to is to do that, is to give, that is to pursue that, regardless of what she does or doesn't do in terms of in terms of her submission. Again, that's between her and the Lord. And part of part of my duty and my responsibility is that washing in the water of the word, that teaching and that modeling, right, that that patience and that long suffering. So I think I think oftentimes we we we we predicate too much on on that issue of what the other spouse is doing, because you can flip that as well, right, and the wife, you know, is paying too much attention to him not doing what he's supposed to do, you know, Invisians five twenty five, and following that, she's not paying attention to what it is that she's called to in five two twenty four. So all right, excellent, let's let's see kind of back to the fathers. Now, what if there is a Christian wife who in her husband is not a family shepherd, perhaps not a Christian, how does she go about shepherding her kids? I think the exact same way everything that we've talked about. Here is what you would do. I think, regardless of what's happening in your family dynamics, these things are non negotiable. Right. You don't say, here's what God desires for my children, but because we don't have dot dot dot. No, here's what God desires for my children. He desires that they would have formative discipline and corrective discipline, regardless of the circumstances. Right, He desires that they would. And I would put that whole idea of family worship as one of the forms of formative discipline. Okay, So if we know these things to be right, then we do them, Okay, regardless of our family dynamics, of our family circumstances. If we know these things to be right, then we do them all right. How do we respond to those that say we should not indoctrinate our children in our faith? We say, stop trying to indoctrinate me. Ah, yeah, you know, I just sometimes people don't know that they're being ridiculous and we have to sort of gently pointed out to them that's a ridiculous statement. We have to indoctrinate our children to everything like like like everything, right, So why would I not indoctrinate my children in mind faith? If I'm indoctrinating my children into everything, right. So yeah, we just sort of gently helped them to understand it being ridiculous. What advice would you give to families that send their children to public schools? Don't? Yeah? Just the government. The government and has a lot of things and it's called to do, and it's supposed to do, and a lot of things that that only it can do, you know, you know, national defense and you know, and things like that, and I think those things are extremely important, But there are other things that the government has just not called to do, and educating children is one of those things that the government's not called to do. Education is discipleship where it was educating our children is discipling our children, period. Luke six forty. His student is not above his teacher, but everyone, when he has fully trained, will be like his teacher. And his teacher is the curriculum. Okay, his teacher is the curriculum. And so yeah, just I just I just think we need to be more diligent and thoughtful about that whole process. And yeah, okay, so strive to not send your kids to public school. Strive to strive to We're obligated to give our children a Christian education, and in the American government educational system it is anti Christian by federal mandate. All right, here's the question, should I baptize my children? No, I'm a Baptist, Folks with you. You're kidding me with this question. No. To their defense, it did not say pre or post salvation, So you have done that. You wouldn't be baptizing them, would you. Yeah? All right, if you could go back and tell your twenty year old self anything, what would you tell him? By apple stock? That's good? Yeah, yeah, that well, that's good financial advice. Any spiritual advice, that would be the spiritual advice. Man. Yeah, you know, I got married when I was twenty and uh yeah, there's so many there's so many things about that that I didn't know and didn't understand. And I guess most of my advice to my twenty year old self would would have to do with with with with marriage and with being a husband and with Yeah, with being patient in that process and yeah, that's good. Yeah, and just out of curiosity the family worship for you, as you've laid out here, At what point in your life did that kind of take root for your family? For you first, I'm assuming then for your family, was there an influence or a book or just seeing the need. I think we early on had some some people who were models of that. We saw that early on, and it wasn't something that we we did right away. I remember the first time that we experienced that at somebody's house, kind of newly married. I was like, that's I'm curious, you know. And then over time it just became something that was that made more sense to us, something that we experimented with, and then just became, you know, something essential to us. And it is amazing. It's not taught any it's not I didn't have it talked to me. It wasn't it seminary talk to me. It was a conversation with Sinclair Ferguson, who said this had to be done. And it's just kind of like he was like, well, wait what I'm missing out? Yeah, all this with my family. So we've gone from you know, orders in the Church of Scotland that you know, church discipline was to be applied to people who weren't engaging in regular family worship to now you know even know what it is and you might tee off on that as well. Sunday school is that were the pros and cons Well, it depends on what you mean though. The Sunday School movement is something that started in the nineteenth century. It's it was designed. It was nineteenth century, eighteenth century it was. It was designed specifically for kids who weren't able to go to school. Think about before labor laws, right, and you had kids working in factories, you know, all these long hours because they had small hands and they could, you know, do these small tasks with their small hands, and they weren't being educated. And so mister Rake's in England it decided there's something needed to be done about that. So they started the Sunday School, which was a school designed to educate these children and reading and writing and arithmetic using the Bible as a primary source for these kids who weren't allowed to go to school. And they were a couple of objections to the early Sunday school moment. It caught on and it kind of and it grew a couple of ejection objections, a couple of warnings. Warning number one was, if we are not careful, we're going to begin to apply this to the children of Christian parents. And if we do that, eventually you'll have people who are not catechising their kids. So here we are, yeah, so so again it's they overly trusted that system, that program to teach their kids about Christ and to indoctrinate them, and the parents relinquish that you advocated their god given right. All right, not necessarily a physical family question, but a church family question within church community. Should younger adults correct older adults through scripture? Well, you know, young men are to treat older men as fathers, right and women, older women as mothers. And there's a way. There's a way that you approach a father, there's a way that you approach a mother. And I think the problem comes not when there is an error in the life of a younger older person than a younger person sees, but it comes when we ignore those distinctions. It comes when we ignore the fact that we're approaching a father or that we're approaching a mother. That that's when the difficulty comes. I don't think. Yeah, I don't think. I don't think anybody has a has a problem when we understand the proper approach and the proper respect that we're to have, so attitude, demeanor, perhaps less public as possible. Yeah, absolutely, just like you would have father, you know, just like you just like you would a father, you know, all right, what are practical forms of discipline at different ages? Again, what are practical forms of discipline at different ages? When is too old to possibly spank? So practical forms of discipline in different ages? Remember, there's a continuum. And I'm going to assume that this was asked yesterday because you know, all of those things, none of those things, none of those things would would be changed by age, right, and you know, encouraging proper behavior and forming of improper behavior, rebuking, restraining, I mean, none of those things. None of those things. You might change the you might change the language that you use, you might change the you know, your approach to whatever, but you're still going to do all of those things. And so when it comes to corrective discipline, and specifically when it comes to spanking your children, there does come a point with our children where that's no longer the tool that we use. And you know, I get asked this question a lot, and my children, you know, would like to know the answer to this question. My philosophy is you never tell the enemy when you plan to withdraw your forces, because then I'll just wait till that day and go crazy. Right. Yeah, So there does come a point when your child reaches a certain level of maturity and your interaction with them, and what you'll notice is it's not And here's the problem. We treat spanking like it's our only tool, right, it's our only tool when you use it too, when you don't use this tool, and we're afraid of not having this tool because it's our only tool. Right, But when you understand these other tools that we have, this formative discipline that we have, and when you use that as the gauge, what we do is we are able to increase the effectiveness of the formative discipline to the degree that our children mature. Right, We're able to engage them in levels that we couldn't engage them before, to the degree that they mature. And that's what we're looking for, not some date on the calendar that says, okay, you're this old, we're not gonna make it. That's we're missing the point, okay. Our goal is for them to reach that level of maturity where we can engage with them more effectively or informative discipline, and beyond that. So there's external controls and internal controls. Okay, our children have very low internal controls, and so we use external controls, right, very low internal controls. You put the little plugs in the sockets because they don't have the internal controls. And that's with the sigets, right. But there comes a time when through formative discipline, they're able to increase their internal controls. And that's what we want. We want them to increase their internal controls so that we can lay off the external controls. Okay, that's what maturity looks like, right, And so well, the question is not you know, okay, at what time does this know? That's not our question and that's not our goal. Our goal is to see a continued increase of our child's internal controls so that we can decrease our use of external controls. And that looks different from child a child all right. In perhaps the neglect of corporal punishment, many parents have replaced spanking or corporal punishment with removing of electronic devices from their kids for punishment. Do you approve or disapprove or what would be your opinion? And I think the uh, the quote that I used from Wesley is very appropriate. There. You know, there may be instances wherein this may be effective, but that's not the point. The point is the Bible's clear, right, that's the point. The Bible's clear. The folly is bound up in the heart of the child, and removing technology will drive it far from No, that's that's not that's it's not what the that's not what the Bible teaches. Now, it is very appropriate and responsible and reasonable that we would have limits with our children when it comes to these things, right, and yeah, so we need to do that. We need to have limits, and we need to teach them to be responsible with these things. So already have a few questions here regarding family regarding children. Let's see this first one is are there situations when a family should should take measures to stop having children? The sex meets tubes tied, et cetera when it comes to this issue. And I appreciate I appreciate the question this way because oftentimes people ask the question and they're going like, Okay, how do we know you know, how many children we should have or when we have enough children and when we have right And that's to me that that's getting it the wrong way around. I think the question that we have to ask is this question, is it ever appropriate to prevent pregnancy? Is it ever biblically appropriate to prevent pregnancy? And if it would be biblically appropriate to prevent pregnancy, what would be biblically appropriate means to prevent pregnancy. I think that's the right way to think about this. And there there could conceivably be biblical reasons to prevent a pregnancy, and I always go to the classic. You know that the wife has had an accident and she's broke her pelvis, rights to heal, she has well. Again, if I'm applying biblical principles and living with my wife as a weaker vessel and living with her in a understanding matner and caring for her the way that I need to, that, I'm not going to get my wife pregnant when she's got a broken pelvis that hasn't healed, you know what I'm saying. So the answer to that question is, yes, there is conceivably times when you would want to prevent pregnancies. And then here's the other question. Okay, so how do we do that? And I think there's some other principles that we want to apply there. For example, you don't want to mutilate your body like biblically, you don't want to mutilate your body. You don't want to take your body that's functioning properly as God intended it and mutilate your body so that it doesn't function properly as God intended it. Yes, pretty straightforward, right, I mean, that's you know, so we would have to find means that didn't violate that. We'd also have to find means that wouldn't allow for pregnancy to take place. It wouldn't allow for fertilization, you know. And so for example, you know, some forms of birth control, some birth control pills are our motivations. They would allow for fertilization, but they would expel the fertilized egg, right, there are some there are some forms of birth control that allow for that. Well, that's that's not acceptable, okay, So we need to make sure that we are thinking through these things biblically. And the reason that I go through this process as opposed to you know, well here, do this, do this, do this, do this. It is because I think I believe we don't want to think on these issues. We want rules that have loopholes so that we can do what we want and not feel convicted. So this is the process of thinking through this to have biblical reason for preventing a pregnancy, right, and I'm scared. I don't believe we'll be able to provide for them. I don't believe. No, that's not no, that's faithlessness. That's not a biblical reason to do something right. So again that's where we start. And then okay, what means are we going to employ? Okay, we can't mutilate our bodies. We don't want to do that. My body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. I'm not going to mutilate the temple of the Holy Spirit. And then we're not going to allow for a baby to be created and then expelled. Right, So have to be means that wouldn't involve those two things. The last question pertaining to something similar there obviously you disagree with abortion, what about fertilized embryos that are now frozen by Christian couples trying to have children. I'm not sure what is what is frozen embryo fertilized egg that they have fertility treatments where they store them and then implant them. I don't know. That's the question. Do you do you recommend this process? No? Recommends that good, I don't recommend the process. There you go, just not recommended question. All right? What do you think about Christians using vaccines that were made by using aborted fetuses? Last one on this type of issue. Yeah, so all of those things would fall into the same category. Right. If we don't need to be using forms of birth control that are abortifations, then we certainly don't want to be using aborted fetuses to vaccinate ourselves, right, that's I mean, it's kind of yeah. All right. We just have a few quick questions here. Could you please speak to give advice to mixed families divorce families mother or father is not a Christian and one is a Christian trying to shepherd the child. Any specific advice? Oh? Sorry, sorry. A husband and wife have come together, they have a child, and they have now divorced, separated. What would be the advice to the mother or the husband who is a Christian trying to raise their child in a christ Like manner. Oh, okay, guarding the other who's not well. I think I think that goes back to what we talked about before, Right, things that we have discussed here, these are things that are non negotiable and there are no circumstances that render these things obsolete. Okay, No matter what the circumstances are. We have to raise trained, disciple, mentor prepare our children. We have to engage in formative discipline, corrective discipline with our children. We have to do this to the best of our ability. There are obstacles in our way. Everybody has obstacles in their way. Amen, All of us have obstacles in our way, and what do we do we overcome those obstacles. There are certain things that are non negotiables. This is why we started with that whole idea of lifestyle evaluation. Right. There are things that we consider non negotiable, and we organize our lives around those things. We have to make sure that this is one of those things that we consider nonnegotiable, and that weize our lives around it, and that we make it happen regardless of whatever we have to do our voter. You have thirty seconds. Could you quickly summarize family integrated worship. Really, the idea that family integration is the idea that there's no systematic, age graded ministry work that goes on within the context confoundes of the church. That the church is a worshiping community, that we worship together, and that we welcome all into that worship of the church. That we don't have you know, separate places or separate you know, environments or experiences for people based on characteristics like their age, but that we that we bring the church together for worship. It's good, all right. It is twelve o'clock, and we do apologize if we did not get to your question. That he does have to leave and head to Boston momentarily. So we will end in prayer and feel free to purchase the books and anything back there you can. They would love for that to happen. And if you can catch him and he have a question that we did not get to ask, you might be able to ask him on the way out. Let's pray and we'll be dismissed. Dearly Father, thank you for this wonderful time we've had to come together as the body of Christ Christians believers, submitting to the authority of the Word of God. We thank you for voting and all that you've done in his life to bring him to this point as a teacher and as a speaker, and to edify us today. We continue to pray for him. We pray for his ministry. We pray for his school of theology as well. We pray for the young men and young women that they are being trained there in the Lord. And we pray Lord that you would continue to bless his ministry and raise up others who have the similar passions and same passions to teach and to preach, and to raise families and raise young men and young ladies up to serve You. God. We pray that, as many here today have even been weighed down, perhaps by some of the points of this topic, help us to let this weight sink in, help it to truly weigh us down for a moment, and think on these things seriously as we contemplate how we are to instruct diligently and consistently our children in the Lord. Our goal is to love you with all of our heart, mind, and soul, and help us to teach this to our children as well. In Jesus, let me pray Amen, thanks for coming. And just so you know, our next speaker will be Stephen Wellhelm in March and Justin Peters in may have a great day