Hope Church LV Sermons
The Social Network :: Relationship Status Parent
- In 2004, a basically unknown Harvard University student named Mark Zuckerberg founded a little online tool that has literally impacted the world. It's called Facebook. He started it simply as something to be used on his college campus and it's now used over 500 million people around the world. When he founded it, he said that it is simply a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, families, and coworkers. It's a tool to help us connect relationally with others. I've been studying about Facebook and reading about Facebook. I've been sharing some things with you about Facebook and I came across a statistic this week about Facebook that honestly, I still not sure I can even wrap my head around it. I can't even believe it because the statistics that I had given you up to this point were statistics through 2010 and now we're starting to see some of the data for 2011 and it is literally mind boggling. When I heard the statistic, I didn't believe it. I did the math and I even went to our accountant on staff and I said, you're gonna have to do this math and make sure I hadn't made a mistake because this just seems like it just cannot be possible. I wanna show you the statistic on the screen. People now spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. 500 million users log 700 billion minutes per month, 500 million users if you divide it out, 500 million by 700 billion minutes, it means that the average user on Facebook is on Facebook about 43 minutes a day. Average is about 23 hours a month for the average user. Now here's what that means. In a month's time, 500 million people spend 1.3 million years on Facebook. You do the math. I've had it checked by an accountant. 1.3 million years on Facebook. It's mind boggling this global movement that's taking place, people getting online to connect with other people. Why is this happening? What do we've said from the beginning? It's because God hardwired us as human beings. God made us for relationships. God made us first and foremost for a relationship with Him. We were created to know God. But secondly, God created us for relationships with others. We're to live out of the overflow and intimate love relationship with God and that relationship is to spill into every other one of the relationships in our lives. Why is the social media on the internet exploding all over the world? It's because we were made for relationships. People are longing to connect with other people. So we began a series Easter weekend. Easter weekend, we started a series here at Hope called the Social Network. What is God's perspective on my relationships? That's the question that we're asking. What is God's perspective on the relationships in my life? And we gave a foundational statement, a defining statement that we really unpack the first two weekends. If you're just joining us this weekend, I would encourage you to go online and watch that, those two messages, you can kind of get caught up with where we've come from. But here's the defining statement. I want to put it up on the screen. Here's what it says. My capacity for loving others is born out of my love relationship with God. I want you to read it with me off the screen. You ready? Here we go. One, two, three. My capacity for loving others is born out of my love relationship with God. Now, let me say that to you another way, 'cause we've been saying it that way for a couple of weekends. Let me say it to you another way. The health of every other relationship in my life depends on the health of my love relationship with God. The health of every other relationship in my life, have a lot of relationships in my life. I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a friend, I'm an employer, I'm a coworker, I'm a pastor. I have a lot of relationships. Listen, the health, what this statement says is, the health of all of those other relationships, think about all the relationships in your life. The health of those relationships depends on the health of your love relationship with God, because God made us to know Him and to love Him, and God desires through us to demonstrate a capacity of love that is not possible apart from an intimate love relationship with Him, because it's His love. And unless I'm living out of the overflow of a love relationship with God, I can't know God's love in me loving others through me as He designed me to. So the first two weekends of this series, we dedicated to talking about our relationship with God. Now we're going to begin the next four weekends talking about some of these other relationships that depend upon our love relationship with God. This first weekend, we're talking about the relationship status of parent. Being that it's Mother's Day weekend, we thought we would address this issue of parenting. And as a parent, there is one question that every one of us needs to be able to answer. Here's the question, look at it on the screen. What is the greatest thing you can pass on to your children? What's the greatest thing you can pass on to your kids? Every parent desires to pass on some things to the next generation. Every parent desires to invest into their children and their grandchildren, call it legacy, call it whatever you want to call it, we all want to give some things, to invest some things, to pass on some things to the next generation. What's the most important? What's the greatest thing? Some people think the greatest thing you can pass on to your children is money. Now some people may not say that out loud. They may, if you even ask them and say this, money the greatest, oh no, money's not the greatest thing you can pass on to your kids, but they spend their lives trying to make money and secure money and store money away so that it can be passed on to their kids with a desire that their kids are able to have a better life than they were able to have. So many parents in our culture in America think the greatest thing you can pass on to your kids is money. Some people think the greatest thing that you can pass on to your kids is a career. Be it the family business or a company that you start or a trade that you work in, whatever it is, some people think that the greatest thing I can do for my kids is I can teach them how to make a living, I can pass on this business, so we put all of our emphasis and all of our time into teaching our kids a trade or passing on the family business or handing down the company. Some people think the greatest thing you can give your children is education. So we're all about making sure that they get all the degrees that they possibly can from the best institutions in America. We try to make sure that they do well in school and they stay in school and they make good grades because we understand in our culture how important education is, so we talk about education like it's the greatest thing you can give to your kids. Some people think the greatest thing you can give to your kids is values or morality. We talk about family values or self-discipline or work ethic or honesty. And we believe that the greatest thing we can do for our kids is not material things, it's not money, it's not even education, but it's values. If we can just instill some values, some work ethic, some honesty, some self-discipline, that that's the greatest thing I can give my kids. Some people think the greatest thing you can give your kids is real estate and property or the family home. And so we try to secure these things and pass them down. There's a lot of things that we think are the greatest thing we can give our kids. And listen, none of these things that I've mentioned so far are bad things, nothing wrong with passing down money, nothing wrong with passing on values to your children, nothing wrong with encouraging education and starting companies and establishing businesses and passing them on the problem is none of those things are the greatest thing we can give our kids. God actually answers the question for us in the Bible. If you have your Bible this weekend, I want you to open to Deuteronomy chapter six. Deuteronomy chapter six, we find God through Moses giving the law. And in giving the law, God begins to speak to this very issue of the greatest thing we can give to the next generation. Deuteronomy chapter six, I wanna begin reading in verse number one. If you don't have a Bible with you tonight, we're gonna put these verses on the screen. It says, now this is the commandment which the statutes and the judgments was the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you that you might do them in the land or you're going over to possess it. So that you and your son and your grandson might fear the Lord's your God to keep all his statutes and his commandments which I commanded you all the days of your life and that your days may be prolonged, O Israel. You should listen and be careful to do it. That it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly just as the Lord, the God of your fathers has promised you in a land flowing with milk and honey. Verse four, here, O Israel. The Lord is 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. These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates. I wanna take this passage description. I wanna try to break it down for you with three defining statements. Here's the first one. God's desire for your family in this generation and the generations to come is a life that is long, abundant, and full. God's desire for your family and my family in this generation and in the generations to come is a life that is long, abundant, and full. In the first three verses that I read for you tonight, we're not gonna spend a lot of time there, but in the first three verses, God is making a promise to his people about the life that he desires for them and he does it with three phrases and what he's saying is this. He's saying, hey, I'm about to tell you something in verse number four. And what I'm about to tell you in verse number four, I'm telling you so that you may experience this and in verses one through three, he's describing what that experience is. Here's what he said. I'm about to tell you something so that your days will be prolonged. You see that there in verse number two. He said, I'm about to tell you something and if you'll incorporate this into your life and if you'll pass this on from generation to generation, man, it will prolong your days. It's as if he's saying, I don't want you to miss one minute of all that I have for you. Then he says, I'm telling you this so that it may be well with you. You see that there in verse three? He said, so that it may be well with you, the word well, is a word that means good or pleasing or satisfying. You've sat down at a big meal and you just ate until you couldn't eat anymore. I mean, it's probably not the best thing to do but you sit down at a meal like that and you just eat and you eat and you eat until you just push away from the table and you are completely what? Satisfied, right? That's a good feeling to be full, to be satisfied. That's this word well. He says, I'm telling you what I'm about to tell you so that you can live a life that's satisfying so that you'll be able one day to push away from life's table and be full. Then he says, what I'm about to tell you, I'm telling you that you may multiply greatly. That phrase multiply greatly, literally means to be spilling over to have more than enough to be abundant. God is describing for his people. His promised people. They're about to go into the promised land and he's telling them about his desire. He says, man, I want you to have a life that is long. I don't want you to miss a single minute of what I have planned for you. He's saying, I want you to have a life that is satisfying, that's full, that allows you to push away from life's table and be content. He says, I want you to have a life that's not just enough, it's more than enough. It's spilling over, your life is full and it's abundant and it's long. The writer in the book of Jeremiah described it this way, look on the screen, Jeremiah 29, 11. He said, for I know the plans that I have for you declares the Lord plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Here's the point, here's the first principle that I've already given to you. I want to simplify it, here's the point. I want to put it up on the screen. God has a plan for my life and it's a good plan. If you believe that, say amen. Hey, I want you to say it out loud with me. All right, here at this campus, out in Boulder City, I want you to say it with me, you ready? God has a plan for my life and it's a good plan. I want you to look at the person sitting next to him and I want you to say it with a little bit of soul in your stomach. All right, I want you to tell him, God has a plan for my life and it's a good plan. That's the principle that we see in these first three verses. What God is promising to his people and here's why this is important. A lot of people believe that a life lived out of the overflow of a love relationship with God is really kind of a second tier life. I mean, if you give your life to God, if you become a Christian, if you follow Jesus Christ, you miss all the fun, you miss all the joy, you miss all the excitement. That is not what the Bible says. The Bible says God's got a plan for your life. God's got a plan for my life and it's a what? A good plan, it's a good plan, it's a plan that is full, it's a plan that is spilling over, it's a plan that is abundant. God's got a plan for your life and it's a good plan. Second point, second principle, the greatest thing you can do today to secure God's desire for your future is to love him more than anything else in your life. Now, when you see that phrase God's desire for your future, that's really the first statement. God's desire for your future, generations, this generation is a life that is full and long and abundant, right? So the greatest thing I can do today to secure that future is to love him more than anything else in my life. Look back at the text, chapter six, the first three verses God describes this desired life for us. Then look what he says in verse four, look back in verse four. Hero Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart. You see the connection of these verses? Verse one through three, God says, I've got a plan. I've got a plan for you and it's a good plan. It's not a second tier life, it's a great life. It's a full life, it's an abundant life. It's a long, God says, I've got a plan for you and it's a good plan. Here's how you get it on my plan. Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul. And with all your might, Henry Black could be said it this way. A love relationship with God is more important than any other single factor in your life. (Silence) Now, most of us here tonight are professed Christians and we would read a statement like that and we would say, I believe that, I believe that to be true. Is it the way we live? If somebody were to follow you around this week and just watch and observe, would they say about you, a love relationship with God is the most important thing in their life? Let me give you a few principles here, some realities that are important as we move into the last section of these verses. He basically tells us here, before you can love God, you must first know God. Before you can love God, you must know God. That's why he begins in verse four by saying, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. He describes who this God is and he invites them to know him. You see, that's what Christianity is all about. Christianity is not a system of religion. It's not do's and don'ts, rights and wrongs. Christianity is God inviting us into a love relationship with himself and everything else in my life is to be lived out of the overflow of that love relationship. So before you can love God, you got to know God, come to know him in a relationship with him. And then the more you grow to know him, the more you love him, right? Look what he says in verse number five, you shall love the Lord your God. It's a interesting way to say it here. It's a present, or excuse me, a future tense verb. He's describing a love that is continuous, but it's growing into the future, meaning that I love him today, but I'll continue to grow in my love relationship with God. You shall, not you do, but you shall. You will continue in the future to love God. The more we grow to know God, the more we love him. Well, how do we continuously develop our love relationship but God will the same way you develop a love relationship with anybody? How do you develop a relationship with somebody? What do you have to do? You have to spend time with them, right? The more you spend time with somebody, the more you get to know them, and the more you get to know them, in some cases, the more you love them, right? No, it's not true in all our relationships on earth, right? I mean, there's some people, the more you get to know them, the tougher they are to love, right? But for example, in a marriage relationship, when you and your spouse, the more you get to know your spouse, the more you grow to love your spouse. My wife and I, this month, will celebrate 19 years of marriage. And today, we love each other, like we could have never loved each other 19 years ago. Why is that? Because we've spent 19 years together. The more you spend time with God, the more you know God, guess what? The more you love him, and with God, there's never anything you're gonna learn about him that you don't love. The more we grow in the knowledge of God, the deeper we love him. And here's the conclusion to that. For my family, I must pursue knowing him more than anything else in my life. Here's what God's saying. Man, God has a long, full, abundant life for us. It's God's desire, but that life spills out of my love relationship with him. I must come to know God. And then as I spend time with God and cultivate a relationship with God, I grow in intimacy with God. And it's out of the overflow of that love relationship with God that God leads me into this good plan. So here's the takeaway. Mom, dad, the greatest thing you can do for your family. You can do for your family. Is pursue knowing and loving God. Dad, the greatest thing you can do for your family is not provide an income. Hey, it's important, we need to do that. Mom, the greatest thing you can do for your family is not nurturing and providing. That's not the greatest thing we can do for our family. Is to pursue a love relationship with him. Why? Because it's out of that overflow that we walk into this life. So then let me give you the third principle. This is one-on-one unpack for just a minute. We'll be finished. The greatest thing you can give your children to secure God's desire for their future is a love relationship with God. Remember God's desire for your future. Remember what we said that is? It's the good plan. It's the long, full, abundant life. How do you get there? Love relationship with God. So here's what that means. Mom and dad, grandmom, granddad, great-grandmom, great-granddad, the greatest thing you can give to the next generation. It's not your money. It's not your values. It's not your company. It's not your real estate. The greatest thing you and I can give to the next generation is an intimate love relationship with God. Listen the way Matthew Henry said it. Look on the screen. Matthew Henry said, "Those that love the Lord God themselves should do what they can to engage the affections of their children to Him." The greatest responsibility we have as parents is to engage the affections of our children on the Lord God Himself. Listen, I love my kids. I have four children. Our oldest daughter is about to graduate from high school. We have two boys in the middle and then our youngest daughter is in first grade. I love all of my kids. I love the stage of life that they are. I just love my kids. I pray for my kids. I want to be an example for my kids, but listen to me as a dad. There is a limit to the impact my faith can have on my kids. At some point, it must become their faith. Man, I can pray for them. I can love them. I can encourage them. I can nurture. I can live an example. I can want them to have this long, full, abundant life, but at some point, that transition. Listen, my mom and dad are first generation Christians. My mom and dad didn't have parents that were Christians or grandparents that were Christians. Both of them came to Christ as young people, and then they met and were married. My mom and dad loved Jesus. My dad's been a pastor my whole life. It's all I've ever known. But my parents' faith can only go so far. There had to come a point when I personally came to know God. And the greatest thing my parents could do for me is lead me to that place in my life where I'm introduced to the person of God that I could come to know him myself. Well, how do we do that? How do we introduce our children to this love relationship? Well, he tells us two things in these verses, and we'll be finished. Number one, he says, I must intentionally teach the truth to my children. Look there in verse number seven. He said, you shall teach them diligently to your sons. He said, you want this life that I've described this abundant, full, long life? He said, man, you need to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, and mind. And you tell what else you need to do. He said, you need to teach your kids about this. You need to be intentional about teaching them the truth about life, teaching them the truth about God, teaching them the truth from the Bible. What he's saying here is that we must set aside time to spend teaching our kids the truth that moms and dads listen to me. It's not the job of the church to simply teach the next generation. If the church is the only one engaged, let me tell you what, the next generation's in trouble. The primary institution God created to disciple the next generation is the family. The church's job is to come alongside the family and to nurture and to add and to strengthen the arms of the parents as they teach their children. The word teach that he uses here is an interesting word. It's not the word that describes formal instruction. We hear that word, I'm to teach my children, and sometimes we get intimidated. Can I be honest with you? I'd rather preach to 10,000 people than to teach a room of five or six boys and girls. It's the most intimidating thing in the world to teach kids. And even with my own kids, sometimes it's so intimidating to think about trying to cover that spectrum of stage of life issues and try to teach the Bible. But so we get in our minds, I'm supposed to teach my kids, and we see us with a white marker board, and the kids all sitting here and us trying to teach the Bible and draw the charts and the graphs and all that kind of stuff. But that's not the word teach that he uses here. The word teach here is actually the Hebrew word sharpen. We're to sharpen our children. It really speaks more to an issue of training than it does of teaching. We don't sharpen something so we can sit back and admire how sharp it is. We sharpen something to make it more useful for the task it was designed to accomplish. You see, what we understand from the Bible is God created my children to love him and out of the overflow of an intimate love relationship with him, they are to love others. So my role is to teach and to train and to sharpen them to make them more useful for what they were designed to do. You see what Moses is talking about here to the children of Israel is not a teaching that is simply focused on dispensing information. Moses is describing a process of training that's goal is transformation. This is not just trying to get our kids to memorize all of the Bible, nothing wrong with memorizing the Bible, it's a great tool. But the goal is not information, the goal is transformation. The writer of the book of Psalms picked up on this idea of sharpening and talking about kids. Listen to what he said in Psalm 127 verse four. Look at it on the screen. He said like arrows in the hand of a warrior. So are the children of one's youth. I've read that verse a lot of times. I've preached it a lot of times. But recently when I was reading it, I saw something that I hadn't really noticed before. And it's when he hit the end says, so are the children of one's youth. You ever heard that expression, they grow up fast? That's what he's implying there, that we have a short window. That's why he calls them the children of our youth. If we don't start today, tomorrow may never come in. And the purpose of the arrow was to hit the target, right? But the arrow doesn't just haphazardly hit the target. You ever tried to shoot a bow and arrow? That's not an easy task, right? The only way the arrow hits the target is by much time spent by the archer with the bow and the arrow in his hands. And through much intentional time spent, the arrow hits its target. Arrows do not just haphazardly hit their targets. What does this have to do with kids? God's given us our children. And their purpose is to grow up, to love him, and to live their lives out of the overflow of a relationship with him, and this doesn't just happen. It requires much time spent by the parent investing the truth of God in the next generation. When does this process begin? What age do we start this training process of teaching them the truth and talking to them about a love relationship with God? When do we start? Let me tell you when it starts. The moment they come into the world. We have every weekend, our worship service is going on in here, but then we also have a preschool area, and a hope for kids area for kindergarten through fifth grade. Why did we do that? Hey, that's not just babysitting going on back there. Let me tell you what that's doing. It's laying a foundation. You know what preschool children are? They're an unreached people group. They're human beings that have never been exposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And for the very first time in their lives, they'll be exposed to the truth. Let me tell you how they get exposed to it through you. As you lay that foundation of the gospel, you say, is that really that important at those young ages? Let me read you some verses. Look at 2 Timothy on the screen. 2 Timothy 3. Listen what it says. This is Paul writing about Timothy. He said, you, Timothy, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them. And that from childhood, you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. Here's what Paul says, Timothy. Hey, Timothy got two books of the Bible written to him. Timothy was a significant leader in the early church. Timothy was a man that God was using to spread the gospel. Where'd all that come from? Paul said, it came from the foundation when he was a child that his mother and his grandmother, Lois and Eunice, laid on his heart and life. And it was that very foundation of the truth that the Holy Spirit of God used later in his life to draw him to salvation, to draw him to an intimate love relationship with God. God, listen, moms and dads, we teach it, we talk about it and sometimes we think, man, I don't think they're getting it. It's not registered, man. We just talked about loving each other and they just beat the living daylights out of each other. I mean, we know more than finished the conversation and they walked out here and punched their brother right in the mouth, they're not getting it. Hey, listen, you're not, for the moment, you're laying a foundation of the truth that the Holy Spirit of God will one day take and use that truth to draw them to an intimate love relationship with God and allow them to love others out of the overflow of that love relationship. It begins immediately, what does it look like? Well, it varies with every family. I think one of the mistakes we make is when we try every family to look the same and how we go about this process. Hey, we're all different. We all learn differently. Listen, it varies with every kid in your family, right? That they're wired different, they learn different. So the important thing is not what it looks like is that it's happening. Now, we're gonna give you some tools beginning this weekend. If you have children in our hope for kids area back there, we got some tools that we're gonna start giving you. One of the things we're gonna start giving you is a card like this that will identify the way our hope for kids works every month. They're teaching a value this month. It's the value of forgiveness. So all month long, your children in the worship service back there are being taught this value of forgiveness. And we're gonna give you this tool as a mom and dad to take home with you. And it gives you the five weeks of this month. It gives you a scripture passage to go along with each week of the month. It gives you some diagnostic questions to begin to ask with your kids, to help them begin to take the truth of God and apply it to their life. And then we're also, Erin, our children's pastor has done a phenomenal job in his wife of putting this together. It's a little placemat that you can put on your table and you can write on it with a sharpie. And on one side of it, it gives you some ways to begin to take the truths of this value and implement them into the lives of your family by dinners celebrating the activity and the life of one of the people in your family and talking about how you can apply this value in your family. So what is it? This is just some tools. If you want these tonight, you can pick them up at the connection center as you leave and then they'll be giving these out and I hope for kids worship service. But what we're saying is you as a family have to decide for you what this teaching process looks like, but every family needs to have it. Every family needs to have it. The second principle and final principle we're done is I must constantly be aware of living the truth before my children. It's not just about teaching the truth, it's about living the truth. He goes on and he says, you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up. The word talk, there's a word that means to say or to speak to someone. It's a word that describes conversation. One of the words teach describes a process of training. This one is a word that just, it's just everyday ordinary conversation. And here's what he's saying. Here's the life application. We should live on the lookout for opportunities to apply biblical truth in the lives of your children and grandchildren. It's not just in these moments that we've set aside to teach and train, we should live looking for opportunities through everyday conversation as the truth becomes a part of the fabric of our lives. And we have these conversations. That's how this training process continues. Barry Schaeffer in his book, Unleashing God's Word, said it this way, I love this quote. Look at it on the screen. He said, God wasn't picturing an occasional devotional moment or a quick pre-meal prayer. God's words, speaking of these in Deuteronomy, were to be intentionally impressed on the younger generation as they were woven into the fabric of everyday life. We're not just talking about some devotional time. We're talking about this teach and talk is a lifestyle principle. And he gives us some examples of how we do this. He gives us four times of day to kind of describe what this lifestyle, he says, first of all, when you sit in your house, I like to sit this way, when you're hanging out. When you're just sitting around the house, when you're hanging out. Hey, all families do this. We have those moments when everybody's just hanging out around the house and don't let those moments pass you by. Look for opportunities to teach. Sometimes we're sitting around the house and what happens? You're watching TV and something pops on the television and you like almost break your neck, trying to get to the remote control and turn it off real quick, right? Before the kids see it, 'cause you're panicking and you're covering up eyes and you're trying to cover their ears and flip the channel real quick. 'Cause you know how television is there. You never know what's about to pop up on that screen. So we're just hanging out in the house, something comes on TV, everybody's scrambling. Hey, instead of just scrambling and screaming and covering ears, you know what that is? That's a teaching moment to have a conversation about purity. It's a teaching moment to have a conversation about guarding your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus. It's a teaching moment to talk about what you allow in is what's gonna come out. What is that? It's just hanging out, but now I'm using those hanging out opportunities that happen in all of our homes to begin to instill the truth in the next generation. Why? Because God's gonna use that to lead them to a love relationship with him. Then he said, when you walk by the way, I call that when you're on the go. Remember in Jesus' day, they walked everywhere they went. If you're gonna store you all, if you're going to the synagogue, you walk. If you're going to a friend's house, you walk. That's how they got everywhere. Well, we live in a culture that spends a lot of time on the go, right? We spend time in the car, we spend time moving around town, we spend time on airplanes. We're a society on the go. What Jesus is saying, what the word of God is teaching us is, those times of transition, those moments when we're on the go. Man, you're in the car. I said, everybody putting their earbuds in, right? Have some conversation about the truth. Ask some questions, dialogue, converse, talk through these things. Then he says, before you lie down, he's talking about when you're finishing your day, those last conversations at night, sometimes are the most tender conversations we have in our home. He teaches us to use those things to instill truth in the next generation. Then he says, when you rise up, when you're starting your day, what's the point? The point is this, don't miss life's teaching opportunities. Moms and dads, grandparents, listen to me. The greatest lessons you will teach your children will not be in a formal setting, but in the informal activities of life. Who's the greatest spiritual teacher to ever walk on planet Earth? It's Jesus, right? How did Jesus teach formally or informally? Mostly informally, right? He and his disciples would be sitting down to have a meal and he would take a basin of water and a towel. Just an everyday life situation, but with that basin of water and that towel, let me tell you what he did. He taught them a powerful spiritual principle about humility and serving others that they never forgot. Here the Bible is teaching us, God has a desire. His desire, His plan for us is a good plan. The key to it is a love relationship with God. And the greatest thing that we can pass on to our kids is this love relationship with God. And to do that, we need to have moments of teaching and training, but we also need to live this life before our kids and use those everyday teaching opportunities to take the truth and plant them in the next generation. Why is this so important? Well, remember our statement that we started with. I want to put it back up on the screen. My capacity for loving others is born out of my love relationship with God. Let me ask you a question. How many of you want your children to have a healthy, successful marriage? Let me see your hand. That's what I thought. How many of you desire for your children to have healthy relationships at work that allows them to be a success and to make a living, right? We all desire that. How many of you desire for your children to someday have healthy relationships with their kids where they're teaching and loving their children? Let me see your hand, right? I mean, we all desire those things. How does that happen? My capacity for loving others is born out of my love relationship with God. Let me tell you how your kids are gonna have healthy marriages, healthy relationships with their own children, healthy relationships at work that allow them to be productive and successful, healthy relationships with their neighbors, coworkers, and you me tell you how that happens? Out of the overflow of an intimate love relationship with God. You see what that means? A love relationship with God is the most important thing in your life. The health of every other relationship in my life rests on that single relationship. As a parent, the greatest thing I can give my kids is a love relationship with God. Let's pray. Father, we thank you tonight for your word. Oh, we pray you'd take your word and bring transformation into our lives. Lord, would you speak? Would you allow us to hear these principles? And God, may they run deep into our soul. Lord, can form us, Lord, to your image. [BLANK_AUDIO]