Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

This is the fourth and last message in our Letters to Brock series. In this series, I’ve been writing letters to our new son, Brock, who is now over a month old. I’m writing them as open letters so I can share them with you and then spend some time exploring the truth behind the letters that I’ve written.

The central verse for this series is Proverbs 22:6. “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” (NIV)

This verse is the linchpin in my theology of parenting. I want to raise, and teach, and disciple my boys in a way that is so effective that they will never walk away from their faith. Even when I am dead and gone, they will still be living faithfully for the Lord. That’s the legacy that I want to leave. And that’s why I’ve been writing these letters in this series.

So let’s pray and then I’ll read my final letter to Brock.

Dear Brock,

You’ve been dealt an interesting hand in your life. You have a dad who is also a pastor. A lot of people look at preachers’ kids, they call them PKs, with a lot of skepticism. PKs are brats. PKs are troublemakers. You’ll hear these and many other unfair stereotypes.

I want to make one thing crystal clear. You are not a PK. You are a DK. You are not a preacher’s kid. You are your dad’s kid. I am your dad first. I am not a pastor who happens to be a dad. I am a dad who happens to be a pastor. You are more important to me than my ministry. You are a higher priority in my life than the church. I’ve been criticized for my “family first” policy in the past. I’ll probably be criticized for it more in the future, but that criticism doesn’t change anything. You, your brother, and your mom are my priorities, second only to God.

I will do my best to teach you, train you, and disciple you in the ways of the Lord. I will never tell you to act a certain way because you are a preacher’s kid. I will teach you to behave a certain way because it glorifies Jesus.

Those things that I teach you, I will also model for you. I am not perfect, but I have no intention of trying to teach you to live a certain way when I am not living that way myself. If I teach you that something is a priority for your life, I want you to see that priority modeled in my life. Even if you don’t remember all of my words, even if you one day forget all about these letters, it is my prayer that you will remember how I have lived my life. I pray that you will remember me as a man of God that you want to emulate. This is the ultimate goal of my life. More than any personal or professional goals or dreams that I may have, I want my legacy to be that I lived my life in such a godly way that my life was worthy of imitation by my boys.

Love,

Dad

Today we’re going to key in on a great parenting passage in Psalm 78. I’ve read these words before, but I’ve always just glossed over them. They never really grabbed me until this week. As I read these words over and over this week, they really started to come into focus for me. It’s a great passage to use as we wrap up this series on parenting.

Beginning in Psalm 78:3, the Bible says, “we have heard and known what our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power, and the wonders that he has done. He decreed statutes for Jacob and established law in Israel,

which he commanded our forefathers to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands.

They would not be like their forefathers—a stubborn and rebellious generation, whose hearts were not loyal to God, whose spirits were not faithful to him.” (Psalm 78:3-8, NIV)

I want to spend the rest of our time unpacking some of the truths that became clear to me this week as I reflected on these words from Psalm 78. These are the motivating truths behind my final letter to Brock.

First of all, this text teaches us that your current priority will become your children’s future theology. Just so we’re on the same page, here’s a very simple definition of theology. Theology is what we believe about God. Whatever you believe about God is your theology. Obviously there is right theology and wrong theology. But what we have to realize as parents is the impact that our choices and our priorities have on our kids. Your current priority will become your children’s future theology.

Let’s go back to Psalm 78. God says that he gave his Word to us “so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands.” (Psalm 78:6-7, NIV)

God sees his principles flowing from generation to generation. He even sees his ways flowing to children who haven’t even been born yet. And who is the crucial link in this generational flow of godly principles? Parents. A parent’s priorities will shape their children’s future theology.

If there’s one thing that we can’t afford to be as parents, it is shortsighted. We constantly have to live with one eye on the future. Every parent is a shaper of the future because what we currently see as a priority, our kids will grow to see as theology. In other words, the way we choose to live our lives today will become gospel truth for our kids tomorrow.

Before you think that I’m overstating it, think about the following study. We’ll call it the 300 principle. Josh McDowell summed up this study by saying, “The most powerful impact upon a child’s ethical, moral, and spiritual development is the relationship with the parents. It is 300 times greater than the church.”

Parents have 300 times more impact on a child’s spiritual development than the church has. Parents, not Sunday School teachers, not children’s ministers or youth ministers, parents are the ones who shape a child’s spiritual future.

If you want your child to grow up believing that the church is important, then they should hear you speaking well of the church. They should see you supporting the church. They should see you loving the church. If they hear you criticizing the church, if they see you taking a spectator role instead of a servant role in the church, those priorities of yours will become their theology.

If you want your kids to grow up with a love for God’s Word, they had better see you reading it. They should hear you quoting it in the teachable moments you have each day. Instead of retreating to a room by yourself to read the Bible quietly, a parent should sometimes opt for the noisy living room. As your children see you reading the Bible, it will spark discussion. It will create those all-important teachable moments. If you want your children to grow up valuing the Scripture, they have to see it as valuable to you in your life.

Bill Hybels tells the story of one of the greatest spiritual lessons he ever learned in his life. It wasn’t in Sunday School. It wasn’t at church camp or a conference. The lesson came from observing his dad.

Bill wrote, “One of my earliest ‘spiritual moments’ came when I was in third or fourth grade. My uncle, my dad’s brother, died suddenly of a massive heart attack. It was the first funeral I ever attended. I don’t remember much about the memorial service at the church, but I can vividly remember standing at the graveside in a driving snowstorm in southwestern Michigan. I remember the pastor making his final remarks, closing with prayer, and the crowd of people starting to disperse.

I was shivering from the cold, and I looked through those driving snowflakes and I saw my dad reach into his pocket, take out a Bible, and walk over to the chair where his mother was sitting. This dear woman had already lost her husband and two other boys. My dad sat down in a chair next to her, put his arm on her shoulder, and read her Psalm 23: ‘The Lord is my Shepherd…I have everything I need.’

What a memory! Even as a little guy, I thought to myself, ‘Something very important is going on right now.’ I learned that when all of live caves in, we turn to the Lord. We turn to the Good Shepherd who walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death. I remember thinking, ‘My father is a very strong man, and here he is turning to God’s Word for comfort and encouragement when the roof of life has come crashing down.’ I remember deciding that I too would turn to the Lord when I faced times of need.”

This story is a perfect example of the 300 principle. I’m sure that Bill was taught in church to depend on God in times of need. But the impact of that lesson was ratcheted up 300 times when he saw that truth lived out through his dad. It was an unscripted, unplanned moment where a young boy simply observed his father’s priority. And that father’s priority became his son’s theology.

Listen to these words that the apostle Paul wrote to a young preacher named Timothy. “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” (2 Timothy 3:14-15, NIV)

Timothy had known the Bible from a very early age because he had a godly grandmother named Lois and a godly mother named Eunice who took great care to disciple him. Paul reminds him to continue in what he learned from them. And he had not only learned the Scripture from them, but these verses tell us that he had become convinced that it was true. The head knowledge came from their teaching. The heart conviction came from the way they lived out the Scripture in their lives. It’s evident that Lois and Eunice knew that their priority today would be Timothy’s theology tomorrow.

To really help crystallize this in our minds, let’s do a little comparison/contrast of a couple of guys with some weird names. Their names were Jehoshaphat and Ahaziah. As we were searching The Big Book of Baby Names when Nicki was pregnant, I’m not sure we even saw these two names. Nevertheless, these two guys with the weird names can tell us a lot about our parenting priorities.

Both men were kings in the Old Testament. Jehoshaphat was king of Judah and Ahaziah was king of Israel. But the accounts of their reigns couldn’t have been more different. Listen to what the Bible says about each man in 1 Kings 22.

“Jehoshaphat son of Asa became king of Judah in the fourth year of Ahab king of Israel. In everything he walked in the ways of his father Asa and did not stray from them; he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD.” (1 Kings 22:41, 43, NIV)

Contrast that with what the Bible says about Ahaziah.

“Ahaziah son of Ahab became king of Israel in Samaria in the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and he reigned over Israel two years. He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, because he walked in the ways of his father and mother and in the ways of Jeroboam son

of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin. He served and worshiped Baal and provoked the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger, just as his father had done.” (1 Kings 22:51-53, NIV)

These men couldn’t have been more different, except for one thing: the course of their lives was set by their parents. Jehoshaphat emulated Asa who had set a godly pattern for his life. Ahaziah followed the pattern of his father Ahab as well as his mother, which led him to turn from the Lord to worship the false god, Baal.

Are we getting the picture, parents? You hold the keys to your children’s spiritual future. But it all comes down to how our children see us living our lives.

This wasn’t originally written as a parenting verse, but I still think these words of Paul should be central in raising our children.

Paul wrote, “I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” (Ephesians 4:1b, NIV)

As Christ-followers, there is a calling of God on our lives. That calling grows even more significant when we have children. And the question that every parent has to contend with is, “Am I living my life in way that is worthy of my calling as a Christian and as a parent? Am I living my life in such a way that I would want my kids to imitate me in their lives?

Listen to what Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 11:1, NIV)

Every Christian parent should be able to say this to their kids. We should be able to tell our sons and daughters, “You follow my example. Talk like me. Act like me. Live like me…because I’m living like Jesus.”

A group of first graders were asked to draw a picture of God in their Sunday School class. Their creations contained some pretty interesting theology. One kid depicted God in the form of a brightly colored rainbow. Another drew Him as an old man coming out of the clouds. One very intense little boy drew God with a remarkable resemblance to Superman. And then there was Katie. Katie told her teacher, “I didn’t know what God looked like, so I just drew a picture of my daddy.”

Parents, you are the closest thing to God that your children see. Long before they can grasp the abstract concept of God, you represent in concrete terms who God is. What he is like.

That’s why we should be able to tell our kids, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 11:1, NIV) That’s a tall order, parents. Which is why I said at the very beginning of this series that this parenting thing is not for wimps. But we’ve got to be willing to rise to the challenge. The stakes are indescribably high, because how you live your life today will shape how your children live their lives tomorrow. Your current priority will be your children’s future theology.

Some of you know this is true because you were brought up with parents who took great care to invest in your spiritual life. Much of what you are today, you owe to them. Others of you have had a much harder row to hoe. Your parents did not invest in you spiritually. Maybe they didn’t invest in you at all. And it’s quite possible that there’s a long chain of failed parenting in your family.

You may need to break the chain of your past to give your children a future.

I have personal experience with this in my own life. I have a mother who was a chain breaker. If you were to trace my mom’s family back over the last few generations, you would be probably be pretty underwhelmed. Even when it came to her own parents, my grandparents, it was far from a healthy, stable, spiritually vibrant home. It was nothing like that. I won’t get into details out of respect for my mom, but just understand that it was nothing like that.

And yet my earliest memories of my mom were of her taking me and my siblings to church. I remember her serving in our church. I remember the priorities she displayed in her life. It had a profound impact on me. And not only me, but my siblings and my dad as well. Dad eventually accepted Christ, largely because of the witness of my mom.

It could have easily gone the other way. It would have been much easier for mom to simply follow in the pattern of her family. And think of the ramifications had that happened. It probably would have meant that my dad wouldn’t be a Christian. I probably wouldn’t be a Christian. It’s almost certain I wouldn’t be a pastor.

My siblings probably wouldn’t be following Christ and they wouldn’t be impacting people for the Kingdom. Think about my sister alone. She is married to a godly man who also became a Christian largely because of her influence on his life. He has preached God’s Word in multiple settings and he now ministers to people in times of grief and loss. My sister is a counselor who ministers to people with disabilities by helping them find employment.

Everything that I’ve just shared with you, you could probably take it all, wad it up, and throw it away if my mom wasn’t a chain breaker. If she didn’t break the chain of her family, it’s a really good bet that none of this other stuff would have happened. I thank God that I have a mother who was a chain breaker.

Let’s go back to our text in Psalm 78. Pick it up in verse 7. “Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands. They would not be like their forefathers—a stubborn and rebellious generation, whose hearts were not loyal to God, whose spirits were not faithful to him.” (Psalm 78:7-8, NIV)

Somewhere along the line, somebody had to say, “Enough is enough. This line of rebellion and sin in my family stops with me.” Somewhere, somebody had to step up and be a chain breaker.

Some of you are blessed to come from a long, godly heritage. Others of you have the challenge of starting that chain with your family. My challenge to you is to start a chain that your children won’t need to break later on.

Start this kind of chain in your family. Psalm 78 says, “We will not hide them from their children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power, and the wonders he has done…so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children.” (Psalm 78:4, 6, NIV)

Parents, we are writing our legacy in the lives of our kids. What kind of chain are you continuing, or what kind of chain are you starting, for you children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and on down the line? We can’t afford to live such myopic lives that we don’t believe that our actions have any significant impact on future generations. They absolutely do.

Steve DeVore built a multi-million dollar company on the principle of role modeling. DeVore is president of SyberVision, a company that markets instructional CDs and DVDs on everything from golf to skiing to weight control.

When Steve DeVore was in college, he watched a bowling tournament on TV. As he intently watched the movements of the professional bowlers, the thought struck him that if he could emulate their movements, he could probably achieve the same results.

After watching the bowlers closely for thirty minutes, he got in his car and drove to the local bowling alley.

Steve got an alley, picked out a ball, and for the next thirty minutes he did just as the professional bowlers had done on TV. He threw nine straight strikes and recorded a score of 278. His highest score up to that point was 163. By emulating the right role model, he improved his performance by 115 pins. But the key was doing it just like the pros.

If your children were to emulate your life as closely as Steve DeVore did professional bowlers, what kind of life performance would your child turn in? Would your children improve their lives by 115 pins or would they be throwing gutter balls?

Listen to these words of Paul one more time. “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 11:1, NIV)

Here’s the key question, parents. If your kids grow up imitating you, will they also be imitating Jesus?

Mike Edmisten

Tags: Letters to Brock, family, hypocrisy, parenting