Sermon Parenting God's Way

So this past weekend, as I mentioned in a previous post, the sermon was about parenting. The syndicated columnist John Rosemond, author of Parenting by The Book, spoke during the service and then in a special longer session later in the afternoon. Here's the main message of the morning study, and then I will do a second post for the afternoon session.

The message started out with just a background about himself, sort of an introduction. If you want to read it, go here.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 says that "there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the sun. How does that apply to child rearing? Simply that everything, applies just to that, everything. Just as there is a time for the farmer to plant, and a time for the farmer to sow, so too is there a time to teach a child certain lessons in life.

Colossians 2:8 states, "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ." The issue is though, that all theories of thought, become in and of themselves a religion. In the case of Psychology, the study of the human and animal behavior, and the attempt to understand it, becomes the main focus, rather than Christ himself.

In the 1960's Psychology came to the forefront of the parenting field, and it in essence replaced the style of parenting that had been passed down from generation to generation up till this point, the traditional Biblical Parenting model. This was the first time in history in which the children did not grow up to raise their children as they had been raised, but instead replaced it with the current parenting trend.

Since then (the last 40 years or so), the job of parenting has become the most stressful job, which due to the nature of parenting, affects mostly the young mothers of the country. Unfortunately it then affects the marriages, and further down the line has affected the culture, mostly in negative ways.

In attempts to help the moms of today , the number of parenting books available have skyrocketed. If you were to stack all the books on parenting up, assuming they are all about one inch think, the tower would be three times the height of the Freedom Towers, the country's soon-to-be tallest building. In Genesis 11, The people build the tower of babel.... today's tower of babel consists of thousands of books on parenting. Just as with the tower of Babel, the parenting advice in the books do little but cause conflict and confusion amongst those who bother to read them.

So where should a parent go to find help? Well, what does the Bible say about parenting? Ephesians 6:4 says, "Fathers do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." Or in other words, if you do not bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord, you will exasperate your children.

How does one bring up the children in the training and instruction of the Lord? Well, let's revisit the parenting styles and ways that the pre1960's generations did it, and take some lessons from them.

(Stay tuned for the afternoon session as we continue in the train of thought. )