As the ministry of The Trinity Church increases and moves temporarily online, Pastor Mark, Grace, and family will be releasing a special series of “Ask Pastor Mark” videos each week to help answer pertinent questions during this time! This question is about the importance of family dinners and how to make them great.
Philippians 3:20-4:1 – But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved.
In writing to the church family in his letter to the Philippians, Paul is functioning as the spiritual father who started the church. His hope is to have the culture of the Kingdom of God live in the church family and extend into all the families in the church. Jesus tells us that the Kingdom is the “Father’s House”, imagery that is all about family.
There are 10 things that can help fathers on earth invite the joy of the Father into their family:
1. Most people wrongly view God. God relates completely differently to unbelievers versus believers. God is not angry at His kids.
2. God the Father’s default mood is happiness. There is a little word in the Greek New Testament that appears frequently and is translated as “happy” in reference to people. But, when referencing God, that same word is oddly translated “blessed” (e.g. 1 Timothy 1:11, 6:15). Sadly, this causes many to not see God as a happy God.
3. God’s happiness is constant, God’s anger/sorrow is not. God had only joy before creation, will have only joy after the new creation, and has constant joy in the meantime. Yes, our sin does grieve God, but we are not the center of His emotional life and His joy is bigger than our sin.
4. God the Father’s home culture is honor and happiness. No one in the Kingdom will be talking trash, gossiping, or shaming others. No one in the Kingdom will be sad to be there and wishing they could leave.
5. We don’t have to choose between God and happiness. If we are with God forever, then we are happy. If we are not with God forever, then we are not happy. God and happiness go together forever.
6. We don’t have to make ourselves happy, we can share in God’s happiness. This is why Paul told us to “rejoice in the Lord”.
7. God wants the culture of His Kingdom Family in our church family and families. Christian families and church families should seek to welcome the fun culture of the Father’s house.
8. Church family is supposed to be a culture of honor and joy lead by the father. This is exactly what Paul says in writing about joy some 19 times in 104 verses. This is exactly what Paul models, honoring people like Timothy and Epaphroditus.
9. Families in the church should follow this culture of honor and joy led by a father. A Christian father should seek to welcome the culture of the Kingdom by honoring each family member and planning and having family fun. The opposite of this is teasing, mocking, name-calling, shaming, and yelling which creates a cheerless environment.
10. God the Father wants to help fathers set a culture of honor and fun. Families flourish and friends come together to enjoy one another when the culture of the Father’s Kingdom is present. Practically, your family will spend more time together, build more memories together, and share more laughs together, which is all practicing for eternity.
Is the culture of your family and church family honoring and joyful? If not, how can you help change that?
Jesus lived from His Father’s identity, reflected His Father’s heart, and did His Father’s work and, as His people, He wants to empower us to do the same after healing wounds our earthly fathers might’ve caused us.
1 Timothy 5:1-2 – Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.
Galatians 4:19 – …my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!
James 5:14 – Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
1 Corinthians 8:1 – Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up.
In addition to physical parents the Bible teaches that we also have spiritual parents. This explains why we ought “not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father” and to treat “older women as mothers.”
Paul was a spiritual father himself. He refers to Timothy, Titus, and Onesimus as “sons” and calls the Christians in Galatia “my little children.”
When the Bible talks about older leaders laying on hands to anoint and appoint younger leaders, that means ministry transfers relationally. You cannot lay hands on anyone through the internet—you have to do life with them. Laying your hands on yet another book is not the same as someone laying their hands on you. One godly and wise real-life mentor is worth more than a thousand books and downloaded sermons because he or she knows you personally.
We can receive wounds from our spiritual fathers. Sometimes this pain cuts doubly deep. If someone has a failed father and then comes into the church family only to have a failed spiritual father, they have the painful double portion of a father wound.
But if you don’t let godly leaders into the down and dirty of your day to day, that’s a problem. The result is knowledge, which puffs up, and not love, which builds up. You can become an emotionally unhealthy person who thinks God provided Bible verses to beat people up rather than build people up.
To order the new book from Pastor Mark & Grace Driscoll “Win Your War”, visit: https://amzn.to/2YuhoDn.
For the entire eight-week “Win Your War” sermon series from Pastor Mark, visit www.markdriscoll.org or the Mark Driscoll Ministries app.
Mark 11:25 – And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
Deuteronomy 6:6-9 – And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Everyone is marked, positively or negatively, by their earthly father. Although everyone’s family experience is unique, we have identified five general categories of fathers.
Tragic dad—this father isn’t in the picture for some tragic reason (i.e., death, permanent debilitating medical problem).
Terrible dad—this father is absent for no good reason (i.e., runs off either before or after kids are born, shows little to no interest in being a parent).
Tough dad—this father is overbearing, dominating, and intimidating (i.e., threatens like a drill sergeant, pushes like a bad boss, or yells like an awful coach). The tough dad abuses his family.
Tender dad—this father is kind, sweet, and nice but fails to protect his family (i.e., gets run over by tough guys, allows his kids to get bullied and pushed around, and watches his daughter end up with an abusive boyfriend because he won’t step in the middle). This family is often financially broke because strong guys beat weak dad in business. The tender dad lets other people abuse his family.
Terrific dad—this dad isn’t perfect, but he is godly, relational, wise, healthy, present, and knows how to be both tough for the family and tender with the family (i.e., their dad provided for all of the family’s needs). Financially, he makes good money. Spiritually, he leads in the worship of God. Relationally, he is encouraging, warm, and connected. Socially, he nurtures healthy relationships with other families to provide community for his family. Humbly he owns his mistakes and apologizes when he is wrong.
How about you? What kind of father do you have? If you are a father, what kind of dad are you?
To order the new book from Pastor Mark & Grace Driscoll “Win Your War”, visit: https://amzn.to/2YuhoDn.
For the entire eight-week “Win Your War” sermon series from Pastor Mark, visit www.markdriscoll.org or the Mark Driscoll Ministries app.
Proverbs 17:6 [NLT] – Grandchildren are the crowning glory of the aged; parents are the pride of their children.
My wife Grace and I recently celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary. We are blessed with five kids all walking with Jesus and serving at the church we planted as a family ministry. Our youngest child is headed toward their 14th birthday and our oldest is 22 and on the brink of finishing her master’s degree and getting married.
Life is full and wonderful.
On walks holding hands, Grace and I have started discussing what life will be like when we are grandparents. We are now closer to holding our kids’ babies than holding our kids as babies. Grandparenting seems amazing. The grandparents we know cannot stop talking about what a fun season it is.
According to Proverbs, it is possible for a child to be as proud of their parents as grandparents are proud of their grandchildren. This does not happen automatically, or quickly. But, if we will pay attention to the seasons of life our children and grandchildren are in, we increase the odds of mutual joy and warmth.
Sadly, every family has seasons of struggle and strife. But sometimes, the struggle and strife is for a simple reason – the parent and child do not both agree on what season they are in and agree to move forward with changes so that their relationship is altered from the previous season. For example, when a kid is six years old, you might need to wake them up for school, but when they are 26 years old, they need to get themselves up for work. How we parent in one season is not bad, but it can be bad if we continue to parent in the new season of life according to the pattern of the previous season. When parents don’t accept this, they frustrate their kids. When kids don’t accept this, they frustrate their parents.
What does this look like ideally?
There is someone we respect highly and see as wise. They have a great relationship with their child and grandchildren. So, I asked their son how it was to work with and live a few doors down from his parents. With a smile, he said that he loved his parents, they were his favorite people, and that they were great at lifting burdens and giving wise counsel. The grandparents decided that their home was always open to the kids and grandkids, but they would not go to the home of their kids or grandkids unless invited. This allowed healthy boundaries and brought harmony. I then met with the grandfather/father to ask how they got to such a healthy adult parenting relationship. He said that when his son was a teen, he asked if there was anything he needed to apologize for or change as a father. The son told him that his dad was too tough on him. This was a kid who was very responsible and put a lot of pressure on themselves, and when dad added his pressure, it was crushing. In wisdom, the father apologized, asked forgiveness, and began a new season by parenting in a new way of grace. Had this not occurred, it is doubtful that this would be a holy, happy, and healthy family of multiple generations. As parents, we never get it right but, by God’s grace, we can make it right.
How’s your heart toward your parents?
If you have a teenager who tells you they’re dating someone, as a Christian parent, how do you handle that and parent them through a new life stage?
In this week’s video, Pastor Mark talks about the ideal stages of dating for a teenage couple and gives parental wisdom on how to parent and encourage your teenage kids as they start dating.
Have a question you’d like answered in a potential future Ask Pastor Mark video? Send an email to [email protected].
Proverbs 31:28 [ESV] – Her children rise up and call her blessed.
No one plants a seed in the morning and eats the fruit in the evening. Parenting is a lot like gardening, and what we sow today will be reached in a future season. For example, most moms of a two-year-old throwing a fit do not get to see that same child rise up and call her blessed for a few decades.
Like gardening, parenting is seasonal. The key is to know what we are sowing in each season. Here are the eight seasons of life for parents, grandparents, teachers, and other caregivers to consider:
1. Conception to birth is about preparing your inner and outer environment. You are a parent before your baby is born and you are eating healthy, getting the house ready, and gathering the small mountain of new accessories (changing table, crib, car seat, clothes, diapers, bottles etc.)
2. Baby (from birth to 18 months) is about feeding and nurturing so that the child develops. Emotional bonds are built with the child through comforting touch. Physical health and growth are made possible through feeding. Spiritual life is sown as you pray over the baby and invite God’s presence into their life. In this season, they also become more mobile and tactile, which is why parenting can feel like you are on suicide watch as the kid keeps trying to put everything in their mouth.
3. Toddler (from 18 months to 3 years) is about informal training and starting to engage the reasoning of the young child. Around this age kids learn their new favorite word, which is usually “no”. In this season, children need to learn to regulate their emotions, abide by rules, be part of a group, play with others, and take on some responsibility with basic chores. In this season, kids also start to form their own preferences and style in areas like what they want to eat and how they want to dress.
4. Preschooler (from 3-6 years) is about more formal training during very busy years. Boys in this season are particularly active and wear you out. In this season, kids need more formal training, they ask “why” a lot as they seek to figure life out, they are ready for playing and socializing with other kids under less supervised environments, and they tend to like crafts and creativity.
5. School age (from 6-12 years) is about character and identity formation. The child has a growing independence as their parents are not always present. Their interests tend to cement (e.g. music, sports, art, etc.). In this season, the child also forms their style and friend group.
6. Teenagers (from 13-18) is a tough time, especially amidst the cultural gravity pulling teens toward folly and rebellion. Most kids have some sort of identity crisis, trying to figure out who they are, and struggle with the awkwardness of puberty, which can include moodiness.
7. Young adults (from 19 onward) is about cultivating responsible independence. You start earning money, paying bills, and governing your own life so that your parents are not as needed as they once were in the daily stuff of life.
8. Parenting adults is about lifting burdens and being wise counsel so that they can start their own family and repeat the seasonal cycle of parenting themselves.
Which season has been the best in your life thus far? Which season has been worst in your life thus far?
Proverbs 3:11-12 [NIV] – My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.
Proverbs 29:17 [ESV] – Discipline your son, and he will give you rest; he will give delight to your heart.
Over the years, I have taken literally a hundred thousand photos and videos of life with our five kids. Once in a while, I pull them so that we can all remember the fun we’ve had and memories we’ve made.
One goal for every parent should be to enjoy life with their child, make memories, and have fun. This is how God parents us. Did you know that God delights in you? He does not just love you; He also likes you, likes being your Father, and likes doing life with you. This is because God is a grace-based parent who puts love and relationship at the starting line instead of the finish line for us.
Because God loves us and seeks our best, he continually delights in us to encourage us and grow our trust in His care for us. And, our Father occasionally corrects us. Importantly, God does not continually discipline you and occasionally delight in you. The opposite is fact – God continually delights in you and occasionally disciplines you.
We are to parent our kids the way that our Father parents us. Discipline is course correction to get back to having fun and making memories as sin and folly push us off course. The purpose of discipline is not to punish since Jesus already paid that price, but rather to associate sin and folly with grief and pain so that we learn to avoid it going forward. The ultimate goal of corrective discipline is not for us to control our child, but instead help them grow in practicing self-control. At some point, our kids grow up and get to decide if they want a relationship with God or us and start making their own life decisions. If we delight in them as God delights in us, the odds increase that they will invite us into their life seasons and decisions because we know we care and have their best interest at heart.
Growing up as a child, was your home mainly one of delight or discipline?
Proverbs 22:6 [ESV] – Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.
Here are nine tips for training kids:
1. Parents are primary. Coaches, youth pastors, teachers, and other people are secondary in God’s line of priority for the raising of a child.
2. Every parent homeschools. Even if your child goes to a school, they learn more in your home than they do anywhere else.
3. The question is not if a child will be trained, but how a child will be trained. For example, ignoring a child trains them that they do not have value but is still a form of training.
4. Parenting is about sowing and reaping. Like gardening, in one season of the child’s development, you are constantly sowing lessons that will not blossom until a future day. Faith keeps sowing even if the reaping is not yet happening.
5. Repetition is required. As you read Proverbs, you will find some things repeated multiple times, and the same things stated in multiple ways. Why? Training includes repeating because we are often forgetting what we are learning.
6. Mom and dad must have a unified vision they present to the child. You cannot train a child to obey their mother and father unless the parents agree on what they are asking of the child. As Jesus said, a house that is divided will fall down, which is why unity is primary.
7. Training can be exhausting because class is always in session. Your kids will need to learn the most important lessons at the least convenient and most exhausting times because God is using them to also teach you.
8. We taught our kids the difference between 1) View 2) Voice 3) Vote. As much as was reasonable for their age and maturity level, we let our kids have a view into what we were doing as a family. Often, we welcomed our kids’ voice into the conversation so that as we made decisions they were heard and considered. Sometimes, we let the kids vote and decide what we would do as a family. This was our way of training our kids to respect authority but also learn to dialogue issues and make decisions.
9. Teach the kids what is happening and why. As parents, we often simply wish that our children would obey what we tell them to do. But they also need to learn to make their own decisions and so by telling them not just what to do, but how and why, is part of training. For example, I once boarded a flight with a family and the kids were freaking out because there was a line, they had to sit in a seat, and wear a seatbelt – things they did not know about because their parents had not trained them what it means to fly on a plane.
Which of these things did your parents succeed at? Which of these things did your parents struggle with?
Proverbs 20:5 [NIV] – The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out.
Parents, along with other caregivers, commonly focus on behavior for the simple reason that it is visible. Under the behavior is the heart we cannot see guiding the decision-making process. When a parent focuses only on behavior, they miss the problem and misdiagnose the solution. There are, in fact, four kinds of kids:
1. Bad heart bad behavior. This is the kid who walks up to another kid, assaults them, and steals their toy for the simple reason that they are a tiny terrorist.
2. Bad heart good behavior. This is the kid who pretends to be obedient and compliant not because they love God, but because it benefits them and is therefore a form of manipulation to get what they want.
3. Good heart bad behavior. This is the kid who meant well but messed up. These kids get really discouraged when they are disciplined for something that was a mistake without malice, like spilling a drink they were trying to retain hold of.
4. Good heart good behavior. Only Mary and Joseph had this kind of kid continually, but it is possible for little people to be godly people some of the time. This includes the kid who, when they do wrong, is sensitive to the Holy Spirit and confesses their bad behavior, which reveals their good heart.
Which of these four best explains you as a kid?
Proverbs 4:23 [NIV] – Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
Many years ago, I took a missions trip to India. Upon landing in the city, we began the long drive out to a more remote village for a pastors’ conference. The road we traveled upon for part of the journey winded along the dirtiest, foulest, and nastiest river I had ever seen. The river was polluted upstream, and human excrement, animal feces, and industrial chemicals flowed downstream causing sickness and stench for everyone and everything downstream.
According to the Bible, your heart is upstream and your life is downstream.
How’s your heart today?
Often, we are more aware of our outer life (weight, appearance, clothing) than we are our inner life. Some roughly nine-hundred times the Bible refers to the heart. The heart includes the emotions we feel, desires we have, and decisions we make.
Perhaps nothing more forcefully reveals our hearts more than parenting. As a parent, one of the great diagnostic tools of the heart according to the Lord Jesus is our communication (Matthew 12:34, 15:18). If a parent or other caregiver is cursing, yelling, name calling, or bending ongoing conflicts into an argument of how the child is making them look bad to other adults, then you know that the heart needs some Holy Spirit heart surgery. Our kids expose and even enrage our hearts, and when they do, we need to bring our heart to our Father so that He can parent us before we parent our child. Parenting is sanctifying if you surrender to this fact. We are God’s child before we are the parent to our child.
Once our heart is right, we can then engage the heart of our child. And, for starters every child needs a new heart. As a Christian with a new nature we can forget that our kids need Jesus too, and that apart from being born again of the Spirit, all they have is a fallen heart. Therefore, the first priority is for the parent to bring their heart to God. And, the second priority is for the parent to teach their child to also bring their heart to God.
If you had to pick one word to describe your heart today, what would that be?