Healing Families [Give the words of knowledge gained from prayer] Let me read another scripture. [Col. 3:20-21] Rarely did Paul write the same thing in 2 letters. This must have been important enough to repeat. Paul never set foot in the church in Colosse, but it had some of the same problems as the church in Ephesus. Let us look at the first part of our scripture. [Ephesians 6:1-3] To start this discussion, I want to look at Proverbs. [Proverbs 1:7] Fear can sometimes be the beginning of knowledge. We have all been told “The stove is hot, do not touch it!” It is good advice, but alas, we fools must do it before we find out the truth of it. So the point is to be disciplined enough to follow the wise advice so we don’t burn our fingers. Notice that verse 2 is one of the commandments. In verse 3, Paul makes a nice observation in that it is the first commandment that has a promise, not a consequence. Some people think the Ten Commandments are just a set of rules to restrict our lives. But here is one with a promise of long life. If you are honoring you Mother and Father by living as Christians, it makes sense that God would want to keep you around those who do not even longer. Well, I have something for us to look at. [iSafe Statistics] It seems we have a gap in our communications between some of the teens and their parents. As a technology person, I know that internet filters are not perfect. The best thing to do to ensure internet safety is communication between parents and teens. So let’s look at this clip of healthy communications between parents and kids. [burping video] OK, well maybe not so “healthy”, but the point is that the kid started the conversation. For some reason, when a parent tries to have a talk with a teen, this how the teen perceives the conversation. [parenting 101 video] I am sure there are some teens who are going to give me grief about giving their parents some ideas. My point is that when children are smaller, they want to talk to their parents a lot and will initiate a conversation. Why does that change? Time to look at the rest of our scripture. [Ephesians 6:4] Maybe part of the problem is the exasperating / aggravating of our children. I have a clip from “Bringing down the House” which I do NOT recommend as a movie to see, but does show this point. [Bringing House video clip] We need to be able to communicate with each other to heal the brokenness in our families. Yelling at our children is not communicating. Nor is ignoring them. We need to have both sides talking. It is preferable if the children start the conversation, but sometimes, in extreme cases, the parents have to take a stand without getting angry. They need to teach and instruct their children that what they are doing does not please the Lord. As humans, we need to know our boundaries. We learn a lot of those from our parents. Parents exasperate children when they ignore them and do not give them boundaries, or aggravate them by giving them boundaries and not explaining why. Communication is the key to a healthy family. Who knows what a baby Christian is? I think we have some teenage Christians here who are not talking with their Father in Heaven. Oh, they pray. Some of the prayers might be “Give me money”, “Give me the car” or “If you loved me you would give me…”. Not that these prayers are bad, but they are one-way. We do not want to take the time to listen to what the Lord has to say on the matter. We do not listen for his advice. I think we all need to spend some time talking with Jesus. As I have been telling you, the child needs to start the conversation. Jesus is knocking on your heart door, but there is no handle on the door on his end. He needs you to open the door and he will come in and eat with you. [Revelation 3:20] God will not aggravate you, but he will train and instruct you. But you must be willing to listen to him. Prayer should be two-way. Come now and pray to your Father. Tell him your problems and ask what you should do. Then wait and listen for the Lord. If you have never invited Jesus into your heart and want to have someone to train and instruct you while they eat with you, please come forward |