In this message to women, Deborah Brown speaks about how to keep your children with you in church. But, her ultimate objective is to consider how to help children love the gatherings of the church and to delight in them. She explains her perspectives on how to train children's affections to love participating in the worship of God and to encounter times where the church gathers.

I know that the guys just prayed but let's just ask the Lord one more time for his help. Lord I do come before you and ask for your words and for your wisdom And we're thankful that you've said that you are close to the ignorant and you pour out your wisdom there. And we desire to be women that are filled with your spirit. We desire to raise children who long after you. And we need your help.

And I need your help. And so we pray for it this morning. Thank you though for this time. We are very thankful for the gathering of the brethren. And so, Father, we ask for your Holy Spirit to superintend this time.

Amen. All right. I think this time is entitled, How to Keep Your Children in Church with You, or Training Your Young Children to Stay with You in Church. But I think if I were to name this talk, I think I would call it training your children's affections. Because at the end of the day that's really what you're doing.

You know, you can train a dog to do pretty much anything you want. We could train a dog to sit through that service for two hours, you know? But that's not what we want to do. We don't want to just train our children to be robots that we can give commands to. On command.

We want to train our children to be affectionate for the things of the Lord. And so with that in mind, I want to talk about how to keep your children in church with you. We don't want to just, you know, bully our children or cajole our children or shame our children, you know, to sit still in church. What we really want to do is to help them love to be in church with us, right? So the question really is How can I help my children delight?

It's not mine, is it? Thank you. How can I help my children delight in the Sabbath? In the day of delight, right? Psalm 122.1 is David's words when he says, oh how I love thy law.

He says, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord. That's Psalm 122 verse 1. For the most part your children will love what you love. If you love baseball, they will love baseball. If you love shopping, they will love shopping.

If you eat only sweet things, they will probably not like grits. Unfortunately, that was a mistake I made with my children. If you love the Word of God, they, if you love to study it, if you love to read it, if it's a priority for you, then they will begin to value it and they will begin to have affection for it also. Instead of trying to train our children to sit still, rather we want to help them see the beauty of the things of the Lord. And so every day we are training our children's affections.

We train our children's affections by the things that we give them to read. I'm assuming that probably most of you are homeschooling your children. If you're not homeschooling them then maybe you're sending them to a religious school or a church school. You are training your children's affections by the things that you give them to read, by the things that you give them to watch, by the computer programs that you give them for their schooling, by the things that you give them to listen to. All these things train your children's affections.

The things that you give them to wear train your children's affections. If you don't want your 13 year old to wear a bikini, don't give your 3 year old a bikini to wear because you'll give her an affection for it. If you want your children to love good literature, then don't give them silly books to read. Kind of a scary thing to walk in on a group full of women, isn't it? Poor guy.

But be very careful with your children's affections because they can very quickly become idols. And once your children make idols of their affections, they are very hard to dislodge Just try it Once your children have affections for things that you think maybe might possibly be an idol the way you find out is by removing it. And then you will find out whether or not it's just a quasi-unhealthy affection, or if it's an actual idol. What you want to do is you want to give your children affections for holy things. For the church, for the word of God, for the songs of the faith.

And so my question is, do you have these affections? Right? You know that was coming up. I mean this is crucial. Do you love the Lord?

Do you love His word? Do you love the songs of the faith do you love do you love the books of the faith the doctrines Do you love the gathering of the people on Sunday? Because if you treat these things lightly, your children will treat them lightly. Let your home be a place where the church is highly esteemed and where Sunday is a day that is looked forward to and a day where all the rest of the days are used to look forward to that day. God doesn't want just Sunday.

He wants Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. He wants every day. He just doesn't want Sunday. This training ground for your children to love the meetings of the church in your home is family worship. Family worship is the training ground for your children to learn to sit still in the meetings of the church.

It's one of those unintended consequences of family worship. That's how your children learn to sit still. That's how my children learn to read and to listen. It was six days a week, practice before Sunday. Our children grew up reading through the Bible in a year.

That's just what we did. We did it every year. By the time our children were married and gone, at whatever age they got married, they read through the Bible that many times every year. I mean we didn't have a real fancy program in our house for family worship. We just read the Bible.

Usually every Bible has in the back a read through the Bible in a year program. And there are different programs. We just had the one in our Bible. And every morning, you know, it had Old Testament in the New Testament. And every day.

That's what we did. We read through the Bible every year. And our children loved it. It was a known entity. It was something they could put their feet down on, firm.

That's how they became familiar with the words of the church, the words of the doctrines. It also, you know you can give your children certain things to read, right? But when you give them the Bible to read, I can't remember, somebody rated a lot of books and I can't remember now the term that they use when they're reading books but the bible is really high as far as literature goes. You have your run spot run and see Jane chase you know spot and then you have the bible and it has good words that raise your children's IQ level. The Bible is a great thing to use in your family worship, and it helps on Sunday morning when you have the pastor using words that they are already familiar with.

They begin to love it. If you don't love, if mom and dad, if you don't love family worship then and If you don't make that a daily part of Monday, Tuesday, all the way through Saturday, then you are sunk when it comes to Sunday. Bummer, huh? It is also our job as parents to secure the honor and the obedience of your children. Ephesians 6, 1-3, you guys know it by heart, I'm sure your children do too.

Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and your mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, that it will be well with you and that you may live long on the earth. If your children are not in control at home then you will find church a miserable and frustrating experience. And this is the job of both parents. And your home is the place where all of it begins.

It's a place where discipline begins and it's the place where discipleship begins. You've got to understand the biblical call to train your children to turn the admonition of the Lord. Your children must, you must secure obedience. They must be obedient to you. If they can't obey you, then How will they learn to obey the Lord?

You are sinning against your children if you are not requiring your children to obey you at home. Your child training issues always show up at church. I don't know about you, but that was true for us. And parents tend to be harder on their children at church because everybody's watching. So if you're not consistent at home and then all of a sudden everybody's at church watching you then What you're telling your children is Will be obeyed will be obedient Church because everybody's watching and I will be embarrassed.

Therefore you're raising hypocrites don't raise this but don't raise hypocrites your your home is the training ground for your children and the church is a proving ground for your children some of for your children. Some of the practical things to do with your children. Teach them how to listen. Something we did with our kids is we just reviewed the content of Sunday's text. I think that Jeff does the same thing we do.

You know where he's going every week. You guys are in Proverbs. You know where he's going the next week. Go for that with your children so that they're familiar with the words. That's what we would do so that our kids knew what they were going to hear.

When your kids watch a movie, the best movies they ever watched are the ones they've seen a thousand times right because they can they can tell that they know what's coming next and they love to they love to they love to say it with them you know the television review those words with the kids that they love them so they know it when they hear when they hear Jeff say these words, they'll look at you. I heard him say triumph. I heard him say victory. Go over those words so that they love them. They love the concepts.

Teach those concepts to your children. We also would write them. I mean, we used all these things in our schooling. We use these, you know, when you wanna do dictation for your kids. Write these things out so that your kids can copy them.

We are learning to write. We did that for our kids so that they were learning the text. So we memorize these. We memorize the verses. Proverbs is perfect and we did it with everything but Proverbs is particularly helpful right now, so I'm going to use Proverbs.

But have them memorize these words so that when they hear them from the pulpit, it connects. Something we also did when the kids were really little, is we would take an eight and a half by 11 paper, we'd separate it into either four sections or either four or eight sections in those little boxes like this. And we would, I would look, we would look ahead and we would say okay what are the ideas here? And we would put little captions in the boxes. When these were little like they couldn't write yet.

They could only draw. And then we would go we would hand it would be given to Matt and went after all the singing is done, pastor gets up there, give him this piece of paper and you know a pencil and say you know you can you can draw pictures of concepts. And so I came over to Claudia and we were talking about this the other day. She said she remembers doing um it was about the disciples listening and she drew she drew these old disciples all in a row with big ears that's all she could think of was how to make a picture of the disciples listening right and that's what she drew in this one little square and so um What we would do later is we would sit around the table after dinner time usually for us, and you go over those papers. We went over the notes with the bigger kids, and you go over their notes too.

What did, You have to ask the kids what these pictures mean because we had no idea. It's like, what's with the ears? Okay. What do these pictures mean? Because you know that when all the senses, all you guys have said at homeschool conferences, you know, you know you sat there, all the senses are involved.

They get so much more out of it. So when they can hear, when they can see, when they can write, and then when they can explain it to you, it means so much more. They retain so much more, and they begin to love it, and they begin to live it out. So don't forget to go over those notes don't just go in that you know circular file and Then look for words. I would look for words They didn't know and that would be part of our I would be I thought I built our vocabulary list Every week is by looking for words.

They didn't know Learn for the salt learn the songs of the week we That's something that we always did is Scott sends out the songs that we're going to be singing. And so we sing the songs in our family worship time so that our kids are familiar with it. They're not tuning out during the worship time at church because they just don't know these songs. It's familiar and they can sing it. You know they can sing the jingles they hear on the radio.

Why? Because they've heard them. Teach them, teach them the songs. I'm sure that your elders are choosing songs that are theologically sound. There's so much you can teach them in these, just in the songs alone teach them to send the theology missiles and teach them that's just decent the song singing in your car singing at breakfast all these things will help your children become engaged in the actual service of the church.

If you think that you can just come to this service without any preparation or you think that, well, you know, when you get in the car on the way to church on Sunday and talk about it, Or if you want to sit, if you think, well, when I get into church, I'll, you know, I'll do it on the fly while we're in the pew. You are sadly, you just set yourself up for failure. You're sadly mistaken because you will fail. I mean Scott said last night about how much work it was. It's a lot of work.

It's a lot of work to disciple your children. You know I'm sure that's how Sunday school got started. Well I know how Sunday school got started. I don't know. You guys know Sunday school got started because there were a lot of kids roaming the streets on Sunday, right?

And so, great! Grab those kids, they've no parents, to teach them, teach them. But no self-respecting Christian father would ever put his children in Sunday school. They have fathers to teach them, mothers to teach them. Wow, that would be awfully convenient.

Have them teach my children. And pretty soon we start sending our kids off. And you know, you can understand. Man, wouldn't that be easy to do? Yeah, well, it didn't work.

The unintended consequences of giving somebody else our responsibility has given us an illiterate generation. And that's not even the reason why. God said in Deuteronomy to teach your children. So I know it's a lot of work, but it's worthy work. It's worthy work more than sewing your own clothes or baking your own bread or any other things that might, I'm thinking all things that used to keep me busy, right?

Making sure that, you know, all the dust in my house was dusted, you know, or anything else, you know, making sure that, you know, the sheets were washed once a week. You're learning all my secrets now. So another thing, discipline in your home is key to winning on Sunday mornings. Let your children know what your standard is for your Sunday for Sunday mornings. For instance, sitting still.

No slouching. These are things you have to talk to your children about. Don't just expect your children are going to know these things. Um, look at the speaker. Sing with all your heart And practice these things.

No looking at your watch or the clock or your cell phone. I know eight year olds with cell phones. No talking or texting. Can you believe I have to say that? Insist on first time obedience with your children.

Now this, all these need to be done at home, but at church also. And when your child is disobedient, you remove the child and you administer discipline. Even at church. Identify rebellion in your children. Things like, sometimes We don't want to call rebellion rebellion.

We want to call it childishness. When actually it is rebellion. Rolling the eyes. Refusing to be quiet. Squirming out of a lap.

Arch backing. Just refusing to be still. All these things are rebellion, a bad attitude. The question in most people's minds is this, is it fair to ask a one to five year old to sit through a service or to be obedient in these areas? Well, my answer is yes.

And my experience bears that out. Not that experience is everything. The Bible says to raise your children in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. But yes, it's hard work, but the answer is yes. If you're having a problem with your children, may I suggest that possibly you are using a form of discipline that's not working.

Commonly I will find that parents need to increase the severity of the discipline for effectiveness. Is that vague enough? In other words, spank harder. There you go. That's on tape.

I'm safe, right? And that's at home. At church though the issues are the same. If your child is not obeying usually one of two things is happening. Possibly you're not communicating well enough with your child about the appropriate behavior you're expecting.

When our kids were little, we often did a lot of role-playing with our children so they could practice what we wanted them to do. And we did that before a variety of behaviors. From speaking kindly to your sister, to looking someone in the eye when you were speaking to them. I mean, you know how it is. Your child snatches a toy from your sister and runs away and then sister puts up a howl and chases its brother down and then you intervene.

At this point, I don't just want to say, alright who had it first? Give it back. I want them to practice the right way to deal with my toys. My toys. Not their toys, they're my toys.

And so I give the toy back to the sister and I'll tell the brother, okay, here's how we're dealing with it. Okay, sister, your brother's going to come and he's going to ask you for this toy. And you have two choices. You can either say, you can either give up your rights for this toy or you can say, how about if I help you find another toy? And brother, you're going to come and you're going to say, you're not going to snatch this toy.

You're going to say, may I please have that toy? Two choices you have. You can ask nicely for that toy or you can go choose another toy. You can let her help you choose no choice carefully on both your parts two choices you only have either one of you has two choices. And we're going to have to role play this.

I mean sometimes we've had to do it because they're both grumpy at this point because they're both mad. We're going to have to role play it several times. How we're going to do this. So they can practice how they can be kind to one another. Well, this kind of training, it takes so much time.

You know, and I'm a very busy mom. I have lots to do. I just want to say, go ahead at first And I'm going to keep on moving, right? But role playing is like teaching your children to fish instead of just giving them a fish and telling them what to do. Role play how you want them to behave in church.

Help them walk it through. And you know, help them to know how you want them to talk to people. We would do that. We would find somebody, my neighbor, we would find anybody, you know, a friend, and we would say, okay, here's what we want to do. Would you please ask them, Claudia, how are you doing today?

How was your week? And Claudia, who has a tendency to clam up and hide behind skirts, would have to say, well Mrs. Nelson, my week was fine and I'm looking forward to the day on Sunday. And we'd go over exactly what she was gonna say and how she's gonna look her in the eye. And it took a lot of time for this kind of training for her to be able to actually look someone in the eye and be engaged on Sunday.

It'd be so much easier just to say, you know what, she is not a type A personality, right? She is an introvert. She is not an extrovert like me. She will get over it. But that is not true.

They don't get over it. I used to be an introvert, hard to believe, but I was. And I would never have stood up here in a million years if someone hadn't helped me get out of it. But these things, they take practice in role playing how your children are going to sit, how they're going to walk, how they're going to talk, how they're going to eat. All these things, how they're going to speak in church.

I mean they're like, okay, you guys homeschool mostly I'm assuming. So you teach your kids, you practice things like math facts and history dates. You don't get them just once. You practice, you practice, and you practice again. It's just like that.

You need to practice these things at home. Another reason your children don't obey is that you are simply just not consistent enough at home. And like I said, you're not spanking hard enough. Usually if you find a child continuing in naughty behavior, then consider this. And don't be afraid of long and drawn out battles.

And you as a mom, you've got to win these battles. And you've got to win these battles no matter how old your child is. Whether they're six months or whether they're 16. And I fought battles in that whole range they're different some of the battles are different I remember when I had a 16 year old daughter who her tendency was when she was upset to clam up. I remember saying to her, your husband will never take this from you.

This is a bad pattern. So she was sitting in the kitchen of that day and she was just, I don't remember what it was, somebody upset her. So I planted myself, we have a, the way to get out of the kitchens about this wide so I planted myself right there, and I said I Got all day. I got all night. I got all week But we'll have it out Because you're not clear.

We're not gonna go in there. I'm done Come on start talking. Because this is not going to work in a marriage. This will not work. Starts to practice talking.

And so it was a battle. And today she thanks me for that, her husband thanks me for that too. But it wasn't, she just needed to practice and it was uncomfortable for her. It was much easier for her Just to put it down in and then not it would have come out and it came out in other ways But it needed to come out in a healthy way that we could be that she could then deal with it before the Lord And me as her mom Who had been down the road who was a wiser. This is why God gives moms and Titus to women to help her deal with it and so I was gonna stay there a week if it took another one of us was gonna starve we could go a week without food I have you know there's 40 days and 40 nights and Bobby Sams didn't die okay he just you know lost his eyesight you know but he didn't die.

So we were going to, I was there for the long haul. And same thing with your six month old. Don't be afraid of long battles. When my son-in-law Peter is teaching his sons to obey, inevitably they will come to the realization that they can say no to their daddy. And then a battle ensues.

But Peter's going to win that battle. And he knows that his sons are going to be happier if he wins. And he knows that they'll be miserable if he doesn't. And so with each one, he has three boys. The oldest is four and the youngest is almost two.

And with each one of his sons they've been different lengths. With one, with his oldest, it was fairly short. With the youngest, I was there that day. It took almost two hours. I think it was almost two hours before that one finally decided to come when he was told to come.

Both of them weren't here. But rebellion is not to be tolerated. God doesn't tolerate it, and neither should we. You cannot secure the honor of your child if there is rebellion in their hearts. And these are things that God is going to require from your hand.

So have we required the biblical standards in our homes? So one of the questions I think is what are we trying to accomplish when we bring our children to church with us? I mean are we just trying to get out of nursery duty? You know are we trying not to have a Sunday school? Are we just, is our fellowship so small we, you know, are going to be spread too thin?

I mean what, what is the goal? What are our goals for keeping our children in church with us? Well, I'll tell you what my goals were My goals were that Our children would learn sound doctrines the sound doctrine from from from of the faith from men who are qualified to teach. And from the two others that God had given. God had given my children two parents to teach them also.

And these are the primary teachers that God has given children. He's also given them other adults in the assembly, which I have been so thankful for the other adults that God has given. Wise counsel for my children in the assembly. So with that goal in mind, the goal that your children would learn the sound doctrines of the faith from men qualified to teach. Those are the goals in mind.

Let's talk about what to do with your children in church. When your children are in church, they need to understand that the worship time is not a playtime. So don't bring any toys. I mean I'm not talking about a teething ring, you know, but I am talking about toys that would distract your child from the reason he's there. Instead, I talked about all these ways to help your child to be engaged in the service.

Learning the songs for the week, learning the verses, learning the words. Don't bribe your child with anything. Teach what the Bible expects and then expect it. Don't bring any food. None of our children are going to starve between breakfast and lunch.

No walking around during the service. For us, We took our children to the bathroom before the service and then we expected them to hold it. Now, I know that sounds pretty dangerous, huh? But trust me, they'll only potty in their britches one time. And then they won't potty again.

For the most part, I know that's probably stretching it for most of you. I'm going on my experience, I'm going on my son-in-law's experience. We tell our kids, go to the bathroom and then hold it until we're done. And we start at 10, we end at 12, 30, 1 o'clock sometimes. And I tell them, they leave and they say, I have to go by and I say hold it and so far we've not had any accidents I fear you only have one and then it'll never happen again but they've hold they held it all the time I think sometimes the potty card is used as the Trump card that parents never say no to Say no And then this is really dangerous to say then make them walk around in it for a while and maybe they won't do it again What a mean mom, huh?

Is Jeff going to get me for this one? Oh wow. I don't allow my children to make a lot of noise during church. Normal noises? Yes.

You know, moving around noises? Yes. But I don't allow them to make excess noise. No giggling and squirming and excess noise. Children noises?

Yes. But not excess noise. It's kind of hard to, no squiggling and squirming. But I'm, often I'll have a, because I don't have any small children anymore, often I will have a child that I'm, you know, we've got families that have, you know, eight, seven, six, five, four, and I take the bait. I'll take the, like the, not the nursing baby, but I'll take the, you know, 13 month old, you know, the nine, the 10 month old or something, the nine, the 13 month old.

And I'll train that one to sit through the service. And so I mean what I do and you know they're learning at that point they're learning and they're not the cognitive level is pretty low right? I'm not explaining, they just don't explain to them, you know, the rules. They just have to experience the rules pretty much. And so they sit on my lap and when they start getting too loud, I take them out of the service and I go to a quiet room, a very quiet and boring room where nothing's happening, and I sit in a chair just like I sat in a chair in the service and I hold them just like I held them in the service.

I tell them, I use words, I say, when you can be quiet, I will take you back. And I wait it out with them. And the minute they're quiet, I'm up. And I'm back in the service, you know, positive reinforcement. I'm back in the service.

But the minute they start squirming, back out I go, back to that really boring room with no pictures on the walls, and then we're missing our playtime. We're not leaving the service for playtime. I'm not gonna walk in the back to try to keep them quiet. I'm gonna go to a boring room, and I'm gonna sit, because I want them to learn to sit through the service. Now, I have a six month old granddaughter who sits through the service.

I have, we've done this with several, well I've just done it with a lot of babies. And they can sit through, they learn. They learn quickly to sit through the service some learn quicker than others it took I still take I own I'm still struggling with sitting through the service take some longer than others but they But the goal is to have your children sit through this service so they can hear the doctrines of the faith by men qualified to teach. I'm just telling you how I do it. I'm sure there's other ways to do it.

There are different things also to do with children who are, you know, who are different ages. You know, the smaller they are the more hands-on and the more visual things you give them. That's why we would give them, like those, we'd put the boxes on the paper and kind of give them some visual, try to give them some visual ideas of what the sermons are. It's why we went over things during the week and our family worship time. To try to give them, you know, try to teach them the songs, everything they can hear and see and touch gives them more of an engaging time during the service.

The Lord's Supper communion is a wonderful visual for your small children You know often you know small children won't understand why they can't have you know that that bread and that wine when it goes by and I have run into parents who will bring crackers of their own and a drink of their own for their children but I'm going to appeal to you not to do that but to take the time to explain to your children the gospel and how wonderful it will be when they understand what the Lord has done for them and what Jesus did when he hung on that cross and took all the wrath of the Father and what that meant and how beautiful that is. None of our children ever Resented that but they looked forward to that as they watched it go by and knew that someday when they understood They would take it. It's a really good visual particularly for young children the Lord suffer is the old they become the old they get the more the better they're note-taking becomes and one thing we did is we we we tried to get our children nice journals that they would be able to keep for over a long period of time.

Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry is a Puritan that wrote commentaries on the entire Bible. Well his commentaries came from the notes that he took when his father was preaching. Philip Henry. That's what they were taken from. All the journals that he had for years on his father's preaching.

That was inspiring. And so, you know, get your children, you know, encourage them to take good notes that they can look back on, that their children can look back on and receive teaching from. And the older your children become, the more relational they will become. And So get to know the men who are preaching Get to know the particular characters within the texts that they're preaching from. But get to know the men who are preaching, your elders, your shepherds.

I have three grandsons, I have four really, but three grandsons in our fellowship and Triumph who's four, Nox who's three, and Loyal who's almost two. And they love their grand papa. And so they're engaged in what he says. Recently at this last conference we were at, Scott was preaching this last Sunday and I had Knox, he's the three-year-old in my lap, and he just, he's a beeline on Scott. He just stares at him.

Claudia and I were just, we were staring at Knox. I mean, he just, he keeps his eye on him. And he's three. Because, you know, part of it, I'm sure, is that he loves his grandpapa. You know, and he's teaching on marriage.

And he's nothing that Knox would be particularly interested in. No dinosaurs, no swords, you know. But Scott also makes a point to get to know the children in his congregation. Well, have these shepherds in your homes and get to know them. Gather your children around them and pray for them.

Listen to their tapes, get to know their voices, Know their concerns and know their loves. Help your children to love them. Everyone will reap rewards from that. You have to remember again that training and discipleship and discipline of your children is the most difficult job you will ever do. It never ends.

My daughter will call me, my married daughter will call me and say, Mom, can we have tea? You betcha. And we have tea. Right? It's a little different, but it's still there.

I will tell you this. My children are now training their children. And when I have my grandchildren in my home, there's no training. It's done. I can't tell you how wonderful that is.

Oh, yeah, it's good. It's real good I go to the store and I take I take them all with me and it's a breeze because it's been done all the disciplining has been done, you know, I I Can't I can't tell you how freeing that is. They obey because their daddy has made them obey me. I don't have to do it. I'm so glad.

I'm so glad that I... It was so much work. It was so much work. But hindsight tells me I'm so glad. I'm so glad I did it because I'm reaping the benefits of it now.

I've seen pictures of when of it being the other way. I mean I walked into Target and a grandmother and a grandfather with, she had to be 13 or 14, she walked in and she said, bye and that grandmother said, you come back here. Well, I'm thinking to myself, go get her, go get her, go get her, go get her. Well it was a battle and she did it but I grandma did it but let me tell you what that grandmother she chased her down but it was an ugly scene you know CS Lewis says that battle is ugly women fight well it's true and it was a fight that grandmother and that 14 year old and it was ugly and it right in the middle of target okay well okay she did it and I was thankful for it but man her daughter should have done it with her granddaughter and did not make the grandmother do it I know it's a lot of work it takes so much time I'll tell you but it's worth it it really is it's worth it um but remember you're training your children to hear from the Lord.

That's what you're doing. You're training them to hear from the Lord. And every one of us has trials and tribulations in this area. So everyone is patient with you. I'll tell you what, if people hadn't been patient with me and helped me, wow, none of my children would be where they are today.

I had help from the women in my assembly, from the men in my assembly. Our son calls a friend of mine the spanking spanking man it's about six foot six and David mouthed off to him once and he looked at him and said your daddy would never allow that. Turn over and gave him some wax on his behind. I was never so thankful and I wasn't there but I was never so thankful for that in my life. Wow I Was glad he was patient with me.

I'm glad he knew us well enough to know that we would never have tolerated that behavior You know we're not we're not performing with our children as some you know Characters in some play that we hope that they just do this on Sunday You know our children aren't these you know badges of honor that show up on Sunday. It just doesn't work that way. We're making disciples. And that's always messy, and there are successes, and there are failures, and there are retakes. But, and it takes a long time.

And it requires the whole body and it requires everything that happens on Sunday. But it starts in your home with what with the things that happen in your home.