Scott Brown discusses Luke 11 in this audio message. In this chapter, Christ's disciples ask Him how to pray. He then explains and instructs them how to pray. He then gives an example of how if a son asks for his father for bread, he won't give him a stone. Similarly, Scott explains that there are 10 gifts for fathers to give to your children.

Luke 11:11-13 (NKJV) - "If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!"

So I've entitled this message, Critical Elements for Spiritual Life in the Home, Giving Good Gifts to Your Children. And I really want to base everything on the character and the nature of God, but I'd like to begin with a text of Scripture to help us understand this, to open up a window of understanding for the heart and the character of God. It comes out of Luke 11. Please turn there in your Bibles. Luke chapter 11.

In Luke chapter 11, at the very beginning, Jesus is teaching His disciples how to pray because His disciples come to Him And they say, Lord, teach us to pray. And this is recorded in verse 1 in chapter 11. And then, after they ask Him to teach them, He teaches them by actually leading them through a prayer that helped us to know how we ought to pray. So He said to them, When you pray, say, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. And after giving them that piece of instruction, he then gives them an example to follow.

And it's an example of a friend who says in the night to his other friend, friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey and I have nothing to set before him. And he will answer from within and say, don't trouble me, the door is now shut, my children are with me in bed. So he gives this illustration of a situation where someone wants to give something good to someone else. And he's deprived of it, but because he won't give up, he finally gets it and is able to give a good gift. And so he's giving this example because of his persistence, because of the friend's persistence, he is given what he wants to give away to do good.

So he gives this example of acts of doing good. How often, in order to do something good, you have to beg for it. And Jesus is saying, beg me, ask me, don't give up, continue to pour out your prayers, that I might do good. That's that example that he gives. And then in verses 9 and 10, he actually issues a command on this same subject.

And he says, I say to you, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you for everyone who asks receives and whoever seeks finds and to him who knocks it will be opened. So the Lord gives a command to ask and knock and seek and don't give up to do that. But remember, the whole subject is all about a Father that is doing good. Someone who does good in this world. And then, after that, he gives an example of God's goodness.

He illustrates it very, very vividly. And what the Lord Jesus does is He gives a picture of a Father and a Son. Because it's in this picture of Fatherhood and sonship that the goodness of God has communicated. We see that in the Trinity. We just sang a song about the Holy Trinity.

And in the Trinity, there is this relationship where the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father, and the son submits to the father and the son says I do nothing except what I see my father doing. I say nothing unless I hear my father saying it and the father looking to the son saying this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. So this is a whole picture of love. So here Jesus is giving a picture of love in this last section that contains the phrase that I pray will be the heartbeat of this whole message here tonight. And it begins in verses verse 11 where the Lord Jesus says, if a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone?

Or, if he asks for a fish, will He give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if He asks for an egg, will He offer him a scorpion? And then Jesus says this, If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? So Jesus is teaching His disciples about how to do good. And he gives an example of a father and a son.

And he relates that earthly father and son to God his Father, who is so good, is so kind, that He gives the Holy Spirit to His children. So this is a picture of the delivering of good things. Now, I want to talk tonight about what good gifts should parents deliver to their children as they're raising them. Because God has so ordained the husband and wife, so that their labors together, their love for one another, issues in the doing of good to their children. And They become like God, their Father, who is a source, a fountain, a river of good to their children.

So I just want to ask the question, what does it mean to give good gifts to your children? And I want to give you ten of them, and you've got an outline, I hope, in front of you. Ten good gifts to give to your children. You do not want your children to be deprived of these gifts in their lifetime. These gifts given to children have really been collected across Scripture, but as elders of Hope Baptist Church, we believe that some of these gifts may actually be being deprived of some of the children in our church.

And so we want to bring these out as a challenge, perhaps even as a correction, if the Spirit of God will convict you of any of these things, let your heart be convicted. I'm praying that God would do His wonderful work to take these words and apply them individually and carefully to each person that's in need of them. In one way, we're all in need of every one of them. I know that for sure. We've just spoken of the first gift, the discipline of the Lord.

Dan has just spoken of it. It was interesting. I was speaking with my daughter, Claudia, in the late morning. And I was asking her to pray for me about this message. And she said, well, would you please send me your outline so I can look at it and pray for you?

So I sent her the outline, and she sent me back a number of passages of scripture that she thought would be helpful. And she sent me back Proverbs 13, 17. And here's what she wrote to me. You could put the parent in the place of the messenger in Proverbs 13, 17. And Proverbs 13, 17 says, a wicked messenger, in Claudia put parent, falls into trouble.

But a faithful parent brings health. A faithful parent brings health. And we've just heard about the healthful principle of discipline and chastisement of children. And so we've covered this first gift, this first wonderful act of good that you can do with your children, and that is to bring them to discipline of the Lord. So that's the first one.

The second one is a revelation of God. One of the greatest gifts you'll ever give your children is a revelation of the nature and the character of God. And this is so important. There's an amazing statement in the book of Jude, where Jude says, keep yourselves in the love of God. And it is so important that parents understand that their primary responsibility in life is to deliver to their children the knowledge of God.

And of course, they do that in many ways. They do that by their own behavior. Husbands and wives do it by their love for one another. If you want to teach your children how to be married, love your wife. Be submissive and a respectful wife toward your husband.

That's how you teach. That's one way that you teach your children to get them ready to be married, is that you have a marriage that gives them a beautiful picture of it. You might think, I need to give them books to read about it. Well, they have a book. It's you.

You are their epistle. And you're teaching them about love every day of your life. You're teaching them how to be married. But in doing so, you're giving them a picture of God. You're giving a picture of Christ's love for the church.

That's a revelation of God. Every day when you wake up and speak to your wife and relate with her, you are declaring the nature of God. And you're either declaring the nature of a good God or a bad God in your marriage. Delivering a revelation of God is one of the most important gifts that you ever give to your children. In Isaiah chapter 40, the prophet commands to say, Behold your God.

And that needs to be something that happens at the beginning of every day, that God is placed before these children and a revelation is given of him so that they can see what he's like. What we need to understand as we give this gift to our children is that all of life, all of family life especially, has one single purpose, and that is to bring glory to God. And, you know, Isaiah says, Bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone who is called by My name, whom I have created for My glory. That's the only reason for family life. It's for the glory of God.

And children who know God not only know how to do the exploits and exhibit the strength of God, but they declare the glory of God. How can a family declare the glory of God if they don't know who He is? So this gift is so important to bring a revelation of God. And there's nothing more powerful in the heart of a child than a vision of God. It is absolutely the most important thing in all of life.

And it will be something that they will take with them wherever they go. Whatever flood they're in, whatever calamity, whatever earthquake, whatever attack, whatever disappointment there, they have in their hearts a knowledge of God. And that's what strengthens the soul of man. And so you have to be very careful to understand that what you give your time to in the daily schedule of your life will tell them who you worship. It will tell them who is your God.

It will describe to them who God is, just by the very nature and structure of your schedule. You have to be very careful what you do. Redeem the time. Because a revelation of God is the most important issue in all of life that has to do with the control of your schedule and the government of your time. When you think about the importance of family worship and gathering your family together in order to acquire wisdom from God.

Here are a couple things that need to be very, very clear. I'll just quote Jason Dohme on this matter who says, Consider no cow too sacred to kill in your life and in your schedule in order to deliver the knowledge of God, in order to be a faithful family shepherd, You have to understand that there are some things that have to go if you would declare the glory of God to your children. There simply is not enough time to do everything that's lawful and interesting in this culture. There's not enough time to do it all. You have to choose.

You have to kill certain things. You have to put certain things to death. I could spend some time now explaining some of the things that I love to do that I've had to kill. I've had to destroy them out of my schedule. And none of them are unlawful.

And all of them have some compelling good to them. But they don't compare with this one thing, and I've had to destroy them. And so will you have to destroy some things in order to have others that are more important. And my appeal is be bold, do it. It doesn't matter what your friends think or what your children think immediately.

You have to kill the sacred cows. Kill them. Put them to death. Because the knowledge of God is so important. There is no hobby too important.

There is no personal skill. There is no passion in life that is more important than the delivery of the knowledge of God in your family. You may think, I need my sleep. And you've exalted sleep over the delivery of the knowledge of God to your children. You may say, well we have to eat, don't we?

But the truth is it doesn't usually come back to things like that. It comes back to all kinds of other time wasters that are destroying the delivery of the knowledge of God to your children. The knowledge of God is best communicated in His Word, and that's where it should focus. Of course, we train our children by example, but that is not enough. We are not good enough examples.

We're actually terrible examples. If their faith in God rested on our examples, God forbid it is not enough. This matter of gathering the family together in order to worship God, to study His Word and to pray, is one of the most important things you'll ever do in your family. And what Scripture says about what should be done for the worship of God is very simple. You read Scripture and you pray.

That's it. What do you do? In our church, people say, how do you train your people to do family worship? And we say, we train them in 30 seconds. And here's what we say.

Take this book every day in the morning and the evening and open it up and read it. And ask, what wondrous thing did I see in the law of God? And pray for one another and pray for the lost and pray for the work of God in the world. That's it. 30 seconds.

You're done. You're trained. Now go do it. We're not going to baby you. We're not going to give you 50 steps and hundreds of hours of training.

Just go do it. We just trained you. Just go do it. You have a perfect living word. Now just go do it.

The delivery of a revelation of God is so important. I was reading this week J.C. Ryle. Seven thoughts on reading the Bible. Number one, read the Bible with earnest desire to understand it.

Number two, read the scriptures with a simple childlike faith and humility. Number three, read the word with the spirit of obedience and application. Number four, read the holy scriptures every day. Number five, read the whole Bible and read it in an orderly way. Number six, read the Word of God fairly and honestly.

Number seven, read the Bible with Christ constantly in view. We need to understand that families that do not call upon the Lord are cursed families. And if you would deliver a supremely good gift, know that this one gift of the delivery of a revelation of God is the most important gift that you will ever give your children. As Jesus said, you know how to give good gifts to your children. You know how to give good gifts.

Give this one. The second gift to give to your children is the confession of sin. James 5 16 says, Confess your faults to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. Proverbs 28 13 says, He that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but who so confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. Joshua came to Achan And he said, My son, give glory to God and make confession unto Him, and tell me what thou hast done.

Hide it not from me. Jeremiah 3.13 says, Only acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the Lord thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers under every green tree, and ye have not obeyed my voice, saith the Lord." Give your family, give your children a good gift, the gift of confession. There are several things that a family culture of confession does. It's such a life-giving thing. Number one, it destroys self-righteousness.

It relieves the pressures of self-righteousness because self-righteousness is a hard, hard taskmaster in a family. Self-righteousness will destroy your family. The confession will drive it out. And it starts at the top. It starts with the father and mother who confess their own sins in an appropriate way.

There are inappropriate confessions that parents can make with their children. But there are appropriate ones, particularly when you sin against your children and you make confession of your sins, when you discipline them in anger, when you misrepresent God. There are various ways that are very appropriate to confess your sins. Parents should not just splatter all of their sins all over their family. And that's not what I'm advocating here.

But I'm advocating an honest confession of sin when you sin against one another in the family. There are enough sins that you have against one another to have enough confession, don't you think? You don't have to tell all the stories of your lured past and all these things. In fact, many of those things should never pass your lips. But there are specific sins that you commit to one another.

That a son commits against a daughter and a father commits against a son. Those are the kinds of sins that especially should be confessed. But it destroys self-righteousness, number one. Number two, and this is so important, it protects children from having false thoughts about God, and false thoughts about the grace and the mercy of God. It gives them a sense of the goodness of God in all of His forgiving kindness.

I want my children to understand how good God is. He is so kind. There's none better than Him. His ways are pleasant ways. All His paths are peace.

He is wonderful. And if you do not have a home full of confession, let me tell you, you will not be protecting your children against wrong thoughts about God. Number three, confession identifies the poisons that are at work in your family, and children need to understand what those are. Number four, it empties the family of sin. It empties out the poison barrel, and it relieves of the sin that's there in the family.

It makes a happy family. Number five, families where there's no confession of sin can never be happy families? Maybe your children don't smile. Maybe you can trace it right back to your own self-righteousness. Because there is no confession, there's no understanding that all stand under the condemnation of the law, but there's only one hope, and that is the blood of Jesus Christ.

So often, happiness in a family is destroyed because there has been no confession. And a family is just one rule after another. The sixth thing that confession of sin does is it centers the family on the cross. And that should be the center of all family life, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, as Jude says, keep yourselves in the love of God.

You know how to give good gifts to your children. Give this gift of confession, lest you be found a bitter, uptight, unhappy family. Fourth gift, expressions of heartfelt affection toward your children. Psalm 103, 13 speaks of this. Like a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth those who fear Him.

This is a tender-hearted spirit of a father toward his children. You know, you can be so hard against your children. I have been hard from time to time with my children. Thank God He's given me a wife to say, Scott, Your heart is hard. And I've had to be one back from time to time.

I'm so grateful for my help, who helps me to see things that I cannot even see on my own. But understand this, expressions of heartfelt affection toward your children are wonderful gifts. Proverbs 3, 11-12 says, My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, neither be weary of his correction, for whom the Lord loveth, he correcteth, even as a Father, the Son, in whom he delighteth." So delight, Delight is often expressed in the discipline as we've just heard so clearly communicated to us. Correction is an expression of delight. And if you don't delight, you won't correct.

So delight is expressed in many different ways. God has called us to be tender-hearted and forgiving of one another. In Romans the Apostle Paul said that we ought to be kindly affectionate toward one another with brotherly love, in honor, giving preference to one another, not lagging in diligence, but fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer. Now these things are all about the language of heartfelt affection. And it's possible, it's possible that there are some of you who've lost affection for maybe one of your children.

All children aren't the same, are they? And some children just seem to be more lovable naturally than others. So here's a question. Have you lost affection, a heartfelt affection, for any of your children? My guess is that you've not lost affection for all of your children, but you may have for one or two, and you actually favor them, that you love more, because they're easier to love.

It is such a blessed gift to live a life where the people around you have heart-felt affections toward you, even though you're very different. How much more the harder child may need your mercy? How much more hope you need to invest in them. The fifth, the fifth gift, a vision of genuine conversion. A vision of genuine conversion.

This is a very important spiritual matter. When you talk about building spiritual life in your home, there's so many things that build it. There's the discipline of the Lord. There's the revelation of God. There's the confession of sin.

There are expressions of heartfelt affection. And now There is a vision of genuine conversion that's all part of the spiritual atmosphere of your home. We live in an era where people have really maligned the biblical doctrine of conversion. And they've reduced conversion to things that are not conversion at all. They've reduced conversion to, I prayed a prayer.

They've reduced conversion to, I walked an aisle. That's not conversion. And so children have to understand what real conversion is, and parents need to as well, lest they lead their children astray and tell their children that they're converted when they have never been converted. And it happens all the time. The Apostle Peter in Acts chapter 3 explained conversion by saying, Repent therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.

So there is repentance and change, conversion, and then there's refreshing that comes from the presence of the Lord. There's a change, there's a new refreshment. There's something very different. John the Baptist said to the Pharisees, bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham for our father. When the Apostle Paul was talking to Agrippa, He said that people should repent and turn to God and do the works neat for repentance.

So it has to do with repentance always. Real, genuine, Biblical conversion always results in a changed life. And so children need to have a vision of genuine conversion. And spiritual life in your home is really dependent on your understanding of conversion. How do you talk to your children about conversion is very important.

And if you reduce it down to praying a prayer, you've misled them. It's the responsibility of fathers and mothers to bring the gospel to their children over and over again in the normal warp and loop of life. Not to beat them on the head with it and constantly be berating them about whether they're converted or not. When they're converted you'll know for sure because they'll change and the sun will come out and there will be a difference. So keep yourselves in the love of God.

Know how to give good gifts to your children and a vision of genuine conversion is critical to the spiritual life of your home. Number six, another good gift, another element of spiritual life in your home is the practice of authentic believers' baptism. The practice of authentic believers' baptism. Often parents have such an urgency to get their children saved that they baptize them before they're really converted. They baptize them on a prayer rather than on a true conversion.

The Apostle Peter in Acts chapter 2 said, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. So here baptism happens after the work of the Holy Spirit in a child's life. In Acts chapter 2 verse 41, it's reported they gladly received his word and were baptized, and the same day they were added about 3, 000 souls. To the Philippian jailer, they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and that thou shalt be saved in thy house. And then they spoke to him the word of the Lord, all that were in the house.

And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes and was baptized, he and all his house, straight away. And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house. A whole family was converted and they were baptized. The Ethiopian eunuch believed and was baptized. Now, there are many wrongful baptisms that take place in the church today.

And you have to be very careful about when you baptize. Many children wake up in their teen years and realize, I was not converted when I was five when I got baptized. I just wasn't really converted. You know, parents, if you're concerned about the spiritual life of your family and of your children, Don't baptize your children too early. Don't jump the gun.

Don't baptize them on a prayer. You wait for that prayer. It's prayed one late night. Baptized the next week. They were never really converted.

Happens all the time. Happens in our church from time to time. Be very careful. Charles Spurgeon said this, Bring them to salvation, don't bring them to the font. Wait.

Wait until it's very, very clear. It will not kill them to wait. Practice authentic believer's baptism. Keep yourselves in the love of God. Do you know how to give good gifts to your children?

Give this good gift to your children. You know, ask for God's wisdom and help. Often these things are difficult to discern. And the reality is, you will have to decide. You and those who are governing your local church will have to help you decide whether they're really converted or not.

But you do not want to baptize your children and having them taking communion when they're not converted. The Bible says that that's taking the cup in an unworthy manner and the Apostle Paul says that some have gotten sick and died because they're taking the cup in an unworthy manner. And you as parents need to understand that you will be responsible for this. For leading your children astray and not helping them to understand what true conversion is and what real baptism is. Keep yourselves in the love of God.

Give good gifts. You know how to give good gifts. This is one good gift. Here's another, number seven, unity in the home. The Lord says, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church.

He says, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but he nourishes and cherishes it. It is a primary responsibility of husbands and wives to protect their love for one another and their unity. It's so easy in the busyness of life for husbands and wives to start living two different lives. Life gets so busy and they just pass in the night. Are you passing in the night?

Or are you truly unified in everything? Do you talk about everything? Are you going in the same direction? Are you dreaming about the same ends and the way to get there. Are you there, co-laboring in life?

Unity in a husband and wife is a marvelous gift for children. It's the head of the household's responsibility to make this happen. My experience is that all wives want this to happen, but most husbands are totally brain dead on it. It's just my experience. It's my experience with my own life.

I have very frank discussions with men. This is very true of men. They're not as sensitive to the disconnectedness that exists with their wife. You can end up just living intensely personal, ever increasingly disconnected lives, but unity in marriage is a blessing. Are you talking about everything?

Are you planning everything out together? It's very interesting just looking around this room. I don't have any statistical analysis of this, but what I'm seeing is I'm seeing lots of wives doing this, and I'm not seeing hardly any men doing this. No, no, no. It's because men are often so dead to issues of connection and unity.

Do I have an amen? Ah, there we go. I thought I was only going to hear the women say that, but no, no. It was contrary to my projections. But unity in the home is so important.

Husbands love your wives, and as Christ loved the church, He gave Himself up for her. This, brothers, is so important, and you, brothers, are the key to it. Your wife wants this. She craves it. It's not her problem it's your problem in mind is this true unity in the home if you desire to give a good gift to your children then don't live separate lives you know you can You can live decades together and have separate lives.

You can stay married for many decades and not be unified. That's a tragedy. Plus it's no fun. Plus there's no love in it. And tragically, your children go and they repeat the same thing.

Number eight, you know how to give good gifts to your children. Protect them from worldliness. Protect your family from worldliness. The apostle John said, do not love the world nor the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. The apostle Paul said to the Corinthian church, what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God as God has said I will dwell in them and walk in them and I will be their God and they shall be my people wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate saith the Lord and touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you and be a father to you, and ye shall be my sons and my daughters, saith the Lord." Now, families are always in grave danger, and it's the danger of creating a love for the world and their children. You grew up loving silly things. You grew up doing irrelevant things, And now you teach your children to do the same.

Your best memories in life are doing irrelevant things. And you're now leading your families into it. This happens all the time. It happens especially with fathers who spent their entire youth playing games, and then they teach their children to do that, and then their children waste their youth. Every Son and daughter needs to hear their father say, do not waste your youth.

Spend it on meaningful, productive, God-glorifying activities exclusively. But it's a gift. It's a gift to protect your children from worldliness. Now, let me say that everything you do in your family will create an affection. This is just the law of life.

It's not something that may or may not happen. Everything in your family life will create an affection. Everything you let your children do will give them an affection for something, and it will grow. It doesn't stop. You don't just chop these things off someday.

Oh, you're 16 now. Now we stop that. It doesn't happen. Do not give your children affection for things that they can't do for the rest of their life. You may think, oh, my son or my daughter is so good at this one thing.

Don't think that they can do that and then stop it someday. Their affections grow naturally with whatever you feed them. Whatever you feed grows. That's the deal. How do you get yourself unaddicted to pornography?

You starve yourself of everything that's impure. You kill the dragon through starvation. That's how you do it. Because what you feed grows. And nobody's ever been able to beat that system.

Keep yourselves in the love of God has much to do with protection from worldliness. You know how to give good gifts to your children. Number nine, another very critical element of spiritual life in the home. Another good gift is love for the church. The question I would just like to present to you is this.

Does your life as adults reflect a love for the Church of Jesus Christ. How important is the Church? Well, Christ shed his blood for the Church. That's how important the Church is. I don't know how to get any more clearer than that.

How important is the church? Christ bled on the cross for his church. That's how important the church is. He purchased it with his own blood. So The church is not something that you play games with.

The church is not something you make a convenience item. The church is not something that you say, well, I like this, I like that. I treat it like a food court. I just go take what I like. That is not love for the church.

That's love for yourself. That's personal idolatry. Does your life revolve around a local church? If it doesn't, you do not love the local church. If anybody wants to talk about that more, I would be very happy to.

This is a war that needs to be waged in the church, where people think of the church as chopped liver. It's, well, if I have time for this or that, then I'll make room for it. That's sinning. That's sinning against God, and it is a sin against your children. I received a letter recently from a father who had a marriageable-aged daughter.

And the father sent me a question because a young man wanted to court his daughter. And he said, I'm looking for advice because this is a family that has all their lives been disconnected from church life. They claim to be believers, but the boy has not gone to church for the last several years. What should I do? My reply to him is, I would be massively concerned about this young man.

I would stay away from him. Here's why I would stay away from him. He's been deprived of local church life. He hasn't had to mix it up with imperfect people. He's not had the sharpening of preaching.

He's not had to sit in a room full of people that are from a lot of different backgrounds. He must be a very selfish young man. He can't engage in the wider body of Christ, where you have a weak person and a strong person, an offensive person, whatever it is. He's not been trained to love in a local church. And I said, I would be very disturbed.

In fact, I would rebuke him for this kind of living. And I would say, don't come back and talk to me until you've demonstrated that you know how to love an imperfect bride. Because you're going to marry this girl, and she's going to be an imperfect bride. And if you are so spiritual that you can't be a part of a local church, you have no idea how to love a bride who has spots and wrinkles and every such thing. I would not let my daughter near anybody that I could not verify that he had some level of love for the local church and the people there.

It's very dangerous to have people who do not love the church because they can't mature in the way that God has designed them to mature. The Bible says that the whole body builds itself up in love. The Bible says we speak the truth in love, we have patience with one another, we're tender-hearted, we're forgiving one another. Why is there a romance about forgiving one another? Because you're going to need it.

People are going to do stuff bad to you. They're going to treat you bad in the church. You need to be treated bad. God wants you to be treated bad. He wants you to have a reason to forgive.

He wants someone to abuse you and slander you so that you'll know how to love someone so that you'll know. And if you're not in a local church, you won't know. God doesn't call you to a local church because it's some perfect little society. He calls you into it into the church because you need the sharpening of an imperfect society. Now I don't understand why God has arranged it that way.

I would not have arranged it that way. I would have created some perfect vision with everyone just like the way I like them. My little world and everyone would fit into it. That's how I would have created the church. God did not do that.

Thank God everyone is not like Dan Horne or Jim Santel's. Can you imagine what a beastly place that would be if they were all like me? It would be terrible. But God does not arrange the church that way. He desires his church to be filled with sinners who are being sanctified so that there's mercy and love.

Now if you don't love the church you don't get the benefit of that. Love the church. One of the greatest gifts you can give your children is to wrap their lives around the relationships in a local church. Let them see this person, dishonor that person. Let them see it and then help them to understand the love of God in it.

Let them be ignored. Let them come in and no one greet them If you come into a church and no one greets you, let me just tell you something you needed it You needed it You are so self-centered you are so self-absorbed you have made such an idol out of your own personality that it so offends you when people don't just flock all over you. You're an idolater, honestly. Don't blame them. God is chastising you.

And you need that. If you would give a good gift to your children, let it be that you love the church. It's a way of keeping yourself in the love of God. You know how to give good gifts to your children. This is one of them.

Number ten, and this is the last one for this evening. There are many. There are probably hundreds, but these are the ones that we felt convicted to deliver to our own church. Lastly, provide a household of joy. Nothing affects the communication of the gospel like joy.

And in homes where there is a lack of joy, there is a lack of the spirit of Jesus. It's just that simple. In Hebrews chapter 1, verse 9, we learn that Jesus was the happiest of all the disciples. Because of his hatred of wickedness, God filled him with a spirit of gladness, far above his companions. And so, a spiritual family is a happy family.

Is your family happy? Is it just a Bible reading family with no happiness? Is it a family that has discipline but no joy? Then Jesus, Jesus needs to fill your home because something else has filled your home if there's no happiness there. I would just like to suggest that overwhelmingly, the Father is responsible for the spirit of the home.

Often, fathers, They evacuate their homes of joy for different reasons. One reason is that they're fearful. Their trust in God is so low that when they drag in after a hard day's work, their heart is full of songs of destruction, and they spread their gloom everywhere. They walk into the house and they say, I'm so tired. I'm so beat.

And they lie down on the couch and expect everyone to serve them. How much joy is even possible in an environment like that? It's almost impossible. Fathers who are fearful of the future, who do not understand the sovereignty of God, whose consciences are warped by their fears, These kinds of fathers are not sources of joy in their families. And if a father understands the greatness of the sovereignty of God, He will have an ability to fill his home with joy.

He's a free man. He's not in bondage to circumstances or his obsessive fears about the future, or the axe that's getting ready to drop on his head and destroy everything. The fear of sudden disaster that the Bible warns against. Fills his heart, and there's no joy, because he's obsessed with his own insecurities. And this is such a terrible sin.

Fathers, if you're fearful men, this is a matter of spiritual import. Repent of this sin of lack of trust in God. And stop bringing gloom into your house because you're so afraid of everything. Living in fear is one of the greatest killers of joy in a family. There are so many things that we could talk about regarding rejoicing together as a family.

We could talk about vacations. We could talk about feasting. We could talk about activities. We live in a culture where people believe that joy comes from doing nothing instead of doing things together. Joy comes from kicking back, That's the only way you can get it.

That's a heresy. That's wrong. And there are just many misunderstandings about this whole matter. Whatever makes you go into melancholy, repent of it and attack it. Your children need a happy father.

This is true of companies, it's true of churches, it's true of families. All of them have a joy meter. You can walk in the door and you can feel it. There's a spirit of joy, there's a spirit of heaviness. After a while, you can know whether Jesus is there.

You can know whether it's a healthy place by the smiles on people's faces. If nobody's smiling, if nobody's smiling, you may not want to go work in that place. Unhappy churches are a perfect contradiction of the gospel. They have no connection with the mercies of God. So how is the joy meter in your family?

Is it running high, Or is it running low? You need to address it. You address it by the thoughts and meditations of your own heart and the joy with which you enter the gates. Do you enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise? Or are you a mean ogre who's biting everybody up?

You're biting and devouring one another. And you're barking, and then your children are barking double. Often what happens in families is that they get so disgusted with warliness and silly, foolish, irrelevant activities, they cut everything out and they replace it with nothing. And there's no joy, there's no activity, it's just we don't do that. And that translation, we don't do nothing.

That's what it translates to. And that's a joyless family, where nothing has been replaced. You've swept the house, but the devil is right back in there to fill it with all manner of unhappiness. Who's responsible? Governors of the house, fathers and mothers.

They're the ones that are responsible to do this. Your children can't do it on their own. They can't find their way. We're like sheep. Sheep can't get themselves from one destination.

They can't go find a good destination. They're totally incapable of it. They don't know how to rescue themselves. We were just reading this morning, a number of us, a citation of Philip Keller's book on shepherding. And what he says in that book is that a flock of sheep will be standing there, and a wolf will come in, and it will shred apart one of the sheep.

And all the rest of them just sit there and they look. They just watch it happen. And then the wolf goes to the other one and tears him to shreds. And all the sheep just stand there and they look like that. Because sheep are often stupid.

They don't take action. They need someone to lead them somewhere else. And that's what fathers and mothers are supposed to do. Lead them to better pasture. Get out of this pasture.

Maybe some of you need to do that. Maybe some of you have been gnawing on dusty nubbys. There's no lushness to it. There's no food in it at all. You're in the desert.

And how do you get out? Well, you return to the Lord, the joy of the Lord. So this is a gift. This is a wonderful gift. And it's one of the critical elements of spiritual life in a home.

It keeps you in the love of God. And it teaches you to know how to give good gifts to your children. So this, all of what I've just said, is really all about spiritual life in the home. We talked about discipline at the beginning, because that's so important. But there's more than that.

There's a whole way a family feels together. There's a whole way a family thinks together. There's a whole way a family deals with sins and problems that are necessary. And I would just like to suggest that these ten gifts are so important. The discipline of the Lord, a revelation of God, the confession of sin, the expressions of heartfelt affection toward your children, a vision of genuine conversion, the practice of authentic believers baptism, unity in the home, protection from worldliness, love for the church, and a house of joy.

I pray that we will excel still more in giving these good gifts to our children and that these would be the hallmarks of our child raising. Would you pray with me? Lord, we pray for an impartation of your Spirit toward us to help us to give such good gifts to our children as you, O Lord, are the Father of every good gift. In Jesus' name, Amen. For more messages, articles, and videos on the subject of conforming the church and the family to the word of God and for more information about the National Center for Family integrated churches where you