When discussing family integrated worship one of the first concerns raised it "How do I get my kids to behave in church?" The practical aspect of keeping children in the worship service is an important issue and in many cases a real difficulty, especially if changing from an age segregated meeting. Thankfully, there are simple, practical things that parents and members can do and it all starts with the mindset of recognizing the goodness of having children in the church.

Well, okay, this subject that we're going to talk about here now is, brings up many difficult problems and, you know, I'm going to give you, I'm going to eventually end up giving you 16 points about this. So 16 ideas for parents who want to keep their children with them in church. But before we get to those 16 points, I'd like to lay some theological groundwork as to why this is even an important subject. This is an important subject for a number of reasons. And let's see, the first one is – where's David Brown?

My – oh, I'm not advancing. There we go, okay, thank you. The theological importance of this subject can be traced to the biblical commands regarding child raising and particularly the heart attitudes of children. Colossians 3.20 says, Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord." So we're engaging a subject in which the pleasing of the Lord is on the table here. There are some things that are pleasing to the Lord and there are other things that are not pleasing to the Lord.

And one thing that is not pleasing to the Lord is a child that does not obey the parent. But you think of it also, what would please the Lord? And what pleases the Lord is a child that does obey the parent. Ephesians 6, 1-4, children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother which is the first commandment with promise that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth.

This is a promise that harkens back to the 10 Commandments. This is one of those core values of the Kingdom of God regarding children. We learn much about parents and children and God's desires for parents and children through this commandment. And of course, this is this great commandment with a promise. And you can always trust God's promises.

They will, they are true. When God makes a promise, He will bring it about. 1 Timothy 2.15, the obedience of children, the hard attitudes of children have a bearing on whether one is able, capable to lead the church. One who rules his own household well, having his children in submission with all reverence. For if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the Church of God?" And then we go to that that great statement in the in the text of the Ten Commandments.

Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you. Honor and obedience in the hearts of children, it really is the central focus of this session that we'll be engaged in now. And I'm going to include a number of practical suggestions for keeping children with you in the church service. All of these are implications of the fifth commandment, but the fifth commandment makes it abundantly clear that obedience and honor in children toward their parents is a big issue to God. I wrote a note to some people in our church and some others that gave some of the points that I'm gonna give you in a minute.

And I had an interesting conversation with one of my friends. He came back to me and he said, why are you dealing with such small potatoes? You're dealing with how children act in a worship service? This is such a peripheral thing. This is such a, Scott, you're going off course.

You're over-exalting something. And I said, well, do you believe the fifth commandment is an important commandment? I said, do you, because what I believe is on the table here is the fifth commandment. And so I don't, I guess, I don't believe we're over-exalting an issue here, We're talking about something in which the pleasing of the Lord by the sons and daughters of men is engaged. We're talking about a success factor in children.

We're talking about really the structure of the universe in the sense that there is order and authority in the universe. There is a Father and all sons and daughters should order themselves under that authority and they should bring themselves lovingly and cheerfully under that authority this this is the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ that you put yourself under the authority of God your Father in heaven and God has given us earthly fathers so that we would understand how to honor our heavenly fathers. And we first must honor our earthly fathers. And the success of our future success depends upon it. God hates dishonor so much that in the Old Testament, children were sometimes stoned for it.

Now we don't stone children today, but I think we need to understand that God has a certain disposition to our disobedient children. We need to think biblically about obedience and disobedience in children. Well today though we like to play footsie with the fifth commandment. We like to reduce its importance. But we need to understand that there's something in the heart of God that would authorize the actual stoning of a disobedient child.

That's a startling idea to our ears, because it's so foreign to the culture in which we live. And we read earlier that Lack of obedience in children, lack of faithful heartedness in children would actually exclude a man from becoming a leader in the church. It would knock him out of that role if his children become disobedient. And by the way, this issue is one of the most ignored issues in church leadership today in the church. And I don't want to try to minimize often the complexities and the difficulties that surround the subject.

But most pastors and most church boards and most church people are simply unwilling to even think about this in a deep way and to try to accept God's statements about honor and obedience in children as it relates to their leadership capability. It's another one of those elephants in the room that nobody really wants to talk about because the implications are difficult to deal with. Well keeping children in all ages together with their parents in the church proposes many problems, many challenges. One of the most dramatic problems is that it exposes defiant hearts of children that already exist in the home. Unfortunately, when you have your children with you in church, the defiance somehow becomes public.

And everybody can see it. And you see it in a completely different way because it's so embarrassing when it happens. And so there's a trial in the making when you encourage people to have children with you in the church service. Because keeping your children with you in the church does a number of things, does a number of wonderful things. One of the most wonderful things it does is that it puts the fifth commandment to the test.

And it will reveal to you how well that's all going in your home this is one of the the struggles that God places before parents because it is a securing honor and obedience in children is it's a 24-hour struggle and it is a battle and it is it is a battle against evil God calls parents to wage war against evil because there is a war being waged against them. There's a war against the seed of the woman that was prophesied in Genesis 3.15. And that war is waged every single day with every single child born to the sons and daughters of men. And this problem of disobedience in the church is a microcosm of the greater battle that's going on for the hearts of children. You know, when you have young children, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven years of age particularly, you wonder if it's ever going to end.

And you wonder if you're ever gonna prevail. But I'll just say, one of the underlying assumptions that we maintain at our church, Trinity Baptist in Wake Forest, is that it is the biblical pattern for children of all ages to be with their parents in the context of worship and instruction. And that this has always been an important aspect of Hebrew discipleship and that it was also an important aspect of the discipleship in the early church. And we have many evidences of this. One of my favorite evidences is just the book of Ephesians, or the book of Colossians.

In Ephesians, we find Paul addressing husbands, He addresses wives, he addresses slaves, and then he uses a Greek linguistic construction to address the children. He uses the vocative of direct address. And it's a linguistic form that's used when you're addressing someone personally. So Paul speaks to the fathers and he says, fathers or husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. Wives, respect your husbands.

Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. He's using the vocative of direct address, which just gives us a clear understanding that the children were there in the meeting of the church. Paul was turning to the children and he was speaking to them. There were no youth group leaders, there were no nurseries, the children were right there. There's a delightful story in the book of Acts where there's a young man by the name of Eutychus.

The term young man refers to someone who is maybe eight to 12 years old. And Eutychus was sitting at midnight in a windowsill hearing Paul preach and he falls out of the window and dies on the ground it's a great story you know I wonder who else was falling asleep. Fortunately, they weren't on the windowsill. This young man just rolled right on out and slammed on the ground. And of course, everybody rushed down to take care of the boy, and he was raised from the dead.

But there were children in the meetings of the early church. There's no indication anywhere. There's not a shred of evidence that children were ever removed from the meetings of God's people. And so this is the biblical pattern. This is what we maintain.

And so why should we do it any differently? I think is the question that we want to ask. And this is one of the underlying assumptions that we maintain at the National Center for Family Integrated Churches and it's one that we advocate as much as we can. We appeal to our brothers to consider this. We find ourselves in difficult conversations.

We argue in a godly and loving way using lavish and long communication. But We need to understand that this is the biblical pattern. And the same old problems that we have today with our children have always been had in every generation. You know, children aren't different in any generation. They have the same nature, they have the same inclinations.

You know, if you read the Bible, you just see the same old problems that you see today. There really is nothing new under the sun. And I'm confident that the parents in the Church of Ephesus had the exact same problem that you have. But God has given us wisdom for how to deal with this. You know, having your children with you is a glorious thing in the services.

I'm seeing the fruits of it. The fruits are unparalleled. What happens in the hearts of children is glorious. You know, the children in our church are like the children in every family-integrated church that I've ever seen. They absolutely love it.

No kiddie sermons, no puppet shows, but they absolutely love the real presentations of the gospel. You know what? Little kids love real preaching. They don't like kiddie preaching, I don't think. I know they love real live preaching with real live adult words.

But it accomplishes many great things. First of all, it incorporates children in the inestimable value of real worship. Children should be included in worship. They should be, they should be on the, if they're really little, they should be on the breasts of their fathers and mothers hearing their bodies resonate as they sing the great hymns of the faith. They should hear the prayers.

They should see the passion and the brokenness. They should see the joy. You know, little children can understand that. I mean, we believe that little children understand things in the womb. How many of you didn't sing to your children in the womb?

How many of you didn't talk to your children in the womb? Well, you know what? We all believe that children receive things, you know, even though they don't understand everything about what they're receiving. And it's the same way in a church service. Who knows what a child is acquiring by hearing men pray in the church?

Who knows what a child is grasping when the hymns of the faith are sung? Well, we don't know exactly. I believe they acquire a lot. I think they get far more than we ever give them credit to. And honestly, I think there's a little bit of work of Satan here to help us think that our children aren't getting anything out of this.

I hear this all the time, my children aren't getting anything out of this. Well, I just don't believe that. I think that's just a lie that you believe that isn't really, that doesn't really fit the situation. Children get something out of everything they're a part of. We're like that too.

None of us get everything of what's going on around us, but we all get something from everything we're a part of. And I think children are the same way and so I just want to explode the idea that says my children aren't getting anything out a big church I just think that's a bunch of baloney you know it gives children affection for important things and substantial things. It's preaching is important, prayer is important, the celebration of the Lord's Supper is important. The family of families gathering together, the extended family of the church, the brothers and the sisters and the fathers and mothers that you acquire when you become part of the church is a wonderful thing. And children are exposed to this mix of ages and all different kinds of personalities and backgrounds and everything.

It's a rich blessing for children to be in the midst of that. And we should take them into that and not put them away with their own age group. I think that's stultifying, I think it's stupidifying, I think it does many negative things to the heart of a child. But bringing your children in the meetings of the church broadens them, it sweetens them, it gives them a better picture of life. I see absolutely no downsides to it at all except for the difficulty that's presented through rebellious hearts and the child training process that God would cause to meet those rebellious impulses.

You know, it accelerates the development of children as well. It gives them an accelerated maturity level on a number of different levels. It also presents some very, very uncomfortable moments for parents and it causes those parents to grow in the Lord Jesus Christ And hopefully it would help them to improve their skills. Hopefully it would help them to know with greater depth the hearts and the inclinations of their children's hearts. And it does produce an experience that will heighten an understanding of the fifth commandment in the life of a child.

But the reality of the church today is that the trial is often avoided. In the modern church, hearts of dishonor are often hidden in nurseries and youth groups. It is so much easier to just hide these problems away. Get them away from me so I don't have to deal with them. My child is disobedient, so it's more difficult for me to handle that child in a public setting, because that child will not obey me.

That child does not have a cheerful heart toward the circumstances that the Lord Jesus Christ has put them in. And so the hearts of children are revealed, and we don't like what we see. It reflects poorly upon us. And so we need to get them out of there as quickly as possible. You know, As a young pastor, I was 27 years old, and I was preaching one Sunday in my church in San Diego, California, and there was a child in the back that started screaming, and screaming and screaming, and finally, finally I asked that the child be removed from the service.

It's so funny for me to think about that now. I, you know, I had, I had no awareness that parents needed training for how to keep their children in church like that. And so those who know me well often tease me that I was the guy that used to throw children out of church for being squeaky. But this is what we wanna do. We wanna hide them away.

We wanna have a worship inner sanctum. We want to have this otherworldly experience that's perfectly quiet so that we can concentrate, so that we can have this experience. And to do that we have to remove real life from us. And that's just our tendency. We like to create this atmosphere of inner sanctum.

And this hiding children away in nurseries, I believe it's harming to the character of the child and it's harming to the character of the parent as well. And so instead of meeting the challenge, we hide them away. Now this is one of the problems that we have in our church. We bring our children into the public meetings of the church And unfortunately there's just nowhere to hide because it seems like it all gets exposed right there in the middle of the service. And this again I think is a kind providence of God that he would bring the true nature of things to bear so that we would know what we should be working on.

There's several negative results of bringing your children into the church. The most obvious one is that a child is not in control and the parents find that going to church is a very frustrating experience and to add insult to injury you end up with often with just an absolutely bedraggled mother who hasn't heard a sermon in five months because her children are out of control. And It's a real problem, right? How many of you are in family-integrated churches right now? Raise your hands.

So you know this problem. You've seen this. You've lived this. You've had to struggle with this. This is a real issue.

Okay, so I'm gonna give you 16 guidelines for keeping your children with you in church. And the first one is, establish biblical standards of behavior. Establish biblical standards of behavior. The fifth commandment requiring obedience to parents, it's the baseline for all child training and it forms the structure of honor and it casts forth the proposition that a child will be successful in life. And so this leads us to address honor and disobedience and rebellion in whatever age, in whatever location it presents itself.

Christian parents are just required by scripture to secure honor and obedience among their children. This is the baseline. And we need to think biblically about what the standard should be. And the answer to what is the standard is this, it's honor and obedience. Rebellious behavior shows up in a number of different ways in the church.

Here's one, refusing to be quiet. The child that just refuses to be quiet. Rolling the eyes. Big sighs. Squirming out of your lap.

Arching the back. Walking around. How about running away? Have you ever seen this? Children, parents chasing their children down.

They let them get two feet from them. Two feet became four. Four became eight. Eight became sixteen. And then a parent starts running.

It's a total scream to watch this. When you're, it's great to be preaching because you can see all this happening. Slumping, slumping, refusing to be still, an attitude of disdain for parents and siblings. And is it fair to ask children to maintain this kind of behavior? And my answer is yes, it is fair that we ask our children to be obedient at every age.

Now, of course, there are different issues at age one and age two than there are at age four, five, and six. But generally we need to keep our bearings about us, we need to keep our wits about us, that honor and obedience is an important category here. And we need to address it from the earliest time on. When do you address the issue of honor and obedience? When do you punish for disobedience in a child's life?

My view is as soon as you see it, as soon as you see it, you should address it. Um, we We have many examples of this. Sarah Edwards was one of those mothers who addressed dishonor the moment she saw it when the child was as young as rebellion seemed to present itself. There's a common feeling that we can tolerate rebellion in younger children, but not older children. And I just want to challenge that proposition.

There are people that think you cannot expect a two-year-old to obey. And I do understand that there are great difficulties in helping a two-year-old to obey. And they certainly are wired in a different way at two than they are at six. Absolutely, no question about it. So a parent has to have understanding as to whether this is true rebellion or there's something else that really needs to be worked with and that there's patience that needs to be applied to the situation.

But people in our culture, by and large, do not believe that a two-year-old can obey. And part, I think one of the things I want to just encourage you to think about is the issue of expectations. Expectations are really important. Here's an example of how expectations come into play in the child raising experience. Think about the life of Helen Keller.

If you're familiar with her story, Helen Keller was absolutely impossible to live with. She was impossible to control until Ann Sullivan arrived. There wasn't a person anywhere who believed that Helen Keller could be disciplined successfully. And the first thing that Ann Sullivan did when she showed up is she restrained that independent behavior. The first confrontation that you read about that Ann Sullivan had with Helen Keller was during dinner time and Ann had always been allowed to grab anything off of anybody's plate, eat with her hands, crawl on the table, do whatever she wanted, because her parents had decided that she was uncontrollable, that there was really nothing that they could do.

And so she was allowed to grab anything she wanted. Unfortunately, she went and grabbed at Ann Sullivan's food and her hand was gripped with an iron grip and she was not allowed to do that. And fortunately, Helen Keller had met her match. She had met a woman of steel who was willing to break social convention, who was willing to believe something that nobody else believed. Nobody else believed that Helen Keller could have any kind of discipline at all.

And, you know, Ann Sullivan's standards were higher than Helen's parents. And I think often we find ourselves leveling out with the standards that seem right to everyone else around us. And I think in a similar way, the church has become overly permissive in the same way that Helen Keller's parents were overly permissive. They simply did not believe that Helen could obey. And and I think that in the church today we have a lot of people who simply do not believe that the youngest of our Children can obey.

Now, we all know that Anne and Helen won the battle. They won because Anne Sullivan fought with an uncompromising resolve. It was a loving fight, but it was a fight. We need to understand that for sure. Now, we need to have biblical standards.

We need to establish biblical standards of behavior to get our wits about us in this whole subject and the biblical standards of behavior are defined by the terms honor and obedience and respect. Secondly, prepare your children for worship. Children need preparation for worship. You know, we're talking about a small period of time in the week of a child. We're talking about an hour and a half period.

Most children can sit in front of a television set for an hour and a half. Most of them can watch a two or three hour movie. And now we're saying that they can't sit in an hour or hour and a half worship service. I just think we need to think about whether that's consistent thinking or not. But they need preparation for this period of time.

And I want to give you a couple of ways that you can prepare. Here are two suggestions. First of all, role play the service thoroughly and have a time in your home where the rules are perfectly clear and I'll just give you some of the objectives that we uphold in our own times of worship in our own family that we've done. Our children are older now, they're beyond the really difficult stage now, but they used to be in the difficult stage. I've been there, been there, done that, and I know it's possible, and I know many people who make it possible.

And so I'm not willing to accept that it's impossible. I just know too many people that made it happen. And so I'm just not willing to accept that. But I do think that technique is involved in the success or failure in the proposition. But preparation is also involved.

In our times together as a family, sitting still is something that we train for, looking at the speaker is something that we train for, singing wholeheartedly, showing respect for the other people in the room, and then being instructed. You know, most children at some point will say to you, I don't know what he's saying. I just don't know what he's saying. I didn't understand that. And that's a perfect opportunity for a father and a mother to explain it.

I think this is one reason why the children were in the discipleship experiences in Israel and were in the early church is because there had to be a backup help there for that child to understand that backup is in the form of their parents to explain the hard words and the difficult concepts as much as they can. It should just engage the parents more and more. And then review the service content before Sunday. If you can, in our church, we try to let people know what the service content is gonna be. The songs, the passage of scripture, we send out an email to help people get a sense of what it's going to be.

We go through passages of scripture, so it's pretty easy for parents to know what we're going to be reading and considering the next week. But preparation, getting them ready for the words and the concepts that are going to be presented that next week. Number three, if you remove your child from the service for discipline, don't make it a play time. If you take your children out of the service because you're disciplining them and then make it just absolutely the most fun experience they've ever had, guess what? You will be trained to do that regularly.

So don't make it a playtime. Continue the standards when you leave the service. And then bring them back in when they're ready. If you don't do this, you'll just be defeating yourself and the objective. Number four, make discipline effective.

If the form of discipline you're using is not working, then change your method or increase its intensity. My experience is often the reason some children and some families don't obey is that the intensity level is not enough. And there's often just an unwillingness in the parents to apply enough intensity to make it happen. You know, we all come from different backgrounds, and this is very difficult. All child-raising practices are not the same.

We're not all comfortable with the same things. But I'll just be very frank with you. Almost all of the discipline problems that I'm observing with the parents that I know, who really, really have difficult problems getting a handle on this, it's two things. It's either intensity or it's consistency. In other words, yes doesn't, it's not, the spanking isn't hard enough.

Or, number two, the yes doesn't really mean yes. It only means that maybe 40% of the time or 60% of the time. And so it's so inconsistent that the child, you know, has always got wiggle room. The child knows that they're, you know, he might be on a roll. He might be in a 60% moment with his parents and he'll play it out.

Number five, don't bribe. Paying children for Exemplary behavior is the wrong direction. Exemplary behavior, honor, obedience, respect should be the baseline of the behavior. Number six, require first time obedience. You know, counting to three, giving one, two, three, four chances to obey is, it absolutely subverts a heart of honor in a child.

And so if your child is not obeying the first time, then you need to Understand what that really is. It's disobedience. First time obedience gives you, if you maintain the principle of first time obedience, you will have the Consistency that you'll need to be successful in it number six. Don't be afraid to leave the service to discipline your children We're we all feel very shamed. You know when our children are disobedient.

We wish we had perfect children. We don't unfortunately all of it we only get We only get to have sinners in our households, and sometimes those sinners would cause us to do things that we wouldn't want to do in public because we don't want this to negatively affect our reputation or something like that. But we need to understand that disobedience is a big deal to God, and taking your children out of the service is sometimes an appropriate thing to do. Number eight, the worship service is not a playtime. My advocacy among our people is that playing in church does not teach them how to worship.

I'm not in favor of giving children a lot of things to play with in the church, particularly not rattles. No rattles, please. Matchbox cars, well, those aren't as loud. But it depends on what kind of motor the kid puts in them that's that's the only thing with cars but I just I discourage our parents from bringing any other books into the service except for the Bible. My view is I think bringing a lot of other books into the service just desensitizes the children as to what we're really doing.

We're not here to look at pictures of Dick and Jane. You know, we have a contemplation of a holy God on the table here. And we should direct everything in that direction. So I realize there's a variance of opinion across the whole world here. I'm just giving you my take on this thing.

No toys, no games. Keep the focus on God from the littlest child as much as you can to the oldest adult. Number nine, children should be and can be quiet in church. On the one hand, we should have tolerance for surface noise in church. It's the normal result of having children with us.

But if a child continues to make noise after correction, then we should recognize that for what it is. It's an issue of disobedience. And my view is that a disobedient child needs to be removed from the service until the heart of obedience is returned. You know, last fall, James McDonald, in his magazine, Family Reformation magazine, by the way, James McDonald publishes two great magazines, Home Schooling Today and Family Reformation. And he published something, an article by Dale Meador called The Beauty of the Child who sits still.

And in the article, he talks about just the importance of training children to sit still. And he says in the article, being drugged by television does not count in sitting still. Here's one thing he said. He said, the child who can sit still is under authority, practices self-control, is teachable, and is a blessing to others. And I just believe that that's true.

Why should we teach our children to sit still? Not so that they will make us look good and people will say, oh, look at how still those children are. This must be such a godly home. No, absolutely not. You can make some children do anything, okay, on the outside, so forget that.

We're not talking about making our children say, yes sir, no sir, so that everybody else in the world will think that they're okay. No, they're sinners. And we're not talking about putting on some kind of outward performance so that people will think you are godly. That's not what we're talking about at all, but what we are talking about are disciplines that go to the heart of the matter, and the heart of the matter is honor and obedience and but I thought that the statements here were true about what sitting still can be in a child. I do realize that when a child is one or two years old sitting still is a more difficult proposition.

Number 10, maintain daily worship in your home. The best place to practice this is in your home by sitting down together and reading scripture, singing, praying together, and children of all ages should be a part of this practice. Number 11, if you're really having trouble with this, I've counseled men to do this who are really having trouble, establish a 45 minute time in your house where you do what you do in the main worship service. Put on a tape if you want to. Listen to a CD or something where there's a sermon and enforce the rules that you think should be applied in the normal worship service.

And do that, and do that a few times. And you will see results. I advocate no walking around in the service, keeping your children on your lap, insisting that they stay there and are obedient to your corrections and keep them with you. It's very distracting for people to have your children running around in the worship service. Number 13, when you take your children out of the service, don't relax the standards.

I addressed that a little bit earlier. Next, fathers play a key role. You know, one of the mistakes that fathers often make is they just delegate this to their older daughters and their wife while they can concentrate and keep their focus. And I just think that's the wrong direction. You know, I've seen families play hot potato with the little child.

It looks like, you know, his child is in one hand, hot potato, go to the next, go to the next. And it's just, you know, throughout the whole service. Well, fathers, fathers are often the common denominator, passive fathers are often the common denominator for unrestrainable children. They're not taking the authority that they need to take and they're expecting their older daughters or older sons to take care of the problem. Number 15, sit in the back row while training.

That's pretty obvious. Number 16, you know, know that child raising, it's the most difficult job given to us to do. It's also perhaps one of the very most important jobs that we're ever given to do. It's such an important job that we dare not hide our children away because we're having problems with them in our worship services. We ought not follow the pattern of the world to hide our disobedience problems in nurseries and daycare centers and youth groups and things like that.

It's interesting that, you know, when you think about this in terms of youth, of teenagers, what we do in the modern church is exactly the opposite of what we should do. At a time in the teen years when children are most tested regarding the authority of their parents we put them under somebody else's authority and we and we and we we come up with this system where where it doesn't really matter how they respond to our authority during this period of time as long as they're following the youth pastor. That is just absolutely the wrong direction. Separating teenagers from their parents at a time when they need the authority of their parents the very most is absolutely the opposite wrong direction to go. So is it possible that the modern church is playing footsie with the fifth commandment?

Is it possible that our structures have eliminated a major opportunity for parents to know the hearts of their children and then to personally bring them into loving submission so that they are obedient to their parents in all things and that the Lord would be pleased with them. We all understand the trials and the tribulations that come from this practice of having your children with you in church. It really, really is difficult to do it. And yet, it is, though it's most painful, it's also most blessed because of the results that it brings in the lives of children with their parents. We are making disciples of Jesus Christ.

It's messy work to make disciples of Jesus Christ. It's not a perfect world. We don't have perfect children. We don't have perfect churches. There is rebellion and disobedience that rises up within us.

And God gives children, parents, to confront that disobedience in a loving and an effective way that runs 24 hours a day so that honor and obedience is secured in the hearts of the sons and daughters of Jesus Christ so that they can be properly prepared to honor their Heavenly Father and to follow their Father in Heaven, even though it runs cross-grain to all of their personal inclinations. That God would have disciples who would love him with all of their hearts and order themselves under his authority, that the gospel of Jesus Christ would spread throughout all the nations, that there is a God in heaven, and that man owes his obedience and his honor toward his father in heaven and Who owes his allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ who shed his blood on the cross? The handling of children in church It raises the gospel of Jesus Christ and the obedience of the heart that's required of all believers to center stage and it makes it very, very difficult. Well there are many things at stake. The success of our children is one of them.

The demonstration of the gospel of Jesus Christ is another one of them. You know, we had a new family come to our church a little while ago and it was pretty obvious that they really had no idea how to train their children for obedience and honor. This should happen. We hope this happens a lot in our experience. There was one moment in the service where one of their boys was saying very loudly, no, no, no, and this went on.

It was absolutely unbelievable. Everybody felt so bad and you know it's so important when things like that happen that these people are treated with such mercy and kindness. They're not ostracized, that they're not made to feel you know too poorly about it. Well. I called the family up That later that week the first thing out of the woman's mouth is oh, I'm so glad That an elder called me because we've just been realizing we have no idea what we're doing in raising our children.

We have no idea. We don't know what to do. Would you please come and help us? So my wife and I went over there. We had just had a glorious time with this very wonderful family.

It was a faithful family. It was a family which, you know, it was just a marriage that God had put together in a glorious way, a husband and wife who really did love the Lord Jesus Christ. But they're like almost every family in America. They have no idea how to raise their children because there are no role models out there at all. It's understandable why this would happen.

And so, Deborah and I just walked through a bunch, just a number of practical things. We opened up scripture and had given them some things that had been written and threw a couple of books at them. Oh, by the way, here are my two favorite books on this subject, Shepherding a Child's Heart by Ted Tripp and Child Raising Tips by Reb Bradley. Take those two books, It's a beautiful, it's just very biblical methodology. Two great books.

I give those away as much as I can to parents. But anyway, this family, the light went on and they began to do things in their home that they had never done before. Their boys are happier than they've ever been. They walk into church on Sunday and they have more joy, they have more love together as a family and being a part of our church. And, you know, we shouldn't be heavy-handed at all with families like this.

We should use this opportunity to come alongside them and help them. I know that this family will be different forever. I know if they had stumbled into a church that had a nursery, this issue would have been delayed for years and it may never have been confronted. And those children would have grown up with disobedience living within their hearts day after day, year after year, and they never would have been comforted by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. They never would have known the happiness of honor and the joy of obedience and the goodness that there is to order yourself under the authorities that God has put in your life.

So it's a worthy battle and I commend it to you.