Ephesians 6:1-4 • Gospel Parenting - Part 2

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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

 If you're looking in your Bibles, there at home, look at Ephesians chapter 6 verses 1 through 4 as we're talking again this day about parents and children and God's standards for being the face of Jesus to one another in the home, reminding ourselves that this is part of God's larger plan to be the face of Jesus to the world as the witness that God intends for the redemptive work of Christ that began all the way back at the beginning of the Bible with Adam and Eve is continuing in the way that we witness to the work of Christ in the ways that we relate to one another. And our family representative today is my wife Kathy again, who will be helping me by giving illustrations from our family as we continue to look at portions of Ephesians 6. And the word that I said last week was, "If you have questions about previous messages on the family or on what we're saying this day, you can write in, you can text, you can send to the website, there will be places identified on the screen beneath us here where you can do that even today. And if we don't have time for all that we might want to cover, we will actually be putting answers on the website and planning a podcast for this week to answer those questions that we're not able to get to today. But a quick rehearsal of where we have been, we said that there are not cookie cutter answers to how you parent individual children in the Bible. Instead, what the Apostle has done in Ephesians is say, "First, you need to establish relationships with the Lord and with your spouse as the fundamental building blocks of what it means to be equipped to be a godly parent for raising children God's ways." And we recognize that it's those foundation relationships that are the basis for responsibilities that will be described as well as the instructions that the Lord will be giving us in His Word. And it may seem simple, but this is actually a wonderful encouragement because all of our parents are concerned at times. The mistake that I made, the decision that I made, is it going to ruin my child because of a momentary lapse in judgment, a momentary error. And we have all the questions about when you start potty training. And do you hold back from first grade or send into first grade? Which is the best college, in state or out of state? And we look at individual decisions often as potentially ruining our children. But what the Bible is doing is saying more important than the particular problems we may be dealing with are the patterns of our lives. They are far more influential for our children. We as parents will all make mistakes.



 But the glory of the gospel is God only pardons. He's using the larger patterns of our lives, even where we have questions, even where we have mistakes, to build our children into loving Him and growing in the nurture that He intends. Now we know that we can make mistakes, and Kathy, you're going to talk about some of that. I'll let you talk about our mistakes. Well, this was mine. I remember those difficult days when I was teaching our children to drive. And one in particular, when our son Colin was driving on his learner's permit, so I was in the passenger seat. And on our way home, from a rehearsal, he pulled out of the church parking lot in front of oncoming traffic.



 And I let him have it. I scolded. I yelled, telling him how dare he put us in danger that way, making that careless decision. I let him have it.



 Years later, I was driving. I pulled out of the same church parking lot into similar oncoming traffic, poor judgment.



 I instantly flashed back to that day that I had just screeched at my son.



 So I called him, and I said, "Colin, I did this today, and it reminded me of that day, and I feel so bad, and I want you to forgive me, please." I was wrong. I overreacted. I went on and on.



 There was silence on the other end of the phone for a few moments, and then he said,



 "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.



 Praise God that our children don't remember every mistake we make in parenting." They don't. In fact, they remember some mistakes that we actually didn't make, right? And we understand that, and we trust God to forgive them as well as to forgive us. And it's our trust in the Lord that makes us move beyond the foundation relationships to the responsibilities that he actually describes in his Word and help us understand what is actually being required. And as the Apostle begins to unfold this passage, he begins to talk first about the responsibilities of a child. And we'll remind ourselves when I correct my spelling, what are the responsibilities of a child? That's in Ephesians 6, and it's actually where the Apostle begins. So let me begin there too. Ephesians 6, verse 1, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother." This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. Finally, instruction to parents, and just one verse of actual instruction to parents. "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." The third building block is the responsibilities of a child which need to be known, and those responsibilities include what to do, but also it includes attitudes, right? So just looking again at verse 1, "Children, obey your parents." There's action.



 Verse 2, "Honor your father and mother."



 It's pretty clear that the Lord is not just settling for good behavior.



 He wants not just actions to be right, but the attitude of a child's heart. The fact that attitudes as well as actions are in view is the reminder of the word of the Lord many centuries before, out of the heart, are the issues of life. And to get good behavior and to lose a child's heart is not the victory that the Lord wants in our homes. I mean, we can all tease about, you know, the child forced to sit into the car seat and who says, "I may be sitting down on the outside, but I'm standing up on the inside." And it may be kind of fun, but we recognize if those things go on forever that there's actually great damage to the heart that God is meaning to form, to get good behavior that's accompanied by belligerence or a smirk or eyes that roll or terror because of how the child is treated to get good behavior. None of those are enabling a child not only to obey parent, but to honor the parents as God intends. And knowing that, the Lord moves on from simply saying it's good in action and attitude to obey and honor, but to begin to explain why that is so. You know, these verses are so simple, but maybe that's because we need the simplicity.



 Verse 1, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right."



 Now, you think, why did the apostle write that? I mean, it just seems superfluous to say, "Because this is right that children obey."



 I think there's two reasons that the apostle may say, "This is right." One is because, of course, in an ungodly family, a child may have no discipline because there may be neglect, there may just be permissiveness. People will say, "Well, that child's cute. Why bother? It's going to be his problem down the road." And God just won't allow that to say, "No, a child obeying his parents, that's what's right." But it's also important for us as believers who make so much of the grace of God in pardon and forgiveness that in sincere, well-meaning Christian homes, at times people say, "Well, just let it go." Or even, "It's against grace to discipline." Or it's not really loving to punish a child for wrongdoing. You say, "No, actually the apostle says, this is right that a child obey."



 And we need to recognize that. Now, we're going to quickly back up and say, of course, obeying according to capacity. There are different stages of child development and we need to learn those.



 In the capability of a child, obedience is right for the sake of the child and we need that plain word, don't we, Kathy? Because we know that children vary in what they can obey. That's right. I have often said to young moms, "You know, your child is not just a short adult.



 He is a child. A child thinks and processes things differently at the different ages and stages of life and cognitive development in ways we may not anticipate, ways we may not always like, but that are age-appropriate and indicative of the stage that they are in cognitively." A few days ago, we got an Instagram post, a series of little installments from one of our sons.



 He said, "At the end of family devotions, my daughter said, "Daddy, I have an important question to ask you." And our son wrote to us, "I thought, it's happening. I am getting ready for the five-year-old sinner's prayer." We'll be on our knees in a moment.



 And then she asked her question, "Daddy, have you ever put your head in a potty?"



 Now, he also wrote, "That was the end of a heavy discussion."



 So if we don't get adult responses that we're expecting, that doesn't mean the child is being disobedient or rebellious or smart, alicky. It may well mean that that child is processing his or her world with age-appropriate understandings and responses.



 So, you actually did it. At Grace Presbyterian Church during the sermon time, you talked about putting head in a potty. Sorry. Sorry, friends. But it's because we do know that they're age-appropriate things. And we've sometimes just talked to people visually about what that means because it's sometimes counter-instinctive. I know you have seen you do this over and over again, that when children are small, what's our tendency? When everything is cute and it doesn't have consequences, we're open-handed with them, right? We're open-handed.



 There are actions and obedience and words like this. And then as they get to be older and middle school and teenage, we're clamping down.



 We're actually... It's a biblical model. The biblical model and the model that works with their development is, "Oh, guide them when they're little."



 And as they grow and become more able to understand, then you begin to open your hand, always there to support and catch and love, but allowing them to grow as is appropriate.



 But if it really is disobedience, so we're not just talking about capacity. We are saying we actually are facing the disobedience of a child, then the apostles' words begin to apply. Children are supposed to obey their parents. That is what is right. And the apostle is saying it's right because he's not only concerned for behavior, but for a child's good. And that's verse 2, "Children are instructed, honor your father and mother," and then that's actually a quotation out of the Ten Commandments. This is the first commandment with a promise, verse 3, "that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land." Now these are ancient Hebrew maxims of what happens when children learn obedience. It goes well with them. That is, they begin to experience the well-being that God intends when they are not involved in behavior that's destructive to the family or destructive to themselves. When they are learning to honor God by the way that they are honoring their parents, not just with behavior, but with hearts that are also set on honoring their parents, which is the springboard, as it were, for a heart learning to honor the Lord as well. And it's in a child's heart learning what God intends for their well-being that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. Now that is not a promise that obedient children will never get sick or even die of accidents. It's the promise that whatever is the place of God's promise eternally for that child is being secured by a heart that is set on him. God's grace is known when a child not only learns to obey, but from their heart learns to obey those and honor those who love that child. That's God's intention. And if that's not done, that's not only not right, it's not good for a child to be rebellious in behavior or in heart. We've seen when it's not good. Our favorite example is when our children were little, we took them one time to a theme park where to queue up for the rides, you know, you go through those fences that send you back and forth, back and forth as you wait your turn for the ride.



 At some point, a little boy in the family just ahead of us got tired of waiting, standing in line. So he sat on top of one of the fence rails and then balanced, braced himself by putting his feet on the rail opposite, which meant he blocked everyone behind us.



 Well, his mother recognized the problem and she would have none of that. She said, "Johnny, get down from there right now."



 And Johnny did not move a muscle. So she said, "Johnny, I mean it. Get down now."



 And Johnny did not blink.



 "Johnny, I'm not going to tell you again."



 It was plain that Johnny was not about to move.



 People began to make their way around him, underneath his legs, around the fences.



 "Johnny, I am going to count to three.



 One, two, two and a half.



 Johnny, please come down. Johnny, we're going to leave you. Johnny will go get ice cream."



 As far as we know, Johnny is still sitting there at age 37 years old, blocking everyone behind him, being frowned at by everyone around him, and that is not good.



 That's not good.



 And I want to capture your last words because we want people to think just for a moment, not of the misbehavior, but of the countenance of everyone around Johnny.



 Everyone is upset. Everyone is mad. Everyone is frowning at Johnny. I mean, it is what you would wish for your enemy, how you would wish for them to be treated. And that's why the book of Proverbs says that a parent who will not discipline his child, this is hard language, hates his child. And you say, "No, no, I love my child." I know, but you're causing by a child that does not learn to obey or honor. You're actually causing that child to face what you would wish for an enemy. And for that reason, the Lord is saying, "No, it's right and it's good that our children learn to obey." And for that reason, we begin to recognize that there are responsibilities that are spelled out rather carefully for parents in this passage. So we move next to what the Lord describes for parents in this passage, and it's simply a worldview that's in view. So the responsibilities are described, verse 2, "Child is to honor his father and mother." Verse 4, "Fathers do not provoke your children to anger." There's just a perspective, and the perspective is parents raise children.



 Parents raise children.



 They're the ones in view. They're the ones receiving an understanding of what should happen in the child, and they're the ones receiving instruction for how a child should be raised. And I know this is going to sound hard. I want to come back, but I want to make clear. What that is saying is the biblical worldview is those who have been given responsibility for the nurturing of the heart of a child eternally are parents.



 That means that parents are to be present in their children's lives.



 Parents raise kids, not daycare, not grandma, not teachers, not coaches, not youth group leaders.



 Now, are there exceptions?



 Of course. The Apostle Paul who's writing these words, at least at this time in his life, is single. He understands singleness and the grace of God that can be brought to bear upon hard family situations. Is somebody holding a stopwatch? Well, if you're out of the home this much time, then you're no longer really present for your children. The answer is no, nobody's holding a stopwatch. No one can determine for your family how many hours outside the home or how many hours of a child in child care or with grandma is suddenly making you an absent, not really present in your children's lives. Parents, nobody's got a stopwatch.



 We do recognize the Bible, as we've said previously, is actually calling for help. I mean, the body of Christ's understanding is that we are not alone in our parenting. So there is an expectation that there will be people in the church and Christian friends and the extended Christian family that will be helping to raise a child. But when it comes to priorities, who has the major responsibility for the raising of children?



 That is the parents. And to underscore that, the instruction is actually given to the spiritual head of the home. And it's for when it actually is the only instruction given to parents in the passage, is only addressed to fathers, as if to underscore, this is important, that parents are to be present. There is a pattern that is to be expected. And without a stopwatch, without trying to have rules that we can't establish in Scripture, the perspective is the pattern of Scripture is that parents have the prime authority and the prime responsibility for raising their children and are to adjust their lives accordingly. And we've seen some courageous examples of that, Kathy, where parents have said, "If I'm responsible for my child's eternity, I have to make some important choices." A number of years ago, we had married friends, a couple. One was a doctor. One is a doctor. One is a pharmacist, both highly educated and with significant incomes.



 They found they were coming home each evening too exhausted to pour into their two young children with any attention or energy or joy.



 And they determined at a certain point that they must re-examine their choices with eternal priorities. And they chose to significantly change their work schedules and their spending priorities in order to be parents to the children. It was hard.



 But when Brian had occasion to visit with these friends when he went back to the 200th anniversary of that church. I was not the pastor 200 years ago. No.



 But this historic church, he met again that couple and they're now adult children and they were beautiful in their faith.



 And we still respect that couple because we recognize they did sacrifice some income and size of home and vacations and things like that, but they were saying our priority is on our children. So again, the idea of the biblical worldview is that parents are present and children are a priority in terms of how they organize their lives. Now we have to go back and say when we were talking about marriage, they are not a greater priority than the spousal relationship. But it's not something that we just pass off. We are saying we bother for the sake of our children because children being a priority in the home is part of their being precious to God and learning how precious they are to Him for eternity. So we are told, "Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but raise them up in the nurture and admonition and the instruction and correction," depending on your translation, "of the Lord." And you get some sense of the priority when you take that fourth verse and you just put the beginning and the end together. "Fathers, bring them up in the Lord."



 Here is that spiritual headship priority saying what you're doing, make sure it's pointing your children to the Lord. And there are different family dynamics. There are different kinds of children and work routines and callings and occupations. But fathers, spiritual heads of home, raise your children in the Lord.



 And that gives us some pause maybe that this pandemic may be providing in ways that we never planned.



 So here's the reality in this new normal which may go on for a while. All of us are having opportunity to recalibrate our family activities. Now someone's just forced because we can't do all the sports and we can't do all the extra activities and we're not on the run from one another. And maybe it's time just again to say, is spiritual nurture of our children a priority in this home? And without somebody forcing it upon us, there are dynamics to examine. Are we praying with our children at meal times and bedtime?



 And for so many families, you know, with different households working different times, different children's activities, they're just going everywhere and maybe meals together are something that hasn't happened in your family for a while. Why not just take advantage of the moment and say, "We're going to be eating together. Let's practice prayer together again." And dad's here or mom is here where they might normally be at work during bedtime.



 Let's read some of those materials that Mrs. Cordes is sending out for children. Let's read it at bedtime or maybe at nap time or in the time that we have together as a family.



 It may just be that time to recalibrate. If you're watching this, it's because you're watching a streaming service. And if that's been good and wonderful for your family just to think about the things of the Lord together and maybe sing some songs together, maybe set time to re-examine as we're moving back into regular opportunities to worship in a gathering together.



 What's the priority of that for our families? As we think about not only giving them instruction but letting them see adults that they love and trust and other families who are gathering together to worship the Lord. This is a priority for the eternity of our children. And nothing's more important that our children honor their parents and learn to honor the Lord is right and it is good and it is a priority of Christian families. For that reason, finally, the Lord begins to give just solid instruction. And that instruction involves kind of the last building blocks. It's kind of the opposite of what we anticipate. We think that God will give us a rule book for raising our children. Instead He has established these building blocks of the pattern of families in order that they may be able to establish what their children should and should not do. Now the Lord is going to be realistic. He says part of the instructions are the things that children don't do. And we need to understand those things. What should children not do? Well, actually, strangely enough, the biblical instruction begins with what parents should not do. Isn't that surprising? The Lord actually begins, verse 4, by saying, "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger." Now some of the older translations use the language of do not exasperate your children. It's a very special word in the Greek that the Holy Spirit reserved in the Old Testament for an attitude of God when His children disobeyed. God grew exasperated with rebellious children.



 In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul reverses the order and he says, "Parents, do not exasperate your children. And that is do not give your children reason to think that you are being rebellious toward God." How does that happen? It happens when you provoke your children to anger by requiring of them what you yourself will not do.



 What does that look like? Well, it may be telling a child not to whine by whining at them, to tell a child not to hit by raging at them, by telling a child to honor the Lord by dropping them off at Sunday school and going off on your own way, that does not honor the Lord. This is just about not being a hypocrite. This is about not just turning over the priorities of children in the spirit to other people. It is saying that God requires of us to be consistent. I mean, that's what our children have. They have great hypocrisy antenna, don't they? Our children always do. We did when we were children. We see when our parents are not being consistent. And the Lord is simply saying, "Parents, first instruction for you if you're going to be raising children is don't be a hypocrite. Don't exasperate your children by requiring of them what you yourself will not do." After all of that, we finally get to a positive instruction of what parents themselves should do. What are they to do?



 Others do not exasperate your children, do not provoke them to anger, but do what? What's the positive? You are to, of course, bring them up, verse 4, second portion, bring them up in the discipline and correction, discipline and instruction, some of your older translations say, the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And I think you recognize there's kind of a push-pull in those words, kind of a positive and a negative. Encouragement, nurture and admonition, correction. And it's so interesting that the Apostle will not allow just one or the other, that there is this spiritual balance that's being sought to raise godly children. They need to be warned, disciplined for what is not good or right in their lives. That will hurt them. At the same time, they need to learn of a God who loves them unconditionally, who forgives and pardons and encourages the weakest, a bent reed he will not break. It's that kind of support also that we are required to give. Ultimately, what we recognize is happening as we are building this foundation, these building blocks all the way up to what we are expecting, is we're ultimately pointing a child to the Lord. We begin from the very beginning by saying, what's happening in the household is to be showing the face of Christ to a spouse and to children. And in all that we're doing, they're not cookie-cutting answers here. They're different personalities. They're different family dynamics. They're different stages of life. But ultimately what we are doing as parents is being called to spiritual discretion.



 In this moment, is it better to correct my child or actually to pardon them for Christ's sake? Are they in danger if I let it go? Are they in greater danger if I crash on every single thing? This is understanding the nature of every child, understanding the nature of a situation.



 When we were in the seminary setting once, we heard a sermon where a young pastor who had no children... Was not married. Was not married. Instructed the rest of us parents by saying, so if your child does anything wrong, it is your responsibility as a Christian parent to correct every error and we thought that is either going to kill the child or kill us.



 We make judgments as God has given us, even as adults when we treat one another. Do I really bring everything to bear when I'm loving my spouse that is negative and I relate? Or do I learn to forgive as well as deal with what must be dealt with? And it's the spiritual discretion that we had to learn too, didn't we? We did indeed.



 When one of our children was small and he was a delight and a lot of fun, but he also, we came to understand, struggled with a level of hyperactivity that both endangered him and exhausted us.



 We corrected, we disciplined, we tried everything we could think of many times every day to no avail and we ourselves struggled in our hearts with alternate waves of anger and despair.



 Actually sometimes I would crawl in bed at night and weep.



 I did it wrong again today.



 One evening after choir practice during prayer request time, I asked for prayer in this situation and one of my sopranos who was a child development expert came to me afterwards and she said, I have these questions for you, is your child highly intelligent? And I said yes. This is not just pride, this is actually he is. And she said, and when does he act the worst? Does he act worse after eating certain things?



 Yes.



 Does he act worse after disciplining him in certain ways? He does.



 And she said, sometimes the brains of highly intelligent children are hungry for stimulation and when certain foods or certain stresses begin to fire in their systems, they actually press for more stimulation.



 So these foods and your discipline may be pushing him over the edge. She said, try removing those foods and that type of discipline and see if that helps.



 And it helped. It made a huge difference.



 And we have to say it wasn't magic and it wasn't immediate. But over the course of time we got control and in the same time felt, how do we say this, in the grace of God, a certain degree of guilt. I mean we're thinking, we are college grads. Why didn't we know this? Why didn't we figure this out? Why didn't we see it happening? And the result, I think it was a result of our own upbringing, our own background. There was a certain way in which we had been disciplined. There was a certain way in which our other children responded to discipline. And we had to learn afresh and anew as God treats us so individually and then gives us foundations for looking at our children's situations. We are responsible to do that with each child in their uniqueness. And it was true of us. You're different from your siblings. I'm different from my siblings. And we began to look at our children, one or two of them. If you looked at them cross-eyed, they would break in tears. And another one or two, no matter what we did, they were just as hard-nosed as could be. And they both came out of you. How did that happen? Same parents, same household, really different individuals.



 And for those of my children who are watching, all turned out great. But they were all different. Right. And for that reason, we have to hear the Apostle.



 Children obey. This is right.



 Honor your father. This is good.



 But parents don't provoke your children to wrath. They are uniquely made by God. They have to be protected. They have to be loved. And that means not disciplining is not an option.



 Not pardoning is not an option. Unconditional love looks at a child that God has made in that child's uniqueness and brings to bear with the mind and the heart and the situations that God has brought to bear what God requires of us to point that child toward Christ. And we should be on our knees. I mean, sometimes our best prayer times, where when we were dealing with difficulties with our children, where we just said what Kevin actually prayed earlier, you know, "Lord, we just need your help." And Brandi Rose in her video, she was like, "God, I just learned to depend on you." And we were so blessed at times. Now, we promised people that we would try to get to a question or two. And we're not going to have a lot of time, so let me say again, website this week, we'll also try to do some podcasts to answer some questions. The first question that we're going to try to answer is one that came from someone whose initials are Shawn Degenhart, and he wrote, "Do you babysit?"



 And the answer is, "Not your kids." No.



 No. That's all people teasing us. But there were things that we felt were appropriate. Encouragement for parents with special needs kids. Anything you want to say to that? We know that there are special needs kids with different capacities. How would you advise?



 We did not, in our raising children, aside from the example we already talked about,



 we had kids with significant health issues growing up, but we did not have those that would fall into the category of special needs children. So I can't speak to that other than to say, find your experts who have the same priorities



 as yours in terms of... Faith. Faith.



 And... Spiritual development. ...care for children. But experts who are trained and have experience to guide you, and there are multiple resources. You don't have to have it all figured out. We didn't. But with our different children, we had...I mean, there were things we had to learn. And the experts who loved the Lord and loved us enough to be honest helped us. So you don't have to go to long. You don't have to figure it all out right now. Go to those who can help you, and that's good advice. One mother said to me, as she described the path they found themselves on when their second child was discovered, had profound hearing loss.



 She said, "Cathy, when we found the experts and the resources available to us, it was like we had been in a room by ourselves, and we opened a door, and there were all these people ready to help us." So that was...they counted it a huge blessing to understand we do not have to figure it all out ourselves. Right. And that goes another question. What about dealing with a strong-willed child? And every parent, I'm going to guess, is going to have an experience of that at some point. I will just tell you something that helped us a lot. So just we're doing right now. There was in our church at one time a panel of parents who had raised children. And we were still raising children at the time. And they acknowledged, "You're godly people. You're supposed to have all the answers." And they were just honest about some strong-willed children that they had struggled with. And one dad said to us something that made a lot of difference. He said, "Sometimes, you know, the child that you struggle with the most in their adolescent or teen years may be the child you're closest to as an adult. You've invested so much, you know. And I think at times when we struggled, we thought, you know, that is hope at the end of the tunnel. I'm not saying that would always be the case. But it does mean, again, you are not meant to go to...we learn from other parents. We learn from the body of Christ.



 And we will face children with different personalities, and we know that. Always when we do this, people ask us about spanking and people ask us about particular discipline measures. So without going through things much, we were raised in a certain generation a certain way that was highly acceptable. We know if you're an adoptive or if you are a foster care parent, you don't even have that option.



 The best articles I've seen are on the Focus on the Family website in which they say, "Should parents in this time spank their children calmly has to be an order of the day." This is not rage. This is not lashing out at people privately. This is not embarrassing a child. This is not causing a child shame as a way of disciplining. Or putting yourself in danger of being reported to authorities like spanking in the grocery store, not a good idea. Almost always a last resort. When the time outs, if the child's in danger and just must hear, if the reasoning doesn't work, so often we've seen parents try to reason with a three-year-old and we're saying, "You know what? That's not going to work.



 That child is too young for you to have the speech to."



 At the same time, we're not going to try to solve all those troubles. Go to people you trust.



 Go to the Focus on the Family website. Look up the subject and make some discretion. But if you are raging at your children, that is not God's way. I think the best thing that we can say to everyone that we've got ten questions here, some of them are multiple paragraphs and we cannot answer. We'll try to do better during the week. Best advice for the moment, get help. If it's an emergency, call 211, not 911, okay? If that's not that type of emergency, if you need shelter, if you need counseling, if you need an abuse hotline, Peoria is wonderful to have a central telephone number where you can call to get some help. So clearly at our telephone number as a church, you can get to a pastor. You can do that even today. You can get to a pastor. Just follow the phone tree and get to the pastor. But if it's something that you actually need, social services help, you need to get out of a harmful situation, dial 211. Great resources in this area to help. Most we want to say, regardless of what other people are saying to you, your goal is to be the face of Christ to another, to spouse, to your child so that they know Christ. Heavenly Father, we have dealt with things very, very quickly and life is long.



 The greatest encouragement you have given us this day is the reminder that even people who make terrible mistakes have a wonderful Lord. You will pardon us and equip us for the children you give us. So guide us well that we might be the face of Jesus to those that we most love, that the witness to the world might be the grace of our Lord Jesus. We pray in His name. Amen.