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00:00:00 Speaker: Paul and I this morning want to speak of five simple and basic areas of family living. Functions of a family which are endangered by our culture, and because of which danger the Holy Spirit is now moving on the church to restore in fullness within his body that the body of Christ might be a counterculture, that the body of Christ might be again the followers of the way who say to the world, not that way, but this is the way. Come and join us. Now the first area. Is the most ticklish to speak of in a group, and I'm glad that we're a little more advanced these days and can talk about things, because the first area that God commanded Recommended for the family, and that which creates a family is the area of procreation. The very first commandment given to mankind. Look at Genesis one and look at the twenty seventh verse following Genesis one twenty seventh verse following. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him male and female created he them. And God blessed them. And God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. The very first command given to mankind was to fill the earth. And some people have said, unfortunately, that's the only one we have fulfilled. And now we do have problems with overpopulation. Nevertheless, the command to us still is to fill the earth. Let God and the church and the world wrestle with the problems of feeding and so forth. The command yet remains to fill the earth, and in that area of sex is where one of the greatest attacks upon the church is coming today, and it is one of the areas most needful to be restored. And therefore, would you look with me now at Ephesians five twenty one, following again. In this instance I'm reading from the Revised Standard Version. We'll start with the twenty fifth verse. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Even so, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Now will you turn with me to first Corinthians seven and while you're turning to first Corinthians seven, let me say that one of the false statements going around in some quarters is that Saint Paul was an old bachelor who didn't understand or love women or want people to be married, and they didn't read Ephesians five because is anything more beautiful than to say that he who loves his wife loves himself. Let a husband love his wife as his own body. That's beautiful. Beautiful. First Corinthians seven. Third verse following. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does. You know, they are saying that Saint Paul was an old male chauvinist and that he wanted women dominated. Do you know they don't read the Word of God in first? In Ephesians five twenty one he said, be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. And in that eastern culture, no man, not even the Lord himself, yet had said to men, be subject to your wife. That was women's lib in the ultimate. For that day. And here he says, the husband, the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does. And the wife? The husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does. And no one had ever said that a wife, a woman, ruled over any part of a man before. So never let the women's libbers or anybody else tell you that the Bible is out of date. Or Saint Paul was an old fuddy duddy who didn't understand women. No one yet has ever expressed anything so beautiful as Saint Paul has about how men and women should love one another. Can you say me an amen? Now I would share with you a sad thing in the world. It is men who are copping out. And perhaps it was so even in the day of the Bible, because Saint Paul had to write. See to it that the husband give to his wife her conjugal rights. And we have been taught in our culture that the man is the aggressor, and all he's after is the body, and that the woman is being chased all the time. I would share with you that in counseling. For one man who complains that his wife will not give him enough sex. Fifty women complain to me that the husband will not give them enough sex. Is that news to you? That's what's happening in the world today. And what is happening is the destruction of the concept of sex. I wish I had time to go into the whole thing about the body and the spirit. Let me just say in brief that in the Christian faith, the spirit is not like water in a glass. It is not like fruit in a canning jar. And the jar is the body and that death. God takes the spirit out to use it somewhere else. That is not it. It is incarnation. The word becomes flesh. And so the spirit becomes the body. We are not spirit in a body. Anybody. We are spiritual bodies. We are in every cell of our body, spiritual. The spirit flows through everything we are and do. You cannot do an act which is simply and only physical because you are a spiritual being. You cannot do an act which is only and simply spiritual because you are a spiritual physical being in one. Jesus Christ did not become half man, half God. He became fully God and fully man in one. And that is what you and I are, is spiritual beings who are fully spiritual, fully human in one. And this means that the root meaning of sex is that it is not simply a bodily function, but it is the meeting of two Spiritual beings. Spirit to spirit. Heart to heart. Mind to mind. Memory to memory. Fondness to fondness. Gratitude to gratitude. Hope to hope. Yearning to yearning. Emotion to emotion. Being to being. Body to body. It is a meeting and a holy union of two beings, and the theory that we could jump into bed with anybody and it's only a bodily thing is horrendous in the sight of a Christian. God has so created it that only one woman can tell one man who he is, and only one man can tell one woman who she is in sexual union. Adam knew Eve and she conceived. That was a meeting. A union of two whole beings. What is happening today is that faith and body are being split apart in the world, so that people think that to do a sexual thing is a body thing only, and that is horrendous in the sight of a Christian. Now, the reason that God gave one of the reasons he gave the command, thou shalt not commit fornication and thou shalt not commit adultery, is that he wants to unite the two spirits, the two spiritual bodies, as one, and it is the very reason for the marriage ceremony. If you take two violins, you musicians, if you take two violins and tune them apart from each other and bring them together and play them, you have cacophony. You do not have beautiful music. They must be tuned to each other. How many have gone to a symphony? And you have heard them back behind the curtain, going two toot, horn, horn, blam blam! And so on. what they are doing is tuning you. I used to think, why didn't they tune their instruments at home? Why subject us to this? But the reason is that the instruments must be tuned to each other. And so, in the marriage ceremony, in the function of the priest under the anointing of the sacrament of marriage, is to unite those two spirits as one until they are united as one. They have no right to be telling each other in the fullness who they are. And I want to plead with the young people here that you do not give yourselves to anyone until you are married. The most beautiful gift, one of the most beautiful, that God has given to Paula and me is that we have never known anyone else than each other. And that to us is precious. Now, if there has to be a divorce or a death, God can find another one and tune that one. God says in Leviticus. The reason that the couple who have committed adultery should be stoned is that they have created confusion in Israel because the wrong man is telling the wrong woman who she is as a counselor. As I work all day among people, I feel called out. I'm pouring out of my humanity into them. And at the end of the day, I just feel totally caught out. I'm even lost from who I am. I remember Agnes Sanford one time wrote to me from New Zealand and she said, help, I'm eighty ministers. And so when I get caught out like that. I come to Paula and she hugs me and I can feel the cells of her body. It happens that I'm given a more mystical nature. Maybe everybody else couldn't do this, but this is to let you know what happens. Have you ever seen iron filings? Uh, magnetized. Have you ever looked in a microscope and you've looked at magnetized molecules? How they're lined out. I can actually, physically and spiritually feel the cells of my body lining out when she hugs me. I am being straightened out and told who I am again, and it's wonderful that we hug each other here. And that's an agape kind of love. And it's beautiful. But in the depth of man, woman, wife, husband, love, only Paula can hug me that way and tell me who I am. If you have already given yourself Elf to some person. You should not have. Go to the priest, get an absolution, and let it be understood that the priest in that absolution is also separating your spirits from each other. Saint Paul said, when you do, you not know that when you lie with a woman, you become one with her. And so whenever there is that kind of union and it is not confessed and is not forgiven, your spirit is confused and your spirit is confused because another being is identified with you. That ought not to be. If you receive the Holy Spirit and you don't like to make love with your mate, you didn't get the Holy Spirit. You got the wrong one. If you receive the Holy Spirit and you don't like to hug and kiss anymore because you become holy, you didn't get the Holy Spirit. If you got the Holy Spirit, It. You want to hug up and love up with your your wife or your husband more. And that's one of the signs of the presence of the Holy Spirit. And so let me say to you that in all of your life together, man and wife, there needs to be a sharing and talking that leads to culmination in the marriage bed. There are three legs to the milking stool of marriage. I used to milk the cow, and I can tell you that if one of the legs goes down, the other two are going. And I've been under the cow and under the milk more times, because one leg went. And the three legs are prayer, communication and sex. If one of those three legs go, the other two are soon to follow. All three must be kept up. Prayer, communication and sex. And it ought to be that in your marriage bed you ought to be enjoying one another more than when you first married. And if you aren't exclaiming, oh, it's so holy. It's so clean, it's so wholesome, it's so good. You've missed the glory. And you need to hear this. And you need to get some good books. And one good book I would recommend is by Herbert Miles entitled Sexual Happiness and Marriage A Baptist Christian, and he writes a very good book, Sexual Happiness and Marriage. It is a union of two beings which refreshes and completes and identifies who you are. Now the second area I want to talk about is blessing. One of the things lost from fathers today is the gift and position they have to bless. And it's important that you understand your position, fathers as those supremely who have the right and function of blessing. Turn to Genesis twelve. We'll not read them, but you also could find them in Genesis fifteen and seventeen. Now the Lord had said unto Abraham, get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee, and I will make of thee a great nation. And I will bless thee, and make thy name great. And thou shalt be a blessing, and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee. And in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. the function. Primary function of a father is to bless, to bless his children. How many of you saw Fiddler on the roof? And do you remember what the the girls came for? The first one came and wanted the blessing, and the father gave the blessing, and the second one came and wanted permission. And the father said, I'll give you permission. And you didn't ask for my blessing, but I'll give it anyway. And the third one came and was marrying a foreigner, and it broke the father's heart that he could not bless that marriage. Do you remember what Jacob and Esau fought for? Do you remember the blessing of the father? Without the blessing of the father, Esau was undone. It was ultimately important to have the blessing of the father. I remember I was visiting in the home of a Christian psychiatrist. And if you want to get a good speaker sometime, try Lee Griffin. He's a Christian Holy Spirit psychiatrist, and I was at his house at night, and it came bedtime. And the two girls and the boy came and knelt in front of him, and he put his hands on them and prayed a blessing prayer over them. And when he did that, I got the fallout. The Holy Spirit was coming down over me and anointing me, and everything in me was saying, oh boy, that's right. Hallelujah. Oh. Uh oh, you know. And ever since then, we don't do it in the evening because our schedule is too shattered. And sometimes we go to bed at different hours. But in the morning, if I'm not with it, Paula's delegated by me, and she blesses the children before they go out the door. But if I'm there, I bless and we put our hands on our children and we pray a blessing prayer over them before they go out the door to school. Our son Lauren calls up, well, he just graduated from seminary, but he would call up from seminary. Wanting our blessing. He would say, I have a tough task. Pray for me, bless me. Before he married his wife, he asked our blessing on the marriage. And that, by the way, is one of the things we've lost out of our culture that ought to be restored. How many of you older ones had to get the father's blessing before you could marry the daughter? Huh? You had to go and ask. Some of them aren't old. Hallelujah. That ought to be restored. It's important. And what it means is this. Let me see if I can explain it. In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Suppose we take three panes of glass, and the light comes down through the three planes. The top plane is the father. Second plane, the mother. Third plane the children. If the father's pane of glass is clean, then you can see that the light coming down to the wife and the children is clean. But if the father's pane is dirty, then it's going to come into the child, the wife and the children. And this is why, when Achan stole the devoted things, they didn't just stone him to death. They stoned his wife and children because the whole family had become polluted by the father's sin. Before we were converted, Lauren was already seven. And before the Lord got into the depths of our heart, he was nine and he was into gangs downtown. He was into pornography, and he was into stealing. Then the Lord got to us. We were morally righteous on the surface, but our heart was not clean. And he got to us in the depths of the heart. And Lauren's behavior changed overnight. If you want to know how to help your children, don't work on the children, work on you. If you want to know how to help your children, you get before the Lord in repentance because the cleaner your vessel, the more beauty comes to the children. Do you want to see this one place in the scriptures? This will answer the question about women who say what my husband isn't with the Lord. Saint Paul said the unbelieving partner is consecrated through the believing partner. Now listen to the next word. Else were your children unclean? But as it is, they are holy. So if one partner doesn't believe and the other one does, God consecrates and the children are holy anyway. But how much better if both are? And fathers inside of this blessing is also protection, and you need to be praying for protection and blessing on your children and every endeavor they do. There is nothing more important because you direct the flow of God's light and love. God observes protocol and he comes to the father and pours the light down to the children through the father. And that is your function to bless and let no one ever take that powerful blessing from you and cause you not to do it. Bless your children every day. Time to speak first of all, about instruction of children and then discipline of children. And first of all, from the Word of God concerning teaching the children. From Deuteronomy six and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shall talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down and when thou risest up. Now what's the antecedent for that? The commandment of the Lord, that thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. We're to teach that diligently to our children from Proverbs. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he'll not depart from it. Now he may depart from it in the meantime. And a lot of us have teenagers that we're sure have departed from it. But we need to hold on to that picture of the Lord having those children, because we have entrusted him them into his hands. And the Lord is altogether steadfast and trustworthy. And when they are old, they will not depart from it. We've seen our children do some straying, but the first three have very much come to the Lord. And that gives us courage to know that should the second three stray, they will come back to the Lord, because those seeds have been planted. And there in the Lord's keeping. Arise, cry out in the night. In the beginning of the watches. Pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord. Lift up thy hands toward him. For the life of thy young children that faint for hunger in the top of every street. Our children need us to teach them. Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord. That's from Ephesians six, from Colossians the third chapter. Fathers provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. Now it was in the biblical culture for the parents to teach diligently the children. They would actually go to bed with the children and instruct the children, as the children were going to sleep at night. When the children were very small, it was the responsibility of the mother until they were weaned. They might be weaned maybe two or three years physically, but they were not considered completely weaned until they could say their prayers, until they could recite their scriptures. Then, at about age six, they would be given into the hands of the father for instruction. And again, the father would teach them as the children would go to bed. And we read in the Scripture where the man comes to the door and he says, give me three loaves of bread. And the man responds, and he says, I can't, for the door is shut, and I'm in bed with the children. This was a literal thing. The father would instruct diligently his children in the way of the Lord. When they became perhaps twelve, then the grandfathers took over that diligent instruction. Now that continued for quite a little while, and then I think we began just a chain reaction of cop out, because the father ceased to be the ones who instructed the children and they said, let mama do it. When fathers began to be so busy away from the home and their jobs were no longer right in the home, then let mama do it. And mama needed help. And we began Sunday schools. The Sunday schools, in the beginning were supposed to support the instruction that was going on at home. But again, another link in that great cop out. We let the Sunday schools do it all and we ceased to instruct at home. And then the Sunday schools, because we were out of order, the Sunday schools became less and less effective to the point now where a lot of churches are saying, let's abandon our Sunday schools, let's have church in the evening, and let's encourage our families to instruct the children in the morning. And I don't really think that that is a solution. Maybe it's working in some places, but I think the only solution is to go back and activate the fathers to do the job that the Lord gave them to do. And let the mothers cooperate with that diligent instruction of the children. I think sometimes we tend to underestimate what a small child can learn. We have a three year old granddaughter and she has received some instruction. First of all, she converted her father because he was not a praying man. And she began to insist that daddy say the prayer at the dinner table. And what could daddy do? Angela would not eat until daddy had blessed her food. And then she began to insist that he say a prayer for her before she went to bed at night. For some reason, mama just wasn't enough. Daddy had to do it. And so Ron responded very fumblingly. But that didn't make any difference if he just said, Lord bless Angela. That was enough for Angela. And, you know, we think that we have to do things so. Right. We have to be so eloquent in our prayers. Not so. If we just call on the name of the Lord, that's enough. And the Lord takes over. So fathers don't need to feel inadequate to the task. If you just stand there before the Lord and say, help, you know the Lord hears that and he honors that kind of a prayer. Well, Angela had a little kitty. And this is just to say that children have a logic going, and they are very, very teachable because her little kitty died and she was just brokenhearted about it. And she went to her parents and, and she said, you know, she just expressed how torn up she was. And they comforted her by saying, well, it's alright, Angela, because God is taking care of your kitty. Your kitty is with Jesus. And Angela looked at them puzzled look on her face and she said, That my kid is with Jesus. Is Jesus in my heart? And they said, well, yes, of course he's in your heart. And she says, well then where's my kitty? So. I think in some of our churches, we're becoming more aware of the kind of image that we're giving to our children, the unconscious things that we're instructing. Um, because we teach them more by who we are than by what we say. And for so many years, it seemed like it was the little old ladies in the church, or some of the young mothers who instructed in the Sunday school. And I'm really glad to see that even in the nursery departments in some of our churches, the men are going in and acting as babysitters. So from the very beginning, the child begins to associate the nurture and the care of the father, the Father God through the church being accomplished by a mother and a father, and the father's oftentimes taking the lead there. I think this business of being an example and teaching children by who we are, it's so very important. And those of you who are grandparents, I think sometimes you think when your own children are raised, your responsibility is gone in the church. It doesn't make too much difference, you know? But the little child coming in the front door of a church, uh, being noisy as he just naturally is a little, you know, you sit on a pew and your legs are too short and you kind of shuffle your feet around trying to get comfortable. If Grandma and Grandpa, because they're having trouble hearing, you know, they're really trying to listen intently and they're disturbed by the movements of the child If they turn around and look disdainfully and show that they are bothered. It teaches the child that that child is not welcome in the house of God, that they're out of place, that there's something wrong with them, that they cannot be themselves in the house of God. But if there's a smiling congregation greeting that child with open arms at the door from the very beginning, it begins to teach the child that the Father God's arms are open, and that he may be accepted and embraced and cherished and nurtured just as he is. And this will set the pattern for his life, and make it much easier for him to experience a real conversion to the Lord, to experience and embrace a real infilling of the Holy Spirit later. What the child sees the parents do speak so very loudly. We can talk to our children about the necessity of respecting the law. And yet you can bet our kids hear very loudly or notice very, very keenly if we are driving too fast, if we are exceeding the speed limit, if we are coming to abrupt stops, if we should be stopped by a policeman and we mutter and put that policeman down for having done his job and show our disrespect of him. That is what speaks to the child about respecting the law. We can undercut our own teaching by our example, or we can validate that teaching by our example. Now, in regard to discipline of children, there's an awful lot said about. discipline in the Bible, and very quickly from Proverbs thirteen he that spareth his rod hateth his son, but he that loveth, he chasteneth him betimes. From Proverbs nineteen chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying. From Proverbs twenty two, foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him. And Proverbs twenty three withhold not correction from the child. For if thou beat him with the rod, he shall not die. Now one thing that our culture has tended to destroy is this courage to spank the child when he needs it. There is a very real working, valid reason for spanking a child, and that is that before the child's intellect and his ability to reason is fully developed, so that you could sit down and really, you know, call him to account. Call him, call all that rambunctious, rampaging energy inside of him to a halt. He needs something that he can really relate to. A child doesn't know where his stopping place is, and we cannot let that be a vague kind of line for him. It needs to be clear. And so when we spank the child, it simply brings all of these energies to a focal point that he can understand in a bit of pain. When we come across to the child just simply with a sweet reasonableness. The child who relates mostly out of his feelings, out of his sensitivities rather than his mind. We'll hear those sweet words coming across to him, but he will feel undercurrent, our anger, our frustration with him, our disappointment, our displeasure. And those two currents will be in conflict. And it leaves the child feeling insecure, not knowing how to relate, not knowing how to respond. But that little bit of pain makes it clean. And it stops him and he can relax. Now, just discipline alone can be very damaging. But when you come along with a hug, the child knows the physical feel of your embrace. And he knows that you love him. Because again, He feels that physical touch. Then that coupled with the discipline, will build a structure for him. He'll know when to stop. Older children though, you begin to deal with them more in terms of reason and conversation and different kinds of punishment. You cease to spank the child. Still, they need to know where that stopping place is. I taught school for a while, and I can remember a seventh grade class that had a lot of really rambunctious boys in it. We were trying to review for final exams, and these boys were just not about to be quiet and be attentive to what we were doing. And so I said, all right, here is your line if you step over this line. And I described what that line was, if you if you do this, if you say this, you know, if your attention is not with us, then you will be out of the class. You may come and take the test, but you may not experience the benefit of the review. There were three boys who did not honor that, and so Unemotionally, I just said there is the door. Well, I hadn't really meant to send them home. I just wanted them to leave the room. But the principal caught them in the hall and he sent them home. So I had boys who were very, very angry with me. I had parents coming, very much disturbed, and I just simply kept saying, I drew the line. They knew what the conditions were. They stepped over that. And so they're paying the penalty. Well, they may have been angry with me right at the moment, but just about a year later, I was at an evening function at the school. I was sitting in the faculty lounge with the door open and one of those boys who had been so upset with Mrs. Sanford came in and just almost snuggled up to me and he says, boy, we sure gave you a bad time last year, didn't we, Mrs. Sanford? Sure am sorry about that. So it pays off. It gave them a sense of security. I cared enough to draw the line, and I think we were too afraid to draw that line for our teenagers for fear of invoking their displeasure, not trusting that if we have planted seeds of love and affection, that that will the Lord will honor that, and we'll receive the blessings and the benefit from that. One final point, and that is that in counseling we find that it is very easy to to deal in terms of healing with people who have received too much discipline because we can handle that in terms of forgiveness, leading them into a forgiveness of the parent who over disciplined, but the parent who left the child hanging out here in the air somewhere with no structure, with no lines drawn because they did not dare to discipline that child, just does not have the structures built inside so that he can exercise a self-discipline. And it's just starting from scratch. It takes a long time to build those structures into the child later in life. So let's pay attention to the word of the Lord. Let us instruct and teach our children discipline diligently, and let us dare to discipline in love and trust that the Lord will hold it all together and nourish it, and bring the child up in the nurture and admonition of His Holy Spirit. The final area of which we would speak is destiny. It is through the fathers particularly, but also through the mothers, but most through the fathers, that destiny comes. A son needs to know who he is and what he's for, and he gains that sense of who he is and what he's for by watching his father and the father. If he is given to the Lord and his life is outpoured in service to others is saying unto His son, this is the destiny for which you were created to be a servant, to give yourself to others. But if the father is totally self centered and himself plants himself in front of the TV, never serves other people and only brings home the bacon, he is saying to his child, this is all you are to. It is through the father that a son gets a sense of his purpose in life. And we learn by watching, and we learn by watching in every area. In terms of destiny, because I saw my gentle father being very kind with my mother, never raising a hand against my mother, always giving affection to my mother that became my destiny because I saw my father as a non-smoker, that became easy for me not to smoke. We give the destiny to the children by who we are, and I love that advertisement, which is now on about alcohol. You know, you've seen that one on the TV about the father who's drinking, and now the son is drinking and his son watches. We give the children the destiny. Now, it's very important that that be done. Our son Lauren became a minister is now going to his first charge. Our son Mark has a definite sense of calling, and he's praying for the Lord to reveal how he is to serve mankind. And that came through watching the parents. You give your children destiny. That's crucial. Now, the final point is this. Abraham gave destiny to his son, Isaac. But when Isaac became old enough, God said to Abraham, take Isaac and sacrifice him. The important lesson here is the release. We must release our children to their destiny, not trap them in what we think they should do. They learn by example. We are bows from which the arrow, the child, is shot forth, and it is not ours to captivate them in our destiny. Rather that we serve in such a way that they find their destiny. And there is a necessity for every mother and father to learn the lesson of Abraham and Isaac, to learn the lesson of the eagle for the mother eagle. I tell this story. I told it to the group of a couple of nights ago. The mother eagle, when the eaglet is ready, takes the eaglet on her back, flies out, and then flies out from under him and he has to fly. If he doesn't, she catches him, takes him back to the nest. A week later, puts him on again, flies out, flies out from under him. He has to fly. If he doesn't fly, she catches him again, takes him back to the nest. A week later, she starts tearing the nest apart. And I want to say to you, be as Abraham you men, and put your Isaac on the altar and release him to God. To your women. Be as the mother eaglet, a mother eagle with her eaglets. Tear up your nest. Kick your children out. Don't think you're being kind to them by holding them in. There is one letter's difference between mother and mother. And so release those children to the world. And here in the Scripture for this, you remember when the prophecy was given to Mary, and the sword shall pierce through your own heart as well. Mary had to let her son go to the cross and not hold him back from his destiny. Can you let your children go like the father of the prodigal and let them fall and let them have their mistakes, that they might come back wiser. Let your children go to their destiny. You give them their destiny by your example. Let them rebel against it and fall and come back. You still draw the line. But emotionally you let go. Let us bow in prayer. Father God, we thank you that you have sent the son, and through the son the spirit that we might be called again unto the word. Lay up the word in our hearts, that we might not sin against thee. Lay up the word in our hearts that we might know how, as fathers, to nurture and raise the children. Lord, open the word to us. Make us a people of the word. Lord, I pray for everyone here that all of the stirrings that you have accomplished in our hearts, all the things that have been heard and are spinning around in our heads and doing things inside of us, might be committed into your hands. Now that some thoughts, some feelings might come to rest, and that we might not work on ourselves and work on our families and work on our churches, but that we might trust you and allow Your Holy Spirit to call up that area. That idea that we need to give our attention to at a particular time, that we might quietly trustfully restfully grow in your grace and in your understanding and in your stature. Therefore, all that we have learned this weekend we lay again on your altar and release so that whatever of it you would bring into fruition in our life, it may be done by the Holy Spirit and not by our striving. Therefore we rest in you, Lord, and thank you that you are the father and that we are your servants. I pray, oh Lord, a blessing upon this congregation. I pray a blessing, oh Lord, upon this people, that where they go, the word of the Lord may gird them, that where they go the Holy Spirit may quicken them, that where they go they may be touched with affection. Praise you Lord. Amen. This is the end of the recording. Please advance the tape to the end of the track.