Session 2

But the first thing we need to address when we talk about God's purpose, more specifically than just loving God, loving neighbors, is authority.

You know, that One of the primary things that God wants us to do within our family with our children is he wants us to establish authority.

If you go back to Ephesians 6 that Martin read, that we are to instruct them in the Lord.

And so one of the things that comes to be a big part of that is our authority and ultimately God's authority.

Basically, what I've seen and what I've experienced, what people have told me is absolutely true.

Every baby exits the womb with a heart inclination towards sin.

Basically, they come out and in their heart, they want to run their own lives and they want to run yours too.

You see that very, very early on.

They want to run the ship.

That means that they need to be children.

They need to be people who are under authority.

We need to teach that to them.

They don't automatically learn that.

We need to structure that into the way we interact with them, the way we train them, the things that we're doing.

So again, Ephesians 6 tells us that we are to do those things in the Lord.

Our parenting... must be done in the Lord, again, kind of God's way.

And that means that to a large degree, you know, our relationship, our parenting isn't being buddy buddies with our children.

I think a lot of parents take that approach.

Sometimes it's one parent that takes that approach and that causes some stuff to happen.

It means that our parenting shouldn't, our families shouldn't be democracies.

You know, there's a lot of families that vote on everything.

Those are absolutely worthless.

Matter of fact, they're worse than worthless.

They actually train our kids to believe things that aren't true about the family.

Families aren't democracies where everyone gets the same vote and whatever votes win.