Gloria Dei Lutheran Church | Urbandale, Iowa

Parent's Priorities: Unchanging Principles of Parenting

Pastor Meyer’s Sermon

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our heavenly Father and from our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus, our Christ.

When I was about 18 years old, my stepdad, who was a pilot for TWA, decided that he wanted to learn how to fly L10-11's. He wanted to be able to fly internationally. And so he took his training classes in St. Louis and my brother and I and some of my friends had an opportunity to go to the training facility to hang out in a flight simulator. As we got into the cockpit and we sat down, I decided my brother could take the pilot seat even though I’m the oldest and we looked out onto the horizon and, now mind you, this is 1986, but the runway of JFK Airport was so detailed and you could see birds flying and everything. It was really awesome. And so we took off and we got up into the air and we were flying around and we decided, “What would happen if you would try to flip an L10-11?” And so my brother decided to try to flip. Well, the problem was, as the wing touched the ground, it actually wiped out the computer and the programmer had to spend the rest of the night reprogramming to get ready for the next day. But the reason why we touched the ground was because we weren’t paying attention to the instruments. You see, we were only 15 feet above the ground.

Now pilots will tell you that the instruments are the most important part of flying. When you are in poor weather, being able to depend on the instruments will help you fly. In fact, you can land a plane just with the instruments and not even look out the window.

As we continue our sermon series, Parents’ Priority, we remember from last week that God has encouraged us to transfer the dependence that our children have on us to help them to transfer it over to God as their heavenly Father. And now we look, this week, at some instruments that God gives us to help us to navigate, to help us to pilot through parenting. And, in fact, these instruments are so important that I would call them unchanging principles. Because not only do these instruments help us in building our relationship with our kids but, hear me now, these will also help you build relationships with other people in your life that does not change whatsoever.

Now we pick it up in Mark 10, our second reading for today, and I want to set it up a little bit because in Mark 10, it’s really the discipleship chapter. Jesus is giving instructions on discipleship. He’s talking about if you are going to be a follower of Jesus, what does it mean for you when you have divorce in your life? What does it mean for you to have wealth and how do you handle wealth as you are a disciple? What about humility? If you are to follow Jesus, what does humility mean in your life? And smack dab in the middle of this discipleship chapter is this little story. “People were bringing little children to Jesus to have Him touch them but the disciples rebuked them and when Jesus saw this, He was indignant and He said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth. Anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’ And He took the children in His arms. He put His hands on them and blessed them.” You see, in this little story about Jesus encountering children, we see three instruments that God gives us to use as we pilot, as we navigate in such a way as to have great relationships with our children and relationships with others around us.

Now when you are flying a plane, the most important instrument to rely on is the elevator and the aeron. Now the aeron is that instrument that you feel when you are kind of rotating, when you’re kind of rolling back and forth. It allows you to be able to turn left and it allows you to turn right. And the elevator controls your altitude. It allows you to either go down or to go up. But the most important aspect of using these instruments is that you need to be able to have the right touch. You need to be able to have appropriate touch when using these instruments. Because if you don’t have the right touch, you’ll jerkily go off to the left or you’ll jerkily go off to the right or you’ll go down or go up. You need to have the right touch so you can smoothly move back and forth and up and down.

And we see as the first important instrument Jesus shows us is right or appropriate touch. It’s that loving, appropriate touch that communicates that rich sense of unconditional love, that rich sense of acceptance. We see it right at the beginning in Verse 13. It says here, “People were bringing little children to Jesus to have Him touch them.” Now the question is why were they so intent on having children come and be touched by Jesus? Some of you may be saying, “So He touched them, what’s the big deal?” In reality, His touch was very likely incredibly different than any other kind of touch. Now how do we know that? Well, we get a clue in the Greek word that’s used for touch because that particular word means to attach oneself to another person. It doesn’t just mean to touch. It doesn’t just mean to embrace. It means to attach oneself to another person.
And so it gives this vivid picture of Jesus probably sitting on a rock and He’s seeing the kids coming towards Him and He says, “Bring it on,” and they all come over and He hugs them and He cuddles with them and it’s a very affectionate kind of moment. It’s very, very relational. Now why is this important? Well, it’s important for us to keep in mind because I came across this study that was done in the 13th Century, the holy Roman emperor, Frederick the II, tried this experiment. He wanted to know what kind of language would children come up with if they were not spoken to, if they were not taught the language of the people. He wanted to know what kind of language would they come up on their own. And so what he did was he had 50 babies brought into his laboratory, which was really an island, and he had these women come in to take care of these babies but they were only allowed to take care of the babies if they would change their diapers, if they would make sure they were fed, make sure they were taken care of but they only could do this without showing emotion, without showing any kind of paying attention. There was no goo-goo, ga-ga and ooh-la-la. No, there wasn’t any kind of attention or even speaking to these children in the hopes they could find out what kind of language they would come up with on their own.

Well, the experiment was unsuccessful because, within a year, all 50 of the children had died. Now when you look at that, the reason why was not because of physical nourishment because they were being fed and they were being taken care of. Their diapers were being changed and those kind of things. The reason why was because they were lacking the emotional and relational nourishment. You see, they didn’t have the touch that was so important to them. And when we see Jesus in the gospels, there’s touching all over the place. Jesus reached out His hands and He touched a man and He was healed of leprosy. Jesus touched Peter’s mother-in-law and her fever left her. Jesus touched the ear of the man who had it cut off by Peter and it was healed. In fact, 20 times is the word touch used with Jesus in the gospels and each time, there was a healing that occurred. There’s a power in the touch and in His loving, appropriate touch. And He has touched each and every one of us in our lives when He reached out His hands and He touched the wood so His hands could be nailed. And it was through that nailing, through that touching, He was able to have us be healed, for us to be healed of our wrongdoing, to be healed of our guilt, for those things we have done that have damaged us on the inside, our relationships trouble that we have with members of our family or friends or God the Father. But He has healed them.

And because He has touched us, we can use these same words that are written in 1 John 1, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the word of life.” You see, Jesus’ touch gives us life. And so we proclaim that life by those who we touch.

Now I came across some research about parents and children and I found out that girls, during their pre-teen years, their need for loving and appropriate touch increases. And research also stated that girls are often touched in loving and appropriate ways five times more as boys are but the boys need the same amount of touching. I also found that as a person gets older, especially in later life, that the need for touch increases. God has given us that tool, that instrument as we pilot, as we navigate through parenting and if you look in your life and you’ve seen that you’ve lost that touch, find some ways to get the touch back into your relationships.

Now as the pilot is flying the plane, he or she also has a fuel indicator instrument available to them so the pilot knows how much time they have to navigate. And as we think about piloting our way through parenting and building relationships, we see from Jesus’ example that God has given us a second instrument that we can fly by and that one is time, abundant time. In fact, someone answered the question, “How do kids spell love?” they answered it by saying that kids spell love T-I-M-E, abundant time.

Now we remember again what Jesus does in Verse 13, people are bringing little children to Jesus to have Him touch them but the disciples did what? They rebuked them. In other words, they were saying probably, “He’s too busy. He has too many other things to do. He has people to raise to life. He has blind people that He needs to heal. He doesn’t have time for children.” But Jesus was not happy about this when He found out about it. In fact, Verse 14 goes on to say, “When Jesus saw this, He was indignant.” Now the Greek word for indignant means that it was much more extremely angry, that He was really, really upset. In fact, the word indignant is kind of a watered down version of what this word means, that He was very upset. In other words, He was saying, “No, no, no, no. No, let them come to me. Bring them on. Let the children come to me. Do not forbid them.”

Now let me tell you right now, there’s no valid excuse for us not to spend time with our children. And I’m just as guilty as anyone here. We find ourselves saying, “I just don’t have time.” I want to caution you about this trap that many of us find ourselves falling into. Sometimes we find ourselves saying, “You know, I want to spend time with the kids but I need to be able to get some things done first. First, I need to be able to get my degree. I need to be able to make more money in a way that I would be able to be more secure in spending more time with my kids. Or maybe I just need to work a little harder so I can get that promotion and then the holidays are coming and I can spend more time with my children then.” Let me tell you right now that if you don’t spend time, if you don’t make that decision to spend time with the kids, you probably will not likely do it. Because we have time for what we choose to have time for.

Billy Graham was asked a great question. He was asked by a reporter, “If you were to live your life over, what would you change?” And I’ll tell you what he didn’t say. He didn’t say that I’d like to have ten more crusades to get more people to come to Christ. He didn’t say that I’d like to be able to write another book so I can touch millions of people’s hearts. He didn’t say that I’d like to open up another leadership institute so I can help build leaders across the world. No, he said, “If I was going to change something, I would spend more time with my kids.” Abundant time.

The bible tells us in James 4:14, “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” Now if you are identifying with this, if you find yourself feeling the weight of knowing that time is not well spent with the kids and others in your life, I have these words of encouragement for you from Acts 3, “Repent then and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.” Abundant time is what makes relationships. Make the choice for abundant time. For like that fuel gauge indicator, the instrument that’s in the plane, the time we have with our children and with others in our lives is limited.

Now as we are a pilot and we’re flying, one other vital instrument we need to be able to use is the radio, being able to talk to the ground control to find out where our location is, to find out if it’s safe for us to land, to see if there are any other planes in the vicinity that we need to be aware of is important for us. And so we see that Jesus shows us not only instruments of touch and time but He also shows us the instrument of talk, encouraging talk.

Now listen to what Jesus has to say, what He did when He was with the kids in Verse 16, “And He took the children in His arms, He put His hands on them and blessed them.” He blessed them. I wonder what those words were that He blessed them. Whatever He said, it was a blessing, it was an encouragement to them. He lifted them up with His words. And my question for you is what words are we saying to our kids? What words are we saying to those people who are in our lives, that we have relationships? One of the most important things we can do is to speak words of encouragement and not words of discouragement, for us to watch the words that we speak. So we have a habit of catching the kids and catching others doing something wrong and always telling them what they weren’t or what they could be doing better rather than catching them doing something right. What words of encouragement are you using to be able to use encouraging words to lift them up?

Now as I was doing my research, I came across something I didn’t realize until this coming week and that is, in all of scripture, there is only one place where God audibly speaks to Jesus and it’s in Matthew 3 where God says to Jesus as He’s getting out of the water after being baptized, “This is my Son whom I am well pleased.” When I heard about that, when I realized that’s the only time God spoke audibly to Jesus, I thought, “Wow, those are some of the same words I would like to hear from my own parents or from my own friends.” You parent with encouraging words because Jesus gives us encouraging words. In John 15, He says, “I have chosen you out of the world,” that you have been chosen. God called you by name. And so we, too, can use encouraging talk as we lead our kids to Jesus.

Now my encouragement is for us not to pay attention to the instruments like my brother and I did while flying that simulator but to pay attention to what the instruments God has given you to be able to use touch and to be able to use time and to be able to use talk and, as you pilot through building relationships, as you pilot through parenting your children, you’ll have those strong relationships that we so much desire. Amen.