My youngest daughter grew up the classic, extroverted, last born, but she had a u unique quality inside of that, in that the quantity and the speed of words that would come out of her mouth astonished people. I’ll never forget one Sunday when a family offered to take Kelsey home from church. I remember the knock on the door. I opened it up. I see this woman who looked exhausted. Kelsey walks in shattering, and she just looks at me and goes, wow. I said, I know, I get it. I, I, I’ve been there. Even Kelsey’s little friends understood it. One time I saw Kelsey at lunch with one of her best friends and her friend said, Kelsey, do you ever stop talking? And Kelsey’s response was, why would I talking’s my spiritual gift? And she went on for five minutes to show how God put her uniquely on this earth to talk the world into a better place because she was our last born.

There was a couple years where she and Lisa and I were the only ones in the house. And while Lisa didn’t have quite the degree of talkativeness that Kelsey did, they were both kind of in that category. And so they would both try to compete talking with me. Kelsey would be having one conversation from this side. Lisa would be having it from the other. And they found out if they weren’t sure I was listening to them, they had the same strategy. They would talk louder and faster and then trying to hook me in, they would end with a question until one time I gave up. But I said, time out. I, I can’t possibly have two separate conversations with both of you at the same time. At which one of them said, well, obviously you don’t love us enough that, well, I’m, I’m trying.

It’s one thing to describe how fast Kelsey talks. It’s another thing if you can hear it for yourself. So she left me a phone message. I’m so glad I saved it. She was maybe seven or eight years old at the time what had happened. She had asked me to pick up a pair of shorts and bring ’em to the church and she had found them. So she didn’t need me to do that. I told you that in about three seconds you’re about to hear why it took Kelsey 90 seconds to get that out. Listen to this.

Hi, this is Kelsey. And forget about the message. I just said, can I dip on yellow shorts? I just remembered that they’re actually kind oranges. And so I called them oranges, yellowish shorts, but I found them. I said, mom, this need to gimme a call. Forget, forget about the other message. Forget about this message too because I know I’m probably just bothering you. But anyway, you can turn it off right now if you want because you don’t have to listen my ter. But anyway, guess about the dumb message because I found I wear one of my shorts so turned and so if you find, I know you want this message. His said, what does he dismiss? His saying, you’re not about the other message. So I just gonna wear a couple my socks and the sword. So that is a message from Chelsea, Elizabeth Thomas, water Queen of Australia, I mean, was fell and was him to come night. 56, 30 wants 15 Grandy wine court. Thank you. Good day oh five. You’re on the phone number seven five two three seven. Especially with phone number. But truly I ask you because I know my phone number and you told me to call me anyway I could. Goodbye. This is Kelsey, by the way, because oh, I away again. Bye

<Laugh>.

She’s blowing a kiss there at the end. So we were going on a family trip and I’m sharing this, trying to defend myself ’cause this is one of my great parental failures out of mini, we were in a minivan going across state in the van all day. And Kelsey’s sitting next to my son and she’s chittering away. And here’s the thing, she doesn’t get tired as the day goes on. She just keeps warming up. And I saw my son’s patience waning thin. And I know you all have higher aspirations for your family vacations. I was just hoping there would be no homicide or hospital visits before we got home. So I pulled grandma aside at the gas station, said, Hey bud, I know it can be exhausting, but here’s the thing. If you just occasionally say, Ah-huh or All right, she’ll never know the difference, all right?

You could just zone out, give her occasional verbal affirmation and she’ll just carry it. Kelsey found out what I said and she was crushed and I felt terrible. I think it’s adorable. I miss it. She doesn’t still talk like this if you’re wondering, but if just felt like, oh, if I could have a do-over, it was one of a thousand do-overs in my kid’s childhood, I wish I could have started over because I really didn’t want to hurt her. And here’s the thing, I’m sure many of you feel the same way. If, if God were to say Gary, you could excel at three things. Being a parent would be one of those three things. I so wanted to be a good parent. I don’t know why always aspired if that if I succeeded something, I want it to be that. The problem is I just didn’t feel like I had all the training.

They don’t have a PhD in psychology. I I see other people that just seem so much more confident. They knew how to raise their kids. Lisa and I read the books. We listened to the programs on the radio. We tried to do everything, but so many times, if I can just be honest, we just felt like we were over our heads because advice would compete with each other. We didn’t know who was right and who was wrong. We’re kinda like, just tell us what to do and we’ll do it. But we couldn’t always figure out what was the right thing to do. It was a great frustration for me. Until then, I started looking at it biblically and one thing surprised me. And that is how few biblical passages have direct how to information for raising our kids. Shockingly, there aren’t very many, and they’re all general fathers.

Don’t exasperate your kids or discipline them. Well, what does that mean? Is it gentle discipline? Is it using the rod? Is it verbal? Is it timeouts? There really isn’t that much information in scripture as to how we’re to raise our children. And if there was some secret method, some full proof way that we could raise these kids and guarantee they would be responsible adults, even more important to us worshipers and followers of Jesus Christ, don’t we think that God would’ve put it in the scriptures? The fact that he didn’t leads me to believe he was pushing us toward an entirely different element. Not so much that there’s one how to method, but God is telling us to model a certain character to our kids. Because where the Bible is not silent, it’s talking to adults about how we must grow to influence others. Throughout all of the New Testament.

And a lot of the Old Testament here is God’s plan for parenting and all of relationships. Biblical influence is based on modeling character rather than lecturing on character. Perhaps that’s why there are dozens of passages where the Bible urges us to take character growth more seriously. The one I wanna settle on this morning is one of my favorites. It comes from second Corinthians seven verse one where Paul writes this. Since we have these promises, we’re gonna come back to this. I wanna set it up first before we get to what these promises are. Since we have these promises, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God. So the Bible doesn’t really tell us parents to make our kids behave nearly as much. Here’s the convicting part as it tells us parents to behave and to model that to our kids.

Now, this isn’t true just for parents, it’s true for every relationship, which I hope makes this sermon relevant. Whether you never have kids or you’re done raising kids or you’re never sure if you’ll have kids, because every relationship is based on this model. It’s what Paul said to the young Timothy when he is becoming a pastor. Look at this in one Timothy four, the pastor, he wants him to help others grow. But before Timothy helps others grow, Paul says, watch, what’s this word? Your life and doctrine closely persevere in them. Don’t start out hold to it because if you do, you’ll say both yourself and your hearers. Paul says to Timothy, how do you have influence as a pastor? You watch your life, you watch you doctrine, you persevere in them. And in doing that, you impact your hear. There was a study that came out about 15 years ago, and it’s a little bit depressing for Christian parents.

It was about how you can help or what makes adult Christians, children of Christian parents become Christians after they leave the home. And what they discovered was even though two parents love each other and raise their kids in the face, see that they’re baptized and everything, that doesn’t guarantee that they stay Christians or act as Christians when they leave the home. We’re not programming computers where you put in the ones and the zeros and you just pop out a Christian. I said, you can’t guarantee it. But here’s the depressing part. You can all but guarantee that your kids don’t become believers by this. If there’s a high level of hypocrisy in the parent’s life, there’s somebody completely different as a profess on Sunday among their Christian friends and the way they live. If kids see a high level of hypocrisy says those kids almost never become believers.

See, the Bible understood this before surveys came out where we have to focus on modeling even more than lecturing. And this goes beyond parenting. Peter uses this to encourage wives who are married to non-believing husbands. One Peter three says this, wives in the same way submit yourself to your own husband so that if any of them do not believe the word he’s talking about women married to nonbelievers, how do you help them become a believer? Tell ’em you need to read this book. Try to trick ’em into coming into a Bible study, giving them a sermon you hope or whatnot. He says, no. They may be went over without words. How? By the behavior of their wives. And when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Peter says, women, the most powerful sermon you can give to a non-believing husband is to let God change you When they see how different you are because of the presence of the Holy Spirit within you.

That’s what will awaken them to their own pursuit of faith. A few verses later, Peter addresses non-believers. In general. Maybe you’re in an office environment and you just have a jerk for a boss or a jerk for a co coworker, you’re thinking, how can I show them? I just wanna get away from ’em. I wanna shut ’em out. And yet Peter tells us how we’re to treat them. He says, treat non-believers with gentleness and respect. How can I respect somebody who doesn’t even believe? And Peter says it’s because they don’t believe that you show them unusual respect, unusual gentleness so that they see that Jesus makes a difference. And can I point out most of our kids or all of our kids before they become Christians, are non-believers? So Peter is saying, we treat them before they have the spirit. Changing them with gentleness and respect.

Show that you’re different. If we bring this back to parenting for just a moment, here’s what this teaches us. One of the greatest gifts we can give our children is our own pursuit of and growth in holiness. It’s one of the greatest gifts we can give them. So instead of being completely obsessed about getting our kids to behave, Paul is challenging us saying, well spend some time thinking about how you need to behave to impact your kids. Why our kids are studying us. Your coworkers are studying you too, but let’s keep this in parenting for the for the time being. Whoever you are, if you have children, they’re studying you. I’ll never forget one weekend it started to freak me out. Graham was three or four. He was that age where he wanted to be with me every hour of the day. I was outside doing something on the car, changing a wiper blade or something.

I turned in spit and Graham looked at me and he goes, why did you spit? I said, I don’t know bud. Sometimes a guy just needs to spit. He goes, I need to spit. Well, that’s kind of weird. We went and he asked me to teach him how to play tennis. He’d seen me watching it on television. So we’re out in the course. This was Northern Virginia. In the middle of the summer, it was really hot. After a little bit, I take off my shirt and Graham just stops and stares at me. Why did you take off your shirt? I said, well, I’m hot bud. I’m hot too. And he takes off his shirt. I’m like, okay, I’m seeing a pattern here. Next morning we went to church. I brought my Bible and Graham bought his, he couldn’t read yet, but he saw his dad bring his Bible to church.

He’s gonna bring his Bible to church. The pastor read the passage. I put my Bible down. It was an empty chair between me and Graham. I looked back a few minutes later and Graham had laid his Bible right next to mine, opened up like mine was wrong passage. ’cause He couldn’t read. He said, okay, this is what a guy doesn’t charge. He opens up his Bible and he leaves it there. And now I’m really starting to think, whoa. That afternoon we were going for a walk. It was our favorite thing to do as a family in the afternoons, couldn’t find Gram’s shoes and say, Hey bud, you look upstairs. I’m looking downstairs. As I went downstairs into the family room, I saw that I’d left my shoes there right in the middle of the floor, which my wife really appreciates, I’m sure. And there were Graham’s shoes right next to mine at the very same angle.

And I figured out what had happened. He came downstairs sometime that day. He saw my shoes. Oh, there’s dad’s shoes. He takes off his and he puts ’em there. And I remember throwing myself before the Lord saying, I’m like a Xerox machine, but there are some things I don’t wanna reproduce. God, you’ve gotta scour my heart. He sees how I respond to people when I’m driving. He hears how I handle money, how I deal with fear, how I deal with other people. There are some things I need to be more mature than I’m God. You’ve gotta do a deep work in my soul because I don’t wanna pattern certain things. I don’t wanna reproduce certain things that don’t represent you. Because if you’re a parent, you know this. There is no moment off Another mother whose name was Lisa, she gave me permission to use her name.

So I will just for the sake of convenience, let me say she was married to a guy named Gary. They had three kids homeschooled them all at this time. And their oldest daughter dropped something one day and let out the S word. Gary’s understandably shocked saying, well, she’s not going to school. And he said, I mean, where would she even hear that word? And Lisa started to look a little sheepish. And Gary said, what? She said, well, a couple days ago I was having a really bad day. Everything was going wrong. And then at the end of that really bad day, I dropped something. It made a big mess. And it’s possible that word might have come out of my mouth. <Laugh>,

Our kids. See how we deal with our frustration, how we deal with our anger, how we deal with others that treat us. And we’re like these Xerox machines reproducing that. And that makes sense then why Paul says, we are to model our faith more than lecture our faith because that will have the bigger impact, which means dads, please hear me. Every husband who has kids in this church, please hear me. You must learn to cherish and love and respect your wife the same way you want your daughters to be loved and cherished by their future husbands. Why do I say that? You are setting the expectations for what your daughter should expect in marriage. If you’re condescending, if you’re short, if you’re controlling and your daughter becomes infatuated with the guy and he treats her that way, she’s gonna think, well, I wanna be married and this is how guys are. But guys, if you’re setting up an example for what it means to cherish your wife and she becomes infatuated with some jerk, no, this isn’t how a marriage is supposed to be and she’ll dump him. Moms, you must learn to love your husband the way you want him to be loved by his daughter, by his wife. Woo.

You must learn to love your husband the way you want your son to be loved by his wife. He’s looking at you. How does a woman treat a man? Is she negative? Is she affirming? Is she supportive? Is she always challenging him because your son is picking up what he should expect in his own future relationships Throughout my life, as I pray for my kids, I feel like God also puts it back on me. I remember one time earnestly praying, God, make my son a man of prayer. Make him a man of worship. I know the power that can release and felt God saying very clearly, Gary, you must develop the prayer life that you want your son to have. It all goes back to modeling. Now the encouraging thing is none of this can be done perfectly. We all are kind of gulping at this point.

Oh no. But Paul says it can be pursued diligently and earnestly. One Timothy four 15, be diligent in these matters. Give yourself holy to them so that everyone may see your not perfection but your progress. Paul says, you’re not there, Timothy, I’m not there. You’re not there. But our kids can see the difference. That we should hopefully have more compassion and kindness and patience and courage today than we did five years ago and more five years from now. And here is the great encouragement to those of you who are older. I saw this happen with my dad. He kept following the Lord. I saw progressive sanctification, slow growth and loneliness throughout his life so that when my kids, his grandkids, remember him, that’s the only man they know when they speak of him. They don’t speak of issues that I might have seen as a young boy.

Not, not that there were big issues. My dad was always a, a man of godly character. But he grew outta some faults. He grew into some other strengths. That’s the only man his grandkids have ever known. It’s the only man that his grandkids will ever remember. And Paul is saying that’s what can happen when we take this seriously. Take what? Seriously. Here’s the point. I’m trying to say that God uses the process of us raising our kids to raise us as much as we raise our kids. So let’s focus on that. Let’s make Second Corinthians seven, one, the earnest pursuit of our lives. None of us are perfect when we start parenting, but parenting can push us a little further down the road. Now of course it’s necessary that we address our kids’ behavior. It’s necessary that we try to build their character. It’s just that we don’t forget how God is using them to address our behavior and our character.

While we do that, that’s the priority that Paul sets in this passage. When he says this, dear friends, let us purify, what’s this word? Read it with me ourselves. Don’t most of us just naturally live with this world would be such a better place if everybody around me would get their act together. If my spouse would be better, if my kids would be better, if my coworkers would be better, if the drivers on I 70 and especially 25 South, if they would all be better, I’d have such a better life. And Paul says, but you can’t change them. And the way that you influence them is when you purify yourself. He says, from everything that contaminates body and spirit, many of us are so focused when our kids are younger or as teenagers on purifying them, that we lose the power of purifying ourself. But from Paul’s perspective, parenting is sort of like taking off on an airplane.

And this has become such a cliche. I’ve been talking about it for 25 years and everybody uses it. But it’s so, I mean, it’s so helpful. I’m just gonna say it again. When you’re taking off on an airplane, they say, in the unlikely event the oxygen mask come down. What do you do? You put your own mask on first so that you can help your kid. And why do they say that? Because if you try to put your kid’s mask on and you pass out, you’re both in trouble. And I think Paul is saying, once you become parents, you need to breathe pure spiritual oxygen. You need to be surrendered to the Holy Spirit. You need to be walking in obedience. So your conscience is in deadened to the Lord’s voice or his conviction. You want God to be all over you and in you and working through you.

And so you’ve gotta put on your own spiritual oxygen mass first. Let God transform you. And then as parents, we can influence others. And that’s why parenting gives us a second shot at this. And more motivation. Because frankly, we just live in a church. And I’m not just saying our church, I’m saying our tradition the whole evangelicalism in general, that is pretty passive about spiritual growth because we know it’s not necessary to get into heaven. So we think it doesn’t matter. And that second part is fatal to our influence and to our ministry. Remind me of a guy who was behind at the airport one time. He was buying a king-sized baby Ruth bar, a kings size bag of peanut m and ms, a full sugared Coke and a men’s fitness magazine. <Laugh>. I wanted to say to him, Hey bud, you know, reading that doesn’t help you with eating and drinking that, but as Christians we kind of have that attitude that, you know what I, I’ll read the Bible once or twice a week.

I’ll come to church a few times a month and then I’ll just naturally grow. But that’s not true. And that’s what Paul is saying isn’t true. That spiritual growth takes work, intention and purpose. We know we have to work to get into spiritual shape. Why do we think it’s any different to get into spiritual shape? I’ve mentioned earlier how I’m trying to address that this year. I just gotta say at my age, it is so hard. ’cause If I take one day off, I can lose a week’s worth of work and I’m terrified. ’cause I’m going on vacation next week and I, I know if I take a week off, I could lose an entire year’s work trying to get there. We know it’s not easy to get into physical shape, but somehow we think we could be passive and just naturally mature spiritually. But that’s not what Paul is saying.

And Peter would agree with him. Here’s what Peter says in Second Peter one for this reason, make, what are these two words? Every effort. This isn’t a lackadaisical. Maybe I’ll get around to it. Peter says, we should make every effort to do what to add to your faith. So this is after salvation, goodness to goodness. Knowledge to knowledge, self-control, to self-control, perseverance to perseverance, godliness and to godliness. Mutual affection to mutual affection. Love for if you possess these qualities in this is so key. Increasing measure. We never corner the market on any of those qualities. We’re always in process. But we should desire to keep growing in each one of those. Why Not to get into heaven, but because they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. If we don’t have them. We’re nearsighted and blind forgetting that we have been cleansed from our past sins.

I, I’m just trying to be honest. I don’t wanna be critical here, but does anybody around you, you know, make every effort to add to their faith those qualities? Do we really, and can I just say in the wider church, there are people that think that’s heresy. Look, I listen to a lot of sermons and they’re all saying, I hate this when pastors tell people just to try harder, that goes against the gospel. I’m like, does it? I mean, I’m not talking about salvation, but when we’re talking about adding to our faith, I gotta say I, I just disagree with ’em. So you should test me. Who am I? You can read the scriptures for yourselves, but I’m telling you Peter, Paul, James, and at least the writer of Hebrews agree with what I’m saying. If I said that without quoting Peter, some people would say that’s a heresy.

But it’s clearly what the Bible teaches. Again, we don’t make every effort to get into heaven. That’s on Jesus. We make every effort so that we’re effective and productive in our knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. So let me dig into that. What does that mean? I said we’re gonna come back to this at the start of the passage. It says, since we have these promises, what are the promises that motivate us to grow spiritually? We go back to two Corinthians six, which is right before two Corinthians seven. That’s where Paul is saying, don’t be yolked with unbelievers. And then he says in verse 17, come out from them and be separate. Why? Here’s the promise Paul is referring to in 18. This is the verse right before seven one, I will be a father to you and you’ll be my sons and daughters. Says the Lord Almighty. God says, here’s my promise. Come to me through Jesus. I will adopt you. I will make you my sons and my daughters. And so the promise is there can be a family resemblance. Just like kids are supposed to look like their parents. God’s spiritual children are to look like their heavenly Father. There should be a family resemblance. Now let just ask you, when people spend time with you, do they ever have a whiff? They feel a little bit like they spent time with Jesus?

Kind of wanna laugh. I think that’s because we’re not taking these scriptures seriously. Making every effort is not about getting from earth into heaven. It’s about recognizing that Jesus by dying on the cross and sending us our, his spirit has made it possible to bring heaven to earth and we’re to be the vessels through whom heaven is seen. How different would this world be? Just think about this. If we made every effort to do this and the world started talking this way, I don’t know if I can believe in the Christian message. I don’t know a guy dying, rising from the dead doing miracles. But I gotta tell you this, every time I meet a follower of Jesus, he or she is so filled with compassion and kindness. They’re so humble, they always forgive. They’re always at other service. I mean, I’ve just never met a group of people like them.

I know this. If I ever have a coworker, I’m hoping they’re a Christian. If I ever have a boss, I’m hoping he or she is a Christian. If I ever kids have a teacher, a coach, I wanted to be a Christian. ’cause There is just nobody that loves like those Christians. Does the world talk about us like that? Why not? I think it’s this passive approach that we have. And parenting can shake us up out of this, okay? You don’t have to make every effort to get into heaven. But if you wanna be a good parent, if you wanna influence your spouse, if you wanna make a difference in your workplace, it becomes necessary that we do this. Because the whole point of influence in the New Testament is this show before you tell. And we have decades of tell and then sort of kind of try to show.

But don’t act like it’s all on you. Demonstrate the difference the Holy Spirit makes in your life and let that call others into Christ. So how do we do that? It’s through relationships. It’s we show patience with people that require our patience. We show forgiveness by people who require our forgiveness. It’s raising children, working with imperfect people, being married to imperfect people, having imperfect roommates that gives us the opportunity to grow like Christ. But this won’t happen. Parents, if we act like we’re mature enough and now our house just focuses on our kids, we’ve reached a level where we can forget about growing. We just want our kids to grow. And the reason we can’t have that approach is because Paul says God is after more than a surface cleaning. Here’s what he says. We’re to purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit.

Not just the scandalous bodily sins coming home drunk, doing the things that get a pastor fired or make you feel ashamed. The attitudinal sins that just get in there and stick to us. Parenting could put the spotlight on those sins. I know a guy has a church of about 250, so he knows most of the people in his church. And after he preaches, he invites everybody to come forward for prayer if they were convicted in a sermon and they need prayer. So one week he, he preached on anger. 13 people came forward and they all got there on the altar and he laughed. ’cause Every person who came forward for a sermon on anger was a mother of toddlers, <laugh>. It’s sort of an occupational hazard that you’re gonna have to learn how to deal with that. And so for the sake of our children, we’re perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.

So we ask ourselves, how do I need to grow to raise a child who sins like this? How do I need to grow to be married to somebody who sins like that? How do I need to grow to show the gospel and the truth of Christ to a coworker who has this weakness? So maybe dad, you’ve married a woman who puts up with you being caustic and harsh and sarcastic ’cause your wife loves you and she just puts up with you. She sees all that you are. And then God decides to give you one of the most sensitive daughters in the history of the world. And you realize I will lose her if I don’t learn to relate to people differently. And God has given you that gift to say, your wife put up with it. Your daughter may not. If you wanna be connected with your daughter, you’ve gotta deal with this.

Or, or, or women. Maybe you just sort of give into your husband all the time or you kind of let him run over you. Maybe that’s how you were raised to do. And then God gives you this strong willed boy and you realize for me to raise him right and to cause him to respect others, he’s gotta learn how to respect me. I’ve gotta stand up. Maybe I never have before, but I need to be different to raise a son just like that. And when we do this, parenting is just different. I I, I remember when I was halfway through parenting, kids were like nine, 11 and 13, something like that. I was golfing with my buddies afterwards, we were talking. I said, man, I wish I could have a do-over. I wish I could start parenting my kids today. Not that I’m particularly wise or knowledgeable today, but I knew nothing when I got started.

I feel like I know more. I feel like I’m wiser. I feel like I’m stronger in the Lord. And then praying afterwards, I felt God convicting me, saying, Gary, what made you wiser? What made you stronger? What helped you mature? It was making all the mistakes you made while you raised those kids. And I realized what God had entrusted to me and what he’s entrusting to you. When my daughter turned 12, I had a great invitation to speak at this convention area in Orlando. And so I let her invite her best friend to accompany us. ’cause After I was done speaking, we went to all of these theme parks. I had a great time. I remember talking to Jenny Laura’s mom before we left. I said, what? What do you want me to know about Jenny? What she can eat? What you want her to do or watch or see or whatnot?

And Jenny just stopped me. He says, Gary, if it’s okay for Kelsey, it’s okay for Laura. We would not let Laura go with you if we didn’t trust you for the next week. She’s your daughter. Do whatever you would do for your own. I don’t know that I’ve ever been so humbled when another woman is basically saying, Laura is your daughter for a week. But parents, every parent here, whether you adopted or natural birth, think about this. That’s what God is saying to you when he places kids in your household. He knows you’re imperfect. He knows you’re gonna mess up. He knows you’ve got some behavioral issues that he wants to address, but he entrusts these beloved sons and daughters that he is crazy about. And he gives them to you knowing you’ll not be perfect knowing you’ll mess up. But he cares so much about you growing and maturing.

He lets you raise his kids. That’s God’s love for you and his passion to help you grow. Here’s the thing, you chose your spouse. When you chose your spouse. You chose some crosses. If you married a selfish spouse, a lazy spouse, an angry spouse, you’re dealing with it, right? You don’t get to choose your kids, whether you adopt or whether they’re natural born. You kind of receive ’em and find out what issues you’re gonna deal with. And if we could see them as God’s gift to us to help us grow. If we stop seeing our kids as things that need to be fixed and we see them as vessels through which God fixes us, that’s relational rehab. That’s when parenting becomes different. So let’s read through this together. Please read with me since we have these promises. Dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit perfecting holiness out of reverence for God. Heavenly Father, I thank you. I thank you for the power of your spirit who wants to transform us, who is just asking us to cooperate and letting you carry us that we can let those attitudes, we can let those actions go through the blood of Christ and the empowerment of your Holy Spirit. Open up our eyes, Lord, to where we need to become different people, to be effective and productive in our knowledge of your Son. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.