July 7, 2024
Responsibility, What's That?!
- Matt Nickoson
Sermon Notes
How well are you empowering your children with responsibility?
“I just feel sorry for Cameron’s future wife.” Allison straightened up, froze for a moment, and then hurried from the room. I walked into the hall to see her standing there motionless. Not knowing what to say, I said nothing. After a few moments, she looked at me and said, “I’ve never thought about it that way.” - Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend, Boundaries with Kids: How Healthy Choices Grow Healthy Children
God loves to create work and give us responsibility.
Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. - Genesis 2:7-8NIV
The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. - Genesis 2:15 NIV
God also sets boundaries for what is right/good and wrong/bad with the work He created.
And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” - Genesis 2:16-17 NIV
God created help for the work:
The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” - Genesis 2:18 NIV
Parents need to be heavily involved when they are youngest and progressively less involved as they get older.
“Being a parent of a teen can cure a person of narcissism. When your child was born, you were the center of her world. You were special to her. Now that she is an adolescent, you have become less central. No matter what you do, she continues to invest in the outside world more than she does in the home… your teen needs a process of time in which to let go of parental dependence and move into adult independence. This cannot be done instantly.” – Dr. John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens: When to Say Yes, How to Say No
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. - Genesis 2:24NIV
“(Teen problems) all have a common foundation: the battle between the teen’s desire for total freedom and the parents’ desire for total control. All teens want the freedom to do what they want when they want. They need to learn that freedom is earned and that they can gain freedom by demonstrating responsibility. Adolescence is the time in life when kids are supposed to learn this lesson.” - – Dr. John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens: When to Say Yes, How to Say No
“By the same token, parents need to be able to recognize when they are being over controlling and when they are being healthy and appropriate about saying “no.” They need to be able to make this distinction in order to do their job: helping teens learn responsibility and self-control so that they use freedom appropriately and live well in the real world.” - Dr. John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens: When to Say Yes, How to Say No
“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” - Luke 16:10 NIV
You can expect what you inspect.
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” - Genesis 3:8-9 NIV
You are probably aware of your own tendencies to go along with your teen’s behavior, to not respond or confront because it’s too much trouble or because you don’t want the conflict. Then, out of the blue, something snaps inside you, and you come out swinging, yelling, threatening — doing whatever it takes for you to express your frustration. I look at this as the “ignore and zap” parenting style: putting up with inappropriate behaviors for too long, then blowing up. When you consider how much teens test their parents, it’s easy to understand the temptation to ignore and zap. However, even though most parents ignore and zap at times — myself included — this isn’t good parenting. It teaches the teen that love and limits don’t go together.” - Dr. John Townsend, Boundaries With Teens: When to Say Yes, How to Say No
What is one change you need to make today to give more responsibility to your child?
Do your best (be diligent) to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. - 2 Timothy 2:15 NIV