Easy Parenting in the 21st Century |05.19.24| Being Mom & Dad pt.2
Matthew 11:25-30
Pastor Erik Anderson
I’m going to invite you to grab the Seatback Bible in front of you or get your phone out. We’re going to be in Matthew chapter 11 today. I mean, Matthew chapter 11, it’s on page 9. If you’re using the black hardback Bible in the seat in front of you, it’s page 9 in the New Testament. So, kind of toward the end of the Bible. We’re going to be in Matthew chapter 11 beginning in verse 25 and this is what we read. “At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Good morning again, everyone. My name is Eric. I’m one of the pastors here. We are continuing this series being Mom and Dad. If you weren’t here last week or if you’re working with us online and you didn’t listen to it last week, go back and listen to that. We’re just doing three weeks on what it means to be Mom and Dad, but this isn’t just a biological Mom and Dad. This isn’t just familial because all of us interact with people who are younger than us, who have—we are mentoring people who are behind us in age or behind us in life stage, and we’re parenting them along. We all have these relationships where we are serving and loving and mentoring those who are younger than we are. We’re going to be talking a lot about parents, Mom and Dad, but that also includes grandparents, that includes aunts and uncles, that includes anybody who has some influence on those who are younger than them. That’s what we’re talking about here with being Mom and Dad. I want to start off by confessing something to you. I need to confess a sin in my life, and it’s this, that parenting is really hard, guys. It’s really difficult. This weekend, the irony of our Lord is that this weekend has been particularly hard for me as a parent. I don’t think because my kids haven’t been acting any different, I’ve just been kind of immature. I’ve been kind of grumpy this weekend, so I confess before you, my brothers and sisters, I confess before my wife and my children that I have not been the best dad that I could this weekend. I’ve been kind of grumpy. I’ve been kind of unhappy.(…) Parenting is really hard. It just takes everything out of you. If you have young children, or if you have adult children, or if you have anybody in your life that’s younger that you’re pouring into, you know that there’s a lot of worry, a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress that goes into caring for somebody who you are taking care of them, that they depend on you. Either they depend on your advice, or they actually physically depend on you, and it drains you. It takes it all out of you. By the way, two separate people this week told me that parenting doesn’t get any easier as they get older, so thank you for that encouragement, I guess. But we know that this is difficult, that parenting is hard. No matter how old our kids are, mine are six, five, and one and a half, or if you have adult children, if you have grandchildren, or like I said, nieces and nephews, whatever, whoever you are that you are pouring into, we know that parenting is hard, and we can look around us and we see in our world that children have a really hard time right now. It’s kind of a hard time to be a kid.
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Between all the things that are going on in our world that are causing economic stress and stress for adults, kids are actually bearing the brunt of it.
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The CDC has said that the percentage of teens who experience what are called persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness, what we would call depressive episodes, the percentage of teens who experience these depressive episodes, these persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness have doubled in the last 10 years. They’ve doubled.
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The statistics are out now that kids are dropping off from extracurriculars because of the stress that sports and other extracurriculars have on them, and that by 13 years old, 80% of kids have dropped out of sports and all other extracurriculars. And with that, teenagers have been using social media more. On average, the average teenager spends four to eight hours on social media, TikTok, scrolling, these kinds of things. We see all sorts of evidence that the use of social media, the increases in all kinds of psychological issues and mental health issues, they all increase together. It’s a hard time to be a kid right now. It’s hard time to be a young person right now. Jennifer Wallace in her book,
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Never Enough, she actually talks about the top 10%
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of children, and this is the top 10% of families who are the top 10% of earners. So this is like the cream of the crop, the elites in our country. So this would be the people, the kids who have go to the best high schools, they go to the best colleges, they have all the money in the world, everything they could need, the top 10% of kids from families who are top earners. These kids are now considered an at risk group because of the amount of mental health issues that they’re facing. So we know that growing up very impoverished is very bad for your mental health. And now we are even seeing that even kids in the top 10% are an at risk group as well. It’s hard right now. It’s hard to be a kid and it’s hard to be a parent. There’s a lot of stress and anxiety that comes along with it. It’s hard to be in a place where you are caring for young people. There’s a lot of stress and anxiety that comes with it. And so into all of this, we read this passage, this passage that tells us this short episode in the gospel where Jesus is teaching, and he is interacting with his disciples, and this is what we hear. So at that time, Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.
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Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” So here we kind of enter into the middle of this teaching. And Jesus, if you will, back at chapter 11, Jesus is talking about all the different things that are going on in the towns around him. The kingdom is being brought into the world. John the Baptist has ushered in the Messiah by his work, by being kind of that last prophet, and now Jesus is here, and he’s proclaiming the kingdom to all people, and there are cities that Jesus is talking about, and he says, “Woe to all these different cities, because they’re not going to receive the kingdom. They’re not going to accept the kingdom. The kingdom is going to come, but they’re going to say no to it.” And then Jesus says this, “I thank you, Father,” he says this short prayer, “because you have hidden these things,” that is the kingdom, “from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” Jesus praises his Father, who he calls the Lord of heaven and earth, who’s the ruler of all things, and he says, “You’ve hidden the kingdom from those who are wise and intelligent,” what we might call people who are successful, people who have everything that they need, people who can operate with skill in the world, and he says that the kingdom is actually hidden from these people, and it’s given to infants, and this word here means those who are naive, those who are foolish, those who are immature, or it can be used for like little babies, and Jesus is saying that the Father has given the kingdom to infants, to little babies. We know that in the Gospels when the disciples are trying to keep children away from Jesus, he says, “Let the children come to me, because for such as these belong the kingdom of heaven.” What we see here is that Jesus and our Father in heaven, they care about kids.(…) God cares about little children. In fact, he wants to give the kingdom to little kids.
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He wants to give it to those who are innocent, to those who are naive, to those who are foolish and immature, those little babies and the young children in our life. God wants to give the kingdom(…) to them.
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He wants them to have it.(…) Jesus recognizes that his Father in heaven is Lord of all, that God is in charge, and then he says here that all things, all that authority has been given to him, that not only is the Father Lord, but he also is Lord, that he is Lord over everything, that all knowledge and power and honor and glory and authority is his.(…) And any small authority that we have, either through politicians or in our own family by being parents or being mentors in our work, all this authority is a gift to us from Jesus, that he holds it all, that he is Lord of all, and then he gives us this authority to care for those who are around us, to serve those around us, to raise children or do our work. All authority is Jesus, and then he gives it to us. Jesus continues on by saying, “This come to me.” Now he stops praying, and now he kind of speaks to the crowd. “All you that are weary in carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
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Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, from gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Jesus here references his yoke, and many of you may know what a yoke is, but it’s a piece of wood that kind of puts together, straps together to animals or maybe even servants, slaves, as they were doing work. The yoke is something that you would put on two different animals to connect them to pull something, to push something, to do some kind of work. The yoke was a tool that was used for work. You put the yoke on an animal or a servant when they were preparing to do some kind of work, and Jesus says his yoke, this piece of wood that he’s going to put on us for work, his yoke is this work that he has to do, and it’s easy.(…) It’s light.
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It’s not a heavy burden, and in fact, and during this time, rabbis, the teachers, as they traveled around, their whole teaching would be called their yoke,
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their instruction on how you should live, what you were supposed to do with your life, how you should make decisions. This was the yoke, the thing they strapped on you for your work in your life,(…) and this is the yoke of Jesus, his expectation on how we are to live, what we are supposed to do, how we make decisions. He says, “My yoke is easy. My burden is light.
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It is not heavy. It does not weigh you down.
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The work that I have for you is not there to give you anxiety, to give you hurry, but it’s instead there to give you rest.
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Rest is what he gives us. Jesus wants to give us his life. He wants to give us his work. He wants to strap his yoke onto us, and it’s easy.
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It’s not heavy.
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His yoke is a life of peace, a life of rhythm and routine that we experience in the spiritual habits that he gives us to do.
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Scripture, prayer, worship, gathering in community in our life groups, this rhythm and routine,(…) this pace of life that we do these spiritual habits and we are with Jesus, and then we become like him. The yoke of Jesus is this life of peace and rhythm that is full of love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness and all the fruit of the Spirit. This yoke that Jesus has for us is a life of peace,(…) a life of rhythm and routine where we are active. Loving our neighbors and loving our community through acts of service. Jesus’ yoke, this thing that he attaches to us is a life, a good life, a good, full and abundant, peaceful life.(…) This is his yoke. This is the work that he gives us to do. The work in life that Jesus is inviting us into, attaching us to, it produces rest in us, not anxiety.
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And we really can look at the fruit of the Spirit.(…) Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and the rest. We can look at those and we can say that’s what Jesus’ yoke is. That’s the life that he offers us. And you’ll notice that in the fruit of the Spirit, anxiety is not a fruit.(…) Busyness is not a fruit.
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Achievement and success is not a fruit.(…) Having wealth is not a fruit.
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The yoke that he attaches to us frees us from the constraints of our world and gives us true peace,(…) gives us true happiness,
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gives us true gentleness and faithfulness and the rest. That is what he wants to give us. That’s the life that he wants to give us, the easy life that he has for us.(…) And so for being a parent or being somebody who cares for those who are little or younger than we are, those who are concerned with those that we are taking care of, being a parent affects how we follow Jesus. It affects what we think about, what we’re worried about, how we do our work and go about our lives. And we need to let Jesus give us his yoke,(…) his easy yoke when it comes to parenting and caring for those younger than us and not yoke ourselves to the kind of busy anxiety-ridden stressful achievement culture in our society. Because right now in our world, anxiety is a dominant approach to parenting. And it’s actually just the dominant approach to anything. Have you noticed that, you know, you like listen to the news or whatever and like everything is the end of the world as we know it. Like everything is the end of democracy. Everything that anybody does is the end of democracy. Have you noticed that? It’s like so much anxiety, like raises our blood pressure. Anxiety is a dominant approach to life and it’s definitely the dominant approach to parenting. And it’s because we love our kids. We’re invested in them. We want what’s best for them. And so we feel anxious about about it. We’re with our little kids. We have, you know, a kid and they’re doing great, but then we kind of see, well, they’re kids the same age and look, they’re already crawling and our baby isn’t it starts there. You already start to worry, well, will my child keep up? Will it catch up? Will my child be able to succeed? We see other children’s development, how well they talk or how good they’re doing in school. And we begin to feel that anxiety of what if my kid falls behind? What if my kid can’t keep up? We have anxiety about how our children experience school. Will they be bullied? Will they be the top of their class? And every single one of us who has kids or is invested in young people, we want them to do well. We want them to succeed. We want them to be the top of their class. We have anxiety about our children’s experience in sports. We want them to be able to do as much as they can and play as often as they can. And we want them to start every game. And so then we see our neighbors and oh man, their neighbors are getting really good gear and they’re hiring a private coach and oh, well, they’re joining that travel baseball league. And well, yeah, it’s 12 weekends of the year, but all of our friends, all of our child’s friends are on it. So really, really ought to do that. We have anxiety about it. We have anxiety about our children’s financial future. We see that the cost of living is rising and we’re worried about how our kids are going to fare financially.(…) And so we push them to make sure they get good AP scores and that they get a good SAT and ACT score so they can go to a good college and can get a good internship and get a good job.(…) This like intense anxiety has a name nowadays and it’s called snowplow parenting. Have you heard of this before? Snowplow parenting. You’ve probably heard of helicopter parenting. You’ve heard of helicopter parenting and that’s where you’re so concerned about your kids. So you’re always following them around, making sure that they’re safe and okay.(…) Snowplow parenting is similar, but instead of just following your kid around, you actually go out in front of your kid to make sure that they don’t experience any difficulty at all. So you actually go in front of your kids and you kind of plow the way so that they can succeed.(…) And so this kind of snowplow parenting looks like being highly selective about travel sports or highly selective about tutors in order to prepare your child to succeed in the sport or in this or in school or whatever it is that they whatever extracurricular they may want to do. It’s about removing difficulty in your child’s life. So it might look a little bit like this. If your child doesn’t do well on a test in school, the parents will call the teacher and say, “Hey, why did my kid not do well? What do you need to do to change this?” That’s what snowplow parenting looks like. Or if your child is sitting on the bench in the sport and you think they should be starting, it’s the parents calling the coach and saying, “Hey, why is my child not starting? My child is definitely better than that kid. We’ve been spending all this money on this private lesson. We’ve been doing all this and all that.” That’s the snowplow parenting.
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Instead of asking your child, “Hey, have you talked to your coach about why you’re not starting? Why don’t you go ask your coach what you can do to start?”
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You see the difference there? The snowplow parent tries to get out in front and clear the waste. There is no difficulty. And parents go to crazy lengths. I think maybe out here in rural Midwest, we’re a little bit protected from this, but definitely in the coasts, we hear some crazy stories. There’s this great book called Raising Empowered Athletes. I actually have my copy out on the parent resource wall as you head out of the sanctuary and hang a left. We have a wall there that has some parent resources. Take a picture of it or look it up on Amazon. If you have a child in sports or if you love sports, you need to read this book. It’s really, really good. Written by this gal named Kirsten Jones. She was a D1 volleyball player, and then she was also an exec in Nike International. She’s a very, very high achieving individual. She talks about this dynamic of caring for your child if they are involved in sports and how to raise your child in a way that empowers them rather than just plows out in front of them so they never have to face any difficulties. But she has several kids in college, and she tells a story about when her son was in grade school. They’re at the park or whatever, maybe at a baseball practice or something.
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Kirsten is talking to some of the other moms, and the other moms go, “Oh, yeah, that book report is due. Have you done that book report yet?”(…) Kirsten’s like, “I don’t know. I haven’t heard about this book report.” Like, “Oh, yeah, that’s a big project. Yeah, I was working on it all night last night.” She’s like, “What is happening?” And so then later that night, she asked her son, “Hey, do you have a book report due tomorrow?” He goes, “Yeah.” She goes, “And you’ve got it?” And he goes, “Yeah, I’m good.” She goes, “Okay.” A few weeks later, there’s some open house or something in the classroom, and they’re in the classroom, and all the book reports are up on the wall, and most of the book reports are beautifully made, well-constructed, no misspellings, no typos, nothing like that. And then there’s her sons, shoddily glued together with typos and all kinds of stuff. And the teacher walks up to her and goes, “You know, Kirsten, people don’t think that I can tell who actually did the work, but I can.”
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This is what we’re experiencing right now because of all the anxiety, economic worry, safety worry, cultural stress. It’s made us into anxious parents and anxious people, but there is a better way. There’s a better way to live, a better way to parent.(…) It’s taking on this easy yoke of Jesus.(…) It’s accepting His way of life. It’s accepting His teaching and receiving the light burden that Jesus is in our lives and the freedom that He gives us. There’s an easier way to parent,
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a way of parenting that is not filled with anxiety, that is not filled with worry, and fundamentally, it requires us trusting Jesus with our kids.
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We have to trust Jesus with our kids.(…) We have to trust that Jesus is just as invested in our kids as we are, that Jesus loves our kids just as much as we do, that Jesus is looking out for them, and He wants our kids to be happy.(…) He wants our kids to have a full, good, and abundant life. We have to trust Jesus that that’s the case. We have to trust Him to take care of our kids.(…) And here’s the hard thing, is that our kids may end up poor in their life.(…) They may end up being failures from society’s perspective,
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but no matter what, we know that they will be loved(…) and cared for by Jesus, who will give them a good, full, abundant life,
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even in the midst of what society might call failure, that our kids are taken care of. The good shepherd is a good shepherd, and he’s caring for our kids.(…) And that requires us to also give our own lives and our own worries over to Jesus to receive His peace and goodness for us too.
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So not only do we have to trust Jesus with our kids, but we have to trust Jesus with us. We have to trust that Jesus cares about us, that He’s invested in us, that He loves us, that He wants us to be happy. He wants us to have a full, good, and abundant life too.(…) And so we give our own worries over to Jesus. We say, “Jesus, I trust you, that you are caring for me, and I trust you even with myself.”
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Oh, there’s another great book that I would recommend that I talked about before called Never Enough by a gal named Jennifer Wallace.
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And she talks about this high, you know, this at-risk population of these kids from the top 10% of family earners,(…) this very,(…) these kids who just have everything, but they are experiencing so much stress, so much distress, so many mental health issues. And she says that the number one way to intervene in a kid who is in distress is for the parents or the caregivers to have their mental health and their support system intact.
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The number one way to intervene in a child who is in distress is for the parents to have their support system and their mental health intact.
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The best predictor for our kids having a good life, full life, abundant life, full of peace and goodness is for us to have that. That’s the number one indicator. The number one indicator for our children to have peace is for us to have peace.
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And peace is achievable because Jesus gives it to us. He actually promises it to us. He says that it is ours.(…) In Ephesians chapter one, verse three, I quote it all the time, “Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places is ours in Christ Jesus.” That means all the peace, all the goodness, all the gentleness and faithfulness in heaven is ours now. And that’s a promise. We have it. Jesus is giving it to us.
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And so we take on Jesus’ yoke, his easy yoke of trusting him, giving him our lives, and giving him our children, and we have peace.
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So I want to give a little bit, maybe a little bit of teeth to this, some application for those of you who have kids or are caring for kids, grandkids, whatever it might be.(…) Here’s a couple things that you can actually do. The first is that you can trust in Jesus. Trust in Jesus to care for your children and to give you everything you need to be a parent. Because Jesus does. He gives you everything you need to be a parent. You’ve got this. You’ve got this. Jesus has filled you with his Holy Spirit. He has given you his power. You’ve got this.(…) Jesus is taking care of you. Trust in him.(…) The next thing that you can do is change your definition of success.
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Change your definition of success. This is going to be difficult because it requires you to take a step back away from some of the emotional buy-in that academics and extracurriculars in our society. It seems to require this big emotional buy-in. But we need to take a step back. We need to change what it means to succeed. Because for our children, succeeding may not be getting straight A’s.(…) Succeeding may not be getting into the University of Illinois or getting into UCLA.
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That may not be success for your child. You need to change your definition of success.
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Change what you expect from your child and change the emotional buy-in. Because your children may not start. Your children may not succeed in sports. Your children may not succeed in extracurriculars. Your children may not succeed in academics.
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And that’s okay.(…) Because Jesus still loves them. He still takes care of them. He’s still watching out for them. And they can still have a good, full, abundant life. If you are a parent that has a child who is in sports,(…) I love this. Kirsten Jones says this in Raising Empowered Athletes. She says there’s only six words that a parent should ever say to a kid after a game or practice. “I love to watch you play.”
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That’s it. Those are the only six words any parent should say to their child after a game or after a practice. “I love to watch you play.” Translate that to academics. Translate that to piano or music, whatever you want to.
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Change your definition of success. Is your child learning? Are they enjoying it? Are they finding fulfillment? And do they feel like their work matters in what they do? That’s success. Please do not sacrifice your children’s peace in Jesus Christ for success. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it. Here’s the last thing.(…) Take a break.(…) Sabbath. This is actually one of our spiritual habits, something that we talk about fairly regularly. Sabbath is just our shorthand phrase for rest in Jesus Christ. Typically, we talk about a weekly Sabbath, typically on Sundays, but it doesn’t have to be. But my encouragement to you is to take a break or take a Sabbath, take a rest from these kinds of high stress extracurriculars. Maybe it’s just one time a week and we say, “You know what? No matter what, Sunday evenings, no homework, no extracurriculars, no busyness, nothing.”(…) We’re going to say no to everything on just Sunday evenings. Maybe it’s a whole day.(…) Hey, Sundays all day long, we’re saying no to everything. Doesn’t matter what travel league we’re on, doesn’t matter what else we have going on, we’re saying no to it. If it’s an extracurricular, we’re saying no, we’re taking a break, we’re taking a rest. This might be even harder yet.(…) Maybe you need to take a break for like a whole semester,
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maybe a whole season. You just need to say, “You know what? This spring,
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we’re not doing any extracurriculars.” I promise you, I promise you, your children will not fail if they take one season off.(…) They may sit on the bench,
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but there’s a lot worse things than sitting on the bench.
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It’s okay. Maybe take a break, maybe a short break, maybe a prolonged break.(…) You got to determine what’s right for your family, but add these breaks into your routine, into your rhythm. Have those things that you’re just going to say no to.
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Have some things you’ll just say no.
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We’re going to say no to any extracurricular. We’re going to say no to any stress. We’re going to take a break to give us all a rest.
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Trust in Jesus,(…) change your definition of success, and take a break. Take a break regularly.
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Jesus is good.(…) Jesus is good, and he is good to your kids. He’s good to you.
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You’ve got this, Mom and Dad. You do. You’ve got this. Jesus is with you. Jesus is transforming you, and he’s giving you a good, full, abundant life in him. And he’s inviting you to join him in helping your children have a good, full, abundant life in him. Amen.