Parenting with Purpose: CCM Parenting Seminar 2024 | Q&A Part 2

Pastor Sandy sits down with us in the studio to answer questions that were submitted by attendees at Calvary Chapel Miami's 2024 parenting seminar. We go over issues such as baby dedications and family devotional times. Even tougher subjects such as knowing what is going on with your kids and their friends,  and what to do when they are caught lying or cheating.

We end with an inspiring story that drives home the central lesson of today's conversation. Parenting, teaching, and training, all happen in the everyday moments of life. Whether at church or a baseball field the purpose of parenting remains the same.

Chapters

• 0:00 Parenting and Trust Issues
• 9:26 Parenting and Family Values
• 17:26 Family Devotions and Life Lessons
• 28:04 Power of God in Everyday Life

Transcript

Joey: 0:00

Family. Thank you for joining us here with Pastor Sandy Adams. And this is kind of a part two or the second half of the Q&As from the conference. Pastor Sandy, I think the question total was up to 36 questions that we got at the conference, so we're going to try to cover the second half of them. And if you're not familiar with the excuse me, the seminar, it was a one day seminar. Then you got to go to CalvaryMiamicom to see and listen to the seminar in its entirety and then come back and listen to part two of the Q&A session, which was the last session of the seminar.

Sandy: 0:38

So yes, Joy, we had a great day today, did we not? It was it was.

Joey: 0:42

You know, I'll say this much we're preparing yesterday.

Sandy: 0:46

I got here this morning and I was so excited Like more excited than I thought I'd be, and I was not disappointed, man, somebody knows, you know, I just think when parents take time out and come together and seek God for wisdom and direction, I just think God honors that and I think he's going to meet them in a special way and there's I think there's so much available to us. God wants to help us in this job of raising our kids that we're not alone, that he's the ultimate father and he really wants to help us, as parents, to do this job and to do it well. That when we take time out to seek his help boy, he's always faithful to supply what we need.

Joey: 1:26

Amen, you know, pastor Sandy, I want to ask you I'm going to just take a couple minutes here before we get into the questions, because maybe somebody's listening and they thought, oh, you know, I don't need to listen to the whole seminar, I just wanted to hear this part of it. Sure, what was the job of a parent? It was twofold, you said. Near the end of the seminar. You said if you remember anything else, remember the purpose.

Sandy: 1:48

Yeah, according to Ephesians, chapter six, the first four verses there we read. We read it several times. But according to Ephesians, paul tells children that they need to obey their parents and they need to respect and honor their parents. But when you think about it, if that's God's command of children, then that should be. The task of the parents is to help teach their children obedience and respect, and so the job of any parent is to teach their children obedience and respect. And, trust me, if they don't learn it from their parents, they're not going to learn it from anyone else. The world certainly isn't teaching people that these days. So it's the parent's job to teach their children obedience and respect, to teach them obedience well, or to teach them obedience while earning their respect.

Joey: 2:47

So, again, that was the foundation and you got, I'm telling you, you got to go and listen to the seminar. So, pastor Sandy, getting into the questions we did not get to at the seminar, the first one if a church leader tells me something my child did, but my child denies it, whom should I believe?

Sandy: 3:05

Well, there's so much here, Joy, that we don't know. We don't know the relationship between the parent and that church leader. You know what has gone on in the past. How long have they known each other? What kind of confidence level is there between the parent and that church leader? Let's just say it's a leader that they trust. Let's say it's a pastor that they've been with for many, many years.

Sandy: 3:33

I would really hesitate to question the pastor there. I would believe the pastor and I would just approach this from an angle of okay, why is my child not wanting to be forthright? Why is my child denying this? Or why are they trying to skirt this issue? And I would approach it from that angle, not that I would necessarily deny my child or call my child a liar or anything like that. I would just say, you know, is there confusion here? Is there misunderstanding here? What's going on here? And I would just try to get to the root cause of what's happening here. And if my child is actually denying something that they did, then they need to be confronted on that and it needs to be dealt with. But this is certainly something where I wouldn't go into it questioning either side. I would just want to get to the bottom of it and just find out what the truth is here.

Joey: 4:35

And then the second question is really the greater issue of lying in general, and it's written like this advice on how to train and educate children when they are caught lying.

Sandy: 4:47

Well, we need to understand the importance of telling the truth, that we're only as good as our word, that as people of God, we've got to let our yes be yes and our no be no. We have to be faithful to our word. We have to tell the truth. Christians are all about speaking the truth and love, and so so we need to make an issue of this, and this is not a question of knowledge or understanding. This is a moral issue. It's a question of doing the right thing or not, and there's all kinds of reasons why people don't do the right thing. And so we wanna stress the importance of telling the truth and the imperative of it, and that this is a moral issue, and we either wanna please God or not please God. We wanna tell the truth or not tell the truth.

Joey: 5:48

So I guess kind of a follow-up question to that or to elaborate on the question. There's a trust issue, right, I mean? Especially if they're older phone car. You mentioned some of the things that you've gone through with your children and consequences and all that, but how do you address the trust issue there? Anything come to mind? Well, that's a huge thing.

Sandy: 6:11

I think the kids need to understand that they have violated our trust. And the question is not can I forgive you If you lie to me? I can forgive you, but the problem is is that the next time you tell the truth I'm gonna question whether you're lying to me or not, and that's the real damage done. I can forgive you for lying to me, but you've just planted a doubt in my mind of your integrity and whether I can trust you in the future, and so you don't wanna. That's not the basis of good relationships. That's not how you get along in life. The basis of good relations is not. The basis of good relationships is dependability and trust, and that's why honesty is such an important characteristic.

Joey: 7:08

Excellent. I actually wanna come back to family devotions. Pastor Sandia, I would like to end with that. I think that'll be sweet, That'd be fun.

Joey: 7:16

So we're gonna go down to the next couple questions. I kinda like rules in and out of the home. So the first one I like when we're reviewing it was pretty simple Should my daughter be allowed to wear whatever she wants? Absolutely not. Now this is funny because my wife was helping me organize these questions and she's so merciful. She said oh you know, but maybe they're asking you know, their little kid, their little daughter, wants to wear a tiara. I go, I don't think that's who's asking this. Pastor Sandia, can you?

Sandy: 7:42

elaborate a little bit. Well, sure, we need to teach our young girls the virtue of modesty, and so there's so much peer pressure today when it comes to clothing and style and fashion, especially for young girls, young boys too, but especially for young girls, and we've got to set standards for, you know, for our daughters With my daughter, we always follow the little motto you can be mod but modest. And so we can dress fashionably, we can dress hip, we can be cool, but we can also be modest at the same time, and that has to be stressed to our daughter. So, yeah, we can't just let a young girl go out wearing whatever she wants. There is no standard in the world today.

Joey: 8:39

Pastor Sandia us down in South Florida. Know that man it is, you know we.

Sandy: 8:48

We had one daughter and there were many times where our daughter went to leave the house and my wife or I would say nope, not in that, Not many times. She was a modest girl, so there wasn't many times, but there were occasion when now you can't do that.

Joey: 9:11

You know and again thinking of my wife and our children are little, but she was a youth leader for a long time and she has told me and it's surprising, but she's experienced it herself Some young ladies, especially growing up in church, they just don't know. They don't know a certain dress, a certain way is going to affect people a certain way. That's our job, right, it's to teach them Exactly.

Sandy: 9:36

I think young girls need to know about young boys and what young boys are thinking and the impulses and the thought process of young boys, that young boys don't approach things the way young girls do. They don't see things the same way and young girls need to understand that and the best person to teach them that is their mom. Amen, she's the best place to teach them and the church needs to teach them that as well.

Joey: 10:02

Awesome, awesome. The next question is in the same realm. It says how can I know what my child is being exposed to at school or at friends' houses, et cetera?

Sandy: 10:13

You've got to know. A parent has got to know. No, you know. How can you know? You gotta get involved. You can go to the school. You can examine the textbooks. When your child brings a textbook home, pick it up and thumb through it and find out what they're being taught. We were very cautious about allowing our kids to go to other people's homes, and we wanted to know what was gonna be going on in that home before our kids were allowed to go there, especially to spend the night. And so you've gotta be very cautious about these issues. And you've got to know, you need to know what you can expect when your kids are going to friends, or when your kids are going to school, or wherever your kids are going to school or wherever your kids are going. It's up to a parent to control their environment, or to at least know the dangers in their environment and do the best they can to protect their kids.

Joey: 11:24

How can that work out practically? In a sense, I'm thinking maybe a parent is embarrassed, or a parent doesn't know how to approach. Again, there's another mom and dad. You know well what are the kids gonna be watching? Or what are you doing over there? You know, is there a key to some?

Sandy: 11:41

tips. Well, if we didn't know, if we didn't know the family or the parents that our kids were going to, then we were very cautious about allowing them to go. And if it was a birthday party for a couple hours in an afternoon, that would be one thing. But we're talking about going to spend the night. Those kinds of things it just didn't happen in our family, unless the other family was a church friend, somebody that we knew the parents intimately, and we understood that the parents, their values, were the same as our values and what they were trying to accomplish with their children is the same as what we were trying to accomplish with our children. We looked for that compatibility and we allowed our kids to. We reserved our kids for people who had that same kinds of accountability. A lot of damage can be done in one night and so we were very careful. If we didn't know what was going on in that environment, we didn't let our kids go into it.

Joey: 12:49

Awesome. Yeah, I'm so grateful. I asked that follow up because that's such a guiding principle right Families with the same goals, the same values. Such a guiding principle.

Sandy: 13:00

That's why you need to be involved in your church.

Joey: 13:02

Amen.

Sandy: 13:04

And you need to look at the families that your children are involved in. It's very helpful if your daughter's got a best friend. Why not invite their whole family over to the house, and so you can get to know the parents as well. Why not get involved? The question itself how can I know what my child is being exposed to? Well, yeah, it's a good question. You need to know and you, as the parent, need to know. So, whatever it takes to gain that knowledge, it's what you need to do.

Joey: 13:36

Awesome, very specific question, but I'm grateful to get it. It shows that we had families with kids of all ages. To take a break from the exact questions here, pastor Sandy, as we were getting ready for the Q&A, I asked Pastor Chris, the kids pastor, the one who organized the seminar. I said I think we should start with the teenager questions because there were so many. It seems like there were so many families with the teenagers.

Joey: 14:02

And now we have this one about a baby and it seems like a new family, even to the faith, even to church. So let's read it. I know we don't baptize babies, but growing up in an evangelical church, I was told that babies needed to be presented to God. We have a nine month old and just started bringing him to church. At one month do I do this?

Sandy: 14:20

Mm-hmm. Well, I think I think you want to. We're talking about a baby dedication here, and so you know, I think you certainly want to do it before the child, before the child comes of age, and you know it won't be long, for you know it could be three or four years, it could be five or six years, when the child all of a sudden is realizes their own sin, realizes their need for a savior, and that child is ready to make a profession of faith in Christ. And so if that child comes of age I've seen where I've prayed with five-year-olds for them to receive Christ, and I know of people who are adults now and when you ask them, when they embrace Christ in their life, they'll go back to a childhood experience.

Sandy: 15:25

Baby dedication is more for the parents, it's more of a parent dedication, and the child is oblivious to what's really happening and what statements being made. This is all something that the parents are stating. They're stating their dedication to want to raise their baby in a way that'll glorify God. And so I would just say that a baby dedication needs to be done when the child is a baby, I mean before, probably before two years old, because very soon thereafter they may be in a place where they, where it may be irrelevant at that point, the step may need to be for the child to pray, to receive Christ and be baptized as a believer.

Joey: 16:09

Yeah, that's awesome, you know, I love that. The summary is that it's never too late, in a sense right, if they're told for baby dedication. Hey, pray with them to receive the Lord Sure, absolutely, that's awesome, which?

Sandy: 16:24

is what every person who's been dedicated as a baby will eventually want to pray to receive the Lord as an adult. So the baby dedication again is more for the parents than it is for the child.

Joey: 16:38

Awesome, and we end with this sweet topic of family devotions, family devotion. So I'll read the first two questions, but they're very similar, they're kind of like one in the same. Any practical tips on family devotions when, where and how? How to keep your kids attention during family devotions.

Sandy: 16:58

Yeah, these are great questions. There are families that have really mastered this. They've become really good at creating, using some creative ways to, to share a biblical truth or a biblical passage with the kids and keep the kids engaged and involved. I think that's wonderful. I think the best devotions with the family are those devotions that that happen spontaneously, that that happen in the course of life. You know Deuteronomy, chapter six. It tells us that we need to teach our children to love the Lord. While we walk in the way, while we live life together with our children, we're constantly teaching them spiritual truths and spiritual lessons, and so, to me, the best family devotions happen spontaneously, during an event that you wouldn't necessarily associate with family devotions, but when the family's out doing something and a spiritual lesson is on the radar and dad stops and sits the kids down and says okay, guys, this is why we do what we do.

Sandy: 18:20

It's because because of our faith in Christ and and this is the lesson that I want to show you and it's doing those things. It's taking life as it comes and interweaving our faith and the Bible into everyday life. This is what this is what the kids. It's so impressionable to the kids that that faith is not just from six to six thirty on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but that, but that my faith encompasses 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Wherever I go, whatever I do, jesus is at work in my life and at any moment God might want to do something through me, and, and so there are great creative ways.

Sandy: 19:16

There's good resources out there for us to use. There's some books that do a good job of putting the Bible stories in kids' language. That's a good idea. There are all kinds of different resources that we can pull from, but it's that well-placed lesson in a person's life and we need it the most. When we see life intersecting with faith and we stop and we call attention to it and our kids walk away with the impression wow, god is for every day. God loves me. God's working in my life right now, even when I don't realize it. It's those moments that impact our kids in the most meaningful ways.

Joey: 20:05

Thank you so much for that. Yeah, we have a couple of kids' Bibles scattered throughout the house. It's funny, and you went over this in the seminar you got to meet them where they're at. So one of the kids' Bibles is destroyed. His cop page is ripped out, but it means they're using it, they're doing something with it. Yes, so that's funny.

Joey: 20:26

And on that same vein, I was listening to a book recently and it was about different habits and family rhythms and this kind of resources. But I was so thankful at the very end of the book the author concluded with our habits and our routines don't change our kids. Jesus changes our kids Absolutely. His power changes our kids. So I love that. He gave incredible ideas. I took so many notes, but he concluded with it's only Jesus that does it, not all these things in this book. So that's kind of like a summary of what I heard you just say, pastor Sandy.

Joey: 21:03

The next question I feel like it brings it everything together how do you get this kid to love the Lord? Let me read it as it's written. What's the best advice you can give for a child nine years old who doesn't want to pray or read the Bible, loves reading books, but not the Bible. And this is every parent's dream, isn't it? We want our kids to want to start to read and pray and have a relationship with the Lord for themselves. So the specific question is how do I get my nine year old to want to read the Bible? But I feel like it's a greater principle.

Sandy: 21:33

Yeah, I think you love that nine year old and you live a winsome Christianity before them. Your faith is real, your joy is in the Lord, you have the peace of God upon your life and you're articulating and you're communicating to this nine year old how much Jesus means to you. You don't have to pressure that kid into wanting a relationship with Jesus or wanting to read his Bible or wanting to have faith. When he sees it in your life, he'll want it for himself. And so I would just say take the pressure off. You know, just love that kid and live your faith in front of that kid. If you're the father, you're the mother, just make sure you continue to show that your child just how much Jesus means to you, and when the time comes, that child will want to embrace Jesus for himself.

Joey: 22:32

Amen, pastor Sandy, something comes to mind and this one's not in the question. So maybe you'll say hey, I'll get back to you and I know I'm putting you on the spot. I appreciate your flexibility, but I know and it came up in the seminar a lot that that ball was important to your family. Your kids played. I mean, that was a big part of life and I know you're a baseball fan as well.

Joey: 22:54

Are there any stories that come to mind with family and kids and sports? Or maybe you were at a game and God did something, or maybe one of their games or an MLB game, I don't know. I just thought to ask you. Maybe a sweet story comes to mind that people might relate to. That's great.

Sandy: 23:12

That's a great question, joey. Well, you know, I'll tell you a story with my oldest son. My oldest son was, of course, he loved baseball, still loves baseball to this day. His name's Zachary. And Zach played baseball starting at six or seven years old and I coached him. I coached him every step of the way and we had many, many wonderful…. You were the coach of the whole team. I was the coach of the whole team, yes, yes, and I coached him year after year.

Sandy: 23:41

You know he, in matter of fact, he had not played Little League Baseball without me as his coach and he was quite good. He played in high school and had played for our local high school and he it was his sophomore year and he didn't play that much and he decided that was going to be his final year and he had made that decision and I took him. He told me he was going to quit and he was going to. Actually it was probably a good thing he did quit. He ended up picking up the base and learned to play the base and became a base player on our youth worship band thereafter. But so it was probably a good decision that he made, but for me at the time it was kind of emotional. Here my son is, he's giving up playing baseball and I wasn't quite sure it was the right thing for him to do and so I took him up to the ballpark and he and I walked out on the field. Nobody was there but us and we walked out on the field and we sat down on the pitcher's mound and I remember asking him I said Sack.

Sandy: 24:48

I said why are you going to quit? I said think of all the wonderful lessons you've learned on the baseball field, all the team experiences you've had, all the wonderful things that God has taught you over the years on the baseball field. Think of all that baseball has given to you. Why are you going to quit baseball? And I'll never forget what he told me. He looked at me and he said Dad, he said baseball hasn't taught me anything. He said everything I've learned here.

Sandy: 25:18

I learned from looking at you because I watched you. I watched how you interacted with people. I watched how you coached the team. I watched how the values that you had and the priorities that you had and how you taught us good sportsmanship and how you taught us to try our best and how you taught us all the other things that you taught me over the years, but it has nothing to do with baseball dead. It had everything to do with you and that blew my mind. That literally blew my mind, because I, as the parent, had not looked at it that way. But he had, he had and he went ahead and quit that year and, like I say, went on and got more involved in the church. And it was all a good move and God blessed it and he never regretted it.

Sandy: 26:10

Yeah, but but dad had to learn a lesson that day that it's not about the sport itself, yeah, it's about the relationships that that work around it. Yeah.

Joey: 26:24

And I'm sure you would agree, pastor Sandy. God could do that through any parent listening.

Sandy: 26:27

Oh, absolutely, and through any vehicle. The same things that we learned through baseball could be learned through you know, model airplane carving, or you know, or you know dirt bike riding or whatever, whatever the issue might be or the activity might be. It's just being it's being there with your child.

Joey: 26:53

Yes.

Sandy: 26:53

It's you, as the adult, being there with your child, letting your child see how you navigate life, the priorities that you have, how you interact with others, how you interface with people. That's where Christianity has lived out, amen. And they see your Christianity, they see your faith and they understand it. With my youngest son, I'll never forget the night when he had we had a dad on the team, one of the other players, his dad. He was a drunk, wow. And he showed up drunk that night and he was behind home play, yelling and screaming and making a scene and and I walked over to him, called him over to the fence.

Sandy: 27:37

Could have been an altercation, could have been an ugly scene, but I but I walked over, I called him over to the fence and I looked at him and I said, randy, I says you're embarrassing your son and here's what I want you to do. I want you to walk out to center field and I want you to stand behind the center field fence and I want you to be quiet for the rest of this game. And, believe it or not, he did exactly what I told him to do, wow. But my son saw that and he thought, wow, dad didn't fight fire with fire. Yeah, he didn't get angry with him, he didn't get upset with him. Dad just went and talked calmly, insensibly, and let the Lord work in the man's heart. And the man heard what the dead, his dad's wisdom, and he did what, what I told him to do.

Sandy: 28:24

Yeah, and so just little things like that over and over again where my kids saw the power of God at work in different situations in everyday life, and I tell you those individual lessons where my kids were able to see God at work counted for a hundred family devotions.

Joey: 28:49

Amen Passers. Andy, thank you so much for the seminar and for your time today.

Sandy: 28:54

God bless you, joy. Keep up the good work, thanks.