Dedicating Our Children To God (Part 3) - Nicole Lee

​In this faith-filled teaching we are encouraged to raise kids who will become men and women who walk closely with Jesus, in holiness and wisdom and fear of the Lord. When we dedicate our children to the Lord we are coming into agreement with what God is already saying about them and declaring that we will settle for nothing less than the perfect will of God for them.

Full transcript generated by ai (please excuse errors):




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​I want to continue this conversation about the eternal significance of dedicating our children to the Lord and then walking out that consecration. And I'm actually going to try to keep it shorter today, because I really do want it to be a conversation and a discussion. Because I know that we're not all parents here. But a lot of us here are parents and I, I really want to hear the thoughts and advice and wisdom from you guys, and especially from seasoned parents, but also other parents who just have younger kids because I know even from just my siblings, like, we all have younger kids, but we get so much from each other. So, Tay, my husband, Tay was recently in a wedding for one of his good friends, Colin, not Colin Cantrell. Nobody missed anything. But one of his friends from the academy and he got this really cool, groomsmen gift. Each of the groomsmen were given a knife with a scripture inscribed on it, and each of the scriptures was different. It was just whatever the Lord had laid on Collins's heart, and the one that was inscribed on taze was Psalm 127, three through six. And it was obviously just the reference, not the in Tyre passage that'd be like a sword, right. But Psalm 127 336, which says, Behold, children are a heritage of the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward as arrows in the hand of a mighty man, so are the children of one's youth. Happy is the man whose quiver is full of them, they will not be put to shame when they speak with their enemies at the gate. This is my all time favorite passage on children, and especially on parenting in the Bible, because it's so accurately depicts parents as warriors, and just gives that picture as a mom and a dad as a true warrior. And what do we do with arrows? Shoot them. Exactly. We shoot them and we shoot them at Target. We tried to do some archery at camp, looking at what he can do. We tried to do some archery at camp up in one of his. And it didn't go so great, because there were so many broken arrows. And all of the bows are missing bow sights, and we're just like a little bit off. But I do genuinely enjoy archery. When TJ and I first got married, he was stationed in Rapid City, South Dakota. If you've ever been to Mount Rushmore, the Black Hills, you've probably been to Rapid City because it's nestled right in there. And it's really beautiful. And I love the people, they're so kind and down to earth. But there is almost nothing to do. It's basically hunting, fishing, hiking, which I shouldn't say that's nothing to do. Let me tell you, it was today's world, you know, say absolutely loved it so much land to just freely go hunting on. But we decided to get into archery together. And he already had a bow. So he bought me a bow and started teaching me to shoot it. And the first time we went to the outdoor range, we went to the 10 yard line, and I attempt to shoot an arrow. And it's like, it doesn't really have momentum just kind of like plops into the grass ahead of me. And same thing happens the second time. And so then he starts teaching me how to hold the bow where my arm should be positioned, and probably most importantly, how to align my bow sight right onto the bullseye. And then I shot an arrow and hit the bull's eye. And he and I, we we just kept practicing until we could do at the 20 yard line 3030 yard line. And my point in saying all this is a little bit obvious, but if you want to hit the bull's eye, you have to aim at the bullseye. And when we dedicate our children to the Lord, we're making a declaration. We're making a declaration to our own hearts. We're making a declaration to the Lord that we're aiming at the bullseye and we will settle for nothing less than the perfect will of God for our child. So last week, dad talked about Hannah, the mother of Samuel. And Hannah, as you know, was barren and cried out to the Lord for children, he heard her prayer and blessed her with a son, who would become the prophet Samuel. And when Samuel was born, she said, for this boy, I have prayed. And the Lord has granted me my petition that I asked if him, so I in turn, dedicate him to the Lord. As long as he lives he is dedicated to the Lord. And I love that Hannah knew exactly the target that she was aiming at. It wasn't a half hearted, like, I'll do my best Lord, and out, you know, hopefully he'll serve the Lord. But she just she makes this declaration that as long as he lives, he is dedicated to the Lord. So our Bullseye is not just that our kids would know God a little bit, or no of God or be saved in escape hell, but that they would love the Lord with all of their hearts, that they would be surrendered to Him and walk in obedience to Him all the days of their lives. Secondly, when we dedicate our child to the Lord, we are coming into agreement with what God is already saying about him or her. And this, to me is the most encouraging part because we all know that in our own strength, in our own power, and in all of the energy and all of the sacrifice that we could ever pour out to our children, we do not have the power to turn their hearts to the Lord. But it is the will of God, and His power is sufficient to do it. You already know these verses, but I'm going to read them anyway. Jeremiah, one, five, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you were born, I set you apart, I appointed you, prophet to the nations. And Jeremiah 2911. For I know the plans that I have in mind for you declares the LORD, plans for peace, and not calamity, to give you a future and a hope. This is not a particularity set aside for Jeremiah, this is the goodness of our omniscient God who has already planned out the lives of our children. And we don't know You know, what God's will for our children's IQ is, or occupation, or spouse or salary, or any of that we can pray over that, but we don't know the will of God. But we do know the will of God about this, that he is calling them to be in relationship with him all the days of their lives. And week, we don't get to, I'm also gonna say this, I know, I know that our kids have freewill to just like we do, they have the choice of whether or not they're going to choose to be in relationship with Him, of whether or not they're going to seek Him every day, but as a mother, and and as fathers, we can make the choice of putting our stake in the ground in prayer by saying the Lord Your kingdom come and your will be done in my kids lives as it is in heaven. And we know when we're doing that we're joining with the perfect will of God. And in saying that, I'm going to contend in prayer for nothing less. And one, one more note on that. Just because the culture around us is so evil, doesn't mean that I'm going to decrease my faith, or lower my kids expectations for their relationship with the Lord. I don't want to look at the giant of the culture and the evil and the sin and then assess the power of God. Because we know that the power of God is not insufficient to bring His perfect will to pass. And it is His will for for every one of our kids, every person in this room, it is His will for them to walk in close relationship with Him like Enoch, in obedience to Him like Daniel, and in holiness, like Noah, even in the midst of a wicked generation, and it is possible and we are not going to bow down to the giants of the culture and say, Well, I hope I hope I hope they end up walking with the Lord. Moses mother, whenever whenever Moses was born, like there was, you know, such a tiny like, 0% chance that Moses would even live because the Hebrew baby boys were being killed, but instead of just accepting it and being like, Okay, this is just the way it is. Instead, she had the faith to put Moses in that basket If the Lord took her faith saved Moses life and delivered all of her people. And that's I don't believe that's just a, you know, we can't just say, Well, that was the Bible. We love the Bible, you know, we have to, like accept that as the great possibility of God for our old lives. We never except the storyline the enemy has for our children, no matter how dark, it starts to look, no matter what path they start to go on, we don't accept the enemy's storyline. And sometimes it just takes continuing to stand in prayer continuing to stand continuing to stand, because sometimes it takes a long time. Yes, it's never too late to pray for God's destiny for our children. And finally, this kind of just goes along with what I was just saying about Moses, in the midst of a culture, that doesn't value the sanctity of life, or the beauty and blessings of God's plan for families, when we dedicate our children to the Lord. And we walk out this consecration day by day by day, we are publicly affirming that God's ways are ways of life. And I know that the enemy has always been after children. But I've noticed in the past year or so, a more direct intensified attack from the evil one on babies and on children. And we're seeing people propagating, celebrating, sometimes literally screaming, you know, into their phones in their cars, for the right to kill babies in the womb, and at the same time, attempting to deceive an entire generation of children about what it means to be a male or a female. And this is not the time for us in the body of Christ to shrink back or shy away from, from teaching, especially starting by teaching our kids but also just saying out loud, that God's ways are ways of life and that children are a blessing from the Lord and that the way he created them as male, or as female is sacred, and holy and good and something to be celebrated. So whenever we are dedicating our children to the Lord, we're seeing you as my son, or as my daughter, you're worth having, and you're worth the daily sacrifice, of picking up our cross, and making all the sacrifices necessarily to daily teach them to walk with God and to protect them from the onslaught of deception in the culture around us. So after we've, you know, had the, the, that mark of like dedicating our children to the Lord, I believe that there's ways that we can also order our lives so that we walk out this consecration of their hearts to Him. And again, I'll keep this short. And I this is where I really want everybody everybody else's input after I'm done, and we'll turn off the recording for that. Because Tony, and I really like we're just at the beginning of this Matthias is going to be seven this year. So we have like a couple of years under our belt, but I just really want everybody else's wisdom in on this. First, we need to recognize the authority that God has given us as parents. And I'm primarily talking about spiritual authority and the authority to rebuke the plans of the enemy, and to push back the attacks of the enemy through worship and prayer, and also to usher in the kingdom of God into our kids lives. But I think if we just if we just take the physical realm for a second, and look at the authority we have as parents in the physical realm, it kind of gives us somewhat of an accurate picture of what this looks like whenever you abdicate your authority. So have you ever been around parents who you just, you just want to sometimes you feel more irritated and others, you just want to wrap your arm around and say, You are the mama or you are the daddy like you have authority over this child. So what happens when parents don't walk in their authority like in the physical just in the physical realm and we can even take it just as young kids because that that picture is so accurate when they're little. Chaos and trust me I am not saying that If you walk in your authority, it'll be order and peace in your home. My sister and I were just telling each other like stories like, I get it, I get it, there is chaos, even when you're walking in authority, but if parents are just like, and right now, I feel like, we're all we're constantly told, like, you should feel guilty. If you walk in authority as a parent, like you're stifling them, you're oppressing them, you know, like all of these things. But we've seen what happens when parents abdicate it. And where there is a lack of authority, someone else will fill it, it never just stays empty, right. And so in the physical realm, that's the kids, you know, and either turns to a very outspoken chaos, or a very quiet manipulation. So, whenever we don't walk in our spiritual authority, though, and we abdicate, that things equally get out of order, and equally can turn to chaos. But instead of our kids coming in taking that place, the enemy just comes right in like he is, he is ready to whisper in our kids ears, and he is ready to take advantage of that. So we cannot let the enemy convince us that we either don't have a right to spiritual authority, or for some reason shouldn't take it over our kids. And I think the most common ways I've experienced this in my own life of the enemy, attempting that is one, he tells us that we've made too many mistakes, and that we've failed too many times, maybe in our personal life, or maybe even in parenting. And we've all made mistakes, some of them. Great, you know, I could probably tell you like five parenting failures I've had today. I could, I won't, but I could. And so could you know, all of us in this room. But we can't let the enemy use that over us to say like, well, you don't have any right than to, to pray over over your children. Or secondly, the enemy will say, Your child has just gone. And I haven't experienced this personally. But in other areas of my life and other things I've prayed over like this person is too far gone, you know, this person has gone too far down a dark road, it'll never be the same again, and to convince you to not pray for the perfect will of God to come into their lives. Or the enemy will just try to convince you like your parents have your tiny person, like how much power could your prayer have, you know, the enemy will try to attempt to convince you of that. But as a mom, and as a dad, the authority that God gives us in prayer over our kids is vast, is great. And you know, Jesus said, about faith, if you have faith of a mustard seed, you can move mountains. So I apply that to my kids. And I can only imagine what God can do in their hearts in their minds in their lives. Also, so ordering our lives in a way of continual consecration of our children to the Lord, I believe is we can we can order be trying to figure out how to say this. I'll say that say it this way, we set up habits, and I almost want to say like rituals in our family to actually schedule the discipleship of our children. And this one involves some of the sacrifice that we were talking about last week, because you have to give up even more time and energy. And it's like, as a parent, you're like, oh my gosh, like, there's nothing left to give sometimes. But it is well worth it. And so I believe that we need to have scheduled times of prayer, of worship of Bible study and devotionals with our kids, and Tni. We've done this like well in some seasons and not so well in other seasons. So hopefully in the end, it'll all balance. So, for example, like our time of worship, for a long time was as a family, it was Sunday morning. And hopefully now doing mission house on Saturday night, we'll get back into that. But I just want to encourage you with your kids, whenever you're scheduling these times of discipleship of worship, of prayer of Bible study. Don't pressure yourself to make it look like this huge, extravagant, holy, spirit filled thing like, just be faithful. Take a little bit of time and be faithful. And so our time of Sunday worship like, especially with the kids so little it's probably no more than 20 minutes. It's worship and prayer. So we do three songs to like you know, adultery. One super kid song. And then we asked each of the kids to pray. And I'm going to be honest with you like, it is not a pretty picture. Sometimes it is like not something, you know, you want to like, advertise because I think the first few months, we did it nine times out of 10, I was crying. And I was not crying because the Holy Spirit was touching me, I was crying. We are constantly interrupted by a kid, like having a massive meltdown, or having to stop and take disciplinary measures, or, you know, someone's hitting someone else. And so it's just, it's like constant training, saying, Okay, you can, you can dance, you can clap, you can sing, you can not throw a truck at your brother, you know, like, and so, but just being faithful, just take that little bit and be faithful day by day by day, but I do believe we have to schedule it in to make it happen. And the last thing I will talk about really quick, of kind of ordering our lives has to do with the atmosphere of our home. And I almost did a talk about this, but I really felt I just felt it on my heart. And before I do, I just want to say this is something that I'm working towards, and I'm not perfect in. And so please like, as I'm talking about this Don't, don't let there be any condemnation, especially moms, like, Don't let there be any combination going on. Because I'm going to talk about like the atmosphere of the home. First and foremost, I think we need to have our hearts right before the Lord to create a peaceful atmosphere in our home. And obviously, we have bad days and, and you know, days where we're struggling. But whenever we can have our hearts before the Lord in a place of surrender, then we can really be that conductor of the music of our home is the way I look at it. Because when my heart is in chaos, and I'm holding on to bitterness, or I'm angry, then my kids pick up on it. So quick, you know, they might not be able to put it into words, but everything kind of goes out of whack. And next is the physical environment of our home. If you come into my house, like on any given day, I'm not saying it's going to be clean, like Tinos list, obviously what he knows this, he's my neighbor, like, you walk in, it looks like six people in there and a bunch of little kids and that's okay. But whenever we have a system to attempt to bring some order to the chaos, then it brings some order to our own hearts, which allows us to have these times of worship and prayer and discipleship. And it doesn't have to be perfect, whatsoever. And again, I feel like this is a bit off topic, but I felt are really called to say it. So I'm gonna say that if we can bring order to the atmosphere from spiritually and physically so that there's a way in which the dishes are getting done and the laundry is getting done and the toys are being put away. There's some kind of cycle to it brings an order and an atmosphere of peace. So I will close with some encouragement from Psalm one. Because I really like to read this passage in the context of parenting. Happy is the one who has not walked in the advice of the wicked, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And on His law he meditates day and night. He will be like a planted tree over streams of water producing its fruit and its season. Its leaf never droops. But in all he does he succeeds. The wicked are not so far. They're like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand during the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous, for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to ruin. I know that right now, all around us, it seems like there's a lot of darkness and a lot of attacks against our children. But we have every reason to have great hope in the Lord and faith that through his power. We can raise kids who will become men and women who work closely with Jesus and holiness and wisdom and fear of the Lord. Thank you for joining us today. Aaron ova is raising up spiritual leaders in many nations through our spiritual enrichment events, syndicated NetCast international prayer Council network and numerous international seminary scholarships together We are lighting the fires of revival, fueling prayer movements and raising up friends of Jesus in the nations. We invite you to partner with us in this extraordinary movement. 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