Family-ish (Part 5): Parenting on Purpose

well good morning one more time victory midtown are y'all glad to be in church this morning come on those who are watching online with us we are so glad that you decided to join us today listen we are going to continue this family-ish series but i want to give you a quick update many of you know that we are just this close to moving in our new building and things are coming along well the progress is happening uh some of the serving teams have actually even already been there through the building to be able to see all the progress and we all are excited and so i just want to let you know that we were initially thinking that we would be in the building possibly next week but i wanted to to let you know next week we will definitely be here somebody say here we'll be here and then we want you to make sure that you are tied into the tech solution tied into the email list because it literally can change overnight and so what we're doing if you know anything about commercial real estate what you know is that after you do all the work now the permits have to be signed now the fire marshal has to give you the okay and so what we want to do is we want to ask you to partner with us in prayer somebody say pray prayer partner with us in prayer that when they come in to do the final inspections even next week that it will be done it will be so and we will be able to text you and say hey y'all we're meeting at our new home we meet at our new home so we're excited about that and we just want to make sure you're able to get those updates so here's the thing as we continue in this family-ish series kendra and i are so excited to have the opportunity anytime we get a chance to minister together to operate together in this fashion we are excited about it and today we're going to actually do something a little bit different than we've done for the whole panel for the whole series we're going to be doing a panel today and i want to just kind of cast vision a little bit for what we are going to be doing on last week how many people about show of hands you were here last week a lot of hands a lot of hands if you were not here last week or even if you missed any of the messages in the series i want to encourage you to get the message go on our podcast go on our youtube page and listen to the message because last week i ministered a message called fighting for your family fighting for your family and today it's really going to kind of build from that place and in fighting for our family what we said is that we referred to the scripture in first samuel 17 where david showed up on the scene after goliath was actually running all over the people of israel and he was actually looking down upon them and he was taunting them for about 40 days he showed up on the scene and said hold on why are y'all letting this giant or this this philistine actually take hold of you why are you actually being subject to that he said is there not a cause and what he meant by that he said is there not a cause that's worth fighting for is there not a cause that we will actually make sure that we are affirming the power of god through us and today what we're going to be doing is we're going to be talking about this subject called parenting on purpose parenting on purpose and what i'm excited about as we talk about this today is that when we learn about the story of david he was around 15 years old and in being 15 years old he still showed up in the strength of the lord he showed up understanding that he didn't have to wait till he got older there's no such thing and we say this today and all of our victory youth and victory kids there's no junior holy spirit holy spirit is not waiting for you to get a certain age before he kicks in he's saying i want you to tap in and i want you to take hold because i have purpose and destiny for you so i want to read this scripture to us because it's going to be a launching pad for us today as we talk about parenting on purpose and you may be even hearing me say this is like well i'm not a parent so is this for me yes this is for you if you're a single this is for you if you are a parent of someone who's come through your home and you've raised them to adulthood this is for you because watch this write this statement down write this statement down in all that we do you will either teach what you've been tested on or you'll be tested on what you've been taught you'll either teach what you've been tested on or you'll be tested on what you've been taught and the reason i'm bringing that to bear is because in this time while you might not think this may be relevant to you we want you to put this in your pocket we want you to put this in your quiver because you will need it and one of the other great things i love about our church is that we're not here to preach selfish messages what do i mean by that we're not just talking about the felt need give me my word give me my song there are times we need to come together as the family of believers the oikos to understand that every sunday i'm gaining something for me to come together as a community as we move forward in discipleship amen so here's the scripture that i want to read to launch us off psalm 127 verse 3a and then i'm going to go to verse 5. it says this children are a gift from the lord they are a reward from him children born to a young man are like arrows in a warrior's hands how joyful is the man whose quiver is full of them i love that how joyful is the man whose quiver is full of them and so as we talk today we want to just posture our hearts posture our minds that we're not looking to be reactive in the state of parenting we're looking to be proactive meaning that we're going to get ahead of the curve as people are growing because again if you don't even have kids you have an opportunity to be one who continues to rear those children that are in this community in the things of the lord amen so here it is as we get ready to jump into this we're going to invite some friends up and as we do that can we just give them a hand kendra's going to invite them up now gary and debbie price would you please join us in mo 2. come on up to the stage i want to give you a little bit of background on our guests today they're all people that we would call friends debbie and gary price they are long-standing members of victory church uh when we joined victory in 2018 we became a part of their small groups uh shortly thereafter so we've done life together with debbie and gary they are the parents of four boys their oldest son carter price he and his wife kendall served very faithfully here at midtown for a few years until the lord called them to reno about six to eight months ago and so debbie and gary have what we call the seated wisdom they've done this over and over again so they're going to speak to us from two perspectives what it was to raise young boys but now what it's like to raise four adult men and then motu as i affectionately call him because you guys know we got pastor mo then we have mo two over here mo is also a faithful servant of victory midtown in particular you always see him in victory kids he's a father of a daughter her name is emma she's a very shy but precocious six years old six-year-old and if you've seen mo at vic fit or if you see him on social media you know moe is all about that fit life you know that about him all day every day give it up for the vegan in the house as well so let's uh have a round of applause for our friends today what we want to do is we want to kick us off with a rapid fire 30 second ask and simply this and mo i'll start with you what's the best thing about being a parent and what's a challenging thing about being a parent uh the best thing about being a parent is just being able to teach i was like saying in the first service like i just remember last year during the kobets season was when emma started to learn how to ride a bike and to be able to see her like do on her own now and like being really good about doing it just to be able to like teach her something and then to see your child doing it after that you know it's like brings great pride like yeah i showed her how to do something right like i guess one of the hardest things would be like am i making sure that i'm doing the right thing for her right like am i showing her the right things am i doing the right things i'm not living the right way for her and that's always a part of me where like i want to make sure that i'm doing the right thing for her for uh years to come absolutely totally understand that debbie what about you well i'll start with the best thing the best thing is seeing my boys grow up and go on with god um our goal always just was to raise them in the ways of the lord and watch them prosper in his call on their life and i would say just quickly that one of the things that we held on to deeply was that the boys were not taught that you could be anything you want to be that's the message of the world the message of god is that he's created us each uniquely with a specific purpose specific giftings for that purpose so it's a raising them up thanks as to raising them up in the way that they should go and mining out the call of god on them that's very specific to who they are the hardest part of parenting for sure at all ages is not being the holy spirit for them i have wanted so bad since the time they were little bitty you know you just want to spank it out of them and i still want to at in their 20s now i still want to be able to control them and keep them from the hard things of life i want to put them on the path well you know that's the holy spirit's job and it's a challenge not to be the holy spirit amen gary what about you sure one of the things that was my great joy was being able to bless my boys with things i know i was uh i'm the consummate amazon shopper so i would uh you know if they needed something or if i thought they needed something i was always looking out so that was fun for me and then um i think the hardest thing is letting them go you know letting them be the men they were that we tried to raise them to be but that god wants them to be and you know so i try to just remember i'm blowing wind under their wings and letting them go wow that's so awesome moe what about you well three months in and just a couple days learned a lot you know one of my favorite things one of the best things is really to look at our son in his face and start to see him developing and growing and seeing the different features that he has of mine and kendra's and when he makes that smile at me even when i'm dead tired i just get all the energy in the world when he's smiling big at me and what i would say right now is uh the most challenging thing kind of to what mo tu said uh you know he basically said like listen am i doing the right thing because we want to make sure we steward the gift of god very well and so even all the books you can read all the things you can hear you want to make sure that you are going to holy spirit to say lord let me raise my child in a way that he should go for the specific purpose that he has for him so that's for me amen and i'd say for me the um the best thing is just answer prayer right um you all some of you have been on this journey with us uh we had believed god for a child when we were dating we had our names already not saying do that if you're dating um but we did and um again holding on to the name maximus for almost a decade and now watching this little boy with so much personality so much life and even things of the spirit already manifesting in him is the best thing and honestly one of the challenging things right now if i could be very honest is leaving him as you all know i'm a pastor and i'm also an associate provost at a university so there are days um where you know i'm i'm away from him shout out to my sister who's watching him at home right now hey maximus he's watching um but but it's hard like so the first day of child care i cried i mean cried like in a way that i didn't think i would cry you know you hear people say you're going to cry i'm like i'm good you know i'm rational oh my goodness security thought something was wrong with me they thought mo had done something because like they were like come over here baby it's okay he's gonna be all right um so leaving him right now sometimes can be hard but i understand that god has called us to um the workplace and the marketplace as well right so shout out to all the the moms that get to stay at home and raise your children but shout out to all the working moms who day in and day out and working dads who day in and day out entrust their children to someone else absolutely and so as we jump into our discussion today i want to let you know where this came from we didn't just kind of pick some questions out of the air what we did as a senior staff was we surveyed the victory congregation and the questions that we're going to talk about today they're like the top uh most recurring questions that we had that we want to try to just bring a little insight bring a little wisdom too and just echo some things as we have this conversation together as a family and as we get ready to start in this first question i want to just i want you to write this statement down because this is the underpinning of what we're going to be talking about today the statement that we thought about is that we don't want to ask the question am i raising my kids the right way we want to ask the question am i operating as the adult that i want my children to become am i operating today as the adult that i want my children to become and the reason why they're so relevant is because even as we're in here right now again we have people at so many different ends of the spectrum on the parenting journey those some of us who have not even started yet but desire it this will give us perspective even to heal from some things that maybe our parents didn't get right and as we're rearing and getting ready for that journey we're able to say okay i'm going to do something a little different i want to take this in and again i'm going to put this in my quiver for later and so as we get into this i want to read this scripture as we start this first question the scripture is romans 12 verse 10 then i'm going to drop down to verse 18. it says this love each other with genuine affection and take delight in honoring each other verse 18 says do all that you can to live in peace with everyone so the first question for the panel for first question for our friends up here uh is this in even our experience you know just a few months in we understand that we come from different backgrounds we have different styles and how we think about things we have the same core values but some things are different where the bible talks about being in unity how have you found i've first started with the prices how have you found uh being in unity is important for your children to make sure that they're not kind of in the middle you know i remember when i was growing up you know you can always kind of find well mama let me do this daddy might let me do this how have you all navigated that and then we'll ask mo the same question well just to be honest we haven't done that well in me on many occasions when the boys were young and we were disciplining them our styles were really different and i think that this is often true male and female but i i had a real hard time with the way that gary was what i perceived to be too harsh on the boys i was softer he was harder and i think that where i landed with that i had to take it first to the lord but i learned that his style needed to be his style and nessa what just because it wasn't the way i wanted him to do it didn't mean that it was wrong and i i really had to come around to that he used to say listen you are going to thank me later for this if i can help these boys to grow up and get some of this stuff out teach them right now you will thank me later he was right amen but even now our styles are different with adult children he's much more direct i kind of bring it around the long way they're like please quit preaching mom we've learned to respect each other in our own personalities and styles and let it dad be dad mom be mom that's good that's good gary y'all can clap it up for her some of y'all said i needed that i needed to hear that so yeah what debbie said i mean that's i did think she was to thank me later so but um i i think that we've tried to really work hard debbie will point out where i have some blind spots and so we talk about those things i think you've got to you know you got to talk about your responsibility so she would you know point those out to me and sometimes i didn't think i was wrong but you know i tried to i've learned that sometimes i have some weaknesses and so that helped but i think though the critical thing for me is that we just didn't take everything at face value like the manipulation that you pointed out oh mom well let me get away with this or dad we would always like oh mom told you that hey mom did you tell you know so we double checked each other we had each other's back it's good that's good now mo you know being a single father and and one of the reasons why we specifically ask you because a lot of times we hear things from and for single mothers but very rarely do we get to actually see and hear from a single father and we believe the principles can go both ways but we want to just kind of hear from you even with you co-parenting um how have you been able to operate in operating in unity even if you're not in the same home yeah i guess so just thinking about like from the first server it's like just giving each other like grace right like the idea of like we're not perfect where we're making this work together and just to have open lines of communication and just to be flexible with each other there's days where like i'll have her for a week and there's days where her mom may have to have her for less than a week like i'll have to come and get her another day and just be able to be open and being flexible around our time just to make sure that emily's good because we want to make sure that she's taken care of and she's there for each other so yeah just having a good line of open communication i mean thank god that we're able to do that you know so i know some situations where you just you don't have those open lines of communication but maybe just put those things behind you and just do that this is for our child just making sure that she's taken care of absolutely thank you for that i mean i think you know one of the things we were talking about and i shared i grew up in a blended family and i'm thankful that my parents on both sides that they would be gracious enough to make sure that they put us first and that even when one person had an opinion about something that was maybe different from the others it's about the children and so as we're looking through this many of us have heard the horror stories and some of us have been a part of the horror stories when someone operated one way on this side and heavily on the other side and so what we want to do is just encourage that as we're having an opportunity to do this and even some of us in the room today that you honor the other person that you don't talk down about the other person that you don't put your way against their way but you see what's god's way and do what you can control and so i just think that's so important i'm so happy that even as we had the opportunity to have lunch the other day you were telling me about how you have to kind of have that that that swivel you have to be very quick on your feet to be able to be flexible as you both are navigating through that so thank you so much for that absolutely and as someone who grew up in a single-parent home one of the things that my mom shared with me that i took to heart i think i was about 14 and what she said to me she said kendra whatever you did not like growing up or whatever you don't like that you see she said i challenge and encourage you to do it differently and at 14 that can be a lot right um because at 14 you're bratty you see all the flaws right but what i did is i took the good that my mom showed me and i kept it and then things that i didn't understand or that i wanted to do better or differently i've tried my best to do it differently and share that with so many others because again i can't imagine even right now with a three month old doing it alone i cannot imagine so i just want to shout out all the single parent moms that are watching online that are in this room all the ladies and men in this room that were raised by a single parent let's give it up because they are doing a mammoth job amen amen what we want to do is we want to ask a question and the price is we want to lead it to uh lead it out to you all first because again we know that right now even as mo um kind of reference a little bit um we're in crazy times there the world is um some would say on fire we've got cove going on we've got racial tensions going on we've got wars and rumors of wars going on afghanistan of the the terrors in haiti and the tragedies there and and one of the questions that a lot of the parents asked is that as my kids are being exposed to this there's a heightened anxiety and depression what i want to ask you too is how have you all helped your sons to navigate through times through things that are happening in the world that technically we didn't have any control over and even as adults if you see that rising up in them how do you help them manage these times sure well i think that there are a lot of as kendra said there's all these things that if we took them all on and some of us do it's it's just overwhelming i mean you can really you know fry your your keyboard or your wires but i think what i've tried to ask the lord to help me and to show my kids if you read in proverbs 4 it talks about seeking wisdom and so ok i'll go there and i'll look what's the wisdom i need to have for all these things that are happening in the world and how to communicate with my children and ask the lord for wisdom you go down through proverbs 4 and it gets to a point it says above all else guard your heart for out of it is the wellspring of life and what the lord spoke to me is that i could be really prone to be offensive or to be offended and i have to guard my heart not to do that with all these things in the world because i can't change everything one you know we have to just deal with what god puts in front of us to deal and ask him to guide our steps and so the goal as i've been with i've worked through some of these things with my boys growing up was to make sure that their peace and joy wasn't being robbed by things that were going on in our culture awesome so and the reality is is that as much as we try to instill that concept of guarding hearts we all have occasions where the world just gets on us whether it be someone right in our home something we see on the news or even all the way up to the president we can feel the weight the burden the offense the hurt it gets on us and it's a cycle that we have to learn to uh deal well with because it doesn't end you know in this world you will have trouble we are going to feel the things that are around us close and afar and the way that we have tried to to help our kids is by showing them that there's only so much encouragement that we can give we can go this far but god can completely heal so i believe these challenges when our kids have been wounded have been opportunities for us to show them point them to jesus who can actually do something about that so we've taken them through this since they were really little i remember our hunter he he's the youngest he used to lament to god in prayer and we'd laugh about it but it was really good he was oh you know my brothers and just carry on and on and on and yeah we all had a good enjoyed it i mean it was fun to listen to him because he was doing what the psalms teach us to do david would lament to god things would get on him and he was in pain and wounded and he would cry out and we read that in the psalms but then at the end of the song at the end of almost every one of those psalms it was but god i trust in you so the process is to allow him our kids to recognize and this applies to us recognize the wounding but do the right thing with it lament to the lord acknowledge that it's real feel the pain but then forgive you actually have to lay these things at the foot of the cross let god have it no matter where that wound came from let him have it and then there might even be repentance involved but then i remember putting my hand on little hunter's heart i say lord heal him don't let this carry over you know it's that concept of don't let the sun go down on your wrath don't let this carry over because what happens is it builds up you know the lord's been dealing with with me on the concept of love keeps no records of wrong don't keep the record let it go you know destroy those tapes in your mind and then re reprogram your thought life you know you have to take those thoughts captive thoughts captive and then we want the things to cut that come out of our mouth to be life-giving even to ourselves that's so good that's so good great practical wisdom y'all clap it up for that i want to shift gears a little bit um mo so like they talked about the fact that they raised their kids and their kids are adults now and they're going through the intentions of what's going on in the world you have a six-year-old being raised in the age of technology and exposure how do you protect her how do you guide her how do you handle that being that she's so young and so open to being able to be affected by these things for me at least in my home at least i try not to keep a tablet around her or none of the shows that she watches on youtube youtube kids and youtube i totally don't have that on on the apps or like if she uses my phone it's typically like a show that i know that it's age-appropriate and it's like something that i know that's good for her right i try to keep her away from like yeah just youtube because you don't know what's going to be popping up the next ad or the next thing or the next show because it auto plays on its own not like i know but i do know but um just just like that and you know i try to keep her more engaged with me at home i know there'd be times where i'll be cooking and she'll have to watch the show but i just make sure it's a show nothing like some person has in their own youtube show stuff like that like i know she may want to watch like somebody's playing with somebody else's toys but i'm like no i can't do that in my household so well one of the things you just said you know you said it but you didn't say it is that even with youtube kids you still have to watch it and i think that's the most important thing what he said is to be aware of what your children are watching be aware of what's coming in through the ear gates and through the eye gates because we can make the assumption that because it's tagged for kids that is good and what we have to always remember and it's something we just ran across the other day we have to remember that the world system is conditioned to infiltrate with things that are outside of the kingdom system and so even the other day uh can somebody got us a book and kendra was reading it to maximus and she all she um auto edited while she was reading the book to him because she saw something in there that was just something that they tried to just slide into the book and she read the book outside of those pages and the rest of that book is history because we understand like we're not playing with it we're not playing with it and so i really just want to say to what you just said we have to make sure that we guard our children we can't leave them to the devices because they will be led to the devices of the enemy and so i just want to encourage you whether you have very small kids i know sometimes it can be convenient to turn it on again we are living this now it can be convenient to say hey just you know kind of watch that right now but we have to watch what they're watching so that was so good it was so good flap it up so mo specifically this question is for you i want to kind of hit you with this one um when you've spoken to other single parents what are some of the maybe common parenting challenges that you share again because sometimes we don't necessarily deal with this sometimes we just kind of say okay parenting at large but what are some of the challenges that you see as a single father that you would love to encourage somebody else and share that as a single father the challenges some of the challenges that i have is just you know sometimes for me i feel like i'm probably doing it alone sometimes uh just knowing that when i have her it's just me and her and like you know it'd be nice to have an extra two hands or something you know to carry some other things but um just know that you're not truly alone know that god is there with you and that's been my strength how i was able to carry through doing this all by myself um and then you know the transitioning back and forth from being like a dad and then mo and then a dad and then moe just just navigating that that transition period and then same with um with emma too like during the whole covet situation transitioning her as well but yeah just just know that god is there for you he's gonna watch over you just know that you're not alone i know it's tough um doing it um as a single parent but yeah i just make sure that my strength is through him absolutely one thing i just want to say as we get ready to transition and kendra asks this next question is that mo is sharing with us about how even being a single father there is the the real life thing of where you're by yourself you know when you don't have that kid with you and sometimes just like all of us we can be tempted to kind of say all right i just need some relief i just need to do this and sometimes we can invite things that are unhealthy into our lives and this is just what i want to say you know just in the atmosphere is that even when you don't have the children with you they're still with you because everything you do will affect them and sometimes we don't necessarily think about that next step about okay if i have an encounter with someone and that my kids now are not with me what happens when they are with you and you see that person out and maybe you didn't handle that situation well or what happens if they're in influencing your life and now there's a negative effect there so i just want to encourage all of us to really steward our time with our children making sure that even when they're not with us operate as if we are still trying to put them in the best situation and we're still trying to make the home the best that it can be absolutely and i think that's so key across the board again if children are sponges and they pick up and they model everything i think we have to be cognizant from a very very young age um what we're doing i know mo and i it was it's hilarious but it's so true um from when we got the good news last september that we were going to have a child mow every single day every single day would pray over my womb and what he prayed and he prays to this day was uh he prayed that the lord blessed maximus with power strength and authority and he'd say it so strong like every morning lord bless my son with power strength and authority and about three weeks in i was like hey we're gonna need some peace up on this prayer because what about what happens when you're not around and and it's so true maximus is a very strong baby i mean even when he went to his two-month checkup the doctor was like this guy is strong and you know i was over there like yeah that's my boy but again we have to be mindful of what we're speaking what we're modeling and gary and debbie i want to ask you this question gary i'll have you kick us off and it's simply this how do we especially in today's society train up our children and even our adult kids to learn how to hear from god and discern him both in the home but most importantly when they're outside of the home gary what would you say to that sure i know that we're going to talk a little bit more about this but modeling listening to god letting them hear that we're trying to hear the lord around a situation we've had it with do we sell this home or do we move here or whatever and we've just told the boys that we're going to follow god no matter what so we've let that be um they understood early on that if god was going to move us i'll use that example like we moved from washington dc to wichita kansas wichita kansas to atlanta and one of the boys said you know when are we going to stop moving and we said we're we're going to go wherever the lord tells us to go and so um you just get on board with that now but we were telling we were trying to hear the lord and so we we would model it as much we can but hearing letting them hear us pray lord speak to us give us a sign you know the whole thing about a fleece or something like that um we would always look for that and if we found it and we believed that we were hearing the lord we shared that with them so they knew this was this is what we responded to go ahead you can clap it up for that absolutely you guys are free to clap when something speaks to you clap snap your fingers you could stand up if you want to dabby go ahead there you go gary i would just add of course that is exactly what we wanted to do we wanted to show them what it looks like to flow in the spirit of god and be under his grace and listen well and obey well and sometimes that's not easy as you all know it's one thing to think you've heard god it's another to take a huge step of faith in that and we've done as much as we know to do we have followed god but also have tried to lay a good foundation of the word knowing that god doesn't speak outside of his word so even when the boys were very young we would get the bible out and not every single day we tried but we'd try to read to them and respond to the word so what does this mean to you and what do you feel like god's trying to say and has that personally applied to you and i think as adults it's been a great joy to watch them learn to love the word of god and use that as a very firm foundation that's the plumb line no matter what you hear well we we are a family who hears the lord in multiple ways i know all of you do as well but we hear through dreams we hear hear through each other we hear from church and even strangers but we're always careful to come back to the word and ask does this align with what we know to be true in scripture that's so good that's so good mo very practically can you just give us at six years old how are you instilling uh for emma to be able to hear from the lord um i mean pretty simple i just asked her what can i pray for you for right um every night i'm like i asked him how can i pray for you she's like i want to pray with my friends i want to pray over my teachers i want to pray over john i'm like john what's this person daddy mo turned on he's like hold on that was just this recently i'm like okay but yeah just knowing that you know the prayer and knowing that we can go to god for these things right and of course you know just she's here you know have big kids you know um just being intentional about the time like in the morning at night just making sure that she knows that i operate with god and prayer is the way to go so amen amen amen y'all pray for mo while he prays for john all right well listen as we get ready to wrap this up i just want to just reiterate the importance of why we're even doing this today again you know it could have been a breakout session or we could have done it on a different time but to do this on a sunday morning we were able to bring the community together to be able to hear different perspectives it's so important and i'm going to read one last scripture to us because it just really solidifies how important it is for us to parent on purpose and the scripture that i want to read is psalm 78 psalm 78 and it's verses 4 through 7. it says this we will not hide these truths from our children we will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the lord about his power and his mighty wonders for he issued his laws to jacob and he gave his instructions to israel he commanded our ancestors to teach them to their children so the next generation might know them even the children not yet born and they in turn will teach their own children so each generation should set his hope anew on god not forgetting his glorious miracles and obeying his commands as we hear that scripture i think it puts a weight on us it allows us to understand that it's not about being self it's not about even me just being worried about the current state of where i am in my life it opens us up to not just be consumers to christianity or consumers to even the word of god at church but god what are you speaking to me about where i am right now where i might be going and even my relationship that i may have had with my parents so that i can understand maybe even some of the things that they did when i was growing up and so as we get ready to close today kendra just wanted to share something in the room because we want to make sure that you know that you have a family together that sees that cares and as we walk through these things again i think all of the weeks of this series they've hit on different things and that's why when we're in a series we want you to try to come or at least tune in as much as possible because everything builds line upon line and pre-sub upon precept kendrick can you just kind of share in a room what you were sensing and feeling sure especially during the first service i just felt that there were people in the room uh couples in particular married couples who were hearing all this parenting advice and um it sounded good but but they've had their own needs similar to mo and i and what i wanted to do is speak into a parent people in the room married couples in particular who have been asking god who've been desirous of children and you feel as if if god has just not heard you again for those you've been tracking with us you know that this has been a 10-year journey of of hope deferred and um having uh babies in in in in the sense of like we had a miscarriage and that was one of the most painful things i ever had to walk through because it was so public we used to attend a church that had 5 000 members sunday to sunday and so you can imagine people coming up to you after they heard and all those kinds of things i just wanted to speak hope into the room for those who are desiring to have children i remember when i was at one of my lowest points chip judd who's a counselor christian counselor who comes to victory on occasion to work with the pastors to make sure that the pastors and teams are healthy he challenged me um i didn't even know him that well but he said kendra um are you open to god writing a different story through you and i didn't want to hear that at the time because i was not open to the story that god wanted to write i wanted my own story but i am so thankful i can say that three and three years later i'm so thankful that i let god write the story and i heard something specific for this room for those who have gone through a divorce for those of you who were in long-term engagements that broke off and you feel as if the hope of a family the hope of parenting is just a thing of the past i heard the lord said believe again believe again believe again dream again that divorce is not denial raising a kid as a single parent does not disqualify you that is that if godly marriage is what you truly and earnestly desire to dream again believe again but do not settle do not settle so i just wanted to speak that in the room because i know what it's like to be in a room like this and you're hearing people talk about their wonderful children and your heart is hard because the one thing you ask god for we head on to the name maximus for a decade we started talking about children when we started dating in 2009. we'd walk around the neighborhood that we live in now and call out the children's name i'm not telling you to do that if you're dating um but but the point of it all is that there were times where i'd have to walk out of rooms like this because it hurt i was numb and so i don't want you all to ever feel from us that now that god has answered the prayer with our son that we're gloating my heart still mourns every day i lament every day for those friends of mine and congregants here and at all campuses that reach out to say pastor kendrick can you pray for me i'm believing god yet still for my miracle as well so amen i just wanted to share that in the room that there is hope just don't let go what i'm going to ask is you know in the first service i close this out in prayer but kendra i'm going to ask you to pray for the congregation because i believe there is a grace in the house there's a grace that as we hear this type of message as even we lean into what she just said that god is moving that he sees you that he knows you and i'm just gonna ask for her to just close us out in prayer as we really solidify this word abba father we come to you now just thanking you for being in the midst holy spirit we acknowledge your presence here and i thank you beyond any words that we could speak that you our paraclete our help or our comforter our guide you are translating this for every heart even for those who will watch this by replay father i ask that you pray and you cover and you bless over our families in jesus name that even as debbie said lord that we'd hear from you that you'd give us the fleece that we need to know when to move when to be still father when to redirect father i pray for every married couple in this room that are raising children in the way of the lord father i thank you that even this week you're going to give them divine revelation how to speak peace in a world filled with anxiety father i thank you for every single parent dad and every single parent mom that you will give them every tool that they need father and that you holy spirit will remind them and manifest in ways that they know without a doubt that they are not alone father i pray for every single in the room today those who are desirous of marriage father and even those who feel called to be single to come alongside those families to be of help and of service father and to just serve you in all that you've called them to do father i pray for every closed womb in this room today father i declare and decree not by power nor by my but by your spirit you will open wombs father that you will reignite sperm father even that has low count in the name of jesus christ father i bless you and i thank you that you have created a space for us in the church to talk about family the unit that you call most significant father and i just thank you that for what you're doing in the earth today and father even for the third and fourth generation yet unborn in this room that will hear this message carried down through the generations father i declare and decree and i ask that through the family you build your church you build your church father build your church it's in jesus name we pray amen amen amen man one last thing i want to say before we take our seats and before pastor tag comes up is as kendra was praying i heard very clearly that there are going to be some people here in the room that you were either watching online or you were here today that you need to call your parents if there is a fissure if there's a break in your relationship because they did the best that they could do at the time and there might be some bitterness in your heart there might be some things that you're like man you left me hanging you didn't do certain things and i just want to say in the room that god's grace is sufficient and so i look forward to hearing the testimonies of those who will take that step do it and afraid you may have not spoken to your parents in a long time but do it afraid and watch god move and don't even worry about what the response might be you step out you be the thermostat and i believe god is gonna move amen amen hey man amen listen as we get ready to leave off i just want to remind you we're right back here next week and be praying let's see if your prayers are strong it might be the last week we're here at the gathering spot so we're excited about it we thank god for you and we'll see you next week [Music]

Channel: Victory Midtown

Views: 405

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 8tT8zzQKgog

Length: 45min 3sec (2703 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 05 2021