(applause) - Happy Father's Day. Have a seat. Wanna say hi to all of our 19 campuses and those of you watching us online and we're glad you're here. Inside your program there is an outline, teaching notes, if you'll take that out we've got a special service
planned for you today. About 30 years ago, there
was a very popular book that came out and it was
called Parenting is Not for Cowards. Any parent who's been a parent understands the meaning of that. Parenting is tough work. It's not for wimpy people. It takes courage. It takes grit. It takes tenacity, persistence, deep love, unselfishness, and a lot of other things. Parenting is definitely not for cowards. Parenting may be the most demanding and the most challenging
job a human being could have because it's the challenge
of literally raising another human being which is incredibly complex. It's hard work. It's not by accident that parenting starts with a process called labor. (audience laughs) (laughing) And any mom could tell you, it's labor. Carrying that baby to full-term and delivering the baby is labor. But that's the easy part
compared to the rest. It just gets harder as time goes on. The problem is, about the time you get experienced and wise from parenting,
you're unemployed. (audience laughs) We get all of the knowledge from the years and years of experience and
then they leave the nest about the time that you
really know what you're doin' 'cause you certainly don't
know what you're doin' when you start out as a parent. Now today, we're gonna start a new series and I'm excited about this
'cause I've never taught on this before, the purpose driven family. How do you have an intentional, purpose driven family? We're gonna look at a lot of the different implications of it. Today we're gonna look at how to bring out the best in kids. Now you say, well wait a minute, I'm not a parent. Well, let me let you
in on a little secret. This is how to bring out the best in kids and everybody else, too. Because there are actually five principles in God's word that if you do these things you will bring out the
best in your boyfriend, in your spouse, in your
boss, in your employees, or whoever. We're gonna look at two
of those five principles this weekend and we're gonna look at the other three next weekend, so today we're only gonna
cover the first half of this outline, on the front side of it, and don't worry about
it, we're gonna cover all the rest later, I
just didn't wanna throw the whole bale of hay at you. I did last night and the
service was about two hours. (audience laughs) So I'm bein' gracious
to you on Father's Day and say I'm only gonna teach
ya the first two points and the next three next week. Does that sound okay? (audience murmuring) All right. Now the reason I wanna do
this purpose driven family is two-fold. First, families are in
serious trouble today. When I talk to parents,
they're stressed out. They're overloaded. they're certainly not living with bargin. They go from one event to the next. There's so many pressures
inside the family, pressures outside the family,
pressures on the family. Many pressures that we
didn't even have ten, 15 years ago that we have today and so families need support. That's a big deal here
at Saddleback Church because it's one of our values. Our name, S-A-D-D-L-E-B-A-C-K, each letter represents a value. A is All nation congregation. We're a diverse church intentionally. But the K in Saddleback is kid and family friendly. Because we wanna support kids and we wanna support parents in this task. So families are stressed out but there's another reason
and this involves those of you who aren't
parents, aren't a father, maybe never will be a father. You need kids in your life. I'm just gonna, as your pastor, as your coach, as your
friend who loves you, you need kids in your life. Study after study after study after study has shown that if you don't have kids in your life you grow older faster, you get hardening of the attitudes. (audience laughs) Kids actually help us grow. We help them grow, no doubt about it, but they help us grow. Kids are God's tool for
teaching us unselfishness. Whether you have kids in your home or you don't have kids in your home or you're married or you're unmarried really is irrelevant. You need kids in your life. Nieces and nephews, kids
in the neighborhood, kids at church, because they're part of the process. We need multi-generations in your life. If you only have your generation in your inner circle, you're pretty boring. (audience laughs) Really. Because other generations
have a lot to teach you, older and younger. Since this is Father's
Day, I've asked four dads to serve as my panel of experts and help me with this message today and I wanna introduce 'em to ya. First one is a guy, he's
a father of four kids, 10, 13, 16, and 18. Serves as a Saddleback Corps member here at Saddleback. By the way, he's a retired
mixed martial arts champion. Welcome Mark Munoz. Would you give him a warm welcome? (applause) All right, Mark. Good to see ya, buddy. Thanks for bein' here. Happy Father's Day. - You too. - All right. Number two, this guy's a father of three kids, 11, 14, 26. He's an ex-marine. He serves here at Saddleback in many different ministries, men's ministry, but he also helps lead and serve in our veteran's ministry. Would you welcome Big Will Narad. Come on, Big Will, come on out, man. (applause) Yay. Happy Father's Day. Glad you're here, brother. Good to see ya. - [Will] Good to be seen. (laughing) - All right. Number three. He's a father of a 16-year-old, serves here at Saddleback. All these men are active
in ministry at Saddleback. Serves in our men's
ministry as a leader there. He serves as a leader in the PEACE team. Welcome Alberto Flores. Give 'im a warm welcome. (applause) Hey, buddy, come on out. Glad you're here. Thank you. Good to see ya. Happy Father's Day. And then our number four, he's the father of three kids between sixth grade and high school. He serves here at Saddleback. He's a corps member of
Saddleback, long time. Also happens to be the CFO of Quicksilver so if you need any clothes you might wanna hit 'im up afterwards. (audience laughs) Welcome Eric Johnson, all right. Give Eric a ... (applause) Hey, buddy. Hey, man, good to see ya. God bless you. All right, now as I
said, the Bible tells us that there are five principles for bringing out the
best in somebody else. These were particularly important
in bringing out the best in children. We're just gonna look at two. Let's start and get right into it. Write this down. Number one. The first way to bring
out the best in a child is accept their uniqueness completely. Accept their uniqueness completely. You need somebody to accept
your uniqueness completely and everybody around you needs somebody to accept their uniqueness completely. This is the starting point. It's recognizing their value and recognizing their individuality. Every child, if you
have more than one child in your family, every child
is completely different. Everybody agree with that? (audience murmuring) They're just not alike
in any sense of the word. Which means that they have
to be treated differently. God intentionally makes
every one of us different. Now he could've, if God wanted to, he coulda just made a machine in a factory process lineup, we all look the same, talk the same, smell the same, like the same stuff. That would be an incredibly boring world. Nobody'd wanna date anybody 'cause you already know
everything about them. So God, I don't know if
you figured this out, God loves diversity. He overdoses on it. 'Cause he's never made any two people looking exactly alike. You look down your row, everybody looks, talks, smells, acts, different. This is God saying,
human beings make clones, God never makes clones, never make copies. Even identical twins are different in thousands of ways. Just like God makes no
two snowflakes alike, everybody has a different handprint, voice print, eye print, footprint, personality, and it's the way God works. We're all unique. Now here's what the Bible says. Ephesians 2 Verse 16. "We are God's workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus "to do good works "which God prepared in advance "for us to do." Did you know that before you were born God prepared in advance what he wanted you to do with your life? Now he laid out a life of good works that he wanted you to do with your life. You can miss that plan but God created you for a plan and for a purpose. Before you were even born. He custom designed you,
he custom made you, and the Bible says we are his workmanship. Circle that word workmanship. It literally means masterpiece. Masterpiece. Or a poem, poema, and it
means like a work of art. And each of your children
are unique works of art. Sometimes you don't
understand a work of art. (laughing) But they are unique. One of the reasons, by the way, why God makes us all different is so everything gets done in the world. If we all liked to do the same stuff, there's a lot get left undone. But fortunately there's some people who like to work with numbers and so they're good at
math and they're good at engineering, they're
good at accounting. There are others who go, I hate numbers, but I'm good with words, and they're good at writing and developing film scripts. Then there are other people who say, no, I don't like to write but they're good mechanically or they're good artistically or they're good at sales or they're good at closing deals and God
wired us all differently. If we all liked to do the same thing a lotta stuff would get left undone. That's why we need each other. Some people are meant to be
underseas ocean explorers and other people like to travel and they need to drive a truck or they need to work in a
small business or whatever. It's all God's plan. He designed us uniquely and differently. 1 Corinthians 12:6 says this "God works through different people "in different ways." Now the implication of that as parenting is you cannot treat
all your kids the same. It just doesn't work. You've probably seen some parenting books where they say, well ya know, to be fair I treat all my kids the same. There's a word for that. Stupid. (audience laughs) Because what works with
one kid doesn't work with another kid. What you say with one
really encourages 'em the next one it devastates them. One of 'em it builds 'em up, the other one it discourages them and they wanna give up. We all react differently. So to be a good parent you have to treat your kids differently because they're all different. And it starts with,
this is the foundation, accepting their uniqueness completely. One of the great tasks of parenting is to help kids recognize their own uniqueness. That they're originals. They're not carbon copies. They weren't meant to
be carbon copies of you or anybody else. They don't have to
compete with anybody else, in fact, they can't
because they are unique and to help them see
that they're not expected to be like everybody else. Why can't you be more like your brother? Or your sister. Well, God didn't make them that way. He wants us to help our
kids learn their uniqueness. Now here's the problem. There are two enemies
that fight your uniqueness and fight uniqueness of
everybody on your row and fight the uniqueness of
all your children constantly and it is the pressure to compare and it is the pressure to conform. You might wanna write these down. Here are the two enemies of uniqueness that parents have to deal with. The first one comparing. Comparing. And the pressure to compare is everywhere. The pressure to compare is everywhere. It's all around. It's worse today than even it was ten, 15 years ago because we have a thing called social media which is
one giant comparison tool. I take a picture of my dessert and then you have to take a picture of a cooler dessert. (audience laughs) And I take a picture of me havin' fun then you gotta show that
you're havin' more fun. (audience laughs) It's a constant comparison. In America, and all around the world, we have made comparing an indoor sport. This week I had to go to two
or three different graduations. We compare academics. How good of grades you got. We compare athletics. How skilled and coordinated are ya. We compare appearance. She's cuter than she is or
he's handsomer than that guy. Academics, appearance, we
compare economic status. He has more money than we do. People compare their lawns. They compare (laughs) everything. Status. Popularity. Things like that. One of the reasons I don't like IQ tests, in many ways I'm opposed to IQ tests, is because they're comparative and the truth is we now know there are at least 11 or 12 different kinds of intelligence. An IQ test typically they
rate one kind of intelligence and if you know how to learn a bunch of ideas and write 'em down
in a coherent paragraph then you're rated high in intelligence. But verbal intelligence is just one. There's mechanical intelligence. Some people look at somethin' they know how to take it apart and how to put it back together nobody's ever told 'em anything about it. There's athletic intelligence where people know how to move in ways that none of us know how to move. There's musical intelligence. There's artistic intelligence. There's relational intelligence. Some people know how to get along with people better than others. By the way, that's the skill that CEOs will usually
pay the most money for. Not academic intelligence
but relational intelligence. Do you know how to get along with people, how to motivate people,
and things like that. There's numeric intelligence. There's verbal intelligence. And on and on. And so the intelligence IQ test only scores one kind of intelligence. We know now that you could score terrible, get bad grades in school, and go out and build a business and
become a billionaire. Because you have a different
kind of intelligence. Or score low in one kind, say mechanical, but you're brilliant in some kind of art or music. So what does the Bible have to say, what does God have to say, about this idea of comparing, when he says he made us all unique? Well look in your outline. (clears throat) 2 Corinthians 10:12 says this "We do not dare to compare." "We do not dare to compare
ourselves it is" what? - [Crowd] Foolish. - Circle that word, foolish. You need to understand that and you need to teach your kids that. You should never compare your kids to anybody else's kids. Never compare your wife or your husband, your spouse, to somebody else. Never compare your job
or your home or anything. God says it's foolish. Why? Because we're all unique. You can compare tangerines and submarines 'cause they sound alike
but they're very different. (audience laughs) And a tangerine is not a submarine and there's no comparison. That's true with people. Galatians 6:4 says this. "Do your own work well." That's what we wanna teach our kids. Don't worry about what
other people are doin', don't worry about their grades,
you do your own work well. "Then you'll have
something to be proud of. "But never compare yourself with others." There is a legitimate kind of pride that the Bible talks about, it's the pride of having
done the best you could. Having done a good job. But the moment you start
comparing yourself, oh I did a better job than he did, you've now just sinned. 'Cause God tells us, don't compare. It's okay to do the best you can and then go ya know I'm
proud of what I did. That's a beautiful meal I just prepared. But if you start comparin'
it to somebody's else's meal, or you start comparin' your deal to somebody else's deal, the Bible says that's
foolish and it's a sin. Comparing is a thing
that we live in a culture of comparison where your
kids come home every day and they've just compared
the clothes they're wearing, the music they're listening to, and every other thing and that robs them of their uniqueness. Now the other thing
that we fight as parents with our kids is conforming. Not comparing but conforming. Conforming, another word
for that is people pleasing. It's when you're more worried about what other people think than worried about what
God thinks about you. The conforming is the pressure to be like somebody else. (clears throat) We see somebody on TV and
go, I wanna look like that and I wanna be like that and
I wanna be cool like that and all that. Conforming, the Bible says, is a trap. The Bible tells us in Proverbs "The fear of man is a snare." What that means is the
moment I start worrying about what other people think about me, I'm dead in the water. Because then all of a
sudden they become my God. They start molding and shaping my life. The little secret is, you don't need other people's approval to be happy. You're as happy as you choose to be. If you're not happy, blame yourself, 'cause happiness is a choice. You don't need other people's approval. Some of you have been trying
to get your parents' approval for 50 years. They may even be dead now
and you're still tryin' to prove yourself to
your daddy or your mom or somebody else. Look, if you haven't got
their approval by now, you're not gonna get it. Hate to tell you that. You're not gonna get it. But you don't need it. You don't need it to live a happy, fulfilled, purpose driven,
Godly, successful life. So if we can teach our
kids to stop comparing or at least minimize it. Go, don't do that. The Bible says it's dumb. It's foolish. Don't compare and then you won't conform. Here's what the Bible says about that. Romans 12:2. "Do not conform yourselves "to the standards of this world." That's the world's value system. And what does the world value? Status and sex and salary and passion and possession, position, appearance and academics and athletics. It said don't conform yourself to the standards of this world "But let God transform you inwardly." How? "By changing how you think." God says I don't want you conformed, I want you transformed. I don't want you bein'
like everybody else. I want you being who I made you to be. Now here's the problem. That verse there, we often think of it as being peer pressure. We tell our kids, don't let other people push you in your mold. Don't follow the crowd in doin' wrong and on and on and on. But you know what? Parents often want their kids to conform to world standards as much as anybody else. And you want your kids
to fit the normal pattern when God says no and made
'em in a different way. They are unique. You're tryin' to conform them so you look good as a parent. If this first step, we must accept our kids, or anybody else for that matter, completely. How do you know if you've done that? As parents, how do you know if you've truly, genuinely, accepted your kids? Real simple. You don't insist they be like you. Ya see, when we have kids, we want them to like what we like. We want them to eat the same food that we like to eat. If we like a particular sport, we want them to be good at that sport. If we're good in a particular area, like I say math or something, well then we want them to be good at math. Well, they're not you. They're unique. (stammers) I wanna say this gently because I love you as your pastor but the world doesn't
need anymore of yous. (audience laughs) One of you is enough. We don't need two of you
running around on this planet. God did not give you
children just to be mini-mes. (audience laughs) And so the conforming doesn't just come from the peer groups. The conforming often
comes from the parents who want to insist, you
have to like what I like, be good at what I'm
good at, watch the shows that I wanna watch and on and on and on. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 13:5 "Love does not demand its own way." And love, if I love my
kids, I don't demand that they like what I like. That they do what I do. That they be good at what I'm good at. I let them be themselves. I let them be who God made them to be. See, the problem is, a lotta kids are getting the message today I can't be me. I have to either be what
my peers want me to be or I have to be what my
parents want me to be. Then when you get married I have to be what my partner wants me to be and then when you get a job I have to be what my professional
boss wants me to be and all of a sudden you get lost in it. So the starting point
of bringing out the best in others is accepting
their uniqueness completely. Now let me turn to my guys here, my panel. Can you, guys, think of a time when you felt accepted completely? I'm gonna give you a couple questions. Another one would be, how do you do this with your own kids? Either one of those
questions would be fine. - Well, Pastor Rick, for myself, far as for my own kids, I was a subject to the other side of it as well with my two sisters being compared and that is very hard. I have a son, one son, he's in the middle, he's 20 now. He's not 12 years old anymore now. So I'm learnin' how to be a father to a 20-year-old young man versus-- - [Rick] And accept 'im at every stage. - Exactly. So that's a new experience but I did the havin' 'im
do what I wanted to do which is playin' football. He didn't wanna play football. But he ran track. I ran track. My daughter played
basketball but she ran track but I had to pull back from that 'cause a brother, and I thank God for his wise council, he just said they have to have the
passion more than you. He saw the passion that I had for what I wanted them to do but they have to have that so I appreciated that and I embraced where he was at and what he wanted to do as well as my two daughters. So just encourage them
to do what they wanna do and support their choices in that. - Yeah, yeah. Ya know my daddy was a pastor but not a single time
in my life growin' up did my dad ever say
you oughta be a pastor. Or have you ever
considered bein' a pastor. And I did this with my own kids. People always say, well,
your Pastor Rick's son, aren't you gonna be a pastor? I want 'em to be what God wants 'em to be and that's not my plan. There's no divine right of kings and well you did it so you have to do it and you have to be the
king, you have to be the ... No, no, no. We're all different. And I didn't feel any pressure on me, in fact, I was actually
headed into politics. Thank God I'm not there. (audience laughs) One day when I was a
freshman in high school ... I was a leader. I was class president from sixth grade through my freshman year in college. Every year, student body president. One year when I was a
freshman in high school, I don't even remember what
the political problem was, but I lead 600 kids to cut school one day and march on the courthouse. (audience laughs) The next day my picture's
on the front page of the local paper. I was quite proud of it. My parents weren't but I was. (laughing) But you gotta let kids be
who they're supposed to be. You guys talk about it. - Yeah, my son was, well
I was just like your dad, towards my son. He played soccer and baseball
pretty much all his life and I was a wrestling coach and I wrestled and he, in the eighth
grade, decided to wrestle. And I'm like, why do you wanna wrestle? - [Rick] Yeah, yeah right. - You gotta lose weight, cut weight, and everybody else is
eating and being happy and you're not. (Rick laughing) But he decided he wanted to do it and I'm just there to support 'im and I'm his biggest cheerleader and I love that he wants to do it. So I was tryin' to discourage him and his mother's tryin' to discourage him from wrestling but he actually did it. Then my other girls, they're
just doin' their own thing and we're just the biggest cheerleaders on the sideline. - So it's just accepting
what they are interested in. Yes. - And I think we need to allow them to express their selves. It's really important to know that our kids are created
in the image of God and let them express
their self, bein' unique. Havin' a 25 and a 15-year-old, it definitely is a big gap and they're unique. A woman and a boy. In my walk with Christ is that, is knowin' that they're in God's hands and as bein' unique we have to watch close and look at them close but also stay far and let them fall and come back. (stammers) They're just gonna make mistakes. They're gonna sin like us but we have a God that forgives us and I think if there was three things for me are really important with my kids, with my family, is love,
forgiveness, and unity. And giving that love to our family, to our kids, and forgiveness
as God forgive us and keep our kids and our family united is really important. - Yeah, what I like that
you said there about ... Our goal is not to mold
our kids into our image. Our goal is to help them become what God made them to be and I say that kids are not things to be molded, they're
people to be unfolded. When you unfold it, you
don't know what's inside but God does 'cause he gave 'em that DNA. Were you gonna say something, Eric? - Sure, it's just my
wife and I are students of our kids. - [Rick] That's good. Write that down. Be a student of your kid. - [Eric] We really are. They are constantly changing. They're constantly evolving as they go through these different phases of development. We constantly are talking about what are you observing,
what are you hearing, what are you seeing with each of 'em. Sometimes it's a struggle to let them to be unique. We make decisions and we choose to step in to the
activities that they like and some of 'em I love and some of 'em are a real stretch. They're a real stretch for me. But it's fun to see them becoming who God's made them and
how they've been shaped. And actually there's
times when it's been fun to be stretched myself joining them in the activities that they love to do. - One of my kids growin'
up loved Japanese anime. I hated it. (audience laughs) But I watched hours and hours and hours of it with 'im and ya know what? I learned to like it. (audience laughs) I learned to like it and then I actually had my favorites too and I thought about starting a fan club. No, I'm kidding on that. (audience laughs) - [Alberto] Pastor Rick. - Yeah? - I always say like, I have a 25-year-old and I told her, I never been a father of a 25-year-old. This is my first time so we have to learn
together how to do that but you have to let them be unique too. - Now, when you have
a family, you got more than one kid in your family, and if they're all unique, that's gonna create conflict, right? 'Cause whatta you guys wanna do? And you got three or four different things that people wanna do. When my kids were growin' up, family night for us was Monday night which was like a date with our family. I had a date with Kay and I had a date with my kids and family together. But we decided, we realized,
we never could agree on what we were gonna do on family night so finally we just made the rule that we would rotate it every week and two rules. One week you get to choose and nobody else can complain about it. Because next week they're
gonna get to choose and you don't get to complain about it. And so if it was Matthew's week and he goes, well, for family night I want us to go to Best Buy and play all the free video games. (audience laughs) So we dutifully go and play
all the free video games at Best Buy. (audience laughs) And then the next week Amy's goin' I wanna go to Barnes & Noble and everybody gets to buy a free book and sit in the corner and read it. Okay, that's what we're gonna do. By the way, when it was
my turn, I got to choose and when it was mom's turn,
Kay's turn, she got to choose, but it's giving everybody
their uniqueness. Does that make sense? Now here's the point-- - Also, Pastor Rick, you
could also do the pot luck. - Yeah, oh. - The potluck family night. What you were talkin' about,
the different activities, you could do so many
within a period of time. Just like watchin' the television program. You're gonna be able to watch your show. - [Rick] Tell me when
your next potluck is. I'm comin' over. (laughing) - [Alberto] Can I be your kid? - It doesn't include food. - [Alberto] Big Will. - You don't look like you're on a real thin diet right now, okay? (audience laughs) - Invite me too. I wanna be there, too. - I wanna be there. I wanna be there. - Big Will's a purpose
driven eater like me. (laughing) The difference is, with him,
I have furniture problems. My chest dropped into my drawers. (audience laughs) Never mind. (audience laughs) Now the truth is, God
sovereignly chose your kids. He picked your kids and
he intentionally put them in your family and he chose, in their DNA, which genes would be recessive and which
genes would be dominant and they're a different
gene structure than you are and he doesn't make mistakes. He knows what he's doing. So the first step in parenting and the first step in
bringing out the best in your kids or anybody
else for that matter is you can't help 'em
until you accept them and you must accept their
uniqueness completely. Got it? - [Man] Got it. - [Man] Got it. - All right. Okay, number two. The second one, we got five of these, we're gonna look at
three of 'em next week, the second is I must not only accept my kids' uniqueness completely, I must affirm their value constantly. Now this is a little bit different. I must affirm their value constantly. This is more than simply
I accept you, kid. (laughs) It's not enough just to accept your kids, you gotta affirm them. You gotta love them. You gotta believe in them. You gotta celebrate them. You got to enjoy them. Not just, well I accept you, 'cause God put you in this family. You gotta affirm them. And that's not always easy to do and we often don't do it enough. Most parents, well
they'll affirm their kid like at a graduation or birthday or something like that. They need it all the time. Now, I deal with people all my life. You know what I've discovered? You and everybody else has a deep bucket that you need to fill with affirmations from other people and that bucket is never filled. I don't think you can give too
much affirmation to somebody. I really don't. I think your need for it is limitless. It is boundless. That bucket is deep, deep, deep. I don't think you can give your kids too much affirmation. I don't think you can give your wife or your husband or anybody you care about too much affirmation. Your employees. Because everybody has a
deep, deep, deep hunger to be believed in, to be trusted, to be understood, to be affirmed, to be valued. They need somebody to go, you're important. You matter to me. You're valuable. And affirming people's value is different than simply accepting their uniqueness and you gotta do it constantly. Why do we have to do it constantly? Because in your child's
mind, in your kid's mind, they've got this scale and it's
all the bad stuff they feel about themselves and
here's all the good stuff they feel about themselves. When they're out there in the world, is the world piling on good
or bad stuff about them? It's always bad. You're worthless. You don't measure up. You're not cute enough. You're not smart enough. You're not athletic enough. On and on and on. And all of these little
pebbles are putting 'em on this side over here
and it's going like this. Whoooooo. And when you get more negative in your life than you
have positive like this, this is called depression and there are a lotta
depressed kids today. None of the world's saying you're great, you're fantastic, you're God's chosen one, you're unique and all that. So you gotta be puttin' it on over here on this side over here. I went to a graduation this week at a school that's for a lotta kids who have some either special needs or emotional needs or learning needs or whatever thing like that and there was a kid, I had a video but I'm not gonna show it to you because it didn't come out real well, but he knew he was different and he was mad at God and
he was mad at the world and he was just angry all the time. When somebody's angry
all the time it's hard to be loving towards somebody
who's angry all the time. He had an anger management problem but he had so changed in
that junior high graduation he was chosen to give
the graduation speech. He got up and he started it this way. It was pretty insightful for being a junior high student. He said my life was like
a campfire, outta control, and the fire was sendin' sparks everywhere and my anger was burning everybody. Then he tells about how his parents, who are Christians and
part of Saddleback Church, and his life group support which is in Saddleback Junior High Ministry, and his teachers and
everybody affirmed him and accepted him, affirmed
him and accepted him, started fillin' his bucket and he ends his speech
saying I'm still a campfire but now I warm everybody and they're attracted to the fire and they're makin' smores over me. (audience laughs) That's pretty insightful. The transformation of a child through acceptance and
through affirmation. It is amazing the power
that it has in our lives. The bottle for being a parent is actually your Father in heaven and here's what your Father in heaven says about affirmation. And value. Matthew 10:29 and 31. "Not even a sparrow can fall to the ground "without your Heavenly Father knowing it." And then he says "And you are
far more valuable to God." Couple days ago, a bird flew up at full force, hit the window on our home, and it killed the bird and
it dropped to the ground. God noticed that bird. That's how much God
cares about his creation. He noticed that that
bird fell to the ground. That's what the Bible says. That's how much God cares about creation. Then he says, and you're
far, far more valuable than a sparrow. Why are you so valuable? And why are your kids so valuable? Three reasons. Write these down. Number one. First, the reason why you're valuable and why your kids are valuable is because God custom-made you. You're not an assembly line. You're not pre-packaged. When god made you he broke the mold. There will never be anybody like you in the past in human history or in the future in human history. You are one of a kind. You're one in billions. God custom-made you. That shows your value. Now, look up here on the screen. The Bible says in Psalm 139 "You made my whole
being; You God formed me "in my mother's womb. "I praise you because you made me "in an amazing and wonderful way. "What You have done is wonderful." You were made by God. If you were to go into a art gallery and you see a picture and
it's created by Picasso and then the next picture you see and it's created by Rembrandt and the third one is a picture, a stick figure, created by Rick Warren. (audience laughs) They're not of equal value. (audience laughs) - [Will] It'll sell off the shelf though. - What's that? - It'll sell off the shelf. - Yeah. And so the point being is
that whoever creates something it's worth a whole lot more
than if somebody else ... (stammers) If I buy a guitar that's played by a nobody, it doesn't cost a whole lot but if I buy a guitar that's been played by Eric Clapton now it's worth somethin'. The fact that you're created by the king of the universe who custom-designed you shows your value. Your Father in heaven created you. Second reason why you're valuable, infinitely valuable, Jesus died for you. You wanna know how much you're worth, look at the cross. You're worth dying for. You're worth God saying I'm gonna go and die on the cross for that person 'cause
I want 'im in heaven. Jesus paid for all of your sins. 1 Peter 1:19 up here
on the screen says this "He paid for you with
the precious lifeblood "of Christ, "the sinless, spotless Lamb of God." Notice, God made and then God paid. Both of these show value. You know how much somethin's worth? I'll tell ya. It's worth whatever somebody's willin' to pay for it and no more. You have a car at home and
you think it's worth so much. It may be true or it may not be. I'll tell ya how much your car is worth. It's worth whatever somebody's
willin' to pay for it. If you have a rare baseball card, like a Honus Wagner baseball card, and you think it's worth so much money, it's worth whatever somebody's
willin' to pay for it. No more and no less. How much are you worth? Look at the cross. Jesus paid for you. God made you and his son paid for you. Now here's the third reason
why you're infinitely valuable. God's Spirit, his Holy
Spirit, lives in you. God's Spirit lives in you. He indwells you. You're the house for his Spirit. 1 Corinthians 6:19. "Do you now know." Paul says. "That the body." Your body. Your body. "Is a temple." "Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit "who is in you and in whom
you have received from God." Now if you were to go up to Beverly Hills and say I wanna buy a home, well if you found a home that looked nice but nobody famous had lived in it it's not gonna be nearly as expensive as if you find a home
and say who lived here, well Tom Cruise lived here and before that Harrison Ford lived here and before that Marilyn Monroe lived here. That jacks up the price a lot. Whose lived in it. Who lives in you? The Holy Spirit of God. - [Woman] Yeah! - [Man] Amen. - All right? All right? (applause) The Trinity shows your value. The Father created you,
the Son died for you, the Spirit lives in you. That's how valuable you are. That's how valuable your kids are. And when they open their lives to Christ and he puts his Spirit in their life they are infinitely of value. So how do we do this as a parent? How can you affirm the value of your kids? Well, there are three ways and you might write these down. It's the next three
verses on your outline. The first way is attention, specifically, visual attention. In other words, the way
you look at your kids reveals how much you value them. You know the look that withers and you know the look that affirms. Visual attention. When you pay attention to something it means you value it. You don't pay attention
to things you don't value and you don't pay attention
to people you don't value. Your eyes are actually a
tool of expressing love. The Bible says it like this. In Matthew 10:30. "Your Father in Heaven
pays great attention." Circle that. "Your Father in Heaven
pays great attention "to you, down to the last detail, "even numbering the hairs on your head." You don't even know how
many hairs you have. God knows how many hairs are on your head, he knows the original color. (audience laughs) And he knows how many fell out in the sink this morning. (audience laughs) That's how much God pays attention to you. Nobody's ever gonna love
you more than God does. You spell love attention. I've told you this before that when my kids were little I'd just be sittin' at
home readin' the paper and Amy or Josh or Matthew they'd come up and say, Daddy, and I'd go
yeah, babe, whatcha need. Daddy. Yeah, whatcha need? And Amy would pull the paper down. Pull it and put her hands on my face. Daddy, look at me. (audience laughs) I have guys used to tell me all the time, I don't know what my
kids and my wife want. I give 'em everything they need. I buy 'em everything they need. What more could they want? They want you. They want your attention. That's the most priceless
gift you can give a person. Because your attention is your time and your time is your life and when you give your time to somebody you're never gettin' that back. I can give you money but I can always get more money. But I can't get more time. I've got a certain amount
of time in my life. When I give you my attention, I'm giving you my life and I'm giving you a part of my time I'm never getting back. I give it to you because I'm saying you're worth it. You matter to me. My attention is on you because you matter. And so one of the ways
you affirm your kids is just paying attention to them, looking at them. Jesus everywhere he went
gave a look, a word, a touch, a look, a word, a touch, a look, a word, a touch. Number two, the second
way to affirm value. First, visual attention,
second, physical affection. The way you affirm people's value is by physical affection. God does this with us. Hosea 4:6 God says this. Talking about you. "I drew them near to me
with affection and love." Any parent knows what he's talkin' about. I drew my children near to me with affection and with love. I drew them near. "I picked them up." And every parent's picked
up a child thousands and thousands of time. "I picked them up and I
held them to my cheek." Can you feel the tenderness in God saying this is how much I love you? Do you know that God
made you with your skin, your skin is made to be touched. You actually need touch to thrive. Now I'm not talkin' about sexual touch, I'm just talkin' about tender touch. Did you know that babies, if
they're not touched enough as infants, they get what's called failure to thrive syndrome. Their brains actually don't develop. It's why preemies, who
can't go home immediately, and premature babies
that are in incubators, several times a day NICU nurses and neonatal nurses will go in and they will massage,
they will touch the babies, because if they don't touch their skin their brains don't develop. I have seen the tragedy around the world, in orphanages all around the world, of little babies who cried and cried and cried but now they're silent because they realize the
cries don't work anymore and so the whole orphanage is silent. I've seen babies who are much older but are stunted in their growth and in their intelligence
because nobody touched them. They just laid there in that orphanage and nobody is touching them. Your kids need touch. Some of you dads go, well I'm
just not a touchy-feely guy. Well get over it. (audience laughs) You can learn anything. And if you love, you can learn that. You can learn that. So physical affection, visual attention, and then here's the third way you can show value to people. Verbal appreciation. Verbal appreciation. So we've got attention,
affection, and appreciation. Verbal appreciation means you tell people how valuable they are. When you send them a birthday card or a note, you just don't write your name at the bottom, happy birthday, to a child. No, you tell 'em, you write long and you tell 'em all the things that they could read over and over that you value in their lives. God does this, Isaiah 43:4. God says "You are precious to me." Notice he says it. Are you tellin' your kids you're precious? Guys, are you tellin' your wife? You are precious to me. Are you tellin' your husband? You are precious to me. Are you tellin' the
members of your family? You are precious to me. "I treat you with honor." God says about his children. "And I love you." Verbal appreciation. If you have ever bought a house in Southern California and held on to it for at least four or five years, you know the meaning of
the word appreciation. (audience laughs) Your house appreciated. Appreciation means to raise in value. If you've ever bought a brand new car and the moment you drove it off the lot you know the meaning of depreciation. (audience laughs) And it's worth thousands of dollars less the moment you drive it off that lot. So appreciation raises in value, depreciation lowers in value. What're you doin' with your kids? Are you raising their
value through appreciation? Or are you lowering their
value through depreciation? Put downs. Every time I appreciate my
wife, I raise her value. Her value to me and her value to the world and everybody else. Every time I appreciate my kids or now my grandkids I raise their value. This is how you do this
affirming their values. Proverbs 12:25 says this "A word of encouragement does wonders." Everybody agree with that? Guys, can you think of some times when a word of encouragement did a wonder in your life? A word of affirmation. Talk to me about it in your own life and then with your kids. - Pastor Rick, I'm glad you said that about not just writing your name on letters or a card. I'm the oldest grandson
at 53 years of age. My grandmother is 96 years old. There's five generations. And I have a file cabinet that has my 13 year birthday, all the cards and letters that she has sent to me. When I was in the Marine Corps overseas. All the letters or birthday cards, it wasn't just signed
Grandmother and Poppa. - [Rick] Yeah, right. - She wrote God's word in there for me and even today. - [Rick] An encouraging word. - Just for Father's Day. She sends God's love through the mail and she's been doin' that so I think it's so important. You were talkin' earlier,
not today but ... - [Rick] Yeah. - About not building
walls but building bridges and we have to do that
with our children as well and that's by speaking life into them and encouragin' 'em with the word of God, with the love. Like you said, to elevate them. No matter how small it may seem or the task that they've completed but let 'em know that
they did a great job. And that's honoring God as well. Not just us as parents, as a father, but God sees what they're doin' as well. - Any of you guys? Yeah. - Yeah ya know (clears throat) it says that a word of
encouragement works wonders and it doesn't have to be your parent. I got bullied when I was younger and for Christmas I got some Jordans, in the eighth grade, and couldn't believe I had some Jordans, I'm actually wearin' some Jordans today. (audience laughs) And I put 'em on and in the
eighth grade I went straight to my Nerf basketball
hoop and slammed dunk like Michael Jordan with my tongue out and everything ahhhhhhh. (Rick laughing) The very next school day I go to school and I get verbally bullied for my shoes and I couldn't believe it and so I scurried away from that and then I went to an open gym and wore my Jordans and
when I walked home I had to walk through a pathway that was about 200 yards in length and as I walked through there
I heard people behind me, which there was people that walked through this pathway all the time, and as I got halfway I hear five people behind me, I looked back,
and they started running. As they ran towards me,
they were already ten feet behind me, and two steps
they shoelace tackled me and starting to bully me for my shoes. (Rick laughs) They peeled them off and
I felt just depressed and angry, all these
emotions in me, and then ... I didn't wanna go to school. I faked being sick for three days and my parents said go back to school. Finally my friend said,
hey, where them Js at? I'm like, oh man, I didn't
feel like wearing 'em today. 'Cause I didn't feel like
tellin' 'im the story 'cause it was so hurtful. Finally he kept asking,
kept asking, kept asking and all of a sudden I said, I didn't feel like wearin' my Js toda
and I clinched my fist and I look at 'im and
he's like, man, calm down. All I wanna know where
your shoes were at, man. Calm down. And then I told 'im the
story, his face drop, and he goes, man, you need
to learn how to wrestle. And I'm like wrestle? (laughing) You guys wear tight leotards and touch each other in funny places, man. I'm cool with that. (laughing) And I think he got mad. I think he got mad and he took me down in ten seconds and I been wearin' a tight leotard ever since. (laughing) And now I have, God's
sovereignty is amazing, because now I have an
anti-bullying campaign and I wear these Js all the time. - Your whole life was redirected by a single affirmation. - Yes. Amen. - That's cool. - Amen. - Ya know with each of my
grandkids, it's such a cliche now 'cause I've done it literally thousands and thousands of times, but when I see any of
my grandkids I'll say, hey Cole, do you know what I love about you? Do you know what Poppa loves about you? And he goes, yeah, absolutely everything. (audience laughs) And I say, yep. Because I've said that so many times. To Claire, to Kayley, to
Cassidy, to Caleb, to Cole, and it's like, hey, do you know, I started when they were babies. Kayley, do you know what
Poppa loves about you? No. Absolutely everything. I love everything about you. There's nothing in you that I don't love. And I've said it so many times, Kayley's now startin' high school, I say, hey Kayley, you
know what I love about ya? Absolutely everything. Yep. (audience laughs) And I want them to go through life with that assurance. That assurance. Anybody else. You guys wanna say somethin'? - I'll throw one in there. My family growin' up experienced a lot of the problems that America
is experiencing today. It seems like our family
had everything happen to it. My dad was a quiet man. Silent generation type of guy. But there was a guy that stepped into my life 25 years
ago and he was my pastor. I remember distinctly at the moment that he said these words. I remember how I felt. I remember how he said them. He said you are a diamond in the rough. - [Rick] Wow. - And God is gonna polish you. - [Rick] Wow. - And that comment literally changed the trajectory of my life. - [Rick] Wow. - It was heading in a direction focused on anger and frustration and that bit of encouragement, that word of encouragement, from an elderly man literally changed the directory of my life and I'm grateful to that guy. Like I said, it was 25 years ago and I remember every detail of the moment. Just a powerful, powerful encouragement. - One of the most powerful sentences that you can give, say to a kid, or anybody else for that matter, is this. You know what you'd be good at? You know what you'd be good at? Because we often don't see in ourselves what other people can see. They can see talent. They can see potential. They can see a personality or something. And most of the world is waiting to be given permission to be themselves. And you just go, you know
what you'd be good at? (stammers) That's a powerful affirmation. Yeah. - Yeah, to me, Pastor Rick, I grew up without these values. Coming from parents that decided to get divorced when I
was 14, 15 years old. It was really hard for me. I didn't have no visual attention from my parents. I was just runnin' around all the way through pretty much 21. I didn't see these values. I married at 21 and now I have a 25 and a 15-year-old and I decide that I was
gonna break the pattern. That I was just going to
use these three values. And I did understand-- - [Rick] How long you been married now? - 26. - [Rick] 26 years. That's great. - 26 years. Really solid. I learned these values from you. About 2014. And that really, with my walk with Christ, I definitely start using
these values with my kids. The age, one is 25, one is 15. There are different ways
to express our love, to express our care, our attention. Really important, I think, right now with social media, with texting, with technology, our kids
always already have the phone in their hands so I'm trying to every day, every hour if I can, just
constantly sending a message of love, my care of them, and I always watching
them on social media, what they're doin'. Something that we did a couple weeks ago was really interesting
because I had probably, I don't know, maybe 15
years not writing a letter in actual pencil and paper
and put it on the mail so I did that to my 25-year-old and amazing what that letter did to her and that relationship that we have now after she opened that
letter and wrote that from the Holy Spirit talking to me and put it into that. It's really beautiful
that we constantly need to communicate to them in any way. Social media, writing a
letter is just really simple but it's important those values to put it on our kids. - And leavin' it there for posterity. Okay, friends, a nation
will never be stronger than its communities. And a community will never be stronger than its churches. And a church will never be stronger than its families. Today in America, one of the reasons why we're havin' all the problems, is 'cause right now 40% of all children in America, 40%, are growing
up without the presence of their dad, a father, in the home. 40% of kids are growin' up without the presence of
their daddy in the home. We are the first civilization in history that's trying to pass on a civilization without moms and dads. Now the Bible says that God created men and women in his image. Men don't have the complete image of God and women don't have the
complete image of God. It takes both masculine and feminine to express the image of God. Because he's bigger than that and the Bible says men need women and women need men, we need each other in the Lord. Not just in marriage but just in life. You need masculine
perspective in your life. I need feminine perspective in my life. And we need each other. And in some of the groups in America, it's as high as 75% of all
the kids are growing up without a father in the home. That's the bad news. But here's the good news. Studies have shown that
the number one predictor of whether a kid is gonna
succeed in life or not, the number one predictor, is not their intelligence,
not how much money their family has, the number one predictor of whether a kid makes it in life or not is this the presence of a caring adult in their life. Who affirms and accepts. And here's the interesting
thing in that study. It doesn't have to be a parent. It just has to be somebody who cares. A coach, a Sunday school
teacher, a neighbor. Somebody who cares. This is why I wanted to start this series. We have thousands of
children in this church who need love and there are thousands of kids in this neighborhood and all of Southern
California who need love. You may never be a parent but you need kids in your life and they need you. They need somebody to accept them and to affirm them and to
just spend time with them. Many of you grew up
where your parents split. You know the pain of that. You know the confusion it
causes and thing like that. I will just say this to you. You are a product of your past, it definitely influenced you, but you are not a prisoner of your past. And you can change it. I remember one of the kids I grew up with and we went to college together and he told me one time, we were out ... This just shows you how long ago, I was lightin' smudge
pots in an orange grove over in Riverside, when the frost came in. He said, ya know Rick,
for four generations back in my family, every generation for four generations, has gotten divorced. I am determined to break that chain. And now nearly 40 years later, he's still married to
the same girl he married. It's a choice. It's a choice. (applause) I want everybody to take
out a card right now. Everybody get a card in front of you. Pull it out. Pull out a card. I'm gonna give you two
different challenges. One or the other. Two different challenges. One challenge I wanna say
is if you are a parent you need to be in a small group. You need the support of other parents. Now I realize many of
you are single parents and you're heroes to me. I realize many of you,
you didn't choose this, it was forced on you, and I honor you for your commitment to
hold your family together but you need more than just yourself. If you're a single parent
or you're both parents, you need to be in a small group. The group I'm in right now I've been in I think 16 years, we went
through every possible, imaginable problem with
kids in our small group. And we helped each other. Now we didn't talk about
parenting every time. It's just we're parents
and when somethin' comes up we would encourage, we would support, you need to be in a small group. If you're a parent and you're not in a small group, you need to write down on your card group, the word group, and I'll get you some information, help you get in a small group. Second, there are kids all around you who are starving for acceptance. If you're willing to help, in one of the student or
children's ministries here at Saddleback, I want you
to write down help kids. In fact, watch this. This is about a minute long. Watch this on the screen. - Did you know that every week at every campus hundreds of men serve in our children's and
youth ministries here at Saddleback Church. Men just like you. (laughing) (upbeat music) - Yeah, I serve in kid's ministry because I can't think of a better way to invest my time. - Yeah, invest is a great word. (upbeat music) 'Cause that's exactly what we're doin'. We're investing in the next generation. - I was very hesitant to get involved. (upbeat music) But I just jumped into
the junior high ministry and now I love it. - Everyone knows (upbeat music) that kids need caring
adults in their lives and that's what we do. We show them that we care
and point them to Jesus. - So, what kind of men are we looking for to join our children's
and youth ministry teams? All sorts of men. Paul played minor league baseball. Jeremy doesn't even like baseball. Josh, he watches one or
two baseball games a year and Don? Don was born before
baseball was even invented. If you'd like more information on how you can be a part of our kids' or youth ministry teams, simply
grab your connection card and on the back of it write children, or kids, or youth, depending
on which department you'd like to serve in and we'll get in touch with you right away. Hey, if these guys can be part of our team, so can you. - That Don Dale is the famous Don Dale. If you've taken Class
101 Discovering the Value of a Spiritual Family, that's the guy when I moved here in 1980 who I found a real estate office, I said I need a place to live and I have no money, no members, no building and he said well let's see what we can do and he got in his car and drove to a condo and he got us the first month rent free and nothing down and I said, Don, do you
go to church anywhere, he goes no, I don't like church, I said great, you're my first member. (audience laughs) I'm gonna build a church for
people who don't like church. That man has been coming
to Saddleback Church since before the first service, 38 years, and he's serving in junior
high ministry still. 38 years later. (applause) You wanna make a
difference in a kid's life, write down help kids on that card and I'll get in touch with ya, I'll give ya a whole
bunch of different options on how you could be a part
of making a difference in the next generation. We need to help each other. All right? Now, I want to just close
with the last verse on the-- Turn your outline over
and go to the very end. And I wanna read this one verse to you. Proverbs 14:26. It's Father's Day. "Reverence for God gives
a man deep strength." "Reverence for God gives
a man deep strength "and his children have a
place of refuge and security." What I'm tryin' to say
here is that the key to becoming a great parent is to become a Godly person. The key to becomin' a great parent is to become a Godly person. The truth is human love wears out and sometimes your kids are unlovable. That's when they need it the most. That's why we need God's love. We need his power. We need his wisdom. By the way, do you
realize these two things we looked at today, we're gonna look at three next week, acceptance and affirmation, are just the ways your heavenly Father treats you? He's just sayin' I want
you to treat your kids the way I treat my kids. Your heavenly Father accepts
your uniqueness completely. He doesn't want you to be
somebody else you're not. And your heavenly Father
affirms your value constantly. Why? Because the Father made
you, Jesus died for you, and the Spirit lives in you. Next session we'll look
at three more ways. Let's bow our heads. The key to becoming a great person and a great parent is to become a Godly person, opening up your life. Reverence for God gives
a man deep strength. It also does it to a woman. His children have a place
of refuge and security. Would you pray this prayer? God, thank you for accepting me, unconditionally, with all my good and bad, ups and downs, warts and all. Thank you for accepting me completely. Thank you, God, for making me unique. And I don't have to be like anybody else. There's nobody in the world like me and you don't want me to be somebody else. Help me to break free from the pressures of comparing and conforming. I don't wanna be what
other people want me to be. I wanna be what you made me to be. And help me to help kids break free from comparing and conforming. And God, I wanna appreciate people. I wanna raise their value. I don't wanna depreciate them. Thank you that you affirm my value, Jesus, when you died on the cross for me. Thank you for that. Thank you that your
Holy Spirit lives in me. I wanna be an agent of affirmation and affection and attention to my family, to my friends, to my
neighbors, to my co-workers. An agent of your love this week. I ask ya to use me and I pray this in Jesus name. Amen. - Thanks for checkin' out
this message on YouTube. My name is Jay and I'm
Saddleback's online campus pastor and I would love to invite you to join our online community. Here are three ways you
can take a next step. First, learn more about belonging to our church family by
completing Class 101 online. Second, don't do life alone anymore by getting into an online only small group that meets on platforms like Skype or learn more about hosting a group with your friends in your home. Third, join our global Facebook community to connect with others
with the online community and be more engaged in the day to day. To take any of those next steps visit saddleback.com/online or email online@saddleback.com. Hope to here from you soon. (mellow music)
