In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of training in the Word of God to prepare the way for the Lord. They encourage parents to have open discussions with their children about real-life issues and to use the Bible as a guide for teaching purity and diligence. The book of Proverbs is highlighted as a valuable resource for teaching these principles. The speaker also mentions the importance of incorporating Bible reading and listening to Bible tapes into daily routines.

Hello, welcome to Charity Ministries. Our desire is that your life would be blessed and changed by this message. This message is not copyrighted and is not to be bought or sold. You are welcome to make copies for your friends and neighbors. If you would like additional messages, please go to our website for a complete listing at www.charityministries.org. If you would like a catalog of other sermons, please call 1-800-227-7902 or write to Charity Ministries, 400 West Main Street, Suite 1, Ephrata, Pennsylvania, 17522. These messages are offered to all without charge by the freewill offerings of God's people. A special thank you to all who support this ministry. Amen, that was an appropriate song. That's what we want to be. Alright, we're here for our final teaching time. Then we'll have the question and answers. Training in the Word. If we're going to prepare the way for the Lord, isn't this one of the most important things that we need to do? Jesus is the Word. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And the Word wants to become flesh and dwell in our children, as He does in us. I just want to share that, as Emmanuel shared with his session, these things that I'll share about how I do things are not the way to do it. There is no the way to do it. There is no the way, because we're all different. We all have different gifts and different situations, family situations and so forth. But I just hope that by me sharing some of the ways that God has led us, that it may inspire you to seek Him for you. And so, this is not the pattern that I'm going to give you of how I think you should do it. How many of you would like your children to have a quiet time when they're 12 years old? Amen? Isn't that a good goal? How many of us have quiet times now? It comes back to what we've been talking about all along here. It comes back to what we want our children to be. And what we want them to be, we need to be either doing that or headed that way. And my children all have quiet times from the ages of... well, in some way or another, from the ages of probably five on up. They just grew up thinking that's what you do when you get up. Somehow it would feel funny, I think, to them. To rise up and not have a quiet time. Unless we're traveling or something like that. But in the normal course of life. My wife has been such a good help in this over the years. When she was 12, she made a commitment to the Lord that she would begin every day with a quiet time. I think you all know what I mean by quiet time, right? A time where we read the Word, we pray, we seek the Lord. When she was 12 years old, she made a commitment to the Lord that she said, I am going to do this by God's grace every day of my life. And she's kept that by God's grace in different ways. When she was a mother of three or four young children, she had to adjust things a little bit differently. You know, you can't just do it like you did it when you were single or when you were 12. But when there's that commitment that's there, that this is what God wants me to do, God will make a way for you to work it all out. I've heard of some mothers who would leave Bibles in certain places, like by the baby changing table, by the bathroom, by the laundry room, wherever they would spend some time, because they didn't feel like they had time to do something more separate from their activity. So they would do it that way. They'd be changing the baby and they'd look over at the Bible, what they were reading. But the thing is, they had a heart that wanted to do that. And so they made a way. God made a way for them. And so you mothers, you know, if you have young children, you don't want to be condemned if you don't do it the way whoever tells you you should. But when you have a heart that says, Lord, I want to seek you. I want to read your word. God will make a way for you. And he can make those moments of snatches of time count in that way too. So we started our children at an early age. Today, Laura takes the five to eight year olds and reads to them from 6.30 to 7.00. She will read to them. Basically, the whole family is reading through the Bible this year. We have a Bible reading plan. And so we're all trying to do that. And that's been a real blessing. So far, we're still on schedule. We're maybe a little behind. But it's wonderful to be able to do things like that as a family. And we set that as a goal. And at the halfway mark, we had some kind of ice cream treat when we all made it. And just to celebrate, you know, and to rejoice in the Lord. So you can do things like that as a family. Make it fun. Make it interesting and a blessing. And that goes a long way towards making it something that children want to do. So she will do that from 6.30 to 7.00. Our older ones, they're supposed to get up with their alarm at 6.00. And from 6.00 to 7.00, that's their time to get dressed and to have a quiet time. The older ones do very well at it. Some of the younger ones need a little help. Sometimes the alarm rings a long time. Papa has to go up and wake somebody up. And sometimes Papa doesn't get up there and they sleep through. But that's our goal. And we're not perfect, but we're headed there. And I can say that the children enjoy it. You know, it's not like, oh, I've got to have my quiet time today. But they like it. They enjoy it for the most part. And it's not a drudgery to them. And that's what we want. We want the heart that serves God because it's a blessing to serve God. Do it from a willing heart. Then at 7.00, the older ones come down and they do chores and make the breakfast. From 7.00 to 7.30. And now, years ago, not too long ago, I had to teach them how to make breakfast. Because my wife, she ministers to the other ones during that time. She ministers to the little ones that aren't up yet. She takes care of them at that time from 7.00 to 7.30. So I stepped in and I taught them how to make breakfast. How to make the eggs and how to do whatever we eat. So I made some disciples there. And they do that now without my help. And I'm free to do other things. A lot of times I'll do some preliminary work before I go out on the job. Or whatever. In the summertime, it's harder for me to get up. So sometimes I've been taking my prayer walks at 7.00 to 7.30. So that's just a little bit of our schedule. 7.30 to 8.00 we eat. And we have found it to be the blessing when there is that consistency. Like you were saying, Emmanuel. We just do the same thing every five days a week. Monday through Friday. Sundays, we don't have family devotions in the morning. We go to church. We have our personal devotions. Saturdays, it's a little different too. Because we come here for prayer at 5.00 to 7.00. And my children love to come with me. Sometimes I'm amazed. Why do they like this? But they just want to come. So praise God for that. So Saturdays sometimes is different too. We may have our devotions at home at 9.00. Or we may not have them if I have to go minister somewhere or whatever. Then in the evenings, we like to have a family time. Where we read a biography. We would read Pilgrim's Progress maybe. Or we read John Bunyan recently. A biography. Missionary biographies. I don't know how many of those we've read. Just a nice time to read together. And we don't just read, but we talk about it. So in a way, it's really family devotions in the evening. I believe in having family devotions. I've heard people say that they're too busy to have family devotions. And I would say, if someone says they're too busy for family devotions, they're too busy. You don't have to do it my way. But how can we think that we're preparing the way of the Lord if we're not spending a rallying of the family together at least once a day. And seeking God together. Praying together. I mean, what kind of a heathen just get up and go to work? But I appreciate a brother I know, a friend of mine. A friend of mine that he went to his boss and he asked him if he could come in a half hour later than the other men at work. Instead of 7.30, if he could come in at 8. And he worked out kind of a deal somehow that it was good work for the company and work for him. His boss was a Christian. But the thing was, his heart was, I want to do this. I'm asking God to make a way for me. And God made a way for him. For an unusual request, let's say. But God honored that. So I believe in making this a priority. It's what I've done in my life. I'm self-employed, so over the years I've been able to have more freedom that way. That's one of the reasons I think I chose to be self-employed or I sought the job that I have. I find that the evenings are too interrupted, personally, to have family devotions. Because there's so many activities, you know, there's so many things that come up. It's just, it doesn't happen as consistently. I believe that the morning is, even in the Bible, you know, it's early will I seek thee, Lord. So I believe it works best. But you need to find out what works for you. And God will make a way if you have a desire. We started right away. We were so excited to have family devotions. We started when Hannah was like an infant. She couldn't even walk. We just put a little blanket right in front of us on the floor and we'd lay her down. And Laura and I would have our little devotions together. And so Hannah never knew anything but having family devotions, even though she didn't know what was going on. But we just wanted to do that. And we could hardly wait till she could sit in a chair, you know, and we could maybe sing a song. So when they're young, you do have to start out simple and start out with the basics. There was times and there still is occasionally times where you may spend the whole time just getting somebody to sit still. And that's family devotions. That's it. You know, that's not real glamorous, but yet it's important. Eventually it pays off. They learn how to sit. And when they're really young, sometimes there's a lot of sessions like that and you can feel like giving up, right? But it's worth it. Usually I take like the two-year-old and sit them on my lap and hold them so that they're not... We were just reminded of this recently because I wasn't doing that and I was constantly having to take this little rod, you know, do this half of the time with the devotions. And my children said, you know, Papa, you used to put the little one on your lap. Do you remember that? Oh, yeah. So I started doing that and I don't have to use that rod anymore. And she's happy there. She's content. She's not squirming. This is okay. This is my spot. It's a little less convenient for me, but that's okay. I really appreciate my wife's help in this. And I think without my wife, I mean, forget it. She makes it happen. We have the same vision and she's committed to making it happen. And if I didn't have her to do that, it would just be disaster. So I really praise her. She's not here right now, but I praise her when she's here too. I'm thankful for that. Thankful for a godly woman. And I think that's a key there, to have it. When you have that common vision, this is something we want. You know, it's not just one person's idea or the others, but it's something that we, before God, we have committed ourselves to. When they were younger, we would read Bible story books. We had a set of volumes about like this and they're nicely illustrated. Good stories that really kept to the scriptures pretty well. So we use that more. I know some of you may not like that. You may just want to read the Bible, but that worked very well for us. And again, you have to sort of tailor it to what you have, what you have to work with. Now, we mostly use the Bible, almost always. And we try to make it fun and interesting. You know, I've heard a lot of people say, when I grew up, we always had a family altar. But you know, it was... I hated it. I've heard people say that. Because it was a total duty. Their father would just open the thing, dryly read the scripture or whatever. They'd all have to say a prayer. And the people... Actually, I've heard people who were turned against family devotions. They didn't even have it in their own home. I knew of one brother. Because it was so... To him, it was such a boring and so dead. And so we should flee that like the plague. It should be fun. It should be interesting. It should be a blessing. And we like to sing a lot, so we sing two or three songs. One of the things that we really like to do, have done in the past, and I guess I'd like to put a plug in today for my favorite devotion book, and that's the book of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs is the manual for youth and children. I used to wonder why God didn't write more about how to train children. He did. I just didn't realize it was right there in the book of Proverbs. Every situation you could imagine in life, it comes up. Talk about diligence. Hey, there's all kinds of scriptures in there for that. If you just go through the book of Proverbs, you're going to hit all the big things that children need to know. And it's so good to just go through it systematically. You're not pointing out necessarily one thing to this person, but you just go through what Proverbs says, and it is complete. And so we've been through it. I think we've been through it probably eight, nine times. Easy. The whole book of Proverbs. And sometimes we'll read it. Actually, we've been through it more than that. We've been through it eight or nine times, one or two, three verses at a time. There's other times where we would read it every month. We would read it every month, a whole chapter a day. There's 30 chapters and we just read a whole chapter and we'd say, OK, what spoke to you today? What spoke to you today? And we always try to get them involved so that they're going to listen. They're going to say, OK, I need to be listening. Well, what's this going to be? It's not just Papa teaching me. So that's been a real blessing. I've never found it to be inappropriate to talk about this thing. You know, it talks a lot in Proverbs about the strange woman and the dangers of lust. And I've never found it to be inappropriate to talk about those things with my children. All of them there. It just kind of flows. Now, you know, you don't get into all the details of it. No. But in a general sense, like the book deals with it, they're being prepared for that. I tell my young boys when they're eight, you know, ten, you know, watch out for the strange woman. Don't let your heart go after women. It's going to bring many strong men have gone down, been brought down and on and on it goes. So it's a very natural way to teach purity and to teach diligence. Like we said, it talks about the heart. My son, give me thine heart. We've used it to talk about the heart over and over and to show our children, we want your heart. Give me your heart, son. Daughter, give me your heart. And I like to use the board a lot. We over the years, one time when they were when they were younger, I every day I would draw a picture of the proverb. That was kind of that was pretty tedious for me because I'm not a great artist. And to try to figure out how to illustrate every verse there. I don't know if I did everyone, but but they never forgot that. They're always begging me to do some more of that. I call them board lessons. They're begging me to do that. And I don't do it as much as I used to. My daughter is a really good artist and she she'll draw stuff on the board. And I just like to keep it up there and look at it. But this week we did it. We did one again. We were talking about obedience. And so we just drew a circle. And this circle was the circle of blessing. OK, everything in that circle is blessed. And we shared how, you know, God says, if you honor your father and mother, you will be blessed. So we put everything outside the circle. We put all the things that are cursed, all the things that are that are outside of the circle. So we drew them up there. You know, death, traps, destruction, sin, curses. And I'm not sure how many times we've taken some of the little ones in during the week. But we bring them over and we shared with them, you know, when you obey Papa and Mama, you're inside this circle. When you disobey, you're out here in this cursed area. And when you disobey, we want to rescue you. We want to save you from that place of destruction and cursing. That's why we correct you. So it's an illustration. It brings it home. Children like to see pictures. So, you know, we'll just draw a little picture. Okay. They went outside. And clearing your conscience brings them back into the circle of God's blessing. So we take them this week even, you know, okay, son, where are you right now? Are you inside there? No. You know, you disobeyed, didn't you? Yes. Do you want to get back in the circle? Okay, let's go do that. So this is real practical. It doesn't, you don't have to be a great artist either. Some of the ones I used to be a better artist when I was doing it every day. But I asked my wife, what ones do you remember? Last night I asked her. They actually took pictures of them and they have a book that has some of the pictures in it. But she said that the one she remembered was the verse that says, the virtuous woman is a crown to her husband. But she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones. So we drew this. A lot of times Proverbs is a dual thing, this side and that side. So most of the time there's like a line down the middle. And then on this side, we show the one thing, this side, the other. So we had this picture of the virtuous woman, this modestly dressed lady, you know, taking care of her husband and putting a crown on his head, you know, over on this side. And then over here, we had this kind of immodest lady with this red dress on and so forth. And the husband was lying on his bed, you know, with his arms out like this. He was like rottenness in his bones. He was dying. My wife said she remembers that one the best. But her name means crown, by the way. She was Laura. That means crown. We did one. We did one. OK. It says that the wise woman builds her house and the foolish one plucks it down. All right. So then we had we had a house here with a lady on top with a covering on hammering down some shingles. She was building her house. Then we had this foolish lady over here with a sledgehammer like this and slamming in bricks flying everywhere. And, you know, they remembered that as a picture. You know, and then you talk about what does that mean? You know, is that is that what God's saying, that the woman is smashing her house with a sledgehammer? No, no, no. But it's like that. She's tearing down her own home by her lips and by her foolish decisions of going after the flesh and so forth. So it's powerful. Proverbs is I just believe it's the best personally for our family devotions. We go through it a lot. We've done different things. It says a strange woman, her house, her steps lead down to hell. So we had a house with it with the doorway out here. And then in the background, there were steps going down and the flames of hell were coming out of here. And there it is. You know, sons, don't go near those kind of women. The ones that flatter you, the ones that tell you how strong and how handsome you are and all this garbage. They're going to go right down to hell. I don't think they've forgotten that. The slothful way, the slothful man is like a hedge of thorns. Well, you know, we had a path over here that was just all covered over with thorns and messed up. And then the way of the righteous is made plain. It was nice and neat. Everything was orderly and cut and so forth. So I think it's a blessing if you can get a whiteboard, especially with younger children, but the older ones love it as much, and do some simple illustrating. Like I said, we went through the whole book of Proverbs and we just, I tried, sometimes it racked my brain, how am I going to draw a picture of this one? But, oh, and at that time they would draw it as well. I think that's part of why they liked it so well. They'd get out their little books and they'd all try to copy what I drew. And that was really, really good for us. And they'll still tell me some of those things come back to them. They'll still tell me exactly how that picture looked, and we read the same verses today. So, Proverbs is a great way to do it. Let's see here. The title of this was Spending Time in the Word. So, I mean, I could talk about prayer, time together, and we like to pray for our missionaries certain days and that sort of thing. But we just try to get the Bible into them every way we can. At night time, turn the Bible tape on. And we've done it more or less, you know, different times. Sometimes we just forget about it for a while. I went up last night, I think they heard me talk in the message last night. So, I went up last night and I had three different Bible tapes going in the halls. You know, I could hear them all going at once. That blessed me. But, you know, they're getting the Word of God implanted in their hearts. One thing we did do for the younger ones is let them listen to the Bible on tape while they read it for their quiet time. Because even though someone can read when they're eight, they can't concentrate very well. And they lose their place and then they go back and all that. Whereas if you have a Bible tape playing and you say, okay, you know, this is where you're going to read today. Here's the tape. You put it in. That really helps them to just keep going. They don't go back. They just, they can't. And so we found that really helpful. We memorize scripture. And family verses and songs are a really good way to motivate for that. Like some of you may not have seen that, but like at church here, we try to every Sunday have somebody share a family verses and songs. And then we have a family verse and a song and a family gets up and they sing a song or two and the children quote some verses or everybody quote verses. So over the years, that has really helped us to memorize certain scriptures. Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. Especially some of the first ones we worked on were the scriptures about the Bible. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect. You know, memorizing those. What is the Bible? Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. We memorized all those. We did that in the family verses and song one time. And I think we should be thinking about that as parents. What verses do I want my children to have? Really good. What are key verses? And work on those for memorizing. So we did that with the Bible. You know, Joshua 1.8. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein. Verses like that. Verses like Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly and so forth. I think children should have those verses memorized so that they know the Word of God is the book and it's settled and it's forever and not one jot or tittle shall pass away until all be fulfilled. So to me, that was the first foundation. Okay, we're going to memorize these and then you're going to get it that this is the book for your life. Alright, that's really pretty much all I wanted to share, but maybe you have some questions for me. Maybe you have some comments about how you have done family devotions that could be helpful to us. I'm sure you all have some good experiences and things. Yes? You mentioned your wife having the same vision in family devotions. I was hoping you would clarify that a little bit. Is that just like having the children there in time? Exactly. She sees her role as making it happen. We have to agree together. Okay, we're going to have family devotions at such a time. So she sees it. Okay, my job is to do everything I can to make this happen. You know, get everybody ready, get the things cleaned up, whatever needs to happen. So, yeah. Does that answer that? Yeah, I mean, I think as husbands, we're the visionaries. We come to agreement with our wives. We should. This is the way God wants us to walk. And then our wives are the ones that have a big part in actually making it happen. And that's a blessing. So what are some of the number one reasons that you have seen in your own life times where family devotions didn't happen or didn't happen as good as they should have? What were the hindrances in your personal life and also in others you've observed? I don't know why it didn't happen. It always has happened. Not every day. You know what I mean. But we've never had a time where we went, you know, I don't know if we've ever had a time where we went three days without it, I'd say. It might have been a Saturday and a Sunday, sometime. It's just something we agreed to do. Now, we did have a lot of times where it wasn't so good. I have to be honest. It's not always good. It's not always great and it's not always good. Sometimes you just did it. And we don't like that and we don't want that. But that's just the reality. And I think that's okay as long as it doesn't consistently be like that. Because there again, that consistency of this is what we're going to do. There's times when I left family devotions and I just felt like this was like a waste of time. Maybe one of those days where all we did was deal with children who were out of whack. I wanted to teach the Bible. I didn't get the chance to teach the Bible. So, I don't know if that really totally answers your question. What have some of those times been that your relationships wouldn't have been right as you look at it? There may have been a few of those, yeah. But we do try to, like Jeff shared, if there's something that's not right, that's our family devotions. You know, there's no sense in faking it. You're not going to have a good family devotions if you said something harsh to your son and you haven't made it right. I mean, I've sat there a few times and looked over at my son and I just saw his face. His countenance was way downcast. And I'm ready to have devotions and all of a sudden I realized, whoa, I hurt him. I hurt him there at the table when I said this, whatever. Well, now it's time to reconcile. And that's a great family devotions, you know, because you're real. And the children love it when I do that. They love it when I make something right with one of their siblings. You can just see it written on their faces. It makes them feel so good. And could we have a better devotion than that? What is devotion? So yeah, if there's a breach in relationship, don't even bother trying to go on. I have a thought on that, Paul. I really want to magnify that principle you're saying, especially in light of, it can almost seem overwhelming to have such a consistent family devotion. But at times, my wife and I have said, well, we need to get away with this child and pray with him. Seth, will you lead worship for a half an hour? Just let everybody sing songs. That time is still set aside. It might be that we need to go with another child and make something right. And if you've got the time blocked out, it's still family devotion. It's just done a little differently. So we do. I didn't share that. We have our devotions from 8.15 to about 9. That's our daily. Okay. Anybody have any other questions? Or maybe there's something you've done that you've really seen has been blessed and been a blessing. Right over there. One thing that my wife was doing with our two oldest sons that's turning out to be a real blessing. We've been doing it for about three months now, is having our two oldest boys, assigning them to a certain part of the maybe 8 to 12 verses. And then having them pick out one of those verses and explain them. And then sometimes the whole devotional comes out of that. I'll add to it and we'll have a discussion. It's been a real blessing. And some of the ones is Proverbs number one and then Psalms 119 is a good one too. Because you can assign them eight verses at a time. They're all nice and organized. That's been a blessing. Anybody else up here? Rick. Yeah, thank you. Kind of a little bit of what Paul was saying, but maybe a little bit more specific. As your family gets bigger, you'll find things seem to happen in trends or spurts or patterns. You'll notice something's kind of off. It might not be relationships. It might just be three or four of the children. Over the course of the last couple of weeks, you just heard a lot of extra sort of teasing. It just seemed on the edge of being too much, too far. So you just, OK, you know what? Tonight we're going to talk about what does God say about this? And some of those impromptu just laying it out on the table and opening up the word of God about real things that are really happening. Because patterns do kind of emerge in a family sometimes. And they're not always good patterns because we're human. And so you just spend some time talking about it and bring it up and say, OK, does anybody have anything they want to confess or talk about? Or maybe that you're seeing is in your life. You just kind of be open to those things that present themselves, even though they're negative. But by the spirit of God, it can be a positive. So good point. Yeah, we've found that over the years that we will just do a devotion, even if we're in the middle of Proverbs. OK, today we're going to. That's a very good point, because if it doesn't apply to our life, what what is the use of it? You know, if we're if there's issues in our life that God wants to speak into, you know, Proverbs is a great book. But let's let's go to the thing that is needful. And we have gone through the New Testament also a few times and different books. It's not like we only do the Proverbs, but I just think if you've never done that, you are missing your children are going to miss so much. This is such a practical book. I know you said, Brother Paul, that you love to teach the word and my husband does, too. I have been very blessed at times when at times some of the best devotions are in that training where you feel like you don't get anywhere. But Daddy has set the course for the day that we are going to obey and we are going to, you know, he's given the vision and he's carried it out. And if that included a discipline or a training or, you know, we feel like, well, we didn't really get to our normal thing. That just sets the day in motion that I can just refer. Remember what Daddy said in devotion. Remember what, you know, kind of attitudes we're having. And I feel empowered to some of at times if we're having a hard time, those devotions mean a lot. Anybody else? I didn't get to hear all that was shared, but I know I wanted to say that one of the things that has been such a blessing in our home is when Paul, when I would come be overwhelmed with a attitude in the home that that's what Paul would then bring out. And many times we'd leave it up on the board. If you do a board lesson, then I take the child during the day and say, you know, what kind of speech are you giving or what kind of road are you choosing? You have the road with two ways on and which road are you on right now? Are you going your own way or are you choosing to walk God's way and have the blessings? Are you choosing this pathway with snares and traps? And it made a difference in our home through that training period for that child or a couple of children at a time. So it's just a real bright spot in our day to apply the word of God. It's not just family devotions, but it's been brought back throughout the day. It gives such grace and ability to make the word of God meaningful. That's what it means in this present situation that's come up after Papa's gone to work, but we could apply it again. Did you stick pretty closely to singing just hymns or did you look for maybe lighter songs or children's songs to mix in or did you stick pretty much to hymns? Well, when our children were younger, we tried to learn a hymn at a time. We'd do one for like a week, maybe one hymn. Then we might sing Jesus Loves Me and so forth. Some of the children's songs that they really like. And we still try to do some of those songs because we still have young children. And I found, you know, that sometimes they're missing out because I really like the good hymns and the older children like them. But then here's these younger ones that can't even sing them, can't read yet. So we've tried to reset the button there and try to make sure we give them at least one song where they can really enjoy it. So, yeah, when they were younger, we wanted to learn hymns. We didn't want them to just learn light songs or easy songs. And we wanted to learn the hymns ourselves because we didn't know, or Laura knew more than I did, but I didn't know a lot of them. So we made that a goal. And our devotions would be learning a hymn. We would actually teach our younger ones the hymn. If they couldn't read even, we would tell them the words. Okay, now let's sing it. So it was really slow, but that's where we were at. And if you have a lot of younger ones, that's where you're at. You're going to be slow. You're not going to feel like you get a whole lot done, but you are getting a lot done. Don't think you're not. It's powerful. Because then when you have these young ones who can sing, who love to sing, that just sweeps the rest of the newer ones up into it. And it's like, yeah, pour yourself into the oldest ones and you'll reap the benefits. We also act things out sometimes. Children love that. We did humble yourself in the sight of the Lord and he will lift you up. God resists the proud. So I had my, you know, Ernest. Okay, Ernest is going to be a proud man now, children. Okay, Ernest, I want you to get from here over to here. Okay, whatever over there was, some blessing, something he wanted. So he was going to try to get there. Well, he can't get past me because I'm resisting him. And so everybody got to see that. He'd go over here and I'd block him, then over there and I'd block him. There's no way this guy's going to make it. And I'd say, you know, children, that's what happens when we're proud. God resists us and you're not going to get the thing that you want. But now, Ernest is a humble man now. So then you pick him up and you carry him over. You know, God gives grace to the humble. So things like that. Different times we hid. One time I hid some chocolate in the room. We were studying Proverbs 2 where it says, if you seek her as treasure and search for her as for gold. I said to them, you know, God's saying that if you search for him like you would for treasure, you're going to find him. I said, you know what, there's a treasure in this room. I hid some chocolate somewhere in here. Do you believe me? They said, yeah, we believe you. So they went on a search mission. And they searched for their hidden treasure. And they found it. And they got to eat it. Well, that was just a little way to show them, you know, that's the way the Lord is. It's not just right on the surface. We don't go out and stumble across diamonds in our backyard, right? But we've got to dig deep. You've got to do some blasting. You've got to whatever. Just little things like that. And I've heard people who have done that. Maybe we haven't done a lot of this, but I've heard some people who did very effectively act out Bible stories. And, you know, they're David running from Saul, hiding under the table, you know, under the cave with their mighty men. And they're right there and they're doing it. They're talking about how it feels. And personally, I haven't done a lot of that, but I've heard people who did that. It was inspiring. So however you can do, you know, as God leads you, make it interesting. Bring it to life. It's not a dead book. It's applicable today as much as it ever has been. But it's up to us as the teachers to make it real to them. They can relate to chocolate. That's a treasure right now. They can't relate really to gold. That doesn't mean anything to them. But chocolate? Hey, that's treasure. I'd like to encourage everyone not to think that little ones can't learn big things. Twice now we've had two and a half year olds where if they hear a hymn song two or three times, they're around there singing it. Maybe not the whole thing, perfectly right. They get the words mixed up from different lines, but they sing phrases. And it's much better than having them be around there saying silly things or screaming at their brothers and sisters or whatever. So it's amazing what they can learn when they're little. They memorize faster than I do. Don't underestimate what your little children can do. And don't sell it short and don't think I'll wait till they get older then I can really teach them now. Pour into them now. I'd just like to add to that, even very little, our Joshua, when he was a real tiny baby, we were practicing singing in different parts. When we were singing Praise to God, Immortal Praise, we'd sing it every morning. And he was just the baby. I mean, not just a year old. He was the tiny baby. And so that was for a season and then that kind of went away. And as soon as Joshua was starting to kind of talk, we noticed that he would constantly kind of sing this song. And we couldn't figure out what it was till he got a little older and could perform it better. It was that song. As soon as he was talking, he was singing that song, the first verse straight through. And we hadn't sung it that much for a while. He just picked it up when he was a real little baby. Wow. The influence that we have.