Today we continue our series called Extreme Makeover-Home Edition. In this series we are talking about issues that face us at different times of our life as persons and families. Last week we talked about the fears that we have as we grow older and how our confidence in God’s faithfulness overcomes those fears. Today we want to talk to those who are experiencing the joy and challenges of parenting young children.

This morning we have celebrated with parents the gift of children and have joined with them as they have dedicated themselves and their children to God. Each of these, as do all parents, has a sense of deep gratitude to God for the gift of their children. However being a parent, especially a parent for the first time or a parent of a newborn comes with some very real and frightening responsibility. You realize that what God has given to you, you now have the responsibility to provide for them and care for them, train them and lead them to reach all the potential that God would have for them. Yet more than anything else that all parents could want for themselves as they parent is the ability to parent responsibly. How do you do that?

Do you remember the first time you realized you were a parent? I’ll never forget when it happened to me—that there were now three of us instead of two. It happened on Highway 81 in southwest Arkansas. I’ve never been the same. Jennifer had been born on a Sunday in Texarkana and I had to go back to the hospital to see a member of our church. As I drove I happened to see a couple in their car who looked to be about the same age as Kathy and I. What I noticed was the clothes in the back and that there were no kids in the car. For whatever reason I started to cry and realized that it would never be just the two of us anymore. (Now they could have had twelve kids at home with grandma but that didn’t matter at the time.) The full reality of being a parent suddenly hit me and I was thrilled, scared and knew that I didn’t have a clue about being a parent.

Today we’re talking about becoming a parent. Those moments are moving and memorable. Our children remind us they are gifts from God, and we feel grateful. How can we say what we feel? The best way to say thanks to God for the gift of a child is to say with your life, "I’ll parent responsibly."

Luke opens the story of his gospel by writing about a couple that experienced the joy of becoming parents at a very surprising time in their life. The story is of a priest named Zachariah and his wife Elizabeth. The child born to them would be John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus and the one who would prepare the way spiritually for the ministry of Jesus. Our story takes place perhaps a year before Jesus was born. It occurs at the temple in Jerusalem and at their home in a city in Judah some miles from Jerusalem. I’ve heard of some unusual ways fathers have been informed they would be a dad or people discovering they would be parents, but when God wanted to let a couple know that they were going to be part of his divine plan he went all out!

Where does being a responsible parent begin? Responsible parenting starts with responsible living (v. 5-6). Our story begins as Zachariah was fulfilling his responsibility as a priest at the Temple in Jerusalem. Zachariah’s name meant "God remembers." His wife’s name was Elizabeth, which means "God is my fortune and fullness." Zachariah and Elizabeth are identified as having a very spiritual character. Luke describes them in 1:6 as being "righteous in God’s eyes and careful to obey all the Lord’s commandments and regulations." What Luke is stressing is the true spiritual nature of these two people in contrast to the fact that to this point Elizabeth couldn’t have children. This is significant because the inability to have children was seen by the Jews as a sign of God’s displeasure with someone. In other words, everyone would think something was wrong in their relationship with God; yet this was not the case. They were a deeply devoted couple spiritually.

What you see in the life of Zachariah and Elizabeth is that responsible parenting starts with responsible living as a Christian. We call it a fully devoted life. The two qualities that Zachariah and Elizabeth possessed could be termed for us: spiritual authenticity and settled convictions. I think the very first soul-searching question that you need to ask yourself as you begin parenting is "Do I have an authentic relationship with Jesus Christ that is producing authenticity in my life?" The issue is not what kind of relationship my parents have or what is the tradition of my family but what about my own personal spiritual devotion to Christ? Is it real? If not then the longer you delay that one key component you will hinder your ability to parent responsibly. Why? Because everything else flows from this one resource!

The second thing is what I call settled convictions. Parents, do you have some settled convictions about certain principles upon which you are building your life? I don’t mean that you have a list of things that you can pull out on a moments notice but core values about what you believe that are grounded in God’s word. There is no doubt that you need all the help and knowledge you can get as you parent. The best preparation for parenting is letting God prepare your life rather than you completing a workbook. Why? Because there are no guarantees in parenting! It is never a formula that you complete. It is a journey of faith every moment of your life but you are going to be better equipped for the journey if you are spiritually authentic and have settled convictions!

An e-mail I saw recently showed a series of three photos intended as sad humor. In the first frame, a mother duck is walking on a sidewalk with six small, downy ducklings close behind her. We see in the corner of the picture that the mother and her six yellow and gray ducklings are walking toward a grate in the pavement. In the second frame, the mother duck has walked eight inches or so onto the grate. The grate has holes in it that appear to be more than two inches wide. One of her ducklings has followed her onto the grate, four others are still on the pavement, one of the six ducklings is no longer in the photo.

In the third frame, the mother duck has crossed the grate, and she has turned around and is peering through the holes in the grate to whatever is below. One duckling stands beneath her, having crossed the grate successfully. The other five ducklings—we cannot say for sure what happened to them because they are not visible in the photo. Let's hope they made it over the grate and hurried on ahead of Mom. Or let's hope there was water where the ducklings fell in. But the caption that accompanied the photo read, "Bad Parenting?" (Craig Brian Larson, Arlington Heights, Illinois)

To try to parent your children without living a responsible life is as foolish as that mother duck leading her ducklings over an open grate. If you try to parent without a relationship with Jesus Christ that is real and solid someone is going to fall through the holes and your children will be the ones who pay the greatest price. Responsible parenting starts with responsible living – living a fully devoted life!

As I said there are no guarantees that come with parenting. I wish I could say to you that if you are everything that God would want you to be that your kids will sail through life and you’ll never have a worry but that is not true. Because what you see in the life of Zachariah and Elizabeth is that even though they were spiritually devoted people they still faced disappointment. Yet it was this disappointment that made them stronger! (Luke 1: 7, 24-25, 57-65)

Zachariah and Elizabeth had one major disappointment: They couldn’t have children and now they were old. (v. 7) As persons faithful to the Jewish faith they had been taught that if you were faithful to God, God would bless you. One of the ways he would bless you would be by giving you children. They were faithful but they had no children. Yet God had a plan to give them hope in a surprising way even through their disappointment.

Luke 1:8-25 tells how God surprised Zachariah with the announcement of the birth of a son and that his name would be John. It happened when Zachariah had gone to Jerusalem to offer a sacrifice on the altar at the Temple. The priests did this by a lottery system due to the fact that there were 18,000 priests. So if you got to do this once in your lifetime you were blessed beyond words. Zachariah is very likely nervous and excited about this once in a lifetime opportunity. He is in the process of offering the incense on the altar when he is interrupted by the appearance of the Angel Gabriel. Gabriel tells him that God has heard his prayer. Now what we don’t know is if Zachariah had been praying for a son or for the redemption of Israel. Regardless, God responded that he would give to Zachariah a son who would bring about the beginning of the nation of Israel’s return to him.

Zachariah fails in a crucial moment to believe what the angel says and wonders how this could happen because of his age and Elizabeth’s condition and age. As discipline for his lack of faith, Zachariah was made unable to speak until the child would be born. His losing his speech amazed the people who waited for him outside and he made gestures for them to understand. After a few days, he goes home to Elizabeth and somehow communicates with her what had happened. After a short time Elizabeth becomes pregnant and goes into seclusion for five months.

In verses 24-25 Elizabeth at last comes forward publicly and expresses how grateful she is for God’s gift of a son because the son would, "take away my disgrace…." She had been in hiding for five months. She had been blessed but still appeared cursed by God and didn’t want to face people.

Did their disappointment destroy them? No! It strengthened them! Zachariah and Elizabeth understood God answers prayer on his time. Elizabeth obviously learned to withstand the pressure of others to make decisions for her. When the baby was born everyone wanted to know the child’s name and she told them emphatically, " His name is John!". Their response was that no one in her family was named John but when they went to Zachariah he wrote down that the boy’s name was John. It was at that point that Zachariah could speak again. The last nine months of adversity had been a test for Zachariah but now when given the chance to make his desires known his first words would be praise to God for the purpose of God for his son and the coming birth of Jesus.

We have people in our congregation who’ve been disappointed in parenting. Parents who have experienced miscarriages, sometimes in multiples, still births, inability to conceive, loss of a child in infancy, physical, mental and emotional challenges. They have faced real, hard, faith shaking disappointments. During those times it is easy for people to have other disappointments:

• We get disappointed with our spouse: "What’s wrong with you?"
• We get disappointed with expectations: "Christianity doesn’t work."
• We get disappointed with others: "Why can’t they understand?"
• We get disappointed with God: "Why….?"

The people I know who have been disappointed are made stronger over time. They’ve been made stronger because they struggled with their disappointment and resentment, stuck it out when pressured and learned to trust God through it all! To parent is to be disappointed but it will be those disappointments that are the foundation of a new dimension of our faith. Responsible parenting grows stronger through the disappointments.

Responsible parenting begins by living a responsible life and growing stronger through disappointment. There is one last thing that is involved in being a responsible parent and that is that we give children stability by affirming their significance (Luke 1: 76-80). As you read verses 76-77 can’t you picture Zachariah holding his son and saying, "And you, my little son, will be called the prophet of the Most High, because you will prepare the way for the Lord. You will tell his people how to find salvation through forgiveness of their sins." Zachariah blessed John by pointing out to all who would hear the unique significance the child possessed: he would be a prophet of God -Israel had not had a true one since Malachi 450 years before), he would prepare the people for what all history was waiting –the coming of Jesus Christ and he would proclaim what every person needs to hear- that a way to find forgiveness is available.

The Jews had a marvelous tradition that we see here—the concept of blessing. It means to say to your children, "You are very significant to me. You are highly treasured." It is that very intangible but real affirmation that says to a child, "I love you and am going to be there for you the rest of your life." This is done three ways: by our touching them, by the words we say to them and by the values we instill in them. This fact of blessing is the most valuable gift that you can give a child. When I counsel a couple prior to their marriage we talk about this aspect of blessing. I will ask each person "Did you receive the blessing from your parents?" Most of the time they say "yes" but when they have not been given that affirmation it is a painful and often tearful revelation. Whatever you give your children make certain that you bless them by speaking into reality their uniqueness.

Our children are significant and to the degree we affirm that in them the greater their stability in life. Blessing that child is something that we do continually as a parent. In verse 80 Luke says that John "grew up and became strong in spirit." The verbs that are used here describe continual action. In other words as John continued to grow physically he continued to grow stronger spiritually! We don’t really know how long Zachariah and Elizabeth lived after John’s birth but what is important is that they lived long enough to spiritually strengthen him for what was to come.

As parents we only have a limited time to give to our children what they will need to make it in life. Eleven miles off the east coast of Scotland, in the North Sea, stands the Bell Rock Lighthouse. It has endured the ferocious onslaught of the North Sea's violent storms since 1811. It rests upon less than one acre of solid rock. That small reef is covered by seawater for 20 hours of every day. The builder of the lighthouse, Robert Stevenson and his band of 65 skilled artisans, had only four hours each day to chink away the stone and gouge a foundation in the rock. As a result of this painstakingly patient work, the 115-foot-tall lighthouse is still in use today. In a similar way, parents have a short period of time in which to build their children's lives to withstand the storms of life. Parents must take advantage of that window of opportunity and carve out a foundation for them on solid rock. Responsible parenting gives a child a place to stand in the storms by affirming their significance today.

Author and speaker Phil Callaway, responded to a letter from a frightened soon-to-be dad who asked for advice on how to prepare for fatherhood. He tells how the birth of his son, May 31, 1986, changed his life forever. He says, "I found myself face to face with my firstborn son. Sure, he was a little wrinkly, but who could blame him? I held him close. I touched his tiny fingers, and counted his toes—all ten of them. I looked into his eyes. They were blue. Like mine.

"Then the most amazing thing happened. A revival, I suppose. As I looked into those blue eyes, it was as if I heard these words: ‘Callaway, for the first 25 years of your life you've been a hypocrite. You've been close to the church but far from God. You are holding in your arms the one person you'll never be able to hide it from. If you think this little guy won't see it, you're naive.’"

"People ask me when I became a Christian, and I say May 31, 1986. You see, that night for the first time in my life, I bowed my head and said, ‘Dear God, I'm sorry. Make me real. I want my precious little boy to hunger and thirst after righteousness. If he won't learn it from me, he has two strikes against him already.’ I meant every word.

"It's been slow-going sometimes, but I believe God heard that prayer. Five years later this same little boy looked up at me one night and said, ‘Daddy, I wanna’ be like you,’ and tears came to my eyes."

"I don't have all the child-rearing answers for you. But I do know this: If you want your child to love God, love Him first. If you want your son to obey, be obedient to the still small voice of God. If you want to change your life to change for good, have children. Lots of them." ("Family Matters: Kids Are from Mars, Dads Are from Moose Jaw," Servant Magazine , Spring, 1999, p. 15)

Responsible parenting means saying with your life, "Thank you, God." When you bring your child home from the hospital, it’s time to start helping them build a life. Are you ready to be a responsible parent? Then make that decision today and every single day you live.

Sunday, July 17, 2005 a.m.

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

bitippit@fbcjonesboro.org