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Episode Notes
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TranscriptIntroduction
Good morning, afternoon, evening, or night . . . whichever best describes your current time of day. I am always humbled when I think about everyone who listens to this show. You’re all over the world, you have different jobs, different-sized families, children at various ages, and you also have different mother tongues, but we all have God, His Word, and Truth.Love.Parent. in common . . and for that I am thankful.
I’m very grateful that we get to meet every week to open the Bible to better know, love, and worship God with our parenting. I’m honored that God is using this show to equip us parents to evangelize and disciple our kids. So, thank you for joining me on this adventure. Today we’re going to dive into a happier topic. With all the talk of callousness and delusion and fear and anger and blame, today we’re going to look at a response to sin that we actually want out kids to have. Please note that today’s show comes equipped with free episode notes, a transcript, and related resources to help you deepen your study. And—with that—let’s understand the humility response to sin as well as how to parent our kids into and through it. Topic
Humility truly is the king of virtues. If pride is at the root of all sin, humility is the foundation of righteousness.
Of course, we can’t create humility in and of ourselves by ourselves. It—as with all spiritual virtues—requires the regenerating and empowering work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Still, we must teach our children about humility, reprove them in their pride, provide them practical correction when they want to humble themselves, and train them in continued humility. Now, before we dive any deeper today, I do want to toss out a vital reminder. We parents cannot lead our children where we are not currently going. In order to lead someone, we must not only be going in the right direction, we need to be further along the road than they are. Then and only then can we lead well. Of course, any of you who heard our “Stop Being the Leader” episode recognizes that the right road is never of our own choosing. It is the road laid out by God. Therefore, we lead our children as we follow God in the way He would have us walk. Are you a humble father? Are you a humble mother? Do you respond to your own sin with humility? If not, I highly recommend you do not approach today’s episode with the sole desire to help your kids change, but—first and foremost—with a desire to be changed yourself. But—as was mentioned last time—this challenge should not feel hopeless or scary to you. If you know and believe in God as He reveals Himself in Scripture, we realize that in our weakness we are made strong. It is He who lifts us up on eagle’s wings. We simply must trust and obey. And with that heavy but hopeful reminder, allow me to share with you that I would be honored and humbled to speak at your upcoming event. Whether it be a family conference at your church or a week of teen camp or a homeschool convention or a couples retreat or a parenting workshop, I would love to meet and minister to you, your family, and your friends. Feel free to visit AMBrewster.com or use the AMBrewster tab in the Evermind App to get more information about inviting me to speak. And if you haven’t yet downloaded the Evermind App, you should use the link in the description of this episode to create your free account and start enjoying our free resources as you learn more about some of our paid products and services . . . including my new book, “Quit: How to Stop Family Strife for Good.” And finally, please don’t forget that without your faithful giving, this ministry will very likely melt away into nothingness. God uses His people to fund and spread His work on this earth. You can visit TruthLoveParent.com/donate to learn more and to give. There’s a family I know who gives consistently every month. The husband works three jobs because he is dedicated to getting his family out of debt, and yet he still sends us $5 every month because he wants to do his part in this ministry. There’s another family who are missionaries, and even though they went on deputation to collect support for their own ministry across the seas, they still faithfully give each month because they want to see this ministry reach more families across the globe. So, please prayerfully consider how much you can give to equip us as we equip you. Now, let’s dive into the meat of today’s study. 1. The Humility Response to Sin Let’s start by looking at two different passages. The first is Matthew 5. In verses 3 through 6 we read, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 5 Blessed are the lowly, for they shall inherit the earth. 6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” I do not believe these are 4 detached concepts, nor do I believe the rest of the beatitudes through verse 11 represent different individuals with different spiritual gifts or personality types. I believe what we’re looking at here is a progression of spiritual maturity. No person will ever run to God in salvation until they first recognize they are spiritually destitute. But agreeing with God about our spiritual poverty isn’t enough. I’ve known many a person who grappled with that reality who ended up hating God in light of it. What comes next is grief. This could have been its own response to sin, but I’m pairing this with the final response to sin we’re going to discuss next week. But it’s this grief, this mourning over our sin that drives us to our knees in humility—blessed are the lowly, the meek, the humble. And it’s this humility that is the hinge in our spiritual growth. We must confess that we are sinners and be grieved over the heinous rebellion of our sin, and this must produce self-abasement in which we fall before God and proclaim, “I cannot do this without you!” It is then and only then that we will be empowered to hunger and thirst after righteousness. And it’s humility that is the fertile soil in which righteousness can grow and blossom into mercy, purity, peacemaking, steadfastness, and joy. This refrain is built out even further in James 4. After disclosing the spiritual root of our quarreling and conflicts as spiritual adultery, and uncovering the pride that is lustful and envious and self-motivated and in rebellion to God, verses 6 through 10 read, “Therefore it says, ‘God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’7 Be subject therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be miserable and mourn and cry. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.” When we have sinned, what must we do? This passage lists 7 requirements. A. The humility response to sin seeks to submit to God. Sin is defiance to God’s commands, but humility puts ourselves under His will. B. The humility response to sin resists the devil. Sin is a the very fulfillment of Satan’s will for our lives, but humility sees our worship of self via Satanic pleasures as something vile that must be amputated. C. The humility response to sin draws near to God. Sin separates us from God, but a humble heart wants to be in close fellowship with Him through prayer and time in His Word. D. The humility response to sin seeks external cleansing. When life is not pridefully being lived for my own pleasures, and when I’m submitting to the Father’s expectations for my life, it will change how I act and speak and feel. E. The humility response to sin seeks internal purity. When life is not pridefully being lived for my own pleasures, it will require that I do the right things in the right ways for the right reasons. It will require that I change my core beliefs in order to act and speak and feel and desire in Christ-honoring ways. F. The humility response to sin grieves. James multiplies the words of his Savior from the sermon on the mount. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn,” and James says, “Be miserable and mourn and cry. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.” This is an appropriate response to sin. And . . . G. The humility response to sin removes self. “Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.” This portion starts and ends with the necessity of humbling ourselves. By the way, in the same way that we will never experience the blessings of the later beatitudes without first submitting to all the others, the very process of humbling ourselves before God requires doing everything else on the list. Humbling ourselves demands that we set aside our worldview and thoughts and desires and choices and pursue God and His desires. When we do this, we will seek Him, resist Satan/the World/and the Flesh, we will run to God, purify our hearts, cleanse our hands, and be broken over our sin. That is the response God wants all people to have to their sin. This response is one of the key ministries of the Holy Spirit. He is in the world to convict us of sin, righteousness, and judgment. So, that’s what the Humility Response is and requires. Now, let’s talk about . . . 2. Parenting Children into the Humility Response A. You need to want it. There are far too many people in this world who do not want their kids to be humble. I say that not because I’ve ever met someone who says, “I don’t want my child to be humble,” but because so many parents are encouraging in their children the opposite of humility. They feed the child’s self-esteem, they create a child-centered home, they encourage the child to follow his or her heart, they don’t expect the child to submit to God, they allow all sorts of selfishness, they stroke her ego, they allow him to idolize prideful people, and the list goes on. All of this is the opposite of humility. Now, please understand, humility is not thinking lowly of one’s self. Humility is actually not thinking about one’s self at all. It’s not about what I want. It’s not about what would make me comfortable. It’s not about my goals and desires. Yes, when I am sanctified and growing in Christ, my desires should be holy as they align with God’s, but they align with God’s because they are His . . . not inherently mine. When the Scriptures declare “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart,” we recognize that if God is my delight, He is my desire. Now, humility is uncomfortable, and we need to want that discomfort for our kids. We need to stop being a home that exists to create strong, self-reliant young people, and we need to be a home that exists to encourage dependence on God, submission to His rule, and passionate love for Him. That is true strength. Meekness is not weakness. Meekness is power under control . . . Spirit control to be specific. If you don’t want that process for you, you’re not going to want it for them. And if you don’t want it for them, you’re not going to ever parent them into it. B. You need to confront their delusion with truth. Pride flourishes in the mire that is delusion. The very belief that we have the right to demand our own way, that it’s appropriate to make decisions based solely on our own desires, that we get to do what we want even when it contradicts God’s Word . . . that is insanity. Sin is absolute insanity, and that delusion just continues to feed our pride. Therefore, we and our kids need truth. We need to be reminded of Who God is and who we are and what that means for us. We need to have thrust into minds the glory of God and the destruction of self. We need the scorching and purifying light of the Lord to reveal the blind corners of our hearts. In David’s epically broken Psalm 51—where he chronicles the abasement of his flesh—we see that the truth of his own sin was only clear in light of the realities of God and His Word. So, once again, I’m going to call you to biblical parenting. I’m going to admonish you to perpetually be adding to your Parenting Bible. I’m going to remind you that you are to be an Ambassador Parent for God. That means that your sole job is to use His Word to teach, reprove, correct, and train your kids. If you have never watched our Biblical Parenting Essentials Conference in the Evermind App, I have a special offer for you today. Normally the Biblical Parenting Essentials Conference and bonus content costs $50, but when you use the link in today’s episode, you can gain access to it in the Evermind App for only $25. Not only will this conference material equip you to be biblical, ambassador parents, but your purchase will also support this ministry. But there are some other great resources for you. One of the links takes you to our two part The Choice All Parents Have to Make episode. The choice to be a biblical parent is an immense, individual, intentional, immediate, indenturing, influential, and indisputable choice we must all make. I’ve also linked the Biblical Parenting podcast episodes and Parenting Like the Holy Spirit episode. But some of you may be wondering what that change will actually look like in your life. We have another short series entitled “Change Starts with Me” that lays out the goal, the source, and fruit of change, and then ends with an interview with a normal dad and mom who experienced this change and wanted to praise the Lord for His work in them. All of these resources . . . and—if were being honest--every episode we publish is dedicated to helping you become a wiser and more mature biblical parent to the glory of God and good of your children. Remember, 99% of our content is evergreen. That means no matter when the episode was published, it has real, practical, and relevant application to your parenting today. Conclusion
Now, I know that on our previous episodes in this series I had many bullet points for our parenting, but today I’ve only provided two: You Need to Want it, and You Need to Confront their Delusion with Truth.
I don’t want to insinuate that there’s absolutely no more specific application. What this looks like in each family, with each parent, and with each child is pregnant with possibilities. But, when it comes to the humility response to sin, none of us are going to get very far without these two points. And once a person both desires to be humble and is consuming and submitting to truth, they are on the road to spiritual growth that will continue for the rest of their lives as long as they want it and believe the truth. There is no end to this process. In fact, for all eternity, God’s people will be learning more and more about our Father and believing it with abandon. Therefore, the best way to help your child experience the humility response to sin is to teach and reprove and—when they’re ready to change—correct them. Until they submit to your teaching and reproof, that’s all you’ll be able to do. And that’s what our next episode is going to be about—them wanting to change. So, please share this series with your friends, and email us at [email protected] or leave a voicemail at (828) 423-0894 if you need help leading your children into the humility response to sin, or if you yourself need to be discipled into humility yourself. And join us next time as we look at the glorious Repentance Response to sin.
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