Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Quarantine Without Getting a Divorce, Killing Your Kids, or Kicking Out Your Roommate

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10 minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Before the episode starts, I want to invite you to a special online-only event with Keith and I. We are going to be doing a lunch Bible study on Friday, April 3rd, from 12 to 1230. We're going to do this for four weeks, actually. And we're going to be asking the question, are we living in the end times? Right now I'm getting so many questions from people who,

Starting point is 00:00:34 you're actually literally asking the question, you know, is coronavirus a sign of the times? Or they're just wondering, what does the Bible say about these kinds of things? There's a lot of questions, a lot of misconceptions. We're going to address those. Again, we're going to put a link to that online event right at the top of our show notes. Pause it right now, click that link, sign up today, and you can join us on April 3rd from 12 to 1230 and a few weeks afterwards. Today on this episode, we are going to tackle this question. and how do we quarantine without getting a divorce, killing your kids, or kicking out your roommate?

Starting point is 00:01:09 It's a hard time, a stressful time for all of us. And we're going to take a little bit more of a practical, lighthearted, and biblical approach to how to handle relationships during this time. Maybe you've seen this. It's not a meme. What do you call it, Patrick? It's a little video clip. It's been going around the internet, and we're going to play it for you here in a second. The audio is the main thing.

Starting point is 00:01:31 if you were to see something, all you would see is a man's face. It happens to be an African-American man. He is just looking into the camera and you hear this voice of God kind of thing from the outside. Listen to it. Because of coronavirus, you are going to be quarantined, but you have a choice. Do you, A, quarantine with your wife and child, or B? Ha, ha, ha. I get a kick out of that. He's like, B, B, B. I don't even need to know what B is. It could be feed me to wild lions, anything but being quarantined with my wife and child. And of course, it doesn't matter if you're a husband, wife, or if you're a roommate. We all know the stresses of living in such close quarters for such a long period of time under such stress with people. And let's just put it this way. It is a setup for conflict.

Starting point is 00:02:25 I mean, yeah, there's a million different external things that can stress you out right now. Part of it is just being stuck in a small space. We're used to going out. You go to restaurants, you go to work, all these different spaces. You don't even think about it. And then all of a sudden you're stuck in your apartment or you're stuck in your house and you can't get out at all. And usually you get to kind of mix up the people you're around. You're around your work friends.

Starting point is 00:02:46 You're around your social friends, your workout friends, whoever. You get a little variety. And now you're with the same people over and over and over every day all day. And a variety is the spice of life. The only spice we're getting in right now is people being. stressed out about health, stressed out about our finances. I don't care who you are. You're worried about one of these two things right now. And maybe it's not just your health. Maybe it's your parents' health. Maybe you're of an age where your parents are far more vulnerable, susceptible

Starting point is 00:03:14 to the coronavirus. And so you're not just trying to manage yourself, but maybe from a long distance, you're trying to help your family cope with this. And on the top of all that, you're trying to work and keep a job if you're privileged enough to be able to work from home. home, you're trying to keep all that together. Yeah, and I haven't been single for a while now, but I have been trying to imagine what it would be like to be single, just living with a few roommates or one roommate, or maybe even by yourself. And I've talked to enough single people in their 20s to know what it's like. One guy said, I feel like I just got married to my friend. We're together all the time. It feels like we have to make food together. It feels like we got to clean things together.

Starting point is 00:03:51 We got a pick what show we're watching together. He's like, I didn't sign up for this. I want to be able to go out, go to the gym, hang out with other friends. But now here I am married to my My oldest son is 25 and he just got kicked out of his house by his roommates. It's a martial law over there. It's like, I don't know. It is weird. But he just went to see a friend and was on an airline. And when he got back, his roommates wouldn't accept him back in the house.

Starting point is 00:04:19 They said he had to quarantine for 14 days. And it seems kind of ridiculous, but that's the fear and anxiety that people have. Now, these same roommates were at true false. big festival here in Columbia where thousands of people were mingling really close to each other in the same theater and all. But they have kicked him out from being on an airline. So I get it. If you're, let's just be honest, you're upset because he's back at your house now. We'll get to more of that later. Who all is at my house and where they're sleeping and how we're doing this. But my point is that I get it, whether your roommates are married or kids or no

Starting point is 00:04:52 kids, it doesn't matter. We're all in this thing together. Okay, so you've got a lot of your kids back at home. How'd that happen? Your life goal. Isn't that what you wanted to have happen? I lost it their night and we were all laughing, but I was like, this is like the boomering effect coming back on me. I don't get it. My youngest is getting ready to turn 18. He's going to graduate from high school. Hopefully if we have that still this year. And so it's expected for him to be there. But my 25-year-old is back in the house because like I said, his roommate took him out. And then my 20-year-old who's living on his own when we went under quarantine here in Columbia, shelter and place order, he decides he wants to come home because he can't stand the thought of

Starting point is 00:05:32 being cooped up with his roommates all day. I guess whatever we have is a better gig than that, food and all. So he came home, but we don't have that big a house. I mean, it's not small, but it's very average size and it's not big enough for all the people in there. And so we're like, well, where are you going to sleep now? We don't have beds or anything. So in the unfinished part of our basement, we have this pool table that really is a laundry table. And that's where we fold all our laundry and keep it there. And my youngest son thinks that pool tables is his closet, by the way. He just keeps all his clothes on the pool table. We cleaned all those off and we put a futon kind of mattress pad, like a, you know, a futon. We put it on the pool table, and that's where my

Starting point is 00:06:11 20-year-old is now sleeping. So, I mean, we're making use of every inch of our house. Kind of imagine you wake up in the middle of the norm. You just hear this loud crash and someone's screaming, he's falling off the pool table. He likes it because there's no windows in there. It's dark, it's cold, and I don't know, it's working for us somehow. Thankfully, my daughter has not come home yet, because if she does, I think the whole thing collapses. All right, I hope Madeline's listening to this. I want her to see what happens if she comes back home. No, she knows she'll never come back home, she said. My family's experiencing something totally different because I've got two younger kids, I've got a toddler and a one-year-old. And so now, all of a sudden, my wife and I,

Starting point is 00:06:50 we both work, and so we usually have our kids in child care during the day. And like, a lot of people listening to this all of a sudden our child care is gone. We're expected to be homeschooling, or in the case of my daughter home preschooling, our child, which thankfully is not as much of a responsibility as people who've got older kids. And we're both working at home. We both have, it feels like busier jobs than we've ever had before. And we're trying to juggle getting babysitters over to watch kids and then also not neglecting our kids and trying to take care of them. You're trying to work and you hear stomping upstairs and children crying and you think, shoot, should I go up there and help? And it's definitely been a huge challenge.

Starting point is 00:07:27 No wonder the divorce lawyers are saying they expect a spike in divorces at the end of this or maybe in the middle of it. Now, I don't know if they're basing that on anything factual or just kind of more speaking out of their own self-interest. Because, of course, they make money the more divorces they are. But with all the outside pressures, you can understand where they're coming from and then add the internal pressures, the anxiety that we all feel, the fears that we all have. even the kind of self-righteousness that we develop as we kind of think through, we're doing this the right way and other people should be doing it like us. Yeah, I mean, that's something Emily and I have definitely experienced. We probably view the situation somewhat differently. How much should we stay at home? How much should we be going into the office? And the hard thing is our decisions, they really affect each other, right? I can't say, hey, I want to go into the office and that not

Starting point is 00:08:18 affect her, that not affect our kids, that not affect the people that our kids are in contact with. And that's same for people, I mean, like your son with the roommates, whatever choices we make, all of a sudden, it's obvious. It's not just about me. It's going to affect everybody else, which I have to say it's kind of funny because I think that's actually true all of the time. But right now, we really feel it in a different way. And depending on your personality, the way you're wired, you probably process and handle this whole thing differently. Patrick and I were on a Zoom conference call with one of our coworkers. And she said, her husband, This is like his dream life. He just gets to stay inside, play music, work on things that are

Starting point is 00:08:53 important to him. So if that's the way you're wired, maybe this isn't as challenging. You can imagine an extrovert going absolutely nuts. And all this, of course, puts more pressure on these roommate or family relationships because people handle this differently. And I think there's also the problem of comparison. If you're working with people remotely, you have no idea what they're doing. And Emily and I have both felt this temptation. when we're talking about what's happening at work, you just wonder, well, is that co-worker actually working right now? Are they watching the latest Netflix show? Or are they not responding to my email because they're busy on something? Or are they just checking out Hulu? You really have no way of

Starting point is 00:09:32 knowing. And it's really easy to compare how hard I'm working to how hard they're working and assume the worst. Well, they must not be doing what I want them to be doing. So I'm sure you feel the problem and you could even put your own story in the context of what we're saying or maybe add a few other stressors that you're experiencing that maybe the rest of us aren't. So let's just get into some practical advice. How do we think about this? How do we think about being quarantine cooped up in a small space with roommates or spouses or kids, people that we love and care about, but we don't necessarily want to be around 24-7 on an extended basis? I don't want to be around myself on 24-7 basis. I wouldn't be around if I were you. Just kidding. Can we say that?

Starting point is 00:10:15 in this episode. We're sharing office, so I'm getting the idea. So let's start with this. Everybody needs some space. They need their own personal space, their own personal time. And maybe there's some ways for you to carve that out in your house that you just respect some boundaries. Maybe it says something as simple as if the door is closed or my wife likes to go have her kind of time with God, I think is what she would call it. And she goes into a certain room and sits in a certain chair. And I know that when she's in there, don't bother her unless it's kind of an emergency. But what are some ways that you can work out so that everybody has some time alone if that's kind of what they need to be able to handle this? Another, I think, helpful and healthy practice

Starting point is 00:11:02 is putting needless conflicts on hold. When you're already stressed out from external things that are happening in the world, things are happening in your work and you're cooped up, it only ramps up, at least for me, my own agitation. I'm a little sharper edged right now than I usually am. And so as a result, I really have to constantly ask myself the question, is this something that's worth arguing about? Is this something that we really need to have a conflict over? I keep trying to think to myself, Proverbs 179, it says this, whoever would foster love covers over an offense, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends. And so that's what I'm trying to do in my own heart is saying, okay, I can let love cover over this small thing that's annoying me and bothering me right now.

Starting point is 00:11:43 And I don't have to repeat it. I don't have to keep saying it over. I can think of a specific example, actually, where I've probably harped on my wife about something that's stupid because, by the way, I do the exact same thing. We're on these Zoom calls. And I don't know if you've noticed this. When you're on Zoom, you always talk way louder than you normally would. And so I started giving her hard time, like, oh, you're so loud on Zoom. And I just kept saying it over and over. And later in day, she goes, I want you to know, you're really loud on Zoom, too. She goes, I can hear everything you're saying. And I was like, yeah, yep, should have let Love Cover over that one and not repeated it. Most of the advice that helps us get along in these quarantine days are the kind of advice that would help any time in our life, anytime in our relationships, but we just feel the need for help more acutely now.

Starting point is 00:12:24 For example, handling conflict, I think it's always smart to say, is this worth arguing over? Is this a big deal? And like Patrick said, the Bible tells us that there are some things that we should just probably not bring up. Love covers a multitude of sins. It doesn't mean that it ignores it. It just means that it doesn't pick a fight. If your goal is to find sinners sinning, then you're going to have a pretty easy time of that because that's what we do. So if we're going to argue or make a big deal out of every little thing that someone does that annoys us, the quarantine is going to be miserable. But what if instead you just ask yourself, is this a big deal?

Starting point is 00:13:06 And is it a big deal now, given all that we have going on and all the stress and anxiety? Do we really need to solve that argument about politics? Do we really need to solve that argument about how your in-laws or my in-laws drive you crazy? Is that really what we need to take on right now? Should we really develop kind of our long-term plan on disciplining kids, if that's an area that maybe we have conflict over? Or is this a time to focus on the important things and know that we can wait. and have those arguments and discussions at the right time. Here's a great mindset to take on. I am the biggest sinner in my house. It's not my spouse who's got all the issues, or it's not my roommate who's got all the issues. It's not my kids who's got all the issues. At the end of the day,

Starting point is 00:13:50 the one person sins that I'm both most responsible for and should probably know the best are my own. And so that means that my wife, my kids, they're constantly having to show me patience. They're constantly having to show me forgiveness. Think about a conversation I had with my daughter in the car. I was frustrated. And my wife talked with her later in the day, and she asked her something about how dad was doing.

Starting point is 00:14:10 She goes, well, he wasn't sad today. He was mad. How old is Iris? She's three going on four. She reads you pretty well. Yeah, she knows what's going on. But she was right. And so my daughter is having to show me patience.

Starting point is 00:14:26 She's saying, yeah, I had to show dad some extra patience today because he was a little frustrated. You ever notice how other people's sins bother you more than your own? Kind of like when you said that Emily talking loud on Zoom bothered you, but you talking loud on Zoom doesn't bother you. Well, that's the case with all of us. My smart aleck comments don't bother me. I think mine are funny. But other people in my house, they start to wear on you after a time. Why is it that other people's sins bother me more than my own?

Starting point is 00:14:54 And I think it's what Patrick's saying is that we don't see ourselves as the biggest sinner. A verse that really, really helps me is found in Luke's. chapter 7. And I won't tell you the whole story. We can just get to the punchline. Jesus says, those who are forgiven much, love much. And I think that's really true. And you could take that principle and apply it out to so many areas of relational conflict or just relational health. Those who are forgiven much, love much. They care about people. They meet needs. They serve. They sacrifice. Those who know how much they've been forgiven in Christ are patient. with other people's sins because they know that Jesus has been patient with theirs.

Starting point is 00:15:37 People who are forgiven much, know how much they've been forgiven by Jesus. They don't make a big deal out of small things because they know that they have their own sins, that their friend, their roommate, their spouse, their kid can make a big deal out of, but so could God. So I think the key here is to have in mind how much we have been forgiven in Christ. And when we focus on that, in a sense, our cross becomes big because we see this huge, infinite debt that Jesus paid for us, the more it makes us loving and kind and patient and forgiving toward those people around us, toward our spouse, our kids, our friends. So similar to saying,

Starting point is 00:16:15 I'm the biggest sinner at my house, something else I've been trying to think is I'm not the biggest deal in my house. I've been repeating and rereading Romans 12 a lot recently, and in Romans 123, Paul says this, for by the grace given me, I say to every one of you, don't think of yourself more highly than you ought than down in verse 10, be devoted to one another in love, honor one another above yourselves. So I don't care if you are the biggest earner in your house. That doesn't mean you're the biggest deal. I don't care if compared to your roommates, you've got the hardest job. That doesn't mean you're the biggest deal. I don't care if you're the one who does most of the child care and that's stressful and heart. You're not the biggest deal.

Starting point is 00:16:51 The best thing you can tell yourself, the best thing I can tell myself is that I'm not the biggest deal in my family. I'm not the biggest deal in my house. My job is to honor others above myself. It's to put their needs above my own and let myself be second or third or fourth. When we think we're a really big deal, one of the things we start to do is complain and grumble that things aren't going our way. And let's be honest, there's a lot to complain and grumble about these days. There's a lot of things that aren't going our way. But it's really, really difficult to live with a complainer.

Starting point is 00:17:23 Philippians too tells us to do all things without grumbling and complaining. And you think, well, why is that sin such a big, big deal to God. Why is grumbling and complaining of all the sins that you could kind of go after? Why that one? And there's a story back in Exodus 16 in the Old Testament, a story about how God had been providing meat and bread called manna for the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness. And they get tired of it. They get tired of eating the same thing over and over and over. And so they start grumbling and complaining about Moses and Aaron their leaders. And they're frustrated with, their leadership because of the food they're eating because of their diet. And God gets really upset with

Starting point is 00:18:06 them. And he says the reason he's upset with them is because they're not really complaining about Moses and Aaron. They're complaining about God. Now, that changes everything, doesn't it? If you think my crumbling and complaining about the quarantine is about the situation or the circumstances or the government or whatever, the health care system, whatever, we might think we're grumbling and complaining about, God says, no, really we're complaining. him because he's the one who is in control. He's the one who's on the throne. He's the one who's overseeing it. And what we're really complaining about is his authority and what he's done in our life and the world that he is supervising right now. So be careful about being a grumbler

Starting point is 00:18:48 and complainer. It might be a more serious sin than you realize. And the funny thing about complaining is it's not even a fun sin. I mean, it's miserable. No one who's complaining is having a great time unless they feel like it makes them seem important. Like look how hard my life is. Some people get a thrill out of that. But maybe just try to give yourself the advice that you would give a three-year-old who was complaining. I always tell my daughter, I say, hey, don't use your complainer voice because she loves to complain. She's always got a complainer voice. I say, use your joyful voice. Put a smile on. Say it with a smile. It might sound like you're just trying to cover up how you really feel, but you would be shocked how just smiling, changing your tone,

Starting point is 00:19:24 changing your inflection actually sometimes leads your heart to come to a different place. So if you're struggling with complaining, start with that. Just try to say your words in a different way. Say it with a smile. Remember how you always said that you wish life would slow down a little bit? Maybe it's because you've got kids and you said, hey, I wish these kids sports would slow down so that we could have a meal together. Or maybe it's your work. And you said, I wish things would slow down so that I could. And then how did you fill that in? You were looking forward to things slowing down at some point or wishing they would at least because you wanted to, Do what? Well, now's the time to do that thing. In a lot of cases, not all, I get it. Not everybody's life has slowed down right now, but a lot of people's have. And they're inside more. And so even if it's being forced upon you, you have more time on your hands. What do you think you should do with that time? And here's one way I think about it is I just go out six months from now or whenever you think that life might return to some sense of normalcy and look back on this time.

Starting point is 00:20:28 and ask yourself, what will I wish that I would have done? Is it organize a closet? Is it go through a bunch of junk in your junk room? Is it to read a couple good books? Is it to listen to the Bible on a Bible app and just listen to a few books of the Bible? Is it to connect with some friends through FaceTime? It could be anything. But this is a gift from God. This time that you have to slow down to reevaluate your priorities, your values, what's important in life is a gift from God. It doesn't come along very often. You've been wishing for this for a long time. Don't waste it. I know a lot of parents who would say, man, I just wish I could get a little more time with my kids. There's things I want to do together. There's things I want to talk about. And this is that

Starting point is 00:21:16 opportunity for almost everybody to be around our kids more. So maybe it's a good place to transition and talk a little bit about how to, if you've got kids, I realize not everybody listening to this podcast is married, not everybody listening to this podcast has kids, but for those who do have kids, how do we talk to our kids about coronavirus and what's happening in the world right now? How does your answer to that, Keith? My kids, like I've already said, are older, and so we've been having lots of discussions. They're reading and seeing all the same things I am. In fact, sometimes they know a lot more than I know about it. My wife tends to know the most. And so we have been having pretty good conversations at the dinner table mixing it with current news, with how we should think about this and process this as Christians.

Starting point is 00:22:01 We, by the way, have now gone 10 days in a row eating dinner at home. And by the way, that is a Simon family record. 30 years of mining Christine's marriage. And I'm pretty sure we've had some really lean years in there. But I'm pretty sure we've never eaten dinner at home 10 days in a row. It's insane. Day 11? Well, really, yesterday was day 11, but we broke it. Ooh, with what? I can't say I might be arrested.

Starting point is 00:22:26 That's amazing. Now I really want to know. Well, I just don't know what people can do and can't do, but we went over to some friend's house last night and they made dinner. And so I don't know, is that allowed or not? Are you under 10 people? Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're fine. We properly socially distanced. Watched your hands. All that. But I just don't want people to be mad at me because I went over to a friend's house and eat dinner. I mean, who am I to judge? We've ate out several times, gone through drive-thru. It's probably really no different. So I've started trying to justify

Starting point is 00:22:54 eating out by saying I'm trying to support local businesses. So if you need an excuse, maybe that's it for you. One thing I understand that parents are wrestling with is how much do they keep their kids at home? And these are especially, I'm talking about kids who can drive and have their own independence and are used to doing their own thing. And I think this is one of those spots where we have to give people grace to make different decisions than us. But in the world I live in and how I think about parenting, especially kids who are older, is they make their own decisions. And I can give them advice and I can help them think through things. But they're going to make their own decisions and do what they do. And that's okay with me. I remember what it was like to be

Starting point is 00:23:37 a teenager, a high school student, a college student. And the last thing I wanted was, my family telling me that I couldn't do something. In fact, the more they told me I couldn't do something, the more I wanted to do it. Not everybody's going to come to that same decision, and that's okay. Some parents I know are clamping down hard on their kids and telling them they can't go out. That's just not a battle that I'm going to fight right now. So I think that a lot of what you're seeing is an opportunity to visit with older kids, inform them, talk to them about the way to love their neighbor, talk a way to be about socially responsible in their community. and then they make the decisions they make, and hopefully they are wise decisions, but I'll tell you what, when I was 17, I wasn't making a lot of wise decisions. Or if I was, they were intermixed with a lot of really stupid decisions.

Starting point is 00:24:26 And if you've got younger kids, you're probably having pretty different conversations, obviously. Again, I do think there's an opportunity here. This might be one of the first times if you've got a toddler or a young elementary age kid that they're asking you questions about death. Why are people afraid of this thing? Why are we all staying in? And I would encourage. encourage you to be honest, to have an honest conversation. This is what death is. This is what death means. And to use it as an opportunity to also talk about Jesus. This is why Jesus came so that even if we die, we could come back to life. That's what I'm trying to do with my get. One of my modos, though, is parenting is a conversation. You get to keep talking to your kid over time. So I don't try to explain everything all at once with Iris. She doesn't understand a lot of this anyway. But I want each time that we talk about what's happening to be, again, an opportunity to add another little thought. I know a lot of parents of young kids are thinking through the TV thing right now, Patrick.

Starting point is 00:25:16 Maybe both parents are working or in just different situations. They're asking the question, is it okay for me to let my kid watch more TV than usual? How are you guys processing that? Well, I don't know if we're a good example or not right now, but I think you dropped this line earlier when we were talking, Keith, you said you don't get fat from what you eat on vacation. You get fat from what you eat in between. And I think that probably applies here. Emily and I are not crazy parents who never let our kids watch television ever, but generally speaking, they don't watch. Notice all you parents out there who minimize your kids' TV watching have now been labeled by crazy by Patrick. No, you can call yourself whatever you want to

Starting point is 00:25:53 call yourself. We also don't give our kids at this stage, like an iPad and say, hey, see you in three hours. That's not our normal parenting style. They might get a movie every other week, maybe every week right now, but they are watching TV right now. It's kind of that whole approach. Look, we're on vacation. And this isn't going to be the thing that's going to determine for them in the long term. I think their relationship with screens. And especially for us, both working, there are simply times where we both have to be fully on. And the only way we can do that is by turning a show on. And personally, I don't feel guilty about that. I'm thankful that I'm able to do it. And let me do a little sidebar and say, the funny thing is, once we're off of work, we've been having

Starting point is 00:26:31 awesome time with our kids. We're going out on walks. We're spending time outside. We're having fun. And so the irony is, yes, maybe we do some more shows than we've done in the past, but I think the quality of conversations we're having, we do highs and lows at the table. I mean, these are all new things we've never done before, and it's because we're all cooped up and we're just trying to do something new. And so I'm looking at it saying, I think those things probably counterbalance watching Frozen 2, 3 or 4 times a week. Yeah, I don't envy people with young kids trying to work and do all the different things

Starting point is 00:27:00 that you're responsible for right now. You mentioned highs and lows and different ideas for what to do at the dinner table. I know I, for one, am tired of talking about the coronavirus. It's like you can't escape it, and I'm just looking for a conversation outside of that. And one thing my wife has been good at over the years that maybe, I don't think it's that new or anything, is just she has a question jar, and we'll pull questions out of the jar, and then each person has to answer them. And of course, some of the questions are stupid, but some of them are pretty good. Some of them end up, you learn something, some you end up laughing. Some you end up making fun of the question.

Starting point is 00:27:36 it's all over the map, but try to create some routines or rhythms or new traditions around this. Remember back to the idea of, I've been wishing that I could spend more time with my kids at dinner. I wish we weren't running around and doing all these sports. I wish we could have meals at home. I know you've said that if you have kids. So now is the time to put all that into practice. Your prayers have been answered. Another thing I have realized is that when you're,

Starting point is 00:28:06 cooped up inside, you quickly get frustrated. All of us are more easily irritable than we would normally be. I just remember having young kids, and I wish I would have known at the time what I know now, and that is that when I'm frustrated at them, it's really not usually because of them. It's usually because of what's happening inside of me. Whenever my daughter comes up and she needs help from me, it's easy for me to get annoyed. Why can't you put your own shoes on or why can't you change your shirt or why can't you just figure out how to play on your own until I forget that that's what she's supposed to do. That's what toddlers do. They ask for help.

Starting point is 00:28:45 They need to be help. They need to be shepherded. They need to be guided. They need to be trained. That's what little kids do. She's not doing anything wrong by interrupting what I'm doing. And so my frustration when she does those things like Keith is saying has a lot more to do with me than it does with her. I think what it shows is that when we get frustrated, our idols are being.

Starting point is 00:29:04 exposed. And I really wish I would have understood that earlier in my parenting, that my idol of comfort is being threatened because my kids need me or my kids are arguing or my idol of control is being threatened when the evening isn't going the way I planned it. There's a lot of idols in a parent's heart that are exposed by their kids. It's not the kids' fault. The kids are being kids. It's how we respond to them that's so incredibly important. And when we respond that way, I think what we end up training our kids to do is we're training them to become emotional weathermen or weather women. In other words, they start learning that the way for me to be a good kid is to try and guess how mom or dad feel. Like, is dad angry right now? Is mom frustrated? Is dad anxious? And I need to change how I

Starting point is 00:29:51 act depending on how I think they feel. They're not growing a character. They're not developing a character. They're just learning how to manage your emotions. And that might be a fine life skill while they're still in your house, but once they get older, they need to have some other skills. In other words, me as a parent, I want to be asking the question, am I training my child to follow Jesus and have a character like Jesus? Or am I training them to know how to respond when I get angry? Think about how our culture teaches us to raise our kids. What do good parents do? Well, if a parent wants their kid to learn an instrument, they hire a piano teacher or someone to teach their kid that instrument. If you want your kid to participate in sports, you find a really good coach who can help them learn that sport.

Starting point is 00:30:34 If you want your kid to do well in school, you might hire them a tutor in math or another subject that they need some extra help in. And that kind of approach to parenting bleeds over into the spiritual area so that we think, well, if I want my kids to do well spiritually, I'm going to take them to church. Now, we never consciously say that out loud, and yet we bring this pattern of finding specialists who can train our kids in certain areas, and we just bring it over very naturally, very comfortably, without thinking, into the spiritual area of life, and think that the church or the student ministry leader or pastor, whoever it is, is going to train my kid in knowing the Bible or having godly character, those kinds of things. But of course, that's never been the Bible's design.

Starting point is 00:31:20 The Bible's design is that parents are the primary teachers to their kids, parents in the home, that's the primary place that a kid grows in faith and that churches come along and partner with parents and that partnership between parents and a church, well, that partnership between parents and a church is really powerful in a kid's life. Well, right now, parents are on the front lines. They are the ones who are responsible for leading their kids. Now, they always were, but now you can't escape it. You can't even bring them to church. Just real quick, I maybe make a plug here. is that Crossing Kids has put some great stuff online if you go to our resource page to help parents do that. So again, parents and church partnering, we're doing what we can online, but there's something that's

Starting point is 00:32:07 required of you. And I bet you when you look back on this time, you're going to be really happy that you invested spiritually in your kids. If you clicked the little link Keith was talking about to check out some of the things our children's ministry is doing right now, there'll be little videos. So you can watch these little videos that we've put together for your kids. But I think taking the lead, I don't just press play on the video. It means I ask some of the questions right afterwards. And maybe it's only one question. Maybe that's only what your kid can get through, but I'm going to have a spiritual conversation with my child. You never know what God's going to use these kinds of things to do. There's obviously lots of bad things that are going to come out of this. But God

Starting point is 00:32:44 is always in the habit of turning bad things into good. And one thing I was talking with some of my friends about was exactly this. I said, I think a lot of us have been negligent about our kids' spiritual development. We expect someone else to do it. And I can't help but wonder if this is going to be the point where God turns around a lot of families, a lot of dads, a lot of moms, and helps them see, you know what? This is my responsibility. One last little thought, thinking about kids and being cooped up, is just this. Your kids, my kids, they aren't mine. Your kids aren't yours. When I say it to people, sometimes they get really offended, they're like, well, no, I mean, I had this child. This child's what? No, no, no, they're not yours. I tell myself this every day. My kids are gods.

Starting point is 00:33:24 And so when I get frustrated or irritable or anxious or whatever it is towards my daughter or my son, I'm not doing this towards someone that I own or that I possess. I'm behaving that way towards someone that God owns, that God possesses, that God cares about deeply. My responsibility is to be an ambassador for God to my kids. It's to be an ambassador for God showing them who God is and what God's like. And so how we respond during this quarantine time, it's going to teach our kids something about God. to teach our kids something about Jesus. And so the challenge I'm trying to take on in the midst of this is I want this extended amount of time that I'm having with my children right now to not be a time

Starting point is 00:34:04 where they look back and think, well, that was terrible and awful. I'm so glad not to be around mom and dad anymore. They can look back on it and say, wow, I learned a lot and I got closer to God. As we wrap up here, let's remember that God is a gracious God, that this is not up to us to pull it off, that we're not trying to give you 10 things that you've got to do or you're going to. to ruin your relationship with your roommate or your spouse or your kids. We all feel a lot of pressure right now and a lot of anxiety. Let's pull back and remember what's the most important. And start at the core, our relationship with God, and then our relationship with the people who are around us. This is a time where God is shaping us. He's teaching us. But we can know that

Starting point is 00:34:44 God is also in it with us. Give yourself grace. Give your family grace. Also, don't forget to sign up for our online Zoom Bible study Friday, April 3rd from 12 to 1230. Are we living in the end times? We're going to talk about questions people are asking right now and a lot of the misconceptions that come along with those things. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with?

Starting point is 00:35:20 Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Quarantine Without Getting a Divorce, Killing Your Kids, or Kicking Out Your Roommate

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