What I Taught at Summer Camp 2005
Tom Shrader recaps the summer camp teaching series on Jonah, walking through the book's key themes: that Jonah's problem was not ignorance but disobedience, that no one can flee God's presence or escape His discipline, and that God is sovereign over every detail of the story. He draws direct applications for the congregation, emphasizing that God is a God of second chances — seen in Jonah, Jacob, Moses, David, and Peter — and that salvation itself is the first and greatest gift of grace. The teaching closes with a pastoral challenge to parents, drawing on what Shrader witnessed at camp: that children desperately need engaged, selfless, present parents rather than material provision, and that it is never too late to confess failure and begin again.
“When you run away from the Lord, you'll never get where you're going, and you'll always pay your own fare. On the other hand, when you go the Lord's way, you always get where you're going, and He pays the fare.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Summer Camp
Recorded: 2005 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 48 min
Themes: second chances, obedience, fatherhood, grace, sovereignty, discipline, parenting, forgiveness, father, parent, feeling like a failure, new believer, struggling with disobedience, parent of teenagers, seeking restoration, grandparent
Scripture: Jonah 1:1-3, Jonah 1:4, Jonah 1:5, Jonah 1:6, Jonah 1:8, Jonah 1:10, Jonah 1:17, Jonah 2:4, Jonah 2:8, Jonah 2:10, Jonah 3:1, Jonah 4:6-8, Psalm 139, Hebrews 11, Hebrews 12, Luke 22, 1 Thessalonians 5:18
Theological Themes: divine sovereignty, repentance, soteriology, salvation by grace, sanctification, biblical obedience, divine discipline, prevenient grace
Full Transcript
Father's Day Opening Prayer
Today is a special day in that it is Father's Day. We want to acknowledge the dads, the grandpas, and the dads-to-be who are here in this room. Father, thank you for these men. I pray they fully understand the awesome responsibility and privilege they have to be stewards of the children and grandchildren that You have given them. When we talk about parenting, all sorts of responses come up, and sometimes we feel so inadequate — and that is really because we are. So we rely on You, and we trust You and You alone.
We are so grateful for Your grace and mercy in every area of our lives, but especially in this area. We pray that in those areas of our lives with our children and grandchildren where we have messed up, we would go to them and acknowledge that. From here forward, we start with a clean slate, forgiven by You, forgiven by them, and we become and live as the men that You have called us to be. Father, thank You for trusting us with these precious children. We pray that we would love them, parent them, raise them, and guide them in a way that would bring honor and glory to You. In Christ's name, amen.
Introduction: What We Do After Summer Camp
I want to invite you to open your Bibles to the book of Jonah. When we come back from summer camp, we do a couple of different things over the years — sometimes I talk about what I saw, sometimes what I learned, and sometimes what I taught. It is a little bit of all three today. You have to keep in mind a couple of things about who comes to summer camp with us.
This year we took about 700 plus students. Many of them are students of ours on a regular basis — they are in small groups, they are here, I would call them East Valley kids. Then there is a group of kids who might call this home but really do not attend regularly; they pop in on certain occasions. There is another group of kids who come from other churches, and their culture is probably a little bit different than ours. And then there are always kids who have no clue what is going on — you hear it all the time — kids who say, "I've never even heard of Jesus. I have no idea what that is. I've never been in a church." My favorite comment they make is, "I didn't even know anything like this existed. I didn't even know that you could have this many people together and be nice to one another." It is an incredible, very eclectic mixed group.
Consequently, parents are in that same boat, and your experience is in that same boat. There were obviously some people who had no background with Jonah at all, but even many church kids said they had never really spent much time in the Old Testament and were not sure about Jonah going in. After two or three sessions, they were saying, "Hey, Jonah rocks. Jonah's pretty cool." And I thought, there are a whole bunch of people back here who could benefit from the same thing. So what I want to do is cherry-pick Jonah, whet your appetite, and maybe you will want to study Jonah a little more on your own. I also want to share some things I saw at summer camp that I think we need to address here as well.
Jonah Is a Real Story
The first point we make is that Jonah is a real story. This is not the biblical equivalent of Pinocchio, and it is not Aesop's fable. This is a real man who really existed, and the word association is exactly right — if I say Jonah, you say whale, or fish. You know the story: swallowed by the whale, and then spit back up. In fact, my original title for the series was *You Can't Keep a Good Man Down*, but I thought that was a little too cute.
But did this really happen? Yes, it really did. There are a few historic incidents where something like this has actually occurred. There is a man off the Falkland Islands who was trying to harpoon a whale as part of his work, and he fell overboard. A couple of days later, they captured that whale, cut it open, and found this man inside — unconscious but very much alive — and he survived. There are stories like that. It is easy for me to reason that if God can take someone who is dead and bring them back to life, God can certainly do this. The whale's physical capacity is also sufficient for it; we spent some time studying that, and there are two whales in particular that could have achieved this, with huge compartments inside their heads in which a man could have survived.
So we start with the basic premise that Jonah is a real man. We date this book to approximately 760 B.C., and Jonah himself is the author. That is our background.
The Call That Came to Jonah
I want to look at the first three verses and apply them to your life and mine. "Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 'Arise and go to Nineveh, the great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.' But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa, found a ship going to Tarshish, so he paid the fare, went on board to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord."
The first thing we see here is that a call comes to Jonah. Remember, we have already covered this — who wrote this book? Jonah wrote it. He does not tell us how he knew
Jonah's Call and Our Resistance
He doesn't say if it was some audible voice, or how exactly it came. But we know the word of the Lord came to Jonah, and it was very clear, very precise, very concise, and not particularly complicated. It said: I want you to go to Nineveh on a mission. I want you to go there and essentially preach the Word against this wicked city. If you follow the war in Iraq and you hear of the town Mosul, that's Nineveh.
So God said, I want you to go there. It was probably the largest city in the world at the time, some 600,000 people. It was a place of commerce, filled with all sorts of immorality and sin, violence and wickedness. Here was the call: go to Nineveh.
Jonah hears the call and heads to Joppa to get a boat to Tarshish. To give some geographical context: let's say Jonah was standing in Phoenix. The call comes — go to Nineveh, Albuquerque. Jonah heads to San Diego, Tarshish. He's going exactly the opposite direction.
Here was the point made to the students, and to you. Knowledge was not Jonah's problem, and rarely is it yours. My problem is not that I don't know what God wants me to do. My problem is I don't want to do it. I'm not confused about what God wants — I just don't want to do it. I'll find explanations and excuses, I'll play games.
It doesn't say this in the text, and I know I'm playing a little loose here, but I'm going to guess — because I know how I think, and I assume everyone else thinks about the same way — that if I'm Jonah, I'm heading down to Joppa thinking, oh man, what am I going to do? And then there's a boat going to Tarshish, and Jonah says, I knew it — it's a sign from God. He said Nineveh, but He meant Tarshish. God must want me to go to Tarshish, or He wouldn't have put that ship there. We've done that. God must want me to eat this éclair, or He would have never created it in the very first place. God must want me to act on these feelings, or He wouldn't have given me these feelings in the very first place.
Jonah Is No Worse Than We Are
I even found myself saying, what a jerk Jonah is. God just says, Jonah, I want you to do this — three things: arise, go, cry. In fact, you could outline the whole book in four words: flee, plea, shout, pout. That's Jonah. Jonah gets his word and goes the other way, and I'm saying, what a jerk.
But don't you find yourself with Jonah? He's no more a jerk than you are. I hope you're not confused about what God wants from you, because He's spoken very clearly, very precisely, very concisely, very simply — right here in Scripture. You've got it in your lap. How does God want you to live? It's right here. Why aren't you doing it? Just like Jonah. That's an amazing connection.
Two Huge Mistakes
Maybe you're even trying to run from God. Jonah makes two huge mistakes. Verse 3 is an important place to mark in your Bible, because you'll see the first mistake — mentioned and then repeated. "Jonah fled to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord." Mark that, underline it, circle it. Then it says he paid the fare and went on board to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. You see the phrase twice.
His first mistake was that he thought he could hide from God. He's going to run from the presence of the Lord. God's never going to find me in Tarshish. I'm going to duck and hide. I'm going to go down into the bottom of the ship. Somehow God will lose track of me. He'll never find me.
Psalm 139 speaks to exactly that. Where am I going to go to flee from the presence of the Lord? I go to the heights — You're there. The depths — You're there. You're both behind me and in front of me. You know what I'm going to say before I say it. That passage culminates in a prayer: God, why don't You search me, because You know all things and You're everywhere. You know everything. Search me, and if there's any sin in my life, bring it forth so that I can see it, agree with You, and confess it.
I'll give you a tip in child-rearing. We used to tell our girls: you can fool me, and you can fool mom. But if what you're trying to do in terms of how you live is only to please me, you're missing the point. What makes me happy is what makes God happy in your life. So if you're going to run and hide from me, you can do that. We used to play those games — what time do you want us home? I'll say 11. And if there's something you're going to do after 11, you can do before 11. So then I'd say 9:15, and now I'm worried. Maybe you shouldn't go at all. I'm going with you. All those games. But ultimately, the kids understood they could fool me, but they couldn't fool God.
You and I are like that. We're very concerned about fooling each other — what if someone saw us in sin — while totally forgetting about God. We have this positive peer pressure to behave. But then we find ourselves in St. Louis where nobody knows us, and oftentimes we live by a whole different ethic when no one is around. That makes you as foolish as Jonah. You're trying to hide from God, thinking He's not going to find you. You cannot flee from the presence of the Lord. He sees all things. He knows all things.
That's Jonah's first mistake — he thought he could flee or hide from God. His second mistake was that he thought he could escape God's discipline. If God is truly your Father and you're His kid, He's going to discipline you.
The Discipline of a Loving God
Hebrews chapter 12: "Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." And God says, "My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him. For those whom He loves, He disciplines."
We talk about this in human terms all the time. I was talking to somebody just this week, and they said, "I love kids." And that may be the case. But my sense would be that you love your own kids in a different way, a special way, and that manifests itself in the way you interact with them. For example, I would never discipline the kid down the street. He is not my kid. I don't discipline him because he is not mine, but I discipline my own kids — not because I don't want them to have any fun, and not because I don't love them. It is exactly the opposite. I discipline them for the very reason that I do love them.
Here is old Jonah, and somehow he thinks he is going to disobey God and get away with it. It is not going to happen. It is not going to happen to Jonah, it is not going to happen to me, and it is not going to happen to you. If you are truly a child of God, if you took communion today and you are legitimately converted, then when you sin, God is going to discipline you. You can count on it.
If you are sitting there right now saying, "I am in the middle of sin and God has not disciplined me," then you have one of two things. One — and this is a little tip — duck, because it is coming. Or two, and this is worse: maybe you are not His at all, and He is simply going to let you go and sin and sin and sin. So that is Jonah. And as you can imagine, we had some great opportunities to apply that teaching at camp.
You Will Pay the Fare
There is a great phrase in verse 3. Jonah went down to Joppa, found a ship going to Tarshish, and he paid the fare. He went down into it, to Tarshish, to escape the presence of the Lord. He paid the fare. Donald Gray Barnhouse wrote this: "It is always that way. When you run away from the Lord, you will never get where you are going, and you will always pay your own fare. On the other hand, when you go the Lord's way, you always get where you are going, and He pays the fare."
There is a cost to sin, and it is huge. If you are going to have sin in your life, you need to get rid of the notion that your sin does not affect others. It is the myth of two consenting adults in a relationship, or the idea that "I am just going to do these drugs and it only affects me — it is only my body." But what about your kids? What about your friends? What about your parents? What about your spouse? What about the people you love, and the destruction that takes place because of your sin?
One of the things I find particularly repulsive about the way I lived for thirty years is that it was an affront to God, but beyond that, there was the damage I did to the people I truly love. I cannot imagine how much pain I must have inflicted on my mom, my dad, my brothers, my friends, and the people who cared for me. You do not sin in isolation, and you are going to pay a price.
You have heard it said: sin always takes you further than you want to go, it always has you stay longer than you want to stay, and it always costs you more than you want to pay. You are going to pay the fare. And that fare is going to be a life of destruction, turmoil, anguish, broken relationships, heartache, and maybe financial ruin. God is either going to cause that or allow it, and He is going to bring it into your life for one reason — to break you down so He can put you back together.
The Bottom of the Rope Is a Great Place to Be
Jonah ends up in the belly of the fish. He realizes he is hopeless, helpless, and empty, and he has real problems. And you know what? That was a great place for Jonah to be. Maybe you are here today and that would be you. You would say, "I am at the bottom of my rope. I cannot go another day. I am completely empty. I give up." That is a great place to be. Now that you are there, do not despair — turn to Christ. Trust in Him and Him alone.
Jonah is a great story, and that is only three verses. We spent the whole first night at camp on just those three verses.
The Real Main Character
Look at what happened in verse 4: "But the Lord hurled a great wind." Here is the point. The main character in the book of Jonah is not Jonah, not the sailors, not the captain, not the people of Nineveh. The main character in the book of Jonah is God. Verse 4: the Lord hurled a great wind. Chapter 1, verse 17: the Lord appointed a great fish. Chapter 2, verse 10: the Lord spoke to the fish. Chapter 4, verses 6, 7, and 8: the Lord appointed a plant, the Lord appointed a worm, the Lord appointed a scorching east wind. This book is about God.
It is a picture of the resurrection of Jesus Christ — that is what Jesus Himself said: "Just as Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, so shall the Son of Man be in the earth for three days and three nights." It is a picture of the sovereignty of God. It is a picture of the graciousness of God. The greatest revival in the history of mankind takes place in Nineveh when Jonah ultimately arrives there.
Jonah's Disobedience and the Storm
The indication is that virtually everyone in the city — man, woman, boy, girl — comes to Christ, believes, is saved, repents. Revival breaks out. Now, here is an interesting thing: it does not last. A hundred years later, God comes and wipes out the city. But revival breaks out. God's grace and mercy is depicted to these people. They deserve it. They are wicked people. They deserve death. God gives them life.
This is a magnificent picture of God — the Hound of Heaven, who is not going to allow any of His children to wander away. He will be on them and on them and on them, pursuing them, tracking them down, doing whatever He needs to do in their life, your life, my life, to make certain that we obey Him.
The Storm and the Sailors
So He hurls a great storm. In verse 5, the sailors are afraid. These are professionals. In that region of the world, there would be violent storms, pretty unpredictable, and these men would be out in a little boat. We get on these huge, gigantic ships today, and when you turn on the TV you always get the weather report — waves anywhere from a foot and a half to two and a half feet. Not much. And you see people walking around with patches, clinging to the hallway walls. That is not these men. These sailors are veterans of violent storms in little ships, not easily frightened. But this was a huge storm, and they are afraid enough to throw cargo overboard.
Then the captain realizes someone is missing. He goes downstairs, and look at verse 6 — he finds Jonah and says to him, "How is it that you are sleeping?" What a great question. Is Jonah in the midst of sinning? Not a trick question — yes, absolutely. He is running from God, and we always hear that when someone is running from God there must be turmoil. Yet Jonah is out like a light. He is sound asleep.
Peace Is Not Proof of God's Will
Do not confuse the feeling of peace with being in God's will. Couples fight and fight and fight, then separate, and they are stunned that there is peace. They say, "I cannot believe how peaceful it is." Well, if I am sitting here hitting myself with a hammer all day long and I stop, there is peace. You are in the middle of sinning, sinning, sinning — selfish, selfish, selfish — and then you remove that event or that person, and there is peace. Then people say, "God wants me to have peace, so God must want this relationship to dissolve, because look at the peace I have."
Look at the peace Jonah has, and you would not for a second tell me that Jonah is even close to being obedient to God. How can you be sleeping, Jonah? Maybe that is what we need to say to someone today. Maybe you are right here in the middle of some sin like Jonah, and we need to say to you: how are you sleeping? How can you call this peace?
Jonah Is Exposed
In fact, the sailors ask Jonah another question, down in verse 10: "How could you do this?" Maybe that is a question for you as well. Here is what transpired. Remember in verse 5 the sailors were afraid. The captain goes down and tells Jonah to come up. They cast lots to see if God would indicate who is the cause of the storm, and the lot falls on Jonah. They begin to ask him a series of questions in verse 8: "What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? Of what people are you?" Jonah ignores the earlier questions and answers only the last. He says, "I am a Hebrew. I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land." We might add, tongue in cheek, "Not enough to obey Him — but I fear the Lord."
In verse 5 the sailors were afraid. Now look at verse 10 — they are exceedingly afraid. Why? Because they knew about the Hebrew faith. They knew about Jonah's God. They knew He was powerful. They knew about the God who led His people out of Egypt, parted the Red Sea, provided food in the wilderness, and brought water from a rock. They knew all of this. Now they are truly terrified. They are convinced He is present, and they say, "What have you done?" For the men knew he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord. How did they know? Verse 10 tells us — he told them.
Jonah has been exposed. His call from God was to go specifically to Nineveh and cry against its wickedness, and now he has been caught. He has confessed and is telling the whole story — this happened, and this happened, and this happened — and somewhere in all of it he said, "I am running from God. I am hiding from God." And they are petrified.
Thrown Overboard
They ask, "What should we do to calm the sea?" The sea is growing more and more violent. They row harder and do everything they can. Finally they give up and say, "What should we do?" Jonah tells them: throw me overboard.
Jonah is a determined sinner. He is willing to die rather than do what God has called him to do. So they pick him up and throw him overboard. The Lord appointed a great fish, and the fish swallowed him. Chapter 2 is essentially the prayer that Jonah offers from the belly of that fish.
The Prayer of Jonah
The discussion is whether Jonah actually died during those three days, or whether he was alive and conscious or alive and unconscious. A whole group of people point to Jesus saying, "Just as Jonah was, I will be," and we would affirm that Jesus did die. I am frankly not that intrigued by the question, but a lot of people really are. My interest is in the content of the prayer and the timing of the prayer. My sense is that the timing was immediate.
I doubt that Jonah spent three days in that fish and then said, "You know what, I ought to pray." That just does not make sense, and it does not line up with my experience. Susan and I had our anniversary on Friday, and on our first anniversary we decided to fly up to Vegas, have dinner, and fly back all in one day. Flying back on Hughes Air West, we got into one of those early monsoon season storms. I had never been in anything like it — it was just beating us around, lightning crashing all over, and the flight attendants were petrified. Susan was hanging on to me and I was hanging on to her, the wings looked like they were flapping, and I did not say, "I'm going to wait until we get to Sky Harbor to pray." I said, "Father, we have problems."
Is that not what you do? If you get a call today that there has been a crash, you do not say you will wait until you get to the hospital. You pray immediately. My sense is that Jonah is praying this prayer the minute he finds himself in that fish, and he is saying amen by the time he is down in the stomach. And it is a magnificent prayer — there are just some incredible things in it.
In verse 4, Jonah says, "I'll look again on your holy temple." It is a little like Abraham with Isaac, when Abraham says to the servants, "You stay and we will return," using that plural — "we will come back" — as though he senses God is going to work somehow. Verse 8 is a great verse: "Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope in steadfast love." What Jonah is saying is that if you trust a false god, you will not receive love and care from him, because a promise is only as good as the person or entity that makes it.
You can have Ginsu knives with a lifetime guarantee, but if you cannot find Bob Ginsu, that guarantee is not worth a thing. A promise is only as good as the one who makes it. If you trust in vain gods, in false gods, you cannot rely on them. But Jonah says, "I, with a voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you." First Thessalonians 5:18 says to give thanks in everything, and Jonah gives thanks. "What I have vowed I will pay, and salvation belongs to the Lord." We could unpack all of that, but I only have fourteen minutes and I want to get to chapter 3.
The God of the Second Chance
Chapter 3, verse 1: "And the word of the Lord came to Jonah" — here is the phrase — "a second time." We see that God is a God of the second chance. He gives Jonah virtually exactly the same charge as before. I will tell you how I might have responded: I might have said, "All right, Jonah, you blew it. You did get the message eventually, but you are going on the bench now. We are done with you, and you do not have much of a future. You will maybe be a role player, but nothing significant — you have screwed it up." We do not see that in Scripture.
We did not have time to unpack it all, but with the students we went back and looked at the pattern. Look at Jacob — he looks like a goofus every time you read about him, and then you turn to Hebrews 11 and he is in the Hall of Fame of Faith. How does that happen? And then there is Moses, God's chosen man for the job. But it is not just about being the right person — it is also about understanding God's timing and God's way. Moses is ready to lead the people out of Egypt, he is God's man, but he is not in God's timing and it is not God's way. So there are forty years in between, and then God comes to him and says, "Now we are ready to go."
Then there is David. I have a friend who was in a small group with me where we were studying David's life, and about the third or fourth week he said, "How dense is this David? How can he not see this?" And I said, "He is a lot like you and me." In fact, one of the very phrases we used every night with the students was: there is a little bit of Jonah in all of us.
Peter and the Second Chance
If we go to the New Testament and look for a man who needed and received a second chance, who would that be? Peter. We look at Peter and we see him in Luke chapter 22, which is to me the most powerful record of his denial. Peter had just said, "I don't know about these other guys, but I will die with you. I will go to prison with you." And I think he meant it. Jesus said, "You are going to deny me tonight before the cock crows three times."
On the last denial, Luke chapter 22 tells us that the Lord turned. My sense is that Peter's eyes and Jesus' eyes met at that moment. Can you imagine the intensity of that? When I used to discipline my girls, I would say to them, "Look at me. Look up here at me." There is something about that eye-to-eye contact — you can tell when someone is lying because the moment you ask the question, their eyes dart away. It is body language, it is instinct, you cannot hide it. Jesus looks right into Peter's eyes, and it says Peter went away and wept bitterly.
Failure Is Not Fatal
Peter and Judas had almost identical experiences of failure, yet their stories ended very differently. Judas went away and wept bitterly, then killed himself. Peter went on to become a hero, one of the cornerstones of the faith, one of the pillars of the early church. You can be here today having screwed it up — and that is not sugarcoated. You've messed it up. You've sinned. Let's call it that, because that's what it is. But failure is not fatal.
You can despair. You can try to run from it, but you're not going to run very far. He's a God of a second chance. Isn't that incredible? And I want to tell you something I think is even more incredible than that: He's a God of a first chance. What I deserve is death. I deserve hell, and He saves me.
What the Students Taught Me
One of my great thrills about summer camp is listening to the students talk. In some cases it's intentional, but in other cases it's just what they instinctively know. The language they use as they talk about their conversion is absolutely exhilarating to me, because all of them talk about, "God saved me — look at what He did."
There was a little girl I met earlier in the week, and I was very impressed with her. I had a conversation with her, and if you had a transcript of that conversation and I said, "This is one of our students," you would say, "Well, she must be a valedictorian at one of the high schools." She was eleven. On the last day, she got up to share. She talked about how she had been around this stuff, how difficult it was, how she wanted to believe but it just wasn't there — and how communion was coming.
We know that communion is a pivotal time, a time of declaration. Don't take communion if you're not one of His. And she said, "I couldn't take communion. I couldn't do it. I'm not His, and I want to be, and I'm crying out to Him, but I didn't take communion." The last song that last night was "Thank You" — "Thank You for loving me" — and the last verse is "Thank You for saving me." She said, "I don't know what happened. Something came over me. I was just filled. Something changed. Everything changed at that moment. I got goosebumps all over."
That is God. It is so cool that He is going to give her a second, and a third, and a 999th chance. But what strikes me even more is that He gave her a first chance, that He gave you a first chance, that He gave me a first chance, and that He saved us — which is absolutely beyond anything we deserve. So when you look at all of this, including the story of Jonah, you go, "Wow, that's pretty incredible."
What I Saw and Heard at Summer Camp
I want to talk about something I saw and heard at summer camp that really struck me. I had a student say, "I got my dad two tickets to a ball game for his birthday, because I knew if I gave him two tickets, he'd have to take me." I had a boy say, "I took up golf — I'm not that keen on golf — but I took it up because I knew if I played golf my dad would value that, and he'd spend time with me." There were reports of boys simply saying, "My dad doesn't love me, and I'll tell you how I know — because he tells me. He says me and the other kids are just in the way."
There was one small group with nineteen girls in it. Of those nineteen girls, four of their mothers were in the midst of an affair. And if you're visiting and thinking, "We've got to get out of this church — that's really a mess," let me say that some of those are kids from our church, but many of them are not. It thrills me that our students are spending time with kids like that and bringing them to something like summer camp.
The Hard Truth About Parenting
I don't know where you are in all of this, but I am genuinely convinced that parenting is really hard. I'll tell you why: parenting is hard because you cannot be a good parent if you're selfish. That's why it's hard. It's not hard to figure out — it's common sense. And the Bible, I think, confirms this by not saying a great deal about it, which tells me it is largely common sense.
The New Testament does touch on the family. It says to children, obey your parents. And then to parents — really, almost the only specific thing it says is, "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger." It seems to intimate that we as men are especially prone to doing that: riding them and riding them and riding them until they overreact. That's not to excuse their sin, but the Scripture acknowledges that we provoke them.
The Hands That Went Up
This weighed so heavily on me that I couldn't hold back any longer. So on Sunday morning, as we were in the amphitheater, I said, "Listen, I don't want to embarrass you students at all. You all know me, and you know I wouldn't be here if I didn't love you and care for you. The last thing I want to do is hurt you in any way. So if this is hurtful to you, don't participate. But those of you who have parents that are divorced — will you raise your hand?" I was staggered to see the hands go up. That's what I'm talking about. These kids are hurting.
When we have testimonies from students in previous years, almost all of them would talk about being in these situations — my mom's gone, my dad's
The Real Need Behind the Stuff
They'll take the stuff, and they'll even say they want the stuff. But I am telling you, what they want is you. They want time with you. That is what they need more than anything else. They need a dad and a mom, and in a lot of cases that is not even an option anymore because one of the two parents is gone.
The objective here is not to throw salt on a wound that is already hurting, or to pick at a scab, or to make you feel guilty. That is not my point. My point is for you to listen, because these kids — they may not say it to you, and they may not act like it — need you desperately. And they do not need you to be a buddy. I am going to throw up if I hear another guy talk about how he and his kids are buds.
You are not their buddy. You are their dad. You are their mom. You are not their friend. They have plenty of friends. They do not need friends. They need a parent — literally a protector — and that is you. The best thing you can give them is to love them, care for them, and discipline them. And the greatest gift you can give them is to see a dad love a mom and a mom love a dad.
Encouragement for Parents in the Trenches
Now, I know that is not every situation here, so you are going to have to do the best you can through God's strength. I talk to a lot of single moms, primarily through PL, and they will say, "Tom, you don't know how hard it is." And I am here to say, I do not know how hard it is. But when they say, "I don't think I can do it," I say, wait a minute — that is different. I do not know how hard it is, but I know you can do it, because God is not going to give you anything that you cannot do or endure.
It may not be easy, and it may not at times be fun, but here is the payoff, and it is worth it. You know where I was yesterday at noon? The second annual father-daughter tea at the Ritz. We got our little tea and cucumber sandwiches and curried chicken sandwiches — it takes two and a half hours — little pastries, piano playing, and a man sings a song about dads and daughters that makes you cry.
I said to my girls, we used to talk about school, then we talked about cheerleading, then we talked about college, then we talked about jobs. Over the years those have all been topics, and this year we are talking about baby names. It is so cool. Looking back, Susan in particular made a heavy, heavy investment in those girls, and it has paid off.
Can you do everything right as a parent and still have a child go wrong? Yes. Can you do everything wrong as a parent and have a good kid? Yes. But most of the time, you are going to reap what you put in. If you are in here slugging it away and wondering whether it is worth it — it is worth it. Do not give up.
Starting Over With Your Kids
And if you are saying, "I have screwed it up," then go to that child, sit them down, and say, "Listen, I sinned. I messed up. I was wrong. It was my fault. I have gone before God, and now I am coming before you. He has forgiven me, and I am asking you to forgive me. But from this day forward, we are going to do it right."
That may be ugly for a while, because if you have never disciplined a child and you suddenly start, they are not going to like it. They want it, they need it, but they may not like it. If they know you love them and care for them, though, they are going to allow you to be the man or woman that God has called you to be. It is a huge deal.
The One Reason for Hope
Jonah is a great book. Summer camp is a great time. Life is great, no problems. But let me say one more thing. I want so much to be an optimist — I just cannot get there. The one thing I see that might be a reason for hope is the church and a relationship with Christ. That is the one thing I see that might be a light in a dark world with huge consequences.
These kids, by the time they are 15 or 16, have done everything. They have tried it all. And I think that is why they are open to Christ. They are at 15 where many of us were at 25 or 30 — saying, "Been there, done that, tried it all. I am desperate." When you start talking about need and emptiness, they hear it. But you have to be real, genuine, and honest.
Closing Prayer
Father, help us see this truth and let it transform the way we live. I pray for the families that are here, the great opportunities and responsibilities before us, that before You, we would live in a way that would bring honor and glory to You. Thank You for Tim and his staff and all the work that goes into summer camp, the volunteers and the dads who spend hours and hours, oftentimes at their own expense, because they see it as a way to honor You.
I pray for the students. God, I am certain that there were some who had a camp high, and it was not real, it was not genuine. But I know this — there are lives that were changed, and You changed them. I pray now that You would plug them into relationships with other believers, that those that do not have believing parents might be salt and light in their home, and that You might save families through these kids.
God, we love You because You first loved us. We worship You because You are worthy of that. We pray to You, here and now this morning, in Jesus' name, amen.