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South Bay SDA Church

Dan Towar

Patsy Towar

God Fearing Families

Diana Grakov

Parenting with a Purpose

Parenting with an Eternal Purpose

Keith Detwieler

Social Me Me Media


Let's start with Ephesians 5 21 to 25 Submitting to 1 another in the fear of God wives submit to your own husband ask the Lord for the husband is head of the wife as Also Christ is head of the church and he is the Savior of the body Therefore just as the Church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives as just as Christ also loved the Church and gave himself for her. Ephesians, 6. Paul, verse 28 and 33. So ought men to love their wives as their own boys He that loveth his wife loveth himself and 33 Never the less let every 1 of you in particular So love his wife even as himself, and the wife see that she loves her husband.

Amen. Ephesians 6, 1-3. Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth. 5 through 7.

Slaves, obey your earth and master with respect and fear and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, do in the will of God from your heart. Serve God personally, as if you were serving the Lord, not men. Line there. It's somewhat uncomfortable words for a modern day popular quote.

And I just want to say that if it is to work under God, the husbands have to be willing to love their wives even as Christ also loved the church. That's the condition upon which they can claim the headship in the family. The husband is to represent Jesus and be like him to his wife and his children. So he's not to be an overlord or a dictator. And when that is taking place, wives genuinely, I believe, like that.

And if it's not the case, then they genuinely think that they have to step it up. And then you have a lot of wives who provide this spiritual leadership for their family. My mother provided the spiritual leadership for my family. I didn't live up with, live, grow up with a father that, who mentored me in the Lord. It was my mother who did it, I'm glad she did, but we are called as men to be that kind of person.

When I was young in ministry, maybe I'll tell them to stop because the next picture is easier to see. But when I was young in ministry, I would work late just out of necessity to have Bible studies, to be at present board meetings. And Patsy, early on, she tried to stay up for me, but she was still getting up very early and she had to make a choice. So she decided to go to bed early, which was really the spiritual choice for her to make so she could get up early enough to have devotions and she would be ready for the children. And it's a good thing you did that.

Pastors keep later hours. I didn't keep early hours, but I'd get home after a while and she would already be in bed. I understood why and no problem with that because I knew she'd get up early and have devotions and I knew the children were getting up very early. And I'd get up early but not quite as early as that. So it works out.

I'll let you take the next part. So our goal in our home was to love Jesus first, the 2 of us, that was our priority. And then our other thing was to raise our children to love the Lord and to love the Adventist lifestyle, to love the standards that our church sets up, and to love God's Word. And so I'm just going to share with you just a foundation that we had in our home, standards. We didn't have a TV in our home.

We did in the beginning because someone gave it to us, but we found it controlled our lives, so we got rid of it. Dan was making his ministry kind of around it so he could see the news at 6.30. So we decided not to get rid of it. And we had a piano so we played a lot of hymns in our home. That was the music.

If toys come into our home, and I'm just sharing with some of the standards. The toys did not have jewelry on them, you know, they were Barbie dolls. And so we made sure that the Barbie dolls, we didn't want anything influencing them in a negative way and take them down the wrong path. We also did not have a deck of cards in our home. I'm talking about bar room cards.

We did have things like Uno or cards like that, but we really try to make everything as spiritually a go to keep them on track. We loved, every time there was a church function, it's not because we were a pastor's family, We would have done this with or without that. But we loved going to prayer meetings. We took our kids to prayer meetings. We took them in gathering.

Do you guys still in gather down here? Christmas caroling and gathering. We took them to that. We took them to every evangelistic meeting. We did everything.

And where there was places where they themselves could be involved actually doing something, we volunteered them to do special music, read scripture, whatever it took. They were very much involved up front and then, you know, so they got comfortable with that. And by the way, we had lots of hugs and kisses and were very close to 1 another. It wasn't just what I call, you know, floating around. But as they got older, we took them on mission trips.

We went to Romania, Central America. Every time the church had 1, we would do our best to ministry with family. Family was ministry. We homeschooled them until the age of 10. We read that in Ellen White's writing, said it's best to keep them in the home until the age of 10.

I know some, our grandkids have went longer. But we truly got called into the conference office because we were homeschooling our kids. They wanted them in church school. So we, you know what I mean, we blazed a trail at that point, it was kind of a new thing. Now it's accepted.

But we, you know, it's just the way it was. We just did all kind of things that brought them closer to Jesus Christ. We prayed, prayed, prayed. We listened, we listened, and we listened, and we kept the communication lines open. It's the same thing in a church family.

You Do the same thing. You communicate. You work together as a team. You pray for each other and you listen a lot. And then there's this togetherness.

The kids learn piano. We wanted to, we didn't want rock music to come into our home, So we took an aggressive form of action. They both play the piano, 1 plays violin, 1 plays flute, they both play the guitar, and it's being carried on into the next generation of grandchildren. So it is, the DNA can be changed. We both come from divided homes.

We did not want our home to be divided, so we had to work extra hard, but just the 2 of us. When you come from a broken home and then to present to break that generational curse, is that what it's called? So they can go forward and be a witness to the Lord and our kids today reflect by God's grace that kind of lifestyle. So thank you, Patsy. We have 3 secrets about this 1 big secret that really changed our children from early on so we wouldn't have to fight so hard, so to speak.

1 is that we need to personalize our own and prioritize our own devotional life every day. I guess it was the last class you mentioned about Sabbath school. Maybe you've mentioned it already, but this keeps you on a daily basis, if you follow that Sabbath school lesson, it keeps you regular in your own study. Whatever it takes, just be consistent in your own study. And you'll not only be blessed Sabbath morning, like you were today, but you need it day by day and We all need it and the pastor needs it to not just prepare for sermons, which I do a lot of a lot of But I need something other than that just to keep me going to So the second step is having morning and evening worship.

And it gets busy when you have kids. If you have to do it at the table, maybe you're going to work, maybe just the 2 of you, No kids, but everybody's going different directions. You get up early enough so you can spend that time as a couple, especially as a family raising children. Make sure that there's morning worship and evening worship. Our children, My Bible First, it comes from this locale.

We love it. We just got finished being with our grandkids for 2 weeks and we learned 6 new songs, verse, every single verse. We knew them already, but now we know every single verse because this comes from the Nelsons, My Bible First. They have visualized songs. This is our grandson Elijah.

We did the same thing with our kids. Micah, we did the same thing with our kids and now we're seeing it repeated in our grandkids. Our grandkids, our kids think this is great. We're going to raise our kids the same way. And so we sing, we read a lesson, We do a memory verse, we have prayer, and in our own personal, we always have a spirit of prophecy book that we are reading along with the staff school lesson.

So that keeps the joy going into the next generation. And there's a beautiful, simple secret. Don't bypass this as saying, oh that's so simple how could that do anything? But it has worked for 2 generations now. We've seen with our own eyes and other people picked it up from Patsy and They they give us the same report What happened my story is at 5 30 in the morning I would strive to get up and have my own personal devotions.

20 minutes later the kids are out of their bedrooms ready for the day. I said, Lord, I want an hour. I don't want 20 minutes. I want an hour. And he never corrected that.

So I thought, well, I'm going to have to do something. I have a Bible, I think that you have over there. What I did is I bought the kids a large print Bible. I had them did you realize that in the book of Genesis, the word God is all over that book. I mean God, God, God.

God created, God blessed, God sanctified. So I gave them a Bible and this is when they were 4 or 5 years old when they could just make a circle and they circled the Word God in the book of Genesis and I thought wow, they're done I better find something else. So I went to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and that's my grandson circling in my Bible. It's cool to just look back on it. But in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Jesus.

Oh, Jesus healed, Jesus blessed, Jesus, oh, it's all there. And then you go to first, second, and third John and the word love is just flashed all over those 3 books. So there they are circling the word Jesus, circling the word God, and circling the word love. Do you think they thought God was pretty good? Oh, yeah, and the book, the Bible, had those things in it.

So that was their first introduction to personal devotions, their first introduction to really learning about Jesus. And they would circle for about 5 to 7 minutes and I would teach them how to pray to ask Jesus into their heart and then they go on with their day and I could finish my hours worth of devotions. It was a beautiful experience and when we go to visit our grandkids and I cut myself short in my devotions so I can play with the grandkids, my children, my 44 year old children will say to me, Mom, did you have your personal devotions yet? Okay, I'll get right to that, you know. So they keep me accountable, but it is, it's well worth it to see it being carried on.

Our 14-year-old grandson comes up to our bedroom with his Bible and his lesson quarterly and a spirit of prophecy book. I have a table, man I am ready for it. I've got my devotions and him and his sister sit there and do their devotions right next to me. And we talk about what they have read and studied. You know what?

That's what heaven is. That's what heaven is, to see the commitment to Jesus Christ. And it's beautiful. Elijah and Mariah are old as 14 and 12. Elijah's preached already so I think he may be thinking about ministry but they've given their heart to Jesus.

That's the most important part and it's very beautiful to see. We do a lot of family things together. Here's ASI from a couple months ago. Our host daughter Heidi is at the piano. Her husband Christian was the junior leader at ASI this year.

Of course, you can see him on Wake Up with Hope, 7 o'clock, on Hope Channel, Monday through Friday. Have you heard of Hope Channel? Wake Up with Hope? You have to go to watch. It's beautiful.

You can get on the internet and watch at any time. And we're just about done. I won't leave time for questions. But I encourage your children to think big about their careers. This is our treehouse in the back of our property and we have a little Hummer vehicle that Kane is in and Mike is up there.

They just love, you know, they have an imagination that won't quit. But basically the secret is make it personal, your devotions. Secondly, have morning and evening worship. And the third secret, while they're young, in their own Bible, have them, if they can't even read, have them circle the word, the name God, Jesus, and love. And they identify with the Bible that way.

It's the first book they ever read, even before they can read. Their walk with God is beautiful from the very start that way. And Dream Big Yourself 2, Patsy, mentors about 100 people that want to lose weight and get more healthy. Maybe that's what I should say, and it's really rewarding. And we're both working on books.

1 thing I can say, as a teenager we ran into a lot more challenges, you know, when the kids want to be independent. And 1 such time happened when Heidi decided that she wanted to have a boyfriend. And we had been teaching the children all along to be in groups, to when you have socialization, you don't couple off. And she kind of rebelled against that, or she started to. And we said, you're at the age where you could get a driver's license.

But if you cannot be mature in your relationships, there will be no driver's license. Heidi loved driving. This was a powwow time. This was a powwow time. And she immediately went back to just group friendships.

So there is ways to work through these difficult situations and come out because now they thank us for it. Thank you. That guy was trying to touch my leg in the wrong place. You know, and so just know that, and maybe you've been challenged to do this if you have children of your own, to be real strict and straight At the times when you have to be, you're not a friend, you're a parent. And when you're a parent, you still have to discipline.

And our kids come back and they say to us, what do I do in this situation? What shall I do in this situation? They're asking us for pointers on how to raise their children. So praise God, that's the way it's supposed to be, as we work as a team to raise our children and grandchildren. As if they've given their heart to Jesus from the time they were 3 and having worship like that, it does make a difference.

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