Begin with the End in Mind - End of Childhood

Good morning, Five Minute Families. We are finishing our ‘Begin with the End in Mind’ series. As we have journeyed backward through milestones, we reach the milestone every parent anticipates… the end of childhood. Of course, our children think that end comes sooner than it does, and some of us parents who are ready for the kiddos to fly the coop will still miss them as terribly as the parents who have been crying and posting about all the “last firsts” - such as the last first day of school. If we are able, we will have 18 years of constant, daily influence. After that, adulthood will greatly alter our relationships with our children. We once knew a family whose seventeen-year-old daughter was making many unwise decisions and ignoring all of her parents’ efforts to help her, but when most families would have washed their hands and determined that it was just too late to make a difference, this family knew that legally their influence would change dramatically after her 18th birthday, so they acted radically in her final months with them - sending her to live with family who would be super strict and where she would have no contacts outside of trusted family. Nine years later they have a beautifully redeemed relationship in which both parents and the now-adult child are thankful for the last-ditch effort her parents made to make a positive difference in her life. Her parents knew that the end goal of parenting a minor is to produce a godly adult - not a successful adult, not a happy adult, not even a productive adult, but a godly adult. Why does that mindset - the mindset of godliness - matter so much more than success, happiness, productivity, or anything else really? 1 Timothy 4:8 reminds us, “godliness is beneficial in every way, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.” So, biblically speaking, what is godliness? Godliness is not just behaving morally. Godliness is not serving consistently at church. Through his study and exegesis of the story of Enoch, Jerry Bridges summar