You can focus on keeping the rules, but that will not give you the relationship.  However, if you focus on building the relationship, you can forget about the rules. You are not going to want to go out every night if you are truly focused on the relationship you have with your spouse. 

The same is true with God. Many religions try to make people follow rules, expecting that to lead to a relationship with God.  It does not work that way. We should spend more time promoting a great relationship with God the Father, and then the rules would work out on their own.

One of the reasons Joseph told Potiphar’s wife that he could not have an affair with her was because it would have been a sin against God. The question is, how did he know it was a sin? The story took place BEFORE the Ten Commandments! The answer is, because he had a relationship with God!

Our children are the same. If we focus on building healthy relationships with our children, the rules will take care of themselves. Am I saying you do not need to give your children rules and limitations? Of course not. I am saying to make sure you put more emphasis on having a relationship with your children, not just rules.

·         Who are you?

·         Who will you become?

·         What will you do?

·         How will you affect the world?

If you stop and listen, you can almost hear the Spirit of God whisper the answer… “that is up to you.”  Wow. The responsibility is one of the greatest in the world, yet one of the most exciting as well!

The Image Of God
To somehow try and understand more, you have to go to your Heavenly Father and ask for wisdom and understanding.  Then God said, “Let us make man in our own image, in our likeness…” GEN. 1:26 

On a spiritual note, it is amazing how becoming a parent will bring you to a new understanding of God’s love for us.  For example, one of the most fulfilling things I do is to go and lay down with my son, Brady, or daughter, Noel, after they have fallen asleep. Just being there with them does something inside of me. My heart seems to swell. It is almost as if I cannot hug them tight enough! (Do you know what I mean?) They have no idea that I’m in there. I just want to be with them.

That is exactly how God is with us. He just wants to be there, even if that means waiting until we are asleep so we are not distracted or too busy.  He created us to fellowship with Him.

One day when my son Brady was around four years old, he was sitting on his bed as I walked in and asked him to pick-up in his room.  With an ‘as a matter of fact’ attitude Brady says, “You know Dad, you’re not the boss of me.  God is.”

What do you say to that?

Surprised, I responded, “Yes, this is true.  However, God made your mom and me your boss.”  Brady answered, “Dad, God created us because He wanted friends.  It doesn’t say anything in the Bible about the Sticker Family!” 

“Ah, The Wisdom of A Four Year Old”

We were not created to be servants of God.  He wanted friends.  He wanted relationships.

It is not about the rules.  It is about the relationship.  Whether we are talking about your relationship with your spouse, children, boss, or God, you must first have the relationship, before you can ever follow the rules.

Let’s think about your relationship with your spouse.  There are certain rules that you know that you are going to have to keep.  (Ex: No going out every night to party with your friends.  No inappropriate relationships.  No coming and going as you please.) 

You can focus on keeping the rules, but that will not give you the relationship.  However, if you focus on building the relationship, you can forget about the rules.  You are not going to want to go out every night if you are truly focused on the relationship you have with your spouse.

The same is true with God.  In the Bible, one of the reasons Joseph told Potiphar’s wife that he could not have an affair with her was because it would have been a sin against God.

Question:  How did Joseph know it was a sin?  The story took place before the Ten Commandments!

Answer:  He had a relationship with God.

Our children are the same.  If we focus on building health relationships with our children, the rules will take care of themselves.

Am I saying you do not need to give your children rules and limitations?  Of course not.  I am saying to make sure you put more emphasis on having a relationship with your children, not just rules.

Parenting is one of our greatest challenges in life.  It can be very difficult and very rewarding.  Maybe it is because we realize that this child’s life is in our hands.  Everything we do, or not do, has an effect on his/her life.  And this is very humbling.

We look into their newborn eyes and cannot help but ask:

·         Who are you?

·         Who will you become?

·         What will you do?

·         How will you affect the world?

“The responsibility is one of the greatest in the world.”

Parenting is only one example of leadership.  We also need to remember that whatever we do for a living, run a business, teach a school, or work in an office building, we affect the people around us.  There are certain qualities that make a good leader.

“So what can you do?”

I consider myself a student.  You see, you can learn everything and anything you could ever want to learn. There are millions of books, audio programs, sermons, seminars, classes, workshops, newsletters, and etc. available to anyone with the ambition and discipline to learn.

So I began.  I, like many of you, didn’t want my life to be just another life. There was a God-given desire inside of me, not to be satisfied with “getting by”.  The Bible says, “I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord, “plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” Jer. 29:11(NIV)

I began to read and listen to anything that would make me better in all areas of my life: sales, relationships, ministry, personal development, health and exercise, parenting, business, finances, etc. As I began to study the lives of great people, companies, and organizations, most of them all had a predetermined set of values or principles they used to guide them through business and in life.

Some of the experts I’ve studied include Rick Warren, Stephen Covey, John Wooden, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Disney, Pat Williams, John Maxwell, Napoleon Hill, Dr. James Dobson and Bruce Wilkinson to name a few.
                         

As I studied, I always took notes and applied what I could to my own life.

In doing this, I made two very important discoveries:  

Discovery #1:  All of these “success principles” were all out of the Bible!  The authors didn’t always give credit to the Bible, they may not have even known.  That is the beauty of principles, whether you know them are not, they always hold true (we’ll talk more about that later).

Discovery #2:  There were only 7 key principles that people used to achieve great things.  There were not 101 steps people took to reach their goals, just seven key principles.

I started to ask myself, “How can I teach these 7 principles to my kids in a way that is easy for them to learn and understand?”  My wife, Rustee, and I sat down to come up with away to teach these to our kids in a way that would be:

•       Simple to use
•       Straightforward
•       Effortless
•       Easy to Understand
•       And Effective

We did exactly that.  And it works!

This book is not just for parents.  No matter how young or how old you are, or whether you are in school or work part time.  You can use these principles as the keys to your success.  Not only that, but you can pass them along to friends and family members.

Word to the wise:

Some people are turned off by the idea of Biblical principles.  I am here to tell you that you don’t have to understand why these principles work, you just have to know how to use them.  Success and great leadership all have the common threads that I talk about in this book.  All of the successful leaders that I have studied have principles that cross paths with these ideas, whether they found it in the Word or not.

We took the seven principles and set them to the ABC’s (well at least A-G).   The ABC’s of A Leader had been created.  And it worked wonders! 

We printed them out and hung it over the light switch by Brady’s door.  In a few short weeks, Brady knew all seven!

Over the next few months, we noticed his behavior change.  He started making decisions on his own using the same principle that had helped shape some of the world’s most successful people.  Ben Franklin and Henry Ford, just to name a couple.  These men had all used some these same principles to achieve great things in their life, while making the world a better place for us all.

Brady had begun to accept these great principles as is own.  They started to become who he was.  And that is what we want.

Thank you