I'd like to talk to you tonight about the key to spiritual growth.

But I do want to tell you just a little bit about my home life part of what is in this book called the shaping of a Christian family.

I had the tremendous privilege of growing up in a family where there was discipline and because

there was discipline there was order and because there was order there was peace.

Very, very different from the kind of homes that some of you come from and of course I don't know one person in this room

So I don't know anything at all about your backgrounds, but I can certainly guess that in a group of this size, there are many of you who didn't come from that kind of a home.

And I am sobered and humbled to think of the responsibility that is mine for having grown

up in that kind of a home.

The Bible says to whom soever much is given of him shall much be required.

And that makes me tremble because no one could have been given more than I was in having had very godly parents,

a godly father and a godly mother who established a godly home.

There can't be peace without discipline on the part of the parents to begin

with and I see the evidence everywhere we go, not just in grocery stores, but in airports.

We have endless opportunities to observe the total inability,

it seems, of young parents to control their children and everything's chaos.

We don't really get to visit very many homes where there is order and peace.

And to me, where there is order and peace.

And to me, that's a tragedy.

And young parents often ask me, how can I discipline my children?

And of course, the first question that I would like to ask them is, have you disciplined

yourself? You cannot possibly expect to discipline your children. If you haven't disciplined

yourself. And my parents were both of them, people of strong discipline, regular habits,

...