I so love this question today, Pastor John. It comes from a French dad and a pastor named Raphael. Hello, Pastor John. Thank you for this invaluable podcast. My question for you is how I can best communicate Christian hedonism to my children during our family worship. They're ages five to 12.

What should be my aims and goals? Do you have any tips for a dad like me? Okay. I love this question. Let's see if we can do it. It's been a long time since I was a dad of little kids. I had five of them, but that's a long time ago.

Two things to make clear up front. Parents must clarify clear Christian hedonism. And I wouldn't recommend using the term with kids. Forget that. I don't think you mean that. So they don't know. They don't need to know the word hedonism at age four or five or six or whatever.

I'm not asking you to clarify the term. I'm asking you to clarify the reality. And the other thing you need to do is exemplify. So hold those two phrases, clarify and exemplify, because that's what I'm going to talk about. So clarify. Three suggestions. Show that the Bible commands rejoicing.

Philippians 4, 4, "Rejoice in the Lord always." And again, I will say, "Rejoice." So now the children know that it is not only permitted to be happy, it is required that they be happy in the Lord. And of course, that will involve a lot of conversation with the children about how to pursue this joy or this happiness if they don't feel it.

That's a huge question. And you help them with that. And it will involve a lot of conversation about what "in the Lord" means, as opposed to just being happy with these gifts. And you can help little children understand the difference between being happy that they have a mommy and being happy that mommy gives them breakfast.

Would you rather have mommy or breakfast? They get this. Okay, number two, show the kids what it means to become a real Christian by going to Matthew 13, 44. The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. And then in his joy, he goes and sells everything he has and buys that field.

Now, children can grasp why this man was really, really, really, really happy to sell everything. They get this. If you ask him, "Why? Why was he happy to sell his toys, all his toys?" And they're going to say, "Well, because the treasure was worth more than the toys." That's what they're going to say, which is right.

This is not a hard thing to understand. You could even act this out in a little drama. I tried to imagine this, like hide mama behind the couch. "Okay, let's go find mama. I think we can find mama. Whoa, there she is." Then she comes out and now you have to ask, "Okay, what would you be willing to sell to have your mama stay in this house while you're growing up?" They get that.

Number three, tell them my rose story, but rewrite it for kids, which I've done to read to you now. Okay? You may not even know what my rose story is and I won't tell the rose story. That'll take too much time. So I'm going to make up a situation and give you my version for kids.

So this story you can tell to your children to clarify the very essence of Christian hedonism, which is that God is most glorified in you when you're most satisfied in him. So pretend that there's a family that has a 12-year-old boy named Tim and an eight-year-old little brother named Eric.

Okay? Eric thinks Tim is the greatest thing in the world. He admires his big brother. He thinks he's really cool. He loves spending time with Tim and he loves to go fishing. His birthday is coming and Tim, the older brother, really wants to make Eric happy with a special birthday gift.

So Tim takes a few odd jobs around the neighborhood, helping people with their yard work to earn some extra money so he can buy Eric a really nice fishing rod with his own tackle box that he's never had before. But to make it really special, Tim puts a note in the tackle box that says, "This is a certificate of promise to take you fishing all day, the Saturday after your birthday, just you and me." So Tim earns the money, buys the gifts, wraps them up, puts them inside the box, and on Eric's birthday, Eric opens the packages, loves the rod, loves the tackle box.

Then he opens the box and finds Tim's note. He unfolds it and reads it. "Wow," he says, "this is the greatest. I love the rod, Tim, and I love the tackle box, but all day, just you and me fishing. Wow." And suppose Tim, the older brother, smiles and says, "My pleasure, Eric.

In fact, I can't think of anything I'd rather do or that would make me happier this Saturday than to spend the day with you." And suppose Eric's face, little brother, Eric's face darkens. The joy goes out of his eight-year-old heart and he snorts. "It's your pleasure. Nothing would make you happier." So it's all about you, Tim.

It's all about what makes you happy. You're so selfish. Now, Tim would be absolutely stunned at this reaction. Speechless. Okay, story's over. End of story. And you ask your children, "Why would Tim be surprised, even hurt, by Eric's response like that?" And the reason Tim is stunned and speechless is because that would never happen.

And then your kids would say, "Eric's not going to say that. Eric would never respond this way. Why not?" Tim did say, in fact, "It's my pleasure." He did say, "I can't think of anything that would make me happier than to spend the day with you." But you know, and your children know intuitively, Eric would never be upset about this.

He would never treat Tim as if he were being selfish. Why not? Because when Tim finds his happiness in spending time with Eric, Tim honors Eric. He treats Eric like he's really something. And Eric intuitively feels this. He feels honored. He feels loved. He feels cared for. He feels enjoyed.

Tim is treating Eric as special. Tim is saying, "There's something about you, Eric, that makes me happy." "There's something about you, Eric, that makes me want to spend the day with you on Saturday." And then you tell your children that this is a parable. It's a story about how we should relate to God.

When we enjoy, when we want to spend time with God, God is honored. So our being happy in God is what makes God look great. And making God look great is what the Bible says we're supposed to do. Glorify God in everything. So we have to pursue happiness in God if we're going to make God look amazing.

That's the way I would try to clarify Christian hedonism for the children. And more briefly, just a word or two about exemplify. I'm not sure how you do this, but I would suggest that you do two things to exemplify Christian hedonism. The first is that our children need to see us enjoying God, enjoying Him in worship, enjoying Him in devotions, enjoying Him in ordinary tasks of life.

God should feel to these children because it feels to us because He feels to us like a burden lifter, not a burden giver. A lifter of our sins through forgiveness because of Jesus. And a lifter of burdens, the burdens of life as we trust Him to work everything together for good.

Oh, how we communicate to our kids whether God is able to carry the burdens of life by whether we enjoy God in the midst of the stresses of life or not. And the second thing I would say that might not be as obvious is we should enjoy our children, not just enjoy God, but enjoy our children.

We have made the case with our little story. We've made the case that a person is honored when they are enjoyed. We want to honor our children. The Bible says, "outdo one another in showing honor." It says to count others more significant, more honorable than ourselves. And one of the ways we count others as significant and one of the ways we honor others is by manifestly enjoying their presence.

Many children feel like a burden to their parents, like they are in the way. If we enjoy our children, we will communicate to them that the most natural thing is to enjoy what we value. This will translate much more easily into the worship of God than if the children only feel like burdens.

So the pathway to breathing mature Christian hedonists is to manifestly enjoy God, manifestly enjoy the children and take them deeper and deeper into the scriptures. I love this episode. Fantastic counsel, Pastor John. Thank you. May it influence and change my own parenting. Thank you. And a great parenting question too.

Keep those coming in to us. And if you have a question, you can do that through our online home and over at our online home. You can explore all 1,250 of our episodes, scan a list of our most popular ones, read full transcripts and get those questions emailed to us.

You can do all that through DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Well, we have addressed whether or not a Christian can attend a so-called gay wedding. But what about the wedding of two fornicating heterosexuals who lived together before the wedding? Isn't that sort of the same predicament or is it? It's a really great question, an important question.

And it's next on Friday when we return. I'm your host Tony Reinke and we'll see you then.