You know, it's natural for kids to want to be like their pop, especially if they're boys. It's natural to want to emulate their parents, especially their dad. The fact is that all of us in many ways turn into our parents. Sometimes we learn what to emulate, sometimes we learn from our parents what to avoid. Unfortunately, sometimes we learn to emulate what we should be avoiding, and that's kind of my lesson here in this short talk with you.
Kids pick things up.
I was able to learn from my dad, from the good things that he taught me. In a way I was able to learn from the bad, too. By God's grace I didn't learn to emulate the bad, to copy it, by and large, although I'm sure I have some bad things that I picked up. But many kids do emulate the bad as well as the good. Instead, God is helping me to assess those things in our family life that aren't things that ought to be repeated and to learn not by imitating but by avoiding.