Principle 3: Train Your Children Realizing That Much Depends On YOU!

We are all shaped by our parents in one way or another. As a young adult think about the number of times you said, "I'm not going to raise my children this way... like my parents did," and then Lo and Behold, you are doing it. Why? Because you have been shaped by your parents, you have learned from them. Ryle says, "We are made what we are by training."

Perhaps nothing is more important in the early years of life than education (aka child training). We place a lot of emphasis on education - especially as Americans. Moms spend countless hours worrying, studying, investigating where they will send their toddlers to preschool and then where they will go to elementary school and so on. High schoolers spend countless hours doing the same thing - figuring out where they will go to college. We invest a lot of time and energy on education. But what about education in the home?

Perhaps no education is more important than what takes place in the home during the early years. Our early habits that are formed come about through early education in the home. Who we are now was shaped very early on from the doctorate degree we earned from home (for most of us this is about 18 years of education).

Think about this for a moment - We are very dependent on those who raise us, are we not? We get our color, taste, likes, dislikes, language, mannerisms, and much more from those who raise us - namely our parents. Again, think back now as an adult how often you catch yourself doing the same things and even saying the same things that your parents did and said. It has been said that 90% of us do what we do, good or bad, because of our early child training. Sounds about right.

All of this is what makes your job, as a parent, so IMPORTANT! God, in His rich mercy, has given children to you with a very impressionable mind - a mind like moist clay ready to be molded and shaped in the way that YOU make it. God gives you a golden opportunity to raise them in a way that pleases the Lord and a way that is for their good. Do not forsake this opportunity! Do not neglect your duty! Do not throw away the opportunity! Once these impressionable years have passed, they are gone for ever. Much depends on you!

One word of caution: Do not become delusional and think that you, as a parent, have no place in the training of your children and that they must just learn for themselves and all you need to do is sit back and wait for grace to intervene and change your child's ways. If you aren't going to train them, somebody else will - namely the world and Satan. The enemies of God would like nothing more than you to neglect your God-given task of raising your child in the way he should go.

As you go forth in your parenting, go forth with the knowledge that God has commanded you to train your child in the way he should go and God will not call you to any task for which He does not supply the grace for you to perform the task or duty. The path of obedience to His commands and teachings is the path that God will bless.

I leave you with this profound thought from Ryle: "We have only to do as the servants were commanded at the marriage feast in Cana, to fill the water-pots with water, and we may safely leave it to the Lord to turn water into wine."