Training Your Children -- Part 4

School is back in session in many places though here in Michigan schools are not to start before Labor Day. Anyway, the point of that is that things are moving back into a more scheduled routine. I will try to get back into writing an entry each week on my blog.

We have been covering some things about training your children. I am trying to give a balance between using Biblical principles and lessons from my own life experience as I go through this material. Hopefully, the lessons from my own experience bear out the truth of Scripture, so I pray that it is all very Biblical.

Last time, I talked about some things related to reaching a child’s heart. Today I want to add just one more short entry regarding the role we as parents play as far as making sure our hearts are right before we try to pass it on to our children.

Many of the things I have covered in the area of teaching and training are part of the answer to reach your child’s heart. However, before we can reach the heart of a child, we must have things in place in our own hearts! It takes a daily commitment from us as parents. We need to spend uninterrupted time (daily) with our children. We need to listen and be available when they are ready to talk. We need to watch behavior and be in tune with what is going on in their life and in their mind. We need to let them know that they are VERY important to us, not by how much stuff we give them, but how much of ourselves we give them. The ultimate goal, of course, is to see that child come to an understanding of his heart need to be regenerated by the Spirit of God. When he is at this point, God can begin His work of changing that child from the inside which is where he really needs to be changed. The bottom line is that Biblical parenting is a full time job. It takes all of our senses, our time, our energy, our prayers and we must sacrifice to see to it that our children are brought to the Savior. And yes, it must be first in OUR hearts. They must see in us a deep desire to please and honor God in the good times, in the tough times, when things are going well and when things are going poorly. They need to see a commitment to the reading and obeying of God’s Word, to prayer, to church attendance and involvement, and to daily living out the Biblical principles we teach to them. How we respond to life as parents will highly determine how our children will respond. Our faith must be real and vibrant or they will see right through us.

Hope this gives you some things to think about. I would love to converse about some of these things or answer questions if there are any. Have a great week and I hope to start a little “series” on modesty in the next entry.