Category: Parenting

Parenting can provide the greatest blessings or the bitterest of failures. Children are free-moral agents and can rebel despite the best efforts that are put forth by the best of parents. However, parents cannot ignore the fact that they play an important role in the raising of their children.

The book of Proverbs paints pictures of various topics that wisdom affects.  A primary focus in the book is the consequences of choices people make.  Proverbs…

Solomon wrote, “Children’s children are the crown of old men; and the glory of children are their fathers” (Proverbs 17:6).  Most young people look forward…

Teach your children that an important thing “to believe about God” is that He deserves respect, submission, and our profound awe. Teach them that the assembly is one of the places reverence is most important. And it is most likely that once you have “trained up your child in the way he should go, that when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

Much of the book of Proverbs is one man’s attempt at teaching his children to be good and wholesome. The Proverbs are a good place to start if you have never done much in the way of training your child in the way he should go. But if you have not started yet, it is already later than you think and one day soon, the cradle is going to be empty and you won’t be able to put the cat back in it.

God gives the child instructions to “Obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right” (Ephesians 6:1). His willingness and ability to do this depends much upon the faithfulness of mom and dad, as they seek to raise him in the “training and admonition of the Lord” (cf. 6:4). As the wise man said, “Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). No, it doesn’t take “a village” to raise a child, it takes a mom and dad!

Yes, my friend, you will be on your own, to stand or fall, for good or bad. There will be no one to blame but yourself. Your mistakes will be yours and no guilt can be handed back to your parents any longer. And there is an additional thought worthy of consideration: when you have children, you will be faced with the same responsibilities your parents had. If you love your children, if you want their life to prosper, if you want them to grow up respecting others and being prepared to face life, you will have to set some rules. And the cycle will have come full circle!

As parents, we long to protect our children from the harsh realities of life. It breaks our heart to see them suffer either emotionally or physically, and we seek to shield them from whatever heartbreak we can. Much of this is needed, and responsible. However, it is possible to be so protective of our children that they fail to receive needed lessons that only heartbreak and suffering can bring.

A loving father writes a letter of concern to a wayward child.

A Loving Father writes a letter of concern to a wayward child.

A Loving father writes a letter to his wayward child.