Train Up A Child Day 4

Train Up A Child Day Four

4.  Train with this thought continually before your eyes — that the soul of your child is the first thing to be considered.
   
Precious, no doubt, are these little ones in your eyes; but if you love them, think often of their souls.  No interest should weigh with you so much as their eternal interests.  No part of them should be so dear to you as that part which will never die. The world, with all its glory, shall pass away; the hills shall melt; the heavens shall be wrapped together as a scroll; the sun shall cease to shine.  But the spirit which dwells in those little creatures, whom you love so well, shall outlive them all, and whether in happiness or misery (to speak as a man) will depend on you.
   
This is the thought that should be uppermost on your mind in all you do for your children.  In every step you take about them, in every plan, and scheme, and arrangement that concerns them, do not leave out that mighty question, "How will this affect their souls?"
   
Soul love is the soul of all love.  To pet and pamper and indulge your child, as if this world was all he had to look to, and this life the only season for happiness — to do this is not true love, but cruelty.  It is treating him like some beast of the earth, which has but one world to look to, and nothing after death.  It is hiding from him that grand truth, which he ought to be made to learn from his very infancy, — that the chief end of his life is the salvation of his soul.
   
A true Christian must be no slave to fashion, if he would train his child for heaven.  He must not be content to do things merely because they are the custom of the world; to teach them and instruct them in certain ways, merely because it is usual; to allow them to read books of a questionable sort, merely because everybody else reads them; to let them form habits of a doubtful tendency, merely because they are the habits of the day.  He must train with an eye to his children’s souls. 

He must not be ashamed to hear his training called singular and strange.  What if it is? The time is short, — the fashion of this world passeth away.  He that has trained his children for heaven, rather than for earth, — for God, rather than for man, — he is the parent that will be called wise at last.

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I can't tell you the amount of times that I have heard my children say, "I am not allowed to watch that" or "read that" o"listen to that" or "play with that" or "go there". But I am always so proud of them because the times I have overheard it, it was said with firm conviction. I pray that it will always be that way.

Our Shelby is 10 now... so there are beginning to become times when I catch a hint of sarcasm or disappointment when she mutters her restriction... but she mutters it still. Though I would rather it be said because she also fully believes and understands the why... at these muttered times I will accept the unhappy obedience, because at the very least she chose to honor our standards instead of going her own way. 

Once again I pray that this is choice that our girls continues to walk in...

I also can't tell you the times that I had teachers look at me like I was crazy because I came in with a book that was sent home for my child to read and explained to the teacher why it was not an appropriate book for her to be reading and she would take a zero on the project before she placed the lies in the page in her mind.

To one of these occasions the teacher replied, "I've been a teacher for over 20years and the kids have always read and enjoyed this book, it's mere fantasy"

I wanted to say with great sarcasm, "ummm yes and the children who read these kind of books are the ones who are now running our country, making our tv shows and movies, and singing our songs on the radio, and writing new books, including our public school curriculum, and what a wonderful, wholesome, moral, and godly job they are doing."

But I kept my mouth shut and walked away because I felt I had made my stand by returning the book and sometimes you just need to shut up and led God do the point proving. 

Not a one of us want to see our children ridiculed.

Good grief, not a one of us wants to be ridiculed.
But we must be willing to be ridiculed, mocked, even hated if that's what standing for Christ and His truth leads to.

We must also teach our children this confidence by example. 

When they see we are willing to go through the fire to stand for righteousness, to stand on the side of the Lord, then they will see we really believe what we ask of them. 

So many will spend hours with their children training them to be skilled golfers, skilled baseball players, skilled pianist, skilled mathematicians, skilled beauty queens and cheerleaders... focusing them on how to get the most out of this earth. How to have more than they had, always more, bigger, better, more success here on earth, but yet they have taught their children nothing of eternal value.

How much are you investing in the eternal soul of the little ones in your life?

Are you training them to please men?

Or are you training them to please God?