Parenting

Those of us who are parents have a very grave responsibility. We have been given charge of young people to feed, teach and protect. There is no job as important as being a parent and we need to treat this task with a lot of thought. We take a lot of time to consider what types of food are best for a growing child, we are very careful that our children do not get themselves into dangerous situations – we would not let a young child play on a busy road. We are equally careful with our child’s education. We want to make sure they have the best start in life that we can give them.

It is strange that while we generally are so careful about how we bring up our children, when it come to spiritual matters we often show less care. The idea of letting children make up their own mind about church matters is an interesting one. We spend a lot of time making decisions for our children for their own good in all sorts of areas, but in the area of their spiritual good often times we don’t make decisions for them.

Proverbs 22: 6 states, “Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.” If we train our child in road safety, why would be not in the ways of God? If we believe we know the way to salvation why would be permit the young and immature mind to make a decision that would lead them to eternal death? We all want the best for our children in this life, surely we also want the best for them in the life to come?

We read in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 11, verses18-21,

“Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. And you shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land of which the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, like the days of the heavens above the earth.”

In this passage we are told to make the words of God a part of everything that we do in life. We teach them to our children in whatever we are doing. Our children need to see just how important God is and they need to be trained in that understanding.

Should we make decisions for young minds concerning worship? Yes, we do in every other life or death situation. In this situation we are of course dealing with eternal life and death, of course we need to direct or children in the way they should go spiritually.