Reflecting on the decisions we have already made today; we realize that each one in some way has impacted our family unit as a whole and thus the individual members. These decisions may be minor and in the moment; or long thought-out about our children’s care, their training or education. We err if “my convenience” is the ultimate goal.
I have heard many parents say “I can’t” do that for my child, when in reality it is best said “I won’t” do that for my child. Parenting is not convenient. I would also go as far as saying being inconvenienced is the best investment we can make to demonstrate our love and devotion to our family. It is required of us to “invest” ourselves in our children. Their good or best must be our goal.
Lamentations 3:27 (NLT): And it is good for people to submit at an early age to the yoke of his discipline. The context of this verse speaks to young people learning of the Lord and His instruction and discipline at an early age. As parents, we are instructed in God’s Word to tell, teach, and train our children in the Lord. The world says we parents are too busy to teach them of the Lord, and we can wait until our children can decide on their own about their faith. An article in the Washington Times titled “Pagan: American Culture Loses Shared Faith Values” addressed the realization that a generation of families have left God and His Word out of their lives totally. “They have no knowledge, no practice, no anything,” writes the Rev. Stephen Koeth. “It’s not that they’re antagonistic to religion. Some of them are, but often times it just has no meaning to them.”
If we are not impacting our children with Godly instruction, then we leave them to a world’s influence that has constant access to them through media and the internet. We have somehow raised a generation who supports socialism even though it can never work for the overall good. We must be honest as parents and invest all that we have in shaping our children with a Christian worldview. We owe it to them to help them not be embarrassed or vulnerable by what they are not told, to have a constant diet on God’s instructions, and equip them to choose to live according to God’s Word.
“But how can they call on Him to save them unless they believe in Him? And how can they believe in Him if they have never heard about Him? And how can they hear about Him unless someone tells them? And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent? That is why the Scriptures say, ‘How beautiful are the feet of messengers who bring good news!’ But not everyone welcomes the Good News, for Isaiah the prophet said, ‘LORD, who has believed our message?’ So faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing the Good News about Christ.”
Romans 10:14-17 (NLT)
