Some of you may not know, but Karen and I had our first child in January. He is a joy to the both of us. This can’t and doesn’t qualify me to speak to you today about raising a family. I have been in the ministry with youth for two decades and have been teaching middle school children for 6 years. This may add some credence to what I have to say. All I ask of you is not to be like John Guzman. On our second to last day of school, the 8^th graders were allowed to visit classes and sit in to talk with the other students who weren’t graduating. In my classes, I don’t allow the students to visit. If you come into my room any day of the year, we are learning something. John popped his head into my room, looked around, and said: “Let’s don’t go in there. They are learning.” Today let’s learn what the Bible tells to us fathers about raising a family for Him.

1.       You must be saved (Trust in the Lord with all your heart)

Before we can expect our children to follow the ways of the Lord , we need to follow Him. This begins with our own salvation. We need to accept Christ as our Savior and follow after Him before we can truly expect our children to. What does becoming a Christian involve?

a.       believing that you have sinned, done wrong

b.       believing that this sin keeps you from being the person God intended and created you to be.

c.        believing that God has done something to change your situation.

d.       believing that Jesus Christ is God and that He died to pay the penalty for your sins.

e.       accepting His payment as your own by praying to Him and accepting the truth of the Gospel.

There is a true story about a man who needed a heart transplant in order for him to live. He felt that it was wrong for anybody to have to die in order for him to live, so he wouldn’t take the transplant. He was 51 years old at the time and had resigned to the fact that people in his family died young from heart disease. His own mother died at 57. Although his daughter kept prodding him to get the transplant, he always refused. And always told her that he thought it was wrong for someone to die so that he could live. This is the way many of us were when we heard the story about Jesus dying so we could live. We refuse to believe that it is an option for us. We believe that we are destined to die and that is the end of the story, after all everybody else dies. So we live thinking that salvation, a real heart transplant, isn’t for us.

That man’s story doesn’t end there, it would be tragic if it did. For years the family and friends and doctors prodded him to get on the waiting list for the heart transplant. He always refused. Then one morning when the daughter wasn’t present the father decided to get the transplant. That afternoon he received the heart he so badly needed. What changed his mind? His daughter was killed in an automobile accident, he received her heart. Each one of us, before we can truly raise our children the way God had created them and intended them to grow, we need to accept His heart transplant of salvation.

Many of us in this room have already accepted God’s salvation, for us we need to daily choose to follow Him by following His Word. When we do this we will not trust nor follow the world’s way of raising a child.

2.       You must not trust the world’s way of doing things (lean not on you own understanding)

Someone once wrote an inventory of what can be done to ensure that your child will not grow up to be the person you want him/her to be. He entitled it: How to Bring Down a Son

1.       Provide him with plenty of free spending money.

This way he thinks money is the answer to all the problems and questions in life. He will spend his life pursuing this and, in the process, leave morals and family far behind.

2.       Permit him to choose his own companions without restraint or direction.

Paul tells us that we shouldn’t be fooled. He says that bad company does corrupts good morals. As parents, we need to guard our children from the corruption this world and the people in it have to offer. This means you have to get to know your children’s friends. My sister does this because she is really concerned for her children. We all need to do this.

3.       Give him a latchkey and allow him to return home at any hour of the night.

This lets him know that you don’t really care too much about him. Where he goes, how long he is there, or when and if he gets back.

4.       Make no inquiry as to where and with whom he spends his leisure hours.

When we don’t talk to our children we lead them to believe that we don’t care about them. When we don’t ask them questions they feel they aren’t accountable to us. Talk to your children, even if they don’t want to answer back. Over time, if you show them that you care enough about them to be rejected when asking a simple question but you continually ask that question, they will return to you for the hard ones. I remember my step father, Joe, before he was my step-father, he was my Sunday School teacher. He would continually asked me to come to church with him, I always said yes. However, after he drove the many miles to our house to pick me up, I would tell him that I didn’t want to go. He did this countless times, because he was persistent even in rejection I stand before you today as a pastor. If you want your children to follow God, talk to them; if you don’t want them to grow up godly, don’t talk with them.

5.       Allow him to believe that manners make a good substitute for morals.

The world today expects manners without morals. They want us to act good and not be good. This is taught in the schools, in business, and sadly in the home. God tells us that our manners come from our morals. To act like we have manners and disregard the morals is to set ourselves up for failure when the times get tough where morals really count. We need to seek inward conformity to God’s Word which will produce actions that are godly.

6.       Let him expect to be paid for every act of helpfulness he offers.

Far to often today, I see it in the school settings, children expect to be rewarded financially or materially for doing what is right. I have students who expect a “treat” every time they turn their homework in on time. Others won’t get good grades unless they are paid to get them.

7.       Let him spend his church-time hours on the street or in bed instead of in church.

When we spend our time at home when we should be at church, our children learn this and model it as-well. If we truly want our children to be brought down in life, don’t let them go to church and don’t let them see you go to church.

8.       Be careful never to let him hear you pray.

Sad truth these days, men think it is a sign of weakness to pray. Our greatest strength as fathers is our prayer life. Don’t neglect it.

The world tells us that the child should be allowed to choose freely what he or she will do and the parent should accept whatever they choose. There is an interesting verse in Proverbs that can be seen two totally different ways: Train up a child in the way he should go and when he gets older he will not depart from it. The normal way to look at this verse is to say that when we train a child in the ways of the Lord, when he gets older he will not leave it. For a moment he might depart from the path of the Lord but in the end, he will return to the training in the Lord that he received as a youth. The other way of looking at this verse is to say: If I train my child in the way that he wants to grow, when he gets older he will stay in that path. If I let the child do what he wants, when he wants, he will remain that way for the rest of his life. We need to train them in the ways of the Lord.

There is another myth out there that tells us we must control all that our children do. This might be true for those that are younger and can’t make wise choices. But at the age of accountability, around 12 in Jewish terms, they should be allowed to do things and have responsibilities. If we have trained them in the ways of the Lord, we can trust them with responsibility and the privileges that go with them. If they have studied and done homework, they should be allowed to have leisure time. If they have fulfilled their responsibilities, we need to allow them the privileges that go with it. As parents we have the responsibility to raise the children to make wise choices and not to control them into doing what we think is right or best.

Another way the world says you should raise your children is to work so hard that you neglect the spiritual and emotional and social development of your children. The logic behind this is natural. I need to make enough money to buy what my child needs to succeed. The problem is we don’t truly understand what a child needs or what we as fathers need. A recent study showed that professionals are saying that their lives are empty. 4,126 male business executives, in 1996, revealed widespread dissatisfaction with the corporate experience. Forty-eight percent of all middle managers said that despite years spent striving to achieve their professional goals, their lives seemed “empty and meaningless.” 68% of senior executives said that they had neglected their family lives to pursue professional goals, and half said they would spend less time working and more time with their wives and children if they could start over again. The question that men are asking today is: “What am I doing all this for?” The answer to that question is found in our family. Socrates once said: “Could I climb the highest place in Athens, I would lift my voice and proclaim: ‘Fellow citizens, why do you turn and scrape every stone to gather wealth, and take so little care of your children, to whom one day you must relinquish it all?’” Most people find out to late that spending time with the family is what is needed the most in our lives. A few years ago Harry Chapin wrote a song called “Cats in the Cradle”. One of the points the song makes is the most important thing we can give our children, and ultimately ourselves, and that is our time. We are finding more and more that it isn’t mere “quality” time that is important it is also the quantity of time.

It is said of James Boswell, the famous writer, that he often referred to a special day in his childhood when his father took him fishing. The day was fixed in his adult mind, and he often reflected upon many of the things his father had taught him in the course of their fishing experience together. After having heard of that particular excursion so often, it occurred to someone much later to check the journal that Boswell’s father kept and determine what had been said about the fishing trip from the parental perspective. Turning to that date, the reader found only one sentence entered: “Gone fishing today with my son — a day wasted.”

Few have ever heard of Boswell’s father; many have heard of Boswell. But in spite of his relative obscurity, he must have managed to set a place in his son’s life which lasted for a lifetime and beyond. On one day alone he inlaid along the grain of his son’s life ideas that would mark him long into his adulthood. What he did, not only touched a boy’s life, but it set in motion certain benefits that would affect the world of classical literature. Too bad that Boswell’s father couldn’t appreciate the significance of a fishing trip and the pacesetting that was going on even while worms were being squeezed on to hooks.

I don’t know about you, but when Joshua is old enough to participate in sports and events at school and church, I will be there to embarrass him (that is a parent’s prerogative isn’t it?). I will be their to help him and teach him the things of life that we all so desperately need as children. We need to be actively involved in our children’s life. As fathers, we should never place money or career over the gift God has given us in our children.

About 15 years ago I was playing volleyball. One of the players whom I never had met before, started a conversation with me. After a few minutes it turned to her college major. She was in her fourth year as a child psychology major. She was a few months away from graduating. She started to ask my opinion on children and to formulate some ideas on children for her research. I started to talk with her. After four hours of talking she stopped and asked me where I received my degree. I told her that I hadn’t. She wondered where I learned so much about child psychology. We were discussing things that her teachers were just starting to discuss and this was her graduating year. I told her the only material I had ever read on child psychology was the Bible. That blew her mind. I hope it makes you think. You want to know how to raise a child and raise him/her well? Base it on this book. This is our third point.

3.       You must follow His Word in Raising your children (acknowledge the Lord in all your ways)

With that in mind, here are ten truths to understand:

1.       Acknowledge that your child is a gift from God (see Ps 127:3, GNB). Children are on loan to us by God and we need to take care of them.

2.       Dedicate your child to the Lord to be used in his service (see 1 Sam. 1:11, RSV). Have a place for him at home and at church to serve God on a weekly, if not daily basis.

3.       Make a personal commitment to God to grow as a Christian parent. The only imitate what we do.

4.       Identify your values and convey these values consistently in your behavior. It isn’t words that will win an argument, it is a life that lives those words.

5.       Express to your children love and acceptance. They need to know that you love them no matter what they do. If they don’t know this, they will never feel comfortable coming to you when they do something wrong.

6.       View discipline as an ongoing process of helping your children ultimately to become self-controlled and self-disciplined. Discipline should be used to teach morality and safety. It should never be done merely to punish.

7.       Pray daily for each member of your family. Pray with them, too.

8.       Maintain family worship and Bible study in your home. A daily Bible study between you and your wife is important. A daily devotion and praise of God is important too. The dinner table is a good way to do this. Don’t eat until you have prayed and praised together.

9.       Involve all family members in church activities. Have something for each person in the family to do at church, no matter how small or how big.

Sociologist and historian Carle Zimmerman, in his 1947 book Family and Civilization, tells of some interesting insights as he compared the disintegration of various cultures with the parallel decline of family life in those cultures. Eight specific patterns of domestic behavior typified the downward spiral of each culture Zimmerman studied.

∙         Marriage loses its sacredness; is frequently broken by divorce.

∙         Traditional meaning of the marriage ceremony is lost.

∙         Feminist movements abound.

∙         Increased public disrespect for parents and authority in general.

∙         Acceleration of juvenile delinquency, promiscuity, and rebellion.

∙         Refusal of people with traditional marriages to accept family responsibilities.

∙         Growing desire for and acceptance of adultery.

∙         Increasing interest in and spread of sexual perversions and sex- related crimes.

We have to keep the family involved in church and with each other.

10.     Participate in events your church will offer to help you grow as a Christian parent. There are times we have Saturday or Sunday seminars on child rearing, attend these.

That same person who wrote an inventory of what can be done to ensure that your child will not grow up to be the person you want him/her to be, also wrote one on How to Bring Up a Son

1.       Make home the brightest and most attractive place on earth. Your children need to see home as the best place they could possibly be.

2.       Make him responsible for the performance of a limited number of daily duties. Have them develop character by taking out the trash, washing the dishes, vacuuming.

3.       Never punish him in anger.

4.       Do not ridicule his conceits, but rather talk frankly on matters in which he is interested.

5.       Let him invite his friends to your home and table.

6.       Be careful to impress upon his mind that making character is more important than making money.

7.       Live uprightly before him at all times; then you will be able to talk to him with power.

8.       Be much in prayer for his spiritual salvation and growth, pray with him daily as well as praying for him in private.

So, what does the Bible say about being a good father, about raising your children in His ways?

a.       teach them Deuteronomy 6.1-9

A recent study of prison inmates in Southern Florida related these startling facts:

99% of prisoners are male.

86% claim to have had no relationship with their father.

Of the thousands studied only 7 of those men are Jewish. Why only seven? I think the answer lies in the traditional manner in which the father is involved with the children in the Jewish home. The more time spent with our children as fathers, the less likely they will stray from our values. This means our values and morals must be godly. You are to know that God is God and to have a passion for Him that will be evident to your children. In your everyday activities they should see that God is real to you and that He is an important part of your life. The English group learned about praising God last week in our service. Fathers, this is an important part of your life that your children need to experience with you, outside of church.

b.       Greatest commandment (Mark 12.28-31).

You need to teach your children about caring for others as much as God cares for you. They need to know and see this in your life. They need to see this great example of God’s love for the people around you as it is manifested in your life. This is next week’s message for the English group.

c.        Great commission (Matthew 28.19-20)

You need to show them how important God is to you by telling others about Jesus as-well. Your children’s faith and maturity will increase as you make the decision to show them that you are fulfilling God’s Word by telling others. This is an important part of your life that they need to see. This is what the English group will learn in a message in July.

d.       Trust the Lord to lead them

After you have done all that you can, after you have accepted Christ as Saviour, after you have forsaken the world’s method of raising children, after you have shown them the importance of God’s Word in your life and for them; then you need to trust the Lord for the results.

I pray the verses we started with make more sense to you and provide you with insights on how to trust the Lord with your family:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,

don’t depend on your own understanding.

Remember the Lord in all that you do

and He will give you success!

Trust the Lord with your family!

©2012 Teach for God Ministries. Used by Permission.

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Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: By David R Williamson. ©2012 Teach for God Ministries. Website: www.teach4god.com