The infants of today are the young men and women of tomorrow, leaving home to enter adult life with the equipment largely provided by parents.
You, fathers and mothers—what have they seen in your house? Have you prepared them to face life, or have you robbed them of important things that they should have seen and experienced?
Has your example been one from which they can profit? Have your concerns been centered on time or on eternity? On material or on spiritual values?
Have your children been conditioned to consider making a living, being a “success” in life, of primary importance, or do the kingdom of God and his righteousness come first?
Have they learned the social graces at the expense of spiritual truth? Have they developed built-in safe guards to purity, or are their standards those of the world?
The children of today are the leaders of tomorrow. Character developed in the home can be the safeguard of tomorrow. The compromise of parents can become the weakness of their children. The flaws of training develop into the follies of mature life.
Only God can give the wisdom, firmness, and love that must characterize the Christian home. And this responsibility cannot be shifted to other shoulders. Teachers in church and school play an important role, but what they give must be supplemental to what children receive at home, not the sole source of training.
Basic to child training are the disciplines that center in God and his Word. “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child,” we are told in the Book of Proverbs; we also know this by experience. Christian parents must exercise the wisdom of reproof, of restraint as well as of guidance, if their children are to learn the lesson of true discipline.
What do your children see in your home? Is yours a home where prayer is given its rightful place? Do your children see you turning often to God, praying for guidance and help? Do they sense that divine power is available to those who look to God for specific needs? Do you pray with and for the little ones God has given you? Do your children know that God is near and that he can be talked to as a loving Heavenly Father? Is prayer incidental, reserved for emergencies, or a way of life in your home?
What place has the Bible in your own daily living, and in the training of your children? Is it a pious ornament on your table, or the Book of reference and inspiration to which you turn daily?
No child has been properly trained until he knows that the Bible is God’s Word and that it speaks to the deepest needs of the human heart. What attitude toward the Scriptures are your children learning from you? Do you have a family altar, a place to which the whole family turns for prayer, praise, and the hearing of God’s truth each day?
Again we ask: What have they seen in your house? What have your children experienced at your hand? Have they had the blessing of discipline? Have they learned that you can say “yes” in love and “no” with equal love? Have they learned the meaning of honoring their parents?
What place has the church in your family life? Is it incidental or vital?
Is the cause of world missions kept before the boys and girls under your roof? Do they sense the prime importance of world evangelism, of the needs of those who do not know Christ?
Do the disasters, sorrows, and privations of others bring tangible reactions from your home? Do your children know the joy of helping others?
What have they seen in your house? What have they heard in your house? Bickering and strife? Conversations taken up with trivialities? The standards of Hollywood and its latest productions or the standards of Christ?
Is there a spirit critical of neighbors, pastor, or friends? What is the overall impression—of love or of carping criticism?
Do your children see compromise with wrong? Do they sense that your words and actions do not jibe, that there is some basic compromise with sin?
This is written primarily to you parents because your responsibilities are great, the privileges and opportunities of molding young lives for eternity.
Moses expressed this responsibility of passing on a godly heritage: “And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou risest up” (Deut. 6:7).
Such responsibilities carry over from one generation to another. Parents bear a priestly relationship to their children. Like Job of old they must pray for those whom God has given them. Like Joshua they must make the decision, “As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Jos. 24:15).
Your children will only too soon pass out into the world. With them will go the impressions and training of youth. They will go either equipped for life or unprepared to meet the temptations and buffetings that are inevitable. Their future is being determined today.
What are they seeing in your house?
