While Your Children Are Young
This quote below is from OldTruth.com--what an important message this is today. I know how often I personally have failed in leading my children toward Christ. I thank God that all of my children are born again but I grieve over the many opportunities I have let slip in leading them to a closer walk with the Savior.
"You also fail yourselves by leaving your children in a state of ignorance, for you heap upon yourselves the consequences of their sins as well as your own. When a child breaks one of God's commandments, it is his sin; but it is also the father's if he never taught the child what the commandment of God was. Wicked children become heavy crosses to their parents. When a father or mother must trace the source of wickedness to his or her neglect in training the child, cross is laid upon cross and the load becomes unbearable. Can there be a greater heartache in this life than to see your own child running full speed towards hell, and know that you were the one who outfitted him for the race? Oh, do your best while they are young and in your constant care, to win them to God and set them on the road to heaven.
Most important, you fail God when you rear an ignorant child. Scripture tells of those who hold the truth in unrighteousness. Among others, this includes parents who lock up the knowledge of salvation from their children. Where is the parent who will rob his own son's house? Yet this is what you do if you neglect his spiritual education. For you keep in your own pocket the gold talent that God intended for you to give your child. If you leave no godly inheritance, what will happen when you die, and the truth of the gospel is buried along side rotting bones?
If you are God's child, then your children stand in closer relationship to the heavenly Father than the children of the unbelievers. God depends on you to nurture them as you have been nurtured, and to protect them at all costs from the devil's education. Training your children up in the ways of the Lord is no casual suggestion. Your refusal to obey, whether the product of deliberation or neglect, will pay you bitter wages when you stand before the King of kings in the judgment."
--William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour, 1665
"You also fail yourselves by leaving your children in a state of ignorance, for you heap upon yourselves the consequences of their sins as well as your own. When a child breaks one of God's commandments, it is his sin; but it is also the father's if he never taught the child what the commandment of God was. Wicked children become heavy crosses to their parents. When a father or mother must trace the source of wickedness to his or her neglect in training the child, cross is laid upon cross and the load becomes unbearable. Can there be a greater heartache in this life than to see your own child running full speed towards hell, and know that you were the one who outfitted him for the race? Oh, do your best while they are young and in your constant care, to win them to God and set them on the road to heaven.
Most important, you fail God when you rear an ignorant child. Scripture tells of those who hold the truth in unrighteousness. Among others, this includes parents who lock up the knowledge of salvation from their children. Where is the parent who will rob his own son's house? Yet this is what you do if you neglect his spiritual education. For you keep in your own pocket the gold talent that God intended for you to give your child. If you leave no godly inheritance, what will happen when you die, and the truth of the gospel is buried along side rotting bones?
If you are God's child, then your children stand in closer relationship to the heavenly Father than the children of the unbelievers. God depends on you to nurture them as you have been nurtured, and to protect them at all costs from the devil's education. Training your children up in the ways of the Lord is no casual suggestion. Your refusal to obey, whether the product of deliberation or neglect, will pay you bitter wages when you stand before the King of kings in the judgment."
--William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour, 1665
posted by kennyo at 10:24 PM
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