Train Up Your Child

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it (Proverbs 22:6, ESV).

As a father to three girls, this verse weighs heavy on my mind. Meditating on this verse, I have been learning is that it implies four things about my role as a father.

• Train your child. Meaning teach, discipline, or mentor your child. This is a command, train a child. Parents show their love for their children by training them. Parents are expected to provide direction and wisdom to their kids as they grow up.
• It implies that parents know what is to be taught. You can’t train, disciple or mentor someone in an area you don’t know about. Parents are not only expected to train their children, but are expected to be competent enough to do so. We are to train our children. You can’t teach what you don’t know. That’s just common sense. If you are not teaching your kids about Christ and how to live as a Christian then you are teaching them something else. You may not want to be teaching something else. You may not think you are teaching something else, but you are just the same. I once heard someone say, “What you do speaks so loudly that what you say I can’t hear.” Jesus says in Matthew 12:30, Anyone who isn’t helping me opposes me, and anyone who isn’t working with me is actually working against me. At First Presbyterian Church in Maitland, FL where I volunteered while I was in seminary, we actually had parents who literally dropped their kids off on Sunday mornings so their kids could attend Sunday School and then drove down to Bob Evans restaurant for Sunday Brunch! What message do you think their kids were getting? What you do speaks so loudly that what you say I can’t hear.
  

  A friend of mine, Dr. Willson, an optometrist, told me something one day that I found very interesting. He said that he uses none of what he learned in medical school in his practice today. Doctors, thankfully, are required to take a certain amount of continuing education in order to stay certified to practice. You can’t be an effective doctor if you stopped learning about your business 20 years ago.

  In a similar fashion, if you stopped learning about Jesus when you graduated from confirmation class or Sunday School class as a youth, you’re probably not going to be able to effectively disciple and mentor your kids. Your relationship with Christ is just the same as it is with any other relationship. If you stop spending time with a person over a long period of time that relationship is going to have less and less influence on you until it has virtually no influence at all.

• What to teach.
  The way he should go. The NLT says, to choose the right path. That’s a very packed phrase also isn’t it? This implies that they be not only given facts, figures and dates to memorize, but that they be able to know the path when they see it. They need to recognize it, they need to discern the way they should go from the way they should not go. They need to understand why one path is right and another path is wrong. We are to train our children in the way they should go.
• The goal of teaching.
  Even when he is old he will not turn from it. That’s the goal. That’s the reason we are given the command to teach—we want our kids to stay on the right path. And that’s what we all want isn’t it? Is there any parent out there who has made it your goal to have all your kids end up in prison? Of course not! We all want our kids to grow up making good healthy decisions for themselves and their families. Christianity is not a joke. Neither is it a Kiwanis or Rotary club. Jesus Christ is not some fictional person you read about in books like The DaVinci Code!

The message of forgiveness in Jesus Christ is both credibly true and relationally relevant. There is nothing more important for Christian parents to teach than this, and there is nothing more important to learn.