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Raising Clean Kids In A Dirty World

Last Sunday evening I was able to speak to parents who had children in the music presentation briefly about the challenge to raise “clean kids in a dirty world.” The writer in Proverbs said, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” We have to remember that no matter what is going on in the world someone is going to help your kids establish their values. So the question is, if not you, then who?

Read further if you would like to learn more about the challenge and find out five suggestions I made to parents.

Did you know the average kid on America watches television more than 1,000 hours a year? Actually that is very conservative at about twenty hours a week. By the time they leave home they will have watched 18,000 hours of television. If they live to be 65 they will have spent nine years of their lives in front of the television.

Take it further, let’s say you have a good home and take your kids to S.S. every Sunday and they keep going every Sunday until 65, they will have spent four months in Bible study. What’s the difference, nine years or four months? Which likely had more influence?

We live in a world where policemen, fireman, teachers and lots of others who serve our lives and protect our families are underpaid while sports heroes and entertainment figures are rewarded with money and fame almost without regards to any kind of values or behavior standards.

So what does a parent do in helping their children fine the right path in life? Let me offer five suggestions. There are no magic answers, just principles. These won’t work unless we work them.

First, remember your child is a gift from God. If you want to survive parenthood remember that your child or children are worth the struggle and are a gift from God even if they sometimes act like the devil. Also don’t forget, one day all parents will give an account of their efforts to the Lord.

Second, give your child unconditional love. Deal with your child as God, your heavenly father, deals with you, that is with patience, grace and unconditional love. Never allow your child to think that your love is conditional to his behavior.

Third, establish clear boundaries. What do you do when you are in parking lot, crossing the street or taking your child to the zoo? You make sure they know the lanes to walk in which are safe. You are not nagging but rather teaching them about freedom. You are taking raw potential in your hands and in 18 or 20 years handing that boy or girl to someone else and to society to make or break other people’s lives. Ultimately, they answer to God for that life.

Fourth, practice consistent discipline. If anyone tells you this is easy or they always succeed, question their truthfulness. Keep in mind there is a difference between punishment and discipline. Punishment is to inflict a penalty and is sometimes appropriate. Children need to learn there is a penalty for doing something wrong as long as the punishment is appropriate to the age and event. Discipline is the other side of the coin. Discipline builds you up to face life. It is intended to promote growth. Every parent needs to know the difference in paying a price and promoting growth through wise decisions. Punishment focuses on the past. Discipline focuses on the future. Discipline is about love. It encourages security. It is positive.

Someone said, “The time to start correcting the children is before they start correcting you.”

Finally, create a thirst for the right things. Children learn from what they see. The best parenting is modeling, teaching, and encouraging. We have to remember that no toy every loves a child. No game is going to answer to God for his or her welfare.

Sometime that verse in Proverbs is taken as a guarantee that if we are good parents we will always produce good children. That is not what this verse says. So what does it say?

A paraphrase might read something like this, “Adapt the training of your child so that it is in keeping with his God-given characteristics and tendencies; when he comes to maturity, he will not depart from the training he has received.”

Every child has natural bents, both good and bad, these are the basic tendencies unique to this child. You might be surprised to learn that the root word of “train up” in the Hebrew is a word used to describe the palate or the roof of the mouth. It was used to describe the actions of a Hebrew mid-wife who after helping to deliver a baby would dip her finger in a paste made of dates and rub it on the gums of the new baby to create thirst and start the baby’s feeding instinct. When you “train up” a child, you are creating a hunger and thirst for the right things in life.

What you are doing as parents is not unlike launching a rocket based on a trajectory. Once the motors are fired up you can’t take it back. You have to trust the trajectory chosen and the internal power. Your job is to do the best you can setting a good course in life and fuel it with love.

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FOCUSED

One of the casualties of aging to which I find myself a victim is the dimming of the eyes.  Ecclesiastes 12 counsels the young person to remember God, their Creator, in their youth before the aging process takes over and various faculties, as listed in verses 1-7, are diminished.

Clear eyesight when we are young may be something we take for granted. However, as we age the realization that our vision is not as sharp as it once was takes hold. “Readers” become standard fare for all intricate tasks. Our once keen laser sharp focus is now blurry and in need of help to restore its youthfulness. That restoration is found through glasses or some sort of rejuvenating surgery. Especially in the early stages of this degenerative eye problem we may be able to fake it and get by, but eventually we must relent and do something to correct the problem.

There is a parallel between physical and spiritual vision. “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” was written in the early 20th century. The hymn writer, Helen Lemmel, was strongly influenced by the artist and later little-known missionary, Lilias Trotter. Miss Trotter started off as an aspiring artist but early on felt a call from God to reach the lost. She began her ministry by rescuing prostitutes from the streets of London. Later she went to Africa, without missionary funding, and served for over forty years. While there she penned a poem that would greatly influence the writing of the hymn “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.”  The poem was entitled “Focused: A Story and Song.” 

The poem centers around focusing one’s attentions fully and completely upon God. She writes that Satan knows that if a person uses all their powers of concentration on being led by God’s Spirit, they will have a great intensity and impact upon those to whom they are called to minister. Lilias Trotter, writing in a more formal use of the English language than we are accustomed, shares some timeless insights which could very easily have been written today but with a different accent. She writes: “Never has it been so easy to live in half a dozen good harmless worlds at once—art, music, social science, games, motoring, the following of some profession, and so on. And between them we run the risk of drifting about, the ‘good’ hiding the ‘best’ even more effectually than it could be hidden downright frivolity with its smothered heartache at its own emptiness.”

The “good” hiding the “best” leads us to emptiness.  Could this be true of us today especially as American Christians? Have we sought the “good” while missing the “best”? The chorus of the hymn, which we will be singing in worship this Sunday, says it best.

                Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face,                                                                                                                                        And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

Keith Pate

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