Who is Shaping Our Children?

Teach the Word to the Young

Isaiah the prophet rebuked “the drunkards of Ephraim” (Is.
28:1), who led the nation of Israel. Noting that their love for strong
drink caused them to err in their vision and stumble in judgment, he
mentioned the necessity of teaching God’s Word patiently and simply to
the very young.

He wrote: “Whom will he teach knowledge? And whom will he
make to understand the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just
drawn from the breasts? For precept must be upon precept, precept upon
precept. Line upon line, line upon line. Here a little, there a little”
(Is. 28:9–10).

Wise and righteous leaders can be raised up only through
this type of thorough grounding in God’s unchanging Word. We are not to
neglect to teach our children. 

The seemingly endless repetitions of elementary lessons
lay the foundation for sound doctrine and the fear of the Lord that is
so necessary for successful living. These things combine to form a
spirit in our children that is naturally turned toward spiritual things,
providing for a holy lifestyle and a rich spiritual inheritance.

Some time ago, while in Europe, I attended a baptism
service conducted by a friend for the 19-year-old son of a minister. I
had to wonder, Why had he waited so long?

I learned that the boy’s parents, although they were
ministers of the gospel, had not introduced their son to the scriptural
truths about water baptism until his teens because they felt that “this
decision-making activity should be postponed until the child was much
older.”

He was now 19. His parents and teachers had waited until
this young man had reached a certain level of maturity to introduce some
truths requiring individual decision-making. “In his own time, he would
make his own decisions,” I was told.

This sort of reasoning sounds very noble and
sophisticated, but it is contrary to God’s Word and to common experience
as well. The spirit of a young child is naturally open to spiritual
truths. His or her ability to grasp the things of God has little to do
with stages of intellectual development or with the acquisition of
social maturity.

The enemy wants to steal your righteous seed. Satan will
do all in his power to steal your child’s soul long before he is 18 or
19—the time when we expect him to have come to some developmental age of
accountability. The enemy has no problem advancing his particular
worldviews or “religious” views on our children.

It’s time for us to stop apologizing for our beliefs and
faith in Christ. Either we are right or we are not. It is time for us to
take a stand and raise our children accordingly, without apology. We
need to be alert to the tricks of the enemy.

The Word of God is straightforward and totally clear:
“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will
not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6).

One of the meanings of “train” in the Hebrew is “to touch
the palate.” This word may also be used to describe the technique used
by mothers to train infants to appreciate and swallow solid food.
Furthermore, the concept of “touching the palate” refers to the process
of introducing new types of food to an infant—or “touching his palate”
with what he needs.

Whatever food is first introduced to a baby and given
faithfully to that child will often become that child’s food of choice.
My baby granddaughter has not been fed very sweet foods. She is
comfortable with the taste of vegetables and appears to be nauseated
when fed highly seasoned foods.

Whatever a baby is constantly fed will often become that
child’s favorite food in later years. For example, Italian or Mexican or
Jamaican babies grow to love the foods that are associated with their
culture.

The same principle is true in the spirit realm. Give your
child a diet of spiritual milk in infancy, and you will ensure a
lifelong preference for spiritual food!

Raising Righteous Offspring

God spoke in detail about child-rearing through the
psalmist in Psalm 92:13-15: “Those who are planted in the house of the
Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bear
fruit in old age; they shall be fresh and flourishing, to declare that
the Lord is upright; He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in
Him.”

This means that we are to plant our children in the Word
of God. The problem with many children is that they are not rooted or
planted anywhere.

Children who are planted in the house of the Lord will
“flourish in the courts of God.” As we plant our children in the church
or in a Christian school or in a biblically sound education program,
they will flourish in our nations. When they are old, they will still
show forth fruit—the fruit of the Spirit!

I urge you to plant your children in the house of the Lord
and in the Word of God. If you do this, your children will literally
“declare that the Lord is upright.”

God is looking for living testimonials of His glory and
faithfulness. When our children are planted and rooted in God, they
become living testimonies of His faithfulness in a faithless world.
Their lifestyles reflect a prosperity and favor that is both
supernatural and natural.

Proverbs 24:4 promotes acquiring godly knowledge and
wisdom with an outstanding promise of reward: “By knowledge the rooms
are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.”

Sometimes we selfishly fix our attention and affections on
our efforts to preserve ourselves and our own seed but think little
about being a testimony to God. I pray that our sons and daughters will
rise up to be a testimony—not to any particular ministry or household
but to God’s faithfulness!

God is vitally interested, for His own sake, in raising up
living monuments in this godless world—monuments to His supernatural
ability and to His desire as a heavenly Father to provide for all His
children. His desire should be our desire as well.

Patricia Morgan is an educational psychologist and a
professor at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is the author of  Raising Children of Destiny (Whitaker House). Her
husband, Rev. Peter Morgan, is pastor of the Covenant Churches of
Jamaica. They are the parents of five children. Adapted from The
Battle for the Seed by Patricia Morgan, copyright © 2003. Published
by Whitaker House. Used by permission.