Walking with the Wise #284: Parental Responsibility

“It is painful to be the parent of a fool;


there is no joy for the father of a rebel."
—Proverbs 17:21 (NLT)

Parenting is hard. There is no manual that takes in all of the different aspects of parenting. As some parents have lamented over the years, by the time you actually figure out parenting, it’s over!

The Bible teaches us that we are to teach our children about God, His Word, and what it means to follow Him. It was part of the rallying cry of Israel’s identity, as it says in Deuteronomy 6:4-9:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

God desires that we love Him with every fiber of our being, and that we make a concerted effort for that love to overflow from us and pour out on the next generation. We are to teach our children about God, who He is and what He has done. We are to live by example, making sure that He is the Lord over the various parts of our life and that we are the same wherever we go—home and work. We are to teach our children about God when they wake up and when they go to bed, when we travel, go to work and come home.

We have the general promise in Scripture that if we prayerfully and faithfully raise our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, they will not depart from it. As the Proverb says,

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it”—Proverbs 22:6.

It’s a general promise, not a guarantee. We must remember: God is the only perfect parent and yet we rebel against Him. I’ve met some parents who were told that if they adopted a certain form of schooling, or if they kept their children from certain practices or things that their children would definitely become Christians. They did exactly what they were told, but saw their children turn away from Jesus and were left wondering, “What went wrong? I did exactly what I was told.”

We are not told that our children are guaranteed to follow Jesus, as if there were some magic formula that, if done properly, would ensure that our children would be saved. No, that is not what the text says. The text says that we are to train them up in the way they “should” go. If we lay that foundation, modeling and teaching it to them, showing that we are prayerfully dependent upon the Lord, they will be drawn to Christ and then surrender themselves to Him in lifelong discipleship.

Our responsibility is to teach, model, and pray—offering discipline and correction when they are young, and suggestions and continued prayerful modeling when they are older. We only have them in our homes for a very short time, and while they are there we are to make every effort to teach them about Jesus. If we don’t, if we fail to model or teach, then they are in danger of growing up to be fools, making us look like failures and possibly causing us a great deal of pain or harm.

How is your parenting? Are you a parent right now of young children? Then begin laying the foundation necessary to grow your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Are you a parent of grown children who have turned away from God? Continue to beseech the throne of grace daily for their souls. Pour out your heart to the Lord and ask Him to work in their life. And faithfully continue to model a Christ-centered life before them. Give them to God; He is the only one who can change and transform their soul. You can’t do it. Only He can, so let us continually give them over to Him. Amen.