Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Wisdom from Proverbs”
Our Bible verse for today: “A wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish son, heartache to his mother … The son who gathers during summer is prudent; the son who sleeps during harvest is disgraceful.” Proverbs 10:1; 5 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “Wise children are a blessing to their parents; rebellious children grieve their parents.”
Rebellious children often grow to be rebellious teenagers who then become adults whose lives are a train wreck. Inappropriate conduct in childhood, if not corrected, can become a pattern of behavior that escalates in severity as the person ages. We all know parents who have gone through years and years of struggles with a child and now as an adult, the person is addicted to drugs, or going through their third divorce, or in prison, or worse.
What’s a parent to do? First, parents have a responsibility before God to raise their children in a Christian home according to Biblical principles. That includes more than just lecturing them; it must involve more than just teaching them; even more than just sending them to church. It has got to involve the parent modeling a Christ-like life. We must first be the kind of person we want our children to be.
But then we must remember that every person is a free moral agent. Each person has been endowed by God with a free will and therefore that person will make their own choices. The older the individual gets, the more the free will becomes an issue. We cannot live someone else’s life for them and we cannot make their choices for them.
That then leads to the final point I want to offer here this morning and it is that if you have a strong willed child / teenager / adult in your life with a pattern of unacceptable conduct, you have to be willing to allow them to suffer the consequences of their choices. That’s the only way they will learn and grow and ultimately make better choices. If you intervene to minimize or eliminate the consequences for them, they have no incentive to correct their behavior. You must use tough love and let them experience the consequences of their choices.
But do it without giving up on them. Don’t enable them in their bad behavior, but also don’t cut them off and cast them out of your life either. Make sure there is always a door open for restoration to occur when the inappropriate behavior stops. The story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32 is the best Biblical example of this.
Wise and obedient children (of all ages) are indeed a great blessing. Rebellious children (of all ages) are a cause for worry and grief. Praise God for all of them, do your best as a parent, and then entrust them all to the Lord.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 