OPEN HEAVENS DEVOTIONAL - SUNDAY - 2/2/2014 - TRAIN UP YOUR CHILD I- BY PASTOR E.A. ADEBOYE

TRAIN UP YOUR CHILD I

MEMORISE

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6

READ

Psalm 127:3-5

Psalm 127:3 Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.

Psalm 127:4 As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.

Psalm 127:5 Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.

MESSAGE

One major undoing of modern civilized society is an abounding generation of untrained children. This trend did not just start, but has been on for some time now. The result is that many untrained children of few years back have become parents themselves. It is the multiplier effect of their lack of proper home training that is now being experienced in the society. Home training is a moral training by which such virtues as honesty, diligence, respect for elders and also some abilities cum skills - such as care of the body, cooking etc are inculcated into children. You will observe that the children of these days have no respect for older ones except in some few cases where parents are not too busy to give attention to the training of their children.

The Bible clearly shows that some children have cut their lives short for being rude to people who are old enough to be their parents (2 Kings 2:23-24), hence time and energy must be invested by parents into their children to forestall such. What about the area of marriage? Some ladies have everything going fine for them but have failed in the area of marriage. They are beautiful, highly educated and have good jobs, but they lack some basic housekeeping and home making skills like preparing good food. Such demeanor have pushed their husbands into the hands of other women who can do better, thus they lose marital joy and peace which often results into a total collapse of the marriage. In many cases, the wedding day was full of all pomp and pageantry, the officiating pastor would have preached from his heart a message such as: “Keys to a Happy Home”, he also would have prayed his heart out at the occasion. But all these ought to be on the foundation that should have been laid a long time earlier. Psalm 11:3 chiefly sums up such cases.

Rather than orientating their children into godliness through godly conversation at home as Deuteronomy 11:18-19 commands, some Christians only engage themselves with worldly counsels and jokes. Our memory verse says train up your child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it. God knows better than we do. He did not say wait until these children become old, but rather from their infancy we need to begin to train them up in the godly way so that their tomorrow would be bright. God says in Deuteronomy 11:19 & 21 that what you teach your children when you’re with them at home will determine how God will respond to them.

PRAYER POINT

Pray that the eyes of parents will be open to see the evil of not training their children and that God will touch the heart of our youths to live godly lives.