For this week's family article, we return to our friend Tim Challies who provides an excellent challenge to nurture our children.
Nurture Your Children
There are few roles in which we feel deeper inadequacy than our role as fathers. What suits us to the task of raising little people? What assurance can we have that we are doing it well? What will our children someday say of us? These are big and perplexing questions, so it is little wonder that church bulletin boards are covered with posters for parenting seminars and library shelves are groaning under the weight of parenting books. One study found that in the past 10 years alone, publishers have released more than 75 thousand books on the subject. Parenting is tough, and none of us is fully up to the challenge.
Considering the importance and difficulty of the task, we may find it surprising how little direct guidance the New Testament offers us. Its clearest instruction is found in Ephesians 6:4: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” The parallel passage in Colossians 3:21 adds just one minor detail: “Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.” While we’re grateful for this divine guidance, we are probably left wishing there was more of it. Couldn’t God have answered a few more of our questions? What about spanking versus timeouts? What about homeschooling versus Christian or public schooling? What about the age to buy a child her first iPhone or the right way to oversee her selection of a spouse? Couldn’t we have just a little bit more detail?
Yet as we carefully and prayerfully consider what God has given us, we see his wisdom. He may not have given us all we want, but he has lovingly provided all we need to be successful fathers. Before the Bible tells us how to parent, it first makes sure we understand why we parent. Once we understand the ultimate goal of parenting, then we see how these two short passages provide a wealth of insight on how to raise our children in godliness. If you are going to be a wise father, you must consider this: To run to win, you need to nurture your children.
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