Dr. DeHaan is founder-director of the internationally known ”Radio Bible Class,” Grand Rapids, Michigan. His Spirit-filled messages of Bible truth have been greatly blessed of the Lord to the salvation of many precious souls.
in your life, and seek to imitate you. Do not expect your child to act any differently than they see you act. If you go to church, you can expect your child to follow. If you pray, you will soon find that little one imitating your prayers. What a pity that many children grow up in pro fessing Christian homes, who have never heard father or mother utter an audible prayer for them. They never find their parents reading or studying the Bible and set ting up a family altar. Folks will send their children to Sunday school while they stay at home to read the funnies, and then expect such conduct will go unpunished. The responsibility in the training of a child lies at the home. Yet parents leave the secular training of their children to the school teach er, the spiritual education to the church and Sunday school; whereas the first duty of a parent is to assume these as a personal parental responsibility. You have no right to expect your child to rise above your own level, for your example determines the pattern of his life. Discipline The third element in education is DISCIPLINE. That word has lost much of its meaning in these days of modem pedagogy when the injunction “ Spare the rod and spoil the child” is no longer believed. Yet there can be no education without this element of discipline. Dis cipline may be defined as “ that method of instruction in education whereby we seek to make the doing of right a pleasant task, and the doing of wrong an unpleasant one.” Whether this involves the use of the literal “hickory stick” or some other less drastic method, the purpose and result are the same. By discipline we make the doing of that which is wrong a very unpleasant thing, because the wrong act is followed by some long-remembered bad effect. Punishing a child for wrong causes the child to associate wrong with punishment, and therefore that child will deter in repeating the wrong because of its effects. This is the negative side of discipline. There is also the positive side that of making the accomplishing of a good deed, a PLEASANT experience. Rewarding a child for obedience makes that act an experience always .to be remembered with pleasant thoughts and strengthens the desire to do good because the good yields rewards and profit. On the other hand, disobedient acts are followed by ill effects and therefore shunned. To allow a child to do wrong without the proper discipline is to encourage, aid and abet in wrongdoing, instead of inhibiting, dis couraging and counteracting the wrong. Here then we have three elements included in the term, TRAIN. “ Train up a child,” says Solomon under inspiration of God by instruction, by example, and by dis cipline. Neglect of these three elements during the early formative years spent in the home before its outside schooling begins, can never be undone by subsequent training. There is no greater, lasting, indelible influence
in the life of a child than the influence of the home the first few years of life. May I bear testimony to the power of a mother’s prayer and the example of childhood days. It was many years after I left the parental roof before I came to the knowledge of salvation by faith in Christ. But during all those year of wandering I never got beyond the reach of mother’s prayers and never beyond the power of early training in my life. When at last I found the Lord Jesus, it was largely because I was never able to get away from the training of those early years. Again and again when Satan tempted me and sin allured me, there rose up be fore me the vision of a little woman in a checkered apron kneeling at that bed in the humble home in Western Michigan, and I heard her earnest pleading with God for the salvation of her children as she called them all by name, one by one and claimed them all for Christ. The memory of my name in mother’s prayer had more to do with my salvation, next to God Himself, than any other thing in the world. ‘Twas in the days of long ago when life was gay and bright, And ne’er a tear and scarce a fear o’ercast my day or night, That often in the eventide I found her kneeling there, And just one word—my name— I heard, my name in mother’s prayer. I thought but little of it then, though reverence touched my heart For her whose love sought from above for me the better part; Until the sterner battles came with many a subtle snare, ‘Twas just one word—my name— I heard, my name in mother’s prayer. I wandered on and heeded not God’s oft repeated call To turn from sin to live for Him and give to Him my all; Until at last of sin convinced I sank in deep despair, And hope awoke when memory spoke my name in mother’s prayer. That pleading heart, that soul so tried, has gone into her rest, But still with me for aye shall be the memory of her trust; And when I cross the swelling tide and meet her over there, We’ll praise the Lord who blessed that word—my name in mother’s prayer. END
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THE KIN G 'S BUSINESS
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