WHEN OUR BOYS WERE AT HOME
by Mrs. Vance H. Webster
“You must be very happy that both your sons are in Christian service. What could you tell other parents about bringing up children to love and serve the Lord?” We have been asked this question many times as Christian parents. We have no simple answer or pat formula. Nor can we claim any special cre dit for the sons that God has given us. We cer tainly were not alone in their up-bringing for the Lord Himself was our great Counselor and Guide. We have experienced that where Christ is the Head of the home and the center of its life, He gives guidance in all the details of raising a family. My husband and I were married a year before he left the engineering profession to enter sem inary and the ministry. I had always said as a girl that I would never marry a preacher or a doctor — and I didn’t! My husband was still a metallur gical engineer at the time we married. Neverthe less, during our courtship days as we talked and planned together as Christian young people, I real ized that I might one day become a pastor’s wife —and I did! During high school and college days the Lord had often spoken to my husband-to-be about Christian service, but because he had seen
so many young men enter the ministry and then leave it, he wanted to be certain of the call of God. When at last he was led to leave his profes sion as a metallurgist to enter theological semin ary, he knew that was the place God wanted him to be. I have thoroughly enjoyed being a pastor’s wife and now would rather be in the Lord’s work than anywhere else. Our first son was born while we were in sem inary and the second some three years later during our first regular pastorate. From the beginning, we tried to give our children the kind of Chris tian foundation on which they could build later, a foundation which no amount of education or oth er training would shake. The Bible counsels par ents to “Train up a child in the way he should g o : and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). Many parents make the mistake of waiting too long to begin their children’s spiri tual training, or of sending them to church and Sunday School when they ought to take them. There is no substitute for early biblical training and the constant example of a consistent Christian home. “ Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it” (Psalm 127:1).
OCTOBER, 1966
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