Train Up a Child: Part 3

Why is child training important?

This is part 3 of a series of posts.  Part 1 can be found here.  

When your child is learning to ride a bike, where do you start?  With a two wheeler?  No...usually, you begin with a trike of some sort.  Then, they may move up to a big wheel or a bigger trike.  From there, they might move up to a two wheeler with training wheels.  When the training wheels are removed, you'll hold onto them as they ride the two wheeler, helping them keep from falling.  Eventually, you'll let go and they will take off down the sidewalk.  They'll probably fall along the way somewhere and skin their knee and when they do, you're right there next to them.

But what if you skipped the earlier steps?  

If I had gotten my three year old a full-sized bike for her third birthday, she would have been equally excited.  She'd have wanted to climb right on and go for a ride.  If I had put her on and given her a little push, she'd have fallen over and gotten very hurt.  If she lived to be eight or nine, she might learn to ride that bike on her own, but without the proper training, there would be a lot more pain and danger for her along the way.

The same is true in all other kinds of training.  If you let a baby just crawl around with no diaper, and gave them no direction, they'd proceed to make a mess all over you and the house.  Eventually, they may learn to go in the toilet, but not before there were accidents everywhere.

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There are some things that come naturally to a child.  Rolling over, crawling, pulling up, walking, and talking are all things that they'll pick up on their own.  Other things don't come naturally.  Romans 3:10 tells us, There is none righteous, no, not one.  1 Corinthians 2:14 says, But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishnes unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.  Sin comes naturally to us.  Obedience does not.  Sin separates us from God and will separate our children from Him also when they reach the age of accountability.  We are responsible for training them up so that when they reach that age, they're ready to obey and follow Him.

This is easy to read over and even think about, and still not realize how important it is to train our children.  It all goes back to the scripture in yesterday's post about the rod.  Let's look at the rod as training.  Whether you are sitting down with the rod of scripture, speaking the truth to your child or using the rod of correction and spanking your child, we can all agree that the rod is a tool of training.  So why is training so important?

Proverbs 13:24  He that spareth the rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.  

Proverbs 22:15  Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.  

This one is the most clear to me and drives home the importance of child training and why it MUST NOT be neglected.  

Proverbs 23:13-14  Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.  Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.  

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Friends, can you see the importance of this?  Neglecting child training is dangerous to our children!  Our children, if they continue in their fleshly desires, doing as they please and not submitting to the will of God (which they learn by submitting to the will of God-fearing parents) are on the path to hell.  Please, do not neglect the training of your children.

Since this series isn't really discussing methods of training, I want to open the comments up for that.  Please be respectful and kind to one another.  Views on this subject vary greatly.  So my question is, how do you train your children?  What methods do you find to be most effective?  

Please join me tomorrow for the final portion of this series.  "Why does Proverbs 22:6 sometimes fail?"

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