OPEN HEAVENS DAILY DEVOTIONAL. MONDAY, 3RD FEBRUARY, 2014 THEME. 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 3 Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. 4 As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. 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 demeanour 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. THEME. TRAIN UP YOUR CHILD II MEMORISE: Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying. Proverbs 19:18 READ: 2 Timothy 3:14-15 14 But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; 15 And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. MESSAGE These days, even the children of pastors are not exempted from the degeneration prevalent among youths. You are expected to train up your children on the word of God. Some pastors could say one thing in church and another thing at home, hence the children become confused, leading to their rebellion against God. Children, if your parents are pushing you aright, glory be to God. If they are not, you can chart a course in life that goes through God’s principles. My own mother did her best on me. She pushed me; thank God I allowed her to push me. You must be hard working if you are not banking on bribing your way through life. Bribing your way through can only take you some distance. There is one thing that takes one to the top in life – hard work. God is not going to promote lazy fellows. “There is no royal road to success” they say. The elders will tell you princes have become slaves before. Parents, some of your children spend too much time watching TV and playing video games. Life is no bed of roses; there is a lot of struggle going on in the world. Only the hardworking will reach the top, so sit up and work hard. Some Christians are believing God for breakthroughs, but let me tell you the truth; there is no breakthrough for a lazy man, because God knows if the breakthrough comes by laziness, the breakthrough would slip out of his hand. Children, be aware that you must obtain blessings from your parents. Honour your father and mother so that they may bless you. I have said it over and over again that I am where I am today by the grace of God and by the blessings my mother pronounced on me. One blessing she used to pronounce then which I did not understand was: “Son, because you have done this, you would call one person but two hundred will answer.” Today, by the grace of God, if I call one pastor and I do not mention any name, more than two hundred would respond. Finally, one cannot be in sin and expect to be a star for God. How can one in sin rise in God; how can God promote such? The Bible says we cannot continue in sin and expect grace to abound. Parents, if you are not ready to be a star for yourself, for the sake of your children, please surrender your life completely to Jesus so that the future of your children will be secure in glory. Do this, if you truly love them. PRAYER POINT: Pray for children of ministers of God that they would be true to the God of their parents and that they will be shining stars in this generation.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 07:21:45 +0000
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