Truths From Proverbs - Training Your Children

With Father's Day coming up this weekend, I thought I would share a few posts regarding parenting, especially for us Fathers!!! God has given my wife and I six wonderful children, but even after 23 years of parenting, there is still much more I need to learn. Listed below are some important truths which I have taken the responsibility to teach our children:

1. I must teach my children to put God first - Prov. 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
2. I must teach my children to submit to my authority plus others who are in authority - Prov. 1:8-9 My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck.
3. I must teach my children to separate from evil companions - Prov. 1:15-16 My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path: For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood.
4. I must teach my children to put God's Word first - Prov. 2:1-5 My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee; So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.
5. I must teach my children to receive God's free salvation - Prov. 3:5-6 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.
6. I must teach my children to love and serve the Lord Jesus Christ - Prov. 8:32-36 Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are they that keep my ways. Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the LORD. But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death.
7. I must teach my children to flee immorality - Prov. 5:1-5 My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding: That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge. For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a twoedged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.

These truths from Proverbs involves the following activities:

1. Staying away from every source of temptation - Prov. 5:7-8 Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth. Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house:
2. Remembering that sin will ruin your life - Prov. 5:11-14 And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me! I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.
3. Waiting for the right husband or wife - Prov. 5:15-18 Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well. Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets. Let them be only thine own, and not strangers' with thee. Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
4. Staying away from the flirty, worldly female - her seductive speech, her immodest dress and the suggestive way she carries herself, and her flirting eyes - Prov. 6:24-26 To keep thee from the evil woman, from the flattery of the tongue of a strange woman. Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take thee with her eyelids. For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread: and the adulteress will hunt for the precious life.
5. Staying away from promiscuous males - Prov. 30:19 The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.
6. Remembering that God hates and judges sin - Prov. 9:17-18 Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell.

Psalm 127:3 Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.