10-08 Gods Requirements to Raise Children

Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth. What God is telling us in this passage of scripture is that we are to raise our children to honor their father and mother. We may even put another spin on this to include all adults, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. etc. We do this so that our children will live long on this earth. I had to think about this part of the scripture for a while. After much research, I find that parents determine the length of time their children live on this earth by how you raise them.

Another statement in verse 3 is that it addresses children directly. For those of you who are listening to this who have teenagers, you need to make sure that they clearly understand that they control their own lifespan by how they treat their parents. Teenagers extend their life or fulfill their life’s plan on earth, as determined by God, based on how they treat their parents. It states that in order for things to go well for you, children in God’s plan, you must treat your parents with honor. Stated another way, teenagers will determine how well their life will go and how long they live based solely on how they treat their parents.

This is a two-way street. Children must obey their parents and respect all adults, but it requires the parents to be the type of parents which children can respect and obey. It is the relationship which provides the framework that identifies the well-being and lifespan of the children here on earth. It is that simple. Both have roles to play, but one has an unwanted desired outcome, the children. But it is the parents who set the stage. From the time in the womb, parents would be speaking to the unborn child and nurturing them from the point of conception.

We think fetuses can’t hear us, but they do. From the time of conception, God’s life blood exists in the womb. You don’t think God is communicating with the unborn child and hearing what you say. If you don’t believe in this, then you absolutely do not need to be having children. This means that, as parents, from the day you conceive, you must be living underneath God’s hierarchical structure. If parents break this hierarchical chain, then you have provided the ability for Satan to enter in and destroy not only the home, the marriage, but will impact your children.

Yes, this will limit not only the well-being of your children but their life. Is that something that, as parents, you want to be responsible for? Children have a spiritual reason for coming into this world. They are not to be brought into this world because two individuals cannot control their sexual appetite. Well, you may say that is what abortion is for. How stupid could one person be to believe this? You go from a sexual experience into murder. That represents a sound person, all right? Parents are to transfer their godly life experiences to the children, creating in the children the lenses which they are to view the worldly activities.

Failure to do that will result in society transferring those lenses which children view the world, and we see what that has become in today’s society. When parents bring children in this world without understanding their god-given responsibility of doing that, then they are basically sentencing their children to a difficult life and shorter than which it could be. Parents cannot give to their children what they have not received through God’s plan for the parents. So parents cannot transfer to the children, as God requires, if they themselves have not received from God what the parents should receive because of living outside God’s structure of authority.

God places the responsibility on the parents, beginning in Ephesians 6 verse 4, NKJV. And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. God places solely on the father the responsibility of raising children, not the mother. This doesn’t leave the mother out of the picture. If we look back to Ephesians 6 verse 1 NKJV, children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. This verse makes the parenting plural, so mothers you have a responsibility as well.

But it is the father that is head of the authority structure of the home, and that is the same in raising children. Right or wrong, participating or not, being a father in the home or leaving the home and child with mother doesn’t matter. It is the father that God holds solely responsible for the raising of the children in accordance with God’s plan. Just as God made woman and gave her to man as his helper, the mother is only responsible in helping raise the children. So mothers, your responsibility is to fill in the gaps when the father cannot be there and assist with parenting activities when the father is there.

Mother, you do have the responsibility, as stated in the previous chapter, in taking care of your husband and the home. This includes duties for the children as well. So let’s break all this down again for us. Satan, from the time in the Garden of Eden, has attacked the hierarchical structure of the home. Why? Because he knows that without that being in place he wins. It is through that structure that all authority structures exist. So Satan uses everything in his power to keep the man out of the picture. He provides lust to get the man to move through sexual activity.

He confuses the man as to what it means to be a father. In some cases, Satan has control over the finances of the family, requiring the father to work multiple jobs, removing him from the home. In other cases, he uses the man to have children outside of marriage, allowing the man to flee his responsibilities, leaving the children with the mother. In all these cases, Satan wants the man to be removed from his responsibilities of raising children, because if the man is not there, then Satan becomes the father. Satan then uses all societal controls to then raise your children how society wants them to be raised.

Exodus 20, verses 5 and 6, NKJV. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments. Fathers, do you get this? God is telling us, men, that if we fail at the fatherhood of our children, not only do we screw up our children, but for three and four generations of our legacy children.

Men, it is our sole responsibility, whether we accept it or not, whether we are there or not, or whether we are there but don’t perform our responsibilities. If we don’t raise our children as God told us, then men, we cause them to not have a happy life and a short-lived life for four generations at least. Wow! Tell this to your sons when they want to sow their oaks too early. This is the reason we have a problem today. The baby boomers were so rebellious that we broke out and did things our way without understanding the effect we were having on generations to come, because we had children and did not accept the fatherhood responsibilities of raising our children.

We are at a time of crisis in our society. For mothers who are in a single home for whatever reason, you are not left without having a father for your children. In our first God is Government series book one, we speak to single women. God tells women in Scripture that when you are single, God is your husband for protection and provisioning. God never leaves this role even when married, but when married he turns the physical husband over to the man in the marriage. If you lose your husband through death, God is still there.

If your husband gets ill and not able to complete his responsibilities, God is still there for that role. If your husband leaves the home, God is still there. So women, you have a father no matter what happens to the father of your children. The problem today is that parents must reassert their responsibility. God gives us four things that parents should do, starting with the father. All four things are contained in Ephesians 6 verse 4, NKJV. And you fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.

One, do not provoke your children to anger. We are to be an encouragement and not a discourager with our children. This does not mean we should not discipline them, but we should do so with respect and love. We should not provoke them to anger based upon what we do or say. God tells us not to provoke them to wrath, anger, turning them into angry people. We find today that most teenagers and young adults are mad at the world. The premise of this is the way parents treated or didn’t treat at all the children, causing them to become angry.

In other words, fathers, do not create the environment you are creating an angry child. Instead, we are to create an environment where you develop an encouraging child. Two, we are to nurture them. The words bring them up means to nurture. Proverbs 22 verse 6 NKJV, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. The word train in Hebrew means to place on the palatable. This is one of those verses. To understand, you need to transition back to Hebrew words.

Take the meaning and then apply the meaning of the words in the time period in which the words were written. Nurturing in this verse applies to feeding the child. Now in ancient Hebrew days, they didn’t have blenders or grinders to break down the food for babies who were coming off of milk and needed to begin to eat solid foods. However, they could not chew food, nor could they swallow hard foods without choking, and their digestive system was not developed to the point of digesting solid foods. So the mother would take small bites of food and chew it, breaking it down to the point of mush, and then take it from her mouth and give it to her children to eat.

This way, they got solid food, learned to chew, were able to swallow, and could digest the food. This process was used to train the children so that when they grew into parents, they would then understand how to feed their babies. So God is telling us that we need to teach our children in the language they can understand, swallow, and digest, regarding the godly ways of life. Now this is how we apply it to men. Men, you are to learn the Word of God, however it works for you, and then you are to break it down over and over in order to teach your children God’s laws on the level they can understand.

3. God tells us to discipline them. Now children, and especially teenagers, don’t like this. As parents, we are commanded to break the child’s will without breaking their spirit in order that they will conform to what you require to teach them. This is a battle of wills, and parents. We need to be right when we do the discipline. If we are not right when we discipline our children, then we go against God’s law. So parents assuming we are right, and they want to go a different direction, then God’s law tells us that their will must be broken without breaking their spirit.

This is the reason scriptures tell us to provide discipline out of love and with love. We are to correct our children while loving them. 4. We cannot discipline out of anger. God states through Scripture that there is a rod of correction. The rod of correction is always for the backside use, not a slap in the face or a fist. Proverbs 10 verse 13 NKJV. Wisdom is found on the lips of him who has understanding, but a rod is for the back of him who is devoid of understanding. Parents, we are not to use any form of physical punishment other than the rod of correction.

When we use any other form of physical punishment, we attack the dignity of the person that leads to breaking of their spirit. Proverbs 13 verse 24 NKJV. He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly. Do you see what God is telling us as parents? If we do use a physical punishment in those cases where it is warranted, we hate our children. For those parents who say I love my children too much to spank them, then look at this passage of Scripture one more time.

God is telling you if you don’t use physical punishment where required, you actually hate them. Instead of doing what we are commanded and not punishing them, then you as parents have allowed them to become what they want to be instead of what God told you to have them become. Proverbs 22 verse 15 NKJV. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. The rod of correction will drive it far from him. This is not talking about child abuse. We are not to use the rod to take out our anger on our children, but for correction purposes only.

Proverbs 29 verse 15 NKJV. The rod and rebuke give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. God goes on to say in Proverbs 29 verse 17 and 18 NKJV. Correct your son and he will give you rest. Yes, he will give delight to your soul. Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint, but happy is he who keeps the law. This really hits home in teenage years. Teenagers are in an in-between state of reality. They want their independence, but have no money. They need dependence on their parents to provide, but only want to do what they want to do.

They feel they are entitled to dependency while acting independent. These are really difficult years for both the parents and the teenagers, but they don’t have to be. If parents raise their children in the early years to understand discipline and respect, and are taught God’s law, the teenage years are not quite so difficult. For teenagers, you need to heed to the first part of the scripture in Ephesians 6 verse 4, where it is said to honour your parents. What does this mean? It means you can be angry, you can be upset, you can be frustrated, and you can want your way.

But unless you have the funds to allow your independence to occur, then you have to not only rely on your parents for support, but you have to respect them. You cannot rebel against your parents. When you disrespect your parents, you fail to honour them. In Deuteronomy 21 verses 18 through 21, NKJV, if a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and who, when they have chastened him, will not heed them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city, to the gate of his city.

And they shall say to the elders of his city, this son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice, he is a glutton and a drunkard. Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death with stones, so you shall put away the evil from among you, and all Israel shall hear and fear. In this passage, God is telling us parents what to do with a rebellious child. This verse is not meant for a young child, but one of age, teenage, and above, because it states he is a glutton and a drunk.

It tells the parent when you have a child acting this way, and you just cannot get them under control, you bring him her to the elders. What is our takeaway from this passage? Yes, times have changed, but the condition has not. In ancient Israel, if a child acted the way they do today, the elders gave them one chance, and if no change, they stone the child. Rebellion then, or now, is not unacceptable. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of God’s requirements to raise children. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world.

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