Charles Pogue
When you have raised your children, and you are knocking on the door of old age (or, like I have, already placed one foot through the door), you cannot but help observe how well or poorly you did at raising your offspring. Sometimes, as adults, they do things that force you to ask, “Did I not bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as I should have?” (Eph. 6:4). Or did I train them properly, but as adults, they (of their own choosing) are on the
road of departing from that training?
If you are a parent with young children, let me please encourage you to never depart from the ways of the Lord, even for a short season. If you do, you will lose valuable time in teaching your children correctly, which may be a factorin the future when they begin to do things that grieve you. You, as an aging parent, will witness this behavior and say, “Where did that come from?”
You may believe you did all that you could to raise those children correctly, but when they (as adults) commence doing things that indicate they are embracing things that liberals in the church have done for years, you will have second thoughts. If upon further observation you realize you have failed to some extent, there will be a heavy burden of guilt that will weigh upon your mind every day. How sad it is when you realize the child you love so much, who once could be counted among those who are sound in the faith, has all of a sudden been engaging in, even promoting, the new innovations of man that the faithful have been warning against for decades.
Perhaps you journey back in your mind and come away with the belief that you imparted to the child all they needed to know to always be counted among those who contend for the faith and combat against changes for the Lord’s blood-bought body. However, upon closer look you realize there is one thing you neglected to do. You failed to warn them of the company they keep. Beware if you never told them, “Do not be persuaded by modern-day methods
which originate in the mind of man and lead to alienation from the grace of God.’
Sadly, when it is too late, you have to admit to them, “I did not arm you sufficiently with the knowledge of how to recognize the fox in the hen house, and now you are not only guarding the brood, you are abandoning the brood and joining the skulk.”
Be certain of this: At the point when you attempt to make the child see the corrections they need to make, there will be, via the avenue of the highway of excuses, an attempt to justify the unjustifiable. Your instruction that is too late will fall on deaf ears. It becomes even more difficult when you look back on your own life and realize there were some companions you had who were only just commencing on the road to apostasy, and you never realized it until it was too late. You look back on the first thing that individual or group did that causes you to wish you had never been involved with them at all, and now your child is following their lead,
doing that very same thing. That too is a heavy burden to bear.
There are occasions, and they are not rare, when parents bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, but they gallop away from the faith on their own. That is bad enough, but when the child ventures away because you know you failed at some point, that is even worse.
Hearken, ye parents of young children, do all you can, and when they are grown, pray that you did all you could to get them started the right way and to stay on the right path.
