A Promise for Parents

Text: Proverbs 22:6

Perhaps we should begin with a question: "Do you believe the Bible?" If the Bible says whosoever calls on the Lord shall be saved, does it mean maybe, sometimes, or some folks? Are we "usually" or "maybe" forgiven? Of course not! When the Bible says something is a spiritual fact or promise, it is 100% true! You believe that, don't you? Of course you do — yet this verse is hard to take at face value; you've seen too many apparent contradictions of it. Solomon may boast in the teaching of his father (4:1-4) and crown it with our text — "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old he will not depart from it." But it was no so in his own life (1 Kings 11:1, 3-4). So what shall we make of this verse? Its promise is not always true in the same sense that the salvation facts the apostles proclaimed are true. The book of Proverbs is a collection of sayings: proverbs by which a person's life can be rightly directed. These proverbs give us common sense principles for life.

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Train Up a Child

So When we read Proverbs 22:6 and say a child who is trained up in a godly fashion will always return to his roots, no matter how far he roams, it is true as a general rule, but not absolutely and always true, because every child has his own free will. But there is enough promise in this verse to let us know, when we are raising our children, that it is not in vain; enough promise to comfort the faithful and broken heart when the child strays.

Children are the source of great joy: Proverbs 23:24-25; Psalm 127:3-5; Proverbs 17:6. They can also be the source of great sorrow. The same man who spoke of children as a joy, as arrows in a quiver and said, "Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them " — this was David, who also moaned those heartbroken words: "O Absalom, my son, my son. Would to God I had died for you! " His son Solomon would have broken his heart, too, if David had lived to see his idolatry. Rebekah said twice in Genesis that the marriages of Esau were a "grief of mind" and that she was "weary of life" because of him.

The waywardness of children is no respecter of persons. I think of a dear friend in the ministry who had a child on drugs, wandering over the country for years. No parent can point a finger at any other parent, for children are not robots who can be completely controlled, even by a loving Christian parent. And I do not wish to heap a pile of guilt on parents who have done all they could to train up their children right, and still the result has not been anything to write home about. There are no perfect parents, but most Christian parents I know truly desire to impart their faith to their children, and do the best they can.