Disciplining Your Children

This fourth message regarding children is on their need for chastisement due to foolishness. Loving discipline assumes a healthy relationship between parents and their children, and it has two parts: First, DEDICATE your children to God - this involves consistent training where the parents act as guardians, because the children are gullible. To "train up" is to devote them to God by guiding them toward righteousness - by example, by prayer, by words and by limitations. This process will include truth (the way they should go), time (a twenty-year process) and trust (developing lifelong character). Second, DISCIPLINE your children because of foolishness, not childishness. Foolishness is stupidity in action - a recalcitrant (obstinately defiant) attitude that restrains (binds up) the child. It resides in the soul (heart) of the child, and only a staff (rod) can truly separate it (remove it far away) from the foolish child.