Shepherding a Child's Heart

Family Worship
Some parents are persuaded that the family that prays together
stays together, so they determine to have daily Bible reading times.
Each family member must be present. They are conscientious about
the need for daily devotions. But, as valuable as family worship is, it
is no substitute for true spirituality.
I know a family that never missed family worship. They read the
Bible and prayed each day. But in family living and family values
there was no connection between the family worship routine and life.
While family worship is valuable, the family worship of the
family described above reflected a defective spirituality.

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Well Behaved Children
Some succumb to the pressure to raise well behaved kids. We help
them develop poise. We teach them to converse. We want children
who possess social graces. We want them to be able to make guests
comfortable. We want them to be able to respond with grace under
pressure. We know that these skills are necessary to be successful in
our world. It pleases us to see these social graces in our children.
I’m a pastor who has raised three children. I’m certainly not down
on well behaved children. Yet, having well behaved children is not a
worthy goal. It is a great secondary benefit of biblical childrearing,
but an unworthy goal in itself.
You cannot respond to your children to please someone else. The
temptations to do so are numerous. Every parent has faced the
pressure to correct a son or daughter because others deemed it
appropriate. Perhaps you were with a group when Junior did or said
something that you understood and were comfortable with, but that
was unquestionably misread by others in the room. Stabbed by their
daggers of disapproval, you felt the need to correct him for the sake
of others. If you acquiesce, your parenting focus becomes behavior.
This obscures dealing biblically with Junior’s heart. The burning
issue becomes what others think rather than what God thinks. Patient,
godly correction is precluded by the urgent pressure to change
behavior. If your goal is well behaved kids, you are open to hundreds
of temptations to expediency.
What happens to the child who is trained to do all the appropriate
things? When being well-mannered is severed from biblical roots in
servanthood, manners becomes a classy tool of manipulation. Your
children learn how to work others in a subtle but profoundly self-
serving way. Some children become crass manipulators of others and
disdainful of people with less polish. Others, seeing through the sham
and hypocrisy, become brash and crass rejecters of the conventions of

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culture. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, scores of young adults
rejected etiquette in an attempt to be real and unpretending. Either
reaction is a casualty of manners detached from the biblical moorings
of being a servant.