Raising our Children Right!

Once we figure there is a right way to raise children, we ask, "How do we do this?"

Paul J. Bucknell

In this article we will focus on preparing our children for marriage. This is difficult because anyone who has his or her sights on marriage are often carried away in romanicism. They believe their future mate will solve all of their problems! They are in for a surprise. The opposite is true.

Our marriage mate tends to bring the worse out of us!

So what are we going to do to help our children to prepare for marriage? Some individuals are thinking about what they themselves can do. This is great. Hopefully this article will give you some fuel for your thoughts, but we first must look at this from the parents' point of view. The parents for good or bad shape their children's view of the world. We all, then, have been shaped. Many hidden thoughts stored deep in our childhood experiences have become the foundation of what is our present perspective.

We can't cure these in an instant, but we can try to show you the biblical perspective. As much as you agree or disagree will show how much your perpsective is on or off. One might claim our perspective is bias, and indeed we agree it is also tainted. We have shaved off many a thick slice of these wrong concepts ourselves. You can read more about our testimony. We will endeavor to place the scriptures right next to our statements to help you understand not only the importance of what is said but also its implications (they get down to the inner battle).

We hope not to argue with you but for you to wrestle with the scriptures like we have.

The woman preparing to be a wife.

Devotions

A woman is waiting for the right man to give him her heart.

10 Listen, O daughter, give attention and incline your ear; Forget your people and your father's house;
11 Then the King will desire your beauty; Because He is your Lord, bow down to Him.
12 And the daughter of Tyre will come with a gift; The rich among the people will entreat your favor.
(Psalms 45:10-12, NASB).


The woman needs to give only her bridegroom all of her heart. But what about a man. What needs to shape his own heart and devotion? His heart is to focus on his home, his wife and children. His work is to serve his family interests. (???)

The man preparing to be a husband.

Men often sense the greater the man, the more the independence. They to to taverns, trips, etc. Activity replaces quality.

What quality is required of man to his wife and family? If a wife is to give him her heart, what is a man to give?

He is to take responsibility to love and care for them. He will sense that he needs God's help to rightly care for what God has encharged to him so he will regularly pray. From prayer, he will find different ways to use God's extra wisdom and grace to bless the people.

The leaders of the church follow a similar pattern. When the leaders see they are responsible to train godly people eager to do God's will. Many pastors/elders just try to keep them happy and coming. They do not sense the responsibility to train. Perhaps to inform, but little are they making significant changes. The reason is that they can pretty manage things themselves. They don't have a God-sized vision that challenges them beyond their capabilities. If they succeed, they get prideful. If not, the feel like failures.

Summary observation:
The way that we care for our mates has a lot to do with our commitment to our charge. The attitude of a husband toward his wife and his wife toward him are crucial in the way they carry out their parental responsibilities. We see this in I Timothy when an elder must have good care for his family. In the end, we can just judge this by the way his wife and family relate to him.

The man must overcome his selfish tendencies in order to become the servant leader of the home. Without such leadership, his care for his wife will not be loving. She will feel insecure and try, often unconsciously, to make up for this insecure feeling by reaching out to others.

The woman preparing to be a mother.

The man preparing to be a father.

Summary

A wife will give her heart, a man must maintain her trust.

Testimony

We all walk a certain trail through the maze of life. I am humbled at both my inadequate fathering as well as pastoring. I realized my commitment in prayer for both my children and the congregation paralleled each other. The more I could understand that I had a responsibility to the shaping of my children, the more I could see the way I needed to shape those in the church.