the duties of parents: #4

We have been discussing J.C. Ryle's little book, The Duties of Parents.  Today we're looking at duty #4:

Train with this thought continually before your eyes -- that the soul of your child is the first thing to be considered.

I think nothing can make such a big difference in our parenting than keeping this in mind. Luke 6:45 says "The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks." Our children's actions and everything that comes out of their mouths shows us what is in their hearts. We want to focus our parenting on leading these little hearts toward Jesus rather than simply controlling our children's outward behavior. 

Ryle writes:

Soul love is the soul of all love.  To pet and pamper and indulge your child, as if this world was all he had to look to, and this life the only season for happiness -- to do this is not true love, but cruelty.  It is treating him like ... [he] has but one world to look to, and nothing after death.  It is hiding from him that grand truth, which he ought to be made to learn from his very infancy -- that the chief end of his life is the salvation of his soul.

A true Christian must be no slave to fashion if he would train his child for heaven. He must not be content to do things merely because they are the custom of the world; to teach them and instruct them in certain ways, merely because it is usual; to allow them to read books of questionable sort, merely because everybody else reads them; to let them form habits of the day. He must train with an eye to his children's souls ... The time is short, the fashion of this world passeth away.  He that has trained his children for heaven, rather than for earth, for God, rather than for man -- he is the parent that will be called wise at last.

Here are three Bible verses that I like to keep in mind to give me courage and fortitude regarding this particular parental duty, even when I feel like (as our Joann mentioned in a comment earlier) that I'm swimming upstream:

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. (Proverbs 4:23)

Good sense is a fountain of life to him who has it, but the instruction of fools is folly. (Proverbs 16:22)

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. (Isaiah 40:8)

Next Wednesday we'll look at parental duty #5. :)