Train Up a Child

Author: Tyler Robbins

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” – Proverbs 22:6

Not having been raised in the church, I never had “devotional time” modeled for me. As a result, it’s taken me awhile to understand ways to lead my children spiritually. I hoped for awhile that our kids would just pick everything up through osmosis and the way we modeled Christian beliefs and actions with our lives. But I felt I needed to be doing more. Eventually, mostly through prompting of my wife, we got to the point where we would read a bible story to our kids at nighttime, talk briefly about it, and pray with our children before hurrying them off to bed. Doing that was a huge step for me, and satisfied my need to feel like I was training our children spiritually.
But awhile back I began thinking about what it really meant to ‘train up’ our children. Like any vocational or other training we receive, to be effective it has to be purposeful, well-planned, and go deep enough for us to retain the information. The best training also has us apply what we’ve learned, and do it ourselves.
So what is my purpose in training my children? I want to give them the best foundation of truth and love of Christ while they are still under my influence. Let’s break that down. What is a foundation of truth? Left to our own devices, the culture will in many ways train us the opposite of God’s truth. For instance, 1 Sam 16:7 tells us that “man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart”. I want my kids to learn not what to think, but how to think in light of the truth in God’s word. That means being able to understand God’s word and apply it to everyday situations. How about love of Christ? While the gospel of salvation itself is incredibly simple, learning to love Christ, submit to His lordship, and allow the Spirit to sanctify us is not so simple. I want my children to understand the characteristics of Christ, and learn that developing these traits in ourselves is a lifelong process.
So I decided that to really train my children in this way meant going deeper than I had been. Instead of spending just a few minutes at night reading a bible story, we would spend an entire month studying a different characteristic of Christ. During the month we will read and discuss several stories or verses in the bible that explore a characteristic like courage, forgiveness, or humility. In order to teach my kids to apply this trait to their culture, I also try to incorporate other mediums like books, songs, movies, and news stories that relate positively or negatively to that characteristic. Not only do the kids enjoy the variety, but it gives us a way to pull God’s truth out of the bible and into our lives.
Finally, a key part of training is having the trainee apply what they’ve learned. God tells us not to just be hearers of the Word, but also doers. So throughout the month we will pray for opportunities to apply what we’re learning, and discuss ways that we can put it into action with friends, neighbors, or other people we meet.
We train our children every day with our actions, good or bad. As Christian parents we have a responsibility to actively train our children in the Lord. I think God wants us to take this responsibility seriously, consider what it means to train our children, and begin the preparation to actively train our children in the Lord every day.