Preparing Your Kids for the Real World (Part 01) – Child Discipline (Part A)

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I.       The goal of raising your children is to bring them to maturity.

1. Jesus Christ is the standard of maturity (Eph 4:13), so the goal should be to teach them to be like Jesus.
2. There are four areas of development in which your child needs to be proficient to be a godly, decent, and productive Christian and member of society.
3. Parents must strive to guide their children in developing:
4. Physically
5. Spiritually

iii.    Intellectually

1. Socially
2. As a child, Jesus Christ increased in wisdom (intellectually), in stature (physically), in favour with God (spiritually), and in favour with man (socially) (Luk 2:52).
3. Parents must guide and teach their children to grow in each of these areas.
4. The most effective way of teaching your children is by showing them what to do by your example.
5. Let’s consider each of these areas in detail, but before we do, it’s necessary to know how to discipline children.
6. If a child is not properly disciplined, teaching and instruction will be become difficult, and his physical, spiritual, intellectual, and social development will be hindered.

II.    Child discipline: children’s behavior must be controlled before training and education can be effectively imparted.

1.      Why must children be disciplined?

1. Foolishness is bound in their hearts and it must be driven out (Pro 22:15).
2. Notice that foolishness is bound not found in their hearts.
3. Bound – 1. a. Made fast by a tie, confined; fastened down; bandaged: also fig.

iii.    Foolishness – n.1. The quality or condition of being foolish.

1. Foolish – 1. Fool-like, wanting in sense or judgement.
2. Fool – A. n. I. 1.  a. One deficient in judgement or sense, one who acts or behaves stupidly, a silly person, a simpleton. (In Biblical use applied to vicious or impious persons.)  The word has in mod. Eng. a much stronger sense than it had at an earlier period; it has now an implication of insulting contempt which does not in the same degree belong to any of its synonyms, or to the derivative foolish.
3. Foolishness must be driven out; it will not leave naturally.
4. Drive – 1. a. trans. To force (men or animals) to move on before one, or flee away from one, by blows or intimidation; to urge on or impel with violence.
5. A child left to himself brings his mother shame (Pro 29:15).

vii.  The goal is to train them up in the way they should go with the hope that when they grow up they will not depart from it (Pro 22:6).

1. It is a general rule that parents who train their children in the way they should go will see them grow up to be good, wise, and well-behaved adults.
2. There will occasionally be good parents who did a good job training up their children who will see them grow up to become fools.
3. There will also occasionally be bad parents who did a terrible job training their children who will see them grow up to be good people in spite of their poor upbringing.
4. Therefore, parents with either good or bad kids should not automatically take the credit or the blame for it until they have carefully considered whether or not they trained and disciplined their children according to the scriptures.
5. This foolishness in the hearts of children comes as a result of their sinful nature (Eph 2:3).
6. This sinful spiritual nature which is dead in trespasses and sins was passed to them from Adam (Rom 5:12).
7. It is present at:
8. youth (Gen 8:21).
9. birth (Psa 58:3).
10. conception (Psa 51:5).
11. Not only is disciplining children good for the children, it’s good for the parents and others.
12. Children should not be your oppressors (Isa 3:12).
13. If they are, it harms them and you.

iii.    If you correct your children, they will give you rest (Pro 29:17).

1. If you correct your children they will bring you much happiness.
2. “A wise son maketh a glad father…” (Pro 10:1; Pro 15:20)
3. “My son, if thine heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine.” (Pro 23:15).
4. If you don’t correct your children, they will bring you much pain, sorrow, and embarrassment.
5. “…a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.” (Pro 10:1)
6. “…a foolish man despiseth his mother.” (Pro 15:20)
7. “A foolish son is a grief to his father, and bitterness to her that bare him.” (Pro 17:25)
8. “A foolish son is the calamity of his father…” (Pro 19:13)
9. “He that wasteth his father, and chaseth away his mother, is a son that causeth shame, and bringeth reproach.” (Pro 19:26)
10. “Whoso keepeth the law is a wise son: but he that is a companion of riotous men shameth his father.” (Pro 28:7)
11. Having children is no reason to have constant chaos and pandemonium at home and in public.
12. If parents properly discipline their children, they will be a joy for both parents and visitors to be around.
13. I have had the pleasure to be in homes where the children were properly disciplined, and as a result they were quiet, polite, and not distracting or aggravating.
14. It therefore can be done. It is just a matter of ensuring that your will, not your children’s, is done.