| “If you know these things, happy are ye if ye do them” (John 13:17).
Remember, that the greatest danger to your child is not the evil outside them; it’s the sin inside them that is the greatest of all threats to their well-being. We have noticed that much of parenting today, especially in the church community, centers around a perimeter of human wisdom. Rigidity along with ritual brings about a conformity that does not help conform that child to the image of Christ. In the end that child runs and we wonder what happened to that training? The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus would not have been necessary if all we needed were a bunch of rules, ingenuity, and insight. Jesus came to solve the dilemma of sin. It is only through Him that a parent can supervise a child in the way he or she should go. We are losing children to this culture because many kids are conformed to a parent’s wishes instead of the power of God. Some parents don’t seem to care, while others who are in the minority do, but both sets of parenting will fall short of the glory of God when the functionality of doing is used more than receiving the mystery life-giving breath of God. The most dangerous thing in a young person’s life is his blindness to the depth of his own spiritual need. Only the Spirit of God can open the eyes of that child, and it is only the Spirit of God who will lead the dad and mom to an open field of parenting in freedom.
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