The Children for Christ by Andrew Murray

‘must’ of God’s will. The fear of grieving the Father, the desire of
pleasing Him, the assurance of His strength to aid our weakness — such
thoughts awaken and fortify the energies of the soul. The will wakes up,
and nothing is so invigorating as the hearty effort to obey. It is because
the Christian parent too little realizes, and is too little taught by the
Church, that ruling his home well is a simple matter of duty, a
command that must be obeyed, that so many children are ruined by
parental weakness. Not to restrain the child is to dishonor God by
honoring the child more than God, because the duty God has imposed
is made to give way to the child’s will.
Closely connected with this is the good-natured weakness, misnamed
kindness, which cannot bear ever to reprove, to thwart, or to punish a
child. It is nothing but a form of sloth: it cannot take the trouble to rule
and guide its feelings by God’s Word; it refuses the pain which
punishing causes the parent. Alas! it knows not how it chooses the
greater pain of seeing the child grow up unrestrained. No grace of the
Christian life is obtained without sacrifice; this very high grace of
influencing and forming other souls for God needs special selfsacrifice.
Like every difficult work, it needs purpose, attention, and
perseverance.
But the chief cause of parental weakness will be found deeper still —
the want of a life of true devotion to God Himself. God is the great
Ruler and Educator; the powers that be, the parents’ powers, too, are
ordained of God; he who does not live under command to God in his
own life has not the secret of authority and command over others. It is
the fear of God that is the beginning of wisdom, of wisdom for the
work of ruling too; it is the failure in personal godliness that is the root
of parental failure.
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