The Children for Christ by Andrew Murray

in the Church, the training of their children is robbed of its power and
its promised blessing. We are to seek for causes of failure in the home
rule.
The first answer may be suggested to us by the words of Paul, as he
argues from failure at home to failure in the Church. We may go a step
backward and argue from failure in the family to failure in the person;
the wrong in the home reveals something wrong in its head. We have
more than once seen that the secret of home rule is self-rule, first being
ourselves what we want our children to be. The wonderful power of the
will with which man has been endowed was meant to make him in the
first place his own master. And yet how many Christian parents there
are to whom real self-control in daily life is quite foreign! It is not the
thought of God's will, nor the rule of their own will, that guides and
decides their conduct, but in conversation and action, in likes and
dislikes, they are led away by the feelings of the moment. Because they
trust that they are God's children, and that Christ's blood pardons their
sins, and that their prayers will be heard, they hope for the salvation of
their children. And yet their education is setting up the most effectual
barrier against God's grace. Pleasing themselves, allowing their
inclination or temper to be the rule of language and conduct, they give
the most effectual contradiction to their profession of being the
servants of God's will. "Would that all Christian parents might learn
the lesson that a quiet self-recollection and self-control, that a calm
stillness of soul that seeks to be guided by God's Spirit, is one of the
first conditions of success in our own spiritual life, and so in the sacred
influence we wish to exert on our children. 'In quietness and confidence
shall be your strength;' nowhere will the unconscious but strong
influence of this restfulness be felt so soon as in family life.
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