“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” – Proverbs 22:6
In Genesis when God created man and woman, He gave them something that separated humanity from any other creation; the ability to choose. We as humans have the freedom to choose to live for God and worship Him, or to reject Him and live for ourselves. This free will is a seeming paradox when looking at the sovereignty of God. His omniscience, omnipresence, and absolute power tend to make us think that He is in COMPLETE control of everything; and He could be, but God has chosen to let us make some decisions for ourselves. Even after we choose Him, we are faced with following His direction or striking off on our own.
There are many examples in the Bible of God’s sovereign will being rejected by humanity’s choice. God’s will was for the first generation of Israelites that were delivered out of Egypt to possess the Promised Land. Hebrews 3:19 reads, “So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.” Notice it wasn’t because God didn’t want them too. In fact, the two that did believe and were ready to take the land the first time, Joshua and Caleb, outlived the first generation and entered with the second generation. In another example, God had declared that the city of Nineveh was to be destroyed. However, Jonah 3:10 reads, “Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.” God is all-powerful, but in His sovereignty He has chosen to leave many things up to us. “Let go and let God” sounds super spiritual, but sometimes we need to seek His face and make some decisions.
So what does this have to do with the scripture above and the title of this article? I’m so happy you asked.
Just because we give our kids a good foundation and have taught them well does not mean they won’t wander for a while. I can speak from personal experience on this. My parents raised me in church. My teething ring was the back of the pew in front of me. I went to church camp every summer and was baptized at age 8. I was singing specials in service and occasionally leading praise and worship as a teenager. My mother was (and is) a prayer warrior that anointed my sister and I in prayer every day. And guess what? I wandered. I wandered a lot! I spent sixteen or seventeen years out of church and running from God. I did my own thing. I lived life. If you want to put it in biblical terms, I took a journey into a far country, and wasted my substance with riotous living. I was living in sin and was pretty happy to continue doing just that.
Were my parents to blame? Did they miss something in my upbringing that would have helped me avoid all of this? I can almost guarantee that they felt that way. I know because as my wife and I are raising adolescents and grown children, we constantly deal with that battle in our minds. When we see them stepping out of God’s will and out of God’s plan for their life, we feel responsible. Therefore, I’m pretty sure my parents felt the same. Our key scripture above seems to leave the impression that if we’re doing our job as parents, this wouldn’t happen. I constantly see family members or friends in our local church who are being tormented by feelings of inadequacy as parents. They are watching their kids stray further and further from God’s truth, and they feel responsible.
It isn’t true. These are lies sent from the enemy of our souls to get us into condemnation and guilt. The scripture above is not a guarantee that our kids won’t stray; but a promise, if we’ll hold on and believe it, that our kids will return to what they have been taught! I am the object lesson in this. I wandered pretty far from God, but in the back of my mind I always knew where I would end up. My mother’s prayers were not falling on deaf ears. God honors the promises in His word, but it doesn’t always happen when we think it should. God’s voice was muted for me for many years, but it was always a fishhook in the back of my brain that would never totally go away. I was raised well. I was taught to value the things of God. I was a human with the free will to walk away, but because of the prayers of loving parents, I came back.
Proverbs 22:6 is a great promise, but it’s not an assurance of lifelong commitment that never waivers. If that were the case, our kids wouldn’t really have free will. Our will would be imposed upon them and the freedom that God intends for each of us would have no value for them. They may stray. They may break our hearts sometimes. We will, at times, have to watch their actions produce necessary and inevitable consequences. However, if we will believe in God’s promises and by faith speak those promises over our children, we will see the completion of His plan. My favorite verse in the entire Bible, Philippians 1:6 reads, “Being Confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” Don’t lose hope! Don’t stop believing! God is mighty and He will accomplish what He sets out to do!