In the Bible, Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.”   What training are we providing? Is it high quality?  Is it truth?  Is it true to the way society works?  Is it true to higher morals and higher principles than the relativism that rules our world today?   

Why do our students flock to up-and-coming artists like Alecia Moore (Pink)?  Because today’s pop culture artists are singing about their lives.  They are singing about what it feels like to grow up in a post 9/11 society.   They are singing about what its like to have grown up responsible for feeding your siblings and getting them off to school because dad is no-where to be found, and mom is passed out drunk 4 days a week.  This is what our children know.  This is what their friends know.  They have never known a governmental office without corruption.  They have never known TV’s without remotes.  They have never known what its like to live in a Brady or a Cleaver home.  We can’t change that.  What we can do is give our kids what it is that they are really looking for in this mixed up, upside down world: love, assurance, encouragement, a safe place to come home to, direction, and guidance when its solicited or desperately needed. 

We must pick our battles carefully.  Criticizing personal preferences like hair color, piercing or the way they wear their pants are far less important, a waste of our time, and often counter productive when much larger, more self destructive issues are at hand like drinking, smoking, cutting, promiscuous sex, and doing drugs.  We don’t want to alienate our kids by nailing them on the incidentals.  We need to love our kids and try to coach them in the way they should go on the big things first. 

While they are younger, we can do a lot of training, discipline, and keep them under more restrictive guidelines.  This is training the children.   As they grow older and become teenagers, our roles tend to change from authoritarians with absolute power to control their lives to more of a coach who refers back to the training they received growing up and who continues to remind and encourage them in the way they should go. 

Lastly, lets continue to pray for our children, that God will guide them, that he will protect them, and that he will make Himself known to them in powerful ways throughout their daily lives.  Don’t give up.  Success in life comes not from holding a good hand, but from playing a difficult hand well.  Pray for wisdom and guidance that you play your cards well with your children, and then look and listen for the answers from above.