UNDERSTANDING CHILDREN
“The righteousness of thy testimonies is everlasting: give me understanding, and I shall live.” (Psalm 119:144)
Before you can raise wonderful children, you have to understand who children are. You cannot manipulate anything you don’t understand
1. They are humans like you. Our children are also human beings composed of the body, soul and the spirit. The body is the physical aspect of your child with which the child eats and moves about on the surface of the earth. With the body, man relates with people around him and his environment. He can taste, touch, smell, see and hear only through the body. With the spirit, the man can relate with God because the spirit is the seat of intuitive power and conscience.
The soul of man has three components with different functions; the mind, the will, the emotion. With the mind he thinks, with the will, he chooses, and with the emotions, he feels.
How they feel will affect how they think which will go ahead to affect what they do. That is why you need to guard against things that will wrongly affect their feelings. Of course, you know that what we touch, read, hear, watch, eat or drink will influence how we feel.
You can only do your family a lot of favour if you protect them from wrong association, wrong television programme, books, music, food and drinks. This will protect the feelings of your children and make it easy for them to accept Christ once they are introduced to God. It will develop their mind in the path of righteousness.
The will of man is what man utilizes in making decisions. Take over the will and ability of your children to choose through prayer. Break the will to choose errors or the will to follow the path of unrighteousness, then ask God to give them the will to make Him their choice and follow Him to the end.
Until the Holy Ghost is in charge of their wills, they will not serve God. You have to nail their will to the cross of Christ and leave it there. Please take this serious because all your parenting efforts will be futile unless you have been able to deal with the will of your children. Destroy their will to sin, drink alcohol, smoke, use drugs, fornicate, tell lies, join bad gangs, follow vain people, turn against God and follow the path of majority to sin.
(Psalm 1:1-6)
2. They are the heritage of the Lord and His reward– You need to handle them carefully because they belong to God, you will give account.
They have fertile minds. Little children have fertile minds that can accept any seed either good or bad; don’t leave them empty. You must sow seeds in their hearts. If you do not succeed here, the devil and the world will sow their own seeds and the result will be disastrous. Sow the seed of the word of God in their hearts, teach them the word, take them to church, let them listen to Christian messages, watch gospel music on television, take them to retreats, seminars and other Christian programmes, through this, you can build them for God.
Culled from my Book ” PARENTING WITHOUT TEARS” available on konga
Our Parenting Pack also available
