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Set Up Some Rules
How do we keep from provoking our children to wrath? By setting up some rules and regulations for everyone in the household.

Now for you to have rules and regulations that really work, it's important to remember one point: Don't overdo it.

You can't be setting up four hundred rules and regulations. Children won't remember that many. They might remember two - maybe.

As we study discipline, I want to remind you - and I would keep reiterating it - that children and children and they do childish thing. So we need to allow them to be that way.

If you intend to discipline your kids, make sure you enforce the rules. Don't make a rule if you can't or won't take the time to enforce it.

Don't give idle threats, telling your child, "If you do such-and-such, I'm going to do thus-and-so." Don't make such threats unless you really mean it. You would then be making a mockery out of the whole system, and your kids won't listen to you. That's when they will start talking back.

If I am not going to take the time to enforce a rule, I don't even want to set that rule.

Train Up a Child
A key Scripture right here is Proverbs 22:6, which says:
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
(Pr.22:6)
Notice it says, "Train up a child in the way he should go". This verse in The Amplified Bible reads:
Train up a child in the way he should go[and in keeping with his individual gift or bent], and when he is old he will not depart from it.
(Pr.22:6 AMP)
In other words, train up a child according to his individual bent. That means each child has a gift or bent, a direction in life to be fulfilled.

Be Flexible
Train up a child in the way he should go. The Hebrew word translated "way" in this verse is "derek." Another place this word appears in the Old Testament is in Proverbs 30. This Scripture says:
There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.
(Pr. 30:18-19)
This Scripture is dealing with flexibility. Let's look at the first three areas mentioned here in verse 19:
  1. The way of an eagle in the air.
    An eagle will fly out in the morning looking for food. It isn't like a little sparrow or a hummingbird, which is always fluttering and flapping its wings. When a big gust of wind picks up suddenly, the eagle doesn't panic; it simply keeps its wings spread out.

    Whatever way the wind is blowing, the eagle just rides up over it and comes down on the other side. The eagle is flexible. It may have to turn and make a few adjustments, but it still get where it's going.
  2. The way of a serpent upon a rock.
    When I grew up in East Tennessee, I did a lot of trout fishing and spent plenty of time in the mountain streams. During that time, I saw rabbit trails, deer trails and dog trails, but never a snake trail.

    That's because there is no such thing as a snake trail around those streams.

    I have been standing in the middle of many a stream and looked over toward the bank in time to see a copperhead slide out of its nest and into the water. (That's when I left the water!)

    I have watched those snakes. They come down across the rocks where the waterfalls are located. If there is a dip in those rocks, they go down in it; if there is a jagged edge, they come up over it.

    I never saw one of those snakes get frustrated and say, "Doggone it! There's no rock over here; I have to go down that way!" That snake never griped about the terrain; it just kept rolling along.

    Whether faced with a high rock or a puddle of water, it moved right through it or around it or over it. But it always got where it was going. It was flexible.
  3. The way of a ship in the midst of the sea.
    When a ship leaves England coming to America, the gyroscope is set in the bell of that ship and it knows where it's going. But sometimes there are currents. Sometimes there are twenty- or thirty- foot waves.

    I don't think a sea captain has ever said, "I'm not going over that wave; I'm going right through the middle of it. So that wave had just better get out of my way!"

    A ship will never go through the middle of any wave. It has to ride over it and come down on the other side. It has to be flexible.

    The same is true with parents and how they handle their kids.

    If there is a key word in training your children and making rules and regulations, it is flexibility. You had better be flexible. The moment you get rigid and legalistic is the moment you are going to reap the whirlwind.

    Now I am not talking against having a standard. As I mentioned before, I believe in setting high standards; my children will tell you that.

    But I am also flexible, and here's why: Psalm 127:3 says, "Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward."
Children are a reward from God to us. They are given to us as a reward. It's our job to train them up and give them back to the Lord. He will then use them for His glory.

Source: God Knows How to Raise Your Kids - Even if You Don't by John McGee.
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers.

Author Biography

Joe McGee
Web site: Joe McGee Ministries
 
Joe McGee, author, national conference speaker, father, and former school administrator, is the founder and director of Joe McGee Ministries, Inc. and Faith For Families Ministries.
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