Teach your children Christian Bible lessons, while they are still young. If the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, band, football, tennis, soccer, basketball, or other sports seem to be more important to your children than any other thing, then you are really missing the mark. Keep them off drugs, alcohol, and pornography, by having regular Christian prayer meetings with your own family in your own house, as well as attending church and church activities like; Sunday School, Worship Service, Training Union,Wednesday night prayer meeting, and Royal Ambassadors on Thursday nights. The important lessons taught by the church will stay with them throughout their entire lives, but all those extracurricular activities will not. Those other things will just fade away, becoming simply fond memories but not so important in later years. Make your children Holy and acceptable to God and in His remembrance for all eternity, always studying the word of God.
One of the best ways to imprint really special regular meetings with your own children is to light a candle and put it in the middle of the room, when you are having a home Bible study. After studying passages of the Bible, having discussion, and talking about the lessons of Jesus Christ, pass around to each participant in a prayer time to share and voice aloud his thanksgiving and supplication. A good acronym for having prayer is ACTS: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. Jesus talks about the parable of the sower in the book of Mark, and ends by talking about how a candle is made to be put on a candle stick, and not to be hid under a bed or under a bushel. Don't hide the words of Jesus Christ from your children but teach them with conviction and remembrance.
“And he said unto them, Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, or under a bed? and not to be set on a candlestick?”
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Mark-4-21/
“For thou wilt light my candle: the LORD my God will enlighten my darkness.”
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Psalms-18-28/
“If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light.”
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Luke-11-36/
If you are having alcoholic beverages in your home in front of the children or in public at restaurants or social meetings, you're really not such a terrific parent. Don't smoke or use tobacco products. You are putting the welfare of your children at risk later on in life or even in the immediate future, by not being a good example, not letting them know that alcohol and tobacco are extremely habit forming and addictive. Don't pass it off as just having a social drink that is only once a month or once a year. Be responsible parents and don't drink and don't smoke. It is very cruel not giving your children the strength by example to resist vehemently all the temptations in life. Teach them all the great moral lessons of the Bible, so that they will be able to fight against the extreme abominations that exist in the world. At least give them the time to study the words of Jesus Christ and know with a surety that there is always a higher power to help them with resisting against evil temptations. No, none of us are perfect and we mess up all the time, but at least let them get in touch with the Son of God, who will never leave them and will never show any weakness of the flesh. If you fail to live up to the standards that you try to set, have the Bible study anyway. God always is willing to help you to correct your soul compass and straighten out your direction in life. A sailboat or ship needs to have a compass. Out on the open ocean, there are no landmarks, no boundaries that a sailor can see in order to follow some coastline when crossing the wide open deep blue. That's why they rely on a sextant to adjust their direction of travel across the ocean by the stars or the sun and by using a compass. Jesus Christ and his words of the New Testament are the soul compass of a Christian. You always know the direction of your soul travel by keeping his words in your heart.
July 19, 2019
Cliff Rhodes Christian Ministry