Proverbs 29:15
“The rod and rebuke give wisdom,
But a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.”Proverbs 29:17
“Correct your son, and he will give you rest;
Yes, he will give delight to your soul.”
Before becoming the Pastor of Calvary Chapel Vero Beach, I spent eight years teaching in the classroom. The first five years I taught in middle school and the final three in high school. Those years proved to be both a wonderful experience and an excellent training ground for raising my own children. My first year was interesting to say the least. I was 23 years old and newly married. I had little experience dealing with preteens, except for the fact that I had been one. My approach in the classroom could have been called the “whose your buddy” method. I attempted to be the cool teacher, who never gave out detentions, office referrals, or parent contacts. The result was chaos. After a few months, I spoke with an aunt who had been in education for years. When I asked for her secret to order in the classroom, she explained that she did not have disciplinary problems, because she had a standard the students understood and she stuck to. Soon after, I observed another teacher who clearly stated the classroom standards and kept to them. When a student misbehaved, she did not become emotional, losing her cool and raising her voice, she simply pointed out that he was breaking the rules, and disciplined accordingly. Those experiences transformed my ability to instruct the children. Instead of spending all my time, energy, and prayer life, dealing with discipline, I was able to teach.
Solomon points out, this same principle should be applied to the home. We have all seen children misbehaving and parents doing nothing more than warning them to stop. As the child continues, the parent raises the level of his voice, until the parent has completely lost his cool. Soon, he begins to scream at the child, perhaps even grabbing the child forcefully by the arm, to snatch him up and leave without further embarrassment. If we are honest, we have not only seen that parent, but we have been that parent. The secret to successful discipline is having a clear biblical standard for our children. The result will be spending less time agitated and upset, and more time instructing and loving our kids.
Allow me to give a few guidelines. First, our standard is based upon how our Heavenly Father treats us. He is ever merciful and forgiving, and understands we are prone to failure. Never does God condone sin, but He is always ready to lovingly restore us, when we fail. One common failure among parents is, putting standards on children that they themselves could not keep. Second, when we must exercise discipline, this should become a teaching time. Instead of allowing our emotions to take over and reacting in anger or frustration, we want to clearly point out how our child has misbehaved. We must explain what the Bible says about proper behavior, consequences, and forgiveness. This is a critical time to hug and pray with our children. Finally, we must be sure the punishment fits the crime. Are we upset at our child because his behavior was wrong or because it embarrassed us in front of our peers? I have seen parents horrified at their child because they bit another child in Sunday school. While it is wrong to bite other kids, in some cases, the parents were more embarrassed by how that made them look, than at the infraction of their toddler. I have even known parents to stop coming to church because of the embarrassment. Keep in mind, your child’s behavior is not always a representation of your parenting. After all, God’s kids ate the forbidden fruit. Don’t discipline out of embarrassment, but discipline with kindness and affection, for the infraction that has been committed.
Pastor Jim
Old Testament:
Zechariah 13- Stain Removal
Zechariah 14- Ready?
When faced with decisions, it is not uncommon to be counseled to follow your heart. Solomon suggests that doing so is a very bad idea. He calls it folly. I can think of three reasons why it is foolish to follow your heart.
A few years ago, the Frito-Lay Corporation ran an ad for their potato chips with the slogan, “Bet you can’t eat just one.” The concept was simple, their chips were so good, so addicting, that once you tasted one, you would keep eating until the bag was empty. In this verse, Solomon points out, sin is like that. The word he uses for hell is Sheol, and can mean the grave. He is declaring, just as death is never satisfied, so desire for sin will never be satisfied by sinning. Often, when we are facing greater than normal temptation toward sin, we think one more look, touch or taste will satisfy the craving. What we find is, the desire comes back with greater force after it has been fed.
Sometimes, determining what God wants us to do can be quite difficult. We can have opposing principles, which can be found in the pages of the Word, applied to the same situation. That is the case with the advice Solomon is providing here. On the one hand, it is folly to attempt to correct a foolish man. Since his thinking is irrational, it is impossible to rationalize with him. The conversation becomes nothing more than a vain argument. On the other hand, if he is not corrected, he will continue on the same path with no hope of escape. When faced with these encounters, we are forced to make a split second decision, seeking God’s best for the situation. Many times we walk away having a much longer conversation with ourselves than we did with the other person; talking out all the things we should have said. Allow me to give just a few tips.
The Bible speaks of the riches of the grace of God. Grace is a word that refers to God’s giving nature. James 1:17 puts it this way, “Every good and perfect gift comes from the father of lights in whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.” Certainly, life is filled with gifts given from heaven to earth. When we gaze into the face of nature, or a new born child, we cannot help but think of the grace of God. Nevertheless, every other gift pales in comparison to the gift given on the first Christmas morning. God wrapped His Son in human flesh and gave Him to mankind to be Savior and Lord. The young Child who was born in a stable, and laid in a manger, would grow to become what the apostle John called, “the propitiation for our sins, and not ours only but the sins of the whole world” (1John 2:2). As the years went by, He would move from a manger to a cross, where He would die, to pay the debt of sin, and reconcile man to God. As you give and receive gifts this Christmas, it is our prayer you would receive the greatest gift ever given, and put your trust in Christ, as Savior and Lord.
Riches are not evil in themselves. The Bible does not teach that money is the root of all evil, but that “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil” (1Timothy 6:10). Throughout Proverbs, Solomon listed instructions that will increase our chances of being successful. He speaks of honesty, integrity, and diligence, while warning against folly, laziness and getting involved with the wrong people.
Prudent means to be wise or even shrewd. The prudent man is the one who looks carefully down the road he is walking, in order to avoid falling into sin and away from the Lord. The simple, or foolish man, keeps walking, never aware of the danger he is in until after it has overtaken him. Obviously, Solomon is exhorting us of the need to be watchful. The Greeks were expert story tellers. They had established a vast system of gods, heroes, and villains, to help explain the unexplainable, and instruct the generations to come, regarding morality. One of my favorite stories is of a man whose name means forethought, who was given guardianship of a box that contained all the evil of the world. On one occasion, he left the box in the care of of his brother, whose name meant afterthought, and instructed him to not allow his wife, Pandora, to look inside. After his brother departed, Afterthought was influenced by Pandora to open the box, allowing evil to spread throughout the world. It was not until after he had allowed her to open the box, he realized the danger of his decision. There is a modern proverb that declares much the same truth,”fools rush in…”
Sin is a plague that has infected every man. As Paul explained to the Romans, it was by one man (Adam) that sin entered the world, but that sin spread to all men because all have sinned (Romans 5:12). David, looking out at the world, and looking in at his own heart, declared, there were none righteous, not even one (Psalm 53:3). Most of us are familiar with the story of the woman who was caught in an adulterous relationship and brought before Jesus. After hearing the charges brought against her by her accusers, Jesus responded by inviting those in the crowd who were without sin, to throw the first stone. One by one her accusers dropped the rocks and departed, for they were all sinners (John 8:3-4). The truth that we have all sinned, makes Solomon’s question all the more striking. Is it possible for anyone to proclaim that their heart is clean, and they are pure of all sin? Scripture boldly declares that it is.
Jim Gallagher 