The Right Path

Direct your children onto the right path,

and when they are older, they will not leave it. Proverbs 22:6

THIS IS ONE OF THOSE PROVERBS we want to read as a promise. We would like to be able to be sure that if we steer our children onto the right path —meaning the path that leads to life in Christ —then they will never leave that course, even when they leave our home. But this isn’t just a promise. Like many other proverbs, it is an adage that points us toward a general principle. It is what ordinarily happens, but it isn’t what always happens. Parents who are passionately dedicated to Christ frequently raise children who are passionately dedicated to Christ. But this proverb provides no guarantee that the faithful efforts of godly parents will always produce godly children.

It’s not that there is no correlation between the way we bring up our children and what becomes of them. The Bible charges us to bring up our children “with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). We have influence, but we don’t have control. We simply don’t have the power to bring about our child’s repentance and faith. That is a burden we were never meant to bear, a burden only our heavenly Father is able to bear.

When we recognize that this is a proverb and not a promise, we can stop judging other parents whose kids seem to be straying from the path of Christ. And we can come out from underneath our own self-condemnation when our kids seem to be resisting our direction toward the right path. We can talk back to the voices inside our heads that tell us that if we had just tried harder, communicated more clearly, been more consistent, gotten our child to church more often, homeschooled, Christian schooled, public schooled, then certainly things would be different. We can rest in the sovereignty of God, casting all of our cares about the path our child is taking on the Lord, knowing he cares for us and our child.

Lord, if it is all up to me to make sure that ________ is heading on the right path toward you, then the burden is more than I can bear. So while I want to walk in wisdom, pointing and leading and prodding ________ in your direction, you must call, you must convince, you must capture ________’s heart.