When your little baby begins to eat solid food (anywhere from six months to a year), do you begin with steak and broccoli? No, you start very slowly by finely mashing up such foods as ripe banana, ripe pear, or avocado, etc. As they get used these palatable foods, you introduce vegetables. Once again, you mash them up finely so they do not choke.
God wants to feed our children’s souls and spirits the same way. Ephesians 6:4 says: “Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”
I love the words “bring them up.” Notice it doesn’t say, “Pull them down,” but “bring them up.” The Greek word is “ektrefo.” “Trepho” means “to fatten, to cherish (with food), pamper, feed, nourish.” This is what we do with our darling little ones. We want to fatten them up, don’t we? We love our fat babies with their chubby cheeks, thighs, and legs? It’s the one time in their life when we can ooh and asah over their fatness!
However, our children are more than bodies. They are souls and spirits. This Scripture tells us how we are to fatten up their inner man, “in the nurture and admonition OF THE LORD.” The highest education we give our children is the Lord’s training. We fatten them up on Christ. We nourish and nurture their souls and spirits with His life-giving Word.
We don’t choke them with these commandments. We mash them up finely. When we have Family Devotions each day with our children, we give them what is needful for them. We give them enough to satisfy them for one meal, “precept upon precept; line upon line” (Isaiah 28:10). They don’t need it all at once because we’ll give them at least two “inner man” meals a day, every day until they leave home..
If you have little ones around your table as you read God’s Word, ask simple questions to make sure they understand. They don’t have to understand everything. That will take a lifetime. But mash up one little morsel for them to get into their soul. Some families have older children, middling, and little ones. Be aware of their needs. Mash up a little morsel for the little ones and ask some “T-bone steak” questions to the older ones.
Above all, remember your source of education is “of the Lord” and His Word. This is your parenting lifestyle (Deuteronomy 6:6-9). Everything else is secondary.
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
www.aboverubies.org
Photo by Peter Mahar Photography. Taken from Doorposts.