Friday: Further Thought ~ Season of Parenting
Further Study: “You should take time to talk and pray with your little ones, and you should allow nothing to interrupt that season of communion with God and with your children. You can say to your visitors, ‘God has given me a work to do, and I have no time for gossiping’. You should feel that you have a work to do for time and for eternity. You owe your first duty to your children”. – Ellen G. White, The Adventist Home, pages 266, 267.
Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com
“Parents, you should commence your first lesson of discipline when your children are babes in your arms. Teach them to yield their will to yours. This can be done by bearing an even hand, and manifesting firmness. Parents should have perfect control over their own spirits, and with mildness and yet firmness bend the will of the child until it shall expect nothing else but to yield to their wishes. Parents do not commence in season. The first manifestation of temper is not subdued, and the children grow stubborn, which increases with their growth and strengthens with their strength”. – Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 1, p. 218.
Discussion Questions:
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Deuteronomy:21.18
"Suppose someone has a son who is stubborn and rebellious, a son who will not obey his parents, even though they punish him.
Deuteronomy:21.19
His parents are to take him before the leaders of the town where he lives and make him stand trial.
Deuteronomy:21.20
They are to say to them, 'Our son is stubborn and rebellious and refuses to obey us; he wastes money and is a drunkard.'
Deuteronomy:21.21
Then the men of the city are to stone him to death, and so you will get rid of this evil. Everyone in Israel will hear what has happened and be afraid.
The above words are strong!
I think it is fair to say that there are very few records of rebellious children being stoned by their parents on Bible. Aaron’s sons and Eli’s sones we’re punished for their rebellion but it must be remembered they were grown men making their own decisions.
The New Testament gives a new perspective on such draconian punishments in the story of the woman caught in adultery:
“Let him that is without sin cast the first stone.”
That does not absolve us from tough love, but remains a challenge for those of us who are parents of children who rebel.
This shows the penalty of sin which is death. We deserve to die for the sins that we have committed for "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord"
Please look this up in the original Hebrew and it reads very differently. What is sin? Ignoring the voice of the Almighty, the law, or understanding intellectually? The wages of sin-is death because we walk our own way. Death of the flesh is inevitable is it not? So, what is the writer talking about... the death of the body or the life in Jesus? How do we deserve to die if God had sent his son? Wages and gifts...hummmm.