Those Kids DID Come With a Parent’s Manual!

We read Proverbs 13 yesterday morning at breakfast. So many great verses popped out–that’s a funny thing about Proverbs…you can read it over and over and still glean so much!

The verse I kept pondering though was probably one I was most familiar with…”He who walks with the wise will be wise; but a companion of fools suffers harm.” Some versions say “a companion of fools will be destroyed.”

Boy, isn’t that counter-culture? Simple verse. One would think most any Christian parent could read it and easily deduct that heavy involvement with a peer group is not the best idea. Even a “good” peer group is still a group of “fools”, given that a child is considered foolish until he is fully trained.

Why do we then rank involvement with peers as one of the most pressing priorities on our list? Why do we break our necks trying to keep them plugged in so they won’t feel left out?

Friends are good…please don’t misunderstand me. My children have a plethora of great friends with whom they thoroughly enjoy fellowship.

But they don’t “walk with” their companions. They walk with me and their dad…the ones to whom the Lord gave them. Their hearts are endeared to us…their primary relationship is with us. Do you know why?

Discipleship. “Make disciples.” Jesus made disciples one way–by walking alongside his friends. He endeared them to Himself because they were together most of the time. Talking, walking, learning.

He didn’t entrust them to the care of another church organization or another less-qualified mentor or another group of people who were learning about life themselves.

We are in the business of making disciples. And there is only ONE way to do it. Deuteronomy 6. Walk, talk, sit, teach.

Companionship.

A reader sent me this quote by Joel McDurmon which I thought beautifully fleshed out this concept of day by day discipleship which will extend to the next generation.

“As we represent God in this world, our legacy is how the next generation represents us in the same endeavor. They are, to some degree, our report card in the cultural mandate (Gen. 1:28) and the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18–20). This should not be understood too absolutely, for the next generation will be judged on their own relationship with God, not on their representation of us.

But the family-children relationship is one of inheritance in terms of wealth: spiritual, mental, and physical. This means that what we pass on is vital. The question, What are you giving your children? includes, What are you teaching your children? How are you training your children? (And, in fact, for some obstinate families, the question must be added, Are you trying to have children?!). It includes a view, not toward a “gloom-and-doom” decline of civilization, but of purposeful planning toward the redemption of civilization one family at a time.”

American Vision