PART 4

Train your children to a habit of prayer.

Parents, if you love your children, do all that lies in your power to train them up to a habit of prayer. Show them how to begin. Tell them what to say. Encourage them to persevere. Remind them if they become careless and slack about it. This, remember, is the first step in religion which a child is able to take. Long before he can read you can teach him to kneel by his mother's side and repeat the simple words of prayer and praise, which she puts in his mouth. I cannot praise that mother among you who never looks after this most important part of her child's daily life herself. You are little wiser than the bird described in Job "which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in the dust, and forgetteth that the foot may crush them; or that the wild beast may break them. She is hardened against her young ones, as thought they were not hers; her labour is in vain without fear". Job 39 verse 14 forward. Prayer is, of all habits, the one which we recollect the longest. Many a grey-haired man could tell you how his mother used to make him pray in the days of his childhood.

Train them also to habits of diligence, and regularity about the public means of grace.

Tell them of the duty and privilege of going to the House of God and joining in the prayers of the congregation. Tell them that wherever the Lord's people are gathered together, there the Lord Jesus is present in an especial manner, and that those who absent themselves must expect, like the Apostle Thomas, to miss a blessing.

Train them, too, to the habit of faith.

I mean by this, you should train them up to believe what your say. Who can tell the misery that unbelief has brought into the world? Unbelief made Eve eat the forbidden fruit; she doubted the truth of God's Word, "Ye shall not surely die." Unbelief made the old world reject Noah's word, and so perish in sin. Unbelief kept Israel in the wilderness … unbelief made the Jews crucify the Lord of Glory – they believed not the voice of Moses and the prophets though read to them every day. And unbelief is the reigning sin in man's heart down to this very hour. Unbelief in God's promises – unbelief in god's threatenings - unbelief in our own sinfulness - unbelief in our own danger.

Train your children to a habit of implicit faith and confidence in your word.