TRAINING CHILDREN
A blog by Rev. Grace Verrier
Did you know that Abraham was chosen to be the father of a great and powerful nation because God knew he would instruct his children in the ways of the Lord? (Genesis 18:18-19) Proverbs 22:6 instructs us to “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” I have heard some say, “Don’t teach children the Bible. Let them decide when they are adults if they want to study the Bible and become Christians.” To me that is like saying, “Don’t give children skating lessons. Let them decide when they are adults if they want to enter the Olympics.” Proverbs says “train” a child and we often equate that to “teach” a child. However, training and teaching are different activities.
When teaching you are telling someone why and how to do something. When training, you cause someone to do something. For example, when my children were small and my object was to get them to pick up their toys, I would first instruct them to do so. Then I would go and train them how to do it sometimes using fun-type encouragement and other times taking their little hands in mine and “helping” them to pick up. (My own mother was fully versed in training children. To this day my tea towels do not fit into my towel drawer efficiently because my mother trained me to fold them into thirds instead of quarters. And when I was old I did not depart from that training.) I often use training methods to encourage children to worship God. I might say,
“Touch your toes
Touch your knees,
Touch your nose,
Touch your fleas,
…and now that your hands are in the air let’s lift them to God”
(Can you picture the pastor doing this in adult church? ( However, I am sure he might want to on occasion because many adults still need to be trained in how to worship God.) Some might think that we are only teaching children to copy us. However, that is like saying you only give children swimming lessons in order to have them copy you. When children are taking swimming lessons they are being trained in the laws of survival. When children are being taught and trained in the ways to worship God, they are learning spiritual survival.
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