People often ask for advice on good parenting books.  I love this.  Parenting books are a great idea, once you have read the ultimate parenting book, smack dab in the middle of your Bible.  Proverbs is absolutely THE parenting book.  In fact, almost every one of the first seven chapters begins the same, “My son…listen to my words…”  Sound familiar?  Hey, that’s what I say all day, too!  If you are trying to parent without deep intake from the book of Proverbs, then I have to tell you…I really do…don’t be mad…You are like a man who skipped all of his brain classes at med school and went straight into the operating room, wielding a scalpel.  “Hey, nurse, what’s this grey stuff called?”  Proverbs explains our two possible outcomes for post-parental production (I.E. what kind of people the little people will become):  the fool or the wise.  The word “fool” is mentioned about a hundred times, describing the fool’s patterns, pleasures, and destruction.  I will not try to break it down here, because every word of it is crucial, but I’ll set the stage with these two verses:

Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child… Prov.  22:15a

…fools die for lack of wisdom.  Prov. 10:21b

Just about all parents look a little war-torn at times, so it’s no great revelation that there’s a battle going on.  But I’ve noticed that Christians often aren’t clear about what the battle really is over.  Is it really over the veggie strike or the bedwetting or the grocery store fits or the booger-picking?  When those developmental hurdles are past, will the storm have blown over?  Are we just living from crisis to crisis, trying to react in a “Christlike” manner?  Is holding it together enough?  The Bible clearly says “NO.”  Another verse:

For the waywardness of the simple will kill them,
and the complacency of fools will destroy them.  Prov. 1:32

Christian parents cannot afford “the complacency of fools.”  As we get to know the Lord better, we find that the darkness is even darker than we ever realized, and the light even brighter.  They never cancel each other out into a dull, neutral gray.  Only religion does that.  Anyway, yesterday’s brightness of joy and delight is absolutely true and right.  But today’s message is about the backdrop, the darkness against which we must raise our little lights to shine…THE WAR.

Here are the three battle fronts for our little ones, as I see it.  We have to be sober and vigilant on all three.

1. The Enemy Eph. 6:12

2. The World 1 Jn. 2:15

3. The Will Deut. 30:9-11, Jn. 14:15, the whole Bible…etc.

Okay, there are volumes that could be and have been written on all these things.  I am going to skip all the eloquent philosophizing, and join this wise father of Proverbs, who teaches me to be so urgent, even from the very beginning, and pull him into a real life scenario that highlights the three battle fronts…

In the first nine chapters of Proverbs, this is wise and urgent father is dropping pearls of wisdom left and right, speaking to his son, but there’s one thing he comes back to over and again.  If I had a personal assistant I’d have an exact number of these passages for you, but it’s revisited at least in every chapter.  He is urgent to raise a son who never falls for the seduction of the immoral woman.  I’m picking this particular character issue because it so greatly highlights my three battle fronts.

Have you thought about this?  Do you have a son?  I have two: a three year old and a one year old.  You bet I have cried out to God for their purity.  Because HOW ON THIS EARTH can we raise our sons to be pure?  How?  This will require some severe wisdom.  But there hasn’t been much wisdom in the church, and it’s easy to see how foolish complacency has killed the church’s sons.  If we believe the time to consider this is prom night, we need to print Prov. 1:32 right up and paste it to the bathroom mirror.  The question is not, “At what point do I teach my son not to have premarital/extramarital sex?”  The question is, “How do I raise a man who fears the Lord and hates evil? (Prov. 1:7, 8:13).  The time to think about it is when the father in Proverbs is thinking about it:  at all times.

1. The enemy:  do you know at what age the average young man first sees a pornographic image?  Do you know how crafty the enemy is to present these to our sons and brothers?  Do you know how strong the hold of immorality and perversion is on our young people?  The father in Proverbs is very aware.  He describes accurately the schemes the seducer (which ultimately is a spirit) will lay out for his son, 2 Cor 2:11.

2. The world:  a prostitute/seductress is a woman who displays and uses her sexuality for gain.  By this definition, how many actresses prostitute themselves in a typical hour of prime-time television?  How many models prostituting themselves in a typical magazine?  The father in Proverbs begs his son over and over not to even go near her house.  Is your TV on?  How many seductresses did you invite into your home last week to meet your son?  Think he’ll survive?  Sorry to be blunt…oh, actually, I’m not sorry.  Jas. 4:4

3.  The will:  the wise father of Proverbs knows that he cannot hide his son from evil or give him enough rules to keep him out of trouble.  He knows this will not work, because the most difficult enemy his son will face is his own will.  The “fool” he describes what the New Testament refers to as the “flesh nature.”  It’s in his son’s self.  He knows that his son needs revelation, not rules.  He needs to LOVE RIGHTEOUSNESS and HATE EVIL.  He needs to have his will in subjection.  So the wise father uses his urgent teaching and discipline to bring his tender young son into subjection to his own voice, knowing that if his son learns to subject his will to his father’s and mother’s voice, when he is older, his will will be under his control.  Instead of his desires ruling him, he will rule over his desires.

My point is not the sexual sin; it is the battle fronts.  We must plant righteousness so deep, so deep, so deep in the hearts of our children, that the enemy, the world, and their own will cannot twist and pervert the path to wisdom that we have set their feet on.  Deuteronomy 6 describes such a vigilance of teaching, and Proverbs 4 tells us when to start:

³ When I was a boy in my father’s house,
still tender, and an only child of my mother,

⁴ he taught me and said,
“Lay hold of my words with all your heart;
keep my commands and you will live…”

Start now.  With your toddler.  He doesn’t know about the immoral woman, and he doesn’t need to.  But he does need to know that IF HE KEEPS YOUR COMMANDS, HE WILL LIVE. He (or she) needs to know that his will is subject to your voice.  That his desires are not in charge.  It truly is a matter of life or death.  Many Christians have revelation in their parenting of the battle with the enemy, but are compromised with the world, and unaware of the need to bring their children into obedience to save their souls…from themselves.

The end of the story is this:  If we win on battle front #3, #2 and #1 are done for.  They don’t stand a chance.  If we can bring our children’s will into subjection first to our voices then to the Lord’s voice, the world will hold no appeal, and the devil won’t hold a candle.  This, I believe, is what the wise father of Proverbs knew.