Psalm 34:11 Come, my children, listen to me;
I will teach you the fear of the Lord.

This whole Psalm is an example of David doing exactly what he says here. David never drew back from giving God credit for all He does. He was “a person after God’s heart” (1 Samuel 13:14, Acts 13:22) because he acknowledged God in praise and worship. He consistently gave God the credit for all the good in his life, and he didn’t accuse God of being mean because of the less-than-good things in his life. We have a lot we can learn from David! The Biblical record is unvarnished, so we know that David was certainly imperfect, not only committing gross sin but also failing in precisely what he says here: teaching his own children to fear God properly. However, we know that his intentions were right, despite his failures. We too need to take time to focus on our children and help them focus on God. One of the fallacies of our age is that “quality time” is a substitute for time, period. Children are entrusted to the state through schools and the like, or even to churches, and parents skip out on their responsibility to teach their children to fear and love God. No one can really take the place of parents, period. God is sometimes amazingly gracious in the case of orphans, but that is a rare exception. We see the results of parental dereliction all the time. The devil hates all that is good, which God created, so he attacks the family relentlessly. One of his major tools is to make even Christians accept what is unbiblical as normal, so that they fail to stand against it. If more Christians would really take back their families, they would take back their culture as well.

As I am frequently reminded, my parents were far above the average in many ways. However, that doesn’t mean they were perfect. I was the only one of four children left at home when my father realized how much he had let his work exclude his children from his life. The trip he and I made from Japan to Kentucky in 1964 will always be a sweet memory for me, because I had his undivided attention for most of that trip, and that was a rare thing indeed. However, that doesn’t mean I learned the lesson and gave my own children the focused attention they needed! There are many, many things I wish I had done differently, but if I were somehow to go back to that time, I would probably make the same mistakes again! Right now, my focus is on spiritual children who don’t live in the same household with me, so the interactions are very different. I need to seek God’s wisdom and guidance at every turn for how I am to teach them and draw them closer to Him, but with that understanding, this verse is still very operative in my life.

Father, there are so many things I want to communicate to so many people! Help me be so yielded to You that You are able to do it through me, because I certainly can’t do it on my own. May all of my spiritual children be rightly related to You, so that they in turn may raise up more spiritual children, in order that Your house may be full, (Luke 14:23) for Your pleasure and glory. Thank You. Praise God!