(Godly Home) Part 16 - Train Up a Child — Denny Kenaston

Hello, this is Brother Denny. Welcome to Charity Ministries. Our desire is that your life would be blessed and changed by this message. This message is not copyrighted and is not to be bought or sold.

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These messages are offered to all without charge by the free will offerings of God's people. A special thank you to all who support this ministry. Praise the Lord. Okay, our next session this evening again is along the lines of teaching and training, but more along the lines of training than teaching.

Biblical Nurture and Training

But as you will see, all of these flow together. We cannot separate them. Proverbs 22 and verse 6 says, Train up a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Ephesians 6, verse 4 says, Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

These two words, train and nurture, these are words that describe a beautiful blend of all the principles that we've been looking at. They all flow together in these two words. One is the Old Testament word, train.

The other one is a New Testament word, nurture. But they are basically the same words in meaning. When we think of raising a plant to production, a mature plant, like we spoke, we use the word nurture.

Those who work in a nursery where they grow plants, they know that term very well. The very word nursery is a place to nurture plants. But remember, a baby's room is also called a nursery. So the root of the word goes back to us also.

We just don't use it much anymore. This word is a beautiful blend of teaching, discipline, love and the actual guiding of a life in a right path. The word has all of that in it. So when you read from now on, bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Know this. God is telling you, use discipline, use teaching, use guiding, use love, use all these things and bring them up in the Lord. The Greek word for nurture, it's found several times in Hebrews chapter twelve, where God teaches us about chastisement.

We could easily read Hebrews twelve this way. My son despised not the nurturing of the Lord. God uses this blend of principle to mold us into the holy image of his son. Look at all the different aspects of child training found in this portion of Scripture without turning there.

Our heavenly father teaches us his word by the spirit of God, thus showing us the way to please him. He surrounds us with his love. Then he moves in on different areas of our own lives where he wants us to change.

He will admonish us. He will warn us and eventually he will spank us to get up to change a habit pattern in our life as we are receiving discipline or nurturing. He is admonishing us about the changes that we should make.

And when the peaceable fruit is there, he smiles upon us and encourages us for the future conduct, the way that we're going. Hallelujah. There it is. And God says we are to be like him as we raise our children.

All these things work together and fit within that one word, nurturing your children in the ways of the Lord. Like the father in heaven, we are seeking the peaceable fruit of righteousness in the lives of our children.

We can see from this example, our father's love. The child training is a very active, hands on affair. And by that, I do not mean just spanking. We must get very much involved in training our children or we will not be fulfilling the biblical command to train our children.

It's a very hands on thing, but it doesn't just mean spanking. Imagine if God spanked you five times a day. Think about that for a minute. Five times a day, I'm fully convinced that the need to use the rod will go down as the other aspects of child training are given their proper priorities.

Remember, we're looking for a cheap fix for obedience. I don't have time to train them. I don't have time to guide them. I don't have time to build character in them. I'll just whoop them when they do wrong.

Shame on you. Proverbs, Chapter 22, verse six is another exceeding great and precious promise in the word of God. This promise is a great encouragement to those who live under the new covenant. Train up a child in the way that he should go.

When he is old, he will not depart. Some people don't believe those verses. Some people had some failures in their family, and it's hard for them to believe those verses. Some people question those verses.

But those verses are in the word of God. I am a firm believer in this fact that if it didn't work out, it's not God's fault. Somehow it must be my fault. And if we all get very honest, it's easy to see that there are so many things we don't know, so many things.

So if it doesn't work out right, let us not rise up and say this verse doesn't work. And let's say God didn't come through for me. No, let us rather say I must not have understood what God meant when he said train up a child in the way that he should go.

See, many people think that means read the Bible at the breakfast table and have the prayer and then make sure they're in a good church and put him in a Christian school. I did it. I did it. No, you didn't.

No, you didn't. What does it mean to train this word train? It means to narrow, to make narrow. The word picture here is a picture of two lines coming together, starting at a wide place and moving in toward a narrow place, sort of like the Broadway in the narrow way.

You know, that's kind of how it is with our children. We start out with our children in the Broadway. They are innocent when they are born, yet they are born sinners. They have a nature to do evil. It doesn't take much before we begin to see that it's clearly there.

We get them that way in a broad way. But God says to us, I want you to narrow that child as the days go by with all these principles that I'm giving you. I want you to narrow the life of that child into the way that it should go.

And if you will do that, that child will not depart when it is old glory. That's a revelation. Did you get it? We start in a wide place, but God says, I want you to end up in a narrow place. Day by day, we slowly teach and train the child into this narrowing place.

The Goal of Training: Disciples of Jesus Christ

The goal is a disciple of Jesus Christ. That's the goal. The goal is not a nice little boy that will sit nice in the front row of the church and everybody will say he's a wonderful little boy. That's not the goal, even though that's a good one.

That's not the goal. The goal is not to have a nice little girl who can know how to cook and sew. That's not the goal. It's a good goal, but it's not the goal. The goal is disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, brothers and sisters.

The big difference, the difference. Young adults who joyfully walk the narrow way that leadeth unto life and enjoy it all the way. Amen. That's what the goal is. Train up a child also means to catechize.

And we have already covered that. So I don't need to go anymore, but I just want to show you these different meanings that are hidden in this word. And the last definition I want to look at is very enlightening.

Cultivating a Taste for What Is Good

The definition is this. To train up a child means to stimulate the palate of the child. Now, the palate is the place where a child tastes. The palate is the place where a child develops a taste for something.

This is good because it gives a positive side to child training, not all negative, positive, leading them into the good and the right. Stimulate the palate of your child to enjoy the right things. And when he is old, he will still be enjoying the right thing.

Hallelujah. I like that. The picture here is of a Hebrew woman who has decided it's time to take her baby off of nursing. So what does she do? She takes food. She's very careful about the food she selects because she's recognizing that I'm going to be training the palate of this child and I want this child to like the right kind of food.

Amen. So she takes the right kind of food. Now you get this, you ladies, you may not like this or maybe you dads won't like it. She takes the right food. She puts it in her mouth. They didn't have baby grinders back in those days, right?

She puts it in her mouth and she chews it up first. Then she takes it back out of her mouth and puts it on the palate of the child to stimulate the palate of the child to like the food that she's giving them.

You get the picture. I always appreciated Jackie's care in this process with each one of the children. She did not start with sweets. She was very careful realizing I am teaching this child what kind of food to like and it is in my hands to direct it.

At this point, they have no choice in the matter. The choice is mine. I will be very careful what I put into that baby's mouth. What a beautiful picture of narrowing up a child in the way that they should go.

The child training implications in this illustration are powerful. What a picture of how a parent trains the children day by day, introducing the good and the holy. This is done in a positive way with joy by a motivated parent.

We want them to love this new habit, this new discipline, this new activity that we are introducing to them because we know that it will be a blessing to them all their days in the future. We want them to enjoy it.

I want my child to love family devotion, so I enjoy it. I introduce it with joy and enthusiasm. Day by day, we go through this exercise until the child rises up and says, Papa, I love devotions. When I grow up, I'm going to teach my children like that, said little Joshua.

As this exercise is repeated over and over, the child develops a taste for that which is good and right. This is augmented with some discipline if needed and in some teaching at times. Let's look at the sports nut for a minute.

Training Through Positive Involvement

If a father is a fanatic about sports and he wants his son to be a good baseball player, this seems odd to me since we're supposed to be training their palates and righteousness. But let's just suppose that's what this father wants.

This illustration is very close to home in America where we live. This father will get very active in his son's life because he wants him to be a baseball player. He will approach this goal with much positive input.

He will not pursue this goal in a haphazard way. Listen to what he will do. He will begin to talk about it with his son and motivate and create a desire in him to be a baseball player. He will go get a baseball magazine and spend time looking at it with his son interjecting comments while they're looking at it.

He will plan a special trip to the store, just him and his son, where they can go and buy the baseball gear that he wants his boy to use. Mom will join in with the excitement when they come home from the store and she'll get excited about the new baseball bat that he got.

Dad will spend much time with his son, teaching him the rules of the game. He will get right down into the game with his son, training him to throw the ball, catch the ball, hit the ball. He will praise the boy for every little bit of progress that he has made, and he will be firm with his son, pressing him at times to spend more time in practice.

He will even use disciplinary methods when the little fella gets a bit tired of the same old thing and wants to go on to something else. He will get him involved in a team, that's the church, bless God, so that he can play with others and increase his skills.

And he'll go to the game, sit on the sidelines and cheer the boy while he plays. Selah. That's how you train your children, my friends. Dear Christian parents, you know, this kind of stuff happens all the time in our land.

I mean, men do this. They spend hours doing this for many lesser things than what we're talking about here today. How much more with us who want our children to be soldiers in the army of the Lord Jesus Christ someday?

How much more? This dedicated exercise described above can be repeated again and again in the child training process. You just come up with it. What do you want? The sky's the limit. You know, you want to be a soul winner.

Follow that plan that I just gave you. You want to be a prayer warrior. Follow that plan that I just gave you. What do you want? Anything that's in this book. Not only can you do things in that boy and that girl's heart in the way that this father did on baseball, but when you pick up this book and set your sights on things that are in here, all of heaven is on your side.

You can't go wrong again. Time is the problem. Consider a few examples of positive learning experiences that you can bring your child through in the course of training. You can teach them to sit and listen during family devotions.

And by the way, that's how you get them to sit and listen in church. Do your homework at home and then transfer the lesson to the church service and you'll never have to take them downstairs and spank them five times during one service.

You can teach them to eat all the food on their plate every time they sit at the table. Amen. You can teach them to eat foods that they don't care for. Walk them through the whole exercise instructing them.

I mean, sit them down and say, look, Johnny, we are going to learn how to be a missionary. You want to learn how to be a missionary, Johnny? We're going to learn how to be a missionary. One of the most important things about being a missionary is eating food that you don't like.

Amen, Daniel. Daniel likes it now. I mean, he's so far beyond the lesson. He likes the stuff. That's how you teach them. You can teach them to put all the toys away when the day is over and you can even teach them to put the toys away that they played with before they get others out.

You can teach them to have good manners by routinely going over what is expected in different situations, walk them through it, set up practice times and of meeting people or excusing themselves from the table or whatever you want it to be.

You want your little boy or little girl to walk up to a visitor and put out their hand, look them in the eye and say, hello, my name is so and so. You can work that thing out in that little fella in some little girl and teach them to do that.

And it'll shock the people they meet because you know how it is a lot of times with little children. And this is my little son and he hides his head, you know, and he won't even put out his hand. Listen, that boy needs some training.

You can do it positively. You don't just say you did wrong, boy, you're going to get a spanking. No, you go after that thing in a positive way. What kind of a baseball player do you think that father is going to have if all he does is sit his boy down and say, look, I want you to be a baseball player and bless God, if you're not, I'm going to let you have it.

God have mercy on us. You can teach them to wake up cheerfully in the morning, get up promptly when they're called in the morning. This doesn't happen naturally. They need to be trained, train them up in the way that they should go.

Some adults still haven't learned how to get out of bed with a happy smile in the morning. You can teach them to lay their head down and take a nap without carrying on and fussing. You can train them in simple chores when they are still very young.

If you'll approach it from a positive way, you would be amazed what a five year old could do if you just get alongside of them and walk them through it. You'd be amazed. You can train them to receive a spanking with a yielded heart and no extreme crying and kicking and fussing all over the place.

You can root out all the complaining and whining in that child by giving them training classes. You can teach them to win souls like the sport nut taught his boy to play baseball. You can teach them to memorize scripture at an early age.

You can teach them. You can teach them. What do you want to teach them? It would be good for you to sit down with your wife and say, OK, honey, what do we want to teach them? Let's take one and go for it.

Then when that one's done, we'll sit down and decide what's next. Amen. All these can be positive learning experience in your child's life with very little discipline. But yeah, you may need to use a little discipline, but most of it is on the positive side, just like the man who wants his son to play baseball.

This is training the palate of your child in the way that he should go. As you can see, these are very hands on activities. They take time. They also yield high returns. Let's look at developing character through responsibility.

Building Character Through Responsibility and Work

Twenty three years ago, Jackie and I lived in suburban America. Up until then, we were city slickers in that setting with new child training principles growing in our hearts all the time. We began quickly to see that there's very little available to build character in our children living in the city.

I mean, you can only take out the trash so much, you know, there's not much to do. So with these things in mind, we felt God leading us to move in the direction of a more of a country setting where there would naturally be more chores and opportunities for the children to work and experience many learning things.

We have a little farm which consists of 15 acres. It doesn't make much money at that size, but it does do some other things that are far more valuable than money. I often tell people it makes godly men and women out of boys and girls.

We also have a family business which is designed to do the same thing. The boys and I build the picnic tables for a living. Hannah is the secretary. Mom's the counselor to guide the things. She checks out all the new products and how we design them.

And sometimes when we get busy in the shop, the whole lot gets out there and we have a ball working in the shop. I know that many fathers in our society do not have this blessing that I'm speaking about, and I want to be sensitive to that as I'm speaking about it here this evening.

However, I want to share the treasures that I have found when I decided that a professional career would not be the best for my family. And I made that decision to train a child in qualities of godly character.

You must be willing to get involved, intimately involved with the children. You must be willing to come alongside of your child and do it with them with a joyful heart and diligently. You need the tools of daily responsibilities to aid you in this task.

Note this. These inner qualities of virtue are developed over the long haul. That is where responsibility comes in. Here we see the constraining power of a sense of duty carried out on a daily basis over a long period of time, developing character in a child's life.

Did you get that? Say it again. Here we see the constraining power of the sense of duty carried out on a daily basis over a long period of time, developing character in the child. I well remember Daniel at age seven getting up at five o 'clock in the morning to milk the goats and then milking them again in the evening.

Once I worked through the learning stages of this project with him, he did it on his own faithfully for two years. Was I making any money? No way. But I was making a responsible man. I remember when we got those goats.

I mean, I did my homework before we got those goats. And when those goats came, we were excited about it. I mean, I was as excited about those goats as that dad was with the baseball glove and the baseball bat that he brought home.

And Daniel jumped right in. Oh, boy, I'm going to get to milk the goats every morning and evening. That's the way we approached it. Consider a few thoughts that I have written on old McKinniston had a farm, the farm and the family business.

They are tools in my hands. That's what they are. Tools to be used to mold and shape children into respectful, responsible, God fearing Christians. They provide a natural flow of demands with varied experiences.

The cows get out of the pasture and the little boys have to face that big cow and help chase it back into the fence. Amen, boys. And the big cows looking at it like this, you know, beautiful learning experiences.

The fence needs repair. So Papa and the boys spend three hours talking and fixing the fence as we go. We need a new loft in one of the barns. We're city slickers. We don't know how to build a new loft in the barn, but we figure out how to do it and build one.

All learning together things that we didn't know. Every day, nine year old Joshua and six year old David have to face the rats in the barn when they go to feed the cows. Amen, boys. The rats in the barn.

You say that's not nice. Guess what? They'll be sleeping with rats someday in Africa, so it won't hurt them to learn to face the rats and not be afraid of them. They must do it when it's hot. They must do it when it is cold.

They must do it when it's dark outside. They must do it in the thick and in the thin. They must do it when they're having fun riding their bikes. And they even must do it when visitors have arrived and they want to play with their friends.

It's time to go do the chores. And away they go. A tool in my hand to build character, brothers and sisters. Even the girls get out there from time to time for some of the good old down on the farm experiences, like chasing a steer around the barn yard full of slushy manure.

Right, girls? Man, you are unkind to your children. What are you putting them through? Where are you going with all this stuff, Brother Denny? Well, how about a mud hut in Africa with all the trimmings and all the trials and all the troubles that go along with it?

It is time we raised up some gospel soldiers in our land and soldiers don't come by sitting around on couches and beds of ease eating grapes. There are lots of things for mom and the girls to do on old McKinnison's farm.

They take care of the garden. They put up the fruit thereof. They have blessed days of canning and freezing where mom and the girls can talk by the way there is bread to bake. There are meals to cook.

There are children to care for. The girls help with the homeschooling, which is excellent training for their homeschool someday. Showing your own dresses also develop skills that they will use in the days to come.

Many times I hear mothers say, I don't have time for all the work that a large family brings. They're not seeing it right. Most of the time a mother says that looking at it without having a large family.

And she just says, it's too much work. I mean, I'm so busy with one or two. How could I ever have six or eight? She doesn't realize that she is missing some of the hidden secrets. If she would make a disciple to share the load and raise a responsible young lady prepared to guide her own home someday, it'll all work so beautifully together.

She will have a helper and she will have a mature young lady who can handle a home someday. And she won't walk into the whole home situation like mom did. So many of the moms, even the ones that are in this room, you walked into this whole thing.

You didn't have a clue what you're doing. You fell in love with this guy and all of a sudden you found yourself in a world you didn't know how to conduct yourself. That's not God's will. And I know you mothers are planning better things for your children.

It all works together. God has beautifully tempered all of this for the good of all and for the good of the society that we live in. I view the family business the same way. It is packed full of learning experiences.

It is true. We do have to make a living. That's true. But the boys have to carry the load in this. Even this becomes training for them. Someday they will be the provider. That's how I look at the business.

I remember the day one evening after we've been working in the shop all day long and Josh had been working all day long in the shop. He doesn't work all day every day in the shop. But there are days when he puts in an eight or a nine hour day in the shop and he had worked all day in the shop and we were sitting in the little sitting room there next to our kitchen.

We were just relaxing and I could tell he wanted to say something, but he couldn't quite get it out. Didn't know how to say it. And I said, Josh, is something wrong? And he stumbled around a little bit more and he said, well, Papa, I'm not sure what to say, how I'm feeling.

He said, I don't want to be proud, but and I picked up on what he was feeling and I said, Josh, are you feeling good inside? Tell me about it. Well, he said, I feel good about myself today. I mean, I worked all day today.

I'm helping the family today and I feel good about it. He said, is it OK for me to feel that way? I said, yes, my boy, it's OK for you feel that way. That's part of becoming a man, my boy. That's part of becoming a man.

Using Family Business to Form Servant-Hearted Men

You see the design. We're not just out there making money off our boys. We're training boys to be responsible men someday that will care for their wives and their children. I use the business to build my children.

I do not use my children to build my business. There is a big difference between the two of those. And many people in this county have failed miserably. They have turned the whole thing around. I use my business to build my children.

I do not use my children to build my business. There's a big difference. I have a problem with some of the people in this area. They see children as moneymakers and they direct them accordingly. I feel they have mixed up the goal completely.

The goal is a godly servant of God, not money. We must keep that thing straight. And I believe if the fire of God burns in our hearts, we will keep it straight. Us fathers who do have a little farm or some little business and we can get our sons and daughters involved in it.

If we keep the fire of God burning in our hearts, we will not get out of balance. The boys want to be men. It's natural for them to want to be men. They grow up playing at our feet in the woodworking shop from the age of two.

They're out there. They are there watching us work as they play and playing at working while they're there. It is very natural for them to get involved and want to help. One day we were all working together and Joshua was really in there working.

You know, I mean, he was carrying his load and little David was out there. He's five years old. He's out there playing. And I noticed him kind of lurking over into the shadows of the corner of the shop crying.

And I went over to him and put my arm around him. I said, my boy, what's wrong? Tears were just running down his face. He said, Papa, I feel bad. All of you are working and I'm playing. I want to help, too.

Isn't there something that I could do? And the Lord spoke to me and said, don't miss this one, Denny. Don't miss this one. And I told him, I said, David, you let me think about it through the day and maybe I'll have something for you to do tomorrow.

Well, by the time we finished our day's work, we're in the house, had a little supper. I said, David, come with me, boy. We're going to go to the hardware store. Oh, well, that's always a treat. They like to do that.

So but this time it was just David. We got in the old car and headed for the hardware store. And I said, you know, David, you know why we're going to the hardware store? No, we're going to buy your hammer and your tape measure so you can help us in the shop tomorrow.

I mean, he was so excited. We went in that hardware store, you know, and looked at all those hammers, you know. Well, let's see which one shall we get for you, David? How about this one? That's a little heavy.

Try this one. How does it feel? We picked out his hammer and we picked out his little tape measure and we went on home and we went to bed, you know, and the next morning we had our little breakfast and had a family devotions and we headed out to the shop.

I mean, that little boy grabbed his hammer in one hand and his tape measure in the other. And he walked out there just like a man does. He's going to help in the shop. I was excited about it and I was watching him and just loving every minute of it.

Well, we figured out something for him to do in our business. We make picnic tables and you have to have this anchor that you put screws in to hold all the boards together on the top of the table. And every one of those anchors has to have a screw in it.

And if you make 50 tables in a day, that's thousands of screws. And so I just set one of those anchors down on the ground and got me some screws in my hand. And I showed David, this is what I want you to do, David, you take this screw and you just tap it like that into the hole.

Then you take another screw and you tap it into the hole. And he watched for a little while. And then you know what he did next. Can I try it? Can I try it? He picked up the hammer and he hit it and it came crooked.

And he was a little frustrated. And I put my hand on the screw and I put my hand on his hand with the hammer and we did one. Then we did another one. Then we did another one. Pretty soon he didn't need my hands anymore.

And he did one. And then it got better. Then he got better. And before the day was out, he was pounding in all of those screws and he saved us all kinds of time. And he had himself a place in the shop at five years old.

Guess what that little fellow felt like when he was done working that day. He walked in there, you know, when we finally shut off the lights and it's time to go, time to go in the house, you know, he put his tools away, you know, and he walked out there with all the men going into the house, you know, that's what the men do after they've been working all day.

And little David was right in there in the middle of it all and walked through the door and sat down at the table and started sharing a little bit about what he did that day. And mama, like a smart mama, she said, Oh, David, I'm so proud of you.

All those things you did out in the shop, you really have been a help to us today. God bless you, David, for how you work like a big man in the shop. You get the idea? This whole story was carried out very purposefully in the manner I have already described about this baseball fanatic.

We did it just like that. I know where I'm going. What am I saying, brethren? What I'm saying is when we look at this whole matter of training our children, it's more than just sitting down and opening up a Bible and reading the scriptures to them.

It's more than sitting down and even teaching the scriptures to them. If we're going to train our children, we are going to come alongside of them. We are going to put our hands into their lives and we are going to walk alongside of them and they are going to learn.

A boy learns to be diligent as he works next to a man who is diligently working. He will pick up the spirit of diligence just from being around a man who's diligent. And when you put diligence in your children, you just double their activity for the rest of their life, because the difference between diligence and not diligence is 50 percent.

Mark it down. You ask any man who has a business, if you've got a worker who's lazy and you've got a worker who's diligent, you'll get twice as much out of the diligent one as you will out of the lazy one.

And it applies that way in every area of life. But guess what? Children do not learn to be diligent with parents standing over them, telling them, be diligent, be diligent, be diligent. Don't you know I want you to be diligent?

Guess what? They never learn to be diligent that way. They will learn to be diligent when you get alongside of them and say, OK, we've got some work to do here. Let's go here. You hand me this. We can do this and let's go to it.

And they pick up the spirit of that diligence from the father or they can pick it up from the mother as she walks into the kitchen and rolls up her sleeves and says, bless God, we're going to wash the floor today, Susie.

Let's get down on our knees with this wash bucket and we're going to get this floor clean to the glory of God. And she gets down there next to Susie and the two of them do it together. And guess what?

Susie's going to be scrubbing that floor someday and mom won't even need to scrub it. That's how it works. I've given you just a few illustrations so that you can get the spirit and the principle of what I'm speaking about.