And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath; 

but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Ephesians 6:4, KJV

To nurture is to care for and protect. To admonish is to provide authoritative counsel and discipline. When combined correctly, a child can grow up with love and respect towards all those he or she will interact with. What's more, that baby will grow up to be happy! It is a delicate balance, but one that all parents can achieve with God's help. We parents just need to remember that the Lord gave us this tiny blessing, but along with that blessing, He has given us a great responsibility.

In recent years, our family and the local church we are a part of have experienced a baby boom. It seems like every time we turn around, another baby's due date is announced. These babes bring life and joy to any congregation and to any family. The trick is to appreciate the joy, while also realizing the great duty that we have towards these little lives. Our responsibility is clearly to keep them safe and to make them feel well loved. At the same time, we want to raise them to be faithful servants of God, as well as good citizens of their communities. 

Before we know it, these little bundles of joy will be mature adults. They will be doctors and lawyers, farmers and ranchers, teachers and business owners, and maybe one or two will become preachers. These things require maturity and involve heavy responsibility. Will they be ready for such a life? I suspect that they won't if we mistake nurturing for pampering and indulgence. We cannot continue with the low expectations that so many parents, churches and schools have devolved to. We cannot raise them to think that God will accept them on their own terms and clean up any messes their own terms bring, for God is their Master not their magic genie. And we cannot award them straight A's and participation medals for just showing up. These types of well-intentioned mistakes will only harm our children, not provide the nurture that God expects.

As to the other side of the coin, we will need to make sure that they have admonition properly applied to their little lives. This means that they will have to mind mama and daddy. It means they will have to respect their teachers and coaches. It means that they will have to have the discipline needed to get along with their little friends without going along with them into improper behavior. It means that they will never post a video on social media that shows them putting a policeman or other proper authority in their perceived places. It means that they will have the verbal encouragement to do the right thing, combined with an appropriate paddle to their little backside when the encouragement is not heeded.

And more than anything else, we must never forget what all of this nurturing and admonition is for: It is so that they can be trained to love, to fear, to respect and to serve both God and Christ. Our duty to these precious new babies is to raise them up to be servants of God, not masters of their own personal universe. This can only be accomplished if it is done in the right way. We must love our children enough to give them everything that they need, and to deny everything that they don't. They will need to be raised with a full understanding of the great worth and privilege of being a child of God and a son or daughter in your own household.

All of these things will take time and Bible study and endless prayers. It will mean putting all of your heart into their raising. But in the end, such a lifetime of hard work will produce for them a righteous foundation for them to build a spiritual life that will be pleasing to God and men. Someday these precious little babies will kneel before God and give an account for the lives that they have led. Let's make sure that we can do everything we can to prepare them for that day.