Our Children are our Seeds
All throughout the Bible, it refers to children as “offspring” or “seeds.” Quality time with God teaches you how to prepare your children. This kind of preparation, planting good seeds in them on a daily basis, produces their future performance."While the earth remains, Seed time and harvest, Cold and heat, Winter and summer, And day and night Shall not cease." Genesis 8:22
Parents, you must teach your young children discipline every day. It is important to train up your children to know and obey the Word of God. As they grow older, they will never turn away from this instruction. It is your responsibility to train up your children in the admonition (the instruction) of the Lord.
Jennifer and I started training our girls as toddlers to get up, fix their beds, wash their faces, brush their teeth, comb their hair, get themselves dressed, get into the Word of God, eat their breakfast, and find out what we had for them to do. If Jennifer or I did not have anything for them to do, we would train them to go and get one toy. Once they were done with the toy, we would train them to put it away and get another one. These are the major things that build the character in the children as a young child. Computers do not teach them character, pushing a pencil doesn’t teach them character, penmanship doesn’t teach them character.
It is the little things, like when they touch something they should not touch—CORRECT IT! That builds character and integrity. But if you are not in order and you cannot get yourself in an organized way, you are just going through the motions every single day. Your day is wasted! You are working hard not working smart, doing the same thing every day thinking you are going to get a different result. What are you doing on a daily basis to get a different result?
I could be outside my home and if I hear one of my children back talk Jennifer, I am in the house, and I am right on them. I make them apologize to their mother right away.
I am not going to take it easy on my kids. I have to teach them right. I do not want them talking back. I do not want them walking in a room when there is someone in the room and they do not say hello. Now here is the acid test. When your children are four and six years old and you ask them to do something, do they say, “No!”?
I’ve seen people let their kids run wild. I hear this from people, “I have no time to read the Word because my kids are so….” Now wait a minute, your kids are only as good as you and what you allow them to get away with. It is just as easy to train children right as it is to train them wrong. Just because there is a whole lot of negative stuff going on out there, that doesn’t mean you cannot train them in the admonition, the instruction of the Lord; so when they get older, they will not deviate from it. Here is another test. When they become 16 years old, whatever spirit(s) that were in the parents have transferred into them. If the parents had bitterness, self-hatred, anger, division, it starts ruling the children’s flesh. It gets inside of them, and it starts ruling their flesh and leading their actions. Now the parents cannot do anything with them, the schoolteachers can't stand them, then what? Then they send them into the military. Now the military de-programs them. They now have to get up at 4:30 in the morning. They have to fix their beds, wash their faces, brush their teeth, get them-selves dressed, and be ready by five o’clock. Every single day Jennifer and I home school our children because if anyone is going to screw them up, it’s going to be us. We teach our children how to give. We do not teach them how to take. Their self-worth increases because of it. The world taught me how to live to give. God taught me how to give to live. A man’s harvest in life depends entirely upon what he sows. If you do not have a harvest, or if you do not like your harvest it means you have the wrong seed.
These are the seeds, the principles, that are really the majors in life. God says to train up a child in the way that he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. This is the way God instructs us how to train our children. Training doesn’t just mean to tell them, it means to teach them how to do things His way.
One summer, I went to minister to a friend of mine in prison. It was one of the hardest things I ever dealt with even though I know how to put my mind out of an equation and put my spirit up. I saw the inmates’ children who were my children’s age leaving the prison. I watched the children and the wives leave a building that is chained with bars all over it and their daddy's inside. The inmates would say, “I love you children!” and the children would respond,“ I love you Daddy!” I had to get up and walk over to the window and look out at the water. It was tough to look back and see all those tough guys so humbled, with their kids waving to them yelling, “I love you!” and them yelling back, “I love you!”. I asked one guy, “How much longer do you have?” And he said, “I’ve got another nine years.” I thought, oh God, nine more years in a cell when there is life all around us.
I’m telling you, you have no worries. You have never done without. None of us have done without, but yet we complain every day. We will order a hamburger and complain because the waitress forgot the pickles.
You must understand, Satan has assigned demons to every baby. From the time that baby is in the womb of its mother, he assigns them to the children to stop them from fulfilling the calling, or assignment God has sent them to the earth to do. Satan has sent demons instantly to those children to hover over them, to try to stop the champions of this world to prevent them from walking out the visions God has given them. Those men and women that are in prisons, God bless them. I want them out of prison. I want to minister to them. I want to help them. They had great callings on their lives, they are truly champions in there, but Satan had to work overtime to hook them and get them all screwed up. My friend in prison, who I knew pretty well, got hooked up with the wrong people and ended up in jail. I don’t hold jail against anyone. I love what Jesus said, “So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, ‘He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” John 8:7
If people around us sneeze wrong, some people want to stone them! “Look at him; he is supposed to be a Christian.”
This is what I am trying to teach you. Train up your children in the admonition--that is the instruction of the Lord, so that when they get older they won’t depart from it, they will never leave it.
God has a great plan for all of us. If you and your wife cannot communicate about disciplining your children in your household, your children will be in a state of confusion. That is a spirit of division. No matter what happens on a daily basis, the spirit of division is still there. You must go back to when the original division started. The reason why I say go back is because if you want to go on and there is a spirit of division there, the acid test is, you are not growing together, you are growing apart. That is the acid test of the spirit of division. God said, “two shall become one flesh.” Matthew 19:5, Mark 10:8-9 and Ephesians 5:31. If you aren’t becoming one flesh and if there is a spirit of division between you and your spouse, unless it is addressed, you will never get in agreement about disciplining your children. A house that is divided is a house that will fall.
“But He, knowing their thoughts, said to them: "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and a house divided against a house falls." Luke 11:17-18
Your household will only go as far as what you are not willing to address. Uproot the roots of the spirit of division so you never have it there again.
I had the greatest parents in the world. Everywhere you saw my dad, you saw my mom, and usually they were holding hands. If I had it to do all over again, I want the same mom and dad. I was taught certain things from my mom and dad that were great, and I was taught a whole lot more from the Word of God. I want my kids to learn the way I was taught to learn, and greater.
If you have not started training your children up in the admonition of the Lord, START NOW! Reprogram them. Tell them to clean their room right now, not five minutes from when you tell them. If you tell them to clean their room, they should not leave the room until the room is clean. If you say the toys should be in the toy room, the toys should be in the toy room. Make sure you follow through with the discipline. You should not compromise the standard because later on in life your children will suffer for it.
Teach them who they are in Christ. Start planting seeds in them at a young age. If they are older, it’s not too late to start. Remember, whatever you sow into them, that is exactly what you will reap out of them. If you want them to love, you’ve got to love. Do not let your emotions trick you into thinking it is wrong to discipline your kids. If you love them, you will discipline them. The purest form of love is discipline. Teach them to respect things.
Your children will always remember who the greatest champion was in their lives. They will always remember who the peer was that came into their lives that changed their lives. Hopefully, they will say it was their daddy and their mommy that was their greatest influence, their mentors, the JESUS that they saw every day.
