KBM Standing Against Friendly Parenting

Today, as we continue our series on being a “Defender of the Faith,” I want to study something that probably half my audience might not want to hear, as a lot of families listen to this together from what I have been told, and for which I am very thankful for. In our study today, we are going to be looking at “Standing Against Friendly Parenting.”

I can almost hear the “booos” from the kids as I’ saying that, but something I try to never loose sight of is the fact that the older I get the smarter my parents become.

We are living in a time when children are becoming more and more in charge of the home and parents are striving more and more to be their children’s friend and not their parents. A parents entire responsibility with their children is to “raise them in the LORD” so that they will seek to spend an eternity in heaven with God the Father, Son, Spirit, as well as all the faithful as well.

However, this simply cannot be achieved by parents that are striving to be their kids friends, because children start out foolish and need strict discipline to remove it from them.

In Proverbs 22:6 we read this…

Proverbs 22:6 NKJV

6 Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.

What is a very important part of this?

Proverbs 22:15 NKJV

15 Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of correction will drive it far from him.

Now please do not get me wrong, discipline that is done solely out of anger with no goal of correction toward righteousness, is not discipline, that is abuse.

Ephesians 6:4 NKJV

4 And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.

We see too many children that are unruly, and if that is not kept in check, they will grow up being unruly as well.

Proverbs 29:15 NKJV

15 The rod and rebuke give wisdom, But a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.

Parents are not to be their children’s friend, no they are to be their parents who are raising their boys to faithful Christian men, husbands, and fathers, and their daughters to faithful Christian women, wives, and mothers, each in that order.

If parents raise their children biblically, then when their children are faithful Christians they will then be able to rejoice in both their physical and spiritual friendship with their children.

If they do not raise them “in the LORD” they will like have much heartache wishing they had raised them properly when they were younger.

In the Lord’s church we need less cuddling of bad parenting and more condemning, helping parents with their children so that one day they will all be by God’s side in eternity.