Are You Helping Your Children to Know the Lord?

Proverbs 22:6  (NIV)

Start children off on the way they should go,

    and even when they are old they will not turn from it.

In the late 1880's, Benjamin B. Warfield, a professor at Princeton University, traced the known descendants of Jonathan Edwards. Edwards was the first president of Princeton and one of the key preachers in religious revival known as the "Great Awakening" during the eighteenth century. Warfield charted the 1,394 known descendants of Edwards. Of his known descendants there were 13 college presidents, 65 college professors, 30 judges, 100 lawyers, 60 physicians, 75 army and navy officers, 100 pastors, 60 authors of prominence, 3 United States senators, 80 public servants in other capacities including governors and ministers to foreign countries, and one vice-president of the United States.

Richard Dugdale, a sociologist and a contemporary of Warfield's, traced the known descendants of Max Jukes. Jukes was a Dutch immigrant that arrived in New York in the early 1700's. An alcoholic who couldn't hold a job, of the 903 descendants of Jukes, 300 were delinquents, 145 confirmed drunkards, 90 were prostitutes, and over 100 spent an average of 13 years in prison including seven were convicted for murder. The Jukes' family cost the taxpayers of New York over 1.2 million dollars. The descendants of Edwards never cost the government a single penny, instead making contributions of incalculable worth.

The best ministry parents can have is to train their children to know Jesus Christ. Are you helping your child to know the Lord?

Dear Lord, today we pray for our children. Help us to take the time to teach them to know You better. Help us prepare them with a good foundation so that they will become the person You want them to be. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.