Daily Devotionals by Ardith Keef

       There is an amazing battle for the minds and hearts of our children.
     When a parent prays privately each day for his or her children, passivity does not rule when  the heat is on. It is not possible to say "Lord, teach me to give up my child and raise him for you" and then just watch from the sideline while the ways of the world creep in.
      While a parent of a teenager must learn to cease preaching at him, the parent still has the power to say "No."
     Remember, the Bible says "foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. . ." It doesn't say merely "baby" , but child.
     It starts when they are little and they are given all the things they reach for. Or, rather than teach the child what he may not have, the parent simply tries to give him another thing he may be satisfied with so that he doesn't miss the thing he originally wanted.
     As children grow older, the habits remain but they take on more sophistication and the sphere gets wider.
     There does not have to be a scene and major wrestle over things a parent forbids. The child does not have to agree or like it.
     At the same time, as he grows older, he must understand the dangers and be allowed more choice for himself.
     I do not believe a thirteen or fourteen year old daughter of a believer should have a "boyfriend." It isn't cute, and it doesn't matter what all her friends are doing. You are not the parent of her friends, but you are her parent. By using that term and by putting herself in that role and having accepted it at home, she has already been allowed to adopt the language of the "I am trying this one and doing it like all the unsaved do" vector. It is a set-up for a series of broken relationships and it is not scriptural to have romantic flings, even on a casual level.
     These things must not be taken hodge-podge and turned into rules in the hopes that things will not turn out badly. We must turn to the Lord each day for sight. We must live before our children and not hold them to a standard we would never be willing to meet. We may not make up for our past mistakes by trying to make them perfect.
     But we can stand before the Lord and be responsible enough to say "no".
We say it calmly and in love because God has delegated His authority to parents and He will back it up.
     The world is moving faster, but the One who hung the stars in place still works at the same pace.
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