Chapter 14: Training Children to Think

1.  What practical means do you use to help keep your children innocent and pure?

2.  How do you prepare them for/walk them through difficulties?

3.  What role do guardian angels play in the spiritual life of your family?

4.  Hebrews 12:11 basically admits that discipline is not fun; in the short term, it brings sorrow instead of joy.  But what does it say is the long term result of this process of discipline [For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.]?  Can you think of issues with your children where you tend to back off from discipline because the process is so uncomfortable?  List two ways in which you will strengthen your approach to loving discipline this month.  Ask for God's help and perhaps enlist the help of a friend to keep you accountable for this.

Action Point-Read from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:25-34 ["Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?  Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?  And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life?  And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O men of little faith?  Therefore do not be anxious, saying, `What shall we eat?' or `What shall we drink?' or `What shall we wear?'  For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.  "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day.]  Entrust your worries and those of your children to the Lord.