Blog

1 Kings 6:7 KJV
And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither: so that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building.

It seems to me that there is a worthy lesson in this verse, relating to raising children.
First a story. When I was a young father, we had a series of tent meetings in our local town. The tent didn’t afford us much privacy if we had to take a child out for an attitude adjustment. Which I did, one day.

One of our visiting ministers that day was Eddie Boese, who had raised a number of children. He sidled up to me after church and said something like “if you would do more training at home, you would not have to do as much at church”. He elaborated a little. I listened.
It was a simple message, delivered gently and kindly, from someone eminently qualified to deliver it. I won’t pretend that it didn’t sting at first. But it was a good message and we needed it. Donna and started doing home practice sessions, making the children sit still for a while, amid other things. It worked, to our benefit and to that of our children. And not just in church meetings.
Don’t take from this that child discipline is out of bounds in church. But I believe that by far the most of our child training should be at home, and generally as one-on-one encounters with our child. Not much noise in public. We are building something sacred and beautiful, and effective character shaping is best done out of the public view. If we see a well-behaved child in public, we can be fairly certain that didn’t just happen – it is a product of things done elsewhere. 

I think that’s how our heavens Father prefers to relate to us. Oh, the things I’ve learned sitting quietly in my armchair late at night in an empty living room – an open bible, an open heart, and a prayer on my lips for God to shape me to fit his purpose. Life itself might teach us some of these things eventually too, but it’s going to be noisier, more public, and more painful. Our loving Father is a much gentler teacher than life.

Imagine a building site with no noise, with sculpted stones coming together and fitting perfectly into a beautiful edifice! A holy, reverential place. That takes planning – and offsite work. We can do it, with God’s wisdom and truth as our guide.