STEWARDSHIP-PARENTING
As parents,
you may confidently rear your children according to God’s Word. While bringing up your children, you are to
remember that your children are not your “possessions” but instead are the
Lord’s gift to you. You are to exercise
faithful stewardship in their lives.
Self-Confrontation Manuel, Lesson 17, Page 4,
Used by Permission of the Biblical Counseling Foundation.
Scripture
does not give fathers dictatorial power over their children. Children are not to be regarded as property
of the parents. Instead, Scripture
speaks to parents as stewards of the Lord, responsible to provide a proper
nurturing environment for children, whom the Lord has graciously placed into
their care. Like all stewards, parents
will ultimately give account for how they have fulfilled their stewardship.
John MacArthur
Successful Christian Parenting, 1998, p. 134.
Today’s
parents tend to be more passive and less involved in their children’s lives
than any generation in our nation’s history. They have turned their children
over to artificial, surrogate parents. Day-care centers, relatives, the
television set, and the child’s own peers often have far more influence on the
moral and social development of today’s children than parents do. That is an
abdication of the parent’s duty before God. The Lord Himself gave parents – not
schools, youth leaders, Sunday school teachers, or anybody else – the primary
responsibility for the nurture and admonition of (their) children.
John MacArthur
The
Fulfilled Family, 2005, p. 101.
No man or
woman ever had a nobler challenge or a higher privilege than to bring up a
child for God and whenever we slight that privilege or neglect that ministry
for anything else, we live to mourn it in heartache and grief.
Vance Havner
Quoted by Curtis C. Thomas, Practical
Wisdom for Pastors, Crossway Books, 2001, p. 118.
Most assuredly
God will require an account of the children from the parents’ hands, for they
are His, and only lent to their care and keeping.
A.W. Pink
A Word to Parents.