Deliberate Parenting

Somehow this morning, I collided with Eli. I couldn’t stop my tears falling as I read about a man who served the Lord and yet at the end of it all, his generation was wiped out. Where and how did he wrong God?

Eli was a man with many responsibilities; in his day, he was the High Priest of God. His job description was exclusive – he had the responsibility of presenting the people to God. He was the one permitted to enter the Holy place and make sacrifices on behalf of the people. He was a very, very important man. He must have been a very very busy man too!

Just Like you!

Eli was a man with many responsibilities; he was a father – he had 2 sons the bible says – Hophni & Phineas. He was responsible for teaching them the ministry of priesthood so that at his demise his sons would carry on in ministry as appointed for the Levites. That was God’s laid out plan – that the fathers would teach their sons His way, so that when the sons grew older they would understand the protocol of ministry.

Exactly like you!

It’s in your job description – to train up a child in the way that he should go, so that when he is old, he would not depart from it (Proverbs 22 verse 6).

So where did Eli go wrong?

It is very clear to me that Eli loved the Lord. Reading about him, I realized he was constantly in the temple. He was there when Hannah came to cry before God for a child; he rebuked her when he thought she was a drunken woman and blessed her when he realized she wasn’t. In 1 Samuel 2: 20, Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife, saying  ‘May the Lord give you children by this woman to take the place of this one she prayed for and gave to the Lord’. Hannah went on to have more children.

Eli, heard God – he could recognize God’s voice. The night God called Samuel, it was Eli who, in recognition of God’s call, told Samuel to answer ‘speak Lord for your servant hears’.

When the ark was captured in battle, Eli was heartbroken and fell and died. The bible records in 1 Samuel 4 verse 18 – then it happened, when he made mention of the ark of God, that Eli fell off his seat backward by the side of the gate; and his neck was broken and he died…’

The interactions between Eli and his sons were briefly told in the scriptures. In 1 Samuel 2 verse 22, we read of him rebuking his sons because the bible said they were wicked men. The bible also says that his sons did not listen to him.

So what did Eli do wrong?

When God spoke to Samuel in 1 Samuel 3 verses 11 – 13, He outlined Eli’s wrong.  He said ‘Behold I will do something in Israel at which both ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. In that day, I will perform against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have told him that I will judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knows, because his sons made themselves vile, and he did not restrain them.

From this scripture, we see that:

v God had previously and severally spoken to Eli about his children’s behavior

v God had warned Eli of judgement to come

v Eli did not restrain his children

And herein lies Eli’s wrong doing!  He did not hold back his children, he didn’t limit them, he didn’t set them boundaries. Therefore God wiped out Eli alongside his children who had grown up to be vile men.

Embedded in that word – restrain – is yet another powerful word – Train.

Not too long ago, Pastor KO sent me a mail in which he wrote – Training a child is a very deliberate process…

Did Eli know this and just chose to ignore it? Am I ignoring it too? Are you?

The dictionary defines deliberate as studied, intentional and in my own words, ‘something that was planned for, not left to chance or happenstance’. Process is defined as a series of actions or steps taken to achieve an end. Note series, note steps, note the implication of continuity… that’s what process is. A deliberate process is one that is well thought out, planned for and studiously implemented. A deliberate process is consistent, continuous, and persistent.

Have we been training our children deliberately? Or are they just growing on food and air, like weeds with no boundaries? Is there a vision for where they are headed? Are there plans in place? Are those plans God’s plans or my plans? Have the plans been well thought out, prayed over? Is there a budget for those plans? Have we consciously allocated resources to achieving these plans? Do we consistently and continuously check that they are within the plan? Do we persistently mirror God’s personality to them so they can copy us? Are we suitable mentors for our children? Are they priority amidst the myriad of plans jostling for attention in our minds?

A wise son makes a glad father and a foolish son is a grief to his father, the scriptures say. O that our sons and daughters would grow up wise I pray.  But a proper child doesn’t just happen, the deliberateness of training a child is what makes for great parenting.