Proverbial Advice To Fathers

C. Discipline Children (13:24; 3:11-12).

1. Illust. Tony Campolo once repeated a little poem that illustrates how difficult this task can be: "Never strike a child in anger; never touch him when irate; save it for some happy time, when both are feeling great!"

2. Illust. A story is told about a college professor who had no children, but plenty of advice for people who did. Whenever he saw a neighbor scolding a child for some wrongdoing, he would say, "You should love your boy, not punish him." One hot summer afternoon the professor was doing some repair work on a concrete driveway. As he finished and was heading back inside, he saw a neighbor boy putting his foot into the fresh cement. He rushed over, grabbed him, and was about to yell at him when a neighbor said, "Now, now, Professor! Don't you remember? You must `love' the child!" At this, the Professor yelled back, "I do love him ..... in the abstract but not in the concrete!"

III. A CLOSING, PRACTICAL THOUGHT.

A. There's a lot of movements in the conservative, evangelical, Christian world today:

1. Socio-political efforts to change way things are.

2. Don't want to detract--I personally don't get too excited about such efforts. Here's why: < according to experts >

a. 7% of influence on a child's life comes from classroom.

b. 1% of influence comes from Church and Sunday School.

c. Want to guess where the remaining 92% comes from?

B. What may be even more important than conducting campaigns FOR the family is conducting campaigns IN the family.

1. As Chuck Swindoll says: "Home is where life makes up its mind."

2. Our prayer this AM is that our children will make up their minds in our homes and that our fathers will help them do it!