Dear Friends,
Do you have children? Do you think you are a good parent? Do you believe you are a Christian parent? Today’s devotional will help you answer the last two questions. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Genesis 18:19 (ESV)

  19 For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.”

“I shall conclude with this earnest request to all Christian parents…that they…have compassion on the souls of their poor children, and be faithful to the great trust God hath put on them. If you cannot do what you would for them, yet do what you can. Both the church and the state…groan under the neglect of this weighty duty. Your children know not God nor his laws, but ‘take his name in vain,’ and slight his worship, and you neither instruct nor correct them…. Wonder not if God makes you smart for your children’s sins; for you are guilty of all they commit by your neglect of your duty to reform them…. If you would not be charged before God as murderers of their souls, nor have them cry out against you in everlasting fire, see that you teach them how to escape it, and bring them up in holiness and the fear of God. I charge every one of you, upon your allegiance to God, as you will very shortly answer the contrary at your peril, that you neither refuse nor neglect this most necessary duty. If you are not willing to do it…you are rebels, and no true subjects of Jesus Christ. If you are willing….lead them, by your own example, to prayer, to reading, and other religious duties; inform their understandings; store their memories; rectify their wills; quicken their affections; keep tender their consciences; restrain their tongues, and teach them gracious speech; reform and watch over their outward conversation. To these ends, get them Bibles and pious books, and see that they read them. Examine them often as to what they learn; especially spend the Lord’s day in this work; and suffer them not to spend it in sports or idleness. Show them the meaning of what they read or learn. Instruct them out of the Holy Scriptures.  Keep them out of evil company, and acquaint them with the godly. Especially show them the necessity, excellency, and pleasure of serving God, and labor to fix all upon their hearts.” [Richard Baxter, The Saint’s Everlasting Rest edited by Benjamin Fawcett, (New York: American Tract Society, n.d.), p. 289-90]