Note to Wise Parents: Learn from King David

Blessed be the LORD my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight:
Rid me, and deliver me from the hand of strange children, whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood:
That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as corner stones, polished after the similitude of a palace:
Happy is that people, that is in such a case:   -Psalm 144:1,11,12,15a

King David: Beloved of God and of God's people.

Back when David was a young man, God said that he was a man after His own heart (of course when David later took it easy, lusted, schemed to commit adultery and followed through with the sin, and then plotted and ordered the murder of an innocent man to hide his own wickedness, God could not say that of him).

But David repented and aside from this black blot on his life, David was a great man of God, a faithful servant, a righteous and humble king, a praying man as well as a songwriter, a fearless warrior and long-term soldier, a sacrificial giver, and an industrious and a successful man.

All this takes much time and it came out of David's short life.  Military campaigns alone could take dad away from the home for weeks or months at a time.  So sadly, David was an often absent father and therefore woefully ignorant.

Of one of David's sons Adonijah, God makes us know that David had never displeased him at any time.  Note this example of a father who made a sad mistake here that later caused him grief and troubled God's kingdom.

But David feared God and knowing the toll that war exacted upon the home earnestly prayed for God to raise up good sons and daughters. (See Psalm 144 below.)

And God heard his prayer for David feared God.  And God did bless his descendants, but many still lost their way and were very wicked.

If only David could have dedicated his energy and time to training his children as much as he gave of his strength to his other enterprises for God, I believe that he would have seen even more of his descendants fear God as their father did.

I cannot be a father absent from the life of my children and expect God to do all of my work for me.

But I do need to humbly and earnestly pray and fast as David did for God to save our children.  For training and teaching without God's great intervention is never enough.

When self ambition, plans, and pastimes are laid aside by the father (or mother) in obedience to God and when they might hinder teaching and leading the family in God's ways, God can repay by doing what dad (or mom) could never do in his own lifetime of strength.  When God works there's usually a longer wait, however it is always worth the wait.         -pdd