Ephesians 6:4 And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

One of my earliest memories is of a family gathering with the wives in the hot kitchen cooking. The men were drinking in the living room ranking on one another. Ranking is a verbal abuse game which is meant to be funny but can get brutal. As a small child perhaps four or five years of age, I wandered out of the hot kitchen into the fire of the drunken mix. I instantly became the target.

I wish I had been raised in a household which feared God and nurtured me in the Word, but I was not. I was raised to toughen up, get some thick skin, and “be a man”. The problem was I didn’t want to be the kind of man that picks on kids.

I got over it. I finally healed those wounds. I did it this year more than sixty years later. Sadly, I didn’t raise my young children as I should have. I wasn’t a drunk, but that didn’t stop the pain of my past from leaking out into their lives. I wasn’t as tough on them as the men before me, but I wasn’t as tender as my Lord would have me be either.

This is not an apology nor is it a confession. It is both a warning and an encouragement to break the cycle of abuse of the past and raise up Godly children who hear the Word in their homes and see Godly behavior exampled in their daily lives.

Psalm 12:1,4,5 Help, Lord; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men. Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us? For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the Lord; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him.