The Increase is the Lord's

Parents, it can be a struggle getting your children to memorize. You can reward, you can prod, and you can plead with them, but if there is no desire, the moment you stop pushing and prodding, they stop memorizing. It can be terribly frustrating and disheartening. Sometimes, you wonder if you are doing any good at all. You are the ones I want to encourage today.

While I was saved at a young age, it wasn’t until I was seventeen when I could confidently say that I had taken my faith to be my own. For many of my teenage years, I was in a large part still coasting on the faith of my parents. The little bit of biblical study I did was passive. Mostly, it consisted of the daily devotional and memory work my mother did with my siblings and me each morning. Sometimes, she was at a loss as to how to instill the desire in us to grow on our own. But still she taught us day after day for years, teaching us the Word.

And in that simple act of daily teaching and memorizing with us, there was eventually a moment in which the Lord began to stir my heart towards Himself. I began to earnestly seek Him more of my own accord, realizing that He offered the only path of life, and that I must not sit idly by.

And from this day I plowed ahead
Though trials loomed to right and left
I knew my path lay straight before
Any other way would leave me bereft.
(From: “The Path Before”, Poems for the Resolute of Heart)

That day came for me when I was seventeen. For some, it comes sooner; others, later. The Lord alone knows the hearts of men, but what I can tell you is this:

Parents, your effort to teach your children to love the Lord and to hide His Word in their hearts will not be in vain. As the Lord wills, there will come a moment in which the seed you have faithfully planted and watered takes root, and it becomes not your God-given desire, but theirs which begins to grow their faith. I exhort you to continue to “train up [your] child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6) Serve the Lord faithfully in this way, and trust that He will provide the increase in their lives (1 Cor 3:6).