Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is older he will not depart.

King Solomon, from Proverbs

Anyone who has ever been on a good team will understand. In order to have quality results, you have to put in quality effort. 

We all expect hard work from our children when it comes to the activities that we consider most important. If they are in school, we want them to work for the highest grade thay are capable of. If they are in an excellent band program, we will want them to put in excellent work. If they are raising pigs or sheep to show in the 4-H stock show, then we expect them to put in the daily hard work that will allow them to excel. And if they are representing the schools team in athletics we expect them to be at every practice. Furthermore, we expect those practices to be every day of the school week. We will hold our children to these high standards even though they be just children, for we are training them to be something special in life.

These are good and proper standards to hold, and few people who understand the price of excellence will dispute this.

But when it comes to the worship with the church, combined with the Bible classes the church may offer, hard work and quality effort are often lacking. Add to that any sort of daily daily devotions such as Bible reading and prayer, and even the best of parents may consider this a bit too much. After all, kids need some time to be kids, don't they? After their homework, band and athletic practices, chores with the 4-H animals, and all of the rest of the really important things that they do, they are going to need a break.

And so we train up our children to become excellent citizens of the world, but we sometimes fail to prepare them to be servants of God. Servants, by the way whose souls will spend an eternity somewhere. Why do we do that? Maybe it's because we have put in so much hard work to become citizens of this world ourselves. 

And then, we as the same parents who would be so upset if little Johnny and sweet Suzy didn't put in their best efforts to get a star on their papers or a pretty pig at the big show, wake up some day to find that we have failed to prepare them for the most important task that they will ever have: To be a servant of God and Christ!

If this is you, welcome to the club! We all have taken our eye off the ball in the training up of our children at one time or another. The important thing now is to do something about it. It will take excellent preparation, hard work and quality effort. It will be hard! But it is our duty! And since we love our children nearly as much as God Himself loves them, then we will put in that hard work because their souls are worth it. And God and Jesus are worth it. 

So, let's put the mistakes of the past behind us and get to the hard but fulfilling work of training up our children for God. We will never regret this preparing of our children for the most important endeavor they will ever take part in.