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Children to Develop Well-Balanced Characters, June 12
The Lord is exalted, for he dwells on high.... He will be the sure foundation
for your times, a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge; the
fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure.
Isaiah 33:5, 6
, N.I.V.
Guard your children from every objectionable influence possible; for in child-
hood they are more ready to receive impressions, either of moral dignity, purity,
and loveliness of character, or of selfishness, impurity, and disobedience. Once let
them become influenced by the spirit of murmuring, pride, vanity, and impurity,
and the taint may be as indelible as life itself.
It is because the home training is defective that the youth are so unwilling to
submit to proper authority. I am a mother; I know whereof I speak when I say that
youth and children are not only safer but happier under wholesome restraint than
when following their own inclination.—
The Adventist Home, 469, 470
.
It should be the object of every parent to secure to his child a well-balanced,
symmetrical character. This is a work of no small magnitude and importance—a
work requiring earnest thought and prayer no less than patient, persevering effort.
A right foundation must be laid, a framework, strong and firm, erected, and then
day by day the work of building, polishing, perfecting must go forward.—
Counsels
to Parents, Teachers, and Students, 107
.
The physical, mental, and spiritual capabilities should be developed in order
to form a properly balanced character. Children should be watched, guarded, and
disciplined in order to successfully accomplish this. It requires skill and patient
effort to mold the young in the right manner. Certain evil tendencies are to be
carefully restrained and tenderly rebuked; the mind is to be stimulated in favor of
the right. The child should be encouraged in attempting to govern self, and all this
is to be done judiciously, or the purpose desired is frustrated.
Parents may well inquire: “Who is sufficient for these things?” God alone is
their sufficiency, and if they leave Him out of the question, seeking not his aid and
counsel, hopeless indeed is their task. But by prayer, by study of the Bible, and by
earnest zeal on their part they may succeed nobly in this important duty and be
repaid a hundredfold for all their time and care....
The Bible, a volume rich in instruction, should be their textbook.... Impressions
made upon the minds of the young are hard to efface. How important, then, that
these impressions should be of the right sort, bending the elastic faculties of youth
in the right direction.—
Testimonies for the Church 4:197, 198
.
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