How to Save Your Children From the World’s Temptations

Parents are the caretakers of their children’s lives. If they would meet their responsibility and be able to look God and their children in the face on the Day of Judgment, then they must make their homes as much like a Gardens of Eden as possible.

The way to save your children from the temptations of the streets is to make your home so bright, so sweet, so beautiful, so happy, and so full of love and joy and prayer, that the streets will have no attractiveness for them, and no power to win them away. “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).

Among the influences which mold and shape character, the place of the family-life is supreme in its importance. Our children are given to us in tender infancy, to teach them and train them for holy, worthy, and beautiful living.

It is not enough to have a grand house to live in. It is not enough to have fine foods, luxurious furniture, and expensive entertainments. Most of the world’s worthiest men and women – those who have blessed the world the most – were brought up in ordinary homes, without any luxuries.

It is the tone of the family-life that is important. We should make it pure, elevating, refining, and inspiring. The books we bring in, the papers and magazines, the guests we have at our tables and admit to our firesides, the home conversation, and the pictures we hang on our walls – all these are educational.

As in everything, Love is the great master-secret of home happiness!

The religious influences are also vitally important. In the first home in the Garden of Eden, the Lord visited Adam and Eve as a familiar Friend. Jesus must be our Guest if our home is to be a fit place for our children and for ourselves. If there is no sincere prayer in it, it is not a true home at all; it is only a heathen lodging-place!

How can we make Gardens of Eden out of our own homes? What are some of the secrets of home happiness? I might gather them all into one word and say, “Jesus!” If we have Christ as our guest, our home will be happy! He must be welcomed into all our life. He must be in each heart. He must sit at our table and mingle with us in all our family activities. Christ can bless our home, only through the lives of those who make up the family-circle.

Make your home so sweet and so heavenly – with love and prayer and singing and holy living – that all through it, there shall be the fragrance of the heart of Jesus!

Has this article inspired you today? I’d love to hear about it! Feel free to leave your thoughts and reflections in the comments below.

God bless you and your family, this day and always.

All for our King’s glory,
Christian

photo by AlisiaK  |  Lightstock.com

This post is another installment of Miller’s Monday Musings, a weekly series that is published every Monday on my website. The series features selected writings that have been adapted from the works of James Russell Miller (1840-1912), a much-beloved Christian author and pastor who is well-remembered for his practical thoughts on Christian home and family life. Learn more about this weekly series by clicking here.