Rather than offer a lofty editorial on parenting, I’m going to interact in a personal way with the four principles of biblical parenting that Wade and Barb Mann emphasize in their article (page 4). Perhaps you’ll also find yourself reflecting personally as you read the article.

“Teaching along the way”—the first principle—has been one of my favorite parts of parenting. But this can only be done well by giving children quantity time. Usually, teachable moments don’t happen on a schedule.

In my home, bedtime is often such a time. Sure, kids sometimes want to push back sleep by asking endless questions; yet I remember that as a child I was much more sensitive at those times when darkness seemed to surround me, when the mysteries of night worried me, and when eternity seemed especially scary.

My siblings and I received a lot of quantity time from our parents, and that made the second principle—modeling—much more accessible to us. I know some pastors’ children who resented all they had to do for the church; but I relished the opportunities when my Dad asked me to tag along on visits or needed a hand setting up chairs for a pot luck supper.

Discipline, the third principle, is often a positive, guiding nudge; but there’s no way to avoid it being a bitter pill at times. Once as a child I fell back on a chair in my home and hit my head. I uttered a word that I’d recently heard at school. My parents took exception to it and placed a bar of soap in my mouth to make their point. I was offended that they didn’t pay more attention to my aching head, but I did get the point. From then on, the soap was not needed for such a purpose.

I’ve also seen how magnetic a home with discipline can be to those who don’t have it. The basketball hoop in our driveway here in Pittsburgh attracted many neighborhood children, but at first they said and did what they pleased. Hearing the rules didn’t seem to change their behavior; but, once they knew we would enforce the rules, they seemed even more drawn to us, and we had no more problems.

When I think of prayer in parenting, I will always think of my mother. Whenever I awoke early enough, I would find her in that chair, eyes closed, a Bible in her lap. I didn’t have to ask if she was praying for me. She was a woman who knew her limits as a parent, and who knew God’s limitlessness in watching over a child and his heart.

If, looking back on my parents’ examples and on my own 16 years of parenting thus far, I could give any encouragement to younger parents, it would be this: In those moments when you are stressed and struggling and yet choose to turn your heart toward your child, even in the simplest thing—in those moments you are doing a good and godly thing. Some of those simple things will serve as your child’s security and will become their sweetest memories.