If you had a little boy...your very own little boy...and you knew that at any time Pharoah's daughter could come and claim him for her own, what would you teach him? In those few months, years or whatever time you had to spend with him, what would you try to instill in the heart and mind of that little boy?
Moses' mother (Book of Exodus) had only a short time to teach him about God and to train him in God's will. We do not know how long she got to be his 'nurse' (Exodus 2:7-10) but that mother surely had her values in order.
She had trained him well enough in that little while that his love for God and his faith in Him was so strong, that he gave up a life of prominence and luxury later on, for a life of affliction and suffering with the Lord's people. I am persuaded that training did not come from the king's palace. Can we, who have as long as 18 or 19 years, do as well? It depends so much on our priorities.
Imagine with me, if you will, a huge department store where someone has mischievously misplaced the price tags: A curtain rod sells for $150.00 and a wash cloth for $200.00, a dish towel for $250.00, but a beautiful carpet sells for 15 cents per square yard and a living room suite for 95 cents.
If you can imagine anything that ridiculous, can you just see what a state of frenzy we homemakers would be in? We may not stock up on many dish towels or wash cloths at that price, but we would get rather excited over the other bargains! If we could make it past the check-out counter, we would be having a ball, wouldn't we?
Well this has happened in America. No...not in material things that we can see, but in something of much more value than material things. But mothers, we are not having a ball...we are losing our children!
Satan has somehow convinced us that a job outside the home is more important than the home...and that things of a material nature are more important than being with our children and training them. So many, many mothers have their children in day care centers or with a baby sitter to be influenced by these people all day long.
When our children were small and we would be traveling, my husband and I would talk about our precious cargo lying asleep in the back seat. It surely made us more aware of how careful we should be in our driving, because of those precious lives in our care.
How much more important are the souls of these little one than their physical life! These little ones that are born to us and that we rear up are going to spend eternity somewhere.
Young mothers and fathers, you only have one opportunity to bring your children up in God's favor. Don't blow it! You can not go back and re-do after you see that you have failed. You may be able to salvage some things later on and you should never stop trying to, but you can not un-do from the beginning and start over.
Save yourself a lot of grief later on. Your children are the most important "possessions" you will ever have control of and they need to guarded wisely, loved abundantly and completely trained by God's Word while they are growing up. This cannot be done by a babysitter or by a child care center. This is done by parental influence and it must be done early (Deuteronomy 6:4-7).
Note: You may not think of your children as 'possessions', because they really belong to God... but we have them longer than we do a car, refrigerator, stove, etc...so I call them possessions. Maybe if we thought of them as possessions, we would take better care of them.
