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WINNING WITH THE WORD “Winning with the Word” is a weekly blog that will help you to be a winner in life by applying God’s principles for living the abundant life as found in the Bible, God’s manual for life. AN INVITATION TO YOU: To follow this blog, click here.  If this blog has blessed you, please encourage your family and friends to subscribe as well. Thank you! ______________________________________ Do you prefer listening instead of reading? Then click below to listen to today’s blog post: https://media.blubrry.com/winning_with_the_word/content.blubrry.com/winning_with_the_word/WWW_Podcast_20191230_A_Parent_s_Promise_from_God.mp3 __________________________________________________________________ Parents frequently ask me for advice on how to raise their children. Frankly, I am somewhat surprised, since by no means do I consider myself an expert on parenting. I do, however, consider God the Expert par excellence on parenting. As I was raising my children, I relied totally on God to direct me. There were many times I had absolutely no clue as to what I was doing. And there were even more times that I made mistakes--sometimes big ones. But there was one thing I always did right: I prayed! And, oh, how I prayed!  Each night, as I checked on my children after they had fallen asleep, I would kneel down beside their beds, gently lay my hands on their precious heads, and pray this prayer: "Father God, please bridge the gap between the love my children needed today and the love they received."  And then I trusted God to do just that. And, do you know what? He did! My daughters are now in their forties, and I can see the fruit of my daily, heartfelt prayer in their lives. They have become beautiful women of God who love Him and serve Him with all of their hearrt, soul, strength, and mind. And I owe it all to our Heavenly Father. You see, when I first became a Christian a few years before my children were born, I discovered a promise to parents in the Bible. The promise is found in Proverbs 22: 6 KJV and says this: "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." The New Living translation states it like this: "Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it." As a young mother, I was trusting enough to believe that verse and to take God at His Word. My job was to learn what  "the right path" was and to teach it to my children.  And so I began a diligent study of the Bible. Whenever I learned a new principle of holy conduct, I taught it to my children. I taught them the Word morning, noon, and night, because the Bible instructed me to do so. Regarding God's commandments, the Bible has this message for parents: "And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." And that's what I did.  So, let's break down these verses in Deuteronomy 6 and uncover the specific steps to wise and successful parenting: 1. Commit wholeheartedly to God's commands. As parents, we must commit ourselves wholeheartedly to God's commandments, If we aren't serious about obeying God, we can't teach our children to be serious. They will see right through our hypocrisy. 2. Repeat God's commandments over and over to our children. We all know that children usually don't get it the first time around. Nor the second! We have to repeat and repeat and repeat. The same is true of God's commandments. Our children need to hear them over and over before those commandments begin to sink in. 3. Continually talk about God's commandments. We must talk about God's commandments when we are at home, in the car,