Proverbs 29:17 Correct thy son, and he shall give thee rest; yea, he shall give delight unto thy soul.
I want you to imagine that you are in your favorite restaurant on a Friday night in your hometown. Across the room you see a couple in their late twenties, and they have a three-year-old child. The child is quiet, happy, and quickly responsive to both father and mother. In fact, you think you hear the child say, “Please.” Does this strike you as normal or odd? The fact is, you are probably thinking as I am describing this couple, “What kind of unrealistic picture is this? No three-year-old can say, ‘Please.’” Oh, really? Can a three-year-old say, “No”? Can a three-year-old say, “Mine”? What we are talking about here is not normal or natural. It is not something that automatically happens.
Fast forward that family to a couple in their forties with a fifteen-year-old child. The child is happy, responsive, and takes healthy initiative, but also responds in a healthy way to parents. Is that normal and natural? That is to say, is this average? No, and if you saw either of those two things happen, you probably would go to the couple and say, “Hey, I want to compliment you on your fine family.” That family would be so extraordinary, and if you made this a family of five, now we are talking about something from a different planet!
It is easy for us to think that such a family is impossible, or to say, “Well, they got lucky,” “It is the personality of their kids.” Proverbs 29:17 says, “Correct thy son and he shall give thee rest; yea, he shall give delight unto thy soul.” Children grow, as does joy or strife, depending on what you do. Ultimately, what you get is the result of what you give, which is to say “a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame,” as it says in Proverbs 29:15.
Now, correction here implies the return to or restatement of a chosen path. You can’t correct a child if you haven’t given him something to go on in the first place. Sometimes we get angry with children or scold or chide them, but we have never instructed them as to what to do. We simply respond to what they are doing.
Correction implies that a parent has begun by stating what is expected. Correction implies the return to and restatement of a chosen path. The results you want are neither natural nor default. The Bible says, “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child.” We are all born with defiance, rebellion, and selfishness, but the Bible says that if you correct your son, he will give you rest.
The work you choose is better than the toil imposed on you by delay or passivity. Today, what we are talking about is a choice. We are not talking about dumb luck. We are talking about the God Who gives grace to those who give obedience. We are talking about rest and delight that grows with your child as you do what is right.