"Gentle Parenting" is not Godly parenting: Proverbs 4 | A Proverb A Day Challenge

Continuing on in our Proverb A Day challenge, we are reminded by Solomon the correct way children should be taught. The word tell us to TRAIN up a child. Comment your key verses and what resonated with you the most from this chapter!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi guys, welcome back to the Amani Talks podcast. You're
here with your host Amani on the podcast where we
discuss our faith based topics and deepening our relationship with
the Lord. Happy fourth of July to everyone out there.
Today is July fourth. We are on proverbs for continuing
on in our Proverb a Day series, I hope that
everyone gets out there enjoys a good cookout, a good

(00:21):
hot zag. So let's get into proverbs for today. It
is gonna be a little bit of a shorter episode,
just based purely off the text. And then also, I
know you guys are just you know, got the day off,
relaxing and everything, So we're just gonna get into a
quick word to start your morning off. Good morning, queen. Okay,
let's read proverbs for I know y'all see me and
my bandana today. If I gotta wake up at six

(00:41):
seven am to get these out every morning by eight thirty,
which is always my goal, then y'all gonna be seeing
a lot of sweatshirts, a lot of bandanas, a lot
of scorbs. Okay, yeah, hear my children the instruction of
a father and give attention to no understanding for I
give you good doctrine. Do not forsake my law. When
I was my father's son, tender and the only one

(01:03):
in the sight of my mother, he also taught me
and said to me, let your heart retain my words,
keep my commands, and live. Get wisdom, get understanding, Do
not forget nor turn away from the words of my mouth.
Do not forsake her, and she will preserve you. Love
her and she will keep you. Wisdom is the principal thing. Therefore,

(01:23):
get wisdom, and in all your getting, get understanding. Exalt her,
and she will promote you. She will bring you honor.
When you embrace her, she will place on your head
an ornament of grace, a crown of glory. She will
deliver to you. Hear, my son, and receive my sayings,
and the years of your life will be many. I
have taught you in the way of wisdom. I have

(01:44):
led you in the right paths. When you walk, your
steps will not be hindered, and when you run, you
will not stumble. Take firm hold of instruction. Do not
let go keep her, for she is your life. Do
not enter the path of the wicked, and do not
walk in the way of evil. Avoid it, do not
travel on it, turn away from it and pass on.

(02:04):
For they do not sleep unless they have done evil,
And their sleep is taken away unless they make someone fall.
For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the
wine of violence. But the path of the just is
like a shining sun that shines ever brighter unto the
perfect day. The way of the wicked is like darkness.
They do not know what makes them stumble. My son,

(02:26):
give attention to my words, and cline your ear to
my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes.
Keep them in the midst of your heart, for they
are life to those who find them in health. To
all your flesh, Keep your heart with all diligence, for
out of it springs the issues of life. Put away
from you a deceitful mouth, and put perverse lips far

(02:46):
far from you. Let your eyes look straight ahead, and
your eyelids look right before you ponder the path of
your feet, and let all your ways be established. Do
not turn to the right or the left. Remove your
foot from evil. Okay, So that is the entirety of
Proverbs four. We are on a roll for Proverbs four days.

(03:07):
I have noticed that it seems like these proverbs really
kind of run into each other, which is why I
said that it was hard for me to read through
it like just a regular book, reading a few chapters
a day, because it does seem repetitive, it does get monotonous.
We are continuing on to see the word wisdom, of course,
but four sounds a lot like three, and I see

(03:27):
a lot of the same themes going into four, talking
about how wisdom preserves your life, it gives you safety,
walk in the way of righteousness. It talks about the
people who do not who go out of their way
to make other people stumble, who walk in the way
of evil, do not walk with those people. So we
see a lot of the same themes. But I understand

(03:48):
because we as people are extremely hard headed, and you
say something once, we're not getting it. We're not getting it.
We are very thick, skold, we can be hard headed.
So when the Bible repeats itself like this, I have
found that it is trying to really emphasize and really
just get it through our heads. When I'm reading through
the Old Testament, I see the Father God, I see

(04:08):
the Lord repeating himself a lot when he's given instructions
to the Israelites, and I'm like, yeah, that adds up.
That makes sense because we know how hard headed the
Israelites are. And so when I'm reading it and I
see other authors make that same kind of repetitive you know,
they repeat themselves, I'm like, yeah, because we're no better
than the Israelites. We are very hard headed, and sometimes

(04:30):
the uptake is slow. It takes a few times to
hear something for you to be like, oh, like he
wasn't playing, Like yeah, it's very important, so I get it.
A portion of scripture that I really loved from Proverbs
for is just the beginning when Solomon's talking about how
his father, King David gave him advice about have wisdom,
have understanding, that's going to keep you. He was talking
about when he was young, when he was still best

(04:52):
Sheba's only child, and you know by then, I think
David had a few kids. But he's saying, basically, when
I was young, these are the words that my father
to me. And I really love that because I don't
know if it's in Proverbs, I don't know what a
scripture it is. I guess I can really google it,
but it talks about train up a child and the
way they will go, and when they're old they will
not depart from it. And that's just so true, y'all.

(05:13):
And that's been the story of my life, at least
a portion of it, y'all. I told you guys, how
I was saved young, grew up in the church, baptized,
fully understood everything, and then I strayed away from it
in my post college years, especially around the time when
I first got to Atlanta. But when something is really
instilled instilled in you, when you were really saved, you

(05:34):
don't lose your salvation like the Lord doesn't. It's not
like there's sin that you can commit that's like, oh, well,
you were actually saved, but now you're not. Like it
doesn't work like that. The Lord keeps you, he preserves you.
And the prodigal son, the prodigal daughter, you know, left
father give him my inheritance, he got his money, he left.
When he came back, he felt so ashamed. He was like,

(05:55):
I don't I shouldn't even be able to be called
my father's child anymore. I'll go be a servant, I'll
go eat with the pigs. And that's how we feel
sometimes when we sin, or we walk away from God,
or just that portion of our life that's just a
prodigal you know, prodigal daughter, prodigal son's story. We feel ashamed.
We're like, oh, God, he would never want me back.
But what do we see in that story, Like the
father is still out in the field looking for his son,

(06:18):
He sees his son afar off, goes and meets his son,
hugs his son, throws him a feast. So that's just
a testament about how when you're really saved, when you're
really a part of God's family, you never are out
of that family. When you are trained up as a
child in the way that you should go, when you're old,
you will not depart from it. Sometimes when we're teenagers,
we depart from it. When we're in college, we depart

(06:40):
from it. When we turn twenty one and we want
to go drinking at the bars for the first time,
sometimes we depart from it. But when we are old,
we will not depart from it. Not calling me oh,
not calling myself oh. But you know, when we get older,
we will come back to it. We won't actually depart
from what we were taught. If we were taught the
right way, when we were young. And that's why I'm

(07:01):
a big supporter of really forcing your children into what
is good, because as people, we automatically want to do
what's evil and that does not exclude children, children more
so than anybody else. So you have to really make
your child do what's right. And I think now I

(07:23):
see a lot of parents letting their kids just do whatever,
letting their kids choose their own sexuality at four years old,
letting their kids dress any way that they want, letting
their kids watch whatever they want, letting them say whatever
they want, all in the name of gentle parenting. A
lot of that stuff is not gentle parenting. It's laziness. Like,
let's just call it what it is. You're not gentle parent.
You can't gentle parent a hard child, okay, a hard

(07:46):
headed child. There needs to be some kind of discipline,
There needs to be some kind of train your child
in the way that they should go. And I love
that Solomon talks about that because he's like, yeah, my
father told me this when I was young, and of
course he's the one that prayed in next God for wisdom.
And it doesn't really matter what your parents tell you, you know,
if the Lord ain't in it, but I definitely like

(08:08):
how he pointed that out. You know, when he was young,
his dad told him about wisdom and understanding, and now
that he's older, wisdom is his last name. But I
think a key verse that really stood out to me
is verse nineteen when it says the way of the
wicked is like darkness. They do not know what makes
them stumble, And I just find that to be so true.
People that do not know the Lord, they just they

(08:29):
go about their life in like a wild, wild West
kind of a way, in a constant cycle of trial
and error. You know, it's almost like they stumble in
so many ways. They don't even know what about their path,
what about their walk made them stumble. It could be
ten different things. But when you walk in righteousness, we
will stumble every now and again, and you can very
clearly differentiate. Okay, this is what made me stumble. But

(08:52):
when you're constantly walking in the path of evil, when
you're constantly doing something wrong, you won't know what one
thing it was that got you to this to this place.
And a lot of times that's what people will say.
They're just like, man, like, I was just living my
life and I don't even know, Like it's just a
culmination of these things that got me here. Very rarely
do our lives just go left based off of one decision,

(09:15):
based off of one indiscretion. It's a multitude of things
to where it's like before I knew it, this is
just where I was because there was so much going on.
So I just found that to be very insightful and
very true. I know that there are times in my
life to where it's just like you know, it's a
progression that lands you on the spot that you're in
and you're like, man, like I have come, I have

(09:35):
strayed so far away, like this isn't like me. A
lot of times you get so caught up in the
path that you're not supposed to be walking. You don't
even it's like you're a whole different person at the end,
and you don't even know. Like I said, you can't
even pinpoint the one thing because it's not one thing.
When you walk in darkness, you don't know what made
you stumble. You're just walking in darkness. So much wisdom

(09:58):
and proverbs, who what a thunk it? But all in all,
I found that chapter four does have the same themes
as the previous three chapters, So there wasn't much that
I could really pull from it that was different from
the first three. If you have not watched the first
three videos of our Proverb in the Day or Proverb
a Day series, definitely go back and watch them their

(10:18):
shorter videos, maybe about twenty minutes. But yeah, it's just reiteration,
which is not a bad thing, a little bit repetitive. Repetitive,
but that's why we're tackling this day by day, a
little bit of wisdom a day, so that we can
remind ourselves. Sometimes we need that reminder, we need a
little refresher on what we heard yesterday. I know, for me,

(10:38):
sometimes I can read and you know, well, you know
I've I've read the whole Bible, and sometimes I still
will read something or hear a verse during a sermon,
I'm just like, dang bars like that they spit it,
and I'm like, well, I've heard this before. I've obviously
read this before. But when you hear it again, it
either has a different meaning to that in your life

(11:00):
that you're currently in or sometimes it's like, oh, like
the light bulb finally goes off. So I appreciate a
message that gets repeated, especially when it's the word and
it's something that we should be hearing again. If you
guys have any different key verses, a different portion of
chapter four that you really enjoyed, that really resonated with you,
drop it in the comments. I love to see what
you guys are picking up from this proverb in today.

(11:23):
But yeah, go out there, have a hot dog, have
a hamburger. You want a burger, get a burger, and
go and enjoy your family for Fourth of July. Love
you guys, and I will see you tomorrow morning. Bye,