Video Ministries

Moral Powers to be Tested

Our sons in their youth will be like well-nurtured plants, and our daughters
will be like pillars carved to adorn a palace. Ps. 144:12, NIV.

The disposition and habits of youth will be very likely to be manifested in
mature manhood. You may bend a young tree into almost any shape that you
choose, and if it remains and grows as you have bent it, it will be a
deformed tree and will ever tell of the injury and abuse received at your
hand. You may, after years of growth, try to straighten the tree, but all
your efforts will prove unavailing. It will ever be a crooked tree. This is
the case with the minds of youth. They should be carefully and tenderly
trained in childhood. They may be trained in the right direction or in the
wrong, and in their future lives they will pursue the course in which they
were directed in youth. The habits formed in youth will grow with the growth
and strengthen with the strength, and will generally be the same in
afterlife, only continually growing stronger.

We are living in an age when almost everything is superficial. There is but
little stability and firmness of character, because the training and
education of children from their cradle is superficial. Their characters are
built upon sliding sand. Self-denial and self-control have not been molded
into their characters. They have been petted and indulged until they are
spoiled for practical life. The love of pleasure controls minds, and
children are flattered and indulged to their ruin. Children should be so
trained and educated that they will expect temptations and calculate to meet
difficulties and dangers. They should be taught to have control over
themselves and to nobly overcome difficulties; and if they do not willfully
rush into danger and needlessly place themselves in the way of temptation;
if they shun evil influences and vicious society, and then are unavoidably
compelled to be in dangerous company, they will have strength of character
to stand for the right and preserve principle, and will come forth in the
strength of God with their morals untainted. If youth who have been properly
educated make God their trust, their moral powers will stand the most
powerful test. . . .

If parents could be aroused to a sense of the fearful responsibility which
rests upon them in the work of educating their children, more of their time
would be devoted to prayer and less to needless display. They would reflect
and study and pray earnestly to God for wisdom and divine aid to so train
their children that they may develop characters that God will approve. Their
anxiety would not be to know how they can educate their children so that
they will be praised and honored of the world, but how they can educate them
to form beautiful characters that God can approve (Testimonies, vol. 3, pp.
143-145).

>From Lift Him Up - Page 271

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