Chosen to Train Them
by: Marshelle Wilburn
As a mother of five biological children, two foster and other spiritual children, I have nurtured “my babies” sometimes to exhaustion over the past three decades.
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When you parent younger children, you experience a physical drain resulting from sleep deprivation and extended energy required when they fight naps, teeth are cutting, or illness brings them and you to tears through long nights. As they get older, your exhaustion can extend from physical to emotional when your child develops “independence” in the pre-teen and teen years. You face battles of wills while trying to encourage the development of consequential thinking and problem-solving skills. Then another season comes that proves to be far more demanding than when our babies were younger.
[su_spacer]In this parenting season, the challenge is for us to accept we don’t have the control we had (or thought we had) over our child’s decisions. Whether you experience it in teen years, it is often difficult for parents to accept when their child chooses to go their “own” way in young adulthood or later. Especially when that way is different from what you dreamed of, prayed, or hoped. For the most part, my children have been gracious to my husband and me over the years.
[su_spacer]”They choose…different from what you dreamed of, prayed, or hoped.”
[su_spacer]Though they may have experienced some immature decision-making requiring our intervention or discipline, the situations have not been so difficult. Different than some parents, having to seek outside resources (counseling, rehabilitation, alternate living arrangements, etc.) to raise them, we are very thankful for this.
[su_spacer]Though we are grateful for many years of calm, it did not make years of unrest any easier and caused us to question whether we parented well, had we led a good example of a godly lifestyle, or did we even know our children at all. These are valid questions for any parent, and even more so, parents who have accepted the call to ministry. Parents serving in ministry, impacted by feeling their children’s behavior, directly reflect on them and their families. Feelings that reach as far as their behaviors feeling like a direct reflection of your relationship with God and your ministry.
[su_spacer]”Do I parent well? Was I a good example of a godly lifestyle?”
[su_spacer]”Serious, Who are these children.?”
[su_spacer]In whatever parenting role and season you find yourself in, know this, God chose you as their parents and entrusted your children to you as His chosen vessel to train them. He provides these instructions in Proverbs 22:6 ESV,
“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
[su_spacer]Notice the word train, which in Hebrew (chânak) means to initiate or discipline; dedicate or train up.
[su_spacer]According to Merriam-Webster, it is also referred to as raise or rear, meaning bring to maturity or self-sufficiency through nurturing care. As I have meditated on this verse many times while being a parent, these past years of parenting adults have caused a deeper contemplation, seeking to find God’s promises and assurances when I did not know which “way” my children were choosing to go.
[su_spacer]Most parents face a season when they must release their children to soar from the nest, outside of their watchful eye to discover their own goals to pursue and reach. Amid this season, parents, especially mothers, must release their children not only physically but emotionally and spiritually. Parents are trusting that they have planted seeds of faith and Godly truths (not our opinions, will, or way of doing things) so deeply within their kids that when they get “old,” they will not depart from it.
[su_spacer]”Old” is a critical word in this verse with train.
Old in Hebrew (zâqân) means aged, matured, or advanced in years.
[su_spacer]Keep in mind; current research shows puberty does not end until mid-twenties. So, our twenty-somethings who think they have the ancients’ wisdom and are beyond instruction soon find out they really are not as versed as they assume, and we already knew. Life’s lessons, not we parents, are sometimes their greatest, most costly instructors.
[su_spacer]This reality is outside of our control, so our assurance comes from not all we teach them not to do. Instead, because God is fully in control, it comes from all we help them learn that God desires for them to do.
- [su_spacer]RELEASE – We release our children to soar into His protective hands—God’s hands, which are always greater and more complete than ours.
- TRAIN – Train and instruct in God’s ways, and He assures us they will not depart from it.
- TRUST – Though our children may detour outside of our desired way for them, it is our challenge to trust our Heavenly Father to keep them until they see Him face to face.
- REMEMBER – This is one of the greatest gifts we can impart to our children and a testimony of faith in our faithful God who created them and enabled us to partner with Him in training them up for His glory.[su_spacer]
Marshelle Jackson Wilburn is a California native, wife, mother of five, speaker, author, international leadership trainer, and urban church planting missionary. She partners in ministry with her husband, Port, Executive Director of Missions of the San Francisco Peninsula Baptist Association, Interim Director of East Bay Baptist Association serving as Director of Operations and H.E.R. Care Women’s Ministry, and alongside him in his role as Lead Pastor of Rock Harbor Christian Fellowship and Board of Directors and Administrator for Clean Living Learning Centers Sober Living Environment Homes.Since 2007, she has served in management at one of the San Francisco Bay’s largest homeless shelters. She has been a LifeWay author of bible study curriculum since 2015. With a degree in Clinical Psychology and a career in education, she is passionate about teaching and encouraging others to live their purpose FULLY with STRONGLife.
Her loves are being a wife and mom of her four daughters, only son, and “Noni” to her granddaughter, spending time with family, SIMMERing (on Facebook and Instagram Live weekly), studying and teaching God’s Word, beaches, and coffee. You can connect with her at MarshelleJWilburn.com
