Ginger Hubbard

But hopefully it's the younger kids that are biting it.

Right.

If they're older, they can wait until you get home.

They're old enough and mature enough to wait until you get home for a consequence.

But when they're really little...

And it's not good to wait because they may forget and then you're having to bring the whole thing back up.

Like I said earlier, there were several times like when we were in the grocery store where they disobeyed or maybe we were at a restaurant and they were disobeying where I had to either leave a full cart of groceries or I had to leave my hot bread with honey butter.

And it's going to get cold.

I know.

Talk about not wanting to take the time to do it right.

But there were several times that we had to leave and we had to go deal with that.

And then my kids learned.

So instead of battling that over and over and over for years and years and years, the more consistent we are when they're little, the quicker they learn that our yes means yes and our no means no and that there are consequences when you disobey, the quicker they learn that, the sooner they're going to respond to that.

And so taking the time to be inconvenienced when they're little is going to save years of frustrating moments out in public.

Right away, what comes to mind for you when you hear that?

What comes to mind is that there is nothing that we can do to change the hearts of our children.

We can obey God by teaching them to obey.

We can obey God by administering consequences when they don't obey, but only God can change their hearts.

And so that is why we bathe all of our efforts in prayer, for God to use our obedience and lovingly and gently being consistent and diligent

to train our children in the wisdom of the Lord, to administer consequences when they don't, to point them to their need for Christ.