Podcast listener Brenda Rogers writes and asks this, "Pastor John, I have a 22-month-old daughter, and I am already teaching her about Jesus and sharing my faith with her. However, recently I've heard about many adult children who grew up in strong Christian homes, some who even had parents who were leaders in the church, who eventually left the faith as adults.

This has become my biggest fear for my own daughter. Can you explain the verse Proverbs 22, verse 6, and give me some practical ways I can help my daughter have a true, authentic relationship with Jesus, one that she will not abandon later on?" Well, I wish I knew more about this than I do, even after 43 years of parenting five children.

But I want to base everything I say as much as possible on the Bible and not just on my personal limitations, so I will try to say something. Let's talk about Proverbs 22, verse 6 first, and then maybe that latter part of the question, "What can you do to maximize the likelihood that your child will follow the Lord?" Proverbs 22, verse 6 says, "Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it." And the problem we all feel is that the promise half of that verse, "he will not depart from it," seems so absolute that every time a grown-up child of a Christian family departs from the way of wisdom or the way of faith in Jesus, we must conclude that this is owing to a failure of the parents to obey the first half of the verse, namely to train him up properly.

And that's a pretty heavy burden to bear for most parents, but if that's what the text means, then we should be willing to bear it. There are passages in the Bible—I mean, before I say what I think that promise actually means, there are passages in the Bible where the disobedience of children as adults, departing from the faith and making a shipwreck of their lives, there are passages in the Bible that are traced back to the failures of fathers.

For example, Adonijah, David's son. David, man after God's own heart, 1 Kings 1, 5, Adonijah exalted himself, saying, "I will be king." And he prepared for himself chariots and horsemen. His father had never at any time displeased him by asking, "Why have you done thus or so?" Now that is a very intentional criticism of David.

His father had never taken the time to say, "Don't do that," because he didn't want to displease Adonijah. And clearly this biblical writer is chalking up the rebelliousness of Adonijah against his own dad for the failure of his father to rebuke him. So there it is. I mean, we do err, and our errors have terrible consequences.

Here's another example. The sons of Eli, the priest. A prophet came to Eli and said, "Why do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded for my dwelling and honor your sons above me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel?" Wow.

I mean, Eli, when he died, because his sons had been killed by God for their disobedience, fell over backwards and broke his neck because he was fat. And it says he got fat because he honored his sons above God because his sons were pulling out the choicest parts of the sacrifices to eat, and their dad loved the food so much he wouldn't criticize his kids.

Oh, he criticized their fornication in the temple, but they kept their jobs, and they kept misusing the sacrifices. And what this shows is that a dad can be very selective in his discipline and his criticism of his children, and clearly the prophet here wants to criticize Eli for honoring his sons above God by failing to reprimand them in the way they were handling the sacrifice.

So the point there is simply not to blow off Proverbs 22:6 as though there were no correlation between the way you bring up your children and what becomes of them. And I know—I mean, I'm a dad, for goodness sakes—I know this is a huge weight to bear for all of us when our kids don't do things we think they should do or do things we think they shouldn't do, to look back and say, "Could I have done better?" And the answer is almost always yes.

But having said all that, I doubt that second half of Proverbs 22:6, "Even when he is old, he will not depart from it," I doubt that the writer of Proverbs intends for us to take that as an absolute promise with no exceptions. And I've got three reasons for why I don't think that means it's a foolproof process that if you bring up your child in a godly way, he will never depart from the faith.

Number one, when you read the history of the kings of Israel, a good and faithful king is sometimes followed by a bad son, and a bad king is sometimes followed by a good son, and there doesn't seem to be any effort on the part of the inspired writer to say, "Faithful fathers have faithful sons, and unfaithful fathers have unfaithful sons." There doesn't seem to be any effort to do that.

The writer seems to be okay pointing out that this godly king is going to have an ungodly son and vice versa. Number two, the only perfect father who ever was had a son who went astray. Israel is God's son and was rebellious almost its entire existence in spite of all God's fatherly ways with his child.

So here's an example, Hosea 11.1, "When Israel was a child, I loved him." God is talking, "When Israel was a child, I loved him. And out of Egypt I called my son, and the more they were called, the more they went astray." This is God. This is God, the perfect father pleading with his son.

What does he get for it? A lifetime, I mean a history time. The whole history of Israel, the whole history of the Old Testament is this son is rebellious. That's number two. And number three, I think it's the most important contextually, Proverbs 22.6 is a proverb. And proverbs by their very nature are generalizations about the way life usually is rather than promises about the way it will have to be all the time.

So for example, I mean, just read through the proverbs and you'll see this. For example, in 22.29 it says, "Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings." Well, really, are we going to force the writer to mean that every carpenter, every stonecutter in Israel who does his job well is going to get a chance to go to the palace and stand before the king?

That's surely not the way we should take the proverb, and many others. But the point of the proverb is to make the generalization that excellence in our work generally gets recognized by discerning people and leads to great benefits, something like that. And the clearest example of how proverbs work is, of course, everybody knows this who studied this, Proverbs 26.4 and 26.5.

Proverbs 26.4 says, "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself." Proverbs 26.5, the next verse says, "Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes." Now, what that does is reveal the nature of proverbs. "Haste makes waste." "A stitch in time saves nine." Those are opposites, right?

"Haste makes waste." Is that a true proverb? Yes. "A stitch in time saves nine." Is that a true proverb? Yes. Well, they commend opposite things. Yes. Which is why Proverbs 26.9 says this, "Like a thorn that goes up into the hand of a drunkard is a proverb in the mouth of fools." In other words, you can use proverbs to put thorns through people.

I mean, you have to be wise to even know what to do with a proverb. You can't just take proverbs and assume that they're self-explanatory. It takes wisdom to know a word. What? Like apples of gold in a setting of silver is a word fitly spoken. You have to get to know the time and the place to use a proverb.

So for those three reasons, I don't think that Brenda should bear the horrific weight of thinking that if she could just do it exactly right, it guarantees that her 22-month-old daughter, when she's 22 years old, will be a solid believer. She cannot bear that burden. So here's what I want to say to her, just a few things.

One, in general, bringing up children God's way will lead them to eternal life. In general, I think that's true. Number two, this would include putting our hope in God and praying earnestly for our wisdom and for their salvation all the way to the grave. Don't just pray until they get converted at six.

That's not—it's very smart. Pray all the way to the grave for your children's conversions and for the perseverance of their apparent conversions. Number three, saturate them with the Word of God. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Number four, be radically consistent and authentic in your own faith, not just in behavior, but in affections.

The kids need to see how precious Jesus is to mom and dad, not just how he's obeyed or how they get to church or how they read devotions or how they do duty, duty, duty. They need to see the joy and the satisfaction in mom and dad's heart that Jesus is the greatest friend in the world.

Number five, modeling the preciousness of the gospel as we parents confess our own sins and depend on grace. And kids see, "Oh, you don't have to be perfect. Mom and dad aren't perfect. They love grace. They love the gospel because Jesus forgives their sins, and I know then he could forgive my sins." Number six, being part of a Bible-saturated, loving church.

Kids need to be surrounded by other believers and not just mom and dad. Number seven, requiring obedience, not being lazy. There's so many young parents today that strike me as being so lazy. They're not willing to get up and do what needs to be done to bring this kid into line.

So we should follow through on our punishments and follow through especially on all of our promises of good things that we say we're going to do for them. Number eight, God saves children out of failed and unbelieving parenting. God is sovereign. It isn't us, finally, who saves our kids.

God saves kids, and there would hardly be any kids in the world if he didn't save kids out of failed families. Number nine, rest in the sovereignty of God over your children. We cannot bear the weight of their eternity. That's God's business, and we must roll all of that onto him.

Wow. Yes, and amen. That is a heavy weight. Thank you, Pastor John. And we have in the archive now about 20 episodes dedicated to parenting on just a huge variety of issues. You can find those episodes and search all of them in our nearly 700 episodes we've released to date at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

You can also search the archive in the apps for Apple and Android as well. Well, Calvinists are on the intellectual side of things, as one listener points out. So does that mean Calvinists don't believe in the active influence of Satan today? That's a good question, and we'll close out the week with it.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.