A word to fathers and mothers

O fathers and mothers, the ruin of your children or their salvation will, under God, very much depend upon you. The gracious Spirit may use you for their conversion, or Satan may employ you as the instruments of their destruction. Which is it like to be? I charge you, consider. It is a notable event in family history when the grace of God takes up its headquarters in the heart of the husband and the father: that household’s story will henceforth be written by another pen.

Let those of us who are the Lord’s gratefully acknowledge his mercy to us personally, and then let us return to bless our household. If the clouds be full of rain they empty themselves upon the earth; let us pray to be as clouds of grace to our families. Whether we have only an Isaac and an Ishmael like Abraham, or twelve children like Jacob, let us pray for each and all that they may live before the Lord, and that we and all that belong to us may be bound up in the bundle of life.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Best House-Visitation," delivered May 23, 1875. Image by steve-h on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Let us not displease His heart

Cross, crabbed, morose natures do not please the Lord. Unkind husbands, fractious wives, rebellious children, and domineering parents are far from pleasing him. God cannot smile upon oppression, craftiness, greed, or the grinding of the poor. Neither is “covetousness, which is idolatry,” pleasing with God. He that is covetous, angers the great Giver of all good, whose liberal soul cannot endure churls and misers. The like is true of all worldliness; the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, these are things which God condemns; in them he hath no pleasure whatsoever.

O ye believers, I pray ye purge yourselves of all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, and as for the deeds of darkness, have no fellowship with them, but rather reprove them. Come ye out from among them, be ye separate, touch not the unclean thing, and then will you please your heavenly Father.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Christian's Motto," delivered March 22, 1874. Image by Paul Bica on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Admonition to Parents

Parental care can alone preserve household piety, and if that be gone, the pillars of the nation are removed. It is an ill day for any church when family piety is on the decline. Household religion has been the great defense of England against Popery. Do not tell me of your state paid clergy and their lofty prelates - give me family prayer, and the Pope may curse away as long as he likes. Give us the open catechism, and the children made to understand it; give us the Bible read from day to day, and godly parents inculcating gospel truths upon their little ones’ minds, and we may laugh to scorn all the powers of Pope or devil.

But once let the family altar be forsaken, and let parents forget the natural duty of ordering their households before the Lord, and you may guard the church as you will, your labor will be vain; you have cast down her hedges, the bear out of the wood shall waste her; you have taken away the tower of the flock, and when the wolf cometh he will find the sheep an easy prey. Christian parents, though I cannot address you this morning as I would, yet with all my heart would I say to you, do not sin against the child by your ill example or by your negligence as to his salvation, but seek of the Holy Spirit that to your own offspring you may fully discharge the solemn duties which providence and grace have thrown upon you.

From a sermon entitled "Do Not Sin Against The Child," delivered November 8, 1868. Image by Chris under Creative Commons License.