Well, we’ve come to the last in our series on the Most Misused & Misunderstood Verses of the Bible. And this Sunday is Mother’s Day. And I can’t figure out if the text for this Sunday, Proverbs 22:6, is very appropriate for Mother’s Day (as it seemed when I picked it sometime last fall) or wildly inappropriate. And that’s because Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

And on the surface, it doesn’t seem like there’s any problem with that verse. And there’s not. The problem comes with how we misuse it. It’s a proverb, not a promise. It’s guidance, not a guarantee. And it’s to be used as a means of wisdom, but is often used as a weapon. In fact, just yesterday, three different people in our church, when told about this upcoming sermon, spoke about how this verse has been used as a weapon against them. And it’s been used as a weapon … almost exclusively by well-meaning Christians.

Furthermore, what do we do with this verse when it doesn’t seem to be coming true in our lives? Having been a Pastor for a long time, and having been a parent for even longer, I’ve had way too many opportunities to talk with other parents about their children and their children’s faith. And even in the best of situations, those are almost always hard conversations.

So, what does this verse mean? And how should we be applying it to our own lives and families? And what do we do when children in the church seem to be clamoring for prodigal status? We’ll be looking at those questions this Sunday. I think it will make for a most interesting Mother’s Day! See you then, Dr. Dave