Free One Word From God Can Change Your Family by Kenneth Copeland, Gloria Copeland Page B

relationship with God. If they have been trained to delay being obedient to God, they’ll only listen to God when they’re in trouble, without money, sick and at the point of death. If they are trained to expect several warnings, they will learn to ignore God’s first instruction. What if that instruction was to keep them from a life-threatening situation? There may be no second opportunity. It pays to hear the first time.
    By enforcing prompt obedience, we train our children to hear God’s voice. Children should learn that their parents mean what they say, and that their parents expect them to obey the first time they give an instruction.
Plug Up the Loophole of Excuses
    Parents use a number of excuses for not disciplining their children. Some of the following may be familiar to you. All of them are loopholes that can keep your child from receiving the kind of consistent, loving correction that will bring positive results in their lives...
    1. My little blessings aren’t old enough to understand. If a child is old enough to know the words “doggie, bye-bye, da-da, no-no,” he’s old enough to understand. As cute as our children are, they still have a sin nature. As parents, we must address this and discipine our children.
    2. He’s tired today. He’s always naughty when he is tired. It’s remarkable that two minutes before the child disobeys, he’s not tired. Even though a child may be tired, he can learn to behave and watch his attitude. Children need to be guided, molded and taught how to behave properly.
    3 . But it isn’t his fault. This puts the blame for your child’s obnoxious behavior on the child he was playing with. Are we going to say Johnny learned to lie from Peter, therefore it isn’t Johnny’s fault? Even though children are around others who may show poor behavior, parents must still require proper behavior from their children. Children need to learn that the fact everyone else is doing it doesn’t make it right.
    4. He’s the way he is because we’re not at home. I’m sure we’ve all used this one somewhere along the way. It sounds good when we’re saying it. But it can’t be an excuse.
    You are your child’s security. Your word is to be obeyed whether you are at the shopping center or at the zoo. Once I was messing around on the back pew while my father was preaching. He stopped in the middle of his sermon and announced, “I’m going to have to get down from the pulpit.” He walked to my row, pulled me out, took me outside, gave me a wallop, then sat me next to my mother. When he returned to the pulpit, he announced, “I lead by example.” A few other parents took their children out and gave them a wallop.
    5. He’s not feeling well. If a child is very sick, he’ll be too sick to be naughty. You know when your child is naughty and when your child is sick. If they are naughty, they are not that sick. Even when you are sick, if you have been trained, you will still be doing the Word.
    6. He’s just like his uncle. His uncle has a real temper, too. You don’t sit still and let every bad hereditary trait manifest in the life of your child, so don’t put up with this excuse either. The power of God’s love and deliverance working through your loving correction will deal with those hereditary traits.
    7. He’ll just outgrow it. Maybe so. But he won’t outgrow the attitudes associated with that disobedience. Children whose parents let them develop wrong attitudes will take those attitudes right up into their teenage and adult years.
Plugged Loopholes Yield Big Blessings
    It takes great strength for parents to plug the loopholes of correction. Don’t let anyone tell you that it’s easy. It takes the greatest strength of your Christian nature to know how to correct your children when they’re young.
    Don’t be fooled by those little cries and those cute little blue eyes that look at you— those cries and looks that would cause you to stop and to put correction aside. And make