Lisa Barry: As parents, we're worried about unleashing our children into a corrupt world. It seems like such a horribly merciless place. Because of that, our fears often swell into a critical spirit, where everything our children do is met with suspicion and condemnation. As we'll find out today, the person our children really need in their corner cheering them on is Dad.

Maybe you've been a little more hands-off than you would like to have been over the years. Well, Elisabeth Elliot believes that it's never too late to make an impact on your children when God is invited to make the changes. Let's join her now as she reads once again from her grandfather's insightful book, Father and Son. Here she is.

Elisabeth Elliot: "You are loved with an everlasting love." That's what the Bible says. "And underneath are the everlasting arms." This is your friend Elisabeth Elliot, continuing my talks today on "A Child is a Father's Call."

How much do you know of your child's interests, his friends, where he goes after school, and how much he thinks you know? Does he think you care? In my grandfather's book, Father and Son, from which I've been reading this week, he mentions a boy's promotion from being a kid to being a guy. I was surprised to learn that those two words, kid and guy, were actually used back in 1922. I was born just slightly after that, and as I recall, we were never allowed to use either of those terms. But I'm sure my grandfather was using them in the context of the way children talk. Here's some more from his little book.

"The promotion from the kid to the guy class is a very real thing, and a boy gets there much earlier than his father may suppose. One of my own small friends in the neighborhood, I have noticed of late, hardly ever speaks with the other fellows as anything but guys. That word represents a horizontal section of the accumulated advance and upward growth of the boy, who belongs to the bunch, for there is obviously a far greater distinction in being a 'guy' than in being a 'kid.'

To the preoccupied father, the distinction may seem rather too fine for practical purposes, but indeed it is in his recognition of what such things mean to the boy that he will find an intensifying of his fellowship with that boy. In the very deepest things of the boy's life, this inner maturity that reveals itself in special ways will often cause the thoughtful father to stand by the bedside of his sleeping boy at night, or to kneel there, and ask God to give him as a father wisdom and sensitiveness enough to appreciate the little fellow who is teaching him so much.

A little boy, brought up in a family whose denominational affiliations had been strongly allied with the Baptist church, but who had become members of a Presbyterian church, yet without yielding their belief as to immersion, decided that he would like to join the church. He was a clear-minded, energetic, out-of-doors little chap, full of fun and with a normal boy's interests in mechanics and games and stories.

As the time drew near for him to make an open confession of his faith in Christ, he quietly told his parents without any hint from them that he wanted to be immersed. He said he had been thinking it all over and had made up his mind that immersion was the right way to be baptized.

His parents respected the little fellow's decision, and with the entire concurrence of the Presbyterian pastor, the boy was baptized by immersion in a Baptist church in the city from which his parents had come, and then was received into membership in the Presbyterian church.

To see that little fellow riding his bicycle [my grandfather calls it a wheel] or playing football with the bunch or adding his part to accentuate the noise of the neighborhood, one would little have guessed that the question of a mode of baptism would have been occupying his thought at all. But so it was. And so it is with other boys in ways that fathers least suspect, as the little fellows begin to find their footing on the threshold of the door that swings out from the home.

One reason why it is so needful to emphasize the often unexpected maturing of a little fellow's mind is found in the fact that fathers are so likely to plod along after the boy in the distant rear, without realizing that almost before they know it, the youngster is advancing in ways which the father had not noticed. Mothers often perceive the real state of things long before fathers do, and this is not in accord with what should be the true balance of rightful parental partnership.

When the small boy begins to run with the bunch, the father must become a member, too. If that father is the right sort of guy, he will be welcome. Oh, no, he doesn't need to be always there when anything is on, but he mustn't just glance around the corner of his newspaper when Little Bill is busting to tell him about a great thing the bunch did or plans to do. But he must put that paper clear down and really care to listen to all that Bill wants to say.

Bunch or no bunch, Little Bill is always glad to have a home base from which his excursions start and to which he can come back without getting snubbed or chilled. The pull of that home, when the father is his ever-ready sympathizing chum, will greatly contribute to correct any of the undesirable temporary allurements of the mixed influence beyond the gate.

But how can a busy father help to get the right books into the hands of the right boy? And what are right books, after all, when everybody says a book is strong that you think is vile? And everybody says a book is so true to life, but you think it's just coarse. And everybody says a book is so charmingly written, but you count it as mere twaddle.

Then, too, where are you going to draw the line between letting the boy read what interests him most and getting him to read what you think ought to interest him? Are you safe in turning him loose in the juvenile section of the public library or even in a Sunday school library? Not only safe from coarseness and twaddle, but safe in letting him follow his reading bent at will instead of leading him out into kinds of reading that you think will minister most to his future usefulness?

The boy will read, just as he will be sure to have chums. As the boy goes pioneering in book land, that alluring land of mysterious, glamorous vistas and beckoning buried treasure, can a busy father go just a step or two ahead? He can. If he does not, then he can easily lose sight of the boy, and unhappily, the boy will scarcely miss him in a land where the boy greatly needs an older chum who can see with a boy's eyes and explore with the eager spirit of youth."

Now of course, because my grandfather wrote this back in 1922, there were no such things as video games or television or any of the other amusements that young people today spend most of their time on. I suppose very few parents today even think of offering a book to their children to read. Their children would have no time to read, because they're watching TV or playing video games or something.

But I think there's some very important advice here. It's books that have had the deepest influence in my life for good. I don't think it's likely to be the television that will have the best influence--very probably the deepest and the most lasting--but by far not the best.

The book goes on: "We men do not read books enough. No, we are not really too busy. It is only that we do not use our time well. We spend a great deal of time in pointless conversation that might be spent in company with books--books that know how to say what we need to hear, books with the savor of salt in them, and not insipid and vapid like so much of the casual conversation at lunch and on the train and the bus.

One of the busiest men of our time, engaged in exacting executive work, serving on many committees with worldwide correspondence, writer of many books and a public speaker of international fame, ordinarily reads about eighty books a year.

Do you read enough books yourself to encourage your boy to read? How much do you read aloud at home? Out from that simple and highly rewarding habit can come many a fine impulse for the boy to assemble a worthy company on his bookshelf. And even though you may not clearly trace specific results in the selecting of books by the boy himself, it's conceivable that in your reading aloud, he may for the first time see as through an open window a little glimpse of the inviting land of books."

I'm so grateful that I grew up in a home where both parents read aloud to us. Every lunchtime when we would come home from school, Mother would read to us while we ate lunch. When we were little children, we were read to when we went to bed at night and usually two or three times during the day. Reading aloud furnishes ideal opportunities for discovering what your child likes and enables you to arouse interest by comment.

My grandfather goes on to speak of the importance of reading the Bible to the children. By all means, read the Bible.

"Whether by reading aloud or by the suggesting of good books, a father should, I believe, do certain definite services for the reading interests of his boy. He should cultivate the boy's imagination. He should equip the boy from the time he begins to read with real information about the common things around him."

And I would add, my suggestion is that you get some nature books. "Arouse an interest in bugs, turtles, reptiles, animals, birds. Number three, give him contact with noble lives through well-told biographies, and in particular, missionary biographies. Number four, see to it that he becomes acquainted with good poetry in accordance with his unfolding life, not the foolish fads of modern free verse. Include in his reading when the boy is still very young good Bible stories, accurately and simply retold."

I'm sure that it was the reading aloud in our home that cultivated our imagination. It certainly helped us with vocabulary. I can remember my younger brothers picking up adult phrases just by listening to conversation and reading books, which most people would have considered were way beyond children that age.

Lisa Barry: Although the book Elisabeth has been reading from isn't available at this point, you can get the next best thing by receiving a copy of this series, which also comes with our Father's Day offer. She's been reading excerpts from her grandfather's book during these last two weeks of broadcast. Again, the title to ask for is the Father's Day gift package. The cost is $25, and it includes this tape series, HINTS ON CHILD TRAINING by Henry Clay Trumbull, leaflets and much, much more. The cost is $25. You don't even have to pay shipping and handling this time.

Just send that amount with your request to: Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68501. Or call 1-800-759-4JOY. Gateway To Joy has been a production of Back to the Bible.

Tomorrow Elisabeth wraps up this powerful series by asking this question: "Are you a mystery to your children?" Learn more the next time we meet for Gateway To Joy.