Lisa Barry: Today on Gateway To Joy, Elisabeth Elliot and her daughter Valerie Shepard talk about training children for heaven. And more specifically, just what a mother should be teaching those precious young ones. If you're a mother, I know you'll want to hear today's program. So, stay with us for a few closing thoughts to this series, on this Friday edition of Gateway To Joy.

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, talking again today with my daughter Valerie Shepard. We've been talking about self-pity, trying to help children get away from that swamp. We've been talking about the mother's own personal quiet time. What are you going to talk about today, Val?

Valerie Shepard: Children do need parents who do spend time in the Word, because they need to be taught about who God is. I was reading one day in Revelation and noticing the seven things that God is praised for. I thought how they correlated well with about approximately seven things that I want to teach my children in their character. These are the things that are God's attributes, that are praised in Revelation: His strength, His power, His wealth, His wisdom, His glory, His blessing and His love.

I thought, through Proverbs there are characteristics or there are qualities that are taught that we should be training in our children, and they are taking responsibility. We know that a strong person is a person who does things for himself. God's strength. We're to glorify God by learning to put on His strength. Perseverance. We want to teach our children perseverance. God persevered in saving each one of us. He went after us. He called us to be His own. That relates to His power, His power to save to the uttermost. Jesus persevered as He went to the cross. He knew what was before Him. He knew the suffering, and yet He went on with it. He set His face like a flint. We want to teach our children to set their faces like flint.

Elisabeth Elliot: I remember your struggles to help Christiana with arithmetic. I just happened to be there one day, and the two of you were sitting at the table. She was just in a state. Poor girl. She just howled, "Mama, I'm never going to learn this. I can't do it." You said to her very calmly and quietly, "You are going to learn it, Christiana, and I want you to persevere."

Valerie Shepard: And I've had to say that with every single one of my children when they're learning math. They've all said that they can't learn it. I have said, "We're not going to say 'can't' in this home. We are going to say, 'With the help of the Lord, I will do this.'" I said, "Because I remember crying over math also. I did learn my multiplication tables. I did learn some concepts in math that I thought I could never catch on to." So perseverance is something you definitely want to teach your children.

I know there were many years when I gave up--because of their complaining--and I didn't teach them perseverance. I would get discouraged by their negative words about something. So I didn't persevere myself, but they need a mother who will persevere in training them and they need to know that they can persevere and they can do something with God's help.

Another thing that I think relates to God's character--His wealth, the riches that are in Christ--is our being good stewards of what He has given us. He has given us a good head on our shoulders. We are to use our heads. We are to think through something. We are to be good stewards of any of the gifts that He has given us. That glorifies God. That brings glory to His name so that other people see the wealth that is in Him. So we are to teach our children good stewardship, how to take care of property, how to take care of one another, how to take care of their money, how to take care of their time, to be wise with the use of their time. So good stewardship and His wealth correlate.

Another thing we want to teach our children is diligence, to do something with an industrious spirit, to do it well and to do it again for His glory. God, because of who He is, is infinitely more diligent and faithful and careful and attentive to details than we are. But as we grow physically and spiritually, He will help us to become more and more diligent to take care of the things that need to be taken care of.

Elisabeth Elliot: As you know, I went to a boarding school. We had rugs in our rooms. We had to sweep those rugs with brooms. There were no vacuum cleaners provided. Of course, it was a great temptation to sweep the dust under the bed. But during breakfast, a faculty member went around from room to room and inspected. Anyone whose room did not pass inspection had his name read out at lunchtime. So it was a pretty rigorous way of going about training diligence in us.

The headmistress, Mrs. Dubose, used to say to us over and over again, "Don't go around with a Bible under your arm if you didn't sweep under the bed." Now some of our listeners might think, "What's the Bible got to do with sweeping under the bed?" What Mrs. Dubose was teaching us was we don't want pious talk coming out of a messy room. These things are all of a piece. It's not secular versus the sacred. To a Christian, everything that you do reveals the validity of your walk with God.

Nothing could be more basic than teaching your children just these things which you're saying. As for stewardship, for example, they don't have a whole lot of money and they don't own a house. But they own toys. They own clothes. They own shoes. Teach them to turn the lights off. Teach them to turn the water off.

Valerie Shepard: So children need a mother who spends enough time in the Word so that she gets to know the character of God so that she can impart that character to her children. I think of just simply the truth that you taught me that my father, my earthly father, was in heaven. He died. He was killed when I was ten months old. So from the time when I was small enough to talk, you taught me that my Daddy was in heaven. That simple truth of knowing that heaven was a place I could look forward to and knowing that heaven was a reality was because you had read the Bible. You knew the truth about heaven.

A child needs to hear the truths about God. We are commanded in Deuteronomy to talk about God's faithfulness. We're to talk about His power and His wealth and His wisdom and the blessing because of who He is. I'm continually reminded of my faithlessness as I look at the things that I've failed in, in raising my children. But again, this line upon line repetitiveness that we are responsible to teach our children. As we teach them responsibility, God reminds me that I must continually come back and pay attention to detail. If I've told my children that they must hang their towels up neatly, then I must go and inspect.

Elisabeth Elliot: If you find a soggy towel on the floor, what happens?

Valerie Shepard: Well we've had the rule through the summer, especially because we have a pool, that they may not use a towel the next time they get out of the pool. They have to dry off in the sun because they left the towel on the floor. Or sometimes with clothes, I have in general, my rule is that I just pick it up and put it away for a week. If they know they were supposed to of course, they know they're supposed to pick up and put away their clothes all the time. But if they've gone and they've left something on the floor, bathroom or bedroom, then I'll just sweep it up and they don't get it for a week.

Elisabeth Elliot: I remember Marj Saint telling me that Kathy, her daughter, had bought a new party dress because she was going to a party. Marj found the dress somewhere where it shouldn't have been and she confiscated it. Of course, there was a great howl because Kathy had to have that dress for the party. Marj was adamant. She said, "You know what the rule is. You may not have the dress back for another week."

"But the party's this Tuesday!"

"No." I don't know what the outcome of that was, whether she just didn't go to the party or what. But if she went to the party, she couldn't wear that new dress. I think we have to be pretty stern when we make a rule like that. Stick with it.

Valerie Shepard: Yes. And again, we have to be faithful to speaking the truth, and that is an example of God's truthfulness to us. He is always faithful. He always keeps His Word. And so we must learn to keep our words with our children. I think these character traits that we want to teach our children are educating them for eternity, not just to be happy in this life. If we didn't have the goal of educating them for eternity, then what is that phrase? If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time. We have got to have goals and a purposeful view of "Why are these children growing up in my home? Why has God given them to me?"

God has given them to me so that I may show them who He is, so that they may bring glory to Him as they grow, as they learn to serve, as they learn to lay down their lives for others. Reverence for the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Our children will be wise if we train them from the beginning to respect authority, to be obedient, to believe in who God is. God is a God full of love, and so we have to be loving to our children or else it will be very difficult for them to learn what real love is.

Elisabeth Elliot: In a sense, we're really God to a very small child, aren't we? He has no idea about God, except the idea that we give him by our treatment of him. God has given us the privilege and the solemn responsibility of representing who God is to those children. Do you want to run through that list of characteristics?

Valerie Shepard: God's attributes are characteristics we want to teach our children. God's attributes are His strength, His power, His wealth, His wisdom, His glory, His blessing and His love. Characteristics we want to teach our children to bring glory to God are perseverance, thoroughness, diligence, faithfulness, responsibility, good stewardship and careful attention to detail.

Elisabeth Elliot: Thank you very much again, Val, for being with me. It's such a treat when you and I get a chance to get together.

Valerie Shepard: Thank you. I'm enjoying it, too.

Lisa Barry: Thanks so much, Valerie, for your input in this series. I know many listeners really look forward to your visits. As we end this series I want to let you know that you can get the whole thing on cassette. It's called "Child Training." This is a series I'm going to get for myself because I want to remember as much as possible, and the only way to do that is to hear it so many times I can't forget.

Do you know someone who is struggling in the way Elisabeth and Val have talked about today? Maybe you'd like to share the tape with her. Again the title to ask for is "Child Training." The cost is $11.50, and to purchase it you can send that amount along with your request to:

Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, NE 68501. Or, call toll-free 1-800-759-4JOY. That's 1-800-759-4569. And on the Web come see us at gatewaytojoy.org. Gateway To Joy has been a listener-supported production of Back to the Bible.

Monday, Elisabeth begins a series about what it means to encounter the cross. So, I hope you can join us then for the next Gateway To Joy.