The utter ruin and spiritual death of your children

Charles Spurgeon, "Christian Training of Children"

Psalm 51:5, "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me!"

Parents! Your children are as surely as grown-up people, "dead in trespasses and sins!" May no parent fail fully to realize the spiritual state in which all human beings are by nature. Unless you have a very clear sense of the utter ruin and spiritual death of your children, you will be incapable of being made a blessing to them. Go to them, I beg you, not as to 'sleepers' whom you can by your own power awaken from their slumber; but as to 'spiritual corpses' who can only be quickened by a  divine power!

If you think that your child is 'not really depraved', if you indulge foolish notions about the 'innocence of childhood', it should not surprise you if your children remain dead in trespasses and sins.

If you would bring spiritual life to your child, then you must most vividly realize your child's spiritual state. It is dead, spiritually dead! God will have you feel that your child is dead in trespasses and sins, just as you once were. God would have you view the spiritually corrupt nature of your child with painful, crushing, humbling sympathy. If you would raise your dead child to spiritual life, then you must feel the chill and horror of your child's death yourself. You must have, more or less, a distinct sense of the dreadful wrath of God, and of the terrors of the judgment to come. Depend upon it, when the spiritual death of your children alarms and overwhelms you, then it is that God is about to bless you!

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J.C. Ryle: "Remember that children are born with a decided bias toward evil, and therefore if you let them choose for themselves, they are certain to choose wrong. The mother cannot tell what her tender infant may grow up to be—tall or short, weak or strong, wise or foolish—all is uncertain. But one thing the mother can say with certainty—he will have a corrupt and sinful heart! It is natural for us to do wrong. Our hearts are like the earth on which we tread—let it alone, and it is sure to bear weeds!"

"Every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood." Genesis 8:21

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Today's choice AI resource:
The Solemn Responsibility of Parents To Their Unsaved Children, part 2