Train Up a Child?

This morning I was reading my Matthew Henry commentary on the genology of Christ found in Matthew chapter one. He had this to say of the mixture of saints and sinners found in this pedigree:

"God's Grace is his own, and he gives or withholds it as he pleases."

I wish writers of parenting manuals would give greater heed to this fact. God does desire a holy seed and one of the primary means of doing this is to give children to godly parents. But one would think from the way that some Christian parenting manuals read that the children who do grow up to serve the Lord got that way because the parents followed a particular program and that it is the program and not God's grace on it (or even in spite of it) that did the trick.