We spend 6 months to a year preparing ourselves to get our driver’s licence. We spend days, weeks, months, and sometimes even years preparing for our wedding day. We spend close to 15 or 20 years or more in school preparing ourselves for our careers.

But the Day of Judgment takes a lifetime of preparation. And it starts from birth, or before. One may ask, “How can someone be preparing for Judgment Day (or anything) before they can talk or even before they are born?” That’s just it…, they don’t. But that does not mean preparation doesn’t or shouldn’t happen.

This is why God has given children their parents, as their preparers. As C. J. Mahaney put it in his book, Humility: The True Greatness (Pg. 158),

All parenting is ultimately a preparation for that day when your child will stand before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account.”

I couldn’t agree more. No matter what our kids end up doing for a career, or where they go to college, or even who they marry, if they are not prepared for THE DAY, then all is lost.

The only thing I would add, if I may be so bold, is to say that parenting is, as far as it lays on the parents, all about preparing their children AND being prepared themselves to stand before God when they must give an account for how they spent their time and energy and focus on preparing their children.

Although specifically speaking about leaders in the Church, Hebrews 13:17 applies also to and makes it clear that parents must give an account for their care of the souls under them:

…they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.”

I conclude with the ending of an excellent article on restoring the family, “The Heart of Family Reformation“, by Jim Elliff:

Judgment Day

Puritan Richard Mather (1596-1669),… once imagined children on judgment day, speaking to their parents. His words will serve as a final sober warning that we must be more diligent to care the for the souls of our children:

All this that we here suffer is through you. You should have taught us the things of God, and did not. You should have restrained us from sin and correct us, and you did not. You were the means of our original corruption and guiltiness, and yet you never showed any competent care that we might be delivered from it. Woe unto us that we had such carnal and careless parents; and woe unto you that you had no more compassion and pity to prevent the everlasting misery of your own children.”

Oh that we would pray earnestly to feel the everlasting weight of this!