Lessons in Fellowship

The father should always feel kindly disposed toward his children. How sad it is that the father's disposition is not always that which it should be! The father of the boys is to come into close connection with his sons, giving them the benefit of his larger experience, and talking with them in such simplicity and tenderness that he binds them to his heart. He is to let them see that he has their best interest, their happiness, in view all the time.1NL 78.9

Parents, let us constantly keep before our children the relation that we sustain to our heavenly Father. Let us tell them that we are His children, and that we desire to treat them as He treats us. He does not indulge us in injurious things. He gives us only the things that are for our best good. He says, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you; for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”1NL 79.1

We are all amenable to God. When we take into consideration our accountability to Him for every action, when we remember that we are “a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men,” we will desire to be purged from our fretfulness and harshness, our lack of sympathy and tenderness for one another. These evils are as tares amid the wheat, and must be destroyed.1NL 79.2