To Train Up A Child

If you're a subscriber to No Greater Joy Magazine, you may have noticed a recurring theme: Children are expected to work!!?? Only, this is not the work of a person that commands another to do what he could do for himself. This is work with a purpose.

Why would an able-bodied man or woman have a child do something that could more easily be done (and more quickly) without the child's involvement?

Every kid is lazy unless he is taught to work. And no one is taught to work with words or admonitions any more than someone can develop muscles in a classroom learning about muscles.
~ Mike Pearl "The Only Trophies" June 2009

If you are going to raise godly, responsible, disciplined children, you must begin early, before they are one year old, teaching them the rudiments of work. There is no alternative.

“It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth” (Lamentations 3:27).

It is good for the man. As a parent you can give your grown son a precious gift, but it must be given when he is still a youth. He will be a better man for having shouldered responsibility when still young.
~ Mike Pearl "Working Character Into Your Children -- Part 2" January 2003

Mike's wife, best-selling author Debi Pearl, echos the theme in many of her articles.
Here's an excerpt from an article written in 2005:

We have a 15-year-old friend, whom I will call Kurt, to save him from the embarrassment of fame. He has taken his high school placement test, and his scores reflected college equivalence. Yet, Kurt has spent most of his days working with his dad in construction. He can do a man’s job in every area of construction, including electrical wiring. His dad is always training his son to be not only a good boy, but a smart man. I feel sorry for boys who are being trained to be school boys, because they will soon be expected to be men, but will not possess any of the skills. Kurt’s way is as clear as light. He loves the Lord, walks in truth, and enjoys working hard. He has been trained.
~ Debi Pearl "The Greatest Of These Is Example" September 2005

Mike & Debi's son, Nathan Pearl wrote about his experience in taking the time to work with his daughter:

As she sat there holding “her” hammer asking an endless stream of questions on a plethora of topics, what I was actually teaching her was that she is more important to me than my job. Work is a necessity, but my daughter is far more important. Today as we sat on the roof, her child-like question was, “What that doing, Daddy?” It seems rather meaningless, but if I take time to answer her today, some day she will trust me enough to ask, “What do you think of him, Dad?”
~ Nathan Pearl "Time" July 2005

The reality is that in today's society not everyone lives in a rural setting or has a job in construction or knows a trade. The good news is that No Greater Joy Ministries realized this difficulty and devised a way for families to re-discover the lessons learned working side-by-side. With No Greater Joy's Distributorship Program, your family will have the tools to begin your own business or ministry as you set goals and move forward together.

NGJ's Home Business in a Box . . . the home-based business program was designed with a twofold purpose—to give your family a unique opportunity to minister and serve other families through NGJ’s training materials, and to give you a viable business your entire family can work together and profit from.

If you'd like to learn more about this program click the link. See if NGJ's Home Business in a Box is right for you.