As parents, our ultimate goal is to bring up children who are both healthy relationally and who are mature. That is, children who have a healthy relationship with their parents, with God and people outside of the home, and, children who grow up to become mature emotionally, morally and spiritually.

As adults, the health of our relationships and the degree of maturity we’ve reached can be directly attributed to our relationship or lack of relationship with our parents, with God and those who we interacted with outside of the home. That means that our relationships are the most powerful indicator of who we are today and who we will become tomorrow.

As an adult, imagine looking back at some of the more crucial moments in your life and being able to increase or decrease some of the good and bad relationships. Or imagine being at the brink of a crucial decision and having a good relationship with God and those who could give you the best advice. What we would discover is that increasing or decreasing the right relationship would have helped us avoid some of the more harmful decisions and experiences in our lives.

As adults, we cannot go back to the past and adjust the levels of relationship in our lives. But presently we can choose to surround ourselves with people who are wise, people who not only know what’s right they also do what’s right. The more wise people we choose to relate to, the wiser we will become.

If you’re a parent, you can help your child avoid the most harmful decisions and relationships by helping to decrease potentially harmful relationships and by increasing potentially beneficial relationships. Because just as your health moving forward depends on the people you relate to, your child’s future for good or bad depends on the people with whom they relate.

Three thousand years ago Solomon wrote:

Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm. – Proverbs 13:20 NIV