While reading through scripture, have you noticed that we are commanded to train children, but not adults? We are to train up children in the way they should go (Proverbs 22:6), teach them while we are at home and while we are walking on the way (Deuteronomy 6:7-8 and 11:19), teach them the fear of the Lord (Proverbs 14:26 and also read Psalm 34:11), and bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4, KJV). We are to be His direct tools for His shaping of their character, and for them to grow in the fear of Him.
In our close relationships with adults, our focus and our methods are to be quite different than as regards our parenting.
This distinction is perhaps most especially helpful to recognize regarding how we shape our lifelong spouses. A husband is to wash his wife in the Word (Ephesians 5:25-26), a believing spouse is to set a good example so as to win the unbelieving partner to the Lord (1 Corinthians 7:14), and we are always to honor our parents (Exodus 20:12). Godly men are to challenge and sharpen one another, "as iron sharpens iron" (Proverbs 27:17). The Apostle Paul admonished older women to train the young women to love their husbands and children (Titus 2:3); in that context, the word "train" seems to have less of a tightly controlled sense than in child training; those younger women are in their own separate households.
As our children grow into adulthood, at some point we cross that vague but definite boundary where we and the child are now relating with mutual respect as adults and friends. Renee and I recently heard about a dear couple who, as their eldest turned 14, held an important ceremony to celebrate his coming of age, and that included their handing over to him the daily responsibility for managing his daily devotional life.
This is not to say that we have no influence on other adults. Surely by divine intent, each spouse has more influence on their marriage partner than on anyone else (possibly excepting children and grandchildren)—but it is taught by example, and by honest expression of needs, wants and desires. Each member of a close relationship has a responsibility to raise real issues and to be heard and appreciated for doing so. Our mutual objective is to raise up the other, not to tear down -- to bless and enable the other by our words, emotions, actions, and even our thoughts and expectations. When we fail in this, it reduces to the level of child training it demeans the adult relationship. Our efforts to correct our spouses are more likely to backfire than to produce our desired result. How much more effective it is, to love and to pray (both the loving and the praying, ceaselessly).
None of the ways in which anyone shapes another person, of whatever age or relationship, is by carving on them to re-make them in his or her own image. That attempt to control someone else is never productive. We do well to whet others' appetites for godly living; we do wrong to whittle someone else into our own image of who we think they should be, to please and impress ourselves.
For more on those topic, read our e-Book on training children further, the blog post about relating to a grown child, the e-Book on relating with love to a controlling person, and the book of Wise Womanly Ways to Grow Your Marriage.
