Teach Children About Faith Dale Sutherland
One of the most important things we can do as parents is to instruct our children in the ways God has worked in our lives. There is a great verse from Jeremiah 9:23-24 that says the most important thing we can do is to know God. Our children are blessed with an abundance of education in science, math, history, and language. However, we will miss the most important education our kids can get if they don’t focus on learning about God.
Sadly, in the current culture of the United States, faith among young people is declining. That makes it hard for us to engage our kids in what we believe to be eternal truths. The fact that the world is attempting to prove they can live without a relationship with Christ makes it much harder for us to convince our children that our faith is not just something belonging to our elders. In fact, the lives of students and little ones today are more challenged than ever before. School shootings, violence, racial inequity, immorality, all point to the need for each child to understand faith in God.
God‘s word encourages the most important person in a child’s life to be the best teacher of the child. Parents are the ones most entrusted with these wonderful children and they have the privilege of having a close relationship with them and an open door to tell them all about what God‘s word says about them. It is not possible to be too passionate about our faith with our children. Our children will only be as open in their faith as we are. If we are not moved by God‘s word and our faith, then we can expect our children to not follow Him closely.
Here are some steps for making a difference in your child’s life. If you want your child to believe, then you should seek God yourself. The first step to reaching our children is to have a passionate, close, and intimate relationship with God ourselves.
Second, in order to grow in that relationship with God, we must constantly be working to do exactly what is said in Jeremiah 9:23 and pursue a right relationship, prioritizing our knowledge of God over knowledge of anything else. Parents must obey the most basic of commands and love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, souls, and minds. Only then, do we have an opportunity or a chance to convince our children to follow suit.
The next thing we need to do is share with our children our reasons to seek God and why we stay seeking God. They need to understand that we are just human and we are dependent on God Almighty for everything as much as they are dependent on us as parents. Parents are the best and most important preachers a kid will ever hear. Even when it seems like they are not listening, we must encourage them, challenge them, and open them up to the wonderful truths we see in God’s word.
And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. – Deuteronomy 6:6-7