Hey, Rock Bridge. I recently got asked a question by a dad, and it’s a question I wrestle with myself. Here’s the question
“How do we, as parents, help and nurture our kids’ faith?”
And another way I’ve been asked this question is like from Proverbs 22:6, where it says:
“…train your children in the way they should go when they get old, they will not depart from it.”
So a lot of parents have this sense of pressure or even guilt if their child is rebellious or becomes a prodigal. So, what are some perspectives and principles that we can take with us as parents? Well, here are a few things I think might help.
Your kids can choose their own way
God, even as a perfect parent, had rebellious kids [like Adam and Eve or Israel]. And so I always think it’s important to remember that the power of our kids choosing is more powerful than the power of our parenting, and so we just need to take some of the pressure off of that and realize that God is sovereign. Our kids have choices… so just take some of the pressure off of that and view parenting through a little bit of a different lens.
Your kids are not perfect
We also just need to remind ourselves there are no perfect kids. There never will be. That’s why we need Jesus. Also, there are no perfect parents either. So in parenting, you’re going to see your sins and you’re going to see your sins impact people that you care about your kids.
Your kids need you
We have to also understand that one of the reasons God puts us in close relationships, whether that’s marriage, church family, or as moms and dads, is it’s part of our discipleship, it’s part of our sanctification, and it’s part of us learning how to love as Christ has loved us. So that’s on the parents’ side now for our kids…their sinfulness is going to show up.It is only a question of when it shows up and how it shows up. And that can be different for different kids in the same family. But every child is a sinner in need of Christ. So when your kid’s sinfulness shows up, it’s important for us to be there as parents. In early years, we’re there for discipline…but as they get older, we’re there for council.
We’re always there in this combination of grace and truth. These are just a couple of reasons I think to keep in mind and to realize that, in parenting, our job is to be stewards. We don’t control the results. We plant the seeds. It’s up to God in the soil of the child’s heart, life or mind for those seeds to be harvested–hopefully for the glory of God.!
Let me just sort of tell you what I’m learning in this season and what I have learned in my journey as a dad. Here are five ways to help and nurture our kids’ faith.
1. Have a regular time of discipleship with your kids
I think it’s important for us to have a genuine and regular time or way in which we sow seeds toward faith in Christ. Right now, for some families, that may look like a very disciplined and structured devotional time multiple times during the week. For some families, it’s going to be mealtime. For others, it may be driving time while for some families it may be very organic and just off the cuff on the flow.
Like in every conversation, we’re weaving in the Lord and the Word of God. Faith! The important thing is it needs to be genuine, not forced. It needs to be kind of normal and part of the routine. When we say it needs to be genuine, authentic, and just an overflow of who we are…we realize that discipleship, especially in kids, is more caught than taught. So it’s more modeling. And what kids are exposed to, what they see in us day in and day out.
2. Talk with your kids about repentance
One aspect that I don’t think we as parents like to model, but we need to model, is to talk with our kids about repentance. All of the Christian life is one of repentance–it starts with repentance. AND it is sustained through repentance. So our kids need to see us and hear us apologize to one another and hear us ask God to forgive us for our sins. That’s just an important part of what we’re modeling.
3. Make church a priority for you and for your kids
We need to understand that the church is available and church is a partnership with parents, and church should be seen as a priority. I think it’s okay for us as parents to have some expectation around faith and the faith journey. It’s odd to me that parents are like, have such expectations for kids to do everything from brush their teeth, clean their room, go to school, do their homework, participate in their extracurricular activities.
Yet when it comes with anything to do with God and the church, like, oh, I don’t want to force them. We’re not forcing them, but we are guiding them and we’re planting seeds because we’re called to be sowers. We have to leave the results up to them and the sovereignty of God.
4. Create anchor points for your kids to hold onto
And then on that journey, I think every family, every parent to child relationship, there probably ought to be some anchor points, like something that’s kind of true north that we hold onto in the home and in the relationship that we have.
So memorize one or two verses of Scripture together that you can just constantly, whether you’re kids eight or eighteen years old, you can point them back to that. I know early on in my boys’ journey, we memorized the Lord’s Prayer together. And, you know, we’re multiracial family. So when my kids faced some racial slurs one time at school, we were able to kind of go to, you know,
“…forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
And I remember one time in bed, that prayer was what we prayed as our kids were navigating the pain of that situation. And so that was an anchor point for us.
5. Find something your kids can relate to
Lately we’ve been struggling, in the Evans household, to sort of find what kind of devotional life is going to work for my boys. And, and so right now we found one by Tim Tebow. Tim was a college athlete and a professional football player. And his fantastic devotional, Mission Possible: A Daily Devotional, is theologically rich, biblically true, rich with great metaphors and stories, and aligns with who we are. So that’s kind of working for us right now.
It’s a talking point to naturally just talk about our faith journey, but is a stewardship. It is a journey. God’s with us along the way. Let’s roll the burdens of parenting onto Him and just walk faithfully in front of our kids. Thanks Rock Bridge! Until next time–the best is yet to come!