Discipling Your Kids
I love my kids. I love being with my kids. I love reading to my kids. I love wrestling with my kids. Did I mention that I love my kids? One thing I really love is discipling my kids – teaching them every day, all day (Deut 6:4ff) the things of God. This ought to be every parent’s greatest calling, joy, and responsibility.
Faithfulness in this will bring about covenantal succession that could last a thousand generations. If you are a parent, you should know that whether or not you are evangelizing and discipling anyone else (and, of course, you should be), you surely ought to be evangelizing and discipling your children. God commands it.
By the very nature of things, this will be a 24/7/365 task. There are at least two reasons why this is the case.
First, you can’t just pass along a platitude once and expect it to take. The lessons of our faith must be repeated over and over again in a variety of ways – when you sit down for breakfast or dinner, when you tuck them in at night, when you drive them around town, when you have family worship, and on and on and on. No one gets it right all the time, but even there, our mistakes and shortcomings are opportunities to teach lessons such as forgiveness, repentance, perseverance, etc. But, we are called to practice what we preach – for our own sakes as well as to model godly behavior before the wee watching eyes in our homes.
The second reason we must devote so much time to discipling our children is because we live in a culture that does not cultivate Christian character. Our world’s default key is stuck on depravity, wickedness and evil. If I want to change the font on my computer, I have to consciously make the effort to find and select the one that I want. So too, if we want to nurture our children in the things of God, we will have to make a considerable effort, for such effort will go against the grain of the world, the flesh, and the devil. This is simply the way it is.
Let’s join together in the cause of stamping out the nominal Christian home. Let’s raise kids whose faith flows through their bloodstream. Let’s produce and reproduce warriors for Christ who will take the gospel and extend it into every sphere of life. Such children will not arise accidentally. But they will become such as they are educated, equipped, encouraged, and nurtured by loving parents who seek to honor God by being faithful stewards of the most precious treasure entrusted to their care.
Stand Firm,
Dale
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