When I was preparing for the study on Luke 18:13-43, I came across a wonderful blog post from First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Mississipi. In the text in Luke, parents were bringing their children to Jesus and I thought the following suggestions by First Pres’ children’s minister Barbara Porter were wonderful ways that today’s parents can help lead their children to Christ.
1. Make sure that you are guarding, nourishing, and focusing on your own spiritual condition. Are you putting Christ first? Do you make time to worship, fellowship with other Christians, read the Word of God, and pray?
2. The example you set as parents is crucial to rearing Christian disciples. Do you realize the importance of living out your Christian faith every day in front of your children? Do they see that Christ is first in your life and that you seek to glorify Him in everything you do?
3. Demonstrate to your children that your relationship with your spouse is the most important human relationship that you have, and prove this by showing respect for your spouse and displaying sacrificial love and physical affection for him or her.
4. Show your child and tell your child that you love them every day. Work diligently at building a relationship with them. Take time from their earliest days to communicate with them about deep and important things.
5. Read the Word of God with your child and pray with and for your child every day.
6. Give your child responsibilities. Do whatever it takes to create within him or her a godly work ethic. Do not do for your children what they are capable of doing for themselves. Those who hate work are among the most unhappy and unfulfilled people in this world. Adam and Eve had responsibilities to fulfill even in the Garden of Eden before sin entered into the world. Work is truly a great gift from the Lord.
7. Do not bail your children out of the consequences that arise because of their own actions and choices. It is essential for them from their earliest days to learn that sin has consequences. You will not always be there to rescue them and you should not enable them.
8. Teach by example that Christ expects us to be presenting our bodies to Him as living sacrifices. The world teaches that it is all about us, breeding those who love themselves first and best. Give them opportunities from their earliest years to serve others, those inside and outside the church. Take them on a short-term mission trip so that they can see the extent of their own blessings and the extent of others’ deprivation.
9. Teach them respect for others. Show them by example that it is the soul of another person that they should value and not the person’s outer shell. Part of showing respect for others involves on their part: modest dress, inclusion, encouragement, forgiveness, praise, and setting a godly example.
10. Impress upon their children the brevity of this earthly life. God compared it to a vapor. Analyze your desire to accumulate things. We must demonstrate to our children by our actions and priorities that material things will never be enough and they will never satisfy us. One day we will all give an account of our lives to our Creator. Only one life will soon be passed. Only what is done for Christ will last. Help your children to understand that this earth is not our home and therefore we should not treat it as such.
11. Demand and command respect from your children. If they do not respect you, whom they can see, how will they ever be able to respect God, whom they cannot see? Do you live in such a way that you are worthy of their respect? Do you say one thing and yet do another? Even a young child can spot a hypocrite. Do the children see their parents respecting one another?
12. Teach your children that pleasing God is their ultimate goal. To do this means sometimes being alienated from the crowd. Pray with your child for one friend who is godly and true. God will provide this friend.
13. Make sure your discipline is consistent and abounding in mercy. It is in the home where a child should experience his/her first understanding of the absolute beauty of the word mercy. It’s easier to build children than to repair men.
And thank God for His grace that makes the all the above possible!
Speak Your Mind