As parents, how do we set our children up to have an authentic Christian life? How can we help them have a vital relationship with our Heavenly Father?
We want our children to know and love Jesus. We want them to have biblical teaching and for that teaching to sink deep down into their hearts. We want it to shape their lives. Of course, the Bible tells us that this is the work of the Holy Spirit. Only God can do it. At the same time, though, we have a responsibility as parents to raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4).
Just thinking about it from a human perspective, there’s been a lot of research done about the influence of parents on their children’s religious lives. Sociologist Christian Smith has written quite a bit about passing the faith down to the next generation, and a lot of his studies show that parents are a primary influence in the lives of children. It’s not their youth pastor or Sunday school teacher. The example we’re setting in the home of what it looks like to love and follow Jesus matters the most. We can say all sorts of things about what they need to believe, but if they see the exact opposite in us, then we’re cutting the branch off on which we’re seated. So, this issue is really important.
We should give children the basic language of the faith by reading the Bible with them. And as we do, we pray that the Holy Spirit would use that to reveal Christ to them in their hearts. The apostle Paul commends Timothy for his “sincere faith” that “dwelt first in your grandmother Lois, and your mother Eunice, and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well” (2 Tim. 1:5). You have this family lineage of sincere faith. How did that faith get handed down? He says, “From childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15).
So, here’s what we can do. We make our children acquainted with “the sacred writings”—the Bible.
For example, are we having conversations around the dinner table about Scripture? When I was in college, I visited one of my professors homes. He invited a group of us over for dinner, and we had this great meal. As we sat around the table talking with each other, he pulled out this little box of note cards, and on each note card was a Bible verse. He passed each of us a note card.
And—I’ll never forget—he said, “Now it’s time for the real feast.” We just had this great meal, but he said now we’d have “the real feast.” Each of us read the verse that was handed to us, and we talked about it for a little bit. We were getting more acquainted with the Scriptures, and that’s the kind of thing that we can do with our children.
We can’t transform the hearts of our kids. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit. But since God uses his word to transform human hearts, we need to help our children to be saturated in the word.
So pray that the Lord would do that work. Surround your family with his grace. Talk about the Bible. Take your children to church. Pray for them. We depend upon the Lord, but he ordinarily uses these things to grant our children “a sincere faith.”
This article is part of our Frequently Asked Questions series. Listen to Pastor Adriel answer this question on Core Radio here.
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