What About Our Kids?
This week's blog is for all those parents and grandparents, teachers, pastors, youth leaders--anyone who takes some responsibility for raising our children and teens to become strong in their faith and love for God.
It's never been easy, and it seems to be getting harder and harder as the years go by. There are just so many distractions in our world today, and so many voices clamoring for our kids' attention. You know what they are: endless electronic images, games, movies, and social media, and peers who are influenced by them. Even young children feel pressured to possess the newest electronics, watch the latest movies, wear the current fashions, listen to current popular music. Relaxed moral values have become so universally accepted that young Christians who strive to be chaste are mocked by their classmates. The voice of the world seems poised, ready to pounce on every unsuspecting child.
Some Christian parents meet this challenge by insulating their children from the things of the world, associating only with Christian families, homeschooling their children or sending them to Christian schools. Some choose to ban or closely monitor electronics, with limited success. But, unless we lock our children away in our homes, or move to the middle of some dead zone without cell phone and internet reception, we will always be surrounded by the things of this world. We may have neighbors whose values are different from ours. We drive by billboards that advertise undesirable merchandise. Even when we carefully choose TV programs at home, we can't always monitor programs that our kids see in their friends' or relatives' homes. And then, there are always those inappropriate commercials that crop up even in the midst of family-friendly programs.
Even when we bring our children to Sunday School or church youth activities, we find that some of the other kids come with "baggage." Most kids are not shy about discussing their less-than-desirable living situations, or the inappropriate movies they have watched. When we ask how we can pray for them, some kids may share all kinds of things that we would rather not have our "innocent" children hear. No matter what good intentions we have, we just can't keep our children away from worldly influence.
Let's admit it, sometimes we, ourselves, are bad influences for our own children. If we are honest, each one of us can say, with the apostle Paul, "I want to do what is good, but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway." (Romans 7:19) No matter how careful we are, we can't totally protect our children from our own sin, let alone this sinful world we live in. Instead, we must teach them how to survive in it.
Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6) You'll notice that this verse doesn't say, "when he is a teen or young adult, he will not depart from it." Wouldn't our lives be much easier if this were true! Instead, we can pretty much count on the fact that our teens and young adult children will make some choices that don't meet our approval. They are compelled to find out some things the hard way because they, too, are sinners who need God's forgiveness.
So, what should we do? With God's help, we will train them "in the way they should go." We will love and nurture them, introduce them to Jesus, teach them about his loving sacrifice, bring them to church and Sunday School and youth activities, listen to them, discipline them, pray for them and with them, forgive them, be good examples, then love them some more. We can only do our best. Ultimately, we must entrust them to God, remembering that he loves them more than we do. He won't give up on them, any more than he has given up on us. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us (1 John 4:16) --and for our children.
It's never been easy, and it seems to be getting harder and harder as the years go by. There are just so many distractions in our world today, and so many voices clamoring for our kids' attention. You know what they are: endless electronic images, games, movies, and social media, and peers who are influenced by them. Even young children feel pressured to possess the newest electronics, watch the latest movies, wear the current fashions, listen to current popular music. Relaxed moral values have become so universally accepted that young Christians who strive to be chaste are mocked by their classmates. The voice of the world seems poised, ready to pounce on every unsuspecting child.
Some Christian parents meet this challenge by insulating their children from the things of the world, associating only with Christian families, homeschooling their children or sending them to Christian schools. Some choose to ban or closely monitor electronics, with limited success. But, unless we lock our children away in our homes, or move to the middle of some dead zone without cell phone and internet reception, we will always be surrounded by the things of this world. We may have neighbors whose values are different from ours. We drive by billboards that advertise undesirable merchandise. Even when we carefully choose TV programs at home, we can't always monitor programs that our kids see in their friends' or relatives' homes. And then, there are always those inappropriate commercials that crop up even in the midst of family-friendly programs.
Even when we bring our children to Sunday School or church youth activities, we find that some of the other kids come with "baggage." Most kids are not shy about discussing their less-than-desirable living situations, or the inappropriate movies they have watched. When we ask how we can pray for them, some kids may share all kinds of things that we would rather not have our "innocent" children hear. No matter what good intentions we have, we just can't keep our children away from worldly influence.
Let's admit it, sometimes we, ourselves, are bad influences for our own children. If we are honest, each one of us can say, with the apostle Paul, "I want to do what is good, but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway." (Romans 7:19) No matter how careful we are, we can't totally protect our children from our own sin, let alone this sinful world we live in. Instead, we must teach them how to survive in it.
Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6) You'll notice that this verse doesn't say, "when he is a teen or young adult, he will not depart from it." Wouldn't our lives be much easier if this were true! Instead, we can pretty much count on the fact that our teens and young adult children will make some choices that don't meet our approval. They are compelled to find out some things the hard way because they, too, are sinners who need God's forgiveness.
So, what should we do? With God's help, we will train them "in the way they should go." We will love and nurture them, introduce them to Jesus, teach them about his loving sacrifice, bring them to church and Sunday School and youth activities, listen to them, discipline them, pray for them and with them, forgive them, be good examples, then love them some more. We can only do our best. Ultimately, we must entrust them to God, remembering that he loves them more than we do. He won't give up on them, any more than he has given up on us. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us (1 John 4:16) --and for our children.
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