How do we raise our children in the faith? Dr. J.V. Fesko suggests three practical ways that believing parents can cultivate and nurture a strong foundation in the Christian faith for their children.
How do we raise our children in the faith? I suspect that this is a question that every Christian parent asks themselves from the moment they either decide or discover that they are going to have children, or at the moment that they hold that child in their arms. They want the best for their child, and most importantly, they want their child to know Christ. There are certainly many, many things that we can do, but three things come to mind, in answering this particular question.
1. Reading the Word of God to Our Children
Read the whole Bible out loud to your children.The first is: how much do we expose our children to the Word of God? You know, in other words, how much time do we spend reading the Word of God to our children? It’s something that we can do very simply. When you’re gathered for a meal, you sit down and read a chapter of Scripture. It doesn’t take very long. And in the course of about three and a half years, you can literally read through the entire Bible. Read the whole Bible out loud to your children. One chapter a day, five to six days a week. It goes by pretty quickly, and before you know it, you’ve read the Bible to your children.
2. Praying for Our Children
Second of all, how much do you pray for your children? I think so often we will pray for things, when things are going poorly, when we’re suffering, when we’re struggling. But how about praying for our children on a day-in and day-out basis? That they would know Christ, that they would love our Triune God, that they would want to serve him, heart, soul, mind, and strength. So reading the Scriptures to them as well as praying for them.
3. Modeling the Christian Faith for Our Children
But I think this third one is perhaps one of the more important ones: how much do we model the Christian faith for our children? The people that most see that discontinuity between what we say and what we do are our children.I think so often it’s the case that we are unfortunately unacknowledged hypocrites, in that we say one thing and we do another. And the people that most see that discontinuity between what we say and what we do are our children. And so one of the things I regularly tell my own children is I say, you know what? I want you to know, above all else, your dad is a sinner! Your dad is a sinner, and I need the grace of Christ as much as anybody else. And I will fail, but I hope what by the grace of God I’m able to do is repent of my sin and to seek that forgiveness from Christ, so that you see that whenever I fail, I need Christ just as much as you do.
