It’s a shame that a lot of believers cannot really boast of having children who follow their faith and love the Lord Jesus.
It’s often a battle to make our children pray, read the Bible or behave well as Christian kids. Most of our kids can quote all the lines of Harry Porter and Tom and Jerry by heart but are hardly motivated to know their scripture memory verses. Sunday school is more like a torture session.
Most Christians hardly invest in any time and effort in godly instructions for their children or getting Christian entertainments for them. Many parents don’t really care what their children do so far as they are out of their way. Even the generality of the Church hardly has a good Christian education program and curriculum in place for our children, most think they disturb the adult service so they are best kept locked away in one corner with enough snacks till the service is over.
Yet we fail to realize we have a limited time frame (between ages 1-7 according to psychologists) to positively impact their young and impressionable minds with the truths of the Scripture, before a worldly mindset is molded in them. By the time children know their left from their right we may have to do a lot of fasting and fighting to get them to tow the Bible line.
Recently a friend told me about his seven year old son’s love for the Holy Scriptures. For a long time he had been asking for a Bible but the parents thought he could not handle it, not knowing that the seeds of righteousness they had been sowing was now germinating.
- They had always prayed intentionally that their kids would love the Lord right from birth. The kids saw their parents pray and study the Word regularly.
- And they kept these up through regular times of family devotions that were kept short and informative to keep the children awake and interested. Kids need to be taught the Word, encouraged when they do right, and corrected and disciplined when they do wrong.
- They lived a consistent Christian life before their kids. It’s a bad sign for you to wait until the kids start ‘preaching correctionally’ before you correct your wrongs. And please don’t harass these little cherubs when they tell you the truth!.
- They invested well in godly comics, music and other entertainment that created a deep hunger that only the Word of God could fill. Kids learn best in an atmosphere of joy and fun as fish take to water. And then they used these occasions to impart lessons of eternal value to their young minds.
-Disinfect your children from all negative influences they may try to bring in from school or your friends. Believe you me, Harry Porter and his ilk with all their scary images will only stretch our children’s imagination where we ourselves do not want to go and make our discipleship work doubly difficult.
For them it was a dreams come true for their child to personally request for the gift of a Bible.
And what a blessing it was as they guided the child in reading and making practical sense of what the Bible was saying to his young mind and seeing the godly attributes blossoming in his life like wildflowers in the rain!.
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