Parenting: A Biblical Worldview

Continuing the series on parenting, I thought it would be helpful to offer some practical ways parents can teach their children to love the Lord. This is our basic command regarding our part of bringing up children, while theirs is “to obey and honor” parents.

It becomes much easier to impart biblical counsel into the hearts of our children when they honor us. It is the right relationship for discipleship. (Rules without relationship results in rebellion.) When children are taught to obey and honor their parents from a young age, the need for discipline gets less and less, and more attention can be given to just enjoying the relationship.

I’m a learning parent, just like you, so these are just a few of my feeble attempts. Feel free to share yours!

• If I do nothing else in the day, I try to make sure I read straight out of the Bible each day. So many great discussions about the character of God spring from this. (I do it even if they act bored 😉 (Dad reads at night.) I believe that the reading of Scripture has a power that we can’t even comprehend. We try to keep a memorization passage going as well.
• I try to point to God through everything. If I am discussing a particular behavior/habit (say, manners at the table), I am careful to emphasize WHY we bother. “Chewing with your mouth closed is simply a tangible way to ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ “. Why do we give preference to older people? Why do we not run in the house? (To be good stewards of our possessions…i.e. not breaking everything in sight.) Etc.
• Whether we’re reading about someone, watching a movie or meet someone, I try to look for opportunities to abbreviate their love for God. “Do you know why Mother Teresa had such compassion on those poor people? Only God’s love can do that.”
• When we go for a walk, I point out how all the beauty around us is evidence of God’s love for us.
• Any time we study some amazing feature of nature, I try to remember to stop and say, “Do we not serve the most creative, incredible God? How could anyone think this world just happened?”
• In the area of money, I try to remind them that all that we have belongs to God.

Day in, day out…our most important job is to reveal to our children that God encompasses all that we do and all that we are. It is giving our children life through a biblical worldview.