The Family Channel: Raising Kids Without Raising Your Blood Pressure

The top mandate for parents is to point their kids to God! Ephesians 6:4 makes clear "Fathers, bring up your children in the training and instruction of the Lord." Obviously, that's not only an instruction to fathers. It's an instruction to parents. God has given parents the responsibility of spiritual training, and it's not optional. The most important lesson we teach our kids is about knowing and loving God. The bottom line of parenting is to point our kids to God.

Parents don't have all the answers for the questions kids are going to ask. I don't mean questions like, "Why are trees green? Why is the sky blue? Or, Why do dogs bark?" Often parents make up the answers to such questions in order to satisfy their kids for awhile. But, as they get older, they ask questions like, "Why did God make me this way? If God is loving and in control of everything, why did he allow Grandma to die?" They ask questions like that and they're very tough to answer. In fact, my reservoir of answers for such questions is very small. But I am fully confident my Heavenly Father, the Creator of the universe, does have all the answers! During such times, it's my joy as a parent to point them to God.

One option is for parents to address questions in a formalized manner. For example, sitting them down and talking through the questions. At times, Ann and I have found the "formal setting" workable. But, we have discovered that we teach our kids most by modeling for them the truths you want them to understand. We are to live our lives in such a way that our kids want to emulate us. They want to be like us, rather than run the other direction.

Lastly, Ann and I have discovered it helps pointing our kids to God when we include them in our dialog about struggles we are actually experiencing. We don't include them every time we have an issue, but once in a while we share our struggles with them and how we feel God is leading us to handle a given situation. This actually prepares them for how to get through difficult times from a godly point of view. For example, how better to teach your kids to have faith in a God in financial difficulties than when you're in the middle of a financial difficulty and you constantly express to them, "Yeah, it's tough right now but we have a God who is faithful and will provide for us!" Or when you're going through grief or pain or struggles, say to your kids, "Yes, this hurts, this is hard. But God will comfort and sustain us."

We are to motivate our kids to trust and embrace God and there is not a better teacher than modeling God in "real life situations." If they don't see God in our lives why should they pursue Him? If they don't see us pointing to God all the time, why should they trust and rely in God? Modeling our relationship with God to our children is one of our main jobs as parents!

On the Victory Side,

Dave