Tag: Raising godly children

Digging in Deeper: Deuteronomy 6:6-7

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“These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, and when you lie down and when you get up.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Here’s a nice, uncomfortable question to get you thinking on this lovely Friday morning: If you are a parent who professes Christ, what are you doing to make sure your children follow suit? Maybe you’re doing everything you can, maybe you’re not really giving it much thought, but either way, there’s probably at least something inside of you that considers the matter worthy of at least a bit of attention. I don’t have any great answers to that question for you this morning, but I do have a reflection on how not to do it. This occurred to me after watching an episode of the long-running CBS sitcom, Young Sheldon, a prequel series of the immensely popular The Big Bang Theory (of which I have never watched a single episode). Let’s talk this morning about something that doesn’t work when it comes to faith and the next generation.

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Digging in Deeper: Proverbs 22:6

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“Point your kids in the right direction— when they’re old they won’t be lost.”‬‬ (The Message – Read the chapter) 

Parenting is tough. I can say that with confidence and I’m only ten years into it. Every season has its challenges. And every season feels like its challenges are bigger and harder than the season before it. You can’t imagine it could get any harder—or better—and then it does. If you are a parent committed to seeing your children grow to love and follow the Lord, this just adds an extra burden to the pile. This particular burden is great enough, verses like this one are often claimed as a cover for mistakes we might have made along the way. Is that okay? 

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Morning Musing: 1 Samuel 8:1-3

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“When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel.  The name of his firstborn son was Joel, and the name of his second, Abijah; they were judges in Beersheba.  Yet his sons did not walk in his ways but turned aside after gain.  They took bribes and perverted justice.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

How ironic and tragic it is that Samuel fell into the same error as Eli! While it appears he was even more faithful to the Lord as a judge than Eli was, Samuel’s sons were given positions as judges over Israel because of who their father was and, like Eli’s sons, were unfaithful failures in the positions as well. Read the rest…

Job One

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This past Father’s Day I issued an encouragement and a challenge to dads.  If we take the Scriptures at face value, we are the ones primarily invested with the responsibility of passing on our faith to the next generation.  In what follows, I talk about how exactly to do it.  Thanks for reading.

 

Job One

As most of you know, I am a Kansas City Royals fan.  I know…this has been a tough summer.  But three years ago, it wasn’t.  Three years ago was the best summer to be a Royals fan since…well…the summer before (there’s even a children’s book about that one that is on the shelves at home).  But before that you have to go back 1985 to find one of comparative excitement.  As for the summers in between, I’ll be honest: They were pretty rough.  There were four seasons when we lost more than 100 games (for my non-baseball fans that’s a notable mark of having had an exceedingly bad season)…three of which were back-to-back-to-back.  There were many more when we were just generally bad.  The badness occurred at pretty much all levels from the top of the organization to the bottom. Read the rest…